We must now, Venerable Brethren, as Our purpose demands, impart to you such counsels as seem best suited for carrying on successfully the study of biblical science. We must, in the first place, have a clear idea of the kind of men whom we have to oppose, their tactics and their weapons.
In earlier times the contest was chiefly with those who, relying on private judgment and repudiating the divine tradition and the teaching authority of the Church, held the Scriptures to be the one and only source of revelation and the final appeal in matters of Faith. Now, we have to meet the Rationalists, the true children and heirs of the older heretics. Trusting in their turn to their own judgment, they have rejected even the scraps and remnants of Christian belief handed down to them from their fathers. They deny that there is any such thing as divine revelation, or inspiration, or Holy Scripture at all. They see in these histories only forgeries and falsehoods of men. They set down the Scripture narratives as stupid fables or lying tales. The prophecies and the oracles of God are to them either predictions made up after the event, or forecasts formed by the light of nature. The miracles and manifestations of God's power are not what they profess to be, but are either startling effects which are not beyond the forces of nature, or else mere tricks and myths. The Gospels and apostolic writings are not, they say, the work of the authors to whom they are assigned. These detestable errors, whereby they think to destroy the truth of the divine Books, are obtruded on the world as the peremptory pronouncements of a newly-invented "free science." This science, however, is so far from final that they are perpetually modifying and supplementing it. There are some of them who, notwithstanding their impious opinions and utterances about God and His Christ, the Gospels, and the rest of Holy Scripture, would fain be regarded as being theologians and Christians and men of the Gospel. They attempt to disguise under such names of honor their rashness and their insolence. To them we must add not a few professors of other sciences who approve and sustain their views, and are egged on to attack the Bible by intolerance of revelation. It is deplorable to see this warfare becoming from day to day more widespread and more ruthless. It is sometimes men of learning and judgment who are assailed; but these have little difficulty in standing on their guard. The efforts and the arts of the enemy are chiefly directed against the more ignorant masses of the people. These men diffuse their deadly poison by means of books and pamphlets and newspapers. They spread it by means of addresses and of conversations. They are found everywhere. They are in possession of numerous schools for the young, wrested from the guardianship of the Church. In those schools, by means of ridicule and scurrilous jesting, they pervert the credulous and unformed minds of the young to contempt of Scripture. Should not these things, Venerable Brethren, stir up and set on fire the heart of every Pastor, so that to this "knowledge, falsely so called," may be opposed the ancient and true science which the Church, through the Apostles, has received from Christ, and that the Sacred Scriptures may find champions that are strong for so great a struggle?