CHAPTER XII.
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.