Not without reason do Protestants demand, What proof can be given that infallibility exists in the Church at all?
what proof is there that the Church has ever been fairly or justly represented in any council?
and why should the truth be ascertained by the vote of a majority rather than by that of a minority?
How often it has happened that one man, standing at the right point of view, has descried the truth, and, after having been denounced and persecuted by all others, they have eventually been constrained to adopt his declarations! Of many great discoveries, has not this been the history?
It is not for Science to compose these contesting claims; it is not for her to determine whether the criterion of truth for the religious man shall be found in the Bible, or in the oecumenical council, or in the pope.

She only asks the right, which she so willingly accords to others, of adopting a criterion of her own.

If she regards unhistorical legends with disdain; if she considers the vote of a majority in the ascertainment of truth with supreme indifference; if she leaves the claim of infallibility in any human being to be vindicated by the stern logic of coming events--the cold impassiveness which in these matters she maintains is what she displays toward her own doctrines.

Without hesitation she would give up the theories of gravitation or undulations, if she found that they were irreconcilable with facts.

For her the volume of inspiration is the book of Nature, of which the open scroll is ever spread forth before the eyes of every man.