The watchful eye of the present Pontiff, Pope Pius X., detected the nature and aims of the new sect before it had yet time to fasten itself upon the minds of the faithful. Accordingly, on September 16, 1907, he issued to the world his famous Encyclical, _Pascendi Dominici gregis_, treating of the errors of Modernism. The Encyclical was divided into four parts as follows I. The Errors of Modernism--_Agnosticism_--This error declares that the human reason is merely a phenomenon, and cannot raise itself to the knowledge of God. This negation offers free access to scientific atheism, which is an opposition to what Faith teaches. _Immanence_--Agnosticism is the negative side of Modernism; immanence constitutes its positive constituent. This doctrine would have it, that religion is a fact and as such demands an explanation; this is not to be sought from without, but from within. Religious immanence thus places as the basis of faith the _sensus cordis_, or a feeling of the heart, taking its origin from a _need of the Divine_ hidden in the folds of the subconscious. _Subjectivism_--Modernism supposing that the religious conscience is the supreme rule in all things relating to God, declares that that conscience, attracted by the unknowable, either exalts the phenomenon, that is, transfigures it, or deforms, that is, disfigures it, according to circumstances, persons, places or time. _Symbolism_--Modernism declares that man, before thinking upon his faith, creates that faith, either in an ordinary and vulgar manner, or in a reflex and studied way. In this second case there come what are called the dogmas of the Church. These dogmas, Modernism says, are the instruments of the believer, the symbols of his faith. Thus the essence of Modernism tends, from a social point of view, to subject the doctrines of the Church to the vague but dominant ideas of the moment, unknown yesterday, and forgotten tomorrow. From the point of view of the individual it would subject objective, theological and philosophic truth to the sensation of the individual and to the sentiment of the ego. II. How these errors are employed.--The Pope then points out the principles which the Modernist theologian makes use of. For the theologian of this kind, dogma arises from the need which the believer has of elaborating his own religious thought. For him the Sacraments are only the symbols of faith, the consequences of worship, or something instituted for its nourishment. Inspiration is the need which the believer has of expressing his thought by writing or by word; in this way it approaches very nearly to poetical inspiration. It teaches, moreover, that the Church is only the product of the collective conscience, which, in virtue of vital immanence, comes down from a first believer; autocratic at first, it must now, according to Modernism bend itself to the popular forms.