So again; that Christ is man, is
a fact of revelation; but the further proposition--Christ has a true
body--though not explicitly stated, is implicitly affirmed in the
first proposition. All consequences, such as the above, which are seen
immediately and evidently to be contained in the words of revelation,
must be accepted as of faith. Other consequences, which are equally
contained in the original deposit, but which are not so readily
detected and deduced, _must be explicitly_ accepted as of faith, only
so soon as the Church has publicly and authoritatively declared them
to be so contained; but not before. Thus, to take an illustration, the
Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin is a fact contained from
the beginning, implicitly locked up, as it were, in the deposit of
faith, left by the Apostles. Were it not so it never could have been
defined; for the Church does not invent doctrines. She only transmits
them. Yet, this doctrine is not so clearly and so self-evidently
included, and lies not so luminously and unmistakably on the very
surface of revelation as to be at once perceptible to all.
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