Chapter 12

UNIVERSAL HISTORY AND THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

We must now consider the Church in relation to history and external historical criticism 297

1st. The history of Christianity; 2nd. The history of other religions 298

Criticism has robbed the Bible of nearly all the supposed internal evidences of its supernatural character 298

It has traced the chief Christian dogmas to non-Christian sources 300

It has shown that the histories of other religions are strangely analogous to the history of Christianity 300

And to Protestantism these discoveries are fatal 302

But they are not fatal to Catholicism, whose attitude to history is made utterly different by the doctrine of the perpetual infallibility of the Church 305

The Catholic Church teaches us to believe the Bible for her sake, not her for the Bible's 305

And even though her dogmas may have existed in some form elsewhere, they become new _revelations_ to us, by her supernatural selection of them 306

The Church is a living organism, for ever selecting and assimilating fresh nutriment 307

Even from amongst the wisdom of her bitterest enemies 309

All false revelations, in so far as they have professed to be infallible, are, from the Catholic standpoint, abortive Catholicisms 311

Catholicism has succeeded in the same attempt in which they have failed 313