HT^^ f?<^, ^^. 
 
 ^\ S?- ^ ' 
 
 
 
 
 r 
 i 
 
 
 ■ Vw "i 
 
 . -SSJr- 
 
 
 

 Date 
 
 Due 
 
 
 MPJL 
 
 3 ms''Z 
 
 
 
 mt 
 
 mi 
 
 
 
 ■''W ji 
 
 
 
 
 ^Y J_ 
 
 ^ ■?■■'"/ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 «*i"!i; ,-, f 
 
 W^9 T t* 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 W^*F*r 
 
 ^^^^^^^^ 
 
 h« 
 
 
 
 
 ^^- 
 
 
 "^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 
 
 
 
 ':■: .^'m 
 
 ft-***' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 BX1806 .mm" ""'"™'"' "-'""^ 
 °liiMIIIIMII&ffiL 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 392 135 
 
BK 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029392135 
 
THE (ECUMENICAL COUNCIL 
 
 AND THE 
 
 INFALLIBILITY OF THE ROMAN PONTIFF: 
 
 A PASTORAL LETTER TO THE CLERGY 
 
 &c. 
 BY 
 
 HENRY EDWARD (/vU'vwwv^^ 
 
 AECHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTEE. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 LONGMAN-S, GEEEN, AND CO. 
 
 1869. 
 
y^^^ir-^^ 
 
 ^ Library / 
 
 .^' 
 
 LONDON : PEINTEII BT 
 
 spomswooDji: and co., new-street sqtjajie 
 
 AND PABLIAMENT STEEET 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Effect of the Council already felt in England and in France, p. 5. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 On the opportuneness of defining the Infallibility of the Boman 
 Pontiff, p. 25. 
 
 Reasons against the definition, 28 ; Answers to reasons against 
 the definition, 33 ; Reasons for the definition, 38. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Tradition of the Infallibility of the Soman Pontiff, p. 58. 
 
 Statement of the doctrine, 58. 
 
 1 . Tradition from the Council of Constance to the Council of 
 Chalcedon, 70. 
 
 Gerson, 70 ; Bishops of France, 71 ; University of Paris, 72 ; 
 Stephen, Bishop of Paris, 73 ; Bradwardine, Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury, 73 ; Clement VI., 74 ; S. Thomas, 74 ; S. Bonaventure, 
 75 ; Council of Lyons, 75 ; S. Thomas of Canterbury, 77 ; S. An- 
 selm, 77 ; S. Bernard, 78 ; Anselm of Havelburgh, 78 ; Synod of 
 Quedlinburgh, 80 ; Council of Rome, 81 ; Eighth General Coun- 
 cil, 81 ; Alcuin and Caroline Books, 81 ; Bishops of Africa, 83 ; 
 Sixth General Council, 84; Formula of Hormisdas, 85'; S. Leo, 
 and Council of Chalcedon, 87. 
 
 2.' Tradition from the Council of Constance to 1 682, 93. 
 Opinions of Gerson, 96 ; Condemnation of Peter de Osma, 99 ; 
 Faculty of Louvain, 99; Clergy of France, 101. 
 
 3. First formal enunciation of GaUicanism, 107. 
 
 Assembly of 1682, 107 ; Nomination by the King, 109 ; Re- 
 sistance of the Sorbonne and other Faculties to the Four Articles, 
 110. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Tiuo effects of the Council certain, p. 124. 
 
 Effect on the evidence and proposition of the Faith, 124 ; and 
 on the relations of the Civil Governments to the Church, 127. 
 
 Postscript. -Monseigneur Maret, ' Du Concile General ei de la Paix 
 Religieuse,' p. 139. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 Reverend and Dear Brethren, 
 
 In publishing, on the 27th of last May, the 
 Apostolic Letters which direct us to invoke, in every 
 Mass, the light of the Holy Ghost for the guidance of 
 the coming CEcumenical Council, I refrained from 
 adding any words of my own. But as the time now 
 draws near when it will be my duty to leave you for 
 a season, it seems fitting, and you may perhaps 
 expect, that I should freely express to you the 
 thoughts awakened by this event, and the intentions 
 for which we ought to pray. 
 
 It has been said again and agaiuj by those who 
 desire what they say to be true, that the indiction of 
 a General Council in ages past stirred the whole 
 world, but in these days is received with complete 
 indifference. If it be- so, then the need of a General 
 Council is proved, and the reason for convoking it 
 is evident. If the Christian world be in a state of 
 coma, it is time that the physicians should consult 
 together. But is it the fact that the coming Comicil 
 is ignored ? What event in the last two years has 
 excited so much attention? In what country of the 
 Christian world has it been passed over in silence? 
 
6 
 
 "What Government has not occupied itself about it? 
 There have been interpellations in legislatures, 
 diplomatic circulars, hundreds of articles in a thou- 
 sand journals in all countries of Europe, speeches in 
 convocations, books, pamphlets, and letters in news- 
 papers from the invited and the uninvited, an uni- 
 versal stir and excitement, not indeed within the 
 unity of the Catholic Church, where aU is calm in 
 the strength of quiet and of confidence, but outside, 
 in the political and religious world. The diagnosis 
 of the case is, therefore, hardly correct. The patient 
 is not insensible, but highly sensitive ; lethargic at 
 times, perhaps, and unconscious of the extent of his 
 maladies, but fully alive to what is passing around 
 him and impending over him in the future. It is 
 true, indeed, that the indiction of the Council of 
 Trent, for example, fell upon the conscience of 
 Christian Europe while as yet it was visibly united 
 to the Holy See. The errors of the so-called 
 Reformation were already in activity, and the minds 
 of men were deeply moved by many passions. The 
 Civil Powers of Europe were then all Catholic, and 
 had therefore a large participation in the Council. 
 Now all is changed. Half of Germany, Norway, 
 Sweden, Denmark, England and Scotland, have ceased 
 to be Catholic. The Civil Powers in countries of 
 which the people remain wholly or almost altogether 
 Catholic, are so no longer. It is not to be ex- 
 pected that they will be moved by hope or by fear, 
 by good or by ill will towards the Council in which 
 they have foregone their share. Nevertheless, even 
 among them, both in public and in private, the 
 
coming Council already exerts an influence which is 
 ever increasing in strength and in significance. 
 
 So true is this, that the question, who have or 
 have not been invited, or who have or have not a 
 right to sit in the Council, has been raised by many 
 who are not of the unity of the Catholic Church. 
 We should have thought that this question would 
 solve itself. The convocation of Parliament is 
 addressed only to its members, and its members are 
 those only who are subjects of the Crown and are 
 duly invested with the right to sit. The indiction 
 of the Council is addressed to the Bishops of the 
 Catholic Unity, who are subject to the authority of 
 the Church, and members of its world-wide empire. 
 By the Bull of Indiction all Bishops are, not in- 
 vited, but obliged to attend. It is not an invitation, 
 but a citation. They can be released from the obli- 
 gation to appear only by the Supreme Authority 
 which imposes it. It has been erroneously imagined 
 that the two Apostolic Letters addressed, the first, 
 to the Schismatical Bishops of the East, and the 
 second, to all Protestants and others not Catholic, 
 were issued to give an (Ecumenical character to the 
 Council. But this is a transparent error. The Coun- 
 cil, by containing either numerically or morally the 
 Pastors of the whole Flock throughout the world, 
 subject to the Apostolic See, is thereby, ipso facto, 
 (Ecumenical. These two letters, therefore, were 
 addressed in paternal charity to those who once were, 
 and now unhappily are no longer, of the Catholic 
 Unity. Their presence is not needed to make the 
 Council (Ecumenical. They are exhorted to avail 
 
8 
 
 themselves of the moment of reconciliation and of 
 peace offered by the assembling of the Council ; and 
 all alike on one and the same condition, namely, a 
 recognition and submission to the Divine Authority 
 of the Catholic and Roman Church, by which the 
 Council wiU assemble, deliberate, and make decrees. 
 They who have the Episcopal character validly im- 
 pressed by undoubted consecration would, upon 
 submission to the Divine Authority of the Church, be 
 admitted to sit with the Episcopate of the Catholic 
 world. The invitation therefore is, first, to recon- 
 ciliation, and then to verification of their episcopal 
 character. The Bishops of the Churches in the East, 
 now in separation from the Catholic Church, are 
 without doubt, for the most part, validly consecrated. 
 They might, upon the renunciation of schism and any 
 doctrinal error, at once be restored to their rank as 
 Bishops. There are others in the West claiming 
 the episcopal character, and claiming likewise to 
 be Catholic, as the Jansenists of the Low Coun- 
 tries, and others again nearer home. ' If they 
 believe their episcopal character to be unjustly 
 doubted or denied, the way is open for examination 
 and redress. It is not for me to say what the 
 Supreme Authority may or may not see fit to do. 
 But this, at least, I may venture to say, for 
 this the Supreme Authority has already done. 
 It has invited all those who are now separate from 
 its unity to avail themselves of this occasion. Let 
 them bring before the coming Council any cause in 
 which they have been wronged; any claims which 
 have not yet been heard, any alleged rights of which 
 
9 
 
 they have been deprived. Three hundred years of 
 contention, misery, and declining faith — not to go 
 deeper into the dark memories of the past — may well 
 turn the hearts of men once more to the Church in 
 which their forefathers believed and died. God is not 
 glorified by divisions, nor is our Divine Master hon- 
 oured by contradictions among those who teach in His 
 name. Let us hope, pray, and labour for unity in 
 the truth. There are many signs of the times which 
 betoken a happier day. Not to go further back than 
 the last forty years, there has come over England a 
 change which may be felt. A distinguished French 
 writer has said that in the midst of the old England 
 which is passing away, a new England is arising. 
 The England of penal laws, and slavery, and unequal 
 legislation is gone; the England of to-day has eman- 
 cipated men from religious penalties, abolished 
 slavery, and given equal laws to the people of these 
 realms. This new England of to-day, with aU its 
 maladies — and they are indeed grievous and menacing, 
 inherited from the sins of our forefathers — is, never- 
 theless, just, fair, merciful, and generous. There is a 
 benevolence growing up where once was ill-will ; and 
 a reaction has set in towards those who have been 
 wronged and falsely accused. Of this, evidence is on 
 every side, in private and in public life ; and this will 
 have results hereafter which the most sanguine now 
 do not venture to express. There may, perhaps, be 
 found here and there some half-educated minds, or 
 some interested and violent persons, who keep up the 
 old rail against the Catholic religion. But the English 
 people do not now believe you and me to be idolaters. 
 
10 
 
 Twenty years ago many did so. But the light of 
 day, and their own good sense, has destroyed this 
 superstition. They know us to believe in naany 
 mysteries of the supernatural order; but they pro- 
 fess to believe in supernatural mysteries themselves. 
 They cannot call us superstitious or credulous, with- 
 out accepting the name themselves. They are coming 
 also to see that the supernatural order needs a more 
 solid and stable foundation than they can find in the 
 midst of their many contradictions ; they see that at 
 last they are compelled in argument to rest upon the 
 witness and testimony of Christendom. But for 
 whom does Christendom bear its witness ? The day is 
 past for appeals to antiquity. If Christianity and 
 the Christian Scriptures are to be maintained in con- 
 troversy against sceptical criticism, the unbroken, 
 world-wide witness of the Catholic Church must be 
 invoked. This consciousness of dependence has 
 worked like a benign influence upon the minds of 
 those who believe Christianity to be a divine revela- 
 tion, and the books of Scripture to be inspired. And 
 I joyfully bear witness that a pious belief in these 
 two divine truths pervades the English people. In 
 saying this I do not forget the materialism, ignorance, 
 indifference, practical atheism of millions. Never- 
 theless the Christian tradition of England, though, 
 grievously mutilated and robbed of its divine au- 
 thority, still survives. There are in the Anglican 
 communion, and among Nonconformists, millions who 
 believe in Jesus Christ, His person and His redemp- 
 tion, with a heartfelt and loving faith; and their 
 faith bears noble fruits. Many of their errors 
 
11 
 
 come from a jealousy for these very truths. It 
 was a master-stroke of the enemy of truth to make 
 them reject the words and the will of Jesus Christ 
 out of jealousy for His Person and His work. As 
 they who killed His disciples believed they were 
 doing a service to God, so they rejected the unity 
 and authority of His Church and sacraments or- 
 dained by Him, and doctrines which came from His 
 lips, in the belief that they were thereby honouring 
 His Person and His truth. But this illusion of the 
 Evil One has been at last found out. Fair and 
 truthful minds acknowledge at this day that every 
 truth for which they profess to be jealous is menaced, 
 and in a multitude of minds altogether lost. But 
 they cannot deny that in the CathoHc Church these 
 very truths are not lost or menaced, but universally 
 taught and believed in all fulness and precision. The 
 mission and work of the Catholic Church in England 
 is like that of S. Paul in Corinth. In the midst of 
 a highly civilised, intellectual, luxurious, refined, 
 philosophical, and contentious race, he preached 
 ' Jesus Christ and Him crucified.' Some asked for 
 signs and others for wisdom ; some were incredulous, 
 others were critical; they sought after learning, elo- 
 quence, logic : he preached, affirmed, and re-affirmed 
 again, as one having authority, sustained by a con- 
 sciousness of a mission and a message both alike 
 divine. Men chafed against both the matter and 
 the manner, and against the manner even more than 
 the matter of his teaching. It was perpetual affirma- 
 tion. They would not see that his divine authority 
 was a part of his message, and that the divine cer- 
 
.12 
 
 tainty of what he taught was the foundation of that 
 authority ; that their ' faith might not stand on the 
 wisdom of man, but on the power of God.' * If the 
 people of England indeed believe in ' Jesus Christ 
 and Him crucified,' we shall soon see the unity of faith 
 arising out of our endless confusions : for to believe 
 in Him we must know who He is, that is, that He 
 is God, consubstantial, co-eternal, co-equal with the 
 Father and the Holy Ghost, therefore we must 
 know the Holy Trinity, One God in three persons; 
 and His Manhood, therefore His Incarnation, two 
 perfect natures in One Divine Person, and thereby 
 also the dignity of His blessed Mother as Mother 
 of God. We must believe also what He has done 
 for us, that is, the redemption by His most pre- 
 cious blood; what He has taught us, or the whole 
 undiminished truth which He has revealed; and 
 what He has commanded us, or all the institu- 
 tions and obligations of His moral and positive law. 
 All these four assemblages of truth are contained in 
 the knowledge of ' Jesus Christ and Him crucified.' 
 No one can be said to know Him who does not know 
 who He is, what He has done, what He has taught, 
 what He has commanded; but no one can know 
 these things who does not know the doctrine of the 
 Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the whole doctrine of 
 faith, the whole order of the Church, its unity and 
 authority, the institution of the Holy Sacraments, 
 with all the grace they convey and the obligations 
 they impose. But this is to know the Catholic Faith 
 and the Catholic Church; and as men become once 
 * 1 Cor. ii. 5. 
 
13 
 
 more calm and. candid, as the storms and passions of 
 three hundred years subside, they will see that in 
 their haste and illusions they have wounded Him 
 whom they professed to honour, and have destroyed. 
 His work whom they have desired to serve. 
 
 For the last thirty years there has been an awaken- 
 ing in the mind of England, such as, for three hundred, 
 years, has never been before. There is a sense of loss 
 and of privation, an honest acknowledgment of the 
 evil done by the so-called reformers ; a desire to 
 restore what has been broken down ; a painful con- 
 sciousness of division, contention, and uncertainty; 
 a conviction that these things are contrary to the 
 will and commandment of our Divine Master : an 
 aspiration after unity, a hunger for truth, a longing 
 after the return of the Divine Presence which once 
 dwelt in the old churches of England. Besides this, 
 there is a consciousness that the Church of Christ 
 cannot be cribbed up within four seas ; that it fills 
 the world, and that the insular Christianity of 
 England, even if it were perfectly united in itself, 
 could not live long when disunited from the Christian 
 world. The spread of the British Empire, and the 
 spread of Anglicanism to the colonies, has stiU more 
 powerfully awakened this aspiration for a higher 
 unity. Wheresoever the insular religion of England 
 goes, it finds a Church and a Faith before it, which 
 contains islands and continents, and the whole world, 
 in its unbroken unity. The colonies of Great Britain 
 are acting powerfully, both in politics and religion, 
 on the mother country. They both give and receive 
 an influence which will deeply modify and assimilate 
 
14 
 
 the whole British Empire to a type, not of the past, 
 but of the future. The mother country has impressed 
 its -outlines upon the colonies ; the colonies are now 
 silently but surely transforming the mother country 
 into their own likeness. But neither will ultimately 
 prevail. Another image and likeness is returning 
 upon both. The great principles, axioms, and maxims 
 of our English law, derived from Catholic times and 
 from the Catholic Church, lie imperishable at the 
 foundation of our political order. They have been 
 carried throughout our colonies, and have reproduced 
 in all our dependencies a political and social life 
 homogeneous to our own. This unity of first prin- 
 ciples would seem to promise for the British Empire a 
 future of solidity and endurance, if only the insular 
 narrowness of England be wisely effaced. The Tudor 
 legislation in religion, which for three hundred 
 years has afficted England and persecuted Ireland, 
 has never been able to establish itself in our colonies. 
 There, the Catholic Church has been always freer 
 than it is even now in England and in Ireland. The 
 abolition of the Tudor statutes is as certain as the 
 rising of the sun to-morrow. In Ireland it is already 
 done. In England it will not long tarry. A larger 
 and more living spirit of justice and charity is burst- 
 ing the bands which human violence imposed upon 
 the liberty of divine faith. In this our colonies led 
 the way, and the mother country must inevitably 
 follow. "We have seemed to be paradoxical and pro- 
 voking when we say that S. Thomas of Canterbury is 
 regaining his hold on the hearts of Englishmen. 
 But it is emphatically true. He died for the liberties 
 
15 
 
 of the Church ; and the liberties of the Church, how- 
 soever they may be embodied in some particular 
 cause in debate, resolve themselves ultimately and 
 necessarily into these two principles, or axioms of 
 faith : the one, that no human authority whatsoever of 
 kings, princes, legislatures, or human laws may come 
 between the soul and God ; the other, that this perfect 
 liberty of the soul in faith is derived from God, and 
 has for its witness, guide and guardian, the Divine 
 Authority of His Church. The English people have 
 long professed the former of these truths. Even the 
 established religion, the whole history of which is at 
 variance with this principle, perpetually asserts it. 
 One half of the English people have vindicated it by 
 suffering under penal laws, unto bonds and death. 
 It is this profound conviction which has helped to 
 abolish the State Church in Ireland. The accumulated 
 action of the colonies, of Ireland, and of half the popu- 
 lation of Great Britain, will inevitably, and before long, 
 abolish the state religion in England. The British 
 Empire then, both in its political and its religious 
 life, wiU have burst its bands, and will reconstitute 
 itself upon a wider base than the area of our four seas. 
 What faith, and what unity then, wUl be commensu- 
 rate to such an empire, it is not difficult to foresee. 
 Even the Russian despotism is powerless to maintain 
 the unity of the Greek Church. Half the Russian 
 population dissents from the established religion. If 
 liberty of faith were granted, no church would long 
 stand but that which is the fountain, guide and guar- 
 dian, of the liberty of faith. To manifest this to the 
 world, the Divine Head of the Church seems so to order 
 
16 
 
 its destinies that the two chief fields of its power and 
 expansion should be the British Enapire and the United 
 States. In these two vast spheres of intense intel- 
 lectual activity and vehement energy of will, an epis- 
 copate of a hundred and seventy Bishops rules over 
 missionary churches the most united, vigorous, and 
 prolific to be found in the whole world. I do not 
 know how others may have regarded the assembly of 
 the Anglican Bishops of England and America two 
 years ago. Something may indeed have invited the 
 criticism as much of their own flocks as of others. 
 But to me it was a subject of hope. It was an ex- 
 plicit evidence of the desire for unity which is work- 
 ing in various ways on every side. They, no doubt, 
 desired to confine that union within their own 
 system; but they felt that the insular narrowness of 
 England is not enough. They invited America and 
 the colonies to bear a part. This alone proved a 
 wider desire and a higher aspiration, which such an 
 assembly can never satisfy. It gave a great impulse 
 to those who have been praying for reunion. They 
 do not fear to declare that America and Australia 
 are not enough without Catholic Europe; and that 
 even Constantinople is not enough without Rome. 
 These ideas have been scattered broadcast ; and where 
 they have lighted they have infused desires and 
 prayers in myriads of hearts up and down in England 
 and throughout the Anglican system, which nothing 
 can extinguish, nothing can stay. They will work 
 on in silence with a potency which is not of man only, 
 preparing for a time when those who are separate from 
 the only unity of Divine foundation will be irresist- 
 ibly absorbed by its supernatural power and grace. 
 
17 
 
 It is certain, then, that in England the indiction of 
 a General Council has come at a time when the 
 minds of men are specially prepared for it. Even if 
 they had been silent, their silence would not have 
 been the silence of indifference. But there has been 
 no silence. Both in public and in private, by word 
 and by writing, an interest serious and respectful has 
 been shown. 
 
 But in this country the interest felt about the 
 Council is chiefly, if not altogether, in its bearing 
 upon religion. In France, besides this, perhaps the 
 chief interest arises from its bearing upon pohtics. 
 The debate in the Corps Legislatif in July of last 
 year shows how profoundly the minds, not of Catho- 
 lics only, but of mere politicians, are moved by the 
 anticipations of what the Council may decree. In a 
 moment of haste and precipitation, some French 
 writers and politicians have interpreted the condem- 
 nations in the Syllabus as a condemnation of the 
 principles of 1789. This is enough to rouse a great 
 turmoil. But is it well to take for granted, and to 
 make us who are at a distance believe, that the 
 principles , of 1789 are such as the theology and the 
 morality of the Christian Church must condemn ? We 
 would desire to beheve, if we can, that those principles, 
 even if they bear the marks of a period of excitement 
 rather than of calm and measured thought, are never- 
 theless in some way reconcilable with the great laws 
 of political morality which lie at the foundations of 
 human society, and are consecrated by the sanction 
 of the Christian world. I should be sorry to beheve 
 that there is anything indelibly impressed on the 
 
18 
 
 political order of the great French people which is 
 at variance with the intellectual and moral system 
 of the Catholic Church. 
 
 In touching on this point, so dear to that illustrious 
 nation, as hereafter in touching once more on another 
 subject, relating to the history of 1682, I shall refrain 
 as far as possible from using language of my own, 
 lest unconsciously I should do, what a French writer 
 has lately, unreasonably I think, and without cause 
 imputed to me ; that is, in any way wound ever so 
 lightly the dignity of France. I shall in both 
 cases use the words of devoted and distinguished 
 sons of that great people. The Prince de Broglie, in 
 treating of the variance between the Church and 
 modern society, which is so sedulously preached by 
 those who desire to exclude the Church from the 
 political order, says that the Catholic Church has 
 stood in relations with civil society these eighteen 
 hundred years in all lands : ' from Constantine to 
 Charlemagne, from Charlemagne to Charles Y., from 
 Charles V. to Louis XIV., from Louis XIV. to 
 1789.' 'Why, then, should there be one only date, 
 1789, when this spirit of adaptation in Christianity 
 has failed, and one only society which is bound to 
 divorce Christianity on account of incompatibility of 
 temper ? ... In reflecting on this singular fact, 
 which is the great problem of our times, I can only 
 find one cause to assign, namely, the abstract and 
 philosophical character which society in France, by 
 the organ of its legislators since 1789, has always 
 aifected to give to the principles on which it is 
 constituted.' ' France,' he adds, ' is the only nation 
 
19 
 
 which has undertaken the generous but adventurous 
 task to labour " not for one nation in particular, but 
 for all the human race ; not for one time, but for all 
 times." ' ' The only thing I shall permit myself to 
 say is, that it is this philosophical character, impressed 
 on all our laws, which has passed also into our 
 manners and our language, that brings with it a 
 complication, until now without example in the 
 relations of a State, and of a society, with the Chris- 
 tian religion, and even with any religion whatsoever.' 
 ' To recognise the principles of 1789 with the cha- 
 racter of universal obligation which they affect, is to 
 add an appendix to the Catechism, and ten or twelve 
 articles to the Creed.' ' The French Revolution in 
 making itself philosopher, metaphysician, and almost 
 theologian, has entered upon the territory of the 
 spiritual. It is a Church which it opposes to the 
 Church, and a new Catholicism which it desires to 
 substitute for, or associate with, the old. A concordat 
 is not enough ; many a Council would be necessary to 
 complete such an operation. Such is, to my mind, 
 the true point of difference between society in France 
 and the Church. It does not limit itself, as all its 
 predecessors, to demanding of the faithful and of 
 their pastors to pay the taxes, observe the laws, 
 lend tl).eir aid to the regular action of pubhc func- 
 tions : it exacts of them on points of doctrine, such as 
 the origin of sovereignty, the liberty of thought, the 
 natural equality of man, a veritable profession of 
 faith, accompanied by an amende lionorahle for all 
 adhesion, in other places and at other times, to doc- 
 trines contrary to itself.' 'It is not very surprising 
 
 b2 
 
20 
 
 that a great institution, which has charge of souls in 
 all the world, should hesitate to commit itself to a 
 symbol of ideas so wanting in precision as to lend 
 itself in fifty years to the Constitution of '91, the 
 Charter of 1830, and to the Plebiscite of 1862.' 
 
 He then points out the ambiguity and uncertainty 
 of a document which may be interpreted in four or 
 five ways. ' Is it indeed the same principle which 
 adapts itself to two interpretations so contrary to 
 each other? In the matter of religious liberty, how 
 many commentaries have we not had? There is the 
 administrative interpretation, which recognises no 
 other worships than those of which the State pays 
 the heads, and fixes the legal status. . . . There is 
 the liberal interpretation, which is much more respect- 
 ful to the rights of individuals. . . . There is the 
 revolutionary interpretation, which gives free course 
 to all aberrations of thought. ... So many schools 
 are there, all sheltering under the common name of 
 liberty of thought, of which the doctors and disciples, 
 intolerant enough for each other, pretend alike to 
 exclusive orthodoxy.' 
 
 ' Imagine face to face our social elements, still in 
 effervescence and in struggle, and that old power, rest- 
 ing on the immovable base of dogma clearly defined, 
 which has seen crumbling at its feet the ruins of a 
 hundred peoples and the dust of twenty ages.' He 
 then imagines a dialogue 'between that antique 
 spiritual power and the impatient sons of modern 
 France. What do you ask of me? it seems to say to 
 them. To live in peace with your governments ? But 
 I have already signed with them more than one con- 
 
21 
 
 cordat, and it is not I that desire to break them. Not 
 to preach insurrection against your laws? I foment 
 revolution nowhere. Do you wish me to recognise 
 those laws as the crown of social progress, and that I 
 should propose them as such to the imitation of the 
 whole world, and to the admiration of future genera- 
 tions ? That is what you will never obtain from me. 
 Speak to me of charity, of necessity, of equity, of 
 accomplished facts to be accepted, of acquired rights 
 to be respected : I hear you and understand you. 
 But do not talk to me either of the ideal or of the 
 absolute ; for the ideal for me will never be any other 
 than the future I am awaiting, and, in my eyes, the 
 absolute is the Truth, which I represent.' ' This lays 
 the finger on the substance of the debate. If the 
 society of France is willing to be taken like all its 
 predecessors, as a mixture of good and evil, imper- 
 fect as all human things, the peace with the Church 
 will be made, if it be not made already. But if its 
 demand be that it should be held sacred, and all but 
 canonised, I doubt if it will obtain that favour. All 
 the advocates in the world, able or ardent, impas- 
 sioned or powerful, statesmen and sectaries, will waste 
 upon it their pains and their eloquence.' * 
 
 These thoughtful and pointed words are enough to 
 assure anyone how groundless and needless are the 
 fears of politicians in France lest the OEcumenical 
 Council should decree anything inconsistent with the 
 true bases of civil society. And surely no French 
 politician will admit that the principles of 1789 are 
 
 * Bevue des Deux Mondes, f^vrier 1869 : Le Christianisme et la 
 Society, pp. 546, 553, par Albert de Broglie. 
 
22 
 
 out of square with those bases of political right. We 
 have, however, a proof which has now attained the 
 dignity of a very touching historical fact. Some ten 
 years ago a young French priest, Professor of Eccle- 
 siastical History in the seminary of Langres, Leon 
 Godard, published a short treatise on ' The Principles 
 of '89 in Relation to Catholic Doctrine.' His object 
 was, if possible, to -remove the supposed contrariety 
 between the principles of '89 and the principles of 
 the Christian Church : a wise and charitable purpose 
 to which we are all daily invited, I may even say pro- 
 voked, by the alternate tones of perplexity and of 
 challenge which come up from friends and foes. In 
 a matter so difficult, and so prejudged by the passions 
 of men, it is no wonder that a good young priest 
 should so have written as to lay himself open to cen- 
 sures not unjust. With the true spirit of a Catholic 
 and a Christian, he went at once to the Holy See and 
 submitted himself and his work to correction. The 
 book was subjected, by the highest authority, to 
 examination ; and an edition, corrected and enlarged, 
 was printed in Paris in 1862, with the authorisation 
 of the Roman censors, and a truly paternal and con- 
 soling letter from the Bishop of Langres. In that 
 letter are quoted the words of the President of 
 the Roman theologians, addressed to the Bishop. 
 They run as follows : — ' This work, tried by a severe 
 scrutiny by certain Roman theologians, was foimd by 
 them to teach nothing in any way opposed to the 
 dogmas of Catholic faith ; Avherefore they judged that 
 it may be published.' I remember that I once saw 
 M. Leon Godard at Rome while his book was under 
 
23 
 
 examination. He had visibly upon him the marks of 
 sickness and of anxiety. Knowing how much he had 
 suffered from the censures which had fallen upon 
 him, I could not but express the sympathy every 
 Catholic feels towards those who set so noble an ex- 
 ample of sincerity and submission. Not long after, 
 the tidings came that Leon Godard was gone to a 
 world where there is no more any cloud upon the 
 truth, nor any mistrusts among the servants of God. 
 In the conclusion of his work, M. L^on Godard 
 writes : — ' Such is our profession of faith in regard to 
 the principles of '89. We believe that they do not 
 contradict any decision of the Catholic, Apostolic, 
 and Koman Church, to the judgment of which we sub- 
 mit without reserve ; and we are convinced that they 
 are in harmony, in respect to opinion, with the judg- 
 ment of the most accredited doctors of the Church 
 and of the schools.' ' If, then, our pen has not 
 betrayed our thoughts, it will be seen that there is 
 nothing in common between our doctrines and those 
 of false liberalism.' ... ' We will maintain the 
 principle of '89 inscribed in the constitution of our 
 country ; but with all the explanations which we have 
 given, and which no one has a right to exclude, 
 because, as we have said, the epoch of '89 is one of a 
 double face, the one good the other evil; the one 
 liberal in the legitimate sense of the word, the other 
 revolutionaiy. The tactics of our adversaries are to 
 draw us to a complete rejection of '89, in order at 
 once to accuse us of a desire to set up again' the ancien 
 regime^ with all its abuses, and to overthrow our 
 existing laws. These tactics we will baflSe, and we 
 
24 
 
 will not abandon an inch oi ground which we have a 
 benefit in defending and a right to hold.' * 
 
 The work of M. L^on Godard will go a long way 
 to relieve the fears and to rectify the misconceptions 
 of certain politicians and political writers in France. 
 It will show that neither the Council nor the Sylla- 
 bus, interpreted, not by any individual, but by the 
 Holy See, need cause the fears — I would venture to 
 use a familiar word, and say the scare — which in some 
 quarters appear now to exist. 
 
 * Les Principes de '89, et la Doctrine Catholique, par I'Abbd L^on 
 Godard. Lecofire, Paris, 1863. 
 
25 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ON THE OPPORTUNENESS OF DEFINING THE 
 PONTIFICAL INFALLIBILITY. 
 
 Hitherto our subjects have been obvious, and our 
 way easy and clear. But now we approach to matters 
 over which it is not possible, either to pass in 
 silence or to venture on the declaration of any final 
 judgment. I mean, the subjects with which the 
 Ecumenical Council will occupy itself. You are 
 already well aware that the preparatory congregations 
 are seven in number, and that the matters distributed 
 to them comprehend faith, philosophy, discipline, the 
 relations of the Church with civil society, education, 
 and the like. 
 
 We have heard on all sides that the Council will 
 define this and that doctrine as of faith; then, again, 
 we are assured that the moderation of wise men will 
 prevent any such definitions. We learn, chiefly in- 
 deed from those who are out of the unity of the 
 Church, but upon alleged communications from the 
 most learned and most distinguished, as weU as the 
 wisest and most moderate, of the bishops and theolo- 
 gians in the Catholic Church, that this wUl be, and 
 that will not be, entertained by the (Ecumenical 
 Council. 
 
 It can hardly be necessary, reverend and dear 
 
26 
 
 brethren, to say to you that all these confident 
 assurances are pleasant illusions. None but those 
 who are admitted to the work of preparing for the 
 Council know what is in preparation, and they are all 
 bound by the Pontifical Secret. From them, nothing 
 can be known ; from others, nothing can be learned. 
 As S. Augustine said : ' Nemo dare potest quod non 
 habet.' We may therefore dismiss all those confi- 
 dential communications. 
 
 But beyond this, they who believCj as we do, that 
 an CEcumenical Council deliberates and decrees by 
 an assistance over which human partisanship, political 
 calculation, private interests, controversial rivalries, 
 and human errors have no power to prevail, wUl have 
 no anxiety as to the result, and no eager predispo- 
 sitions to express. If the Council should decide 
 contrary to their previous judgment, they would 
 rejoice to be corrected by its unerring guidance ; if it 
 should refrain from pronouncing on matters on which 
 they previously believed a decision to be opportune 
 or even necessary, they would with their whole heart 
 submit their judgment, and believe that such a deci- 
 sion would be not only not necessary, but not even 
 opportune. In this sense of perfect submission, 
 springing from faith in the perpetual and infallible 
 assistance of the Holy Spirit, all Catholics will await 
 the final result of the first Council of the Vatican. 
 All this hot anxiety as to its decrees belongs to 
 minds used to the contentions of convocations which 
 may err, or to the debates of Parliaments in which 
 parties rule the day. But to those who believe with 
 undoubting faith that the acts of the coming Council, 
 
27 
 
 whatsoever they be, will be not only infallibly true, 
 but wise and opportune, and that the result, whatso- 
 ever it be, will lay down a rule of faith in matters of 
 belief, and a rule of thought and judgment in matters 
 of prudence, there can be no anxiety, or impulsive 
 desire for this or for that result. They wUl remain 
 in a calm equilibrium of mind and will, ready with 
 promptness and with joy to accept whatsoever decrees 
 come forth as the wisest and the best. 'He that 
 believeth, let him not hasten.'* 
 
 With this temper of mind, and with this submission 
 of will, I may now take up the chief topic of the 
 Pastoral Letter addressed to you two years ago on 
 the Centenary of S. Peter; but, in doing so, I shall 
 endeavour to lay it before you with the arguments 
 adduced, hinc inde, on either side. "We have been 
 often told of late that one subject to be defined by 
 the Council will be the infallibility of the Pope. 
 They who tell us this are chiefly those who, being out 
 of the unity of the Church, believe this doctrine to be 
 false ; and they rely upon statements made, as they 
 allege, by Catholics few and rare in number, who do 
 not believe the doctrine to be true, or by Catholics 
 who, believiag the doctrine to be true, nevertheless 
 are of opinion that to define it would not be opportune. 
 
 With those who are without, we have nothing now 
 to do. With the handful of Catholics who do not 
 believe the infallibility of the Vicar of Jesus Christ 
 speaking ex cathedrd, we will not now occupy our- 
 selves. But the opinion of those who beheve the 
 doctrine to be true, but its definition to be inoppor- 
 * Isaias xxviii. 16. 
 
28 
 
 tune, deserves a full and considerate examination. 
 We wUl endeavour so to weigh it, in preparation of 
 heart to accept whatsoever may be decided by the 
 supreme authority of the Church. 
 
 Once for all, let me repeat that we are now about 
 to weigh the reasons," not for or against the truth of 
 the proposition ' that the Vicar of Jesus Christ, 
 speaking ex cathedrd in matters of faith and morals, 
 cannot err ; ' but assuming, for the time, that this 
 proposition is certainly true, whether it be opportune, 
 that is, timely, prudent, and expedient, that it should 
 be defined. 
 
 I. Reasons against the Definition. 
 
 1. It may be said that no necessity or urgent 
 reason can now be found for the promulgation of such 
 a definition, inasmuch as the whole Episcopate and the 
 whole priesthood of the Catholic Church, a few only 
 excepted, together with the whole body of the faith- 
 ful, have always received, and have even in these 
 times received with veneration, docility and joy, the 
 doctrinal decisions which have been published by 
 Pontiffs, and recently by Pius the Ninth. 
 
 2. That for the determination of all controversies, 
 and for the solution of all doubts, the decree of the 
 Council of Florence respecting the supreme authority 
 of the Roman Pontiff as universal doctor, together 
 with the profession of faith enjoined by Pius IV. in 
 conformity with the mind of the Council of Trent, is 
 sufficient. 
 
 3. That in order to decide and to determine this 
 
29 
 
 question fully and precisely, it would not be enough 
 to declare simply the Pope to be infallible; but it 
 •would be necessary, at the same time, to declare, and 
 that by a dogmatic decree, the foi'm and the mode in 
 which the infallibility of the Eoman Pontiff is to be 
 manifested : which would be a difficult question, and 
 would involve the authority of the Holy See in many 
 new and grave complications. 
 
 4. That the making of such a definition would be 
 exposed to this intrinsic difficulty. Suppose the 
 bishops not to be unanimous, what course should 
 then be taken ? Suppose, again, that they were 
 unanimous in declaring the infallibility of the Roman 
 Pontiff to be a doctrine revealed by Jesus Christ, and 
 always and in all churches traditionally taught and 
 believed, would they not, in the very act of defining 
 the dogma, seem to profess that there is no authority 
 in defining the faith inherent in the Episcopate ? 
 
 5. That such a definition would be of doubtful 
 utility, and would rather hinder the hope of re-uniting 
 the Eastern Churches to the Holy See, for the genius 
 of the Greek and Oriental mind is such as to recoil 
 from every new word. It is well known what serious 
 and endless controversies the single phrase ' Filioque' 
 has stirred up. For which reason, in the profession 
 of faith enjoined by Gregory XIIl. for the Greeks, 
 and by Urban YIII. and Benedict XIV. for the other 
 Orientals, the very words of the Florentine Decree, 
 without any change or addition, were retained. 
 
 6. That such a definition would retard also the 
 return which we so much desire of Protestants to the 
 unity of the Church; inasmuch as the new dogma 
 
30 
 
 would excite and increase in large numbers a prejudice 
 against the CatLolic Church, and especially against 
 the Roman Pontiff, and thereby render it more difficult 
 for them to understand and to embrace the faith, by 
 raising a suspicion that the doctrine of the Pope's 
 infaUibHity is a novelty unknown in earlier ages. 
 
 7. That this question, concerning which it is by no 
 means certain that there is any necessity to define it, 
 might possibly raise divergencies among the bishops, 
 who now are of one mind and heart in reverence and 
 obedience to the Holy See ; a result which would be 
 most disastrous. 
 
 8. That it is not impossible that the defining of the 
 Pope's infallibility might cause doubts, or, what is 
 worse, dissensions among Catholics who are otherwise 
 sound, and perfectly and willingly submissive, from 
 conviction, to the authority of the Church; and that, 
 because certain historical facts and documents are not 
 as yet sufficiently explained; so that in many coun- 
 tries the minds of men are not sufficiently prepared 
 for such a definition, 
 
 9. That such a new decree would be no remedy 
 for the perversity and contumacy of the few persons 
 who reject the decisions of the Supreme Pontiff, and 
 appeal from them to a General Council, as the only 
 judge of controversies ; forasmuch as their aberrations 
 come not from error of intellect, but from perversity 
 of will. The infallible authority of Almighty God 
 does not hinder men from rejecting the truth He has 
 taught, and following their own errors. ' They have 
 Moses and the prophets, let them hear them ; if they 
 hear not them, neither will they believe ' the defini- 
 
31 
 
 tions of the Church. There is a difference, also, be- 
 tween a definition of the infallibility of the Pope and 
 that of any other Christian doctrine. In the latter 
 case, the authority of the Church may be sufficient to 
 overcome any doubt. In the former it is this very 
 authority, the principle and fountain of all certainty 
 in faith, which is in question. Would it not, there- 
 fore, be more prudent to spare the weakness of those 
 who are not yet able to bear this definition, which, 
 though many think it to be useful, nobody thinks 
 to be necessary? Would not the example of Our 
 Lord and the Apostles commend to us this mode 
 of proceeding? 
 
 10. That it may be feared lest, by a perversion of 
 the true sense of such a decree, some may be induced 
 to ignore and to despise the authority given by our 
 Lord to bishops, especially in the condemnation of rash 
 and pernicious opinions in philosophy and theology. 
 
 11. That it may also be feared lest bishops, whom 
 for some years the Apostolic authority has been 
 calling into activity, in order that they should not 
 straightway send to Rome all doubts about books and 
 matters of which it is their office to judge, might, 
 by such a definition, be rendered more backward in 
 exercising their episcopal office of judges of doctrine. 
 
 12. That it would soon probably follow from such 
 a definition, by reason of the nature of man, that 
 not only matter of doctrine on which the supreme 
 decision of the Church is desired, but also many 
 other kinds of business would be sent to Rome, there 
 to be judged, decided, and solved ; so that every- 
 thing would crowd in to the centre of unity. And 
 
32 
 
 great as is the erudition, experience, justice, pru- 
 dence, and authority of the Roman Congregations, 
 such a course would not be for the prosperity of the 
 Universal Church ; for the Church, as the Holy Ghost 
 teaches, is a body, but the health of a body depends 
 on the force and motion of all and each of the mem- 
 bers. ' If all were one member, where were the 
 body ? ' ( 1 Cor. xii. 19.) Nobody doubts that the chief 
 member of the body is the head, and that in it, as in 
 its centre and seat, the vital force resides ; and yet no 
 one will say that the soul resides in the head alone, 
 which is rather diffused as its form throughout the 
 members of the whole body. 
 
 These, then, are reasons forjudging that a dogmatic 
 decision on the infallibility of the Pope would not be 
 opportune. Let that suffice which has been already 
 declared, and has been believed by all ; namely, that 
 the Church, whether congregated in Council, or dis- 
 persed throughout the world, but in the Successor of 
 Peter always one, is always infallible, and that the 
 Supreme Pontiff, according to the words of the 
 Council of Florence, is 'the teacher of the whole 
 Chui'ch and of all Christians.' But as to the mys- 
 terious gift of infallibility, which by God is bestowed 
 upon the Episcopate united to the Pope, and at the 
 same time is bestowed in a special manner on the 
 Supreme Pontiff, and by which gift the Church, 
 whether in an OEcumenical Council or by the Pope 
 without a Council, guards and explains the truths of 
 revelation, it is not expedient to make further decla- 
 rations unless a proved necessity demand, which 
 necessity at present does not exist. 
 
33 
 
 II. Answers to the Reasons against the Definition. 
 
 On the other hand it is urged : 
 
 1. That if the Episcopate, priesthood, and people, 
 are, with so few exceptions, unanimous in receiving 
 with submission and assent the Pontifical Acts, there 
 would not only be no risk in promulgating such a 
 decree, but they would rejoice to see the formal 
 reason of that Catholic submission justified by an 
 authoritative definition; or, if the number of those 
 who refuse submission be more numerous, a necessity 
 thereby is proved for the declaration of the truth. 
 
 2. That the Decree of the Council of Florence 
 ought to be sufficient; and would be, if it were not 
 misinterpreted by those who deny the infallibility of 
 the Supreme Pontiff, speaking ex cathedrd. The 
 existence of this misinterpretation by Galileans and 
 by Anglicans shows that the decree is not sufficient. 
 
 3. That the doctrine of the infallibility of the 
 Pope, held, as it is alleged, by all but a small number, 
 is already subject to the questions as to the form and 
 mode of its exercise. These questions will not 
 become less clear by being defined; and by being 
 made more clear, the complications which now arise 
 from want of a clear declaration will be avoided. 
 Erroneous or doubtful opinions give rise to compli- 
 cations; but truth excludes doubt and obscurity in 
 proportion as it is precisely defined. 
 
 4. That if the bishops were not unanimous as to 
 the making of a definition, no doubt the prudence of 
 
 c 
 
34 
 
 the Council would know what course to take. The 
 Council of Trent made no definition of the Immacu- 
 late Conception. It went to the very verge, but no 
 further. If the bishops were unanimous in declaring 
 the prerogatives of the Head of the Church, they 
 would not thereby abdicate or divest themselves of 
 any privileges or endowments divinely conferred 
 upon the Episcopate. The divine endowments of 
 the Church are not at war with each other. The 
 Apostles did not cease to be infallible because their 
 Head was so. The infalhbility of the Church does 
 not diminish the infallibility of Councils. The en- 
 dowments of the body are the prerogatives of the 
 head, and both -have their proper sphere and theu* 
 full and legitimate exercise. No bishop alone is 
 infallible, nor is the whole Episcopate infallible 
 without its Head. Of what, then, could they divest 
 themselves by declaring their Head to be infallible ? 
 
 5. That the hope of reunion with the East is alone 
 to be found in the expHcit recognition of the divine 
 prerogatives of the Church. Eeunion on anything 
 short of this, on any base, obscure, ambiguous, or 
 equivocal, would not endure for a day. The rent 
 would be made worse. The Decree of the Council of 
 Florence, which is alleged to be sufficient, was not 
 sufficient for the Greeks. They accepted it, lDut as 
 soon as they were again a,t Constantinople they threw 
 it to the winds. Eeunion is not to be gained or to be 
 sought by reducing its conditions, like a bargain, to 
 the minimum ; but by an explicit and precise accept- 
 ance of the truth. Gregory XIII., Urban VIII., 
 Benedict XIV., kept strictly to the Florentine Decree, 
 
because no other existed then. No other exists at 
 this day; and the question is, whether the events of 
 the last three centuries do not demand a more precise 
 declaration of the sxipreme authority. 
 
 6. That the return of Protestants to the Church is 
 more retarded now by the apparent contradiction 
 among Catholics on the subject of infallibility, than 
 it could be by the definition of the infalHbihty of 
 the Pope. They now reject the infallibility of the 
 Church altogether, because they believe that we are 
 divided, and therefore in doubt about it. What we 
 seem to doubt, they are encouraged to deny. We 
 seem to be in doubt because we are divided, not 
 about the infallibility of the Church, but about the 
 infallibility of its Head. They believe this answer to 
 be a subterfuge. So long as the infallibility of the 
 Pope is not authoritatively declared, they cover them- 
 selves under the shelter of those Catholics who deny 
 it. And to our shame, they borrow their belief that 
 the opinion is a novelty, not to be found in earlier 
 ages, from ourselves. The Galileans put weapons 
 into their hands, which they use against all infalli- 
 bility whatsoever. 
 
 7. That no divergence among the bishops is to 
 be feared, the unanimity alleged above may assure 
 us. But if it were to exist, in what would it be 
 of greater moment than in respect to the doctrine 
 of the Immaculate Conception at the Council of 
 Trent? The prudence of the Council, both natural 
 and supernatural, would know how to deal with such 
 a contingency ; and if divergence in anything should 
 arise, no diminution of filial and cordial obedience 
 
 c 2 
 
36 
 
 to the Holy See could follow in those things where 
 all are unanimous. 
 
 8. Tliat if the pastors of the Church be unanimous, 
 there is no fear of dissensions or doubts among the 
 faithful. Rather, the dissensions and doubts, if any 
 now exist, arise from the allegation that the pastors 
 are not unanimous as to the infallibility of the Vicar 
 of Jesus Christ. • It is of the highest moment to 
 expose and extinguish this false allegation, so boldly 
 and invidiously made by heretics and schismatics of 
 every name. For this reason alone the sooner the unani- 
 mity of the pastors of the Church can be manifested 
 the better, both for truth and for the salvation of souls. 
 The same reason holds as to the supposed historical 
 difficulties. They have been examined and exposed 
 over and over again; but they will be perpetually 
 repeated, and with increased confidence, so long as the 
 infallibility of tbe Roman Pontiff shall seem to be 
 left undefined. Where the Church has spoken, the 
 faithful are not open to seduction. While the Church 
 is silent, the spirits of error are clamorous and plaus- 
 ible. A definition would silence all voices but the 
 voice of the Church. 
 
 9. That such a decree would satisfy those who, out 
 of heretical perversity, oppose the Faith, or out of 
 ignorance and insubordination excommunicate them- 
 selves by appealing from the Supreme Pontiff to a 
 General Council, is not to be expected. But if there 
 be a hope for them, it would be in rendering clear be- 
 yond all possibility of question the divine certainty of 
 Faith ; and this is closely connected with the divine 
 authority of the Head of the Church. The example 
 
of our Lord in sparing the infirmities of the weak, 
 who were as yet unable to bear mysteries not yet 
 revealed, is no warrant for keeping back any revealed 
 truth because men will not believe the revelation 
 already made. This would tacitly assume that the 
 infallibility of the Vicar of Jesus Christ is not 
 a revealed truth. If it be a revealed truth, our 
 Lord's example is not in point ; still less that of the 
 Apostles, who ' kept back nothing,' and declared to 
 the faithful ' all the counsel of God.'* 
 
 10. That the perverse interpretation or abuse of a 
 decree must always be only partial, and can never 
 be either wdespread or permanent in the Church, and 
 can therefore afford no reason against its being made, 
 if the proper reasons exist for making it; and that 
 the definition of the infallibility of the Roman Pon- 
 tiff can in no way lessen the authority of bishops as 
 judges of doctrine in their own flocks, but on the 
 contrary give great support to all their legitimate 
 acts. It does not appear how bishops should be more 
 authoritative because their Head is less so. 
 
 11. That, for the same reason, it does not appear 
 probable that bishops would be less active as pastors 
 and judges in their own churches because the doc- 
 trine which they already unanimously believe had 
 received its formal definition. If the belief of its 
 truth does not now produce these consequences, it 
 does not yet appear why the definition of that trulh 
 should do so. 
 
 12. That, lastly, no centralisation of the ordinary 
 administration of the Universal Church could legiti- 
 
 * Acts XX. 20, 27. 
 
38 
 
 mately follow or be in any way promoted by a defini- 
 tion of the infallibility of the Vicar of Jesns Christ, 
 speaking ex cathedrd, in matters of faith and morals. 
 Such a definition belongs to a higher order, with 
 Avhich the ordinary pastoral office of bishops can 
 rarely have any immediate contact. Questions of 
 faith and morals, on which the Church has not 
 already judged, very rarely arise in any diocese. 
 The infallibility here in question has no relation to the 
 multifarious administration of dioceses. Such a defi- 
 nition as we speak of would either have no appre- 
 ciable influence on the ordinary administration of 
 bishops ; or if any, only in the way of giving certainty 
 and solidity to the judicial acts and pastoral juris- 
 diction of the Episcopate throughout the world. 
 
 For these reasons, it appears to some that the 
 objections to such a definition have no sufficient 
 weight to dissuade the Council from making it. 
 
 III. Eeasons foe the Dehnition. 
 
 Such then, reverend and dear brethren, is a brief 
 statement of the arguments for and against, as to the 
 question whether such a definition be opportune. 
 Thus far we have weighed only the objections and 
 the answers. Those who believe that such a definition 
 would be not only opportune, but is urgently re- 
 quired by the circumstances of these times, give their 
 reasons as follows : — • 
 
 1. They think such a definition would be opportune 
 because the doctrine is true ; for if true, can it be 
 said with prudence that to declare it is not oppor- 
 
39 
 
 tune? Is not this question already closed by the 
 fact that God has thought it opportune to reveal 
 it? Can- it be permitted to us to think that what He 
 has thought it opportune to reveal, it is not oppor- 
 tune for us to declare? It is true indeed that, 
 in revealing the Faith, God in His wisdom and 
 compassion was slow, deliberate, and gradual, mea- 
 suring His light to the infirmities of the human intel- 
 ligence, and preparing the minds of men for a fuller 
 manifestation, both of His presence and His kingdom. 
 But this divine procedure, binding as it may be on us 
 in dealing with heathen nations who have never heard 
 His name, is in no way binding, nay, is not even per- 
 missible, in dealing with those who have been baptized 
 into the full revelation of faith. From them nothing 
 may be kept back. With them no economy can be 
 admitted. There is now no ' disciplina arcani ' among 
 the members of His mystical Body. They are illumi- 
 nated to know ' the Truth as it is in Jesus ' in aU its 
 fulness : ' that which you hear in the ear, preach ye 
 upon the housetops.'* 
 
 By 'opportune,' then, in the mind of the objector, 
 must be meant something politic or diplomatic, some 
 calculations of local expediency in respect to nations 
 and governments. This sense of opportunity is 
 proper to legislatures and cabinets in deliberating on 
 public utilities and opinions; but in the Church of 
 God, and in the truth of revelation, it is always 
 opportune to declare what God has willed that man 
 should know. Nay, more than opportune : if the infal- 
 libility of the Yicar of Jesus Christ be a doctrine of 
 * S. Matthew x. 27. 
 
40 
 
 Jesus Christ, ' necessity lieth upon us, and woe unto 
 us if we preach not the gospel.'* It may, however, be 
 said that many revealed truths are not defined ; and 
 that it does not follow that any doctrine ought to be 
 defined, only because it is true. 
 
 2. This is indeed certain, but a further reason for 
 defining it is easy to find. This revealed truth has 
 been denied. There are two reasons for which the 
 Church from the beginning has defined the doctrines 
 of faith : the one, to make them clear, definite, and 
 precise; the other, to reaffirm, and to defend them, 
 when they have been called in question. If the infal- 
 libility of the visible Head of the Church had never 
 been denied, it might not have been necessary to 
 define it now. The true doctrine of justification was 
 never defined till it was denied. The nature of inspir- 
 ation has never yet been defined, but the denial which 
 is now widespread may one day demand it. In like 
 manner the infallibility of the Eoman Pontiff has been 
 denied. Its definition therefore becomes necessary. 
 We affirm that it was never formally denied before 
 the period of the Council of Constance, and that this 
 modern denial of the truth renders its definition 
 necessary. We are told by objectors that the denial 
 is far more ancient and widespread : that only makes 
 the definition all the more necessary. They who, to 
 make the doctrine appear doubtful, or to prove it to 
 be false, represent the denial of it to be ancient and 
 widespread, in that proportion increase the necessity 
 of declaring it by a dogmatic decree. Such a denial 
 as emanated from the so-called Assembly of the French 
 
 * 1 Cor, ix. 16. 
 
41 
 
 clergy in 1682 would amply suffice to show that the 
 definition would be opportune. 
 
 3. And further: the denial of the infallibility of 
 the Roman Pontiff has already generated extensive 
 doubt as to the truth of the doctrine. We are asked, 
 if the doctrine be revealed, how is it that you allow 
 it to be denied ? If you are not doubtful about it, 
 why not put an end to doubt by declaring it to be 
 true ? It is certain that not only Protestants believe 
 the doctrine of the Pope's infallibility to be an open 
 question among Catholics, but some Catholics are 
 tempted to believe it to be theologically doubtful, and 
 therefore not revealed; irreconcilable with history; a 
 modern exaggeration arising from the adulation of 
 courtiers and the ambition of popes. In France, to 
 deny it has become a test of political independence. 
 In England, some Catholics are stunned and fright- 
 ened by the pretentious assumption of patristic learn- 
 ing and historical criticism of anonymous writers, 
 until they doubt, or shrink in false shame from be- 
 lieving a truth for which their fathers died. The con- 
 tact of the Catholics of England with the Catholics of 
 France, good and beneficial as it has been, never- 
 theless introduced among us both books and habits 
 of thought which were of the Galilean f3chool. This 
 has spread among us an opinion that the infallibility 
 of the Pope, if possibly true, is nevertheless doubtful; 
 and this doubt, dormant and harmless as it may be in 
 pious and simple minds, who are never put to the 
 test about it, and if tested would instinctively go 
 right in spite of intellectual perplexities, is in restless 
 and active minds full of danger, above all in a Pro- 
 
42 
 
 testant country, and in the midst of all manner of 
 controversial warfare. The admission of a doubt as 
 to any revealed doctrine is fatal to faith in that 
 doctrine. 
 
 4. It would appear, not only to be opportune that 
 this doctrine should be placed beyond the reach of 
 doubt by a dogmatic decree, but that such a decree 
 would be specially opportune at this time, because 
 the formal and systematic denial of the truth in 
 question has arisen since the last General Council. 
 
 It may at first sight appear that this statement is 
 at variance with the common assertion of theologians, 
 that the denial of the infallibility of the Roman 
 Pontiif had its rise in the circumstances of the 
 Council of Constance. Two distinct periods must be 
 noted in this subject. From the Council of Con- 
 stance to the Council of Trent this denial was con- 
 fined to the opinions of a handful of men, and to the 
 disputation of- the schools in France. So little was it 
 known elsewhere, that when the Church met in the 
 Council of Florence, it made, without hesitation, its 
 celebrated decree on the prerogatives of the Roman 
 Pontiff as the Universal Pastor and Doctor of the 
 Church. Nevertheless the erroneous opinion lingered 
 on from the time of Gerson, Peter d'Ailly, and 
 Almain, in what De Marca calls the ' Old Sorbonne,' 
 to distinguish it from the Sorbonne of his own day. 
 It is certain, then, that before the Council of Trent 
 this opinion had not assumed the systematic and 
 elaborate form given to it by the Assembly of 1682, 
 and by those who have defended the Four Articles. 
 This modern and dogmatic form of the denial of the 
 
43 
 
 Pope's infallibility, ex cathedrd, was completed in the 
 seventeenth century, that is, since the last General 
 Council. 
 
 5. Now, if the next General Council meet and 
 separate without taking any notice of this denial, one 
 of two inferences may perhaps be drawn. It may be 
 said that Gallicanism has obtained its place among 
 tolerated opinions ; or, at least, that it may be held 
 with impunity. It does not readily appear what 
 could be said in answer to this. It would be hardly 
 enough to say that it was not thought opportune to 
 meet so grave a denial of a doctrine universally taught 
 everywhere out of France, nor to carry into execution 
 the acts of Alexander YIII., Innocent XI., and Pius 
 VI., who have authoritatively censured it. ' Qui 
 tacet, consentire videtur.' 
 
 6. It cannot be said that the denial of the infalli- 
 bility of the Roman Pontiff is obscure, unobtrusive, 
 and latent. It is patent, notorious, importunate, and 
 organised. It exists, not indeed in power, as once it 
 did in France ; but it exists stUl. Its roots are yet 
 in the soil and alive. It exists in a handful of active 
 and hostile minds in England and in Germany, and 
 it has been taken up by Protestants in both countries 
 as a weapon of controversy or of contumely against 
 the Catholic Church, and especially the Holy See. 
 To find or to invent a division among us is their 
 only hope. To foment the least divergence into a 
 conflict is their chief policy. There can be no doubt 
 that Gallicanism affords them their most advantageous 
 attack. Catholics are visibly united on all doctrines 
 of faith, even on the Immaculate Conception; but on 
 
44 
 
 the infallibility of the Pope, Gallicanism has caused a 
 divergence, which Protestants think or pretend to be 
 a contradiction in faith. The combined action of 
 Gallicanism within the Church and of Protestants 
 without it, has given to this erroneous opinion a 
 notoriety in the last two centuries, and especially in 
 France and England, which takes it out of the cate- 
 gory of imperfect and innocuous eiTors which may 
 be left to evaporate or to be absorbed. It has in- 
 scribed itself in the history of the Church, and will 
 live on until, by the Church, it is finally condemned. 
 7. Prudence would require the condemnation of 
 any notorious error which may hereafter produce iU. 
 eifects; but the denial of infallibility in the Head of 
 the Church has already produced ill effects ; neverthe- 
 less, so long as no condemnation is stamped upon the 
 error, it will always pass for a tolerated opinion. 
 Impunity is taken for acquittal. The faithful will 
 never believe that it is wrong to do that which they 
 see done every day, and even by ecclesiastics, without 
 note of censure. They do not know that three popes 
 have condemned the denial of their infallibility ; and 
 if they did they would justly say, 'But as we are not 
 bound to believe the infallibility of the Pope, there- 
 fore his condemning the denial of his infallibility 
 proves nothing. If he be infallible, why are we not 
 told so ; if he be not infallible, where is the harm of 
 saying so ? ' The effect of this upon the doctrinal 
 authority of the Church is gravely injurious. When 
 it is atfirmed that Scripture and tradition, and theo- 
 logical reason, and the acts of Councils, and the 
 declarations of Pontiffs, all attest the infallibility of 
 
*0 
 
 the Vicar of Jesus Christ, speaking ex cathedrd, and 
 that three Pontiffs have prohibited the denial of it, 
 and that the Avhole consensus of theologians, with the 
 exception of a handful, and that a transient and 
 national school, all alike declare the same, we are met 
 at once by the question, ' Why, then, is it permitted 
 to deny it? What may be done with inapunity .can- 
 not be wrong.' ' Where there is no law, there is no 
 transgression.' This may not be logical; but the 
 answer to this is not obvious. 
 
 8 . And further, the prolonged existence of this error 
 keeps up a theological and practical disunion in mind 
 and feeling among the faithful. Let the ti'uth be de- 
 clared, whichever way it go. Truth generates union 
 and peace ; doubt generates secret antipathies, conten- 
 tions, and mistrusts. We live in an age and country 
 where Catholics are compelled to hear, and, if not to 
 read, at least to know, what the public opinion and 
 public press of an anti-Catholic people can say against 
 the Faith and the Church. They hear that their 
 pastors are Ultramontanes ; that they are exaggerated 
 and extreme ; one-sided and partisan, ignorant, super- 
 ficial, and untruthful in history, untrusty in reason- 
 ing. All this they hear, perhaps, with offence and 
 pain ; but it leaves its blight behind. Secret doubts 
 and misgivings arise. They say to themselves : 
 ' Perhaps, after all, there is some truth in all this. 
 If there were none, could it have been so often and 
 so confidently said? Where there is smoke, there is 
 fire.' A small number of Catholics, also — for what 
 motives God knows — ^have added to this scandal, 
 partly by wi'itings bearing their names, partly by 
 
46 
 
 anonymous writing, in Protestant papers and reviews. 
 All this would expire like smoke when the hearth is 
 cold, if there were an authoritative declaration of the 
 truth. Till then, they who, in the face of every 
 kind of malevolent imputation and impertinent criti- 
 cism, defend that which the Theological Schools of 
 the whole Church, under the direct sanction of the 
 Holy See, have both taught and teach in every 
 Catholic country, must patiently bear the petulant 
 and pretentious criticism of anti-Catholic minds, 
 aided, unhappily, by some who bear at least the 
 Catholic name. They will not, indeed, be unwilling 
 to bear it for the truth's sake, nor do they care for 
 any contempt for their own; but they have a con- 
 tinual sorrow for the scandal of the weak, the hin- 
 drance of truth, the perversion of minds, the aliena- 
 tion of hearts, the party spirit, the mistrust among 
 brethren, and, worst of all, the mistrust of flocks in 
 their pastors, which are caused by these animosities 
 and infidelities. 
 
 9. Of these scandals, a direct effect is that the 
 action of truth, both within and without the Church, 
 at least in this country, is enfeebled. All who have 
 experience in the state of minds out of the Church, 
 and in their painful approaches towards it, and all 
 whose duty it has been to hear and to read the objec- 
 tions of those who enter not in themselves and hinder 
 those who are entering, will know that the alleged 
 doubts about infalhbility and the supposed extrava- 
 gances of Ultramontanes return in every case with 
 the constancy and monotony of the tide. The effect of 
 this is to confuse, perplex, and indispose the will. A 
 
tl 
 
 dubious authority, like a dubious law, imposes no obli- 
 gation. No one will submit to he knows not what. 
 The contentions of GaUicanism and Ultramontanism 
 obscure the authority of the Church, and make it 
 seem to be doubtful. Utterly false and unreasonable 
 as this is, it has its effect in alarming, confusing the 
 mind, and rendering it incapable of discernment, and 
 the will indisposed to submission. 
 
 On our own people within, thank God, such temp- 
 tations have less power; but every priest will. know 
 by his experience what misery and mischief has been 
 done to timid or scrupulous, or, again, to rash and 
 contentious minds. It must never be forgotten that 
 faith, like humility and purity, is a grace of the Holy 
 Spirit. It is to be matured and strengthened by 
 truth and by obedience ; it may be endangered and 
 extinguished by falsehood and disobedience. But 
 doubt is the shadow of falsehood and the prelude of 
 unbelief. If there be any truth of the faith in which 
 ambiguity is perilous, it is the Divine and infalHble 
 authority on which all faith reposes. The infallibility 
 of the Vicar of Jesus Christ is the infallibiUty of the 
 Church ia its Head, and is the chief condition through 
 which its own infallibility is manifested to the world. 
 To convert this, which is the principle of Divine 
 certainty, into a doubtful question, and one of the 
 highest endowments of the Mystical Body, into a 
 subject of domestic strife and fraternal alienation, is a 
 master-stroke of the Enemy of Truth and souls. 
 
 10. It is some times alleged that if the infallibility of 
 the Pope, speaking ex cathedrd, were defined, it would 
 meet with widespread refusal. Not so : rather, like 
 
48 
 
 the Immaculate Conception, it would be met by uni- 
 versal acceptance. The same prophets in sackcloth 
 prophesied unbelief, contention and schism, before the 
 Immaculate Conception was defined. We were then 
 told that there was not a trace of it in antiquity ; that 
 the Fathers were against it ; that Schoolmen and 
 Saints denied it ; that to define it would separate the 
 Church of to-day from the Church of the past, re- 
 move faith from the broad tradition of the Christian 
 world to the airy basis of the Pope's authority, draw 
 narrower the conditions of communion by adding a 
 new test, and fatally divide the 'Latin Church.' The 
 answer is before men's eyes. Nevertheless, we have 
 volumes of matter, undigested and misunderstood, 
 from Fathers and Schoolmen, published and repub- 
 lished, without a trace of consciousness that a com- 
 plete exposure of all this incoherence has again and 
 again been made. The same is now the prophecy as 
 to the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff. There is 
 no trace of it in antiquity ; the Fathers knew nothing 
 of it ; the Schoolmen are against it ; the Saints ignore 
 it; the Councils exclude the notion of it; the tra- 
 dition of thirteen hundred years refutes it; the 
 adulation and ambition, the ignorance and the ser- 
 vility of the Roman Curia have invented a novelty 
 which all the independent, learned, and noble-minded 
 of all countries have, with irresistible logic and sur- 
 passing erudition, in vain resisted. We are told that 
 this novelty is all that is now wanting to narrow the 
 Roman Church to its Latin dimensions; that its 
 definition will at once exclude all the independent, 
 learned, and noble minds lingering and suffering 
 
49 
 
 within its oppressive unity ; that, as true friends of 
 the 'Latin Church,' they urge us, with all cordial 
 solicitude, to refrain from declaring the Roman Pon- 
 tiiF to be infallible ; that our true policy is compre- 
 hension, the concession of points to which their 
 patristic learning forbids submission, the explaining 
 away of the Council of Trent to admit the Thirty- 
 nine Articles according to Sancta Clara; that if, 
 unhappily, under the blind pressure of the ignorant 
 and the courtly adulation of the ambitious, and, above 
 all, the subtle management of the Jesuits, this crown- 
 ing aberration be added to the Roman theology, the 
 Latin Church will finally stand convicted by Scrip- 
 ture, Antiquity, Fathers, Schoolmen, Councils, His- 
 torical Science, and all that is independent, learned, 
 noble, and masculine in its own communion, and be 
 thereby delivered over to its own infatuation and 
 downfall. To these self-complacent advisers it is 
 enough to say, ' Ubi Petrus ibi Ecclesia.' There is 
 not to be found a theological truth, not as yet imposed 
 as of faith, for which such a cumulus of proof exists of 
 every kind and of every age, and under every one 
 of the loci theologici^ as for the infallibility of the 
 Roman Pontifi^. The evidence of the belief of the 
 universal Church in the immaculate sinlessness and 
 pre-eminent sanctification of the Mother of God, vast 
 as it is, does not approach, either in extent or in 
 explicitness, to the evidence for the infallibility, that 
 is, the stability of faith in the Successor of Peter. 
 There is no truth which already so pervades the 
 mind of the whole Church, by unbroken tradition 
 from the beginning; nor any which would meet with 
 
 D 
 
50 
 
 a more universal and unanimous acceptance on its 
 definition and promulgation. Even in France, the 
 only country in which, for a time, and under the 
 pressure of pohtical causes, the doctrine has been 
 opposed, the opposition exists no longer as a theology 
 or a school. '■La doctrine francaise^' as its friends 
 truly but unwarily call it, lingers as a national tra- 
 dition; surviving rather as a reminiscence than as a 
 conviction. 
 
 11. The definition of the Immaculate Conception 
 has filled up and completed the analogy of the new 
 creation, and of the Second Adam and the Second Eve. 
 It has also rendered precise and complete the doctrines 
 of original sin and of grace. In like manner the 
 treatise of Divine Faith has one part as yet undeter- 
 mined, which would be completed by the completion 
 of the doctrine of infallibility. The virtue of divine 
 faith has for its formal motive the veracity of God, 
 and for its ordinary means of knowing the revelations 
 of God, the proposition of the Church. But if the 
 proponent be fallible, the certainty on which the 
 revelation comes to us cannot be divine. The Church, 
 by the divine assistance of the Holy Ghost, is infal- 
 lible, and the certainty of the truths proposed by it 
 to our faith is divine. But if the Head of the Church 
 be fallible, the certainty of truths because proposed by 
 him — as, for instance, the Immaculate Conception — - 
 cannot be divine, and is therefore fallible ; but if fal- 
 lible, it cannot exclude doubt, and for that reason can- 
 not generate faith. Where faith is, doubt cannot be; 
 and where doubt is, faith ceases to be. The treatise 
 
51 
 
 of Divine Faith is therefore incomplete so long as 
 the infallibility of the proponent be not fully defined. 
 
 12. The same is true as to the treatise de 
 Ecdesia. The infallibility of the Church dispersed 
 or congregated is matter of necessary faith. The 
 infallibility of the eighteen General Councils in which 
 the Church has been congregated is also of neces- 
 sary faith. But the Church, during the last eighteen 
 centuries, has done a multitude of acts by its Head 
 alone. Are these acts infallible or not ? For in- 
 stance, the declaration of original sin by Innocent 
 I., and of the Canon by Pope Gelasius ; and more 
 recently, of the Immaculate Conception by Pius IX. 
 What does the treatise de Ecdesia teach as to the 
 Head of the Church and his prerogatives? Are his 
 declarations and condemnations in matters of faith 
 and morals fallible or infallible ? The question has 
 been formally raised, and is of the greatest practical 
 moment. Until it be solved, the treatise de Ecde- 
 sia is so far incomplete. 
 
 13. The practical importance of this question wUl 
 be manifest at once by remembering that for three 
 hundred years the Pontiffs have elaborately and 
 expressly condemned a long series of propositions in 
 theology and philosophy. The ' Theses Damnatse ' 
 are very numerous. Now, are these fallible or in- 
 fallible? Do they require of us the assent of 
 faith, resting upon the Divine authority from which 
 they emanate; or are they venerable utterances, to 
 be respected indeed always, with assent if we agree 
 with them, with silence if we do not? Has the 
 
 D 2 
 
52 
 
 Church, then, for three hundred years, been mistaking 
 doubtful utterances for certainties; and that in 
 matters of faith and morality, involving the absolu- 
 tion of souls from sin ? They who deny the infal- 
 libility of the Pontiffs have here a hard task to 
 reconcile their theory with fidelity to conscience and 
 to truth. 
 
 14. But to pass from the region of theology to 
 that of politics. The definition of the infallibility of 
 the Pontifi"s, speaking ex cathedrd^ is needed to exclude 
 from the minds of Catholics the exaggerated spirit of 
 national independence and pride which has, in these 
 last centuries, so profoundly afflicted the Church. 
 If there be anything which a Catholic Englishman 
 ought to know, it is the subtile, stealthy influence 
 by which the national spirit invades and assimilates 
 the Church to itself; and the bitter fruits of heresy 
 and schism which that assimilation legitimately bears. 
 The history of England, from S. Thomas of Canter- 
 bury to Henry VIIL, is a series of steady encroach- 
 ments of the civil power upon the liberty of the 
 Church, in all its operations, in its possessions, dis- 
 cipline, elections, tribunals, appeals, and jurisdictions. 
 The whole English Church became charged and satu- 
 rated by the secular spirit; its whole mind was 
 clouded, and its whole Avill was bribed, till under 
 Henry YIIL, by a few acts of intimidation, its resist- 
 ance was quelled; and it fell, whole and altogether, 
 under the power of the Crown. The schism once com- 
 plete, the work of heresy was inevitable, and was pur- 
 sued at leisure. Such might have been also the history 
 of France from Charles VII. to Louis XIV. The 
 
53 
 
 French monarchy confirmed its hold on the Church 
 of France. The process of subjugating the eccle- 
 siastical liberties to the parliaments and tribunals of 
 the country was steadily pursued ; but the Church of 
 a great nation, or rather of an aggregate of nations, 
 in close contact and affinity with the Holy See, Avith 
 the memories and even the present influences of 
 Avignon in the midst of it, could not fall under a 
 royal master, as the Church of an island, far off and 
 detached from Eome, fell under the violence of a 
 royal tyrant. The great Church of France was led, 
 indeed, to the verge of danger through its national 
 traditions, but it has never passed the line. English 
 nationalism became the Anglican schism. French 
 nationalism checked itself at the Galilean Articles. 
 The Anglican Reformation has no perils for the 
 Catholic Church ; it is external to it, in open heresy 
 and schism. Gallicanism is within its unity, and is 
 neither schism nor heresy. It is a very seductive 
 form of national Catholicism, which, without breaking 
 unity, or positively violating faith, soothes the pride 
 to which all great nations are tempted, and en- 
 courages the civil power to patronise the local Church 
 by a tutelage fatal to its liberty. It is therefore 
 certain that Gallicanism is more dangerous to Catho- 
 lics than Anglicanism. The latter is a plague of 
 which we are nof susceptible ; the former is a disease 
 which may easily be taken. Gallicanism is also the 
 last form of Regalism yet lingering in the Church. 
 The Imperialism of Constantinople and of Germany 
 is gone. Time has rendered it obsolete, because im- 
 possible; the ecclesiastical prerogatives of medieval 
 
54 
 
 Europe tave likewise expired, with the religious 
 unity which alone rendered them just. But the 
 unity of the French nation renders it yet possible 
 that influences and claims inconsistent with the 
 liberty of the Church may still exist. Anything that 
 fosters this idea of National Churches, independent, 
 except in a few vital relations, of the Holy See, 
 powerfully excites a spirit which is not filial. An 
 Episcopate which depends as little as it can upon 
 the Pope, rears a laity which depends as little as 
 possible upon the Episcopate. I am not saying that 
 such is the spirit of the noble and Catholic people of 
 France at this day ; but I should not be going too far 
 if I were to give this as a description of Gallicanism, 
 and of the spirit and tendencies generated by it. So 
 long as the Articles of 1682 remain as a standard of 
 orthodoxy, this spirit and tendency will be kept 
 alive. When these Articles are buried, one of the 
 worst germs of Regalism will be extinct. 
 
 In speaking of France, I think it a duty to guard 
 against a misunderstanding which appears — contrary, 
 I must believe, to all reason and justice — to have 
 arisen from some words addressed by me to you, 
 reverend and dear brethren, two years ago, in a 
 Pastoral on the eighteenth Centenary of S. Peter's 
 Martyrdom.* In speaking of the supremacy of S. 
 
 * Two pamphlets have appeared in Paris, the one by the Abbe 
 St. Pol, Chanoine Honoraire, the other by the Abbe d'Upalgaz, de 
 rUniversit^ dAlcala. In both, and almost in the same words, I 
 am censured for saying that Gallicanism produced the great French 
 Eevolution. No proposition so shallow was uttered by me. What 
 I really did say, and here repeat, is, that, as the despotism 
 of the Tudors corrupted the Church in England, and produced 
 
55 
 
 Peter's See, it was inevitable that I should speak on 
 the subject of Gallicanism ; but I endeavoured so to 
 do it as to avoid wounding, by the lightest word, the 
 profound Catholic instincts of our brethren in France. 
 Many of its most eminent sons, both ecclesiastics and 
 laity, have so spoken to me of what I then said as to 
 assure me that my words gave them no cause to 
 think me wanting in heartfelt veneration and aflfec- 
 tion for the Church in France, glorious in all its 
 history for martyrs, confessors, and saints ; fruitful 
 in all deeds of fidelity to the Holy See, and of 
 charity to all mankind. I should not only grieve, 
 but I should hold myself guilty of a high crime 
 against humility, charity, and justice if I had so 
 spoken ; and I desire here and now, if any word of 
 mine shall seem to be wanting in veneration and 
 admiration for the Church and people of France, 
 hereby to disclaim all fault, except for the want of 
 skill in dealing with a delicate but inevitable subject. 
 I make this declaration now by way of preface to 
 what I am about to add. In the Pastoral of 1867 I 
 was recalling to your mind the history of Gallicanism, 
 and my words were these : — ' The boldness or the 
 unconsciousness with which Gallicanism is sometimes 
 put forward as an opinion which Catholics are free to 
 hold without blame, and as a basis on which Churches 
 are to unite under the shelter of Bossuet, and as a 
 
 both Anglicanism and the revolutions which have destroyed 
 it; so also the despotism of certain French monarchs paralysed 
 the liberty of the Church, and produced both Gallicanism and the 
 reyolutionary reaction which has effaced Gallicanism in France. 
 It is a little daring, and hardly respectful, to tell us that the mar- 
 tyred clergy of 1799 died for Gallicanism. 
 
56 
 
 standard of Catholic moderation in rebuke of ultra- 
 montane excesses, makes it seasonable to tell its 
 history. Gallicanism is no more than a transient and 
 modern opinion which arose in France, without war- 
 rant or antecedents in the ancient Theological Schools 
 of the French Church ; a royal theology, as suddenly 
 developed and as parenthetical as the Thirty-nine 
 Articles, affirmed only by a small number out of the 
 numerous Episcopate of France, indignantly rejected 
 by many of them ; condemned in succession by three 
 Pontiffs ; declared by the Universities of Louvain 
 and Douai to be erroneous ; retracted by the bishops 
 of France ; condemned by Spain, Hungary, and 
 other countries, and condemned over again in the 
 bull "Auctorem Fidei." ' * Whether I am justified 
 in using these words, the next chapter will show. 
 
 Now, in the following chapter I will give the out- 
 line of the history of the doctrine of the infallibility 
 of the Roman Pontiff; and in doing so sufficient evi- 
 dence will, I hope, appear by the way to justify the 
 assertions of the above quotation. 
 
 What will appear may be thus stated : — 
 
 1. That Gallicanism has no warrant in the doctrinal 
 practice or tradition of the Church, either in France 
 or at large, in the thousand years preceding tile 
 Council of Constance. 
 
 2. That the first traces of Gallicanism are to be 
 found about the time of that Council. 
 
 3. That after the Council of Constance they were 
 rapidly and almost altogether effaced from the theo- 
 logy of the Church in France, until their revival in 
 1682. 
 
 * The Centenary of S. Peter, etc., p. 41. 
 
57 
 
 * 4. That the Articles of 1682 were conceived by 
 Jansenists, and carried through by political and 
 oppressive means contrary to the sense of the Church 
 in France. 
 
 6. That the Theological Faculties of the Sorbonne, 
 and of France generally, nobly resisted and refused to 
 teach them. 
 
 I am the more anxious to render this testimony to 
 the Church in France, and to the Sorbonne, because 
 I never fully knew, till I read the evidence published 
 in this year by M. G^rin, how nobly that illustrious 
 Church contended against the Articles of 1682. 
 
58 
 
 CHAPTEE in. 
 
 TRADITION OF THE INFALLIBILITY OF 
 THE ROMAN PONTIFF. 
 
 Thus far we have enumerated, briefly, the reasons 
 adduced for and against defining the infallibility 
 of the Pontiff, speaking ex cathedrd. In order, then, 
 to preclude as far as possible any ambiguity or un- 
 certainty as to the limits and extension of the doc- 
 trine of the infallibility of the Pontiff, speaking ex 
 cathedrd^ intended by me in this Pastoral, and by 
 those known to me, who believe this to be a truth 
 of revelation, I will once for all state the various 
 opinions which have been put forward in opposition 
 and in its defence. No better analysis can be found 
 than that of Bellarmine, which I will therefore 
 simply transcribe. After saying that the Pontiff 
 may be considered in four ways — 1, As a private 
 person; 2, As a private Doctor; 3, As Pontiff alone 
 with his counsellors; 4, As Pontiff with a General 
 Council, Bellarmine says : — 
 
 1. ' Both Catholics and heretics agree in two things ; 
 first, that the Pontiff, even as Pontiff and with his 
 counsellors, or even with a General Council, may 
 err in controversies as to particular facts, which 
 chiefly depend on the information and testimonies of 
 men; secondly, that the Pontiff, as a private doctor, 
 may err even in questions of faith and morals; and 
 
59 
 
 that from ignorance, as at times happens to other 
 doctors. 
 
 2. ' Next, all Catholics agree in two other things, 
 not indeed with heretics, but among themselves. 
 First, that the Pontiff, with a General Council, cannot 
 err in framing decrees of faith, or general precepts of 
 morals. Secondly, that the Pontiff alone, or with his 
 own private Council, whether he may err or not, in 
 deciding anything in a dubious matter is, nevertheless, 
 to be obediently listened to by all the faithful. 
 
 ' These points so disposed of, only four opinions 
 remain. 
 
 ' The first is, that the Pontiff, even as Pontiff, 
 although he define a doctrine with a General Council, 
 may be a heretic himself, and teach heresy. . . . 
 This is the opinion of all heretics, especially of 
 Luther and Calvin. 
 
 ' The second^ that the Pontiff, even as Pontiff, may 
 be a heretic, and may teach heresy if he define with- 
 out a General Council. This is the opinion of Nilus 
 and the later Greeks, of Gerson, Almain, and others. 
 
 ' The third^ that the Pontiff cannot in any way be 
 heretical, or publicly teach heresy, even though he 
 alone frame a definition : which is the opinion of 
 Pighius in book iv., chap. 3, of the " Ecclesiastical 
 Hierarchy." 
 
 ' The fourth, which lies between these extremes, is, 
 that the Pontiff, whether personally he can be a 
 heretic or no, cannot, in any event, define anything 
 heretical to be believed by the whole Church. " This 
 is the most common opinion of nearly all Catholics," 
 as S. Thomas says. 
 
60 
 
 ' Of these four opinions, the first is heretical : the 
 second not proprie heretical, for we see still that it 
 is tolerated in the Chui'ch; yet it appears to be 
 altogether erroneous, and proximate to heresy.' 
 
 It is to be borne in mind that Bellarmine wrote 
 this before the Four Articles of 1682 had been framed 
 or censured. 
 
 ' The third opinion is probable, but not certain. 
 . ' The fourth opinion is most certain, and to be 
 asserted.' * 
 
 Bellarmine in later years reviewed his ' Contro- 
 versies,' and wrote of this point as follows : — 
 
 ' This opinion is more rightly the common judgment 
 of Catholics ; for opinion implies uncertainty, and we 
 hold this judgment to be certain.' And again, 'I 
 said that the opinion of those who teach that infalli- 
 bility of judgment resides not in the Pope, but in 
 the General Council, is not plainly heretical, but 
 erroneous and proximate to heresy. We do not, 
 indeed, venture to pronounce that opinion plainly 
 heretical, because they who follow it have, neither 
 they nor their books, been condemned by the Church. 
 Nevertheless, it seems to us so manifestly eiToneous, 
 that it may deservedly be declared by the judgment 
 of the Church to be heretical.' 
 
 In the Pastoral of 1867, 1 gave a number of quota- 
 tions by which the strange misconceptions or misin- 
 terpretations of objectors are sufficiently precluded. 
 
 The words ex cathedrA exclude all acts of the Pontiff 
 as a private person or as a private Doctor, and con- 
 fine the character of infallibility to those acts which 
 
 * Bellarm. ControT. de Summo Pontif. lib. iv. cap. 2. 
 
61 
 
 are promulgated from the Chair of supreme authority 
 as Universal Doctor of the Church in faith and morals. 
 
 We have been lately told, by those who desire to 
 hinder the definition of this doctrine by secular oppo- 
 sition rather than by theological reason, that there 
 are some twenty opinions as to the conditions re- 
 quired to authenticate an utterance of the Pontiff ex 
 cathedrd. I will therefore venture to affirm that no 
 other conditions are required than this : That the 
 doctrinal acts be published by the Pontiff, as Univer- 
 sal Teacher, with the intention of requiring the assent 
 of the Church.* 
 
 This, then, is the opinion which, in the following 
 pages, we shall exclusively intend by the terms ex 
 cathedrd. 
 
 It will be observed that the fourth Galilean Article 
 differs from all the above-cited opinions, inasmuch as 
 it asserts that the judgments of the Roman Pontiff in 
 matters of faith are not irreformable, unless the assent 
 of the Church — that is, either congregated or dispersed, 
 either previously or subsequently — shall adhere to 
 them. 
 
 The Galileans maintained the infalUbility of the 
 See of Peter, but not the infallibility of his Successor. 
 
 The tradition of the Church, while it refuses to 
 
 * This cannot be better expressed than in the words of F. Franzelin, 
 Professor of Dogmatic Theology in the Eoinan College : — ' Sive Con- 
 cilio sive Pontifici infallibilitatis charisma competit, quando et qua- 
 tenus, ut divmitus consiiiutus magister Ecclesise, intendit definitive, 
 sententia docere Ecclesiani universam auctoritate postulante consensum 
 in veritateln propositam. 
 
 ' Locutio ex cathedrd nihil est aliud quam descripta propoaitio 
 authentica doctrine. Quid enim est cathedra apostolica nisi supre- 
 mtim authenticUm magisterium pro universa Ecclesia ? ' 
 
62 
 
 separate the See from the Successor of Peter, affirms 
 the identity, and therefore the infaUibility, of both. 
 
 In order to narrow the question, I may add that 
 no one now contends for the necessity of General 
 Councils. The framers of the Four Articles of 1682 
 were too intelligent to contend that the assent of the 
 Church congregated in Council is necessary to an 
 infallible declaration of the Pontiff. They contended 
 only for the consent of the Church dispersed. But 
 it will be difficult for them to show that such an 
 opinion is to be found in the tradition of the Church. 
 It is the inversion of the immemorial belief and prac- 
 tice of the Church. It will not be difficult to show, 
 even in the narrow limits of a Pastoral, that the tra- 
 dition of the Church is not to test the teaching of the 
 Pontiffs by the assent of the Church, but to take the 
 doctrine of the Pontiffs as the test of the doctrine 
 of the Church. The Head spoke for the whole Body, 
 and the utterances of the Head were the evidence of 
 what the Body believed and taught. It can hardly 
 be necessary to add that, in order to constitute an 
 article of faith, two conditions are necessary, the one 
 intrinsic, the other extrinsic : the former, that the 
 doctrine to be defined be contained in the divine 
 revelation ; the latter, that it be proposed to us by 
 the Church as revealed. 
 
 If there be anything for which the whole tradition 
 of the Church bears witness, it is to the stability in 
 faith of the See and of the Successor of Peter. 
 
 If there be anything not yet defined which is 
 nevertheless proposed, as of divine certainty, by the 
 constant tradition of the Church, both dispersed and 
 
63 
 
 congregated, it is that the Roman Church and Pontiff 
 are by divine ordinance an infallible authority in in- 
 terpreting the faith and expounding the law of God. 
 
 It is obviously impossible now to do more than trace 
 the outline of the subject; but this I will endeavour 
 to do, and to point out that this doctrine in question 
 has already passed through the historical periods 
 which mark its progress towards a final definition. 
 
 For example, let us first look at the history of the 
 doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. This truth 
 was fully but implicitly contained in the universal 
 belief of the Church, both east and west, as to the ab- 
 solute sinlessness and pre-eminent sanctification of the 
 Mother of God. This constituted the first period 
 of imanalysed belief. The doctrine was thus com- 
 memorated, year by year, in the Festival of the 'kyiaa-- 
 l/.og^ or the ' Sanctificatio ' of the Blessed Virgin. 
 The second period was one of analysis, forced upon the 
 Church by the Pelagian heresy, and arising also from 
 the legitimate and inevitable intellectual action of the 
 faithful upon the matter of faith. The Festival of the 
 Sanctification of the Blessed Virgin legitimately 
 became the festival of the Immaculate Nativity. The 
 third period was the period of definition, in which the 
 two opinions of the Immaculate Nativity and the 
 Immaculate Couception contended together, till the 
 one was continually so weakened as to lose all proba- 
 bility, the other was so confirmed as to become certain. 
 The Immaculate Conception was then, at last, defined 
 and proposed as a doctrine of revelation and an article 
 of faith. 
 
 The doctrine of the infallibility of the Church, 
 
64 
 
 though not as yet defined, is everywhere declared in 
 the whole history of Christianity. It has likewise its 
 distinct periods, steadily advancing to a definition. 
 But it will be seen that the infallibility of the visible 
 Head of the Church is intrinsically necessary to the 
 infallibility of the Church. The same periods of 
 simple belief, of analysis, and of definition may be 
 traced. The first, in which the belief of the infalli- 
 bility of the Church and of the Pontiff pervaded 
 all the world, both east and west. This belief was 
 not only professed but reduced to practice in the 
 public action of the Church; and in every public 
 and authoritative instance on record the infalli- 
 bility of the Church is declared to rest upon the 
 stability in faith of the Roman Church, or of the 
 See of Peter, or of the Apostolic See, or of the 
 Successor of the Apostle, or of the Yoice of Peter, 
 still teaching by his Successor in his Sec. The 'praxis' 
 of the Church — that is, its immemorial, universal, and 
 invariable procedure in the declaration of faith and 
 the condemnation of error — implies and demands 
 always as its motive the stability in faith of the 
 Eoman See, and in almost all cases explicitly declares 
 it. This period extends from the beginning to the 
 time immediately preceding the Council of Constance. 
 The second period is, as before, one of contention and 
 analysis, in which Occam, John of Paris, Marsilius of 
 Padua, Nicholas de Clemaugiis, Gerson, Peter d'Ailly, 
 and others of less note, began to distinguish and to 
 deny what had till then been always implicitly or ex- 
 plicitly believed. What they began in France was 
 afterwards fostered by the jealousy of parliaments, 
 
65 
 
 jurists, and Jansenists. The declaration of 1682 is 
 no more than a mere modern refinement of the same 
 doctrme, rude and inchoate at first, afterwards re- 
 duced to system and expression. It is to be borne in 
 mind that the Articles of 1682, if they deny the in- 
 fallibility of the Pope, do not afiirm the fallibility of 
 the Roman Church and See. The distinction ' inter 
 sedem, et in ea sedentem^ is carefully guarded even 
 by Galileans. Instinct told them that to deny the 
 infallibility of the Roman See was to deny the infal- 
 libility of the Church, and to depart from the whole 
 praxis of the Church for the first sixteen centuries. 
 The third period may be said to begin from 
 1682, in which the denial of the infallibility of the 
 Roman Pontifi' was first enunciated in a fo^'mula. It 
 opened the period of definition. The contests between 
 those who maintained the Immaculate Nativity and 
 those who maintained the Immaculate Conception led 
 to a closer and more scientific analysis, from which 
 two things have resulted : first, the elimination of 
 the doctrine of the Immaculate Nativity as inadequate 
 and erroneous; and secondly, the definition of the 
 Immaculate Conception. So, also, the contests be- 
 tween those who maintain the infallibility of the 
 Church, but reject the infallibihty of the Roman Pon- 
 tiflf, have akeady resulted in an analysis of the whole 
 subject of the divine certainty of faith, and the divine 
 order by which the faith is preserved and propounded 
 in the world; and from this wiU likewise foUow in 
 due time — whether now or hereafter, it is not for us 
 to say — two consequences: first, the elimination of the 
 doctrine of 1682 as inadequate and erroneous ; and 
 
 E 
 
66 
 
 secondly, a definition of the Infallibility of the Church, 
 embodied in its immemorial and universal praxis^ 
 of which the stability of the faith of Peter, both 
 in his See and in his Successor, is the primary and 
 necessary condition. And as in the history of the 
 Immaculate Conception a series of Pontifical prohibi- 
 tions rendered less probable and less tenable the 
 opposing doctrine, till the former prevailed and 
 was solemnly defined, so with the infallibility of the 
 Church and its Head. 
 
 First. In 1479 the proposition 'that the Church of 
 the City of Eome may err,' was condemned in Peter 
 de Osma by the Archbishop of Toledo as heretical ; 
 and this condemnation was confirmed in a bull by 
 Sixtus IV.* 
 
 Secondly. The Articles of 1682 have been cen- 
 sured by Innocent XI., Alexander VIII., Inno- 
 cent XII., and Pius VI., in the condemnation of the 
 Synod of Pistoia. 
 
 Lastly. The proposition ' that the authority of the 
 Roman PontiflF over (Ecumenical Councils, and of his 
 infallibility in questions of faith, is futile, and has been 
 often refuted,' was condemned in 1688 by Alexander 
 VIII. 
 
 We will first take so much evidence as the narrow 
 limits of this Letter will allow, of the statement that, 
 from the beginning of Christianity down to the times 
 immediately preceding the Council of Constance — 
 that is, for fourteen hundred years — the doctrine of 
 the stability of the faith of Peter in his See and in 
 
 * Aguirre, Defensio Cathedrae S. Petri, tract, i. disp. xv. 45 ; 
 and Eoskovdny, Eomanus Pontifex, &c., torn. i. 630. Neitria. 1869. 
 
67 
 
 his Successor was in possession, by the immemorial 
 and universal tradition of the Church. From this it 
 follows that they who deny it are innovators; that 
 they who affirm the infallibility of the Pontiff, speak- 
 ing ex cathedrd^ to be a novelty recently introduced, 
 are, in the form of their argument, fighting in rank 
 with those who affirm the doctrine of Transubstantia- 
 tion to be an innovation of the CouncU of Lateran, 
 and the doctrine of the Holy Trinity an innovation 
 of the Council of Nic^a. 
 
 I will, however, invert the usual order in which the 
 evidence is adduced. We will begin, not with the 
 early centuries, but with the later. Even our oppo- 
 nents tell us that Ultramontanism, since the CouncU 
 of Constance, has possessed itself of Christendom. 
 It is undeniable, then, that for the last four himdred 
 years it has pervaded the theology and practice of the 
 Church. 
 
 We wUl therefore trace up the stream towards the 
 fountain. We shall be able thereby to see, before the 
 Council of Constance, what doctrine was in possession ; 
 whether any change is afterwards traceable. We 
 shall thereby be able to appreciate the claims of Galli- 
 canism to antiquity, authority, and truth. 
 
 In order to put beyond question ^that, for the last 
 four hundred and fifty years, the belief of the infalli- 
 bility of the Roman See and Pontiff has been com- 
 pletely in the ascendent, it may be well to call to 
 mind certain facts. 
 
 1. First, it is admitted that the doctrine of the 
 infallibility of the Roman Pontiff has been taught by 
 the Roman Pontiffs, the Roman theologians, the 
 
 E 2 
 
68 
 
 Theological Schools of all countries, excepting France, 
 from the Council of Constance,* in 1418, to this day : 
 that is to say, for four centuries and a half it has been 
 the doctrine of all the religious orders, and eminently 
 of the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and of the Society 
 of Jesus ; of all Theological Schools, excepting the one 
 before named; and even of almost all universities. 
 Is it credible that all these representatives of the 
 learning and science of the Church should have erred, 
 and all erred alike, in elaborating a novelty unknown 
 to the Church till then? 
 
 2. During these four centuries and a half three 
 (Ecumenical Councils, of Florence, Lateran, and Trent, 
 have been held, and not so much as a whisper of doubt 
 as to the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff was heard 
 in^them. 
 
 3. During these same centuries, three (Ecumenical 
 Councils have touched upon the authority of the 
 Roman Pontiff, and they did so in these words. 
 The Council of Florence in 1439 decreed: — 'We 
 define, that the Roman Pontiff is Successor of 
 Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and true Vicar 
 of Christ, and the Head of the whole Church, and the 
 Father and Doctor of all Christians ; and to him in 
 Blessed Peter was delivered, by our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 
 * The Council of Constance had not the question of infallibility 
 before it. In affirming that a Council was superior to the Pope, ' in his 
 quffi pertinent ad fidem,' it did not declare the Pope to be fallible. And 
 even those words were resisted, not only by Cardinal ZarabeUa, but by 
 the Cardinals and Ambassadors of Prance. Moreover, they were the 
 act of only a part of one Obedience, in the midst of disorder and 
 irregularity which would suffice to annul them, even if Martin V. 
 had not carefully excluded them from his confirmation. 
 
69 
 
 the plenary power of feeding, ruling, and governing 
 the Universal Church.'* 
 
 The Council of Lateran, in 1520, condemned as 
 heretical the proposition ' the Roman Pontiff, the 
 Successor of Peter, is not the Vicar of Christ consti- 
 tuted by Christ Himself in Blessed Peter over all the 
 Churches of the whole world. 'f 
 
 The Council of Trent in four places describes the 
 Roman Church as ' Ecclesiarum omnium Mater et 
 Magistra. 'J But the word ' Magistra ' signifies the 
 authority of teacher and guide. 
 
 Lastly. The Council of Constance itself gives an 
 evidence of the Pontifical authority of the most 
 decisive kind. In the last session of the Council, the 
 Poles, because the Pope would not condemn a certain 
 book, appealed to a future General Council. Martin 
 v., therefore, in a public Consistory on March 10, 
 1418, condemned all such appeals. Gerson wrote 
 against this condemnation, which runs in these 
 words : ' It is lawful to no one to appeal from the 
 Supreme Judge, namely, the Apostolic See, or the 
 Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, 
 or to reverse his judgment in causes of faith, which, 
 as causce raajores, are to be referred to him and the 
 Apostolic See. 'II It cannot be unlawful to appeal from 
 a fallible to an infallible Judge. But a General Coun- 
 cil is infallible. The Pope, therefore, is not fallible. 
 This proves two things : the one, what was the claim of 
 
 * Labbe, Concil. xviii. p. 526. Ed. Yen. 1732. 
 t Ibid. xix. p. 1052. 
 
 % Concil. Trid. Sess. vii. De Bapt. 3 ; Sess. xiv. De Ex. Unct. 3 ; 
 Sess. xxii. 8 ; Sess. xxv. cont., De delect, ciborum, &c. 
 II Gersonii 0pp. torn. ii. p. 303. Ed. Antverp. 1706. 
 
70 
 
 the Pontiff in the Council of Constance ; the other, how 
 little that Council was swayed by the errors of Gerson. 
 
 I. Tradition from the Council of Constance to 
 THE Council of Chalcedon. 
 
 But we are told that no one denies the rise of this 
 opinion from the time of the Council of Constance. 
 This, then, is one point of departure ; and we will 
 proceed to examine what was the faith of the Church 
 before that date, ascending towards the source. 
 
 1. The first and least suspicious witness will be 
 Gerson himself. He says, adulation ' concedes [to 
 the Pope] that he is above law, and that it is no way 
 possible that appeal be made from him, nor that he 
 be called into judgment; nor that obedience be 
 withdrawn from him, except in case of heresy. He 
 alone can make articles of faith ; he alone can deal 
 with questions of faith, and the causce majores ; he 
 alone, as has just been done, makes definitions, rules, 
 laws, and canons; otherwise all that is defined, de- 
 creed, framed, or ordained by others is null and void. 
 Nor can anything ordained by him be in any way 
 whatsoever cancelled or annulled except by him alone ; 
 but he is bound by no constitution made by any 
 whomsoever. If I am not deceived, before the celebra- 
 tion of the holy Council of Constance this tradition had 
 so possessed the minds of many pedants rather than 
 lettered men, that any one who should have dogmatically 
 taught the opposite would have been noted and con- 
 demned for heretical pravity.'* But how should this be 
 
 * Gersonii 0pp. torn. ii. p. 247. Ed. Ant. 1706. 
 
71 
 
 if the communis sensics fidelium were not united 
 against the dogmatiser? What bishop would have 
 allowed or have passed such a sentence against him, 
 unless the whole Episcopate had been united in the 
 contrary principles and instincts? ' This tradition,' 
 as Gerson calls it, could have had no authority, nor 
 even existence as a tradition, if it had not been the 
 immemorial and widespread belief of men. Adula- 
 tion may make schools and cliques ; it cannot make 
 a tradition. The tradition was fatal to the novel 
 opinions of Gerson and his master; and he solaced 
 himself, like all innovators, in aspersing his brethren. 
 Now, if any one can produce evidence to show that in 
 this Gerson was wrong, and that evidence is to be 
 found before his time of the denial of the infallibility 
 of the See and Successor of Peter, let it be produced,* 
 and it will be fairly examined. The infallibility of 
 the Vicar of Jesus Christ is in possession. It is for 
 those who deny it to dislodge it if they can. 
 
 I will now take other evidence : and as far as 
 possible from the public acts of Synods or of Epis- 
 copates. The few individual witnesses I shall quote 
 will be those whose names have an exceptional weight. 
 
 2. When, in 1314, the King of France was endea- 
 
 * Theoph. Eaynaud, torn. xx. p. 389, Cracov. 1669, sums up 
 the question in these words : — ' It were in vain to bring to- 
 gether a number of theologians, since all may be adduced who 
 lived before the Council of Constance. For this truth [the in.- 
 fallibiUty of the Koman Pontiff] was never called into controversy 
 among Catholics before the time of the Councils of Bale and Con- 
 stance. But all who went before unanimously taught that the defi- 
 nitions of Pontiffs, even without a General Council, made matter of 
 faith, and that every judgment of faith belonged ultimately to the 
 Holy See.' See also the whole of sectjop xi, 
 
72 
 
 vouring to compel Clement V. to declare his prede- 
 cessor Boniface VIII. to be heretical, the French 
 bishops, in an address to the Pope, speak thus : ' It is 
 no question of the heresy of a Pope, as Pope, but as 
 a private person. For as Pope he could not be heretical., 
 but only as a private person: for never was any Pope 
 a heretic as Pope.' * 
 
 3. The University of Paris, in 1387, addressed 
 Clement VII., whom they recognised as Pope at Avi- 
 gnon, and by the mouth of the same Peter d'Ailly who 
 afterwards so strangely deviated from truth: 'We 
 unanimously protest, that whatsoever hitherto has been 
 done in this matter by them [the University], and 
 whatsoever in the same, either now or at any other time, 
 we may do or say in their behalf, we humbly submit 
 altogether to the correction and judgment of the Apos- 
 tolic See and of the Supreme Pontiff who sits in it, 
 saying with blessed Jerome, " This is the Faith, most 
 blessed Father, which we have learned in the Catholic 
 Church ; in which, if we have laid down anything less 
 wisely or cautiously than we ought, we ask to be cor- 
 rected by thee, who boldest the Faith and the See of 
 Peter." For we are not ignorant, but most firmly hold 
 and in no way doubt, that the Holy Apostolic See is 
 that Chair of Peter upon which, as the same Jerome 
 witnesses, the Church is founded. ... Of which See, 
 in the person of Peter the Apostle sitting in it, was 
 said, " Peter, 1 have prayed for thee, that thy faith 
 fail not." It is to this, then, that the determination 
 of Faith, and the approbation of Cathohc Truth, and 
 
 * Theolog. Wirceburg, torn. i. p. 373. Paris, 1852. 
 
73 
 
 the condemnation of heretical impiety, above all, 
 belongs.' * 
 
 4. The Bishop and Theologians of Pavis had cen- 
 sured certain opinions of S. Thomas in 1277. When 
 S. Thomas was canonised, in 1324, Stephen, Bishop 
 of Paris, withdrew the censure, in union with the 
 Dean and Chapter and sixty-three Masters and Bache- 
 lors in Theology: in so doing he calls 'the Holy 
 Koman Church the Mother of all the faithful and 
 Teacher of faith and truth, founded on the most firm 
 confession of Peter, Vicar of Christ; to which, as to 
 the universal Rule of Catholic Truth, belongs the 
 approbation of doctrines, the solution of doubts, the 
 determination of what is to be held, and the con- 
 futation of errors. ' f 
 
 In these two passages we have the testimony of 
 the Bishop, Chapter, Theologians, and University of 
 Paris in the century before the Council of Constance. 
 5. What was at that time taught in Paris was 
 taught in England. Thomas Bradwardine, Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, who died in 1349, in the pre- 
 face to his book 'De Causa Dei,' says: 'I know 
 what I will do ; I will commit myself to that ship 
 which can never perish, the ship of Peter. For in it 
 our only Head and Master Christ in safety sat and 
 taught : to teach us mystically that in the boat of 
 Peter, the Church of Rome, the authority and teach- 
 ing (magisterium) of all Christian doctrine should 
 abide. To the judgment, therefore, of so authentic 
 and so great a teacher I submit, and subject fully and 
 
 * Inter Gersonii 0pp. torn. i. p. 702. Antverp. 1706. 
 
 t D'Argentr6, Coll. Judio. torn i. p. 1, p. 222. Ed. Paris, 1728. 
 
74 
 
 altogether myself and my writings, now and here- 
 after.' * 
 
 6. Clement VI., in 1351, writing to the Armenian 
 Patriarch, says : ' If thou hast believed, and dost still 
 believe, that the Roman Pontiff alone, when doubts 
 arise concerning the Catholic Faith, can by an au- 
 thentic determination, to which we must inviolably 
 adhere, make an end of them ; and that whatsoever 
 he, by the authority of the Keys delivered to him by 
 Christ, determines as true, is true and Catholic ; and 
 what he determines to be false and heretical is so to 
 be regarded.'! Clement here plainly requires the 
 Armenians to believe the infallibility of the Roman 
 Pontiff as a truth of revelation. 
 
 7. It would be endless to quote from S. Thomas, 
 but these few words will sufiice : ' Therefore the Lord 
 said to Peter, whom He made Supreme Pontiff, " I 
 have prayed for thee, Peter, that thy faith fail not, 
 and thou, when thou art converted, confirm thy breth- 
 ren." And of this the reason is, that the faith of the 
 whole Church must be One . . . which cannot so be 
 kept unless questions of faith be determined by him 
 who presides over the whole Church ; so that his 
 sentence be held firmly by the whole Church.' J And 
 again : ' And while in other parts there is either no 
 faith, or it is mingled with many errors, the Church 
 of Peter both is fresh in faith and pure from error : 
 and no wonder, because the Lord said, " I have 
 prayed for thee, Peter, that thy faith fail not." ' § 
 
 * Bradwardini de Causa Dei, Prajf. Ed. Lond. 1618. 
 
 ■j- Baronius, torn. xxv. ad annum 1351, p. 529. Ed. Luc. 1750. 
 
 i Summa, sec. 2^ quKst. i. art. 10. Ed. Yen. 1593. 
 
 § Opuscula vi. In Symbol, Apost. 0pp. tom. xvii. p. 70. Ed. Ven. 
 
75 
 
 Now we may, without hesitation, take S. Thomas as 
 the witness of what was taught both by the Dominican 
 Order and by the schools of the Church in the century 
 before the Council of Constance. 
 
 8. S. Bonaventure, in like manner, will represent 
 the Franciscan Order : ' Peter, named from the Kock, 
 was by the Lord placed as the foundation of the 
 Church: " Thou art Peter, &c." Rabanus says that 
 all the faithful throughout the world may understand 
 that whosoever separate themselves in any way from 
 the unity of his faith or of his communion can 
 neither be absolved from the bonds of sin, nor can 
 enter the gate of the kingdom of heaven. Therefore 
 the Lord gave to Peter extraordinary powers over all 
 the Apostles in the words, " And thou, when thou 
 art converted, confirm thy brethren." ' * Again, he 
 says : ' If, in the time of the figurative priest, it was 
 sin to oppose the sentence of the Pontifi^, much more 
 in the time of the revealed truth and grace, when it 
 is known that the plenitude of power is given to the 
 Vicar of Christ, is it sin, no way to be tolerated in 
 Faith or morals, to dogmatise contrary to his defini- 
 tion, by approving what he reproves, building up 
 again what he destroys, and defending what he 
 condemns.' f 
 
 9. The Council of Lyons in 1274 drew up a form 
 of profession to be made per modum juramenti by 
 the Greeks in the following words : ' The Holy Roman 
 Church has supreme and full primacy and principality 
 
 * S. Bonav. In Expos. Reg. Pratrum Minorum, cap. i. torn. vii. 
 p. 332. Eom», 1596. 
 
 + Ibid. In Apol. Pauperum, respon. i. cap. i. p. 413. 
 
76 
 
 over the Universal Church, which it truly and humbly 
 acknowledges itself to have received from the Lord 
 Himself in Blessed Peter, the Prince and Head of the 
 Apostles, with plenitude of power. And as before 
 all others it is bound to defend the truth, so also if 
 any questions arise concerning the faith, they ought 
 by its judgment to be defined. . . . And to the same 
 all Churches are subject, and to it the prelates of the 
 same render obedience and reverence. But to this 
 [Church] the plenitude of power so belongs that it 
 admits the other Churches to a participation of its 
 care. . . By mouth and heart we confess that 
 which the Sacred and Holy Roman Church truly 
 holds, and faithfully teaches and preaches.' 
 
 The formula, which is inscribed Sacramentum 
 Grcecorum, runs as follows : — 
 
 ' I, N., recognise the unity of faith which I have 
 subscribed ... as the True, Holy, Catholic Faith; 
 I accept it and confess it with heart and mouth ; and 
 I promise that I will inviolably preserve the same as 
 the Holy Roman Church holds, faithfully teaches and 
 preaches ; and in the same I will always persevere ; 
 nor at any time will I depart from it, nor in any way 
 deviate or differ from it.' * 
 
 If any one, with these facts and testimonies before 
 him, can continue to affirm that the Articles of 1682 
 have any foundation in the two centuries before the 
 Council of Constance, or that the doctrine now cap- 
 tiously and invidiously styled Ultramontane is a 
 novelty, he is bound to bring, what as yet has not 
 been offered, some evidence of his assertion. 
 
 * Labbe, Concil. torn. xiv. p. 512, 513. Ed. Ven. 1731. 
 
77 
 
 10. For the twelfth century we have two wit- 
 nesses, both Saints; one a confessor, the other a 
 martyr, and both our own: S. Thomas of Canter- 
 bury, and S. Anselm. 
 
 S. Thomas writes to the Bishop of Hereford: 
 ' The fountain of Paradise is one, but divided into 
 many streams, that it may water the whole earth. 
 Who doubts that the Church of Rome is the head of 
 all the Churches, and the fountain of Catholic truth? 
 Who is ignorant that the keys of the kingdom of hea- 
 ven were entrusted to Peter ? Does not the structure 
 of the whole Church rise from the faith and doctiTue 
 of Peter? . . . Whosoever he be that waters or plants, 
 God gives increase to none, save to him who has 
 planted in \hs, faith of Peter, and rests in his doctrine J 
 Again he says of the Apostolic See : ' Fi'om this none 
 but infidels, or heretics, or schismatics withdrew their 
 faith and obedience.' * 
 
 11. S. Anselm, in dedicating his book on the Holy 
 Trinity to the Pope, writes : ' Forasmuch as the pro- 
 vidence of God has chosen your Holiness, to commit 
 to your custody the life and faith of Christians, and 
 the government of His Church, to no other can refer- 
 ence be more rightly made, if so be anything contrary 
 to the Catholic faith arise in the Church, that it 
 may be corrected by his authority; nor to any other 
 can anything which may be written against such 
 errors be more safely submitted, that by his pru- 
 dence it may be examined.' f Again : ' Let those who 
 
 • S. Tliomse Epist. Ixxiv. ad Suf&aganeos, p. 167; Ep. cxxiv. ad 
 Eobertum Heref. p. 277. Ed. Oxon. 1844. 
 
 t S. Anaelmi de Fide Trin. Dedic. p. 41. Ed. Ben. Paris, 1721. 
 
78 
 
 despise the Christian decrees of the Vicar of Peter, 
 and in him the decrees of Peter and of Christ, seek 
 for other gates of the kingdom of heaven; for cer- 
 tainly they shall not enter in by those, the keys of 
 which the Apostle Peter bears.'* 
 
 If Saints and Martyrs do not represent the mind 
 of the Church, where shall we seek it ? 
 
 12. S. Bernard writes to Pope Innocent: 'It is 
 right to refer to your Apostleship whatsoever danger 
 and scandal may arise in the kingdom of God ; 
 especially those which touch the faith. For I judge it 
 to be fitting that the injuries of the faith should there 
 be repaired, where the faith cannot fail. For this in 
 truth is the prerogative of that See. For to what 
 other was it ever said, "I have prayed for thee, 
 Peter, that thy faith fail not?" Therefore, what 
 foUows is required of Peter's Successor ; " and thou, 
 when thou art converted, confirm thy brethren." ' f 
 
 13. In the same century, that is in the year 1149, 
 Anselm, Bishop of Havelhurgh, was sent by the 
 Emperor Lothaire to Constantinople. He there held 
 public disputations with Nechites, Archbishoj^ of 
 Nicomedia, on the errors of the Greeks. By the 
 desire of Eugenius III., he afterwards put these dis- 
 putations in writing. It will be borne in mind that 
 Anselm was German by birth, and therefore a repre- 
 sentative of a country remote from Roman influences. 
 He was endeavouring also to win the Greeks from 
 their errors, of which one was the denial of the pre- 
 
 * Ibid. Epist. ad Humbertum. Lib. iii. 65, p. 391. 
 t S. Bernard, ad Innoo. P. Ep. cxoi, torn. iv. p. 433. Ed. Paris, 
 1742. 
 
79 
 
 rogatives of the See of Peter, both in jurisdiction 
 and in faith. Ansehn had every inducement to 
 reduce to the narrowest limit the doctrines necessary 
 to reconciliation. As the representative of the 
 Catholic Church, to the separated East he spoke as 
 follows : ' The holy Roman Church, chosen before 
 all others by the Lord, has been endowed and blessed 
 by him with a special privilege; and by a certain 
 prerogative stands pre-eminent, and by a divine right 
 has an excellence before all Churches. For while 
 other Churches at divers times have been possessed 
 by various heretics, and have wavered in the Catholic 
 faith, that [Church], founded and consolidated upon 
 the Rock, has always remained unshaken, and never, 
 by any false and sophistical arguments of heretics, 
 has been drawn away from the simpUcity of the faith 
 held by Simon Barjona; because it has always been 
 defended by the shield of divine wisdom, through 
 the grace of the Lord, against deceitful controversies. 
 For it has never been shaken by any terror of 
 emperors, or mighty ones of this world, because 
 by the strength of the Lord, and the shield of a 
 strong patience, it has always been secure against 
 all assaults. Wherefore the Lord, [knowing] that 
 other Churches would be greatly harassed by the 
 im'oads of heresy, and that the Roman Church, 
 which He had founded upon the Rock, would never 
 be weakened in the faith, said to Peter, " I have 
 prayed for thee, Peter, that thy faith fail not; and 
 thou, when thou art converted, confirm thy brethren." 
 As if He had openly said : " Thou who hast received 
 this grace, that while those are shipwrecked in faith. 
 
80 
 
 thou abidest always in faith immovable and con- 
 stant, confirm and correct those that waver ; and as 
 the provider, and doctor, and father, and master, 
 have care and solicitude for all." * He rightly, there- 
 fore, received the privilege of being set over all, who 
 received from God the privilege, before 'all, of pre- 
 serving the integrity of faith.' Again he said: 
 ' Why do you not rather receive the statutes of the 
 Holy Roman Church, which by God, and from God, 
 and in the next place after God, has obtained the 
 primacy of authority in the Universal Church, which 
 is spread throughout the whole world? For so we 
 read that it was declared concerning it in the first 
 Council of Nicsea by three hundred and eighteen 
 Fathers. For it must be known, and no Catholic 
 can be ignorant of it, that the Holy Roman Church 
 was preferred before others by no decrees of Synods, 
 but that it obtained the primacy by the voice of 
 our Lord and Saviour in the Gospel, where He said 
 to Blessed Peter, " Thou art Peter, and upon this 
 Rock,"' &c.f Now this is language which, at the 
 present day, would be called Ultramontane ; but 
 Anselm so addresses the Greeks in a perfect con- 
 sciousness that he spoke the mind of the Catholic 
 Church. And what he spoke, he wrote, as we have 
 seen, by the command of Eugenius III. Not a trace 
 is to be found that these words of Anselm were not 
 a true expression of the immemorial and universal 
 tradition of the Church in his day. 
 
 14. The Synod of Quedhnburgh, in Saxony, in 1085, 
 
 * D'Ach^ry, Spicilegium, torn. i. 194. Ed. Paris, 1723. 
 t Ibid. 
 
81 
 
 condemned what was called the Henrician heresy: 
 namely, that not only temporal but spiritual things 
 are subject to emperors and kings. In the Acts of 
 the Synod we read : ' When all were seated accord- 
 ing to their order, the decrees of the Holy Fathers 
 concerning the Primacy of the Apostolic See were 
 produced : namely, that it is allowed to none to 
 revise its judgment, and to sit in judgment upon 
 what it has judged; which, by the public profession 
 of the whole Synod, was approved and confirmed.' * 
 
 15. In the ninth century, that is in 863, a Council 
 in Rome decreed as follows : — ' If anyone shall de- 
 spise the dogmas, commandments, interdicts, sanc- 
 tions or decrees, in respect to Catholic faith, eccle- 
 siastical discipline, correction of the faithful, the 
 amendment of sinners, or the prevention of impending 
 or future evils, wholesomely promulgated by him who 
 presides in the Apostolic See, let him be anathema.' f 
 
 16. This canon was recognised in the eighth Gene- 
 ral Council, held at Constantinople in 869 ; so that 
 the final and irreformable authority of the Roman 
 PontiiF was recognised and declared under pain of 
 deposition for clergy, and of excommunication for 
 the laity until penitent. J 
 
 17. In the eighth century Alcuin writes to the 
 faithful in Lyons : ' Let no Catholic dare to contend 
 against the authority of the Church. And lest he be 
 found to be a schismatic and not a Cathohc, let him 
 follow the approved authority of the Holy Roman 
 
 * Labbe, Concil. torn. xii. pp. 679, 680. Ed. Yen. 17S0. 
 t Labbe, Concil. torn. x. p. 238. Ed. Ven. 1730. 
 J Labbe, Concil. ibid. p. 633. 
 
 F 
 
82 
 
 Church.'* In the Caroline books — whether they 
 be by Charlemagne or Alcuin — we read of the 
 Roman Church that, as Peter was set over all the 
 Apostles, so Rome is set over all the Churches. 
 Tor this Church is set over all the rest by no 
 decrees of Synods, but holds its primacy by the au- 
 thority of the Lord Himself, who said, " Thou art 
 Peter," &c. . . . Whence it is to be understood that 
 holy and learned men in all parts of the world, 
 shining with the light of teaching and science, not 
 only have not departed from the Holy Roman Church, 
 but also, in time of need, have implored help from it, 
 for the corroboration of the faith ; which, as we have 
 ali'eady said and proved by examples, all members of 
 the Catholic Church ought, as a rule, to do ; so as to 
 seek from it [the Roman Church], next after Christ, 
 help to defend the faith: which [Church], not having 
 spot or wrinkle, both sets its foot upon the monstrous 
 heads of heresy, and confirms the minds of the faith- 
 ful in the faith.' f 
 
 This testimony, by the way, is important for those 
 who believe that Charlemagne imposed on the Roman 
 Pontiff the insertion of the ' Filioque ' in the Creed. 
 
 We have now reached the eighth century of the 
 Church, before the separation of the Greeks, and 
 while as yet they acknowledged the supreme autho- 
 rity, both in jurisdiction and of faith, of the See of 
 Peter. The Greeks acknowledge the second Council 
 of Nicaaa as infallible, and in that Synod the letters 
 
 * Alcuin, 0pp. in Patrologia, Migne, torn. c. col. 293. Paris, 1857. 
 j- Carol. M. 0pp. in Patrologia, Migne, torn, xcviii. col. 1020, 21. 
 Paris, 1851. 
 
83 
 
 of Hadrian to Tarasius, Bishop of Constantinople, 
 were read and approved. In those letters Hadrian 
 says, 'Whose (Peter's) See shines forth in primacy 
 over the whole Church, and is Head of all the 
 Churches of God. Wherefore the same Blessed Peter 
 the Apostle, governing the Church by the command 
 of the Lord, left nothing uncared for, but held every- 
 where, and holds, supreme authority (sxparrjo-s ttolv- 
 TOT£ TicCi x^oLTSi T*)v oip)(^r]v) .' Hadrian then requires 
 Tarasius to adhere to our ' Apostohc See, which is the 
 Head of all Churches of God, and in profound sincerity 
 of mind and heart to guard the sacred and orthodox 
 form ' [of faith] . The whole Synod cried out in 
 acclamation, ' The Holy Synod so believes, so is 
 convinced, so defines.' * 
 
 18. The African Bishops, in 646, addressed a 
 Synodical letter to Pope Theodore, which letter was 
 read and approved in the Lateran Council of 649, 
 under Martin I. ' No one can doubt,' they say, ' that 
 there is in the Apostolic See for all Christians a 
 fountain, great and unfailing, abundant in its waters, 
 from which the streams go forth copiously to irri- 
 gate the whole Christian world ; to which [See], 
 also in honour of Blessed Peter, the decrees of the 
 Fathers gave special veneration in searching out the 
 things of God, which ought by all means to be care- 
 fully examined ; and, above all, and justly by the 
 Apostohc Head of Bishops, whose care from of old 
 it is, as well to condemn evils as to commend the 
 things which are to be praised. For by the ancient 
 discipline it is ordained that whatsoever be done, 
 * Labbe, Concil. torn. viii. p. 771, 5. Ed. Ven. 1729. 
 r 2 
 
84 
 
 even in provinces remote and afar oflF, shall neither 
 be treated of nor accepted, unless it be first brought 
 to the knowledge of your august See, so that a 
 just sentence may be confirmed by its authority, and 
 that the other Churches may thence receive the 
 original preaching as from its native source^ and that 
 the mysteries of saving faith may remain in uncorrupt 
 purity throughout the various regions of the world. ' * 
 
 This declaration of the African Synod, being read 
 and approved in the first Council of Lateran, is there- 
 fore confirmed by its authority. 
 
 19. In the Pastoral of two years ago, I gave the 
 evidence of the Sixth General Council, held at Con- 
 stantinople in 680, in which the letter of Agatho 
 was received as the voice of Peter. In this letter, 
 addressed to the Emperor, after reciting the dogma 
 of faith, Agatho thus speaks of the Roman See : 
 ' Relying upon the protection [of Peter], this, his 
 Apostolic Church, has never deviated from the way 
 of truth in any way of error whatsoever; and his 
 [Peter's] authority, as that of the Prince of all the 
 Apostles, the whole Catholic Church of Christ and all 
 the universal Synods always and faithfully have in all 
 things embraced and followed. . . . For this is the rule 
 of the True Faith, which, both in prosperity and ad- 
 versity, this Apostolic Church of Christ, the Spiritual 
 Mother of your peaceful empire, holds and defends as 
 vital : which Church, by the grace of Almighty God, 
 will never be convicted of erring from the path of 
 apostolic tradition, nor has it ever yielded or been 
 depraved by heretical novelties; but as it received in 
 * Labbe, Concil. torn. vii. p. 131. Ed. Yen. 1729. 
 
85 
 
 the beginning of the Faith from its Founders, the 
 chief of the Apostles of Christ, it abides untainted to 
 the end, according to the divine promise of our Lord 
 and Saviour Himself, which in the Holy Gospels He 
 uttered to the Prince of His disciples : Peter, Peter, 
 behold, Satan hath desired to sift you as wheat : but I 
 have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not. And thou, 
 when thou art converted, confirm thy brethren.' * 
 
 It "was to this that the Fathers answered in accla- 
 mation : ' Peter hath spoken.' 
 
 On this evidence two things are to be observed : 
 
 First, that Agatho's declaration of the untainted 
 orthodoxy of the Apostolic See until his day refutes 
 the attempt of those who would fasten heresy on 
 Pope Honorius, his predecessor. 
 
 Next, that the Fathers so little distinguished 
 ' inter sedem et in e^ sedentem,' that they identify 
 Agatho and the See as one and the same. They 
 address him wg TrpoaroB^fiovip tro* rrjs olxovfJLSurjs £x>c7\.rj- 
 (rlag, sttJ tvjv (TTspiav Trirpav ItnSori. ' To thee, there- 
 fore, as the first See of the Universal Church, we 
 leave what is to be done,' &c.f 
 
 20. It may perhaps be said that the language of 
 Anselm of Havelburgh, quoted above, gives no proof 
 of the mind of the Eastern Church. I will therefore 
 add one more testimony, at a period when as yet 
 
 * Labbe, Concil. torn. vii. pp. 659, 662. Ed. Ven. 1729. 
 
 + Ibid. p. 1110. So S. Jerome: 'Ego Beatitudini tuse, id est 
 Cathedrse, consocior,' 0pp. torn. iv. P. 2, p. 19; and S. Prosper, 
 inter 0pp. S. Aug. torn. x. App. p. 176, Paris, 1690 : ' Sacrosancta 
 Petri Sedes per universum orbem Paps Zosimi sic ore loquitur.' 
 S. Peter Damian writes to the Pope : ' Vos 'Apostolica Sedes, Voa 
 Eomana estis Ecclesia.' 0pp. torn. iii. p. 221. 
 
86 
 
 the Greeks had not accomplished the schism which 
 endures to this day. This last evidence is contained 
 in the Profession of Faith which Pope Hormisdas, in 
 the year 517, required the Oriental Bishops to sign; 
 and they did sign it. We have, therefore, in an 
 authentic and public act, the response and accept- 
 ance, of the East, of the doctrinal authority of the 
 Apostolic See. It runs as follows : ' The Eule of 
 Faith. The first act of salvation is to keep rightly 
 the rule of faith, and in no way to deviate from the 
 decrees of the Fathers. And inasmuch as the words 
 of our Lord Jesus Chi'ist cannot be passed over, who 
 said, " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will 
 build my Church," &c. . . . These words are con- 
 firmed by their effects, for in the Apostolic See 
 religion has been always preserved without spot.' 
 Then follows a condemnation of heretics and of all iu 
 communion with them. ' Wherefore we receive and 
 approve all the letters of Pope Leo, and all that he 
 wrote concerning the Christian religion. Therefore, 
 as we have said, following in all things the Apostolic 
 See, and professing all its decrees, I hope to be 
 worthy to be in that one communion with you which 
 the Apostolic See enjoins, in which is the perfect 
 and true solidity of Christian religion : promising 
 also that the names of those who are separated from 
 the communion of the Catholic Church, that is, those 
 who are not united in mind to the Apostolic See, 
 shall not be recited in the Holy Mysteries. This, my 
 profession, I have subscribed with my own hand, and 
 presented to thee, Hormisdas, Holy and "Venerable 
 Pope of the City of Rome. — XV. Kal. April. Agapito 
 
87 
 
 viro clarissimo Consule.' * This Profession of Faith 
 was signed, it is said, by 2,500 bishops, f 
 
 Another version of this formula is given by John, 
 Bishop of Constantinople, in a letter to Pope Hormis- 
 das. It runs almost in the same terms, but in two 
 passages it is even more explicit. After the words 
 of our Lord to Peter, it continues : ' These sayings 
 are confirmed by the efi'ects, because in the Apostohc 
 See religion is always kept inviolate ; ' and aftdtwards 
 it concludes : ' But if in anything I should be tempted 
 to doubt in my profession, I declare, by my own 
 condemnation, that I myself should be partaker with 
 those whom I have condemned.' J 
 
 21. From the third Council of Constantinople in 
 the seventh century, which is received by the Greek 
 Church, we will pass to the Council of Chalcedon, 
 one of the four first General Councils received, 
 at least in profession, by Anghcans, in the fifth. 
 This brings us to the period of undivided unity, and 
 therefore, as they admit, of infallibility. 
 
 Now it is certain that S. Leo, in the most explicit 
 language, claimed for the See and for the Successor of 
 Peter an indefectible stability in faith. Two years ago 
 I quoted his testimony, which is abundantly sufficient 
 to prove this assertion. I will now add only two short 
 
 * Labbe, Concil. torn. v. p. 583. Ed. Ven. 1728. 
 
 I We have this on the authority of Eusticus, who wrote about 
 AD. 546. He says that the faith was confirmed ' per libellos sacer- 
 dotum forsan duorum millium et quingentorum, imperante Justine, 
 post schisma Petri Alexandrini et Acacii Constantinopolitani. Eustici 
 S. E. E. Diac. Card. Contra Acephalos. Disp. Galland. Bibl. Max. 
 torn. xii. p. 75. 
 
 X Labbe, Concil. torn. v. p. 622. Ed. Ven. 1728. 
 
88 
 
 passages. Preaching on the anniversary of his elec- 
 tion to the Pontificate, he says : ' Not only the Apos- 
 tolic, but also the Episcopal dignity of Blessed Peter 
 enters into our solemnity, and he never ceases to 
 preside over his See, and he has always an unfailing 
 fellowship with the Eternal Priest. For that solidity 
 which, when he was made the Rock, he received 
 from Christ the Rock, transmits itself to his heirs.'* 
 Again : ' The solidity of that faith, which is com- 
 mended in the Prince of the Apostles, is perpetual. 'f 
 ' If anything, therefore, is rightly done, or rightly 
 decided by us .... it is by the work and merits 
 of him whose power lives and whose authority is 
 
 supreme in his See For [the faith of Peter] 
 
 is divinely guarded by such a solidity that neither 
 has heretical pravity ever been able to violate, nor 
 heathen perfidy to overcome it.'| 
 
 It was with this consciousness of his commission 
 and prerogatives that S. Leo sent his Dogmatic 
 Letter to the Council of Chalcedon. He peremptorily 
 forbad, in his letter to the Emperor, that the doctrine 
 of faith should be discussed as if it were doubtful. 
 To the Fathers of the Council he wrote : ' Now I am 
 present by my vicars, and in the declaration of the 
 Catholic Faith I am not absent : so that you cannot 
 be ignorant what we believe by the ancient tradition, 
 you cannot doubt what is our desire; wherefore, 
 most dear brethren, let the audacity of disputing 
 against the divinely inspired Faith be altogether 
 
 * 0pp. S. Leon. : In Anniv. Assump. Serm. v. 4. Ed. Ballerini, 
 1753. 
 
 ■f Ibid. Serm. iii. 2. 
 I Ibid. Serm. iii. 3. 
 
89 
 
 rejected, let the vain unbelief of those that err be 
 silenced. Let it not be allowed to any to defend 
 that which it is not allowed to believe. By the letters 
 which we addressed to Bishop Flavian, of blessed 
 memory, it has been most fully and clearly declared 
 what is the pious and sincere confession concerning 
 the mysteiy of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ.'* 
 
 After the Dogmatic Letter of Leo to Flavian had 
 been read, the bishops exclaimed, ' This is the Faith of 
 the Fathers, this is the Faith of the Apostles. So 
 we all believe ; the orthodox so believe. Anathema 
 to those who do not so believe; Peter has spoken 
 by Leo.'f 
 
 In their letter to S. Leo the Fathers of the Council 
 declare that he has preserved for them the Faith, being 
 set as the interpreter of the voice of Blessed Peter 
 (^TToLcri TTjS Tou ^axaciiou YIstoou (pcovijg spf/.rjV£vg xa^KTra,- 
 l^evog); 'whence we also, using you as our leader in 
 what is good and profitable, have manifested to the 
 children of the Church the inheritance of truth.' . . . 
 Of themselves they say that he presided over them 
 as ' the head over the members' («jV ''sc^aAv) ^sX&v). 
 Finally, they pray him to honour by his sentence their 
 judgment (T/|U.7](rov xa) roug (rcug -i/Tji^oig tyjv xpto'iv^.^ 
 But this judgment, which related to the precedence of 
 Constantinople next after Rome, S. Leo cancelled and 
 annulled. The Legates protested. § S. Leo writes 
 
 * 0pp. S. Leon. Epist. cxciii. p. 1069. Ed. Ball. 1753. 
 
 f Labbe, Conoil. torn. iv. p. 1235. 
 
 f Epist. S. Synod. Chalc. ad Leon. P. inter 0pp. pp. 1088, 1090. 
 
 § Ep. Marciani Imp. ad Leon. Papam, ibid. p. 1114. 
 
90 
 
 to the Empress Pulcheria : ' The agreement of the 
 bishops, contrary to the rules of the Holy Canons 
 made at Nicsea, the piety of your faith uniting with 
 us, we declare void, and, by the authority of Blessed 
 Peter the Apostle, by a general decree we altogether 
 cancel.'* S. Peter Chrysologus writes to Eutyches, 
 who had asked his judgment on his doctrine: 'In all 
 things I exhort you, honourable brother, that you 
 obediently attend to the things which have been 
 written by the blessed Pope of the City of Kome, 
 because Blessed Peter, who in his own See lives 
 and presides, offers the truth to those that seek it. 
 We therefore, for the love of peace and of faith, cannot 
 hear causes of faith without the consent of the Bishop 
 of the City of Eome.'f 
 
 And here we may stay our course. We have 
 reached the period of undivided unity, when all the 
 woi'ld looked to the See of Peter as the source of 
 supreme authority in jurisdiction and in faith. The 
 two keys of jurisdiction and of knowledge, intrin- 
 sically inseparable, are here visible in the hands 
 of Leo. The two great prerogatives of Peter, 
 ' Feed my sheep,' and ' I have prayed for thee that 
 thy faith fail not,' are as explicitly recognised in 
 the Council of Chalcedon as by us at this day. I 
 forbear to quote the testimony of individual Fathers. 
 S. Augustine and S. Optatus would give it in abun- 
 dance. But I have endeavoured to exhibit the tradition 
 of the Church in its public and authoiitative prac- 
 tice. I think it undeniable that throughout all the 
 
 * Ad Pulcher. ibid. p. 1158, sec. 3. 
 
 t Ep. Petri Chrys. adEutyclien, inter 0pp. S. Leonis, ibid. p. 779. 
 
91 
 
 ages we have been reviewing there was a constant, 
 universal, and unvarying tradition of the stability 
 of the faith in the See and the Successor of Peter; 
 and this world-wide fact wUl give us the true interpre- 
 tation and value of the words of S. Irenseus, ' Ad 
 hanc enim Ecclesiam, propter potiorem principalitatem, 
 necesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam; in qua 
 semper ab his qui sunt undique, conservata est ab 
 Apostolis traditio.'* 
 
 If any one shall answer that these evidences do 
 not prove the infallibility of the Pope, speaking ex 
 cathedrd, they will lose their labour. 
 
 I adduce them to prove the immemorial and uni- 
 versal practice of the Church in having recourse to 
 the Apostolic See as the last and certain witness and 
 judge of the divine tradition of faith. That they 
 prove this no one will, I think, deny. Even those 
 who imagine that Honorius was a heretic have 
 never ventured to incur the condemnation of Peter 
 de Osma, who affirmed that ' the Church of the 
 City of Rome may err.' Even the Gallicans of 
 1682 professed to believe the See to be infalhble, 
 while they affirmed that he who sat in it was fallible. 
 Thus far, then, we have the line of testimonies run- 
 ning up from the Council of Constance to the fifth 
 century ; that is, to the period of the four first 
 General Councils, when as yet the East and West 
 were united to the See and to the Successor of 
 Peter. The thought that either the See or the Suc- 
 cessor of Peter could fail in faith is not to be found 
 in those thousand years. With all the events of 
 
 * S. Iren, Adv. H^r., lib. iii, 2. sec. 21, note 27. Ed. Yen. 1734. 
 
92 
 
 Honorius fresh* before them, the Fathers of the third 
 Council of Constantinople responded to Agatho's 
 declaration of the inviolate orthodoxy of the See and 
 the Successor of Peter. The East and the West 
 alike united in this. In the Formula of Hormisdas 
 we have even more than this. The Roman Pon- 
 tiff imposed subscription on the Oriental bishops 
 of a profession of which the inviolate orthodoxy 
 of the See and of the Successor of Peter is the 
 explicit basis ; and the Oriental bishops obeyed and 
 subscribed. It will be observed, too, that they 
 did this in faith of the promise made to Peter. 
 Through those thousand years two texts are per- 
 petually present : ' On this rock I will build my 
 Church ; ' for the stability of the See. ' I have 
 prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not ; ' for the 
 stability of the Successor of Peter. It is to be 
 observed, also, that the evidences adduced are not, 
 with a few exceptions, the words of individual 
 bishops or doctors, however illustrious. They are 
 the decrees or declarations of Synods, of whole 
 Episcopates in Rome, Africa, France, Saxony. They 
 are the acts of General Councils, and, therefore, 
 pviblic documents of the Universal Church. On this 
 evidence it may be affirmed, without hesitation, that 
 for the first fourteen hundred years — that is, till the 
 
 * I cannot refrain from adding, that we have positive historical 
 proof that Honorius did not err in faith. We have his two letters, 
 which are perfectly orthodox. In whatsoever sense the words of 
 the Council may be understood, they cannot be understood to accuse 
 Honorius of heresy, with the proof of his orthodoxy before us 
 under his own hand. Gonzalez, De Infall. Eom. Pontif , disp. xv. 
 sect. vi. § 1. 
 
93 
 
 preludes of the great Western schism, and of the 
 Council of Constance — the praxis Ecclesice is definite 
 and undeniable, and that Gerson was right in saying 
 that any one who had ventured to deny the infalli- 
 bility of the See and of the Successor of Peter 
 would have been condemned for heresy. 
 
 But if for heresy, in what light did the consent 
 of the faithful, and the tradition of the Church, 
 regard the truth denied ? The correlative of heresy 
 is faith. 
 
 This, then, is what may be regarded as the first 
 period of simple, traditional faith, immemorial and 
 universal, in the stability of the faith of Peter in his 
 See and in his Successor; which, when analysed, is 
 the infallibility of the Vicar of Jesus Christ.* 
 
 II. Tradition from the Council of 
 Constance to 1682. 
 
 We must here close the first ' period of this sub- 
 
 * It is with no little surprise, shared I believe by those who 
 have read the evidence from the fifteenth to the fifth century given 
 in this chapter, that I read in the book ' Janus,' which has caused 
 no little stir in Germany, the following words : — ' For thirteen 
 centuries an incomprehensible silence on this fundamental article 
 (Papal Infallibility) reigned throughout the whole Church and her 
 literature. None of the antient confessions of faith, no Catechism, 
 none of the Patristic writings composed for the instruction of the 
 people, contain a syllable about the Pope, stiU less any hint that 
 all certainty of faith and of doctrine depends on him.' ' The Pope and 
 the Council, by Janus,' p. 64. — The reader will judge whether an 
 incomprehensible silence reigned on the perpetual stability or inde- 
 fectibility of the Paith in the See and Successor of Peter, and whether 
 there be any difference between this and the infallibility of the Pon- 
 tiff. But these confident assertions may mislead thousands. 
 
94 
 
 ject, which ends with the CouncU of Constance, and 
 enter upon the second, which reaches from that Council 
 to the Assembly of 1682. In this period, of about two 
 hundred and forty years, the authority of the Koman 
 Pontiff was far more explicitly manifested, by reason 
 of the efforts made to diminish its amplitude. 
 The Councils of Constance and Bale may be said 
 to have demanded the decree of the Council of 
 Florence. This explicit declaration precludes the dis- 
 tinction between the ' See and him that sits in it.' 
 The Council affirms that the plenitude of all power 
 was given by our Lord not only to Peter, but, ipsi 
 in Beato Petro^ to his Successor in Peter. This 
 decree is a summing up and declaration of the divine 
 tradition we have hitherto been tracing upwards, 
 century by century, towards its source. The second 
 period may be called the period of contention, in which 
 the authority of the Koman Pontiff has been subjected 
 to a controversial analysis. Many things rendered 
 this inevitable. The revival of the Koman jurispru- 
 dence filled the princes and civil powers of Europe 
 with the principles and maxims of ancient Csesarism.* 
 They aimed at supreme and absolute power over 
 all persons and causes, ecclesiastical and civil. In the 
 Pontiffs they met their only obstacle ; the only anta- 
 gonist they could not break or bend. The pride of 
 nationality is easily roused, and they roused it as 
 an ally against the power of faith and the authority 
 of Rome. 
 
 A still more dangerous auxiliary soon ranged 
 itself on the same side. 
 
 * Bottalla, ' The Supreme Authority of the Pope,' p. 157 etseq. 
 
95 
 
 The rise and rivalry of nationalities within the 
 unity of the Catholic Church, which first generated 
 controversies as to the supreme and final authority 
 of the Roman Pontifi', soon led to divisions in the 
 Conclave, and to doubtful elections. At the time 
 of the Council of Constance the Church was dis- 
 tracted by three Obediences and three doubtful 
 Popes. 
 
 The Council, from its opening to its fourteenth 
 session, contained only one of the three Obediences. 
 The second Obedience then came in. It was not 
 until the thirty-fifth session that the three Obedi- 
 ences united, and a Pontiff of certain and canonical 
 election presided over it, as S. Leo over the Council 
 of Chalcedon, or S. Agatho over the third Council of 
 Constantinople. 
 
 But it was in the fourth and fifth sessions, while as 
 yet only one Obedience was present, that the decrees 
 which represent the novelties of Gerson were pro- 
 claimed. They were null from the beginning, from 
 the nullity of the assembly, the irregularity of the 
 voting, as well as the heterodoxy of the matter. 
 They were protested against as soon as read, and 
 let to pass, not only because opposition was vain, but 
 because their passing was, ipso facto, void of effect. 
 But into this it is needless to enter. So long as a 
 Galilean remains, the Galilean version of the Council 
 of Constance will be reiterated. It will be remem- 
 bered how Gerson complained of the condemnation, 
 by Martin V., of those who appealed from the Pope 
 to a General CouncU. This one Pontifical Act, pub- 
 
96 
 
 lished in the Council itself, ruined the fourth and 
 fifth sessions from their base. 
 
 In order to appreciate correctly the real nature of 
 those sessions, we may recall to mind what were the 
 theological opinions taught at that time by Gerson, 
 in Paris, We shall readily see, first, of how little 
 weight is the authority of his name ; and next, how 
 analogous was the course of erroneous opinions in 
 France with that of the opinions which issued in 
 Anglicanism in this country. 
 
 The following propositions are a sample of much 
 to be found in his writings : — 
 
 ' The decision of the Pope alone, in matters which 
 are of faith, does not as such bind (any one) to 
 believe.'* 
 
 ' The decision of the Pope binds the faithful not 
 to dogmatise to the contrary, unless they see that 
 manifest error against faith, and great scandal to the 
 faith, would arise from their silence if they should not 
 oppose themselves. ... If persecution of their 
 opinions, and punishment should ensue against them, 
 let them know that they are blessed who suffer per- 
 secution for justice sake.' t 
 
 ' A simple person, without authority, might be so 
 excellently learned in Holy Scripture that more 
 confidence is to be had in his assertion,' in a doc- 
 trinal case, than in the declaration of the Pope ; for 
 the Gospel is to be trusted rather than the Pope. 'J 
 
 * Gersonii 0pp. Ed. Dupin, Ant. 1706 : torn. i. De Exam. Doctr. 
 Consid. 2, p. 9. 
 t Ibid. - 
 I Ibid. Con. 5, p. 11. 
 
97 
 
 Bishops ' in the primitive Church were of the same 
 power as the Pope.' * 
 
 ' It is ridiculous to say that a mortal man may 
 claim to have power of binding and loosing sin, 
 in heaven and on earth, while he is a son of per- 
 dition,' &c. f 
 
 ' The Roman Church, the head of which is believed 
 
 to be the Pope may err, and 
 
 deceive and be deceived, and be in schism and 
 heresy, and fail to exist.' J 
 
 ' It appears that if the Pope .... be wicked 
 and incorrigible, the King or Emperor of the 
 Romans .... has to apply the remedy by con- 
 voking a Council.' § 
 
 ' Bishops (oppressed by Popes) may reasonably 
 carry their complaints, not only to the Pope and a 
 General Council, which is the most fitting tribunal, 
 but to orthodox Princes.' || 
 
 ' Here is a foundation for the possible case of sub- 
 traction or suspension of obedience to any Pope 
 rightly elected.'^ 
 
 These are the first principles of the Anglican 
 schism, which has always justified itself by such 
 writers as Gerson, Peter d'Ailly, Nicholas de Cle- 
 mangiis, and by their later followers, Dupin, Van 
 Espen, and Febronius. 
 
 In quoting the opinions of Gerson, which every 
 Catholic must lament and reject, it would be unjust 
 
 * Tom. ii. De modis uniendi, p. 174. 
 
 t Ibid. p. 168. t Ibid. p. 163. 
 
 § Ibid. p. 178. 
 
 II Tom. ii. De Statu Eccl. p. 533. 
 
 f Tom. vi. De Auferib. Paps, p. 218. 
 
 G 
 
98 
 
 not to bear in mind the circumstances of the times, 
 which forced upon h.im and others questions alto- 
 gether new. Confidence in the supreme office of 
 the See and Successor of Peter, in matter of faith, 
 had been rudely shaken by the disputed election 
 of two and of three claimants to that supreme 
 power. Though it was not logical, it was only too 
 natural that the doubts should spread from the elec- 
 tion to the office, and that the contending Obediences 
 should endeavour not only to prevail over their 
 opponents, but to protect, as they thought, the 
 authority of the Church and the integrity of the 
 Faith, from dangers inseparable from the co-existence 
 of two and three claimants to the supreme office of 
 Judge in doctrinal causes. A good and a prudent 
 motive can be supposed for this error. In deny- 
 ing the infallibility of the Pontiif, and in affirming 
 the infallibility of Councils, Gerson no doubt thought 
 to provide a broader and surer basis for the 
 faith, of Christendom. So much it is but justice to 
 suppose. Nevei'theless, his opinions are erroneous, 
 even to the verge of heresy, and have scattered the 
 seeds of a wide growth of heretical errors from that 
 day to this. It is no wonder that Protestants have 
 claimed Gerson as a forerunner and an authority. 
 Villiers, a Protestant writer, in his book called 
 ' Influence of the Reformation of Lutber,' says that 
 Gerson and Richer were the leaders of the religious 
 revolution in France.* 
 
 In the last analysis, the great Western schism is 
 no more than the rivalry and contention of Xa- 
 
 * Bouix, De Papa et de Concil. CEoum. torn. i. 493. Paris, 1869. 
 
99 
 
 tionalities. What individuals have never been able 
 to effect against the unity and authority of the 
 Church, nations have endeavoured to do. And no 
 more luminous evidence can be found of the divine 
 stability of the Church, both in its unity and its 
 authority, than that it should have been able not 
 only to heal the great Western schism, but for four 
 hundred years to preserve both unity and authority 
 as it is at this day, and that, too, in the period of the 
 most vigorous and vehement development of modern 
 nationaUties. 
 
 But to return to the thread of our subject. It is 
 certain that the opinions of Gerson soon lost their 
 hold, even in the Sorbonne. The Council of Florence 
 eighteen years afterwards, that is in 1439, effaced the 
 traces of the fourth and fifth sessions of the Council 
 of Constance by its well-known decree, which, if it 
 does not explicitly affirm the infallibility of the 
 See and of the Successor of Peter, implicitly and 
 logically contains it. That well-known decree is no 
 more than the final expression of the immemorial 
 and universal practice and faith of the Church by 
 the infallible authority of a General Council. 
 
 Forty years later, that is in 1479, the condemna- 
 tion of Peter de Osma by Sixtus IV. affirms the 
 contrary of his error to be of faith, namely, ' that the 
 Church of the City of Eome cannot err.' 
 
 In 1544 the Faculty of Louvain published two-and- 
 thirty Articles against the errors of Luther. The 
 twenty -first runs thus :^ 
 
 ' It is to be held by firm faith that there is one 
 true and Catholic Church on earth, and that visible, 
 
 o 2 
 
100 
 
 which was founded by the Apostles and endures to 
 our time, retaining and holding whatsoever the Chair 
 of Peter hath delivered, does deliver, or shall here- 
 after deliver, in faith and religion ; upon which [Chair, 
 the Church] is so built by Christ the Bridegroom, that 
 in those things which are of faith it cannot err.' 
 
 The 25th Article runs : — 
 
 ' Those things are to be held by a firm faith which 
 are declared not only by express Scripture, but also 
 which we have received to be believed by the tradi- 
 tion of the Catholic Church, and which have been 
 defined in matters of faith and morals by the Chair 
 of Peter, and by General Councils legitimately con- 
 gregated.' * 
 
 The great Western schism, and the erroneous 
 opinions in the Council of Constance, had their legiti- 
 mate development in the Protestant Reformation: 
 and this, by separating part of Germany and Eng- 
 land from the Church, cleansed its unity of an infec- 
 tion which threatened not unity alone, but the foun- 
 dations of faith. We are often told, with much 
 pretension of wise and benevolent counsel, not to 
 draw too tight the conditions of communion, or to 
 define too precisely the doctrines of faith. No doubt 
 this advice was given at Constance, Florence, and 
 Trent. But the Catholic Church knows no policy 
 but truth; and its unity is extended, not by compre- 
 hension of error, but by the expulsion of all that is 
 at variance with the health and life of faith. We 
 shall see hereafter how this plea was put forward in 
 * EoskovAny, De Eom. Pontif. torn. ii. 35. 
 
101 
 
 1682, as it is at this moment, on the eve of the first 
 Council of the Vatican. 
 
 In 1579 the clergy of France, assembled at Melun, 
 decreed as follows : — 
 
 ' Bishops and their vicars, to whom this charge is 
 committed, shall take care that in all synods, diocesan 
 and provincial, all and every one, both clerics and 
 laymen, shall embrace, and with open profession pro- 
 nounce that faith which the Holy Roman Church, the 
 teacher, pillar, and ground of the truth, professes and 
 cherishes. For with this Church, by reason of its 
 [principality] primacy, itis necessary that all Churches 
 agree.' * 
 
 In 1625 a document was drawn up by the Assembly 
 under the title of ' Address of the Assembly- General 
 of the Clei'gy of France to the Archbishops and 
 Bishops of the Kingdom.' It was never published, 
 for some reason not clearly known. It is given in the 
 ' Proces-Yerbaux,' printed by order of the Assembly 
 in 1762-5. In the 157th article it runs as follows : — 
 ' The bishops are exhorted to honour the Holy Apos- 
 tolic See, and the Church of Rome, the Mother of 
 the Churches, founded in the infallible promise of 
 God, in the blood of the Apostles and Martyrs. . . . 
 They will respect also our Holy Father the Pope, 
 visible Head of the Church universal. Vicar of God on 
 earth, Bishop of Bishops and Patriarch of Patriarchs, 
 in a word, the Successor of S, Peter ; with whom the 
 Apostolate and the Episcopate have had their begin- 
 ning, and on whom Jesus Christ has founded the 
 
 * Koskovdny, ibid. torn. ii. p. 105. 
 
102 
 
 Church, in entrusting to him the keys of heaven, 
 together with infallibility of the faith, which we have 
 seen endure miraculously immovable in his successors 
 unto this day.' * 
 
 We now come to a period in which the Church in 
 France, with the Court and Government, gave its 
 testimony to the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, 
 by a series of public acts which admit of no reply. 
 From the year 1651 to 1681 the Jansenistic contro- 
 versy was at its height. 
 
 In 1651, eighty-five bishops of France wrote to 
 Innocent X., praying that the five propositions of 
 Jansenius might be judged by the Apostolic See. 
 They say : ' It is the solemn custom of the Church 
 to refer the greater causes to the Holy See, which 
 custom the never-failing faith of Peter demands in 
 his right that we should perpetually observe. In 
 obedience, therefore, to this most just law, we have 
 determined to write to your Holiness on a subject of 
 the greatest gravity in matter of religion.' At the 
 end of the letter they add : ' Your Holiness has lately 
 known how much the authority of the Apostolic See 
 avails in the condemnation of the error in respect to 
 the double head- of the Church ; " straightway the 
 tempest was calmed, and at the voice and command 
 of Christ the Avinds and the sea obeyed." ' f 
 
 After the condemnation of Jansenius by Innocent 
 X. on June 9, 1653, the bishops of France again 
 wrote, on July 15 : 'In which affair,' they said, 
 ' this is worthy of observation, that as, on the relation 
 
 * RoskovAny, ibid. torn. ii. p. 175. 
 I Ibid. torn. ii. p. 180. 
 
103 
 
 of the bishops of Africa, Innocent the First condemned 
 of old the Pelagian heresy, so, on the consultation of 
 the bishops of France, Innocent the Tenth proscribed 
 by his authority a heresy directly opposite to the 
 Pelagian. For the Catholic Church of that ancient 
 time, sustained only by the communion and authority 
 of the See of Peter, which shines forth in the decretal 
 letter of Innocent to the Africans, followed by another 
 letter from Zosimus to the bishops of all the world, 
 subscribed without delay the condemnation of the 
 Pelagian heresy. For it clearly saw, not only from 
 the promise of Christ our Lord made to Peter, but 
 also from the acts of the earlier Pontiffs, and from the 
 anathemas launched just before by Damasus against 
 ApoUinaris and Macedonius, while as yet they were 
 not condemned by any synod, that judgments for 
 the confirmation of the rule of faith made by the 
 Pontiffs, when consulted by bishops, rest upon a 
 divine and supreme authority throughout the world; 
 to which all Christians are in duty bound to render 
 the obedience of the mind.' * 
 
 It is here to be observed that the condemnation 
 of Pelagianism by Innocent I. without any General 
 Council has always been received as infallible ; and 
 next, that the French bishops here declare the 
 ' obedience of the mind,' that is, interior assent, and 
 not only obsequious silence, to be required of all 
 Christians. 
 
 On September 2, 1656, the bishops wrote to 
 Alexander VII. almost in the same words. They 
 call the letter of Zosimus ' a peremptory decree,' and 
 * Ibid. p. 190. 
 
104 
 
 quote S. Augustine's well-known words : ' Finita est 
 causa rescriptis Apostolicis,' &c. * 
 
 In the year 1660 the bishops wrote again, if pos- 
 sible, in stronger language. They declare : ' In thee, 
 as in the Successor of Peter, is firmly seated the 
 strength of us all.' f 
 
 Lastly, in the encyclical letter of the assembly of 
 the clergy, on October 2, 1665, they declare: ' The 
 circular letter which the General Assembly of the 
 clergy of France wrote to all the bishops of the king- 
 dom on the 15th of July 1653 shows that the submis- 
 sion which we have been used to render to the Holy 
 Father is an inheritance of the bishops of France, 
 who, in a synod held under Charlemagne and Pepin, 
 made a solemn declaration of their will to preserve 
 their unity with the Roman Church, and to be subject 
 to S. Peter and his Successoi's to the end of their life. 'J 
 They add, that all the Churches of France were in a 
 perfect will to follow all that the PontiflF should order 
 in matter of faith ;' and add : ' This is the solid point 
 of our glory, which renders our faith invincible, and 
 our authority infallible, so long as we hold the one 
 and the other inseparably united to the centre of 
 religion, by binding ourselves to the See of S. 
 Peter,' &c. 
 
 "We have here six solemn acts of the French 
 bishops and assemblies, recognising in the most ex- 
 plicit terms the stability of the faith of the See and 
 
 * D'Argentre, CoUectio Judiciorum, torn. iii. p. 2, p. 280. Paris, 
 1736. 
 
 f Zaccaria, Anti-Febronius Vindicatus, diss. v. cap, 2, p. 242. 
 Rome, 1843. 
 
 :]; D'Argentre, Coll, Jud., torn. iii. p. 2, p. 312, 
 
105 
 
 of the Successor of Peter. It may be said with 
 truth, that the memory of Gerson and of the old 
 Sorbonne was by this time simply effaced from the 
 Church of France. The condemnation of Jansenius 
 rested, and rests to this day, upon the peremptory and 
 irreformable decree of Innocent X. The bishops of 
 France, on March 28, 1654, wrote to the Pontiff on 
 the subject of the Jansenist evasion as to the question of 
 fact respecting the propositions. They declared that the 
 Jansenists were endeavouring ' to take away a part of 
 the ancient deposit of faith, the custody of which was 
 entrusted to the See of Peter by Christ, by dishonestly 
 drawing aside the majesty of the Apostolic Decree, to 
 the determination of fictitious controversies.'* It is 
 clear that the bishops here recognised the supreme 
 and plenary authority of the Pontiff in all its ampli- 
 tude of faith, morals, and dogmatic facts. 
 
 This was at that time the doctrine of France. In 
 a meeting of the leading Jansenists, held in the 
 Faubourg St. Jacques, on the publication of the Bull of 
 Innocent X., Pascal suggested that he had heard it 
 said that the Pope is not infallible. Arnauld imme- 
 diately answered, that if they should pursue that line 
 of defence ' they would give good reason to their oppo- 
 nents to treat them as heretics.'' f 
 
 This part of the subject, then, may be summed up 
 in a quotation from Peter de Marca. The Jesuits, in 
 their College in Paris, had maintained in 1661 a thesis 
 afl&rming the infallibility of the Pope in faith, morals, 
 and dogmatic facts. The Jansenists endeavoured to 
 
 * Ibid. p. 825. 
 
 ■f Boiiix, De Papa, &c., p. 564. 
 
106 
 
 stir up the government to censure it. Peter de 
 Marca, just then translated from the Archbishopric of 
 Toulouse to Paris, declared that the opinion which 
 affirms the infallibility of the Koman Pontiff, speaking 
 ex cathedrd, is ' the general and received opinion, ap- 
 proved by the Church of Kome and by the schools 
 of Christendom. ' He adds : ' This opinion is the only 
 one which is taught and embraced in Italy, Spain, and 
 the other provinces of Christendom ; ' and that ' the 
 opinion which is called the opinion of the Doctors of 
 Paris is placed in the rank of those which are only 
 tolerated.^ * This was before 1682 and the Pontifical 
 condemnation of the Four Articles. Again, he says : 
 ' Finally, it would be to 023en the door to a great 
 schism to endeavour to overturn these theses, so long 
 as they are understood in accordance with the com- 
 mon opinion ; because not only such an opposition tends 
 to ruin openly the constitutions published against 
 Jansenius, but even to dispute publicly and with au- 
 thority against the power of the Popes as infallible 
 Judges, when speaking ex cathedra, in matter of faith, 
 which is conceded to them by the consent of all the 
 Universities, except the ancient Sorbonne.' In the 
 same document he goes on to use the words quoted 
 in the Pastoi'al of 1867 : ' The great majority of the 
 doctors [in France], not only in theology, but also 
 in law, follow the common opinion, which has founda- 
 tions very hard to destroy, as has been already said, 
 and they laugh at the opinion of the Old Sorbonne.^ f 
 
 • Zaccaria, Anti-Febronlus Vindicatus, dissert, t. cap. 2, s. 5, 
 Notes. 
 
 I Ibid, note 5. 
 
107 
 
 I hope that I have sufficiently justified the state- 
 ment made in 1867, that the Gallican opinions have 
 no warrant in the ancient traditions of the illustrious 
 Church of France. 
 
 III. First formal Enunciation of Gallicanism. 
 
 We must now enter upon a less pleasing pai't of 
 our subject, the revival of the opinions of the ' Old 
 Sorbonne,' and their fabrication into the Articles of 
 1682. 
 
 It would be out of place to recite the details of the 
 contest which arose from the thesis in the College of 
 the Jesuits. The Jansenists attacked the infallibility 
 of the Pope, because they were condemned by two 
 Pontifical constitutions. rThey had influence enough 
 with the Government to persuade the ministers of 
 Louis XIV. that the doctrine of the infallibility of the 
 Pope was dangerous to the Regale, and even to the 
 Crown of France. The Government and the Parlia- 
 ment prohibited the theses. The Sorbonne resisted 
 the dictation of Government in theology. The Par- 
 liament insisted on its obedience, and commanded the 
 Faculty to register its decrees respecting the infalli- 
 bility of the Pope. Out of this arose a conflict which 
 required seventeen decrees of Parliament to reduce the 
 Sorbonne to obedience. Finally, the expedient of the 
 Assembly of 1682 was decided on as a means of 
 giving a doctrinal and authoritative character to the 
 theology of the Court and Parliament. The history 
 of this policy of Colbert and his colleagues shall be 
 
108 
 
 given from the work of M. G^rin, Judge of the Civil 
 Tribunal of the Seine, who has in this year published 
 a number of documents hitherto unknown, and con- 
 clusive in proof, in behalf of the Sorbonne and against 
 the Government. 
 
 The French writer already named has publicly 
 censured me for saying, in the Pastoral addressed to 
 you two years ago, that the Four Articles of 1682 
 are a 'Royal Theology;' and that in the assembly 
 by which they were passed, the Archbishop of Cam- 
 brai opposed them. I think it due to you, reverend 
 brethren, as well as to myself, both to repeat these 
 statements and to prove them. 
 
 This writer, signing himself the Abb6 St. Pol, 
 thought to overturn my statement by quoting a pas- 
 sage from the Arret du Parlement, in which it is 
 said that the Articles were passed unanimously 
 (unanimement). Who ever doubted that the Par- 
 liament would say so, and did say so? But with 
 what truth it was said, we shall now see. The Abb6 
 St. Pol admits that the Archbishop of Cambrai 
 resisted until convinced. The Archbishop resisted 
 until he obtained an assurance that the Articles 
 should not be imposed by authority on the Theolo- 
 gical Schools of France ; which assurance was, never- 
 theless, immediately violated by an order of the 
 King.* 
 
 We have it, also, upon the evidence of the Pro- 
 
 * G&in, Eecherohes historiques sur 1' Assemble du Clerg6 de 
 France de 1682, p. 201. Paris, LecofFre, 1869.- But I need say no 
 more on the fidelity of tlie Archbishop of Cambrai. His courageous 
 successor, in a noble address to his clergy on the 10th of September 
 last, has abundantly proved the truth of my statement in 1867. 
 
109 
 
 cureur-G(^n4ral De Harlay, one of the chief managers 
 of this whole transaction, that ' the majority ' of that 
 Assembly 'would with all their heart have changed 
 their mind the day after if they had been allowed to 
 do so,' * This evidence is beyond all refutation and 
 all suspicion. It occurs in a private letter to Colbert, 
 hitherto unpublished, and henceforward never to be 
 forgotten. But I shall have occasion to return upon 
 this document later. 
 
 In M. G^rin's volume incontestable proofs of that 
 date are to be found in the letters, memorials, and pri- 
 vate documents of Colbert, the Archbishop De Harlay, 
 and the Procureur-G^neral, to establish beyond all con- 
 troversy (1) that the Assembly of 1682 was neither 
 Synod nor Council of the Church of France, nor even a 
 representative assembly of the French clergy ; but an 
 assembly of Archbishops, Bishops, and others nomi- 
 nated by the King, or elected under every kind of 
 pressure and influence of the Court, in the midst of 
 strong and public protests by such men as the Car- 
 dinal Archbishop of Aix and the Vicar-General of 
 Toulouse, As a sample out of many, the following 
 will suffice. Colbert wrote to the Bishop of Avran- 
 cheB : ' Sir, the King has judged that you will be 
 able to serve him more usefully than any other .... 
 in the assembly formed of the clergy. His Majesty 
 commands me to write to you, to say that he has 
 made choice of you,' &c. Bossuet writes to De 
 Kancd : ' The assembly is going to be held. It is 
 willed that I should be of it.' Fleury writes : ' The 
 King willed that the Bishop of Meaux should be of 
 * Ibid. p. 389. 
 
no 
 
 it.' In the same tei'ms Colbert wrote to the Arch- 
 bishop of Rouen. In the same way the elections 
 were forced at Toulouse, Narbonne, and Aix, indeed 
 in every place ; so that Daniel de Cosnac says : ' Cette 
 maniere de deputation ne me paraissait pas trop 
 glorieuse.' To give any idea of the complete 
 nullity of these pretended elections, it would be 
 necessary to transcribe the third chapter of M. 
 Gerin's work. 
 
 But (2) another fact of much greater importance 
 both to the unity of theological truth, and of the 
 illustrious Church in France, is this — that the Faculty 
 of Theology at the Sorbonne, together with the other 
 Theological Faculties in Paris, not only steadfastly 
 and courageously resisted the Four Articles, but it 
 may be truly said that they never received them. The 
 shadow of acceptance which was wrung from a cer- 
 tain number by acts of intimidation and violence on 
 the part of the King, the Court, and the Parliament, 
 is abundant proof that the Four Articles were 
 never accepted by the Theological Faculty of the 
 Sorbonne.* The importance of this is great and 
 manifold. It completes the rejection of the Four 
 Articles by every great Theological School. It clears 
 the great name of the Sorbonne of a shadow which 
 I had hitherto feared must rest upon it ; and lastly, 
 it clears the Church in France from participation in 
 an event which must always grieve those who revere 
 and love its noble Catholic traditions. 
 
 * This was notorious : — 
 
 ' La Sorbonne defend la foi, 
 Et le clerg6 lYdit du roi.' — Chansons du temps. 
 
Ill 
 
 I will endeavour, as briefly as I can, to give the 
 substance of M. G^rin's evidence. 
 
 The Edict of March 20th ordered that the Four 
 Articles should be registered in all the Universities 
 and Faculties of Theology, and taught by their 
 professors. 
 
 The Faculties of Theology in Paris were composed 
 of 753 doctors. The houses were those of the 
 Sorbonne, Navarre, the Cholets, St. Sulpice, several 
 religious orders, and others. 
 
 Of these, Fleury tells us that the regulars, to a 
 man, maintained the infallibility of the Pontiff ; that 
 the congregations of secular priests were of the same 
 opinion. 
 
 We have before us a secret report, drawn up for 
 Colbert by some doctors, partisans of the Court, in 
 which they arrange in two classes, Pour Rome and 
 Contre Rome^ the theologians of the Faculties in Paris. 
 
 Of the Sorbonne they say: 'Except six or seven, 
 the whole house of the Sorbonne .is educated in opinions 
 contrary to the declaration. The professors, except 
 the syndic, are so greatly opposed to it, that even 
 those who are paid hy the King are not willing to 
 teach any one of the propositions which were pre- 
 sented to his Majesty in 1665; although, in the Col- 
 leges of the Sorbonne and Navarre, there are chairs 
 founded to teach controversy. The number living in 
 the College of the Sorbonne is very considerable. 
 They are all united in Ultramontane opinions except 
 four or five. All the professors, even the royal, except 
 the syndic of the Faculty, are of the same maxims.' * 
 * Gerin, p. 343. 
 
112 
 
 Of the House of Navarre, every professor, except 
 one, was Antigallican. 
 
 St. Sulpice, the Missions Etrangeres, and St. Nicho- 
 las du Chardonnet. — That ' those who have given an 
 opinion in this matter (of the Four Articles) are of 
 the opinion of the Sorbonne.' And of St. Sulpice it 
 was said that it was the seminary of the whole clergy 
 of the kingdom, and that there were many houses 
 which looked upon it as the parent house.* Of St. 
 Sulpice, in 1665 it was declared that the whole body 
 was extreme for the authority of the Pope. 
 
 The Carmelites, Augustinians, and Franciscans 
 were all Ultramontane. 
 
 Such were the men whom Louis XIV. commanded 
 to register and to teach the Four Articles. 
 
 The first President de Novion, the Procureur- 
 G^neral de Harlay, and six councillors, were charged 
 to carry this- declaration of the Edict to the Sor- 
 bonne on the 1st of May 1682. Three hundred 
 doctors were present. The dean by seniority, Be- 
 tille, was enfeebled with age. When the registration 
 of the Edict was demanded, the Faculty desired 
 time and deliberation. But Betille answered, ' Gra- 
 tias agimus amplissimas,' and ' Facultas pollicetur 
 obsequium ; ' on which the deputation withdrew, and 
 Betille with them. The three hundred remained, 
 expecting their return, and demanding a delibera- 
 tion; but the absence of the dean rendered it in- 
 formal. They then separated. Some days after, 
 the Procureur-General demanded the registration of 
 the Edict. The Faculty answered that they could 
 give no answer before the 1st of June. 
 *• Ibid. p. 345. 
 
The king, therefore, on the 10th of May, wrote to 
 the Syndic, saying, 'that he heard that "quelques 
 docteurs," certain doctors, were disposed to discuss the 
 Edict ; ' and added : ' It is my will that if any one 
 betakes himself to do this, you stop him, by declaring 
 to him the order which you have received from me 
 in this present letter.'* 
 
 Some advised a second deputation of the Parlia- 
 ment. But- Colbert writes to the Procureur De 
 Harlay that he was afraid of two things: the one, 
 ' to let so much authority be seen ; ' the other, ' of 
 letting it become known to the Court of Rome that the 
 opinions of the Faculty on the subject of the Declaration 
 of the Clergy are not in conformity with the contents of 
 that Declaration.''^ 
 
 The 1st of June passed without any new order for 
 the registration of the Edict. The opposition had 
 become much more vivid. Colbert wrote to De 
 Harlay, telling him that ' the king had received a 
 letter, saying, that "all was lost;" that the king was 
 thinking of expelling MM. Masure, Desperier, and 
 Blanger, who appeared to have a chief part in the 
 affair; but that it would be at variance with his 
 principle, of avoiding as much as possible the appear- 
 ance of any opposition on the part of the Faculty, or 
 the using of authority on the part of his Majesty.' J 
 De Harlay, in answer, addressed to Colbert a 
 document, dated June 2, under the title of 'Projet 
 de reglement pour la tenue des Assemblies de 
 Sorbonne.' After giving his opinion that it was wiser 
 
 * Ibid. p. 351. t Ibid. P- 352. % Ibid. p. 354. 
 
 H 
 
114 
 
 not to send the Parliament a second time to the 
 Faculty, and not to exhibit a great manifestation of 
 authority, he insists that public opioion must be 
 managed, and an appearance of liberty must be left 
 to the Sorbonne. He then goes on in the following : 
 'It is not altogether without pretext to think it 
 strange that the Faculty should complain of the form 
 of the king's Edict, and of the new submission, and 
 of the Chancellor of the Church of Paris, and finally 
 of the obhgation to teach a doctrine, when declared 
 by an assembly of the clergy, of wliom the greater fart 
 would change with all their heart to-morrow^ if ^^^y 
 were allowed to do so. But, after all, no one was 
 wanting in respect to the Edict of the King,' &c. * 
 
 On the 16th of June, at six in the morning, an 
 usher brought an order of the Parliament, forbidding 
 the Faculty to assemble, or to deliberate, and com- 
 manding a certain number to appear in the Parlia- 
 ment, at the bar of the ushers, at seven o'clock. When 
 they arrived, the First President addressed them, 
 calling them a cabal, unworthy of confidence and of the 
 marks of esteem with which they had been honoured. 
 
 The Edict, the Declaration of the Clergy, was then 
 registered by command. 
 
 On that same day De Harlay wrote to the Chan- 
 cellor Le Tellier the following letter, which will for 
 ever destroy the illusion that the Four Articles were 
 the free and voluntary expression of the opinion of 
 the Church of France in the seventeenth centurj'. 
 It runs as follows : — 
 
 * Ibid. p. 355. 
 
115 
 
 ]6tt JuM, 1682. 
 
 My Lokd, 
 
 After avoiding, as far as depended upon my care, to 
 employ with ostentation the authority which it pleased the 
 king to give us to bring the Faculty of Theology to ohe- 
 dience, in the hope I had that the doctors, who are in very 
 great number, very learned and well intentioned, would 
 prevail over the contrary party ; nevertheless, the way in 
 which their deliberations yesterday began, and the assurance 
 we received that the evil party would prevail to-day hy 
 about fifteen voices (as you have without doubt been in- 
 formed), having made me change my opinion, I therefore 
 thought no more of anything but executing the order of 
 the king, which M. de Seignelay brought us yesterday. 
 You will see, my Lord, by the Arr^t of which I send you a 
 copy, as well as by the address which M. the first President 
 made to the doctors who came to the Parliament, the manner 
 in which we proceeded ; with much regret on my part, and 
 with equal pain that I am obliged to have a hand in these 
 afiuirs, we applied remedies almost as disastrous as the evil, 
 and because we are still exposed to many disagreeable conse- 
 quences.* 
 
 He then details the reforms necessary to make the 
 Sorbonne ' serviceable to the king,' which consists 
 simply in expelling the Ultramontanes, of whom eight 
 were commanded to depart that same day, or the day 
 following; and further, in stopping the salaries of 
 those who could not produce a certificate of having 
 taught the Four Articles. We find a memorandum, 
 dated 11th August 1685. f 'The professors of the 
 Sorbonne went to the Royal treasury to demand 
 their payment, according to custom. Three were 
 paid. For the three others, they were told that, as 
 they had not satisfied the order of the king, which 
 
 * G^rin, p. 359. f Ibid. p. 375. 
 
 H 2 
 
116 
 
 obliged them to teach the Propositions of the Clergy, 
 they would not be paid until they had given satis- 
 faction.' * 
 
 So resolute, unanimous, and constant was the Sor- 
 bonne in its opposition to the Four Articles, that the 
 Advocate-General Talon, on June 22, 1685, wrote to 
 the Secretary of State, that ' his Majesty knew better 
 than any one how important it is to stop the progress 
 which the cabals and evil doctrines of the College of 
 the Sorhonne were making in the Faculty of Theology.' 
 He adds that there was only one Professor, ' qui en- 
 seigne nos maximes.'f 'The evil doctrine of the 
 College of the Sorbonne' is that which M. I'Abbe St. 
 Pol, Chanoine Honoraire, calls at this day 'I'ultra- 
 Catholicisme en Angleterre.' 
 
 I will now add only two more quotations. 
 
 In 1760 the Abbe Chauvelin, Counsellor of the 
 Parliament of Paris, deadly enemy of the Jesuits 
 and of the bishops who defended them, reporter of 
 the Proces against the Society of Jesus, published, 
 
 * Ibid. p. 376. 
 
 f How deeply the national spirit had pervaded the minds and 
 language of men at that time, appears from the constant use of such 
 phrases as, ' la doctrine fran9aise,' ' les opinions fran^aises,' ' nos 
 maximes.' We find also Massillon writing, ' comme cveque fran9ais.' 
 The words grate strangely on the ears of those to whom the Church 
 of God is more than nation, country, and kindred. I cannot refrain 
 from quoting the noble and delicate words of the Archbishop of 
 Cambrai to his clergy in synod on September 10th last: — 'There 
 is no nation that may claim the privilege of having, in the bosom of 
 the Catholic Church, its theology apart, and its peculiar doctrines, 
 which a kind of prescription gives it the right to preserve for ever. 
 Understood in this way, these national doctrines would be evidently 
 incompatible with Catholic unity ; and they would bring on in time, 
 and by the force of events, the divisions which consummate under 
 our eyes the final ruin of Protestantism.' 
 
117 
 
 without name, the famous work, ' La Tradition des 
 Faits.' In it we read a summary of all I have en- 
 deavoured to detail. 
 
 ' When the attempt was made to oblige all eccle- 
 siastics to profess the (maximes de France) opinions 
 of France, what difficulties were there not to be 
 encountered ! It was necessary to wrest an assent 
 from many of them ; others opposed obstacles which 
 aU the authority of Parliament had great difficulty 
 in overcoming. There was need of all the zeal, and 
 all the lights of certain prelates, and certain doctors 
 attached to the true opinions, to reclaim the great 
 number of Ultramontanes who were found among 
 the clergy of France. There may be counted seven- 
 teen orders which Parliament was obliged to make, 
 to force the Faculty of Theology to register the 
 regulations of 1665, and the doctors to conform to 
 them. The learned prelates who drew up the cele- 
 brated Declaration of 1682 met with no less contra- 
 diction in getting it adopted. The ecclesiastics 
 never ceased to rise against it, until the Parliament 
 employed its authority to constrain them.. When 
 the Parliament endeavoured to enforce the registration 
 of the Edict of 1682 by the Faculties, the pretexts 
 and the subterfuges to avoid it multiplied without 
 end. The University and the Faculty of Law sub- 
 mitted without any difficulty. But it luas necessary 
 to come to the exercise of authority, to bring the 
 Faculty of llieology to obedience.'' * 
 
 We seem rather to be reading the history of the 
 Anglican Reformation than of the glorious Church 
 of France. 
 
 » Geriii, p. 389. 
 
118 
 
 One more quotation shall be the last. In the Session 
 of the Assembly on the 24th November, 1682, the 
 Promotor Charon, after saying that Louis XIV. sur- 
 passed David in gentleness, Solomon in wisdom, 
 Constantine in religion, Alexander in courage, all 
 the Ceesars and all kings on earth in power, applied 
 to him this Byzantine text; which I do not translate, 
 but leave as I find it. ' In exercitu plus quam rex, 
 in acie plus quam miles, in regno plus quam impe- 
 rator, in disciplina civili plus quam praetor, in con- 
 sistorio plus quam judex, in Ecclesia plus quam 
 sacerdos.' * 
 
 You will remember that in the former Pastoral I 
 only said that Gallicanism was a Royal Theology, 
 and no part of the Cathohc tradition of the glorious 
 Church of France. I here give the first proof of my 
 assertion ; and shall be ready, if need be, to add 
 more hereafter. 
 
 In the Pastoral on the Centenary I recited the 
 prompt and repeated censures of the acts of 
 the Assembly by Innocent XI., April 11, 1682; 
 Alexander VIII. in 1688 and in 1691; the retrac- 
 tation, by the French Bishops and by the King, of 
 the Acts of 1682; and finally, the condemnation of 
 the insertion of the Four Articles in the Synod of 
 Pistoia by Pius VI., in the Bull 'Auctorem Fidei.' 
 To this, much might be added ; but as one Pontifical 
 condemnation is enough for those with whom we are 
 now dealing, I forbear to add more. 
 
 Such, then, is the present state and aspect of this 
 question. We have traced it, first, through its first 
 * Ibid. p. 301. 
 
119 
 
 period of constant, immemorial, universal, and public 
 practice, down to the Council of Constance ; secondly, 
 through the period of conflict, and therefore of ana- 
 lysis, from the Council of Constance to the Assembly 
 of 1682 ; thirdly, from 1682, in the Pontifical Acts by 
 Avhich the opinion adverse to the infallibility of the 
 Successor of Peter, speaking ex cathedrd, has been, 
 if not condemned, at least so discouraged that the 
 opposite opinion may be affirmed to be at least cer- 
 tain, if not de Jide, though not imposed as of universal 
 obligation. In this stage of the question an CEcu- 
 menical Council meets. The question, therefore, is 
 not whether the doctrine be - true, which cannot be 
 doubted ; or definable, which is not open to doubt : 
 but whether such a definition be opportune, that is, 
 timely and prudent. 
 
 Those who maintain that the time is ripe, and that 
 such a definition would be opportune, justify their 
 opinion on the following reasons : — 
 
 1. Because the doctrine of the infallibility of the 
 Vicar of Jesus Christ, speaking ex cathedra, in mat- 
 ter of faith and morals, is true. 
 
 2. Because this truth has been denied. 
 
 3. Because this denial has generated extensive 
 doubt as to the truth of this doctrine, which lies at 
 the root of the immemorial and universal practice of 
 the Church, and therefore at the foundation of 
 Christianity in. the world. 
 
 4. Because this denial, if it arose informally about 
 the time of the Council of Constance, has been 
 revived, and has grown into a formal and public 
 error since the closing of the last General Council. 
 
120 
 
 5. Because, if tlie next General Council shall pass 
 it over, the error will henceforward appear to be 
 tolerated, or at least left in impunity ; and the Ponti- 
 fical censures of Innocent XL, Alexander VIII., 
 Innocent XII., Pius VI., will appear to be of doubtful 
 effect. 
 
 6. Because this denial of the traditional belief of 
 the Church is not a private, literary, and scholastic 
 opinion, but a patent, active, and organised opposition 
 to the prei'ogatives of the Holy See. 
 
 7. Because this erroneous opinion has gravely en- 
 feebled the doctrinal authority of the Church in the 
 mind of a certain number of the faithful; and if 
 passed over in impunity, this ill effect will be still 
 further encoui'aged. 
 
 8. Because this erroneous opinion has at times 
 caused and kept open a theological and practical divi- 
 sion among pastors and people, and has given occasion 
 to domestic criticisms, mistrusts, animosities, and 
 alienations. 
 
 9. Because these divisions tend to paralyse the 
 action of truth upon the minds of the faithful ad 
 intra ; and consequently, by gi\'ing a false appearance 
 of division and doubt among Catholics, upon the 
 minds of Protestants and others ad extra. 
 
 10. Because, as the absence of a definition gives 
 occasion for these separations and oppositions of 
 opinion among pastors and people, so, if defined, the 
 doctrine would become a basis and a bond of unity 
 among the faithful. 
 
 11. Because, if defined in an CEcumenical Council, 
 the doctrine would be at once recei^-ed throughout 
 
121 
 
 the world, both by those who believe the infallibility 
 of the Pontiflf and by those who believe the infalli- 
 bility of the Church; and mth the same universal joy 
 and unanimity as the definition of the Immaculate 
 Conception. 
 
 12. Because the definition of the ordinary means 
 whereby the faith is proposed to the world is re- 
 quired to complete the Treatise ' de Fide Divina,' 
 
 13. Because the same definition is required to 
 complete the Treatise ' de Ecclesia deque dotibus 
 ejus.' 
 
 14. Because it is needed to place the . Pontifical 
 Acts during the last three hundred years, both in de- 
 claring the truth, as in the dogma of the Immaculate 
 Conception, and in condemning errors, as in the 
 long series of propositions condemned in Baius, Jan- 
 senius, and others, beyond cavil or question ; and, still 
 more, to make manifest that the active infallibility 
 of the Church, between Council and Council, is not 
 dormant, suspended, or intermittent; and to exclude 
 the heretical supposition that infallible decrees are 
 left to the exposition and interpretation of a fallible 
 judge. 
 
 15. Because the full and final declaration of the 
 divine authority of the Head of the Church is needed 
 to exclude from the minds of pastors and faithful the 
 political influences which have generated Gallicanism, 
 Imperialism, Regalism, and Nationalism, the peren- 
 nial sources of error, contention, and schism. 
 
 For these and for many more reasons, which it is 
 impossible now to detail, many believe that a defini- 
 tion or declaration which would terminate this long 
 
122 
 
 and pernicious question would be opportune, and that 
 it might for ever be set at rest by the condemnation 
 of the propositions following : — 
 
 1. That the decrees of the Roman Pontiffs in 
 matter of faith and morals do not oblige the con- 
 science unless they be made in a General Council, 
 or before they obtain, at least, the tacit consent of 
 the Church. 
 
 2. That the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks in 
 matter of faith and morals, as the Universal Doctor 
 and Teacher of the Church, may err. 
 
 They have also a desire, which springs from their 
 fraternal and grateful affection for the illustrious 
 Church of France, the Mother of S. Germanus, from 
 whom England derived the Episcopate, and the Guar- 
 dian of the Holy See, glorious for a long history of 
 splendid deeds of faith: it is, that the Bishops of 
 France should, in this first Council of the Vatican, 
 stand forth to lead the voices of the Episcopate in 
 asking that the infallibility of the Vicar of Jesus 
 Christ may be declared by a decree of the universal 
 Church. 
 
 There was a day in which the great family of 
 S. Dominic rejoiced the whole Catholic world, when, 
 at the feet of Gregory XVI., it laid its petition that 
 the words ' conceived without original sin ' should be 
 inserted in the Litanies. The suffrage of that illus- 
 trious Order closed up the circle of unity among the 
 faithful. 
 
 The suffrage of the illustiious Church of France 
 for the closing of a divergence, now become historical, 
 among the pastors and faithful of that great Catholic 
 
123 
 
 people, "would give joy to the whole world. They 
 may claim the glory of this act as a prerogative, for 
 a reason like that which has moved brave legions to 
 claim the peril and the glory of leading the last and 
 crowning act of some great warfare at its glorious 
 close. 
 
124 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 TWO EFFECTS OF THE COUNCIL CERTAIN. 
 
 Whether the first Council of the Vatican will define 
 that the Vicar of Jesus Christ, speaking ex cathedra^ 
 in matter of faith and morals, is infallible or no, is, and, 
 till the event, must remain a secret with God ; but 
 whatsoever the decision of the Council may be, we 
 shall assuredly know that its decision is infallibljr 
 right, and we shall embrace it not only with obedi- 
 ence, but with the interior assent of niind and will. 
 
 There are, however, two things which the Council 
 will certainly accomplish. First, it will bring out 
 more visibly than ever the only alternative proposed 
 to the human intellect, — namely, rationalism or faith ; 
 and next, it will show to the civil powers of the 
 Christian world the inevitable future they are now 
 preparing for themselves. 
 
 As to the former, it will be more than ever 
 manifest that the basis upon which God has Avilled 
 that His revelation should rest in the world is, in 
 the natural order, the testimony of the Catholic 
 Church, which, if considered only as a human and 
 historical witness, affords the highest and most certain 
 evidence for the fact and for the contents of the 
 Christian revelation. They who deny the sufiiciency 
 of this human and historical evidence ruin the basi^ 
 
125 
 
 of Christianity; they who, under the pretensions of 
 historical criticism, deny the witness of the Catholic 
 Church to be the maximum of evidence, even in a 
 historical sense, likewise ruin the foundation of moral 
 certainty in respect to Christianity altogether. If 
 the historical evidence of the Catholic Church 
 for the stability of the faith in the See and the 
 Successor of Peter be not sufficient to prove, as a 
 fact of history, that the Chi'istian Church has so held 
 and taught, history is altogether a poor and slender 
 foundation for the events and actions of the past. 
 The pretentious historical criticism of these days has 
 prevailed, and will prevail, to undermine the peace and 
 the confidence, and even the faith of some. But the 
 ' City seated on a hill ' is still there, high and out of 
 reach. It cannot be hid, and is its own evidence, 
 anterior to its history and independent of it. Its 
 history is to be learned of itself. 
 
 The Catholic Church is not only a human and 
 historical witness of its own origin, constitution, and 
 authority; it is also a supernatural and divine wit- 
 ness, which can neither fail nor err. In the natural 
 order of human evidence, it is a sufficient motive to 
 convince a prudent man that Christianity is a divine 
 revelation. This motive of credibility is sufficient for 
 the act of faith in the Church as a divine witness. In 
 the supernatural order, the Church is thereby known 
 to be divine in its foundation, constitution, and endow- 
 ments. The same evidence which proves Christ- 
 ianity to be a divine revelation proves the Catholic 
 Church to be a part of the faith of Christianity, and 
 to be likewise the incorporation and channel of truth 
 
J2fi 
 
 and grace to the world. The same evidence which 
 proves the Catholic Church to be divinely founded, 
 proves it also to be infallible; and the same evidence 
 which proves the Church to be infallible proves the 
 infalHbility of the See and Successor of Peter. I have 
 already said that the evidence for the infallibility 
 of the See and Successor of Peter exceeds in explicit- 
 ness and extent the evidence for the infallibility 
 of the Church, without reference to its Head and 
 centre. But this cumulus of evidence proves that 
 the Church and its Head are the visible and audible 
 witness, sustained and guided by a divine assistance 
 in declaring the revelation of Jesus Christ to the 
 world. It is not, therefore, by criticism on past 
 history, but by acts of faith in the living voice of the 
 Church at this hour, that we can know the faith. 
 It is not by the fallible criticism of the human mind 
 on the dubious, or, if so be, even the authentic 
 writings of uninspired men, but by faith in the 
 divine order of the Christian world, that God wills us 
 to learn the doctrines of revelation. Unless historical 
 criticism lead us into the presence of a Divine Witness, 
 and deliver us over to His teaching, our highest cer- 
 tainties are but human. No historical certainty can 
 be called Science, except only by coui'tesy. Even 
 Theology, which may be resolved into principles of 
 absolute certainty by way of faith, is not properly a 
 science.* It is time that the pretensions of ' historical 
 science,' and ' scientific historians,' be reduced to their 
 proper sphere and limits. And this the Council will 
 
 * Greg. ' De Valent. torn. i. disp. i. q. 1, p. 3, pag. 22. Ingold. 
 1592. 
 
127 
 
 do, not by contention or anathema, but by the words, 
 ' it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us.' 
 
 The other certain result of the Council will be, to 
 make more than ever manifest to the civil powers of 
 the Christian world the inevitable future they are 
 now preparing for themselves. 
 
 A member of the Corps Legislatif in France, two 
 years ago, announced that, in the Bull of Indiction of 
 the Council, the Holy Father, by omitting to invite 
 the civil governments to take part in it, had pro- 
 claimed the separation of Church and State. 
 
 A moment's thought will be enough to explain why 
 no civil government was invited to attend. What 
 government, at this day, professes to be Catholic ? 
 How should any government which does not even 
 claim to be Catholic be invited? What country in 
 Europe, at this day, recognises the unity and authority 
 of the Catholic Church as a part of its public laws? 
 What country has not, by royal edicts, or legislative 
 enactments, or revolutionary changes, abolished the 
 legal status of the Catholic Church within its terri- 
 tory? On what plea, then, could they be invited? As 
 governments or nations, they have, by their own act, 
 withdrawn themselves from the unity of the Church. 
 As moral or legal persons, they are Catholic no longer. 
 The faithful, indeed, among their subjects will be 
 represented in the Council by their pastors ; and their 
 pastors are not only invited, but obliged to be pre- 
 sent. If any separation has taken place, it is because 
 the civil powers have separated themselves from the 
 Church. They have created the fact, the Holy See 
 has only recognised it. The gravity of the fact is not 
 
128 
 
 to be denied. It is strange that, with the immuta- 
 bility of the Church, and the ' progress,' as it is 
 vaunted, of society before their eyes, men should 
 charge upon the Church the responsibility of breaking 
 its I'elations with society. The Church at one and 
 the same time is accused of immobility and of change. 
 It is not the Church which has departed from unity, 
 science, liberty ; but society which has departed from 
 Christianity and from faith. It is said : ' If Christian 
 unity be destroyed, if science have separated from 
 faith, if liberty choose to reign without religion, a 
 terrible share of the responsibility for these evils rests 
 upon the men who have represented in the Christian 
 world unity, faith, and religion.' Does this mean, upon 
 the Episcopate, Councils, and Pontiffs ? Who, if not 
 these, ' have represented in the Christian world unity, 
 faith, and religion ' ? Have they, then, misrepresented 
 these things to the world? If so, who shall represent 
 them? and where, then, is the Divine office of the 
 Church ? The Pontiffs have been for generations lift- 
 ing up their voice in vain to warn the governments of 
 Christendom of the peril of breaking the bonds which 
 unite civil society to the faith and to the Church. 
 They have maintained inflexibly, and at great suffer- 
 ing and danger, their own temporal dominion, not 
 only for the spiritual independence of the Church, 
 but for the consecration of civil society. But the 
 governments of the Christian world would not listen ; 
 and now a General Council meets, and the place where, 
 as at theLateran,at Florence, and at Trent, they would 
 have sat, is empty. The tendency of civil society 
 everywhere is to depart further and further from the 
 
129 
 
 Church. Progress in these days means to advance 
 along the line of departure from the old Christian order 
 of the world. The civil society of Christendom is the 
 oflfspring of the Christian family, and the foundation 
 of the Cliristian family is the sacrament of matrimony. 
 Fi'om this spring domestic and public morals. Most 
 governments of Europe have ceased to recognise in 
 marriage anything beyond the civil contract, and, by 
 legalising divorce, have broken up the perpetuity of 
 even that natural contract. With this will surely perish 
 the morality of society and of homes. A settlement in 
 the foundations may be slow in sinking, but it brings 
 all down at last. The civil and political society of 
 Europe is steadily returning to the mere natural order. 
 The next step in de-Christianising the political life of 
 nations is to establish national education without 
 Christianity. This is systematically aimed at where- 
 soever the Kevolution has its way. This may, before 
 long, be attempted among ourselves. It is already in 
 operation elsewhere. The Church must then form 
 its own schools; and the civil power will first refuse 
 its aid, and soon its permission, that parents should 
 educate their offspring except in State universities 
 and State schools. The period and policy of Julian 
 is returning. AU this bodes Ul for the Church; but 
 worse for the State. The depression of the moral 
 order of right and truth is the elevation of the mate- 
 rial order of coercion and of force. The civil powers 
 of the world do not choose this course; they only 
 advance in it. There is behind them a power invis- 
 ible, which urges them onward in their estrangements 
 from the Church ; and that unseen power is at work 
 
 I 
 
130 
 
 everywhere. It is one, universal, invisible, but not 
 holy; the true natural and implacable enemy of the 
 One, Visible, Universal Church. The anti-Christian 
 societies are one in aim and operation, even if they be 
 not one in conscious alliance. And the governments 
 of the world, some consciously, others unconsciously, 
 disbelieving the existence of such societies, and there- 
 fore all the more surely under their influence, are 
 being impelled towards a precipice over which 
 monarchies and law and the civil order of the 
 Christian society of men will go together. It is the 
 policy of the secret societies to engage governments 
 in quarrels with Rome. The breach is made, and the 
 Revolution enters. The Catholic society of Europe 
 has been weakened, and wounded, it may be, unto 
 death. The Catholic Church now stands alone, as in 
 the beginning, in its divine isolation and power. 
 'Et nunc, reges, intelligite; erudimini, qui judicatis 
 terram.' There is an abyss before you, into which 
 thrones and laws and rights and liberties may sink 
 together. You have to choose between the Revolution 
 and the Church of God. As you choose, so will your 
 lot be. The General Council gives to the world one 
 more witness for the truths, laws, and sanctities 
 which include all that is pure, noble, just, venerable 
 upon earth. It will be an evil day for any State in 
 Europe if it engage in conflict with the Church of 
 God. No weapon formed against it ever yet has 
 prospered. The governments of Europe have 
 been for the last year agitated and uncertain; the 
 attitude of France is wise and deliberate, worthy 
 of "a great people with the traditions of Catholic 
 
131 
 
 history at its back. The attitude of otlier great 
 powers is also hitherto dignified and serious, pro- 
 portionate to great responsibilities. Lesser poten- 
 tates and their counsellors may circulate notes and 
 resolve questions, and furnish matter for newspapers ; 
 but they are not the men to move Mountains. 
 
 Whilst I was writing these lines a document has 
 appeared purporting to be the answers of the Theo- 
 logical Faculty of Munich to the questions of the 
 Bavarian Government.* 
 
 The questions a,nd the answers are so evidently 
 concerted, if not written by the same hand, and the 
 animus of the document so evidently hostile to the 
 Holy See, and so visibly intended to create embar- 
 rassments for the supreme authority of the Church, 
 both in respect to its past acts and also in respect to 
 the future action of the (Ecumenical Council, that I 
 cannot pass it over. But in speaking of it I am 
 compelled, for the first time, to break silence on a 
 danger which has for some years been growing in its 
 proportions, and, I fear I must add, in its attitude of 
 menace. The answers of the University of Munich 
 are visibly intended to excite fear and alarm in the 
 civil powers of Europe, and thereby to obstruct the 
 action of the CEcumenical Council if it should judge 
 it to be opportune to define the Infallibility of the 
 Pope. The answers are also intended to create an 
 impression that the theological proofs of the doctrine 
 are inadequate, and its definition , beset with uncer- 
 tainty and obscurity. In a word, the whole corre- 
 spondence is a transparent efibrt to obstruct the free- 
 • Times, Sept. 20, 1869. 
 I 2 
 
132 
 
 dom of the (Ecumenical Council on the subject of the 
 infallibility of the Pontiff; or, if that doctrine be 
 defined, to instigate the civil governments to assume 
 a hostile attitude towards the Holy See. And this 
 comes in the name of liberty, and from those who 
 tell us that the Council will not be free ! 
 
 I shall take the liberty, without further words, 
 of dismissing the Bavarian Government from our 
 thoughts. But I must declare, with much regret, 
 that this Munich document appears to me to be 
 seditious. 
 
 Facts like these give a certain warrant to the asser- 
 tions and prophecies of politicians and Protestants. 
 They prove that in the Catholic Church there is a 
 school at variance with the doctrinal teaching of the 
 Holy See in matters which are not of faith. But 
 they do not reveal how small that school is. Its 
 centre would seem to be at Munich; it has, both in 
 France and in England, a small number of adherents. 
 They are active, they correspond, and, for the most 
 part, wi'ite anonymously. It would be difficult to 
 describe its tenets, for none of its followers seem 
 to be agreed in all points. Some hold the infal- 
 libility of the Pope, and some defend the Tem- 
 poral Power. Nothing appears to be common to all, 
 except an animus of opposition to the acts of the 
 Holy See in matters outside the faith. 
 
 In this country, about a year ago, an attempt was 
 made to render impossible, as it was confidently but 
 vainly thought, the definition of the infallibility of the 
 Pontiff by reviving the monotonous controversy about 
 Pope Honorius. Later we were told of I know not 
 
133 
 
 what combination of exalted personages in France for 
 the same end. It is certain that these symptoms are 
 not sporadic and disconnected, but in mutual under- 
 standing and with a common purpose. The anti- 
 Catholic press has eagerly encouraged this school of 
 thought. If a Catholic can be found out of tune 
 with authority by half a note, he is at once extolled 
 for unequalled learning and irrefragable logic. The 
 anti-Catholic journals are at his service, and he vents 
 his opposition to the common opinions of the Church 
 by writing against them anonymously. Sad as this 
 is, it is not formidable. It has effect almost alone 
 upon those who are not Catholic. Upon Catholics 
 its effect is hardly appreciable ; on the Theological 
 Schools of the Church it will have little influence ; 
 upon the Ecumenical Council it can have none. 
 
 I can hardly persuade myself to believe that the 
 University of Munich does not know that the rela- 
 tions between the Pope, even supposed to be infal- 
 lible, and the civil powers have been long since pre- 
 cisely defined in the same acts which defined the 
 relations between the Church, known to be infallible, 
 and the civil authority. Twelve Synods or Councils, 
 two of them (Ecumenical, have long ago laid down 
 these relations of the spiritual and civil powers.* If 
 the Pope were declared to be infallible to-morrow, it 
 would in no way affect those relations. 
 
 We may be sure, reverend and dear brethren, that 
 this intellectual disaffection, of which, in these last days, 
 we have had in France a new and mournful example, 
 will have no influence upon either the (Ecumenical 
 
 * Bellarm. Opuscula. Adv. Barclaium, p. 845, ed. Col. 1617. 
 
134 
 
 Council, or the policy of the Great Powers of Europe. 
 They will not meddle with speculations of theological 
 or historical critics. They know too well that they 
 cannot do in the nineteenth century what was done 
 in the sixteenth and the seventeenth. 
 
 The attempt to put a pressure upon the General 
 Council, if it have any effect upon those who are 
 subject to certain Governments, would have no effect 
 but to rouse a just indignation in the Episcopate of 
 the Church throughout the world. They hold their 
 jurisdiction from a higher fountain ; and they recog- 
 nise no superior in their office of Judges of Doctrine 
 save only the Vicar of Jesus Christ. This preliniinary 
 meddUng has already awakened a sense of profound 
 responsibility and an inflexible resolution to allow 
 no pressure, or influence, or menace, or intrigue to 
 cast so much as a shadow across their fidelity to the 
 Divine Head of the Church and to His Vicar upon 
 earth. 
 
 Moreover, we live in days when the ' Regium Placi- 
 tum' and 'Exequaturs' and 'Arrets' of Parliament in 
 spiritual things are simply dead. It may have been 
 possible to hinder the promulgation of the Council 
 of Trent : it is impossible to hinder the promul- 
 gation of the Council of the Vatican. The very 
 liberty of which men are proud will publish it. 
 Ten thousand presses in all lands will promulgate 
 every act of the Church and of the Pontiff, in 
 the face of all civil powers. Once published, these 
 acts enter the domain of faith and conscience, and 
 no human legislation, no civil authority, can efface 
 them. The two hundred millions of Catholics will 
 
135 
 
 know the decrees of the Vatican Council; and to 
 know them is to obey. The Council wiU ask no 
 civil enforcement, and it wiU need no civil aid. The 
 Great Powers of Ettrope have long declared that 
 the conscience of men is free from civil constraint. 
 They will not stultify their own declarations by 
 attempting to restrain the acts of the Vatican Coun- 
 cil. The guardians and defenders of the principles 
 of 1789 ought to rise as one man against aU who 
 should so violate the base of the political society 
 in France. What attitude lesser Governments may 
 take is of lesser moment. 
 
 May He in whose hands are the destinies of king- 
 doms and of nations guide the rulers of Christendom 
 by a spirit of wisdom and justice at this crisis of their 
 trial. This CouncU wiU assuredly be ' in ruinam et 
 in resurrectionem multorum.' If Christian nations 
 be desolated, then will come the alternatives of anti- 
 Christian socialism, or the Catholic order of the 
 world, purified in the fire and reunited to the centre 
 of stabihty and justice, from which it is now departing. 
 Those who desire such a future are busy in scatteriag 
 fears, mistrusts, and falsehoods as to the acts of the 
 Council, and even of the intentions of the Sovereign 
 Pontiff. These ignoble tactics have been rebuked with 
 a calm and dignified severity by the bishops of Ger- 
 many, whose words I had rather use than my own : 
 ' Never will the Ecumenical Cotmcil declare a new 
 doctrine which is not contained in the Scriptures, or 
 the Apostolic traditions. When the Church makes a 
 decree in matter of faith, it does not proclaim a new 
 dogma; it only sets in a clearer light an ancient and 
 
136 
 
 primordial truth, and defends it against new errors.' 
 ' In a word, the CEcumenical Council will declare no 
 new principle, nor any other than that which is already- 
 graven on your hearts by your faith and conscience ; 
 or than those which have been held sacred for ages 
 by Christian peoples, on which repose, and have 
 ever reposed, the welfare of States, the authority of 
 magistrates, the liberty of nations, and which are at 
 the same time the foundations of true science and 
 true civilisation.' * 
 
 There is one thing against which it is our duty to 
 be on our guard ; I mean a fearful and timid anxiety 
 as to the results of the Council and as to the future of 
 the Church. It is the illusion of some minds to imagine 
 that the Church was strong once, but is weak now; 
 that the days of its supremacy are over, and that now 
 it is in decline. The reverse is the fact. There was 
 never a time since the Apostles descended from the 
 guest-chamber to traverse the world, when the 
 universality of the Church was so manifest, and its 
 divine jurisdiction so widespread. There was never a 
 moment when the unity of the Church both within 
 and without, that is the unity of the faithful with 
 their pastors, and of the pastors Avith their Head, 
 the unanimity of pastors and flocks in faith and 
 in charity, was so solid and invincible. From the 
 mystery of the Holy Trinity to the dogma of the Im- 
 maculate Conception, there is not a doctrine of faith 
 on which Catholics in all the world differ by a shade. 
 Peter's faith has not failed, and the Church rests 
 on Peter's faith. We may be upon the eve of 
 * Address of the Bishops at Fulda, Sept. 6, 1869. 
 
137 
 
 a great conflict, but the conflict is the forerunner 
 of a greater manifestation of the Kingdom of God 
 on earth. The eyes of men are looking one 
 way, as they that look for the morning. They are 
 hungering after rest, certainty, and truth. They 
 have sought it up and down, and have not found it. 
 The broken cisterns will hold no water ; and the dim 
 tradition of a fountain far off and yet at hand, closed 
 to the world but ever open to all who will, is 
 rising again upon their memory. The nations of the 
 Christian world have been deceived, and turned 
 against the Mother that bare them. But the unrest, 
 and the unsatisfied craving of the heart and of the 
 reason, is drawing them once more toward the only 
 Church. All countries, above all our own, are con- 
 scious, in their political, religious, and intellectual life, 
 of desires they cannot satisfy, and needs they can- 
 not meet. ' As he that is hungry dreameth and 
 eateth, but when he is awake his soul is empty : and 
 as he that is thirsty dreameth and drinketh, and after 
 he is awake is yet faint with thirst and his soul is 
 empty; so shall be the multitude of all the nations 
 that have fought against Mount Sion.' * It is the 
 conflict with the Church of God that has wasted and 
 withered'the spiritual and intellectual life of Europe. 
 England, with all its faults, is very dear to us. It has 
 still a zeal for God; and the face of our land is yet 
 beautiful with the memories of our Saints and Mar- 
 tyrs. The Council has moved it with strange and 
 kindly aspirations. England hopes for some clearing 
 in the dark sky which for the last three hundred years 
 
 * Isaias xxix. 8. 
 
138 
 
 has lowered upon it ; for some light upon the horizon ; 
 some change which wiU open to it once more the 
 unity of Christendom and the rest of immutable 
 faith. You will labour and pray that this visita- 
 tion of the Spirit of God, now sensibly breathing 
 over England, and over all the Christian world, may 
 open the hearts of men, and prepare them for His 
 voice, which, through this Council, is calling them 
 home to the Mother of us all, the only fountain of 
 grace and truth. 
 
 I remain, reverend and dear Brethren, 
 
 Your affectionate Servant in Christ, 
 
 ^ HENRY EDWARD, 
 
 Archbishop of Westminster. 
 
 ROSABY SuiTOAT, 1869. 
 
139 
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 When the foregoing Pastoral was already pi-inted, 
 I received from Paris Mgr. Maret's volumes, 'Du 
 Concile General et de la Paix Eeligieuse.' I am 
 sorry that I did not see them in time to weigh certain 
 points raised in them before publishing what I have 
 here written. 
 
 The Bishop has, however, re-stated so clearly the 
 opinion he maintains, in the preface to his work, 
 that I am at no loss to compare it precisely with 
 the doctrine maintained in this Pastoral. 
 
 In making that comparison, I trust I shall use 
 no word at variance with the fraternal charity and 
 respect due from me to Mgr. Maret, both in person 
 and as a brother. 
 
 He says of his own opinion, which shall be stated 
 in his own words,* ' As truth cannot be contrary to 
 itself, this doctrine is easily reconcilable with the 
 doctrines which are the most moderate of the School 
 which bears the name of Ultramontane. What 
 Divine right, what certain right of the Sovereign 
 Pontificate is there, which is not enunciated and 
 defended in our book? The Pontifical infallibility 
 itself is not therein denied, but brought back to its 
 true nature. We acknowledge and prove that the 
 Pope, by his right to consult or to convoke the 
 
 * Du Concile General et de la Paix Eeligieuse. Preface, xxvi. vii. 
 
140 
 
 episcopal body, by the possibility in whicli he is of 
 acting always in concert with it, possesses in virtue 
 of the Divine order the assured means to give infal- 
 libility to his dogmatic judgments.' 
 From this I gather : — 
 
 1. That the Pontiff possesses a means of giving 
 infallibility to his judgments. 
 
 2. That this means is the right of consulting the 
 episcopal body. 
 
 From this it would seem to follow — 
 
 1. That, apart from the episcopal body, the Pontiff 
 is not infallible. 
 
 2. That consultation with the episcopal body is 
 a necessary condition of giving infallibility to his 
 judgments. 
 
 3. That the Pontiff gives infallibility to his judg- 
 ments by receiving it from the episcopal body, or 
 by his union with it. 
 
 If I understand this statement, it denies the infal- 
 libility of the Pontiff altogether ; for it affirms it only 
 when the Pontiff has given to his judgment what he 
 has received from the episcopal body, or what he 
 cannot have without it. 
 
 In this process the words of our Lord seem to be 
 inverted. It is his brethren who confirm him, not 
 he who confirms his brethren. 
 
 The endowment of infallibility residing in the 
 body flows to the Head when in consultation with 
 the Episcopate. It is infiuxus corporis in Caput, not 
 Capitis in corpus. 
 
 The doctrine I have maintained in these pages is 
 as follows : — 
 
141 
 
 1. That the endowment of stability or infallibility 
 in Faith was given to Peter, and from him, accorduig 
 to our Lord's words, confirma fratres tuos, was de- 
 rived to his brethren. 
 
 2. That this endowment, which is again and again 
 called by the Fathers and Councils the ' Privilegium 
 Petri,' or the ' Prterogativa Sedis Petri,' was given 
 in him to his Successors. 
 
 3. That the Successor of Peter still ' confirms his 
 brethren ' by the possession and exercise of a divine 
 right and endowment, not only of consulting them 
 or of convoking them, but of witnessing, teaching, 
 and judging by a special divine assistance which 
 preserves him, as Universal Teacher in faith and 
 morals, from error. 
 
 The office of Peter was not to be confirmed by, but 
 to confirm, his brethren ; the same is the office of his 
 Successor, even when apart from convocation or 
 consultation with the Episcopate as a body, whether 
 congregated or dispersed. 
 
 In the testimonies I have quoted it is evident 
 that, in virtue of a divine assistance, the dogmatic 
 judgments of the Pontifi" ex cathedrd do not receive 
 from the episcopal body, but give to the Universal 
 Church, an infallible declaration of truth. 
 
 I must ask you to review the evidence I have 
 given, in all of which the promise of our Lord, ' I 
 have prayed for thee,' &c., is either expressed or 
 understood; and Peter's privilege of stability in faith 
 is ascribed to his Successor as the inheritance of his 
 See. 
 
 Mgr. Maret proceeds to ask, ' Do we contend against 
 
142 
 
 the authority of judgments ex cathedrd when we 
 affirm, with the great masters in theology, that there 
 are certainly judgments of that kind only when the 
 Pope employs the most certain means which God 
 gives him to avoid error ; that is to say, the concur- 
 rence of the bishops ? ' 
 
 If I understand these words, they mean : — 
 
 1. That no judgments are certainly ex cathedrd 
 except when the Pontiff acts with the concurrence 
 of the bishops. 
 
 2. That the Pontiff is bound to employ the means 
 which is the most certain to avoid error ; namely, the 
 concurrence of the bishops. 
 
 The doctrine maintained by me, under the guidance 
 of every great master of theology of all Schools, 
 Dominican, Franciscan, Jesuit, so far as I know, 
 excepting only theologians of the GaUican school,* 
 is, that judgments ex cathedra are, in their essence, 
 judgments of the Pontiff, apart from the episcopal 
 body, whether congregated or dispersed. This con- 
 currence of the episcopal body may or may not be 
 united to the act of the Pontiff, which is perfect 
 and complete in itself. It is to the Cathedra Petri, 
 apart from the Episcopate, that the faithful and 
 pastors of all the world throughout Christian history 
 have had recourse. For instance, the condemnation 
 of Pelagianism by Innocent the First, and of Jansenius 
 
 * Of this I think sufficient proof was given in the Pastoral of 
 1867. But I may refer to Aguirre, Defensio Cathedrce Petri ; Gon- 
 zalez, De Infallib. Eom. Pontificis ; Schrader, De.Unitate Eomana; 
 Theoph. Eaynaud, AvTog t^a ; who expressly prove this point by 
 ample quotations. The words of Peter de ]\Iarca, p. IOC supra, are 
 alone enough. 
 
143 
 
 by Innocent the Tenth, were appeals to the Cathedra 
 Petri, and judgments ex cathedrct,, to which the con- 
 sultation of the African or of the French bishops 
 respectively contributed no influx of infallibility. 
 And those two judgments were regarded as infallible, 
 from the moment of their promulgation, by the whole 
 Church. 
 
 If there be no certain judgments ex cathedrd apart 
 from the episcopal body, what are the judgments 
 of Alexander VIII., Innocent XI., and Pius YI. ? 
 
 What are the condemnations in the ' Theses Dam- 
 natge ? ' The episcopal body was not united with the 
 Pontiff in their publication. When did it become so? 
 TiU this concurrence was verified, these Pontifical 
 Acts, according to Mgr. Maret's opinion, were not ex 
 catJiedrd, and therefore were not certainly infallible. 
 How long were they in this tentative state of sus- 
 pended or conditional infallibility? Who has ever 
 discerned and declared the epoch and the crisis after 
 which they became judgments ex caihedrd,! Silence 
 is not enough. Even strong terms of adhesion are 
 not enough. The bishops of France received the 
 condemnation of Jansenius by Innocent X. as infal- 
 lible in 1653, but in 1682 published the Four Articles. 
 
 All this, if I I'ightly understand it, seems to present 
 an inverted theory, at variance with the tradition, 
 praxis, faith, and theology of the Church. 
 
 But further, if the Pontiffs are bound to employ 
 ' the most certain means ' to avoid error — namely, 
 the concurrence of the episcopal body — they must 
 either convoke a General Council or interrogate 
 numericaUy the Episcopate throughout the world. Is 
 
144 
 
 this an obligation of the divine order? If so, where 
 is it to be read ? In Scripture it cannot be looked 
 for. In tradition it is not to be found. In history 
 we have the direct reverse. We find the Pontiffs 
 witnessing, teaching, deciding by the authority of 
 Peter. We find the Episcopate appealing to their 
 judgments as final. We find the faith of Peter, 
 taken not only by the faithful, but also by the 
 bishops, as the rule of faith, and the text of what 
 is to be believed by all the world. 
 
 If the concurrence of the Episcopate with its Head 
 be ' the most certain means ' of avoiding error, because 
 it is the full, ultimate, and, so to speak, exhaustive 
 act of infallible judgment, nevertheless the privilege 
 of stability in faith divinely granted to the See and 
 Successor of Peter is a certain means of avoiding 
 error ; and that certainty, though extensive it be not 
 adequate to the certainty of the whole Church, which 
 included always the See and Successor of Peter, 
 is nevertheless intrinsically and by divine ordination 
 certain, to the exclusion of the possibility of error. 
 
 Why, then, is the Pontifi" bound to take ' the most 
 certain means,' when a means divinely certain also 
 exists? And why is he bound to take a means 
 which demands an (Ecumenical Council or a world- 
 wide and protracted interrogation, with all the delays 
 and uncertainties of cori-espondence, when, by the 
 divine order, a certain means in the Apostolic See 
 is always at hand? For instance, was Innocent X. 
 bound to consult the whole episcopal body before he 
 condemned Jansenius? or Alexander VIII., when he 
 condemned the ' Peccatum Philosophicum ' ? or Sixtus 
 
145 
 
 IV., when he condemned as heretical the proposition 
 that ' the Church of the City of Kome may err ' ? 
 
 It would seem to me that if any such obligation 
 exists, or if declarations ex cathedrd are only certain 
 when the episcopal body has been consulted, then the 
 action of the Pontiffs, from Innocent I. to Pius IX., 
 has been out of course; and their doctrinal judgments 
 fallible always, except when the Episcopate concurred 
 in them ; and for that reason almost always uncertain, 
 because, except in a few cases, we cannot be certain, 
 by explicit proof, whether the episcopal body has 
 concurred in those judgments or no. 
 
 I know of no Ultramontane opinion with which this 
 theory can be reconciled. The Ultramontane opinion 
 is simply this, that the Pontiff speaking ex cathedrd, 
 in faith or morals, is infallible. In this there are no 
 shades or moderations. It is simply aye or no. But 
 the opinion we have been examining affirms the Pontiff 
 to be infalhble, only when the episcopal body concurs 
 in his judgments. But if the episcopal body have 
 not pronounced or even examined the subject-matter, 
 as, for instance, in the question of the 'Peccatum Philo- 
 sophicum,' or in the Jansenistic propositions, or in 
 the questions ' De Auxilus ; ' I would ask, are then the 
 judgments of the Pontiff either not ex cathedrd, or if 
 ex cathedrd, are they not infallible? But if they are 
 not infallible they may be erroneous, and if the Pontiff 
 in such judgments may err once, he might err always, 
 and therefore cannot ever be infallible. I see no means 
 of reconciling this opinion with that of any Ultramon- 
 tanes, however moderate. They are frontibus adversis 
 pugnantia. With all my heart, I desire to find a mode 
 
 K 
 
146 
 
 of conciliation : not a via media^ which is the essential 
 method of falsehood, but any intellectual analysis 
 and precise mental conception which might satisfy 
 the mind of Mgr. Maret as to the infallibility of the 
 See and of the Successor of Peter. I cannot but 
 add in passing that much confusion seems to me to 
 arise from this whole notion of * moderate opinions.'' 
 
 The Pontifical j udgments ex cathedra must be either 
 fallible or infallible. If it be immoderate or exagge- 
 rated to affirm them to be infallible, how is it not 
 equally immoderate or exaggerated to deny their 
 infallibility? Either way the affirmation and the 
 denial are equally absolute, trenchant, and peremp- 
 tory. I see just as much, and just as little, moderation 
 in the one as in the other. Either both are moderate 
 or neither. And yet those who affirm the Pontifical 
 infallibility are held up as warnings, and they who 
 deny it as examples ; the latter as patterns of mode- 
 ration, the former as exaggerated and extreme. But 
 they are both in extremes. Aye and no are equally 
 exclusive, and admit of no degrees. 
 
 Is it not the truth that moderation is a quality, not 
 of the intellect but of the moral nature ? .Certainty 
 admits of no degrees. Doubt may; but certainty 
 excludes doubt and all its gradations. To be mode- 
 rate, cautious, forbearing, self-mistrusting, and con- 
 siderate of opponents in all doubtful matters, is a 
 virtue ; but in matters that are certain, to fail in saying 
 that they are so, is to betray the truth. To treat 
 certainties as uncertainties in mathematics is not 
 intellectual, in revelation is unbelief. The only 
 moderation possible m matters of theological certainty 
 
147 
 
 is to speak the truth in charity, aXTjQsus*!/ su uyuirr • to 
 diminish the precision of truths which are certain, or 
 to suffer them to be treated as dubious, or to veil them 
 by economies, or to modify them to meet the preju- 
 dices of men or the traditions of public opinion, is 
 not moderation, but an infidelity to truth, and an 
 immoderate fear, or an immoderate respect for some 
 human authority. 
 
 Mgr. Maret further declares: 'We do not combat 
 the Pontifical authority, except so far as it is identified 
 with the system of the pure, indivisible, and absolute 
 monarchy of the Eoman Pontiff, and so far as his 
 absolute monarchy and his personal infallibility are 
 made one exclusive whole.' 
 
 Once more I am afraid of doing injustice to the 
 Bishop of Sura. If I understand the doctrine which 
 I suppose I must now call Ultramontane, but would 
 rather call, as all the schools of Christendom do. 
 Catholic, it is this — that the supreme and ultimate 
 power, both in jurisdiction and in faith, or the clavis 
 jurisdictionis and the clavis scientice, was committed 
 first and for ever to Peter, and in him, as the Council 
 of Florence says, to his Successors. The Episcopate 
 succeeding to the Apostolate received, servatd pro- 
 portione, a participation of the pastoral care and of 
 the endowments of the Church. "What Peter was 
 to the Apostles, the Pontiffs are to the bishops. 
 What they have in part, he has in plenitude. I am 
 unable to see that the primacy and infallibility of 
 Peter in any way lessened or detracted from the 
 authority and endowments of the Apostles; nor does 
 it appear how the authority and endowment of his 
 
148 
 
 Successor shall lessen or detract from those of the 
 Episcopate. Bishops are not less authoritative be- 
 cause their Head is more so. Bishops are not less 
 judges of doctrine in an (Ecumenical Council because 
 their Head, in the intervals between Council and 
 Council, is, by Divine assistance, guided and sustained 
 so that he shall not err in interpreting the faith and 
 expounding the law of God. It is in behalf of the 
 whole Church, pastors and people, that the Spirit of 
 God preserves from error the Head, on whom all so 
 depend, that an error in his guidance would mislead 
 the whole flock, or break the Divine unity of the 
 Church, or undermine the witness and the magisterium 
 of the universal Church. Bishops are not elevated 
 by the depression of their' chief. The least bishop in 
 the world feels himself elevated and strengthened by 
 the belief that the words ' Ego rogavi pro te ' were 
 spoken to his Chief and Head, and that, in union with 
 him, and through him, he is confirmed in the infal- 
 lible faith of Peter. I know of no monarchy pure 
 and absolute beyond this. 
 
 To sum up the comparison of these two opinions. 
 The opinion of Mgr. Maret would seem to place the 
 infallibility of the Church in the whole body as its 
 proper residence, and by result in its Head. 
 
 The doctrine here maintained is that infallibility 
 was communicated by the Divine Head of the Church 
 to Peter as His visible representative and Vicar upon 
 earth, and through him to his Successors and to the 
 Church for ever. 
 
 In virtue of this order the Church is always infal- 
 lible, both actively in teaching and passively in 
 believing. 
 
149 
 
 In its active infallibility it is secured from error, 
 whether dispersed, as it is always, throughout the 
 world, or congregated, as it rarely is, in Council. 
 Only eighteen times in eighteen hundred years has it 
 met in Council; but through all those eighteen cen- 
 turies its active infallibility has been, not intermittent 
 but continuous, both in its Episcopate with its Head, 
 and in its Head as Universal Pastor and Teacher, 
 both of pastors and flock. 
 
 The stability, indefectibUity, or infallibility of the 
 faith of Peter are three modes of expressing the 
 same Divine fact. 
 
 If this be monarchy pure, indivisible, and absolute, 
 then I fear I must come under the author's censure, 
 though I cannot admit its justice or understand its 
 terms. If Mgr. Maret does not intend to condemn this, 
 then, I think, I will even hope that his learned mind has 
 suffered some illusion, perhaps arising from a want of 
 precision in some who are opponents, and from a want 
 of chastened language in those who are about him. I 
 most sincerely and ardently share in his desire to 
 see all divergences corrected in the enunciation of 
 truth, pure,. clear, and lucid as the river of the water 
 of life. I have consciously no thought in my heart 
 but to promote this unity of mind and will ; and in 
 what 1 have written, if there be a word to wound 
 save where truth compels it, I hereby record my 
 desire to blot it out. 
 
 Stability signifies the immovable firmness of the 
 Faith in standing against all assaults of power and 
 force: indefectibility, the imperishable vitality and 
 light of faith, which can never fail : infallibility, 
 
150 
 
 the unerring discernment of truth in detecting and 
 destroying falsehood in the midst of the intellectual 
 aberrations of the Christian world. These three 
 endowments are various in their operations, but 
 identical in their nature and their source. It is 
 the perpetual Divine assistance, derived from the 
 perpetual presence of the Spirit of Truth in the 
 Church, which sustains the Faith of the See and 
 of the Successor of Peter, stable, indefectible, and 
 infallible ; that is, in one word, ' Yesterday and to-day 
 and the same for ever.' 
 
 I do not know how other minds may be affected 
 by the history of Christianity, in which, as I have 
 very briefly shown, the eyes of men and of nations 
 in all lands were always turned to the See and the 
 Successor of Peter as the centre and source of this 
 stable, indefectible, and infallible faith. To me this 
 manifests the ' Privilegium Petri ' with the evi- 
 dence of light. Two hundred and fifty-seven Pon- 
 tiffs in unbroken line have witnessed, taught, and 
 judged in causes of faith. Against three only do the 
 modern adversaries of the Pontifical infallibility bring 
 charge of hetei'odoxy. Two hundred and fifty-four 
 stand unchallenged in their immutable stabihty of 
 faith. Of those three, two, Liberius and Vigilius, are 
 not charged with heresy. Whatever be the fault of 
 Honorius, supineness or hesitation, heterodox he was 
 not; heretical he could not be, for his own letters 
 remain to prove the orthodoxy of his teaching. But 
 these three are all that the most relentless adversaries 
 of the ' Privilegium Petri ' have ever been able to ad- 
 duce. To my mind, these threads of mist upon the 
 
151 
 
 world-wide splendour of two hundred and fifty-seven 
 Successors of Peter, in no way aflfect the confidence 
 with which we say of them in S. Leo's words : 
 ' Sohditas enim Ula, quam de Petra Christo etiam 
 ipse Petra factus accepit, in suos quoque se transfudit 
 heeredes ; ' * and of his See in the words of prophecy : 
 ' Thronus ejus sicut sol in conspectu meo et sicut 
 luna perfecta in aBternum ; et testis in ccelo fidelis.'f 
 
 * Bellarm. De Summo Pontif. lib. iv. cc. viii. to xiv. In die 
 Assumpt. Serm. v. cap. 4. 
 f Psalm Ixxxviii. 
 

 !' P^>l 
 
 p?1r^ 
 
 ^- 
 
 
 'U. . « 
 
 
 f - 
 
 ^ 
 
 "" -^ . . 
 
 m 
 
 
 
 
 
 : > 
 
 !