I.

(Scripture, cap. i. p. [134]558.)

On the 18th of July, 1870, Pius the Ninth, by the bull Pastor Aeternus proclaiming himself infallible, and defining that every Roman bishop from the times of the apostles were equally so, placed himself in conflict, not merely with Holy Scripture (which repeatedly proves the fallibility of St. Peter himself, when speaking apart from his fellow-apostles), but with the torrent of all antiquity. Yes, and with the great divines of his own communion, such as Bossuet; including divers pontiffs, and the Gallicans generally. But note, here, what St. Clement says of the Holy Scripture, and of the search after truth. Is it conceivable, that he knew of any living infallible oracle, when he wrote this book, never once hinting the existence of any such source of absolute gnostic perfection? A like ignorance of such an oracle characterizes Vincent of Lerins, the great expounder of the rule of faith as understood by the four great councils of antiquity.

Clearly, Clement had never seen in Irenaeus the meaning read into his words by the modern flatterers of the Roman See. [^3711] The discovery of 1870 comes just eighteen centuries too late for practical purposes.