the believer from generation to generation. Who shall dare dissolve
or loosen this holy bond, this divine reciprocality, of Faith and
Scripture? Who shall dare enjoin aught else as an object of saving
faith, beside the truths that appertain to salvation? The imposers
take on themselves a heavy responsibility, however defensible the
opinion itself, as an opinion, may be. For by imposing it, they
counteract their own purposes. They antedate questions, and thus, in
all cases, aggravate the difficulty of answering them satisfactorily.
And not seldom they create difficulties that might never have
occurred. But, worst of all, they convert things trifling or
indifferent into mischievous pretexts for the wanton, fearful
difficulties for the weak, and formidable objections for the
inquiring. For what man FEARING God dares think any the least point
indifferent, which he is required to receive as God's own immediate
Word miraculously infused, miraculously recorded, and by a succession
of miracles preserved unblended and without change?--Through all the
pages of a large and multifold volume, at each successive period, at
every sentence, must the question recur:- "Dare I believe--do I in my
heart believe--these words to have been dictated by an infallible
reason, and the immediate utterance of Almighty God?"--No! It is due
to Christian charity that a question so awful should not be put
unnecessarily, and should not be put out of time. The necessity I
deny. And out of time the question must be put, if after enumerating
the several articles of the Catholic Faith I am bound to add:- "and
further you are to believe with equal faith, as having the same
immediate and miraculous derivation from God, whatever else you shall
hereafter read in any of the sixty-six books collected in the Old and
New Testaments."

I would never say this. Yet let me not be misjudged as if I treated