If the blind acceptance of authority appears to him in its true colours,
as mere private judgment _in excelsis_ and if he have the courage to
stand alone, face to face with the abyss of the eternal and unknowable,
let him be content, once for all, not only to renounce the good things
promised by "Infallibility," but even to bear the bad things which it
prophesies; content to follow reason and fact in singleness and honesty
of purpose, wherever they may lead, in the sure faith that a hell of
honest men will, to him, be more endurable than a paradise full of
angelic shams.