SECTION 2

OUR DUTY TO JUDGE THE PRINCIPLES OF THE "EXAMINATION."
The author of the " Examination," acknowledging as " eternal truths " the principles I have put forth; the connection between gifts and offices in apostolic times having already been clearly established in my previous writings; the " Archives " having taken care to give warning that, in his ecclesiastical principle, the author of the " Examination " went farther than Catholicism itself; the application of this principle to justify the present institution being founded on a more than doubtful interpretation of some passages of scripture; universal priesthood being again, in the judgment of the " Archives," pitiably banished in the cloudy regions of abstraction, I might think myself absolved, as far as concerns the theses of the " Examination," from the fatigues of controversy. But, as these views are used as a support in the endeavor to embarrass the path of faith, it is good that the sheep of Jesus should not be seduced; and, in order to spare them the dangers of a wrong path, charity demands that these things should be carefully passed under judgment.