“Now the Pope,” says Mr. Alger, “excommunicates the emperor, sets up a rival, foments a rebellion among his subjects, or launches the terrible interdict on a whole nation, shutting the churches, muffling the bells, forbidding confession to the penitent, unction to the dying, burial to the dead.”[27] Either the author has been imposed upon by his authorities, or perhaps he has not weighed sufficiently his words. The effect of an interdict of the Pope is inaccurately stated. These are “terrible” matters, and one who is reciting history should be careful and exact in his specifications. Here, as before, he is bound to give his authorities, and learned and credible ones, or change his language. “The repeated gross contradictions of bishops, councils, and popes, their inconsistent decrees reversing or neutralizing each other, _infallibility clashing with infallibility_, begat irrepressible doubts.”[28] This sentence may pass for a rhetorical flourish, but it involves a grave, a very grave, a most grave charge, and is backed up by no example, or proof, or relation of authorities! These cutting and slashing assertions where conscientious accuracy is required and sound scholarship ought to be displayed, place the intelligence and education of his Boston audience in no enviable light. Let us have some specimens of “infallibility clashing with infallibility” by all means: “Luther sprang forth with one-third of Christendom in revolt at his back.... But _the fundamental doctrines_ of the church scheme otherwise remained _essentially_ as they had been, unchallenged.”[29] What a pity that the theologians of the sixteenth century had not known that “the fundamental doctrines of the church scheme remained essentially” the same! The Council of Trent, if it had only understood this, might have saved its anathemas. “After Luther, then, we see Christendom, with _fundamental agreement of belief_, differing, for the most part, only in affairs of polity and ritual, split into two bodies—those who rest their belief on the _inspired_ authority of the church, and those who rest it on the inspired authority of the Bible.”[30] Here again we have another _fundamental_ erroneous idea of the church. “Inspired” authority is not what Catholics believe. This language shows poor theological training or a loose way of handling delicate and important points. But on this point we shall have more to say.