Second, because it is the Roman Catholic Church alone which knows her own essence and attributes. All others are more or less ignorant of the essence and attributes necessary to the church of the Theanthropos.
Thirdly, it is to the Roman Catholic Church alone to which the essence, attributes, and marks which we have shown à priori to belong necessarily to the Church of Christ apply. Consequently, the Roman Catholic Church is the real cosmos of God in its perfection of being and faculties, and men have no possible alternative but to join it, to submit to its authority, under pain of the death of the intelligence, of being a creature out of joint with the whole system of God’s works, of being in the impossibility of attaining their last end in palingenesia. The Roman Catholic Church or pantheism—all truth or no truth—death or life here and hereafter.
[161] We have said authority and not sacerdotal character, because as to that there is no difference between the Supreme Pontiff and the episcopate, but only between the episcopate and the priesthood.
THE LAST DAYS OF OISIN, THE BARD.
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
III.
OISIN’S YOUTH.
“Patrick! thy priests do ill to jeer,
Not me, but Oscar’s self, and Fionn:
Wise are they; but the dead are dear:
This deed is not well done.
“Who dares to say the King lies bound
By angel hosts in bonds abhorred?
Had these lain bound, great Fionn had found
And freed them with his sword!