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 HISTORY 
 
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 THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 KRC)M Tilt; KREN'CII OK 
 
 L F. BUNGENEH, 
 
 AnnoR OK "thi-: priksi' and tiik m'(H'EN.»T," ki-c. 
 
 KDITKD, FROM THE SRCOND LONDON FDITION, 
 
 WITH A SI MMAllV oF TIIK AC'IS ul' TIIK C^OUXCTL 
 
 BY JOHN M'rLI.NTOCK, U.D. 
 
 N E ^ Y 11 K : 
 HARPER & B R O T H K R S, P T 13 L I S H E R S. 
 
 (RANK I. IN SQUARE 
 
 1855. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thou- 
 sand eight Imndred and fifty-five, by 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office for the Southern District of New York. 
 
 U ^ 
 
 
C N T K A T ,S. 
 
 TAor. 
 
 Introdictios by tiik Amkuican KruToK xvii 
 
 Summary of tmk Decrees and Canons ok the Counciu . . . \xi\ 
 
 Translator's Preface . . xwviii 
 
 Author's ruEFACE xl 
 
 BOOK 1. 
 
 PRKLIMIN ARIES OK THE COINCIL: ITS ORGANIZATION 
 
 AND AUTHORITY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 (1520-1545.) 
 
 UNIVERSAL CRY FOR A COUNCIL: OPPOSITION OF THE POPES. THE COUNCIL 
 
 OF TRENT AT L.VST SUMMONED. 
 
 Inti*oduction — Fii*st wislies — i^nint Rorimrd and Lutlicr — Awakeninc — 
 Antipathies — Leo X. — Illusion — Twenty-four years to wait — Adrian 
 VI. — His theory of Indulgences — Projected reforms — Projected ex- 
 teniiinations — The Popedom in Germany — Admissions made by the 
 Pope — ^The hundred grievances — Clement VII. and the Diet of Nu- 
 remberg — Counter-diet — Charles V. and Francis I. — Tiattle of Pavia 
 — Two letters — The Colonna< — The Throne and the Tiara — The Con- 
 stable de IJourbon — The Sack of Rome — Hypocrisy — Reconciliation 
 — Interview at Bologna — The Augsburg Confession — Christ and Be- 
 lial — There is no fear of the heavens falling — The League of Smal- 
 kalde — The Turks — Geneva — Paul III. — Ten \-ear3 yet — ^The Sons 
 of the Pope — Negotiations — Difficulties — Mantua — Vicenza — Trent 
 — War breaks out again — Hostilities cease — The Council is about to 
 open — Retrospect 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 (1545.) 
 FIRST CONVOC.\TION : INTUIGLta, DIFFICULTIF-'S, AND DELAYS. 
 
 The arrival of the Legates — ^Thrce years' indulgence — Scruples — Four 
 himdred seat.-^ and no })ishops — Parturiunt monies — ^The imagination 
 of Father Hinor — Simple arithmetic — A notable admission — CEcu- 
 menical Councils — The Chureh'.s Representatives — .bTusalem and 
 Trent — I)i[)lomacy — Had the Protestants promined obedience — Every 
 epoch has its fixed idea — Luther's trepidation — The real object of 
 his wishes — \'iciou3 circle — Where was the doctrine of Infallibility 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 — Affairs of Cologne — Who was iu the wrong — Complications — By 
 what did the Council hold? — The Procurators — Infallibility by Del- 
 egation — Charles V. and heresy — The Pope's offers — The priest- 
 king — The Morals of the Popes — New Scandals — Of happy mem- 
 ory — Papal Infallibility — Certain questions — The Popedom at 
 Rome 20 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 (1545-46.) 
 THE COUNCIL AT LAST OPENED. SESSIONS L, IL, III. 
 
 The Bishops begin to be impatient — First Session, 13th December, 
 1545 — Formidable task — What Catholicism had been hitherto — 
 Bossuet and St. Augustine — Progress in Religion — Reasonable In- 
 consistencies and absurd Logic — A wise Decree — In whose name 
 was it to be published — Pope and Council — Prcesidentihus legatis — 
 Foxes — Second Session — Protests — Were appearances really saved 
 — People know not where to begin — Indecision and Alarm — "Day 
 of Battle! Glorious Day!" — Dangerous medley — What the weak- 
 minded may think — The Queen of the Virtues — Credo — Third Ses- 
 sion — ^An able General — The Italians at Trent — Their Oath — The 
 Consent of the Church 42 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 (1546.) 
 DEATH OF LUTHER. THE AUTHORITY OK THE COUNCIL. FICTITIOUS UNITY. 
 
 Luther dies — Shut, shut the Bible ! — Let us open it — The question of 
 Authority — Its bearing exaggerated — What is Authority in Religion 
 — What can it be — Dilemma — What, at bottom, is the Submission 
 of those who think — What is Authority without Force — God might 
 have, God ought to have — What know you of that — Three Objects — 
 To regulate the faith, to preserve the faith, to maintain unity — 
 Regulate the Faith — What that supposes and to what it leads — To 
 preserve the Faith — Have they succeeded — Variations — ^An eternal 
 Burthen — Unity — Does God intend it — Conclusion 61 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL FROM ITS THIRD SESSION 
 (1546) TO ITS REMOVAL FROM TRENT (1547). 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 (1546.) 
 
 SESSION IV. DECREES ON THE RULE OF FAITH, THE CANON AND USE OF 
 
 SCRIPTURE, AND THE VULGATE. 
 
 Homage to the Bible — What is Tradition — Limits to credibility — What 
 the Fathers thought of it; and the councils — What it had hitherto 
 been — Papal aberration — Of what is Holy Scripture composed — 
 Why had this still to be decided — The divines at the council — The 
 Apocrypha — Three opinions — Strange omnipotence — The Vulgate — 
 Its history down to the time of the council — ^The decree would admit 
 
CONTENTS. V 
 
 no delay — Results — The Vulgate as it stands — Whose province is 
 it to interpret Scripture — Demi-liberalism — Absolute bondage — The 
 god of Epicurus — Historical question — The Old Testament — The New 
 — The Fathers — The last of the Fathers — Saint Augustine and the 
 Bible Societies — A false quotation — Decree on the reading and the 
 interpretation of the Bible — Fate of this decree in the hands of the 
 popes — Deadly Pastures — Port-Royal — Liberty in Roman Catholic- 
 ism — Sophisms — Difficulties in drawing up the decree — The Anath- 
 emas — Historical aspect of the case — Hesitations in the council — 
 Decrees on the faith — Decrees on reformation — Alarms — Precautions 
 — Fourth Session — The pope's confirmation — What had been gained 
 — Perpetual compromise — External difficulties *77 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 (1546.) 
 SESSION V. DECREES ON ORIGfNAL SIN AND ON PREACHING. THE IMMACU- 
 LATE CONCEPTION. 
 
 Altercations about the choice of subjects — Preaching — The bishops and 
 the monks — Mutual recriminations — Indemnifications to the bishops 
 — General relaxation of morals to the advantage of the popes — Lu- 
 theran opinion — Question of original sin — Four problems — Infants 
 dying without baptism — The Roman catechism — All explanations 
 but by anathemas, abandoned — Reflections on this subject — Five 
 canons — The immaculate conception — Historical views — Fluctua- 
 tions — How the Roman dogmas establish themselves — Fii-th Session 
 — Disputed votings 114 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 (1546.) 
 SESSION VI. TROUBLES IN THE COUNCIL. EPISCOPAL RESIDENCE. DECREES 
 
 ON GRACE AND JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 The ambassadors — Peter Danes — Holy War — Jubilee — Miscalculations 
 — Alarms on the side of Trent — Projects for transferring the council 
 to another place — Victories of Charles V. — Fresh altercations on the 
 choice of subjects — Residence — Historical view — The legates severe 
 at the expense of the bishops, and the bishops severe at the expense 
 of the pope — Grace — Two extremes — AVhat is in truth the Romish 
 doctrine — Warm disputes — What we are to believe respecting grace 
 — Draft of the decree — Herculean task — Inconsistency and audacity 
 — Quarrel betwixt Soto and Catherini — No solution — Benefices — 
 Historical view — Pious donations — Origin of the quarrel about the 
 Divine right — Efforts to keep the pope out of it — Decree on residence 
 — Abuses without end — Samson's courage — Sixth Session — To be 
 still and adore 128 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 (1547.) 
 
 SESSION VII. CANONS AND DECREES ON THE SACRAMENTS. PLURALITIES. 
 
 GOVERNMENT OF CATHEDRALS. 
 
 Question of the Sacraments — The number seven — Historical and dog- 
 matical difficulties — Oddities — Omnia a {}^rts<o instituted — How this 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 •lecree was twisted — The sacrameuts — Their necessity — Inaccuracies 
 and sophisms — Intention necessary — Occasions or causes of grace — 
 Warm disputes — What does the Koman Church really teach? — The 
 intention of the priest — Objections — What is to be done? — Baptism 
 — Baptism of heretics — H0I3' Chrism — Confirmation — Historical view 
 — Anathemas — Whose province it is to confirm — Receiving the holy 
 Chrism — Gratuitously — Historical view- — Sad realities — Twenty- 
 ecven anathemas — Water of baptism — Human arrangements — Plu- 
 ralities — Historical view — Unions and commendams — The pope, 
 always the pope — The eleven articles of the Spanish prelates — 
 Reference to the pope — Replies — Scdva seiiiper — Results — Roman 
 immutability 150 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 (1547.) 
 SESSION VIII, TRAXSLATIOX OF THE COUNCIL TO BOLOGNA. 
 
 Projects of translation — The plague — Great hurry — Decree of transla- 
 tion — Eighth Session — Minority — Resistance — To obey in order to 
 be obeyed 181 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 FROM THE TRANSLATION OF THE COUNCIL TO BOLOGNA 
 (1547) TO THE SECOND SUSPENSION AT TRENT (1552.) 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 (1547-1549.) 
 
 KESSIONS IX. AND X. THE COUNCIL AT BOLOGNA AND THE RLTMP AT TUENT. 
 PROROGATIONS AND POLITICAL COMPLICATIONS. THE INTERIM. 
 
 Two councils instead of one — The pope says nothing — Ninth and Tenth 
 Sessions — All is brought to a halt — Victories of Charles V. — Paul IH. 
 allies himself with France — Old dotard — Protestation — What Rome 
 has read at all times in the hearts of her friends — Fresh protests — 
 New mask — Mutual affronts — Thunder and finesse — Fourteen months 
 already lost — ^The pope's death universally expected and desired — 
 The Interim — Criticisms — Resistances — Conferences resumed — Nun- 
 cios sent into Germany — Their powers — Checks and affronts . 187 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 (1549-1551.) 
 
 --.ESSIONS XL AND Xtl. DEATH OF PAUL III. COUNCIL RECONVENED BY JU- 
 LIUS III. QUARREL OF THE POPE WITH HENRY II. 
 
 T>oath of Paul HL — Glance at his life — The conclaves — Historical Re- 
 view — Tedious delays — Sad heroism — Factions — Combinations — Ju- 
 lius HL — All difficulties return — They seem to grow easy — Fresh 
 ones appear — The pope eludes them — Second convocation of the 
 council — The bull is keenly criticised — How interpreted by Charles 
 V. — The council opened anew with fifteen bishops — Eleventh Ses- 
 BiCN — Was it still-bom — Political occurrences — Rupture with France 
 
CONTENTS. Vn 
 
 — Gallicaii iticonsistenoies — How retleemed by Henry 1 1. — Mew ciuisos 
 of distrust — Will the Protestants come — John Huss — Twelfth Session 
 — Adjournments — Amyot — Parliamentary audacities .... 203 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 (lo5I.) 
 SESSION Xlir. DKCREES ON THE EUCII.\RIST. TR.\NSUB6TANTIATI0N AXU 
 
 EPISCOPAL JURISDICTION. 
 
 The communion under both kinds — State of the question in the six- 
 teenth century — Discussion — Authorities — Trent and Constance — 
 Drink ye all of it — Sophisms — True motives — A safe-conduct granted 
 — Transubstantiation — Production and adduction — Did Luther be- 
 lieve in transubstantiation? — Physical objections — ^Miracle xipon 
 miracle — Axioms — Is trans;ibstantiation a miracle like any other — 
 This is my body — Scriptural objections — Analysis of the narrative — 
 Historical objections — The Apostles and the New Testament — The 
 Fathers — The idea advances but slowly — Admissions — The Mass — 
 The priest — Indiscreet questions — Theory and practice — Adoration 
 of the host — Jesus Christ whole and entire — What purpose does 
 transubstantiation really serve — Ignoble questions — Dilemma — Su- 
 perstitions — Idolatr}" — Episcopal jurisdiction — Origin — Objections 
 — Historical review — How the pope became its centre — The coun- 
 cil avoids going back to principles — Concessions — Thirteenth Ses- 
 sion 216 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 (1551.) 
 SESSION XIY. PENANCE. ABSOLUTION, THE CONFESSIONAL. EXTREME UNC- 
 TION. 
 
 Complaints against the divines — Regulations on that head — ^The sacra- 
 ment of Penance — The confession — Scriptural objections — Falsifica- 
 
 ^ tions and sophisms — Let every man examine himself — To loose is the 
 most miraculous and the most divine of powers — The more it is al- 
 leged to be necessary, the more is it objectionable — Have the Prot- 
 estants renounced what is reasonable and good in confession — What 
 the Church ordains at present is not what was recommended in 
 primitive times — The council shuts its eyes and pursues its own 
 course — Other difficulties — In what manner is penance a sacrament 
 — What proves too much proves nothing — Was the right to bind and 
 loose given to the priests alone — Reserved cases — A conclusion drawn 
 in passing — What there is most false and most dangerous in confes- 
 sion — Good results, the value of whicli, however, must not be exag- 
 gerated — Peoples — Kings — Phrases and facts — Absolution — Absolute 
 or conditional — Logically it can only be absolute — Questions ad- 
 dressed to a good woman — Deplorable results, to which ever3thing 
 concurs — Inconveniences in detail — The Compendium — Admissions — 
 Conclusion — Extreme unction — One Apostle only speaks of it — Scrip- 
 tural discussion — Contradiction — Difficulties arising out of the only 
 passage that can be adduced in favour of this sacrament — Elders and 
 priests — Formula in common use — Reiteration — Extreme imction of 
 little use, and often dangerous — Fresh discussions on episcopal juris- 
 diction — Numerous abuses — Insufficient corrections — Dispensations 
 more rare but more dear — Fourteknth Session 244 
 
vm CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 (1552.) 
 
 SESSIONS XV. AND XVI. PROTESTANT DEMANDS. PAPAL FEARS. SUSPEN- 
 SION OF THE COUNCIL. 
 
 The affair of the safe-conduct taken up again — Reception of the Prot- 
 estant ambassadors — Fifteenth Session — Proi'ogation — The situa- 
 tion again becomes menacing — Fears and precautions of the pope — 
 Arrival of some Protestant doctors — All ceases and dies — War bursts 
 out in Germany — The emperor takes to flight — Suspension for two 
 years — Involuntary Gallicanism — Peace of Passau and abolition of 
 the Interim — The council no more talked of — Rome thinks she has 
 got rid of it .. 265 
 
 BOOK lY. 
 
 FROM THE SUSPENSION IN 1552 TO THE END OF THE 
 TWENTY-SECOND SESSION IN 1562. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 (1555-1561.) 
 
 council suspended. POPES MARCELLUS XL, PAUL IV., AND PIUS IV. PO- 
 LITICAL complications. 
 
 Ten years' interruption — Death of Julius III. — Election of Marcellus II. 
 — ^He reigns only one-and-twenty days — Election of Paul IV. — His 
 character — His incoherent projects — Manoeuvres — The States of the 
 Church invaded — Violent acts of the pope — His deliverance — What 
 he meant to make of the council — His pretensions with respect to 
 kings and kingdoms — Ferdinand resumes the offensive — The Refor- 
 mation spreads in all directions — The Inquisition — Servetus and Ro- 
 man Catholic historians — Pius IV. — New tactics — Delays on the part 
 of Rome and impatience of France — Attempts to create a divei'sion — 
 Geneva and its history — David before Goliath — The charity of St. 
 Francis de Sales — Shows and appearances, injinite protraction of busi- 
 ness and disguising of real intentions — Plan of a European confedera- 
 tion against the Protestants — The project miscarries — A new council 
 is desired, and not the continuation of the old — It is proposed that 
 one should be held in France — The pope is compelled to hasten mat- 
 ters — ^Third convocation of the council — Difficulties eluded — Of the 
 unity of the Council of Trent — The bull satisfies no one — The six 
 legates — Meeting of the States at Orleans — Bold demands — Catherine 
 de Medicio and the Reformation 271 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CONFERENCE OF POI.SSY. GALLICANISM NOT ROMANISM. 
 
 Colloquy of Poissy — The Chancellor de I'Hopital — Did he attack the 
 pope alone — The Protestants have the ball at their feet — Be/a nnd 
 
CONTENTS. IX 
 
 the Cardinal de Lorraine — Lainez — The praises he receives — What 
 Gallicanisni is in the ej^es of the popes — Philip II. — The sympathies 
 he could reckon upon in France — Tlie true country of a priest's affec- 
 tions — The colloquy concludes that the cup should be conceded to 
 the laity — The pope consults the cardinals — Their unanimous refusal 
 — ^The matter referred to the council 290 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 (15G2.) 
 
 SESSION XVII. -XX. DISPUTES ABOUT THE AUTIIORITV OF THE LEGATES AND 
 INDEX EXPURGATORIUS. TREACHEROUS SAFE-CONDUCT. DIVINE RIGHT OF 
 BISHOPS. EMPTY SESSIONS. 
 
 Bad feeling on the part of the court of France — Re-opening of the 
 council — ^Seventeenth Session — Ambiguous decree — False reasoning 
 — Precautions taken — Proponentibus Icgatis — Question about forbid- 
 den books — Historical review — Gelasius, Leo X., and Paul IV. — Em- 
 barrassment and puerilities — A monstrous libert}' — Absolute enslave- 
 ment — An illusory appeal made to the Protestants — Eighteenth Ses- 
 sion — The safe-conduct and the Inquisition — Spanish Gallicanism — 
 The question of residence taken up anew — It becomes complicated 
 and envenomed — Voting upon it — Reference to the pope — Murmurs 
 — Pius IV. dreads pronouncing upon it — Momentary calm — ^Several 
 questions of detail examined — Abuses pointed out — These none durst 
 touch without the consent of the pope — His evasive reply on the 
 question of the Divine Right — Nineteenth Session — No result — Pius 
 IV. conceives a dislike for the council — Would fain dismiss it or have 
 it entirely under his hand — Jealousies among the members — The 
 pope's pensionaries — Offers of money to the king of France — Arrival 
 of the French anibassadoi*s — Satirical harangue — Dissimulation — 
 Another Session (Twentieth) without result 296 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 (1562.) 
 
 SESSION XXI. COMMUNION IN BOTH KINDS. THE COL^'CIL INTRACTABLE. 
 MORE PAPAL INTRIGUES. NO RESULTS. 
 
 Question of the communion in both kinds again, with a false turn — 
 Twenty demands made by the emperor's ambassador — All becomes 
 complicated anew — the pope blames the legates — He takes up arms 
 — Imminent ruptures — Digression — What the pope was in the eyes 
 of the princes — Their motives for maintaining and sparing him — Pius 
 IV. has again the upper hand — Visconti's mission — Is the suppression 
 of the wine in the supper ordained in Scripture or only commanded 
 — Neither the one nor the other — Analysis — Of what is the lay per- 
 son deprived — ^This question eluded — ^The question of the concession 
 of the cup resumed — The council seems less liberal than the pope — 
 Urgent demands of the ambassadors — Tergiversations of the legates 
 — Twenty-first Session — Unexpected debates — Several points left un- 
 decided — General disappointment — ''They do only what they have a 
 mind to" — Neutrality of the king of Spain — Advantage which Pius 
 IV. derives from it — ^The supper viewed as a sacrifice . . .812 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 (1562.) 
 SESSION XXII. IS THE MASS A SACRIFICE? DECREES ENACTED AMID POLIT- 
 ICAL INTRIGUES. 
 
 The mass — Definitions and principles — A first and a wide breach — 
 Can there be any parity between the mass and Jesus Christ's sac- 
 rifice — J71 remembrance of me — Offered 07ice — What we ask of every 
 sincere Roman Catholic — How people come to believe everything — 
 To admit that the mass is not incontestably in the Bible amounts to 
 the admission that it is not there at all — Serious difficult}^ — To finish 
 as speedil}'' as possible — Recriminations — The pope's new precautions 
 — " It is thus that the king anl the world are deceived" — Splitting 
 of parties — The small matters — Three opinions on the question of the 
 cup — Conditions laid down — Majority against the concession — Pro- 
 ject of referring it to the Pope — Frictions of oil — Sundry wise regu- 
 lations — Absolute prohibition of receiving payment for masses — 
 Doctrinal canons — Do this — Long debates — Masses for temporal 
 wants — Masses in honor of the saints — Private masses — A little water 
 in the wine — Worship in Latin — Scriptural objections — Histoi'ical 
 objections — True motives — Twenty-second Session — Minorities — 
 Submission and silence 332 
 
 BOOK Y. 
 
 EIGHT MONTHS OF DISCUSSION AND INTRIGUE WITH- 
 
 OUT A SESSION. 
 
 CHAPTER. I. 
 
 (1562.) 
 discussions on ORDERS AND ORDINATION. CONTINUED PROROGATIONS. 
 
 All begins anew ; one might suppose he had mistaken the page — Eight 
 successive prorogations — Opening of the debates on the sacrament of 
 orders — Imprudent haste — Are orders a sacrament? — Calvin's opin- 
 ion — In what sense were orders instituted by Jesus Christ? — Scrip- 
 tural and historical discussion — Roman system — Few advantages 
 and many inconveniences — The seven orders — No scriptural founda- 
 tion — Difiiculties that cannot be resolved — The council evades 
 them — The mass the basis of the Roman priesthood — Order and 
 the orders — Grace in ordination — Endless uncertainties and obscu- 
 ties 355 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 (1562.) 
 DISCUSSIONS OF THE DIVINE RIGHT OF THE EPISCOPACY AGAIN. 
 
 The hierarchy — Is Episcopacy to be found in the New Testament — In 
 what sense it is legitimate — Contradictions of the Roman system — 
 How these were removed at Trent — The old question of the divine 
 I'ight changes its aspect — It becomes simplified on the one hand, and 
 complicated on the other — New efforts to leave the pope out in the 
 discussion of it 365 
 
CONTENTS. xi 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 (1502.) 
 DISCISSION OF THE SUPREMACY OF THE POPE. DANGEROUS QUESTIONS. 
 
 Tlio popedom — T/fou art Peter — St. Peter in tlic Xcw Testament — His-, 
 tory — "Writings — Is tradition more favourable — llow the Fathers ex- 
 plained Thou art Peter — Whatever Peter may have been, is the pope 
 his successor — Chronological difficulties — What is required in order 
 to the testimony of the Fathers being conclusive — Iren.fus — The ajjoti- 
 tolical conatitutions — The lloman element — Internal difficulties — 
 How to link the chain — Independence of the Apostles and of all the 
 pastors established by them — The patriarchs — The right of conquest 
 no right — Contrast between the embarrassment of the Church's doc- 
 tors, and the hardihood of the popes — Gregory XVI. in 1832 — Some 
 facts — Nice — Carthage — Gregory' I. . . " 3*70 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 (1562.) 
 THE POPE EVERYTHING OR NOTHING. ULTRAMONTANISM AND GALLICANISM. 
 
 Tlie pope is necessarily all, or nothing — Pangs of the Roman part}' — 
 The vote is taken but the discussion continues — It comes upon the 
 ground of the authority of the council — The perilous position of things 
 becomes more and more evident — All the objections reach farther 
 than is thought desirable by those even who make them — The cause 
 is committed to Lainez — His speech — The Church is essentially sub- 
 ject — It was to Peter alone that it was said, " Feed my sheep" — Ab- 
 solute ultramontanism — A Roman Catholic has logically no reply to 
 make — Irritation increases — Complaints of the bishop of Paris — The 
 French of that time, and those of the present day 387 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 (1562.) 
 ARRIVAL OF CARDINAL LORRAINE. NEW POLITICAL COMPLICATIONS. 
 
 The Cardinal of Lorraine — Precautions taken — Urgency of the Span- 
 iards — Rumours and factions — New draft of the decree on residence 
 — A return to what had been prepared in 1551 — Point of issue — 
 Arrival of the Cardinal of Lorraine — His speech — What were at bot- 
 tom his projects — New causes of distrust— The pope's illness — The 
 Cardinals — Historical remarks — No foundation for their rights — The 
 Cardinal of Lorraine describes the calamities of France — Du Ferrier's 
 conclusions — Ours — In what sense the Church has a horror for blood 
 — New fluctuations on the Cardinal's part — A bad Frenchman, a bad 
 Spaniard — Fabian delays — The pope sends three formulas on the in- 
 stitution of bishops — They say too little, or too much — Agreement 
 on any point impossible — Battle of Dreux — Pius IV. considers the 
 success gained contemptible — Demands of the court of France — ^The 
 pope pretends to dread a revolt — Offers of money — Nothing is ready 
 — The cardinal's journey to the emperor — Ferdinand's complaints 
 against the council and the pope — The court of France sends to in- 
 quire what have become of the pi*omised reforms 30G 
 
Xll CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 (1563.) 
 DISCUSSIONS ON MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, AND CELIBACY. 
 
 Marriage — Is it a sacrament — Scriptural and other objections — In giv- 
 ing it this title, has it been really rendered more sacred — The Church's 
 despotism — Objections of jurisconsults — Indissolubility of marriage 
 — Except it be for adultery — Divorce — It maybe made a law, but not 
 a dogma — Weakness of the arguments in favour of the decree — Other 
 difficulties — Civil elements of marriage — Quibbles — If marriage be a 
 sacrament, the civil power has nothing to do with it — The march of 
 ideas — Side by side with so much strictness, unheard of dissoluteness 
 of morals — Abuse of dispensations — Sophisms of the ultramontanists. 
 Can a Roman Catholic treat them with contempt? — The celibate — 
 Can we examine whether it be, in itself, more holy than marriage — 
 Monks and the monastic life — Suicide — Convents in poetry — Con- 
 vents in reality — Forced vows — Scruples of jurisconsults — Celibate 
 of priests — Right and abuses — The celibate and the Reformation — 
 The Jewish law — The Christian law — St. Peter — Ideal and realities 
 — "What the clergy are where it prevails — Why the celibacy of the 
 priests is persisted in 417 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 (1563.) 
 POLITICS AND INTRIGUE AGAIN. THE POPE, THE EMPEROR, AND THE KING. 
 
 Political pre-occupations — Death of the Duke of Guise — Cardinal of 
 Mantua's letter to Paul IV. — Letter from the emperor — The council 
 has remained obnoxious to all the blows then levelled at it — The 
 pope's reply — Constantine and Theodosius — What has been made 
 of them, and what they were — Philip 11. and his prelates — Tumults 
 at Trent — Two new legates — Morone at Inspruck — Negotiations — 
 Peace in France — The pope's ill humour — At Trent weariness and 
 disgust • 439 
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 THE COUNCIL HURRIED TO A CLOSE. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 (1563.) 
 
 DISPUTES ON PAPAL AUTHORITY. L.VIXEZ BEARDS THE COUNCIL. LORRAINE 
 
 GOES OVER TO THE POPE. 
 
 Glance at the position of parties — The as.sembly — ^The Roman Catholics 
 — The Protestants — the Pope — Rome — The emperor begins to fail — 
 The Cardinal of Lorraine goes over to the ultramontanists — What is 
 a heretic in the eyes of the Church — Consistency with her requires 
 persecution — The question of divine right resumed — The cardinal 
 
CONTENTS. xiii 
 
 makes a second step — The council is led away into the field of the 
 pope's authority — The opinion of Lainez on dispensations and the 
 right to dispense — Almost everybody shocked by his ideas and the 
 tone in which he announced them — He excuses himself — The cardinal 
 stops the protests — Dispute betwixt the ambassadors of France and 
 Spain — State of the question — A bias and its sequel — Violent acts of 
 the French ambassador — Compromise — Other disputes of the same 
 kind 450 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 (1563.) 
 
 SESSION XXiri. DIVINE RIGHT OF BISHOPS, AND THE PAPAL POWER, BOTH 
 LEFT UNDEFINED, AND WHY? DECREES ON ORDERS AND ON REFORMA- 
 TION. 
 
 Why such an indisposition to vote on the question of the divine right 
 — It is definitively withdrawn — Consequences of the vague state in 
 which it has been left — Disagreement among the doctors — Silence of 
 the council on all that relates to the popedom — Is it true that this 
 silence was quite voluntary ? — Historical sketch of the discussions — 
 Almost as many questions omitted as decided — An attempt made to 
 draw up a table of the functions of the seven orders — It fails — The 
 council admits, in spite of itself, the legitimacy of the suppressions 
 made by the Reformation — Theological difficulties — The Roman sys- 
 tem is logical and clear only at the surface — The Spaniards desist — 
 The legates are delighted — Twenty-third session — Decree of Refor- 
 mation in eighteen chapters — Residence — Conditions and formalities 
 of ordination — Conditions as to age — The seminaries — Historical re- 
 view — The seminaries one of the fruits of the Reformation — Marriage 
 — Ambiguous decree 460 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 (1563.) 
 
 SESSION XXIV. CARDINAL LORRAINE VISITS ROME. DECREES ON MARRIAGE, 
 DIVORCE, AND THE REFORM OF THE CLERGY. 
 
 Forty articles presented to the ambassadors — Why so many cardinals 
 Italians, and always an Italian pope — The princes think of taking 
 their guarantees against the bishops — Pius IV. urges matters to a 
 close — Intervention of the Cardinal of Lorraine — His journey to Rome 
 — Draft of decree on the princes — Exorbitant pretensions — Du Fer- 
 rier's protest — The council more than ever a chaos — An explanation 
 of the proponentibtcs consented to — A congregation in confusion — 
 Twenty-fourth session held, in greater confusion still — Pallavicini's 
 success — Objections to twelve anathemas of the decree on marriage 
 — Contradictions, incoherencies, shifts, and quibbles — Why was the 
 indissolubleness of marriage not formally taught — Disciplinary arti- 
 ticles — Clandestine marriages, dispensations, &c. — Reformatory arti- 
 cles — Elections, provincial and diocesan councils — A^isits, preaching, 
 censures, draft of a catechism, penances, salaries, competitions, ecclesi- 
 astical procedure — Why, after so many decrees, did people still com- 
 plain of the insufficiency of the council ? 47 1 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 (1563.) 
 PAPAL ARROGANCE. PURGATORY AND VIRGIN WORSHIP. 
 
 The Queen of Navarre is summoned to Rome — Protest of the Queen of 
 France — The pope seconds the views of Philip 11. on that kingdom 
 — It is decided that the close of the council shall take place before 
 the close of the 3-ear — The discussions hastened by the bad state of 
 the pope's health — Question of purgator}' — Scriptural discussion — 
 Involuntary admission in the Protestant sense — Could purgatoiy fail 
 to be expressly mentioned in Scripture? — The worship of the Virgin 
 — Mary in the Gospels — In the Acts — In the Epistles — In the Apoca- 
 lypse—Historical review — The Virgin in the writings of the Fa- 
 thers — Great eulogies but no trace of worship — Epiphanius, Cyril, 
 Proclus 487 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 (1563.) 
 SAINT WORSHIP. HOW SAINTS ARE MADE AT ROME. 
 
 The worship of the saints — Silence of Scripture — What all prayer ad- 
 dressed to a dead person pre-supposes — Pagan objection — Euther 
 and the saints — What would be lost, in general, by not praying to 
 them — ^The worship of the saints forbidden by implication in many 
 passages of Scripture — ^There is but one sole Mediator — Abuse of the 
 worship of the saints — Has it ever remained and can it remain with- 
 in the limits traced by the council — The common people invoke them 
 as present everywhere and as possessing power of themselves — 
 Proofs — Does the Church combat the tendencies of the common peo- 
 ple — What would be thought by a pagan entering Rome again after 
 eighteen hundred years' absence — Juliana of Liege and the cut in the 
 moon — A mandement of the Archbishop of Lyons — Falsehoods and 
 sophisms — ^Tlie Virgin queen of the imiverse — Proofs — Citations — 
 The mob of saints — How they are fabricated at Rome — Relics and 
 worship of relics 497 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 (1563.) 
 IMAGE WORSHIP AND INDULGENCES. 
 
 Worship of images — The Second Commandment — Fraud — Discussion — 
 If the images are nothing in themselves, why are some more vene- 
 rated than others — Is the worship of images really different from 
 what it was among the pagans — The worship of the Virgin, worship 
 of beaut}' — Questions to her worshippers — Indulgences — Historical 
 review — The council tries to purif}*^ the practice, but leaves all the 
 obscurities of the theory xmtouched — Discussion — Several wherefores 
 — Ridiculous facilities — Although salvation were to be bought, the 
 greatest of the saints would not have wherewithal to pay for it — It 
 is a matter, therefore, in which none except Jesus Christ can lend aid 
 to any one 614 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 (15C3-4.) 
 
 SESSION XXV, ALL DIFFICULTIES ENDEIJ, Tlii: COUN'CIL BREAKS UP AND 
 
 TilK POPE TRIUMPHS. 
 
 Heforniatory decree on the subject of the religious orders — Encronch- 
 inents on the civil authority — Decree of general lefonnation — "Wise 
 measures — Digression on the acceptance of the council in France — The 
 dogmatic decrees are thought little worthy of a couneil — The j»ope 
 dangerously ill — More and more haste made — Tlireatening difficulties 
 — These are smoothed down — ^The pope's confirmation to be asked for 
 — All the old decrees to be read in public — The decree on the princes 
 to have eveiything removed from it that can shock tluni — Twenty- 
 fifth and last se.'^sion — [Jnlooked-for article in favour of the pope's 
 .'luthority — Prorogation until next day — The decree on indulgences 
 past — Resumption of the session — Fasts, festivals, the Index, the Cat- 
 echism, questions of precedency, <tc. — heading of the old decrees — 
 One further difficulty eluded — Final voting — The pope's confirmation 
 asked for — Resistances — View taken of the confirmation by those even 
 who advise it — It is given — The pope reserves to himself the interpre- 
 tation of ihjn decrees — Rome can as little trust the decrees of T^ent 
 as she can trust the Bible — Conclusion 524 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The doctrines of Rome should be called Tridentine rather 
 than Catholic. It was the Council of Trent which gave them 
 their form and pressure. Dogmas which had for ages floated 
 in vnicertainty were at Trent stereotyped for ever ; the theories 
 of the schools were trimmed, revised, composed, and arranged, 
 until at least a semblance of harmony was obtained, and they 
 were then stamped by the Council with infallibility. 
 
 The acknowledged creed of Rome is contained in the acts 
 and decrees of the Council of Trent — ^there, and nowhere else. 
 The Apostolic and Nicene creeds are held by Romanists in 
 common with Protestants ; but there is no formulary contain- 
 ing all the credenda of Romanism. The Catechisms in com- 
 mon use are of no authority ; indeed, there may be a distinct 
 one in each diocese, if the bishops choose. The Catccliis'inus 
 Co?icilii Tridenti7ii (Catechism of the Council of Trent) was 
 prepared by order of the Council after its dissolution, under the 
 authority of the Pope. It was decreed at the twenty-fourth ses- 
 sion, that this Catechism (to be prepared) should be translated 
 into the various languages of Rurope, and "expounded to the 
 people by all pastors ;" so that the book has a qicasi symbolical 
 authority. But it was neither published nor sanctioned by the 
 Council, nor has any Pope ever declared it to be an authorita- 
 tive creed. Indeed, on one occasion, in a controversy touching 
 the relation of grace to freedom, the Jesuits denied the author- 
 ity of the Catechism as a symbolical book ; and this denial has 
 never been contradicted by Rome. 
 
 This state of things gives a Roman controversialist great ad- 
 vantage. Q,uote the most celebrated Roman doctors — an an- 
 gelical Aquinas, or a sainted Liguori — and you will be told that 
 their writings are " not authoritative" Cite a catechism, a 
 
x\ni INTRODUCTION. 
 
 prayer-book, a breviary — your mouth is closed at once with the 
 declaration that the Church recognizes none of these as giving 
 her creed. Pursue your quest as far as you may, you will find 
 no book, no formulary, no summary of doctrine, recognized as 
 binding except the Canons and Decrees of Trent. In the lan- 
 guage of the greatest Romanist theologian since Bellarmine, 
 " Every other writing that may bear such a title, is only a de- 
 duction from this formulary, or a nearer definition, illustration, 
 or apphcation of its contents, or is in part only regulated by it, 
 or in any case obtains a value only by agreement with it, and 
 hence cannot, in point of dignity, bear a comparison with the 
 original itself."^ The canons of Trent are the very citadel of 
 Rome. 
 
 Regarded in this light, the acts of the Council obtain a new 
 importance. In fact this Council " must ever be regarded as 
 the most important, if not of all councils, yet assuredly of all 
 modern ones. Its importance lies in two great points. In the 
 first, the doctrines of Rome, after many fluctuations, broke for 
 ever with the Protestant opinions. Out of the doctrine of justi- 
 fication, as then set forth, arose forthwith the whole system of 
 dogmatic theology, such as it is professed to the present day in 
 the Catholic Church. The second point is, the re-establish- 
 ment of the hierarchy by the decrees on ordination, and the acts 
 of reform adopted by the Council. These reforms are, to this 
 day, of the greatest moment. By them the faithful were anew 
 I and still are] subjected to the uncompromising discipline of the 
 Church, and in urgent cases, to the sword of excommunica- 
 tion The bishops solemnly bound themselves by a special 
 
 confession of faith, signed and sworn to by them, to an observ- 
 ance of the decrees of Trent, and to submission to the Pojie'"^ 
 
 But the Council was the starting-point of a new era, not 
 merely in view of doctrine, but also of the Papal power. One 
 of the purposes of its convocation — the world thought it the 
 c/w'c/' purpose — was to set limits to the Papal authority; but its 
 great result was directly the reverse. Struggles there were, 
 indeed, in the Council ; but the Pope emerged from them all 
 tenfold stronger than before. The very council that was to 
 bind him hand and foot, put into his hands the means of con- 
 
 ^ Mohler, Symbolism, Introil. (J 1. 
 
 * Ranlcp, History of the Popes, Book iii. vol. i. p 25G. 
 
INTRODUCTION. XIX 
 
 trolling bishops, priests, and laity, with a force and pressure 
 never dreamed of before. The decrees of Trent are the laws 
 of the Church ; hut tlie Pope alone can interpret tlujse decrees ; 
 and so he can always make what rules he pleases, both for faith 
 and conduct. The Church has doubtless gained in point of 
 energ}' by this concentration of power in consequence of the 
 decrees of Trent ; but it has, at the same time, lost even the 
 show of Catholicity which it possessed before. It admitted, at 
 Trent, " that its dominion was circumscribed ; it gave up all 
 claim upon the Eastern Church, and repudiated the Protestants 
 with countless anathemas. In the earlier Catholicism there 
 was an element of Protestantism ; this was now for ever cast 
 out.'i 
 
 The history of an assembly which gave rise to such issues 
 must ever be matter of the deepest interest. Who were the 
 men that thus made, in effect, a new Christianity ? By what 
 authority did they enact laws and frame dogmas to which all 
 men must yield, or be accursed ? By what processes were their 
 decisions reached ? It is the duty of the historian of the Coun- 
 cil to answer these questions. Happily the sources of informa- 
 tion are not wanting. The " Reporter" of modern times was 
 not, indeed, present in the lofty hall wherein were gathered so 
 many of the best and worst, the ablest and the meanest, of the 
 vast body of ecclesiastics who clung to Rome in that day of her 
 severest trial ; but many pens, official and unofficial, were at 
 work, taking notes for posterity. The first published history of 
 the Council was the well-known work of Father Sarpi, which 
 was originally published in England by Spalatro, under the 
 name of Storia del Concilio Tridentino di Fietro Soave 
 Polaiio. Though Sarpi never acknowledged the work, it is 
 well known that he wrote it ; the manuscript was sent from 
 Italy by Sir Henry Wotton to James I., and the first edition 
 was printed at London (1619, foL). It has been repeatedly re- 
 printed in Italian, and has also been many times translated. ^ 
 
 ' Ranke, loc. cit. 
 
 ' The best edition of the Italian text is that of Geneva, 1629. In 
 Latin we have Petri Suavis Polaniy Hist. Concilii Tridcntini (London, 
 1620, 4to). The most useful edition for the student is Courayer's {His- 
 toirc de Concile de Trente, avec des notes critiques, &c., par P. F. lb 
 CouRAYER, Amst. 1751, 3 vols. 4to). There is an English version by 
 Sir Nathaniel Brent, with a Life of Father Paul (Lond. 1676, fol). 
 
 B 
 
XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Father Sarpi's history, full of wit, talent, and sarcasm, made 
 a strong impression throughout Europe. The Roman Court set 
 its learned men at once to refute it. A vast supply of material 
 was collected by the Jesuit Alciati, but he died in 1571, before 
 completing his work. The task devolved upon another Jesuit, 
 Sforza Pallavicino, who completed it with great ability. The 
 fu'st edition of his Istoria del Co?icilio di Trento was published 
 at Rome (lGo6-57, 2 vols. foL). It also has been repeatedly 
 reprinted and translated into various languages. 
 
 Of these two writers, whose books have been the chief sources 
 of information for all who have since treated of the subject, M. 
 Bungener speaks in the following terms : " Sarpi and Palla- 
 vicini are little read, and we cannot well expect them to be 
 read. Differing profoundly in their qualities and in their views, 
 they are but too much alike in their faults. In both we find 
 diffuseness and dryness : no plan, no philosophy ; an absence, 
 in fine, of all that is now looked for in a historian. Sarpi's 
 work is nothing better than a long satire, lifeless and insipid ; 
 often, too, inaccurate and unfair ; Pallavicini's is but a long and 
 dull apology, more accurate in its details, but feeble in its rea- 
 sonings, and, in the aggregate, childish and false. "^ 
 
 This is entirely too summary a judgment. That these wri- 
 ters are not adapted to popular reading is true enough ; that 
 they are both sometimes inaccurate, and even unfair, is also 
 true ; but neither of them deserves the sweeping condemnation 
 in which M. Bungener indulges. An elaborate and impartial 
 criticism of the two writers is given by Ranke'(History of the 
 Popes, Appendix, k II.), from the conclusion of which we take 
 the following candid and comprehensive statements : 
 
 " It has been asserted that the truth may be distinctly gath- 
 ered from these two works combined. This may perhaps be the 
 case in a very large and extended sense : it is by no means so 
 in particulars. They both swerve from the truth, which cer- 
 tainly lies in the midst between them ; but it cannot be come 
 at by conjecture : truth is j)ositive, original, and is not to be 
 conceived by any accommodation of partial statements, but by 
 a direct review of facts. As we have seen, for instance, Sarpi 
 says that a treaty had been concluded at Bologna ; Pallavicino 
 denies this ; no conjecture in the world could have hit upon the 
 
 * Preface, page xli. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxi 
 
 fact that the treaty was not made by word of mouth, but by 
 writing, a fact which really reconciles the discrepancy. So 
 again, they both distort Contarini's instruction ; there is no har- 
 monizing their contradictions; it is only when we refer to the 
 original that the truth strikes us. 
 
 " Their minds were of the most opposite cast. Sarpi is keen, 
 penetrating, caustic ; his arrangement is eminently skilful ; his 
 style pure and unaflected, and although the Crusca will not 
 admit him into the list of classic authors, probably on account 
 of some provincialisms he exhibits, his work is really refreshing 
 after all the pompous array of words through which we are 
 forced to toil in other authors. His style coincides with his sub- 
 ject ; in point of graphic power he is certainly second among 
 the modern historians- of Italy : I rank him immediately after 
 Machiavelli. 
 
 " Nor is Pallavicino void of talent ; he draws many pointed 
 and forcible parallels, and he often displays no little skill as the 
 pleader for a party. But his talent is somewhat of a heavy 
 and cumbrous cast ; it is one that chiefly delights in turning 
 phrases and devising subterfuges ; his style is overloaded with 
 words. Sarpi is clear and transparent to the very bottom ; Pal- 
 lavicino is not wanting in continuous flow, but he is muddy, 
 dilluse, and shallow. Both are heart-and-soul partisans; both 
 lack the spirit of the historian, that grasps its object in its full 
 truth, and sets it in the broad light of day. Sarpi had cer- 
 tainly the talent requisite, but he will be an accuser, and no- 
 thing more ; Pallavicino had it in a vastly lower degree, but 
 he will be, by all means, the apologist of his party. 
 
 " Neither can we obtain a full view of the substance of the 
 case from the works of those two writers combined. It is a 
 very remarkable circumstance, that Sarpi contains much that 
 Pallavicino was never able to hunt out, many as were the 
 archives thrown open to him. I will only mention a memoir 
 of the nuncio Chieragato, concerning the consultations at the 
 court of Adrian VI., which is very important, and against which 
 Pallavicino makes objections of no moment. Pallavicino also 
 overlooks many things from a sort of incapacity. He cannot 
 discover them to be of much consequence, and so he neglects 
 them. On the other hand, Sarpi lacked a multitude of docu- 
 ments which Pallavicino possessed ; the former saw but a small 
 
XXll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 part of the correspondence of the Roman court with the legates. 
 His errors sprmg, for the most part, from the want of original 
 documents. But, in many cases, they both are ignorant of im- 
 portant records. A httle report by Cardinal Morone, who exe- 
 cuted the decisive embassy to Ferdinand I., is one of the high- 
 est moment as regards the history of the whole latter part of 
 the Council. Neither of them has made use of it." 
 
 No writer of recent times has done more to throw light upon 
 the history of the Council, and to furnish materials for its study, 
 than the Rev. Joseph Mendham. In 1834 he published 
 "■Memoirs oftlie Council of Trent, priiicijxdly derived from 
 raaniiscrift and 2inpiibiished recoj'ds" kc. (London, 8vo) ; 
 and in 1842, his ''Acta Concilii Tridentiiii^ a G. Cardinale 
 Pcdeotti descri]pta, eclente J. MendhairC (London, thick 8vo). 
 These works are indispensable to the student who desires to pur- 
 sue the subject thoroughly.^ 
 
 Although so much had been done in the way of elaborate 
 and extended histories of the Council for the use of students and 
 theologians, the want of a concise yet thorough treatise, adapted 
 to popular reading, was for a long time seriously felt. One of 
 the best attempts to supply this want was made by the Rev. T. 
 A. Buckley, in his '' History of the Council of Trent, com- 
 'piled frmn a comimrison of various ivriters,'^ he. (London, 
 1852, 12mo). This work is careful, painstaking, and thorough. 
 Mr. Buckley uses his authorities with discrimination, and com- 
 piles from them an accurate and useful record of the Council. 
 He does not seek to be so impartial as to be indifferent ; not de- 
 siring "the qualified praise sought by those who can neither 
 heartily agree nor differ." For these excellent qualities his 
 book deserves great praise. As a manual for students it is also 
 worthy of high commendation. 
 
 Far different, both in its aims and in its execution, is M. Bun- 
 gener's work, now presented to the reader. The writer is 
 well known as the author of several brilliant books, illustrative 
 of the history of Protestantism in France. Two of these have 
 been translated, and published in this countiy under the titles 
 
 ^ There is an elaborate German history of the Council : VoUstandigc 
 Geschichtc dcs Trident- Conciliums, von C. A. Salig (Halle, 1741-45, 
 3 vols. 4to). A Gallican view -will be found in Dupin, Hist, dii Concile 
 de Trcnte, &c., BruxcUes, 1721, 2 torn. 8vo. 
 
INTRODUCTION, xxiii 
 
 of "The Priest and the Huguenot," and "The Preacher and the 
 King ;" and their wide popularity sufficiently attests their merit 
 as books for the people. M. Bungener has great dramatic power ; 
 his personages live and move before the reader ; he distinguishes 
 each with something of Homer's individualizing power. This 
 faculty, combined with the power of seizing upon salient facts, 
 and of grouping them into pictures, is one of the essential qua- 
 lities for a writer of history ; and it is precisely here that most 
 historians, especially of the Church, signally fail. Skeletons of 
 history we have in abundance ; it is for men of genius, like our 
 author, to reproduce the life. 
 
 But the present work, in addition to the merits of style which 
 characterize M. Bungener's other works, has peculiar excel- 
 lences of its own. He has used his sources carefully and con- 
 scientiously ; few facts of any importance in the acts and doings 
 of Trent are omitted ; few are stated out of their proper and 
 living connexions ; none, I think, are distorted for polemical 
 purposes. The intrigues and the chicanery of the Popes and 
 their legates, on the one hand, and of the Princes and their am- 
 bassadors, on the other, are laid bare in a masterly manner ; 
 the reader gets behind the scenes, and sees all the secret ma- 
 chinery by which the puppet bishops were pulled, unwittingly, 
 this way and that ; but nothing is set down in maUce. M. 
 Bungener shows himself to be also, to a great extent, master 
 of the controversy between Rome and the Church of God. The 
 reader will find that he not merely states the doctrinal decisions 
 of the council clearly, but that he shows their general incon- 
 sistency with the word of God, and even with the stream of 
 pure tradition. In this respect the work has a value to which 
 no other history of the Council can lay claim. 
 
 I have taken the hberty to divide the Books into chapters, to 
 alter a few passages in the translation, and to add an occasional 
 note of explanation. Moreover, as the author furnishes no sum- 
 mary of the doings of the Council at its several sessions in con- 
 nected form, I have deemed it best, in view of the wants of stu- 
 dents and readers who may not have the Acts of the Council at 
 hand, to prefix to the text a brief account of the Sessions in 
 chronological order, abridged from Landon's "Manual of Coun- 
 cils." 
 
 John M'Clintock 
 
SUMMARY OF THE ACTS i\JSrD DECREES OF 
 THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 The Council was first convoked June 2, 1536, by Pope Paul III., 
 to be held at Mantua, May 23, 1537. The Duke of Mantua object- 
 ing, the Pope prorogued the meeting to November, 1537, and after- 
 wards till May, 1538, at Vicenza. At the appointed time not a single 
 bishop appeared at A^'icenza; and, after another prorogation, the Pope 
 issued a bull, May 22, 1542, convoking the council for November 1, 
 1542, at Trent. Further difficulties delayed the opening until the 
 end of 1545. 
 
 The council was opened, and the first session held, December 
 Session I. 13th, when there were present, the three legates, four 
 Dec. 13, 1545. archbishops, and twenty-two bishops, in their pontifical 
 vestments. Mass was said by the Cardinal del Monte, and a sermon 
 preached by the Bishop of Bitonte ; after which, the bull given No- 
 vember 19th, 1544, and that of February, 1545, were read, and the 
 Cardinal del Monte explained the objects which were proposed in 
 assembling the council. The next session was then appointed to be 
 held on the 7th of January following. 
 
 On the 18th and 22d of December, congregations were held, in 
 which some discussion arose about the care and order to be observed 
 by prelates in their life and conversation during the council. 
 
 On the 5th of January another congress was held, in which Car- 
 j5^g dinal del Monte proposed that the order to be observed in con- 
 ducting the business of the council should be the same with that 
 at the last council of Lateran, where the examination of the different 
 matters had been entrusted to different bishops, who for that purpose 
 had been divided into three classes ; and when the decrees relating 
 to any matter had been drawn up, they were submitted to the con- 
 sideration of a general congregation ; so that all was done without 
 any disputing and discussion in the sessions. A dispute arose in this 
 congregation about the style to be given to the council in the decrees. 
 The pope had decreed that they should run in this form, "The Holy 
 CEcumenical and General Council of Trent, the Legates of the 
 Apostolic See presiding," but the Gallican bishops, and many of the 
 Spaniards and Italians, insisted that the words "representing the 
 universal Church," should be added ; this, however, the legates re- 
 fiised. 
 
 In the second session forty-three prelates were present. A bull 
 Session II. was read prohibiting the proctors of absent prelates to vote ; 
 Jan. 7 also another, exhorting all the faithful then in Trent to live 
 
1546. ACTS AND DECREES OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. XXV 
 
 in the fear of God. The learned were exhorted to give their atten- 
 tion to the question, how the rising heresies could be best extin- 
 guished. The question about tlie style of the council was again 
 raised. 
 
 In the following congregation. Jan. 1.3, llic same question was 
 again debated. Nothing was settled in this matter, and they then 
 l)roceedcd to deliberate upon which of the three subjects proposed to 
 be iliseusscd in the council (viz. the extirpation of heresy, the refor- 
 mation of discipline, and the restoration of peace), sliould be first 
 handled. 
 
 In the next congregation the deliberations on the subject to be first 
 proposed in the council were resumed. Some wished that the ques- 
 tion of reform should be first opened; others, on the contrary, main- 
 tained that questions relating to the faith demanded immediate notice. 
 A third party asserted that the two questions of doctrine and refor- 
 mation must be treated of together : this latter opinion ultimately 
 prevailed ; but at the moment the sense of the assembly was so 
 divided that no decision was arrived at. 
 
 It was then resolved that congregations should in future be held 
 twice a week. 
 
 In the congregation held January 22d, the party in favour of en- 
 tering at once upon the subject of reform was much increased, but 
 the three legates continued their opposition to the scheme. Subse- 
 quently, however, they proposed that the council should always take 
 into consideration together one subject relating to the faith, and one 
 relating to reform, bearing one upon the other. 
 
 On the 24th a curious dispute arosii about the proper seal for the 
 use of the council. 
 
 In the third session nothing was done except to recite Session in. 
 the creed, word for word. ^^^- '^■ 
 
 In a congress, held February 22d, the legates proposed that the 
 council should enter upon the subject of the Holy Scriptures; and 
 four doctrinal articles were presented, extracted by the theologians 
 from the writings of Luther upon the subject of Holy Scripture, 
 which they affirmed to be contrary to the orthodox faith. 
 
 As to the first article, the congregation came to the decision that 
 the Christian faith is contained partly in Holy Scripture and partly 
 in the traditions of the Church. Upon the second article much dis- 
 cussion arose. All agreed in receiving all the books read in the * 
 Roman Church, including the Apocryphal books ; but there were ^ 
 four opinions as to the method to be observed in drawing up the 
 catalogue. One party wished to divide the books into two classes, 
 one containing those which have always been received without dis- 
 pute, the other containing those which had been doubted. The second 
 party desired a threefold division. 1. Containing the undoubted 
 books. 2. Those whicli had been at one time suspected, but since 
 received. 3. Those which had never been recognized, as seven of 
 the Apocryphal books, and some chapters in Daniel and Esther. The 
 third party wished that no distinction should be made : and the fourth 
 that all the books contained in the Latin Vulgate should be declared 
 to be canonical and inspired. 
 
 ^ 
 
XXVi SUMMARY OF THE ACTS AND 1546. 
 
 The discussion was resumed on the 8th of March, but not decided. 
 In the following congregation it was decided that the catalogue of 
 the books of Holy Scripture should be drawn up without any of the * 
 proposed distinctions, and that they should be declared to be all of / 
 equal authority. 
 
 In the next session between sixty and seventy prelates attended. 
 Session IV. Two decrees were read. 1. Upon the Canon of Scrip- 
 Apni 6. tuj-e^ which declares that the holy council receives all the 
 books of the Old and New Testament, as well as all the traditions 
 / of the Church respecting faith and morals, as having proceeded 
 , / from the lips of Jesus Christ Himself, or as having been dictated 
 '^ by the Holy Spirit, and preserved in the Catholic Church by a con- . 
 tinued succession, and that it looks upon both the written and un- y 
 written Word with equal respect. After this the decree enumerates 
 the books received as canonical by the Church of Rome, and as they 
 are found in the Vulgate, and anathematizes all who refuse to ac- 
 knowledge them as such. The second decree declares the authen- / 
 ticity of the Vulgate ; forbids all private interpretation of it ; and - 
 orders that no copies be printed or circulated without authority, under 
 penalty of fine and anathema. 
 
 After this, the question of original sin came under consideration, 
 and nine articles taken from the Lutheran books were drawn up and 
 offered for examination ; upon which some discussion took place ; 
 ultimately, however, a decree was drawn up upon the subject, divided 
 into five canons. 
 
 1. Of the personal sin of Adam. 
 
 2. Of the transmission of that sin to his posterity. 
 
 3. Of its remedy, i. e. holy baptism. 
 
 4. Of infant baptism. 
 
 5. Of the concupiscence which still remains in those who have 
 been baptized. 
 
 A great dispute arose between the Franciscans and Dominicans 
 concerning the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin ; the 
 Franciscans insisted that she should be specially declared to be free 
 from the taint of original sin ; the Dominicans, on the other hand, 
 maintained that, although the Church had tolerated the opinion con- 
 cerning the immaculate conception, it was sufficiently clear that the 
 Virgin was not exempt from the common infection of our nature. 
 
 A decree of reformation, in two chapters, was also read. 
 
 In the fifth session the decree concerning original sin was passed, 
 Session V. containing the five canons mentioned above, enforced by 
 June 17 anathemas. Afterwards the fathers declared that it was 
 not their intention to include the Virgin in this decree, thus leaving 
 the " Immaculate Conception" an open question. 
 
 In a congregation held June 18, they proceeded to consider the 
 questions relating to grace and good works. Also the subject of resi- 
 dence of bishops and pastors was discussed ; the Cardinal del Monte 
 and some of the fathers attributed the heresies and disturbances which 
 had arisen to the non-residence of bishops, whilst many of the bishops 
 maintained that they were to be attributed to the multitudes of friars 
 and other privileged persons, whom the pope permitted to wander 
 
 y 
 
1547. DECREES OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. XXVll 
 
 about and preach in spite of the bishops, who, in consequence, could 
 do no good even if tliey were in residence. 
 
 In the congregation hcUl June 30, twenty-five articles, drawn up 
 from the Lutheran writings on the subject of justification, were pro- 
 posed for examination. 
 
 In a congregation held August 20, the subject of justification was 
 again warndy discussed, as well as the doctrine of Luther concern- 
 ing free-will and predestination. 
 
 Upon this latter subject nothing worthy of censure was found in 
 the writings of Luther or in the Confession of Aug.sburg ; but eight 
 articles were drawn up for examination from the writings of the 
 Zuinglians. Upon some of these there was much difference of opinion. 
 
 By the advice of the bishop of Sinagaglia, the canons drawn up 
 embodying the decrees of the council were divided into two sets: one 
 set, which they called the decrees of doctrine, contained the Catho- 
 lic faith upon the subjects decided ; the others, called canoyis, stated, 
 condemned, and anathematized the doctrines contrary to that faith. 
 
 Afterwards they returned to the consideration of the reform of the 
 Church, and to the question about episcopal residence. Most of the 
 theologians present, especially the IJominicans, maintained that resi- 
 dence was a matter not merely canonically binding, but of Divine 
 injunction. The Spaniards held the same opinion. The legates, 
 seeing that the discussion tended to bring the papal authority and 
 power into question, endeavoured to put a stop to it. 
 
 In the sixth session the decree concerning Justification was read : 
 it contained sixteen chapters and thirty-three canons Session vi. 
 against heretics. •^*"' ^^' ^^^~- 
 
 The decree explains the nature and the effects of justification, say- y 
 ing that it docs not consist merely in the remission of sin, but also in 
 sanctification and inward renewal. That the Jinal cause of justifica- 
 tion is the glory of God and of Jesus Christ, and eternal life; the effi- 
 cient cause is God Himself, who, of his mercy, freely w^asheth and 
 sanctifieth by the seal and unction of the Holy Spirit, who is the 
 pledge of our inheritance ; the meritorious cause is our Lord Jesus 
 (xhrist, his beloved and only Son ; the instrumental cause is the 
 sacrament of baptism, without which no one can be justified ; and, 
 finally, the formal cause is the righteousness of God given to each, 
 not that rigliteousness by which He is righteous in Himself, but that 
 by which He makes us righteous. But no man may dare, under pain 
 of anathema, to utter such a rash notion, as that it is impossible for a 
 man even after justification to keep God's commandments. 
 
 The decree further teaches upon this subject, that no man may y 
 presume upon the mysterious subject of predestination, so as to as- 
 sure himself of being amongst the number of the elect and predesti- 
 nated to eternal life ; as if, having been justified, it were impossible 
 to commit sin agam, or at least 'as if, falling into sin afler justifica- 
 tion, he must of necessity be raised again. It also teaches the same 
 of perseverance, concerning which it declares that he who perse- 
 vereth unto the end shall be saved. 
 
 Further, that they who by sin have fallen from grace given, and 
 justification, may be justified again when God awakens them : and 
 
XXVlll SUMMARY OF THE ACTS AND 1547. 
 
 that this is done by means of the sacrament of penance, in which, 
 through the merits of Jesus Christ, they may recover the grace 
 which they have lost ; but it also implies the sacramental confession 
 of his sin, at least in will, and the absolution of the priest, together 
 with such satisfaction as he can make by means of fasting, alms-giv- 
 ing, prayer, etc. And this grace of justification may be lost, not only 
 through the sin of infidelity, by which faith itself is lost, but also by 
 every kind of mortal sin, even though faith be not lost. 
 
 These chapters were accompanied by thirty-three canons, which 
 anathematize those who hold opinions contrary to the doctrine con- 
 tained in the chapters. 
 
 Besides this decree, another was published in this session, relating 
 to Reformation, containing five chapters upon the subject of resi- 
 dence. 
 
 Before the seventh session, a congregation was held, in which it 
 was agreed to treat in the next place of the sacraments ; and thirty- 
 six articles, taken from the Lutheran books, were proposed for ex- 
 amination : after which thirty canons on the subject were drawn up, 
 viz., thirteen on the sacraments in general, fourteen on baptism, and 
 three on confirmation. They relate to their number, their necessity, 
 excellence, the manner in which they confer grace, which they de- 
 clared to be ex o-pere operato, i. e., that the sacraments confer grace, 
 upon all those recipients who do not, by mortal sin, offer a bar to its 
 reception. 
 
 After this the question of reformation was discussed ; amongst 
 other things it was debated whether a plurality of benefices requiring 
 residence is forbidden by the divine law. 
 
 In the seventh session the thirty canons relating to the sacraments 
 Session VII. Were read, together with the accompanying anathemas, 
 March 3. yiz., thirteen on the sacraments in general, fourteen on 
 baptism, and three on confirmation. 
 
 1. Anathematizes those who maintain that the seven sacraments \/ 
 were not all instituted by Jesus Christ. 
 
 3. Anathematizes those who maintain that any one sacrament is i/ 
 of more worth than another. 
 
 8. Anathematizes those who deny that the sacraments confer grace 
 ex opera operato. 
 
 \). Anathematizes those who deny that baptism, orders, and con- 
 firmation, imprint an ineffaceable character. 
 
 10. Anathematizes those who maintain that all Christians may v/ 
 preach God's word, and administer the sacraments. 
 
 12. Anathematizes those who maintain that the sin of the minis- 
 ter invalidates the sacrament. 
 
 13. Anathematizes those who maintain that the minister may 
 change the prescribed form. 
 
 Amongst the fourteen canons on baptism : 
 
 3. Anathematizes those who maintain that the Church of Rome 
 does not teach the true doctrine on the subject of baptism. 
 
 4. Anathematizes those who deny the validity of baptism conferred 
 by heretics, in the name of the blessed Trinity, and with the inten- 
 tion to do what the Church does. 
 
1519 DECREES OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. xxix 
 
 5. Anathematizes tliose who maintain that baptism is not neces- 
 sary to salvation. 
 
 10 Anathematizes those who maintain that sin after baptism is 
 remitted by faith. 
 
 11. Anathematizes those who maintain that apostates from the 
 faitli should be again baptized. 
 
 13. Anathematizes those who deny that baptized infants are to be 
 reckoned amongst the faithful. 
 
 14. Anathematizes those who maintain that persons baptized in 
 infancy should, when they come of age, be asked whether they are 
 willing to ratify the promise made in their name. 
 
 Secondly, the decree of reformation, containing fifteen chapters 
 relative to the election of bishops, pluralities, &c. 
 
 In a congregation which followed, the question of transferring the 
 council to some other place was discussed, a report having been got 
 up that a contagious disease had broken out in Trent. 
 
 Accordingly, in the eighth session, a decree was read, transferring 
 the council to Bologna, which was approved by about Session viil. 
 two-tliirds of the assembly; the rest, who were mostly March ii. 
 subjects of the emperor, strongly opposed the translation. 
 
 In the first session held at Bologna, the legates and thirty-four 
 bishops were present; a decree was read postponing all ^t Bologna, 
 business to the next session, to be holden on the 2d of Session IX. 
 June ensuing, in order to give time to the prelates to ar- ■'^P'"'!^!. 
 rive. 
 
 On the 2d of June, however, there were but six archbishops, 
 thirty-six bishops, one abbot, and two generals of orders Session X. 
 present; the rest continuing to sit at Trent. It was deemed -^""^ -■ 
 advisable to prorogue the session to the fifteenth of September ensu- 
 ing ; but the quarrel between the pope and the emperor having now 
 assumed a more serious aspect, the council remained suspended for 
 four years. 
 
 In 1549, Paul III. died, and the Cardinal del Monte having been 
 elected in his place, under the name of Julius III., he issued a j^^q 
 bull, dated March 14, 1551, directing the re-establishment of 
 the council of Trent, and naming as his legates, Marcellus Crescen- 
 tio, cardinal, Sebastian Pighino, archbishop of Siponto, and Aloysius 
 Lipomanes, bishop of Verona. 
 
 Accordingly, the next session was held at Trent, in May, 1551, 
 when Cardinal Crescentio caused a decree to be read, to ji^i Trent, 
 the eflfect that the council was re-opened, and that the Session XI. 
 next session should be held on the 1st of September fol- Mayi,i55i. 
 lowing. 
 
 In the next session, an exhortation was read in the name of the 
 presidents of the council, in which the power and author- Session Xil. 
 ity of oecumenical councils were extolled ; then followed ^^V'-- ^• 
 a decree declaring that the subject of the Eucharist should be treated 
 of in the next session. James Amyot, ambassador of Henry II. of 
 France, presented a letter from his master, which, after some oppo- 
 sition was read : it explained why no French bishop had been per- 
 mitted to attend the council. Afterwards. Amvot, on the part of 
 
XXX SUMMARY OF TilE ACTS AND 1551. 
 
 Henry, made a formal protest against the council of Trent, in which 
 he complained of the conduct of Julius HI. 
 "^^ In the congregation following, the question of the holy Eucharist 
 was treated of, and ten articles selected from the doctrine of Zuing- 
 lius and Luther were proposed for examination. 
 
 In another congregation the question of reform was discussed, the 
 subject of episcopal jurisdiction was brought forward, and a regula- 
 tion drawn up upon appeals. 
 r* The decree concerning the Eucharist was read on the 13th of Sep- 
 ' Session XIII. tember, and was contained in eight chapters. The coun- 
 Oct. 11. f,\\ declares, in chapter 1, that after the consecration of 
 
 the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, very God, and very Man, 
 is verily, really, and substantially contained under the species of these J 
 sensible objects. 
 
 3. That each kind contains the same as they both together do, for 
 thtit Jesus Christ is entire under the species of bread, and under the 
 smallest particle of that species, as also under the species of wine, 
 and under the smallest portion of it. i 
 
 4. That in the consecration of the bread and wine, there is made J 
 a conversion and change of the whole substance of the bread into the 
 substance of our Lord's bod}', and a change of the whole substance 
 of the wine into that of his blood, the which change has been fitly 
 and properly termed " transubstantiation." 
 
 5. That the worship of Latria is rightly rendered by the faithful to 
 the holy sacrament of the altar. 
 
 To this decree there were added eleven canons, anathematizing 
 
 those who held certain heretical doctrines on the subject of the holy 
 
 Eucharist, and especially those contained in the ten articles proposed 
 
 Vi for examination in the congregation held September 2. 
 
 ^"~- Afterwards, a decree of reformation, containing eight chapters, 
 
 was read ; the subject of it was the jurisdiction of bishops. 
 
 In a congregation held after this session, twelve articles on the 
 subjects of penance and extreme unction were examined, taken from 
 the writings of Luther and his disciples in a subsequent congrega- 
 tion. The decrees and canons upon the subject were brought for- 
 ward, together with a decree in filleen chapters on reform. 
 Session XIV. In the fourteenth session the decree upon penance, in 
 Nov. 25. nine chapters, was read. 
 
 It states 1, that oar Lord chiefly instituted the sacrament of pen- 
 ance when he breathed upon his disciples, saying, " Receive ye the 
 Holy Ghost," &c. 
 
 2. That in this sacrament the priest exercises the function of judge. 
 
 3. That the form of the sacrament, in which its force and virtue 
 resides, is contained in the words of the absolution pronounced by 
 the priest, "Ego te absolve," &c. ; that the penitential acts are con- 
 trition, confession, and satisfaction, which are, as it were, the matter 
 of the sacrament. 
 
 6. As to the minister of this sacrament, it declares that the power 
 of binding and loosing is, by Christ's appointment, in the priest only; 
 that this power consists not merely in declaring the remission of sins, 
 but in the judicial act by which they are remitted. 
 
1562. DECREES OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. XXXl 
 
 9. That we can make satisfaction to Cod by self-imposed inflic- 
 tions, and by those which the priest prescribes, as well as by bear- 
 ing patiently and with a penitential spirit the temporal sorrows and 
 afflictions which God sends to us. 
 
 In conformity with tiiis decree, fifteen canons were published, con- 
 demning those who maintained the opposite doctrines. 
 
 After this, the decree upon the subject of extreme unction, in three 
 chapters, was read ; and the council then agreed upon four canons on 
 the subject, with an anathema. 
 
 1. Anathematizes those who teach that extreme unction is not a 
 true sacrament instituted by Jesus Christ. 
 
 2. Anathematizes those who teach that it does not confer grace, 
 nor remit sin, nor comfort the sick. 
 
 3. Anathematizes those w^ho teach that the Roman rite maybe set 
 at nought without sin. 
 
 4. Anathematizes those who teach that the -rrQeaftvTeQoi, of whom 
 St. James speaks, are old persons, and not priests. 
 
 After this the question of reform was treated, and fourteen chap- 
 ters upon the subject of episcopal jurisdiction were published. 
 
 In the fifteenth session a decree was read, to the effect that the 
 decrees upon the subject of the sacrifice of the mass and Session xv 
 the sacrament of orders, which were to have been read •^^"- 2^- ^^^2. 
 in this session, would be deferred until March 19, under the pretence 
 that the Protestants, to whom a new safe-conduct had been granted, 
 might be able to attend. 
 
 In the following congregation the subject of marriage was treated 
 of, and thirty-three articles thereon were submitted for examina- 
 tion. 
 
 The disputes which arose between the ambassadors of the emperor 
 and the legates of the pope produced another cessation of the council. 
 The papal party were not sorry when the report of a war between the 
 emperor and Maurice, elector of Saxony, caused most of the bishops 
 to leave Trent. 
 
 The chief part of the prelates having then departed, the pope's 
 bull, declaring the council to be suspended, was read in Session xvi 
 the sixteenth session. This suspension lasted for nearly ^'^>' ^^ 
 ten years ; but on the 29th November, 1560, a bull was published by 
 Pius IV. (who succeeded to the papacy upon the death of Julius III. 
 in 1555), for the re-assembling of the council at Trent on the follow- 
 ing Easter Day ; but from various causes the re-opening of the coun- 
 cil did not take place until the year 1562. 
 
 On the 18th of January in that year the seventeenth session was 
 held; one hundred and twelve bishops and several theo- Session xvri. 
 logians being present. The bull of convocation and a "^^"- ^^' ^^^^ 
 decree for the continuation of the council were read ; the words 
 *'^ proponcntibus leffatis,^' inserted in it, passed in spite of the opposi- 
 tion of four Spanish bishops, who represented that the clause, being 
 a novelty, ought not to be admitted, and that it was, moreover, in- 
 jurious to the authority of fficumenical councils. 
 
 In a congregation held January 27, the legates proposed the ex- 
 amination of the books of heretics and the answers to them composed 
 
XXXll SUMMARY OF THE ACTS AND 1562. 
 
 by Catholic authors, and requested the fathers to take into their con- 
 sideration the construction of a catalogue of prohibited works. 
 
 In the next session the pope's brief, which left to the council 
 Session XVIII. the care of drawing up a 'list of prohibited books, was 
 Feb. 26. read. 
 
 The congregations held on the 2d, 3d, and 4th of March, deliber- 
 ated about granting a safe-conduct to the Protestants, and a decree 
 upon the subject was drawn up. 
 
 On the 11th of March a general congregation was held, in which 
 twelve articles of reform were proposed for examination, which gave 
 rise to great disputes, and were discussed in subsequent congregations. 
 
 In the nineteenth session nothing whatever passed requiring notice, 
 Session XIX. and the publication of the decrees was postponed to the 
 May 14. following session. Immediately after this session the 
 
 French ambassadors arrived. 
 
 On the 26th May, a congregation was held to receive the Ambas- 
 sador of France. The Sieur de Pibrac, in the name of the king his 
 master, in a long discourse, exhorted the prelates to labour at the 
 work of reformation, promising that the king would, if needful, sup- 
 port and defend them in the enjoyment of their liberty. 
 
 In th& 20th session, the promoter of the council replied to the dis- 
 Session XX. course delivered by Pibrac in the last congregation ; after 
 June 4. which a decree was read, proroguing the session to the 
 
 16th July. 
 
 In the following congregation five articles upon the subject of the 
 Holy Eucharist were proposed for examination. 
 
 The question about the obligation of residence was also again 
 mooted : but the Cardinal of Mantua objected to its discussion as en- 
 tirely alien from the subject before them, promising, at the same 
 time, that it should be discussed at a fitting season. In subsequent 
 congregations held from the 9th to the 23d of June, the subject of 
 the five articles was discussed. 
 
 In a congregation held July 14th, the decree in four chapters on 
 the communion was examined. 
 
 On the 21st session, the four chapters on doctrine were read, in 
 Session XXI. which the council declared, that neither laymen nor ec- 
 Juiy 16. clesiastics (not consecrating) are bound by any divine 
 
 precept to receive the sacrament of the eucharist in both kinds ; that 
 the sufficiency of communion in one kind cannot be doubted, without 
 injury to faith. Four canons in conformity with this doctrine were 
 then read : 
 
 1. Against those who maintain that all the faithful are under an 
 obligation to receive in both kinds. 
 
 2. Airainst those who maintain that the ('hurch hath not sufficient 
 grounds for refusing the cup to the laity. 
 
 3. Against those who deny that our Lord is received entire under 
 each species. 
 
 4. Against those who maintain that the eucharist is necessary to 
 children before they come to the exercise of their reason. 
 
 Subsequently nine chapters on reform were read, having regard to 
 the duties of bishops, education of clerks, &c. 
 
1562. DECREES OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. xxxiii 
 
 A few days after this session, the Italian bishops received a letter 
 from the pope, in which he declared that he was far from wishing to 
 hinder the discussion of the question concerning the nature of the 
 obligation to residence ; that he desired the council to enjoy entire 
 freedom, and that every one should speak according as his conscience 
 directed him ; at the same time, however, he wrote to his nuncio 
 Visconti, bidding him take secure measures for stifling the discus- 
 sion, and for sending it to the holy see for decision. 
 
 In the congregations held after the twenty-first session, the ques- 
 tion was concerning the sacrifice of the mass. All the theologians 
 agreed, unanimously, that the mass ought to be regarded as a true 
 sacrifice under the new covenant, in which Jesus Christ is offered 
 under the sacramental species. One of their arguments was this, 
 that Jesus Christ was priest after the order of Melchisedec, the lat- 
 ter offered bread and wine, and that, consequently, the priesthood of 
 Jesus Christ includes a sacrifice of bread and wine ! 
 
 In a congregation held about the 18th of August, the archbishop of 
 Prague presented a letter from the emperor, in which he made ear- 
 nest entreaties that the cup might be conceded to the laity. This 
 delicate subject was reserved for special consideration in a subsequent 
 congregation. 
 
 The decree on the subject of the sacrifice of the mass being now 
 completed, the fathers began next to consider the subject of commu- 
 nion in both kinds. Three opinions principally prevailed amongst the 
 prelates ; 1, was to refuse the cup entirely ; 2, to grant it upon cer- 
 tain conditions to be approved of by the council ; and 3, to leave the 
 settlement of the matter to the pope. 
 
 On the eve of the twenty-second session a decree passed, by 
 which it was left to the pope to act as he thought best in the matter, 
 the numbers being ninety-eight for the decree, and thirty-eight against 
 it. The discussion lasted altogether from the 15th of August to the 
 16th of September. 
 
 In the twenty-second session, one hundred and eighty prelates, 
 with the ambassadors and legates, were present. The Session xxi I. 
 doctrinal decree touching the sacrifice of the mass, in ^'^P^- ^"• 
 nine chapters, was published. Then followed a decree concerning 
 what should be observed or avoided in the celebration of mass. Priests 
 were forbidden to say mass out of the prescribed hours, and otherwise 
 than Church form prescribed. • 
 
 In the third place the decree of reformation was read, containing 
 eleven chapters, on bishoprics, dispensations, &c. 
 
 With respect to the concession of the cup to the laity, the council 
 declared, by another decree, that it judged it convenient to leave the 
 decision to the pope, who would act in the matter according as his 
 wisdom should direct him. 
 
 In a congregation certain articles relating to the reformation of 
 morals were discussed, and the theologians were instructed to exam- 
 ine eight articles on the subject of the sacrament of orders. 
 
 This occupied many congregations ; in one of which a large num- 
 ber of the prelates, chiefly Spaniards, demanded that there should be 
 added to the 7th canon, concerning the institution of bishops, a clause 
 
XXXIV SUMMARY OF THE ACTS AND 1563. 
 
 declaring the episcopate to be of Divine right. An attempt was 
 made to stifle the discussion, but John Fonseca, a Spanish theologian, 
 amongst others, entered boldly upon the subject, declaring that it was 
 not, and could not be forbidden to speak upon the matter. He main- 
 tained that bishops were instituted by Jesus Christ, and that by 
 Divine right, and not merely by a right conferred by the pope. The 
 discussion of this question proved highly disagreeable at Rome, and 
 the legates received instructions on no account to permit it to be 
 brought to a decision. 
 
 However, in subsequent congregations the dispute was renewed 
 with warmth: in the congregation of the- 13th October, the Arch- 
 bishop of Granada insisted upon the recognition of the institution of 
 bishops, and their superiority to priests. Jure Divino. 
 
 The same view was taken in the following congregation by the 
 Archbishop of Braga and the Bishop of Segovia ; and no less than 
 fifty-three prelates, out of one hundred and thirty-one present, voted 
 in favour of the recognition of the Divine institution and jurisdiction 
 of bishops. According to Paolo, the number amounted to fifty-nine. 
 The dispute was, however, by no means ended. On the 20th the 
 Jesuit Lainez, at the instigation of the legates, delivered a speech in 
 opposition to the view taken by the Spanish bishops, denying alto- 
 gether that the institution and jurisdiction of bishops were of Divine 
 right. 
 
 All this time so little progress had been made with the canons and 
 decrees, that when the 26th of November, the day fixed for holding 
 the 23d session, arrived, it was found necessary to prorogue it. 
 After this, in the following congregations, the subject of the Divine 
 right of bishops was again discussed, when the French bishops de- 
 clared in favour of the views held by the Spaniards. 
 
 The pope, in order to elude the difficulty in which he was placed 
 1563 ^y ^^^^ demand of the Spanish and French bishops, that the 
 " Divine right of bishops should be inserted in the 7th chapter, 
 sent a form for the approval of the council, in which it was declared 
 that "bishops held the. principal place in the Church, but in depend- 
 ence upon the pope." This, however, did not meet with approval, 
 and, after a long contest, it was agreed to state it thus — that " they 
 held the principal place in the Church under the pope,''"' instead of in 
 dependence upon him. 
 
 However, a still warmer contest arose upon the chapter in which 
 it was said that the pope had authority to feed and govern the Uni- 
 versal Church. This the Galilean and Spanish bishops would by no 
 means consent to, alleging that the Church is the first tribunal under 
 Christ. They even more strenuously denied that " the pope pos- 
 sessed all the authority of Jesus Christ," notwithstanding all the lim- 
 itations and explanations which were added to it. 
 
 On the 5th of February the legates proposed for consideration 
 eight articles on the subject of marriage, extracted from heretical 
 books. 
 
 The question was afterwards discussed, whether it was advisable, 
 under the circumstances of the times, to remove the restriction laid 
 upon the clergy not to marry ? this was in consequence of a demand 
 
1563. DECREES OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. XXXV 
 
 to that effect made by the duke of Bavaria. Strong opposition was 
 made to this demand, and many blamed the legates lor permitting the 
 discussion, and maintained that if this licence were granted the whole 
 ecclesiastical hierarchy would fall to pieces, and the pope be reduced . 
 to the simple condition of bishop of Rome ; since the clergy, having / 
 their affections set upon their families and country ^wovXiX be inevit- 
 ably detached from that close dependence upon the holy see, in which 
 its present strength mainly consists. 
 
 In the meantime, the Cardinal of Mantua had died, and the pope 
 despatched two new legates to the council. Cardinal Morone and Car- 
 dinal Navagier. The French continued their importunities on the 
 subject of reformation, and were as constantly put off upon one pre- 
 text or another, by the legates, and thus much time was wasted. 
 
 All this time the contests about the institution and jurisdiction of 
 bishops, and the Divine obligation of residence, continued ; and at 
 last, in order to accommodate matters, and bring things to an end, it 
 was resolved to omit altogether all notice of the institution of bishops, 
 and of the authority of the pope, and to erase from the decree con- 
 cerning residence whatever was obnoxious to either party. They 
 then fell to work upon the decree concerning the reformation of 
 abuses, and at last, on the 15th of July, the twenty-third Session xxiii. 
 session was held. 208 prelates, besides the legates and •'"^>' ^^■ 
 other ecclesiastics, were present. The decrees and canons drawn up 
 during the past congregation were brought before the council. 
 
 First, The decree upon the sacrament of orders, in four chapters, 
 was read. 
 
 Then were published eight Canons on the Sacrament of orders, 
 which anathematized, 
 
 1. Those who deny a visible priesthood in the Church. 
 
 2. Those who maintain that the priesthood is the only order. 
 
 3. Those who deny that ordination is a true sacrament. 
 
 4. Those who deny that the Holy Spirit is conferred by ordina- 
 tion. 
 
 5. Those who deny that the unction given at ordination is neces- 
 sary. 
 
 6. Those who deny that there is a hierarchy composed of bishops, 
 priests, and ministers, in the Catholic Church. 
 
 7. Those who deny the superiority of bishops to priests, or that 
 they alone can perform certain functions which priests cannot, and 
 those who maintain that orders conferred without the consent of the 
 people are void. 
 
 8. Those who deny that bishops called by the authority of the 
 pope, qui auctoritate Romani ponti/icis assuinuntur, are true and 
 lawful bishops. 
 
 After this, the decree of reformation was read, containing eighteen 
 chapters on the residence of bishops, and on other ecclesiastical 
 affairs. 
 
 In the following congregations the decrees concerning marriage 
 were discussed, and it was unanimously agreed that the law of celi-^ 
 bacy should be continued binding upon the clergy. 
 
 Moreover, twenty articles of reformation, which the legates pro- 
 
xxxvi SUMMARY OF THE ACTS AND 1563. 
 
 posed, were examined ; and during the discussion, letters were re- 
 ceived from the king of France, in which he declared his disappoint- 
 ment at the meagre measure of ecclesiastical reform proposed in these 
 articles, and his extreme dissatisfaction at the chapter interfering with 
 the rights of princes. Shortly after, nine of the French bishops re- 
 turned home, so that fourteen only remained. On the 22d of Sep- 
 tember, a congregation was held, in which the ambassador Du Fer- 
 rier spoke so warmly of the utter insufficiency of the articles of re- 
 form which the legates had proposed, and of their conduct altogether, 
 that the congregation broke up suddenly in some confusion. 
 
 To fill up the time intervening before the twenty-fourth session, 
 the subjects of indulgences, purgatory, and the worship of saints and 
 images, was introduced for discussion, in order that decrees on the 
 subject might be prepared for presentation in the twenty-fifth session. 
 Session XXIV. On the 11th of November, the 24th session was held, in 
 Nov. 11. which the decree of doctrine, and the canons relating to 
 
 the sacrament of marriage, were read. There are twelve canons, 
 with anathemas, upon the subject. 
 
 1. Anathematizes those who maintain that marriage is not a true 
 sacrament. 
 
 2. Anathematizes those who maintain that polygamy is permitted 
 to Christians. 
 
 3. Anathematizes those who maintain that marriage is unlawful 
 only within the degrees specified in Leviticus. 
 
 4. Anathematizes those who deny that the Church has power to 
 add to the impediments to marriage. 
 
 5. Anathematizes those who maintain that the marriage tie is 
 broken by heresy, ill-conduct, or voluntary absence on either side. 
 
 6. Anathematizes those who deny that a marriage contracted, but 
 not consummated, is annulled by either of the parties taking the re- 
 ligious vows. 
 
 7. Anathematizes those who maintain that the Church errs in 
 h )lding that the marriage tie is not broken by adultery. 
 
 8. Anathematizes those who maintain that the Church errs in sep- 
 arating married persons for a time, in particular cases. 
 
 9. Anathematizes those who maintain that men in holy orders, or 
 persons who have taken the religious vow, may marry. 
 
 10. Anathematizes those who maintain that the married state is 
 preferable to that of virginity. 
 
 11. Anathematizes those who maintain that it is superstitious to 
 forbid marriages at certain seasons. 
 
 12. Anathematizes those who maintain that the cognizance of 
 matrimonial causes does not belong to the ecclesiastical authorities. 
 
 After this, a decree of reformation was published, relating to clan- 
 destine marriages, impediments to marriage, &c., containing ten 
 chapters. 
 
 After this a decree, containing twenty-one articles, upon the reform 
 of the clergy was read. 
 
 Session XXV. Thc last scssion was held on the 3d December, 1536; 
 and last. Dec. in it the decrees concerning purgatory, the invocation of 
 3d and 4th. saints, and the worship of images and relics were read. 
 
1564. DECREES OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. ^ XXXVll 
 
 1. Of purgatory. Declares that tlic Cliurch lia.s always tauglit, ^ 
 and still teaches, that there is a purgatory, and that the souls which 
 are detained there are assisted by the suflrages of the faithful and by 
 the sacrifice of the mass. 
 
 2. Of the invocation of saints. Orders bishops and others con- 
 cerned in the teaching of the people, to instruct tlicm concerning the 
 invocation of saints, the honour due to their relics, and the lawful 
 use of images, according to the doctrine of the Church, the consent 
 
 of the fathers, and the decrees of the councils ; to teach them that . 
 the saints ofier up prayers for men, and that it is useful to invoke j 
 them, and to have recourse to their prayers and help, &c. 
 
 On the subject of images, the council teaches that those of our 
 Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and of the saints, are to be placed in 
 churches ; that they ought to receive due veneration, not because 
 they have any divinity or virtue in them, but because honour is thus 
 reflected npon those whom they represent. 
 
 The council then proceeds to anathematize all who hold or teach 
 any contrary doctrine. 
 
 These decrees were followed by one of reformation, consisting of 
 twenty-two chapters, which relate to the regular clergy. 
 
 A decree was also published upon the subject of indulgences, to 
 this effect, that the Church, having received from Jesus Christ the 
 power to grant indulgences, and having, through all ages, used that 
 power, the council declares that their use shall be retained, as being y^ 
 very salutary to Christian persons, and approved by the holy coun- 
 cils ; it then anathematizes all who maintain that indulgences are use- 
 less, or that the Church has no power to grant them. 
 
 The list of books to be proscribed was referred to the pope, as also 
 were the catechism, missal, and breviaries. 
 
 Then the secretary, standing up in the midst of the assembly, de- 
 manded of the fathers whether they were of opinion that the council 
 should be concluded, and that the legates should request the pope's 
 confirmation of the decrees, &c. The answer in the affirmative was 
 unanimous, with the exception of three. The cardinal president 
 Morone, then dissolved the assembly amidst loud acclamations. 
 
 In a congregation held on the following Sunday, the fathers affixed 
 their signatures to the number of two hundred and fifty-five; viz., 
 four legates, two cardinals, three patriarchs, twenty-five archbishops, 
 one hundred and sixty-eight bishops, thirty-nine proctors, seven ab- 
 bots, and several generals of orders. 
 
 The acts of the council were confirmed by a bull, bearing date 
 Jan. 6, 1564. The Venetians were the first to receive the Confirmed. 
 Tridentine decrees. The kings of France, Spain, Portu- Jan. 6, 1564. 
 gal, and Poland, also received them in part, and they were published 
 and received in Flanders, in the kingdom of Naples, and Sicily, in 
 part of Germany, in Hungary, Austria, Dalmatia, and some part of 
 South America. 
 
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 If it be our highest civil privilege and indefeasible right to 
 have law deduced from the purest know^n fountains of morality, 
 and enforced by the strongest knovi^n sanctions, the British con- 
 stitution is deservedly most dear to us. For its morality is that 
 of the Holy Scriptures, and the sanction of its laws is that of 
 the Divine Authority as revealed there. 
 
 Viewed in this merely civU light, all religious bodies which 
 proclaim the Holy Scriptures to be the sole and sufficient rule 
 of faith and duty, whether they be endowed by the State or not, 
 are eminently conservative of our civil constitution. For the 
 more widely spread, and the more powerfully inculcated the 
 principles, the motives, and the sanctions of the Bible, the better 
 our warranty for security without despotism, liberty without 
 hcentiousness, mutual toleration without infidelity and indif- 
 ference. 
 
 The Church of E.ome does not rest on that foundation. Its 
 influence can not be deemed conservative of our civil constitu- 
 tion, yet it is eagerly bent on having a powerful organization 
 within our commonwealth. Its success must prove the reverse 
 of conservative to all that we hold most dear — to all that we 
 can most legitimately claim. Its morality has not the purity 
 of Holy Scripture, and even where most pure, being sanctioned, 
 not by God addressing us in his Word, but by a body weakened 
 by a thousand associations with human fallibility and corrup- 
 tion, it has of necessity a comparatively feeble purchase on the 
 conscience and the life. Hence, wherever it reigns, no security 
 without despotism, no liberty without licentiousness, no mutual 
 toleration without infidelity and indifference. 
 
 To acquaint ourselves, then, with this antagonistic organiza- 
 tion of the Roman hierarchy, its doctrines, its laws, its adminis- 
 
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. XXXIX 
 
 tration, may be regarded as heiicefortli an indispensable part of 
 a sound and complete education. 
 
 And if important in a mere civil point of view, how infmitely 
 more so in the religious and theological ? 
 
 For this end it is not enough that we know something of the 
 Decrees and Canons of the last solemn Council of the Roman 
 Church, and of the Catechism drawn up and published after 
 its close. New translations of both have lately issued from the 
 London press, ^ and testify to the interest widely felt in the sub- 
 ject. It is still more necessary that the history of that assem- 
 bly which, after having both added to and taken from the Word 
 of God, characteristically closed its sittings ^^ith reiterated 
 anathemas to all who diflered from it, should be known, the 
 vagueness and variableness of its doctrines exposed, and the ten- 
 deucy of its errors to gather force with time demonstrated by 
 the advance made in some of the worst of them since. 
 
 I had long meditated some such work, when that of M. Bun- 
 GENER was put into my hands by a valued relative. It came 
 highly recommended, and at once recommended itself by a clear- 
 ness, truthfulness, and vigour in the narrative, an acuteness and 
 terseness in the reasoning, and a spirit of Christian fidelity and 
 charity, which I am sure my countrymen will appreciate, if I 
 have at all succeeded m doing it justice in the translation. 
 
 It was no small encouragement, that, though personally un- 
 acquainted with the author, happening to learn how I was en- 
 gaged, he wrote me expressing his satisfaction, and offering to 
 send me his last notes and additions. These I have since re- 
 ceived and incorporated, so that the work in English is more 
 complete in this respect than the original one in French. 
 
 David D. Scott. 
 St. Axdre-v^-s, May, 1852. 
 
 * The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, -with a Supple- 
 ment, containing the condemnations of the early Reformers, and other 
 matters relating to the Council. Literally translated into English, by 
 Theodore Alois Buckley, B. A., of Christ Church, Oxford. London, 
 185L 
 
 The Catechism of the Council of Trent. Translated into English, 
 with Notes, by the same Author. London, 1852. 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 The Author of this History had been for some time engaged 
 on it, when the newspapers informed him that preparations 
 were in progress for celebrating, in 1845, throughout all the 
 Churches of Roman Catholicity, the three hundredth anniver- 
 sary of the opening of the Council of Trent. 
 
 This news not a little surprised him. He could hardly com- 
 prehend how an appeal could thus be made to so stormy an 
 epoch. E,ome is surely too much interested in having the De- 
 crees of Trent regarded as oracles, to be in the least desirous to 
 have their history too narrowly scrutinized. Amid the chaos 
 which we were engaged m elucidating, and which we could see 
 at a glance was replete with matter as little creditable to papal 
 authority as it was to that of Roman Catholicism in general, 
 the Church of Rome, thought we, must have strangely reck- 
 oned on the ignorance of some, and on the infatuation of others, 
 when she could present herself ultroneously to be tried by such 
 an ordeal. 
 
 There was some risk, in fact, of the trial proving a rough one. 
 Some popular author might take up the subject. His book, 
 which he could easily render amusing without making it untrue, 
 might make an immense impression. The Council of Trent 
 began to be talked of in the social circles of Europe, and this 
 surely was not what had been thought desirable when instruc- 
 tions were issued for having it recalled to men's minds. 
 
 The anniversary came. Nobody took advantage of it to tell 
 the world what that famous assembly was. It would seem 
 that the Church of Rome had herself taken it to heart, and had 
 seriously pondered the subject. Whether the festival was coun- 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE. xli 
 
 termanded, we do not know ; we have had no news as to that. 
 At Rome, in particular, not a word was said about it. It was 
 the day on which the Pope had an interview with the Emperor 
 of Russia. 
 
 Be that as it may, we proceeded with our task, and now 
 commit it to the pubhc, 
 
 "We will not say that there lias been any generally felt want 
 of it. To say this, would not only be, as it always is, ambi- 
 tious; it would be untrue. Who now dreams of the Council 
 of Trent ? Truly, the public has something else to do than to 
 ransack the acts of a council. 
 
 But although the want of some such work may not be gener- 
 ally felt, it is felt, nevertheless, by some, and it would be felt by 
 many, w^ere the idea but suggested to them, and w^ere they but 
 oflered the means of satisfying it without too much trouble. 
 Statesmen, public WTiters, numbers of Roman Catholics, Pro- 
 testants of all the Churches which Roman Catholicism now ren- 
 ders restless and uneasy, alike in religion, politics, and j^norals, 
 by the feverish revival to which it calls our attention — all at 
 this day are interested in knowing what took place, and what 
 was done, in the assembly at which that Roman Catholicism 
 was definitively constituted. 
 
 Father Paul Sarpi and Pallavicini, the only two historians of 
 the Council down to this day, are little read, and we can not 
 well expect them to be read. Differing profoundly in their 
 qualities and in their views, they are but too much alike in their 
 faults. In both we find dilTuseness and dryness ; no plan, no 
 philosophy : the absence, in fine, of all that is now looked for 
 in a historian. Sarpi's work is nothing better than a long satire, 
 lifeless and insipid ; often, too, inaccurate and unfair. Pallavici- 
 ni's is but a long and dull apology ; more accurate in its details, 
 but feeble in its reasonings, and, in the aggregate, childish and 
 false. Sarpi has been put on the Index Expurgatorius ; Palla- 
 vicini ought to be there. His puerilities, his absurd reasonings, 
 often say more than the attacks of the opponent whom he thinks 
 he is refuting. After having read the former, who blames every 
 thing, you dread being too severe ; after having read the latter, 
 who approves every thing, you are reassured. The weakness 
 of the defence clearly enough attests the weakness of the cause. 
 You feel that severity is only justice. 
 
xlii AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 We would fain hope that we have been just. The pretensions 
 of the Council of Trent, and of its foolhardy heirs, authorizes our 
 sifting its claims. But when will they be sifted by those who 
 have been fashioned into obedience to them ? A colossus with 
 feet of clay — those on whom it treads might make its fragihty 
 better known than we can do, and might labor more effectually 
 toward its downfall. 
 
HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 PRELBHNARIES OF THE COUNCIL: ITS ORGANIZATION 
 
 AND AUTHORITY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 (1520-1545.) 
 
 UNIVERSAL CRY FOR A COUNCIL : OPPOSITION OF THE POPES. 
 THE COUNCIL OF TRENT AT LAST SUMMONED. 
 
 Introduction — First wishes — Saint Bernard and Luther — Awakening — 
 Antipathies — Leo X. — Illusion — Twenty-four years to wait — Adrian 
 VI. — His theory of Indulgences — Projected reforms — Projected ex- 
 terminations — The Popedom in Germany — Admissions made by the 
 Pope — Tiie hundred grievances — Clement VII. and the Diet of Nu- 
 remberg — Counter-diet — Charles V. and Francis I. — Battle of Pavia 
 — Two letters — The Colonnas — The Throne and the Tiara — The Con- 
 stable de Bourbon — The Sack of Rome — Hypocrisy — Reconciliation. 
 — Interview at Bologna — The Augsburg Confession — Christ and Be- 
 lial — There is no fear of the heavens falling — The League of Smal- 
 kalde — The Turks — Geneva — Paul IIL — Ten years yet — The Sons 
 of the Pope — Negotiations — Difficulties — Mantua — Vicenza — Trent 
 — ^War breaks out again — Hostilities cease — The Council is about to 
 open — Retrospect. 
 
 The history of a council is not confined to the circumstances 
 amid which it was called, and which have marited its proceed- 
 ings. It properly commences with the first of those expressions 
 of the general feeling which led to its being assembled, and with 
 the wants which it had to satisfy. 
 
 But these wants and those feelings may possibly have had 
 their nature insensibly modified by time. If there are ideas in 
 which the essence remains although the forms vary, there are 
 those also in which the essence changes without any alteration 
 having taken place in the forms. Liberty, for example, has 
 hardly any thing now in common with wliat was once under- 
 stood by the word ; and when our modern demagogues speak of 
 
 A 
 
ti HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 a Leonidas. or of a William Tell, it is most frequently a mere 
 play of words. 
 
 When Luther spoke of a council for the reformation of the 
 faith, was he, as Bossuet^ alleges, pursuing quite a different path 
 from St. Bernard, when, four centuries earlier, he called for a 
 reformation in discipline ? AYe think not. " ATho Avill give 
 me," exclaimed the Abbot of Clairvaux,^ " who will give me 
 the satisfaction, ere I die, of seeing the Church in the condition 
 she was in in her early days I" But in the twelfth centur\', at 
 an epoch essentially practical, and with a man who had above all 
 things a genius lor organization, the perfect ideal of the Church 
 was also, above all things, an ideal of order, of practical faith, 
 and of purity of manners. 
 
 It is thus that we should account for the faith being apparent- 
 ly left out of consideration in that appeal to antiquity. It re- 
 mains to be seen w^iether serious attempts to answer that appeal 
 could have left the question on the domain where people thought 
 they had placed it. 
 
 Attempts there were ; b ut seri oiis,. atternpts, or at least seri- 
 ously pursued, there were none. That the Councils of Basle 
 and Constance had jipt. answered the desire expressed of old by 
 St. Bernard, may be seen from the fact, that the nations had 
 not ceased to call for a reformation — a council, and that people 
 spoke generally as if nothing had as yet been done. 
 
 This being the case, can it be admitted that a serious, learned, 
 and impartial council, such, in fine, as the Bishop Durand de 
 Mende lixed the basis of at the beginnino: of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury^ — that such a council, even in the twelfth, would not have 
 been led off, in spite of itself, into the domain of the faith ? 
 And had it really entered on it with the desire of seeing the 
 Church again " such as she Avas in her first days ;" had it, in 
 harmony with that wish, frankly placed Scripture again above 
 all traditions, who will say that discipline and morals alone 
 would have appeared altered ? We are now about to have a 
 proof to the contrary almost at every page. 
 
 Nevertheless, this work, which so many councils had been 
 imable or unwilling to undertake, nations and doctors had been 
 silently accomplishing without being aware of it. The instinct 
 of the former, and the logic of the latter, equally revolted against 
 that strange abstraction, of a church infallible in its doctrines 
 yet increasingly fallible in its manners ; people had believed 
 
 ^ Variations, B. I. - Bernard, Epistle to Pope Eugeniu3 III. 
 
 ^ Tractatus de modo concilii gcncralis celehrandi. Reprinted at Bruges 
 in 1545, and dedicated by the Jurisconsult Probus to the Fathers of the 
 Council of Trent. 
 
Chap. I 15-21. LEO X. 8 
 
 that they were only {sighing lor a disciplinary relbrmation, and, 
 lo I a single shake was all that was required in order to the half 
 of Europe arousing itself from its lethargy, and sighing for a 
 reformation of the faith. 
 
 But, down to this time, t he very w^ j-^l fflU"^'^ '^^'^'' hateful ta 
 JLhe Church of Rome. In vain had it attempted to palm off a 
 deception', by itseTTadorning with that name some petty assem- 
 blies held in Italy by the Popes. Council, in the language of 
 Europe, no longer meant any thing short of general, universal 
 council. Rome struggled to put people off with courts of an 
 inferior grade, but from all other quarters there arose the cry for 
 the supreme court, the States-General of Christendom. 
 
 Pallavicini has endeavoured to prove that the popes were less 
 afraid of it than people said ; but truth wrests from him, from 
 time to time, admissions that more than suffice to overturn all 
 the rest. " Just as in the pupil of the eye, the smallest grain of 
 dust causes extreme uneasiness, so, when things of the highest 
 value are in agitation, the remotest dangers give occasion to the 
 cruellest alarms."^ Sarpi himself never said more or spoke bet- 
 ter. The breath of public opinion had set in motion enough of 
 those " grains of dust" so menacing to the eye of the popedom. 
 Could it proceed, then, and place itself without alarm in the 
 midst of the whirlwind ; Basle and Constance .had not allowed 
 it to entertain any doubt as to the immensity of the danger that 
 threatened it. 
 
 Be that as it may, when the question had undergone the 
 change that we have indicated, the Court of Rome seemed rec- 
 onciled for a moment to the idea of a council. On the field of 
 doctrine, it believed itself sure of victory. So iii fact it was. 
 iTor'arshigle bishop had as yet deserted it ; Leo X. would have 
 thought it a fine thing to reply to the Saxon monk, by the im- 
 posing voice of the whole Christian episcopate. This illusion 
 lasted but a short time ; and, to tell the truth, few had shared 
 it. Leo X.'s advisers were frightened at his confidence. They 
 were right. "Whatever importance dogmatic questions had ac- 
 quired, it was soon easy to see that people had not on that ac- 
 count laid aside their old complaints or their old longings. The 
 seculai- p rinces of Christendom spoke more than ever ci ^t^ctting 
 * liLmits to llu LiKToachments of the clergy ; their subjects talked 
 more than ever of their unwillingness tp^ieceive in future auy 
 buTmen of respectable character for their pastors ; and bishops 
 spoke, too, of insisting on the restoration of those rights of wEicL 
 Rome had gradually deprived them. In fine, Luther and his 
 friends, after having called so warmly for a couocUj^^had not 
 
 ^ Pallav., Tntrod. ch. x. 
 
4 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 been slow to add the expression of their desire, that it should 
 not be convoked or presided over, or directed by the Bishop of 
 Rome. To that the pope could only reply as a pope might be 
 expected to do : he caused him to be excommunicated. "^"* 
 
 Leo X. considered himself nevertheless as engaged, if not to 
 the Lutherans, at least to the princes who had supported their 
 first appeal. In 1521, and even before that, we see him occu- 
 pied about the selection of a city in which the council might be 
 conveniently held . But towards the close of that same year he 
 died, very far probably from suspecting that twenty-four years 
 would elapse before matters should be in a train for the accom- 
 plishment of such a purpose. 
 
 Adrian, his successor, was a man of honest intentions ; he 
 desired a reformation of abuses, but he desired to see it efTected. 
 by the pope ; as for reformation in matters of faith, he could not 
 conceive how any one could have so much as the idea of such a 
 thing. Li his eyes, it was all one to deny the mass and to deny 
 that the sun exists; and Luther, he thought, was less a heretic 
 than a madman. All the Roman dogmas had for a long time 
 been struck at by the axe of Wittemberg, when he believed that 
 they were still at the question of indulgences, and spoke of ar- 
 ranging the affair by giving explanations on that point. With 
 this view he proposed to proclaim to all Christendom, as pope, a 
 doctrine which he had taught before as a divine. According to 
 him,' the effects of the indulgence purchased or acquired, are 
 not absolute, but more or less good, more or less complete, ac- 
 cording to the dispositions of the penitent, and the manner in 
 which he performs the work to which the indulgence is attached. 
 A bull to this effect was said to be ready for publication ; but 
 alarm seized all the pope's circle, and not without reason, for 
 their master would thereby employ his own hand in opening the 
 door by which all Luther's ideas had been successively intro- 
 duced into Germany. In vain would the indulgences continue, 
 according to the bull, to be powerful means of salvation ; for it 
 is clear that if their virtue — it matters not in what degree — de- 
 pends on the dispositions of the believer, it is very difficult to 
 avoid the conclusion, either that the indulgence, received Avith- 
 out piety, is null, or that piety, from the moment that it is true 
 and solid, may dispense with the indulgence. In either case, it 
 is not easy to see what value indulgences can have by them- 
 selves, and what is, in reality, the power of granting them. We 
 shall have to return to this subject at another place. 
 
 The pope's counsellors, accordingly, resolved to leave the 
 question at rest. He confined himself to reforming, but very 
 
 ' Commentar}^ on the Fourth Book of The Sentences. 
 
Chap. I. 1522. PROJECTED REFORMS. 5 
 
 quietly, and with a most carel'iil avoidance of any apparent con- 
 cession, some part of what had been most criticised in the traffic 
 of indulgences. 
 
 This first step in the path of the reforms, by which he had 
 flattered himself that he was to stop the progress of Luthcran- 
 ism, was almost the last which he was to succeed in eflectino-. 
 "VVe shall also have to show elsewhere, with more details, what 
 the best-intcntioned popes had to encounter on every side in the 
 way of resistances, obstacles, and inextricable embarrassments. 
 There were then at_Ilome, according to Ranke's calculations, 
 two_thousand five hundred venal chaigeS) the property of titu- 
 lars, whose incomes ought to have corresponded to the interest 
 of the capital sunk in purchasing them. They were created in 
 batches, according as the exigencies of the treasury required ; one 
 day twenty-five secretaries, another fifty registrars, and all ac- 
 C]uircdJ<lic. right of living at the expense of Christendom ; unless 
 the purchase-money were repaid, which it would have required 
 enormous sums to do, they could not be touched ; to diminish 
 the revenue would therefore have been unjust. " Yes, dear 
 Leo," wrote Luther in 1520, " vou remind me of Daniel in the 
 den, and of Ezekiel among the scorpions. What could you do 
 alone against all those monsters ? Let us add, moreover, three 
 or four learned and virtuous cardinals : — Were you to Imzard 
 attempting a remedy for so many abuses, w^ould you not be 
 poisoned ? wretched Leo, seated on that accursed throne I 
 If St. Bernard felt compassion for his pope Eugenius, what 
 shall not be our lamentations for thee, after a farther four hun- 
 dred years' increase of corruption ! — Yes, thou shouldst have to 
 thank me for thy eternal salvation, were I to succeed in burst- 
 ing that dungeon, that hell in which thou dost find thyself im- 
 prisoned." Leo X. alas I did not think himself so very ill off 
 in that frightful prison. He did his best to embellish it with all 
 that was festive and magnificent ; with those farces,^ in short, 
 that had made it the most splendid and amusing Court in Eu- 
 rope ; but one may readily conceive what a pious and serious 
 man must have suffered, while lying in that den and unable to 
 extricate himself, on seeing it the prolific source of all the 
 Church's murmurs, and all its evils, and all its causes of ofience. 
 Adrian had not been three months on the throne when he 
 groaned to think how wanting he was in ability to accomplish 
 his fondly-cherished reforms ; and he had not been in it a year 
 when, in the bitterness of disappointment and vexation, the ex- 
 
 ' Pallavicini, B. I. eh. ii. It was to provide tlie money required for 
 these farces that Leo X. himself expected nearly twelve lumdred of the 
 offices we have nieutioned. 
 
6 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 termination of the Lutherans seemed the only feasible means of 
 having done with them. 
 
 He began, accordingly, to sound the dispositions of the princes 
 of Germany ; but he found them generally far from zealous in 
 a cause which they had long been accustomed to identify far 
 more with the interests of the pope than with those of religion 
 and the Church. Those sovereigns that were farthest removed 
 from Lutheranism, were less afflicted at its jDrogress than se- 
 cretly gratified at the disappointments of the Court of Rome ; 
 and old Germany had not ibrgottcn the humiliating spectacle 
 of her emperor grovelling for three days in the snow at the bot- 
 tom of the walls of Canossa.^ The remembrance of Henry lY, 
 weiofhed heavilv on all the electoral and ducal crowns. " Lu- 
 ther is a demon I" the pope exclaimed to them. " Ay," thought 
 iliey, "but he is an avenging demon." And they were in no 
 haste to lay an arrest on his proceedings. 
 
 The diet was about to meet.^ Did the pope hope to obtain 
 fiom the princes in a body, what each individually had all but 
 refused ? If he flattered himself with this prospect, he was soon 
 to be undeceived. Meanwhile he neglected nothing that could 
 help him to break with that hated past of which he felt him- 
 self the heir. All the disorders with which the Court of Rome 
 was reproached, he humbly confessed ; to every reasonable and 
 useful proposal he engaged to apply his endeavours ; but in spite 
 of all this, he did not even succeed in having his demand for an 
 anti-Lutheran crusade taken into consideration. These engage- 
 ments, it was seen, it was beyond his power to keep ; those con- 
 fessions were admitted to be sincere, but this was only one proof 
 more of the immensity of the evil. All he gained by them was 
 the censure of his Court, where he was openly charged with 
 weakness, cowardice, and folly ; and Pallavicini, though he uses 
 milder expressions, seems to have been sufficiently of this opin- 
 ion. He came to the conclusion that Adrian was a holy priest 
 but a wretched pope, and, in short, a poor creature. 
 
 The diet, accordingly, replied, that before proceeding to extir- 
 pate heresy, measures must be taken for extirpating that which 
 was the cause, or at least the occasion, of heresy. It had seen, 
 it said, with the liveliest satisfaction, that the pope seriously 
 thought of this. It had no doubt of a council-general being in 
 his eyes the first and the best of means. 
 
 But we have already seen that ouq. of the pope's reasons for 
 testifying to his readiness to undertake so many reforms, was 
 precisely this, that it might put it quite out of people's thoughts 
 
 ,.ti,»fc*jKf**-- 
 
 * lOrT. Disputes with Gregory VII. 
 ^ At Niu'pmberer, Xoveniber, 1522. 
 
t:HAP. I \yrj. projected exterminations, 7 
 
 to_d yy ai:j[ ^ of obtaiiiiii^^ them by lucuiia uf a cuLUicil. Strong in 
 tTie consciousness ot" liis good intentions, he had supposed hiriisclf 
 in a better position than any one else for preserving, in all its 
 fulness, the absolute jjower \vhich he confessed had been so 
 much abused. And the diet had not only asked for a council, 
 but a gor/iy, ^/i:Cdg,_aJLuLXlEnsirau. council, convoked as soon as 
 possible, and with the ernpeiui ;- coii.-cui, m one of tlie cities of 
 GrerFfniny ; thus (•()lll|)l•i^inL^ in the compass of a few line-, all 
 thTTTwas imt-^i roni lary to llie pope's \'ie\A's and iuterr.-ts. And 
 theT[talians could but say, with redoubled murmuring, " He has 
 got only what he has brought upon himself." 
 
 Ere long the secular princes proceeded to still greater lengths. 
 About twenty years previous to this period, the Emperor Max- 
 imilian had caused ten of the main grievances of Germany 
 against Rome to be put into a regular form ; and this document, 
 although expressed with much reserve, had produced an im- 
 mense sensation. The time for such reserve had now gone by. 
 Maximilian had noted ten grievances; the princes procet-deil to 
 note a hundred. This formed the famous Centum graven nhia 
 — a writing which. In tlie course of a f '\a' clays, fouiul its way 
 over all CT(n-many and Europe. 
 
 The djel had separated iu Marcli (lo2a). In September, 
 Adrian died^„ Enjoying the estCLnn of his enemies, but detested 
 byThosewho formed his immediate circle, he congratulated him- 
 selfoii his death-bed, on his escape from this labyrinth of tor- 
 menting rejections, and his friend Cardinal Enckenwort could 
 write upon his tomb — Here lies one, who in his hfe found 
 nothing more miserable than his being called to reign. ^ 
 
 The heir to his embarrassment began to pursue quite a ditfer- 
 ent course. As for obstacles, Clement VII. - was resolved to act 
 jis if he saAV them not ; abuses cbuiil never Ylraw a sigh from his 
 breast ; affronts he would contrive to devour in silence, at least 
 as long as he felt that he was not in a condition to revenge them. 
 Accordinglv, in anew ilicL^. he caused it to be seriously asked, 
 w hat people complained about ; and on being re fe rredTto the 
 him drccl grievances of the preceding ye aj;;^ he replied that he did 
 In ot Icnow wdiat people w^ere sayin g. He recollectcd Tlaid Uai-^ 
 dinal Campeggio, his ambassador, t hat a certain w riting of that 
 kind had been in circulation ; but he Avould have consi 'tpfrd'TTiiTr 
 sel f guilty of insulting thc~ princ^sni ^trrbuting such a pamphlet 
 to ti ioxoy As for the re st, added the legate, he w^as ready to give 
 every satistlictiou to the Germans ; a nd he, Campeggio, had full 
 powers to that efiect. He was then asked, where he proposed 
 
 ^ , . . Qui nihil sibi infelicius in vita tUixit, quam quod imperarot. 
 * Julian d^i Medici, cousin of Loo X. ^ Xurembertr, 15'21. 
 
8 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 to begin ? On this he showed the plan he meant to follow, com- 
 prising some good enough j^ eforms , hut confined a lmost entirely 
 to the 1n\vp r p.lRrp -y. The diet replied, that it was ridiculous 
 to think of healing the leaves, or at most gome branches, whi le 
 the tru nk~was le ft sickly and c ankered. In an edict of the 
 lyth of April, it did not confine itself to declaring, as it had 
 done before, that it were good to call a council ; i t decree^ 
 t hat a council should actually be called, ar d thn^ ^"^ °""?i fW= 
 
 possible C "^ • 
 
 ""TTampeggio now lifted the mask. As the ettiperor^ was in 
 Spain, his brother, the Archduke Ferdinand, represented him in 
 the diets, and in his name exercised a part of the imperial func- 
 tions. The legate contrived to persuade him to convoke at 
 Ratisbon a kind of counter-diet, where an attempt might be 
 made to amend the decrees of that which had been dissolved. 
 The meeting did take place, but not a single elector was there. 
 Some had positively refused ; the rest had hesitated ; and, in 
 short, no one came. There were present only two dukes, one 
 archbishop, two bishops, and the deputies of nine others. Cer- 
 tainly it had been the wisest course for them quietly to dissolve 
 the meeting ; but the cardinal insisted. On the 6th of July, 
 they decreed that the old decree of Worms against the Lutherans, 
 should be put in force ; and on the 7th, they adopted the project 
 of reformation, which the diet had rejected as insignificant and 
 ridiculous. 
 
 Charles V. could not openly give his sanction to decisions 
 taken without regard to legal forms ; but as it was of consequence, 
 on account of his squabbles with France, to remain on as good 
 terms as possible with the pope, he blamed the peremptory tone 
 of the Nuremberg decree. It lay with him, he said, and with 
 him alone, to demand a council. The diet might request him to 
 use his good offices with the pope ; but as for acting of itself, it 
 had no right to do so. And as it had farther decreed to meet 
 again at Spires, in the last months of that same year, to see how 
 matters went, and, if need Avere, to hasten their progress, the 
 emperor prohibited any such meeting. 
 
 He was soon to speak another language. Conqueror of Pavia,^ 
 master of the fortunes of Francis I., his victory had made him 
 master of Italy. He no longer stood in need of the pope, who 
 was now no more to him than one of the petty potentates Avho 
 shared that country among them. In June, 1526, while the diet 
 was sitting at Spires, he himself sent an order to deliberate on 
 the aflairs of the Church ; and it was decided, in conformity with 
 his views, that he should be besought to endeavour with the 
 
 ^ Charles V. ^ 1525. 
 
Chap I. 1526. DIET OF NUREMBERG. 9 
 
 utmost expedition to have a council-general, or failing that a 
 national council, convened in Germany. 
 
 This M^as a new step ; and it was a great one. If the court 
 of Rome so much dreaded a council open to all its friends and to 
 all its influences, what would it not apprehend from one altogether 
 German ? 
 
 Driven to extremity, the pope did not wait until the demand, 
 should be presented to him. Certain imperial decrees, more or 
 less hostile, on some points, to the rights or to the pretensions 
 of the Church, furnished him with an occasion for speaking out. 
 On the 23d of June he wrote a violent letter ; on the 25th, it 
 was followed by a brief in much milder terms, full of flatteries 
 and of promises, and without any allusion to the other. Charles 
 did the same. In a first letter, meant as a reply to the first 
 brief, he boldly recriminates ; he will appeal from it, he says, 
 like the Lutherans, to a universal and free council. In another, 
 written also two days after the first, he seems to have forgotten 
 the first altogether ; he protests his respect for the pope ; his 
 love of peace, his desire for the fraternal union of the two powers. 
 In a third letter, in fine, it is to the cardinals he addresses him- 
 self It IS for the cardinals, says he, to convoke the council, 
 should Clement persist in refusing. 
 
 He knew to whom he spoke. A powerful p*arty, sustained and 
 encouraged by him, had been labouring for some lime in Rome 
 itself, to bring down the pope. Cardinal Pompey Colonna, head 
 of the family of that name, had declared himself on the emperor's 
 side. It was the destiny of his family, he would say, not only 
 to be hated by the popes, but also to deliver the Church from 
 them. " If his ancestors had made a Boniface VIII. tremble, he 
 would contrive to bring a Clement VII. to reason." And it was 
 not only by violent measures that he had it in his power to 
 torment the unhappy pope. Clement's election had been sig- 
 nalized, it would appear, by some dishonourable doings. There 
 had been cabals, and promises of money and of places ; not at 
 all uncommon, generally speaking, in the elections of those days, 
 yet strictly prohibited by the canons of the Church, and conse- 
 quently sufficient, should the emperor concur, for efiecting the 
 deposition of the pope on the ground of his being an illegitimate 
 intruder. Add to this an illegitimacy of another kind, that of 
 his birth. The son of one of Julian di Medici's mistresses, he 
 had never been able to prove that his father had married her. 
 In creating him a cardinal, Leo X. had caused a solemn sentence 
 to be passed, in which his legitimacy was acknowledged ; but 
 this was only an additional proof that it had till then been at least 
 doubtful — and people had continued to doubt. Now, the ancient 
 
 A* 
 
10 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 canons had likewise forbidden the elevation, even to the priest- 
 hood, of any one whose birth had not been legitimate or regularly 
 legitimated. 
 
 The storms were now gathering overhead ; but the pope on 
 his part had lost no time. Before breaking with the emperor he 
 had made sure of the support of France. All the oaths which 
 the royal prisoner of Pavia had been made to swear, in his prison 
 at Madrid, for the recovery of his liberty, he had been secretly 
 loosed from by the pope. Secretly leagued also under his aus- 
 pices against the emperor's encroachments, the princes of Italy 
 were ready to rise at the first signal. 
 
 They rose accordingly. The pope then sent all his disposable 
 forces into Lombardy ; but no sooner was Rome left defenceless, 
 than the Colonnas approached its walls with all the soldiers and 
 banditti they could muster. They entered the gates. The pope 
 wanted to wait their coming, seated on his throne, with the tiara 
 on his head, and the cross in his hand, like Boniface of old. 
 " Let us see," he said, " whether they will dare to lay hands on 
 the successor of St. Peter I" Peter himself would hardly have 
 known who he was, in such a dress and with such appurtenances. 
 Let us be just notwithstanding ; there was something fine in 
 Clement's purpose. But his friends took fright, and advised him 
 not to be so confident. The Colonnas were not the men to go 
 down on their knees ; they had seen the popedom too close at 
 hand ; they knew what fir- work there was under the velvet of 
 its throne, and what pasteboard under the gems of its tiara. 
 Clement fled to the Castle of St. Angelo, and the Colonnas pil- 
 laged the Vatican. Repulsed by the people, they proceeded to 
 encamp outside the gates, whither the King of Naples, at his 
 own instance, or upon orders from the emperor, sent them daily 
 reinforcements. The pope capitulated ; he engaged to recall his 
 troops, and the Colonnas were to retire. But hardly were his 
 troops on their way back when he excommunicated the Colonnas, 
 their adherents, their friends — all in line who aided, or should in 
 future aid them. This was neither more nor less than to ex- 
 communicate the emperor. Taking refuge in the liouse of the 
 Viceroy, Pompey Colonna appealed " to a future council," and 
 the appeal was found mysteriously attached one morning to the 
 church-doors in Rome. 
 
 Ere long, from the north and the south simultaneously, the 
 tempest approached. Here the viceroy demanded a reason for 
 the excommunication of the Colonnas ; there it was Charles of 
 Bourbon, the general of the imperial army, who advanced, no 
 one knew why — a minister^of the evil one, according to some — 
 the minister of God, according to others, to chastise Rome, and 
 
Chap. I. I5ir. Tin-; COLONNAS. 11 
 
 there 1o pcrith. No one knew at tlie time whether he had any 
 order, and it is a problem to this day whether lie had any. Cer- 
 tain it is, that he had none to the contrary, and that he was 
 never seriously disavowed. 
 
 Clement upon this oflercd again to reinstate the Colonnas, 
 The viceroy accepted this offer and returned ; Bourbon made no 
 reply, and behold liim ere long at the foot of the Avails of Rome I 
 On the Gth of May, 1527, the assault is given ; the general is 
 slain, but the city is taken, and fourteen thousand Germans, al- 
 most all Lutherans, are left to see to the emperor's being avenged. 
 From the top of the toAvers of St. Angelo, the pope looks on 
 while his city is pillaged. He sees his cardinals led in proces- 
 sion, mounted on asses. The bells sound, salvos of artillery are 
 fired. It is Luther whom they are proclaiming pope. An old 
 soldier crowned with a tiara, is by way of burlesque enthroned 
 in his name. 
 
 Meanwhile, from one end of Europe to the other, all that still 
 cling to Roman Catholicism, and to the Roman Church, are in- 
 dignant at the very idea of an imprisoned pope. But the first 
 to utter groans on the subject is Charles V. He orders proces- 
 sions for the pope's deliverance ; he intermits the festivities at 
 Valladolid on account of the birth of a son ; there is but one 
 thing that he forgets, and that is to issue orders for his troops to 
 quit Rome, and set the pope at liberty. Infamous farce ; and 
 yet it lasted six whole months. 
 
 As for the rest, as regards dissimulation, Rome is never far 
 behind. Clement proceeded to present an example less odious, 
 indeed, but still more extraordinary. 
 
 The princes who were leagued again.st the emperor had now 
 at last some success. A French army occupied the kingdom 
 of Naples. Tiie pope was free. Now was the time, if ever, for 
 excommunicating Charles V., combining with his enemies, and 
 giving freedom to Italy. Warmly urged to declare himself. 
 Clement hesitated, drew back, refused. In secret he could find 
 no expression strong enough for cursing the emperor ; in public 
 he flattered him, and loaded him with civilities ; he seemed like 
 one who never dreamed for a moment that Charles had had any 
 thing to do with the siege of Rome, or his six months' captivity. 
 
 Why this change ? The cause of it was an enigma to no- 
 body. Florence had availed itself of the popes reverses for the 
 purpose of shaking ofi^ the yoke of the Medicis, and Clement was 
 bent, above all things, on its recovery. To this Ave must ascribe 
 his meekness, and the attentions which he paid to the only one 
 who had the poA\'er to accomplish that object. Besides, nothing 
 hut a sense of danger and resentment could have united him, 
 
12 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 even momentarily, with his neighhours. He well knew that it 
 was not in Germany that he had the worst enemies to fear ; 
 and that he had more need of the emperor to aid him against 
 the princes of Italy, than he had of those princes against the 
 emperor. 
 
 Charles, on his side, began to need the support of the court of 
 Rome. Never having acknoAvledged himself the author of the 
 pope's reverses, his pride was not engaged in having the pontiff 
 kept in abasement ; and so, no sooner were negotiations com- 
 menced, than one would have supposed that their mutual friend- 
 ship had never been clouded for a moment. The pope promised 
 all that was required of him ; Charles Y. made all the returns 
 that were asked, and engaged, in particular, to put Florence 
 again under the power of the Medicis. One point alone re- 
 mained in suspense, and that again was, the grand affair of the 
 council. Charles had mentioned it, but without any urgency, 
 and it was clear that for the moment he had ceased to care 
 about it ; and Clement, who cared about it still less, had said 
 neither Yes nor No in reply. 
 
 In March, 1529, a new diet was held at Spires, and much 
 debating took place. An edict was passed, bearing that the in- 
 noA'ations already received might be tolerated by the princes, 
 but that new ones ought not to be authorized. Against this de- 
 cree six princes and fourteen free cities protested ; and hence 
 arose the name Protestants, which was ere long to become com- 
 mon to all the Reformed. 
 
 The pope and the emperor were now reconciled ; nothing 
 seemed wanting but that they should embrace each other before 
 the eyes of all Europe. In November, accordingly, we find 
 them met at Bologna, lodged in the same palace, and eating at 
 the same table. How laughable would be those grand scenes 
 on the stage of human politics, were not their chief characteris- 
 tics most deplorable and most immoral I But let us proceed 
 with our narrative, and cease to judge. "VYe shall have enough 
 to judge ere long. 
 
 The conferences between the two potentates lasted four months. 
 The emperor, from all that appears, had seriously returned to 
 the idea of a council. He insisted on having it, and was almost 
 at the point of exacting it. Nevertheless, Clement succeeded in 
 diverting him from his purpose. He demonstrated — what, in- 
 deed, had begun to be evident — that a council could only serv e 
 40 interpose a gulf between the nhnvf^^-i f^^^ T^ni-n e and the Re- 
 •(rrnirjj^ It was necessa rv, before setting about having ci} e, 
 either to bring back tlie lileformed, or to crush them . It was 
 in Ihis spirit that Charles V. set out tor (rermany. A diet was 
 
Chap. I 1530. ALARMS OF CLEMENT VII. 13 
 
 about to be opened at Augsburg, and Campeggio, the papal 
 nuncio, was to precede him there. 
 
 Though sure of the emperor's concurrence — as far, at least, 
 as any one could safely trust in the promises of Charles V. — still 
 Clement was not without alarm. It was much to have rid him- 
 self for the moment of the dangers of a council, but the grand 
 object was to prevent the far Avorsc evil of the diet constituting 
 itself a judge in matters of faith. To this, even Avithout desiring 
 it, it might be led at last. Tiie Lutherans had announced their 
 having drawn up a confession of faith, and this was to be pre- 
 sented by the Elector of Saxony. But what reception would it 
 be proper that it should receive ? If not at once condemned, 
 people everywhere would say that it was approved ; if condemned 
 at its reception, this would imply that the diet was acting as a 
 couucil. If the diet should refrain from meddling with it, to 
 whom should it be sent ? To the pope ? Clement would fain 
 hope not ; and not without reason. To a future council ? In 
 that case one must be called, and this is what the pope desired 
 above all things to avoid. Meanwhile, the confession made its 
 appearance ; and already it had come to be commonly called the 
 Confession of Augsburg. But what was to be done with it ? 
 
 By dint of great caution and contrivance, the nuncio succeeded 
 at once in concentrating the dispute between the divines of the 
 two parties. " I learn," wrote Luther to the Elector of Saxony's 
 chaplain, Spalatin, " that you have undertaken an admirable 
 task — that of bringing Luther and the pojje to agree. Should 
 you succeed I promise to reconcile Christ and Belial." On some 
 points, nevertheless, the two parties agreed ; at least they be- 
 lieved that they were agreed. Melanchthon, in his ardent de- 
 sire for peace, had hazarded certain concessions, which neither 
 Luther nor the Lutherans could ratify. Moreover, even had 
 those first points been got over, there were quite enough left on 
 which it was evident that they never could hope to come to a 
 common understanding. 
 
 The conferences now began to languish ; nothing more could 
 be expected than that they would be broken up as soon as the 
 chief points in dispute should be brought forward. The emperor 
 had been too much accustomed to act to permit his remaining 
 long a mere spectator. In a first edict he allowed the Lutherans 
 six months to make up their minds to become Roman Catholics ; 
 in a second, he regulated and determined, with the air of a pope, 
 what men were to believe and teach, until the approaching 
 council, on all the controverted points. To the refractory he de- 
 nounced imprisonment and death. 
 
 And, amid the general stupefaction, at a time when all the 
 
14 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Eook I. 
 
 human props of the Reformation seemed ready to fall away, " I 
 saw, not long since," cried Luther, " a sign in the heavens. I 
 Avas looking out of my window at night, and beheld the stars 
 and the whole majestic vault of God held up, without my being 
 able to see the pillars on which the Master had caused it to rest. 
 And yet, there was no appearance of its being about to fall. 
 There are some men who look about for those pillars, and would 
 fail touch them with their hands. And because, forsooth, they 
 cannot, they begin to tremble anon and to lament. They fear 
 that the sky mav fall. . . . Poor souls I Is not God always 
 there?" 
 
 To the contraveners, then, the prospect was that of imprison- 
 ment and death. 
 
 The conclusion suited the pope admirably,^ but not the prem- 
 ises. Iso doubt the imperial edict was rigorously Roman 
 Catholic ; Charles V. said nothing in it that Clement would not 
 have said in his place. But was it for Charles to speak on this 
 occasion ? What right had he to say, " This is the faith, and 
 that is not the faith .''' After his having made himself pope in 
 one sense, the Elector of Saxony, or any other prince, might 
 equally make himself so in another. 
 
 Clement took the best course, by quietly leaving to be pre- 
 sumed that nothing had been done without his approval. He 
 himself wrote to all the princes, recommending them to execute 
 the edict. The P miestants among them refused ; and as the 
 emperor talked of re.-?orting to compulsion, they rosolverl tn unitff 
 fo r the common defence of their str\tes and th^ jv fn.ith. Such 
 was the origin of the Leap-ue of Smalcal de (1531). 
 
 Notwith.?tancling the League^ Charles still found himself 
 strono- enough to act against them ; but the nearer the moment 
 for action approached, the more repugnant did he feel to fight 
 as the mere soldier of the pope. It was from a council onh^ 
 thought he, t hat he c^n l^ -wUh nny f]pnpnn.y yaceive tlip swnj fl 
 wi th which he, the emperor, was to march against the Luthera iig . 
 Hence arose a fresh pressure on the pope , and fresh tergiversa- 
 tions on his part. He consented to the cal li ng of a cou iici L ^"i^ ' 
 o n condition that it should be held in ins, the Tapal States. Hr, 
 consented to the Protestants being heard, but on condition that 
 thr bifhnpr, ^'^" ording to use [Hid WOUi, should alone have lb e 
 ri^it If? v ile, in a word, it was easy to see that were all these 
 demands to Be conceded, it would only be at the last extremity 
 that he would yield his consent and co-operation. 
 
 ^ "One lias a right to destroy those venomous plants witli fire and 
 sword," said Canipeggio, in tlie name of tlie pope, in his " Instructio 
 data Caesai'i in dipt a Auenstana." 
 
Chap. I. i:31. CHARLES V. IMPATIENT 15 
 
 The emperor now began to be impatient. The Turks were 
 all tlie while making rapid advances, and a few days more 
 would find them at the gates of Vienna. Charles V. required 
 all the forces that Germany could furnish, and the Protestants 
 refused th eirs unless the Edict of A ugsburg wasj:e yok£d . This 
 poi iit was conceded ; llic pope reclaimed in vain; freedom of 
 conscience was granted, but the dec ree ra n thus, " until the _ 
 council." The summons was to be issued in six months, and 
 the opening was to take place in a year. And so, when hardly 
 done with the conquest of the Turks, we find Charles again in 
 Italy. New conferences followed with the pope, and new tergi- 
 versations, so that the parties separated almost in a quarrel. 
 
 The pope now returned to the French alliance, and Germany 
 and France being at peace, Clement could closely unite himself 
 with the king without breaking ostensibly with the emperor. 
 The negotiations went on jjrosperouslj^ Catherine di Medicis, 
 the pope's niece, Avas to marry Henry, second son of Francis I., 
 and that monarch, on his side, Avas to employ all his influence 
 with the Germans, in order to prevail on them either to renounce 
 altogether the idea of a council, or to consent to its being con- 
 vened in Italy. He tried this, but found them intractable. By 
 dint of solicitation, he obtained their promise, that they would 
 consent to a council being held out of Germany, provided it were 
 not to be in Italy. 
 
 Where then should it be held ? The French ambassadors 
 suggested Genev a as the proper place, on which the pap^^skecT 
 .if his ally were jesting with him, by pr oposing a city iii whicIL 
 Catholicism w a^i nt thp. Inwpst elxb. Shortly afterward Cle ment 
 \ii. iell sick, and his last days were embittered by the defection 
 of England. He died, he said, Avithout any regrets ; he had 
 done his duty in opposing Henry YIII.'s divorce. Possibly so, 
 and Roman Catholic historians have sufficiently praised him for 
 it ; only it is forgotten, that before condemning that famous 
 divorce, he had long shown himself quite favorable to it. The 
 very act of approval had been drawn up. Pallavicini denies, 
 while Guicciardini aliirms this, and Burnet^ proves it by the 
 production of pieces which clearly suppose either the existence 
 of the brief or a formal promise to publish it. 
 
 Paul III., C lement YII.'s successor, J iad been cardinal under 
 six popes ; no man was more deeply conversant with all the 
 secrets of Roman policy. He saw that for the moment resist- 
 ance was impolitic ; and, accordingly, hardly had he ta ken his 
 se at on the throne wh en he bepran to spenk- nt tho. p puncil as the 
 
 ^ Letters of Henry VIII. and Wolsei/. Burnet, Collection of Records. 
 See also Herbert's Life of Henry VIII, and Ranke's Popes. 
 
16 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 sole re medy for the evils of the ti me. He made it his own affair, 
 and outstript all men's wishes for it. 
 
 Ten years, notwithstanding, were destined still to elapse be- 
 tween words and deeds. It is true that people were not long 
 of seeing Avhat they had really to expect from. him. Amid the 
 plans of reform which he took a pleasure in unfolding, and for 
 the execution of which he desired nothing better, he would say, 
 than the support of a council, two youths, the one sixteen, the 
 other hardly fourteen years of age, were at once created cardi- 
 nals — and these youths were his own children.^ 
 
 In spite of this scandal, or, perhaps, because of this scandal, 
 and in order to lessen the noise it made, he declared (January, 
 1535) that the convocation was about to meet. Yergerio had 
 set off for Germany. He w as to_ see alLthejprinces, alljthe men 
 of in fluenc e : the Roman Catholics , to keepthe ijOronL^ppjasirLg; 
 aTcouncil held "m Italy ; t he Protestants, to prevail o n them to 
 "eng age'To obse rve its decrees ; L utherrXiut he r most _espegialhtL,- 
 to k eep him irom opposing it. What idea, then, could have 
 been formed, we do not say of"conscience, but of mere human 
 self-respect, by these men, when w^e see them capable of imagin- 
 ing that, after eighteen years of warfare, Luther could still have 
 remained accessible to their seductions ? Vergerio saw him only 
 once, for a very short time, according to some, and for a very 
 long time according to others. What is certain is, that he 
 gained nothing, and that some years afterwards this " great 
 mignon ol Lhe pope," as a chronicler calls him, went himself 
 over to the Reformation. As for the princes, the~RomanT}ath-^ 
 olics w ere unanimou s in declg ri^ig th n.t tbn y hnrl nn wisK -ifH^-flf 
 council held m Italy, and the Protestants, tha t they.Jiad- no 
 wTsh tor one- lrctd iu_j[aIylQr nny whnn^; if thpi pnpt^ wns to be 
 at the head ot it. ~" 
 
 From all this, Paul would have gladly allowed himself to 
 conclude, that it was no longer to be dreamt of; but he was 
 pushed on in spite of himself " A council," reiterated the em- 
 peror, " a council we must have I . . . I charge myself with the 
 execution of its decrees." He consented, besides, in spite of the 
 princes, to its meeting in Italy. Thus tliere was no longer any 
 pretext either for refusal or delay. Paul submitted, and fixing 
 on the city of Mantua, the 7tli of- May of the following ' year 
 (1537) was appointed for the opening. 
 
 * His grandchildren, Alexander Farnese and Gui-Ascagnio Sforza, the 
 issue the one of his son Lewis Farnese, and the other of his daughter 
 Constance. The follies of his youth had been such, that his mother 
 had found it necessary to have him shut up in the Castle of St. Angelo, 
 from whicli he escaped by letting himself down by a rope. 
 
Chap. I. 1538. PAUL III.— ABORTIVE CONVOCATION 17 
 
 Hardly had the bull of convocation appeared when it was 
 evident that it would end in nothing. Germany, France, En- 
 gland, Italy itself, were all in a ferment with protests. Nay, the 
 very Duke of Mantua, of whom Paul had reckoned himself so 
 sure, started a thousand difficulties with respect to the favour 
 proposed to be shown to his city. Paul then fixed on Vicenza. 
 This involved a sacrifice, for Vicenza belonged to the Venetians, 
 who were often at enmity with the Court of K.ome ; and so the 
 })ope took advantage of this change to put ofl' the opening for a 
 year. He fixed it for the 1st of May, 1538. 
 
 On that day his legates^ were at Vicenza : there they wailed 
 for the arrival of the bishops ; no bishops came. As for those 
 of Italy, a word from Paul would have sufficed to send a host 
 of them ; but he felt that he was bound to wait until some, at 
 least, appeared from other quarters. The legates waited three 
 whole months, still nobody, actually nobody, appeared. It be- 
 gan to be evident that the emperor himself had no longer any 
 wish for a council, for there were plenty of bishops, both in 
 Spain and Austria, whom he might at once have sent. Upon 
 this the pope recalled his legates, but without revoking the sum- 
 mons of convocation. He fixed the opening for the month of 
 April, 1539 ; afterwards, in a final bull, the time was adjourned 
 indefinitely. 
 
 We shall not enter into the details of the negotiations of all sorts 
 which occupied the years 1538, 1539, and 1540,^ for we should 
 only have to behold anew, under almost identically the same 
 forms, all that we have had hitherto to observe. We should see 
 the same feelings of repugnance, the same obstacles, the same 
 oscillations. We hold ourselves bound to omit nothing that is 
 essential, but by no means to say every thing. The preliminaries 
 of the council fill a whole book in Sarpi, and three in Palla- 
 vicini. 
 
 It was in 1511, at a new interview between the pope and the 
 emperor, that the city from which it was to derive its name was 
 first spoken of as that in which it was to meet. Trent, in the 
 heart of the Tyrol, oflered the advantage of bein g oiia of the 
 most central cities o fEuropeV It was neither so very Italian as 
 tnat tne Germans should refuse t o repair to it, nor .^n v cry~r4ni;^ 
 
 ' Campeggio, Sinionetta, and Aleander. 
 
 * It -was in 1538 that there appeared the famous Condlhim <Jc Emen- 
 danda Ecclesia, addressed by Paul III. to the Comiuission, Avhich he had 
 charged with drawing up a statement of the disorders of the Church. 
 To it we would refer beforehand those of our readers who may think 
 we exaggerate matters in what we shall have to say of the evils signal- 
 ized in that memoir. It bears the signatures of all the most respect- 
 able Romanists of the time, Contarini, Sadolet, Giberto, Aleander, dire. 
 
18 HISTORY or THE COUNCIL OF TREiNT. Book I, 
 
 man as to make the pope despair of remaining master of any 
 assembly that mighty be hel(iin_iti_ He only thought it very 
 far from Romeyhut after so many disputes and altercations he 
 had reason to think himself fortunate when other parties were 
 content. Time, besides, was pressing. The diet had again 
 decreed, at Ratisbon, that something absolutely must be done, 
 and that if there was to be no council-general, one must be 
 convened in Germany. Accordingly, the bull of convocation 
 appeared early in 1542, and the 1st of Isovember was fixed for 
 the opening. 
 
 While these things were transacting, war again broke out 
 between the emperor and France. It was meant, nevertheless, 
 that matters should proceed. The pope sent his legates, and 
 the emperor an ambassador and some bishops. After waiting 
 seven months without any one else appearing, those who had 
 come went away, and all was broken off anew. 
 
 AYho, shall we say, was in fault ? Francis I., it was said, 
 for it was he that broke the truce. Francis I. took revenge on 
 the Protestants ; he was resolved to shew, that if he had broken 
 up the council, he was not on that account the less a Roman 
 Catholic. The victims he sent to the stake would soon have 
 regained for him the friendship of the pope, much disposed as 
 the pontitr was otherwise not to allow his irritation to go too 
 far against any thing that contributed to delay the great afiair. 
 Charles Y., besides, had united himself with Henry YHL, that 
 excommunicated heretic and personal enemy of the Pope ; the 
 Diet of Spires had passed an edict so frightfully tolerant, that it 
 seemed to have been dictated by the Protestants. The pope re- 
 claimed, urged, and threatened. The emperor held his peace, 
 and followed his own course. 
 
 Peace, in fine, was proclaimed between Charles and Francis, 
 and one of the articles of the treaty (24th December, 1544) 
 bears that they were to unite their efforts for the meeting of the 
 council. Paul anticipated them. A new bull was published ; 
 the council was to meet on the 15th of March. It was the em- 
 peror now who was angry ; he thought it strange that he had 
 not been consulted about the fixing of the time ; but as he made 
 it a point that he should be able to say, that \o him, and to him 
 alone, the world was to be indebted for the council, Jie himself 
 became the grand mover in the matter ; and in all the courts of 
 Europe his ambassadors eagerly urged that the bishops might be 
 sent to attend it. Paul appointed his legates ; there were still 
 to be three, but three new ones. These were the Cardinals del 
 
 ' Trent was n, dependence of the Empire, but the bishop held the 
 government of it. 
 
Chap. 1. 1515. RETROSPECT. I'J 
 
 Monte, Sauta-Crocc, and Pole. This last (Reginald Pole) ^vas 
 of the royal family of England. The two others we shall here- 
 after see occu})ying the papal throne. Europe now began to be- 
 lieve that, for this time at least, the council would not pass ofl' 
 in smoke. 
 
 And now, before proceeding farther, shall ^^■e pau.se lor a lit- 
 tle, and take a retrospect of what had been done ? We have 
 been rapid enough in our narrative for the attentive reader to seize 
 its general features, and to deduce its legitimate consequences. 
 Mutual distrust, hitrigues, misapprehensions, and quarrels of all 
 sorts, acts of violence and acts of baseness, together Avith the 
 most inextricable mingling of interests, views, and passions, all 
 manifestly and grossly human — such was the chaos from which 
 the council was to emerge ; such was the basis on which that 
 seat was to be constructed from which God himself was to be 
 cousidered as about to speak. Meanwhile, he who had been 
 contemptuously called by Leo X. " a clever fellow," had been 
 permitted by God to see Europe pervaded with his doctrines ; 
 and that council which Luther had called for in 1517, and 
 which he might have dreaded in 1520 — in lo4o, even before it 
 had been opened, had altogether ceased, before he descended to 
 the grave, to give any serious ground of alarm to the Reforma- 
 tion. It had lost its charm before it met. T\ventv-five vears 
 of delays had proved superabundantly — 
 
 To some, that Rome did not wish for the Council, never had 
 seriously wished for it, and could not have any wish for it : 
 
 To others, that the princes who had most called for it, really 
 cared very little about it ; 
 
 To the Protestants, that no concession Avhatever would be 
 made to them ; 
 
 To the Roman Catholics, that small abuses would be amended, 
 and the great ones preserved ; 
 
 To all, in fine, that it would not be the Church's council, but 
 the pope's council. 
 
 And as for those, if there still were such, who persisted in 
 hoping something from it, can it be imagined that they would 
 at that time have dared to promise to its dogmatical decisions 
 the authority which has been given to them since ? No ; the 
 human springs of the machine had creaked too long and too 
 lamentably. They were destined still to creak too long. The 
 authority of the Council of Trent commenced, in foct, only after 
 its close. This we shall prove, and without ditiiculty ; but this 
 is just what we think it of most importance to prove well. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 (1545.) 
 FIRST CONVOCATION : INTRIGUES, DIFFICULTIES, AND DELAYS. 
 
 The arrival of tlie Legates — Three years' indulgence — Scruples — Four 
 hundred seats and no bishops — Parturiunt monies — The imagination 
 of Father Biner — Simple arithmetic — A notable admission — Oecu- 
 menical Councils — The Church's Representatives — Jerusalem and 
 Trent — Diplomacy — Had the Protestants promised obedience — Everj'- 
 epoch has its fixed idea — Luther's trepidation — The real object of 
 his wishes — A^icious circle — Where was the doctrine of Infallibility 
 — Affairs of Cologne — Who was in the wi'ong — Complications — By 
 Avhat did the Council hold? — The Procurators — Infallibility by Del- 
 egation — Charles \. and hei*esy — The Pope's ofii'ers — The priest-king 
 — Tlie Morals of the Popes — Xew Scandals — Of happy memory — 
 Papal Infallibility — Certain questions — The Popedom at Rome. 
 
 The grand day of the opening approached at last, and all 
 eyes in Europe were fixed on the small town which was to be 
 rendered for ever memorable by the proceedings of that day. 
 
 On the 13th of March, 1545, two of the legates, the Cardi- 
 nals del Monte and Santa-Croce, arrived at Trent. They came 
 armed with two papal bulls : the one public, merely appointing 
 them to preside in the council ; the other secret, authorizing 
 them to dissolve it, should the pope's interests seem so to require. 
 This was nothing new. Martin V. had taken the same precau- 
 tion when the Council of Pavia met. 
 
 A vast crowd greeted the cardinals on their arrival, and being 
 received as princes, they responded to the popular enthusiasm, 
 as princes indeed, but as princes of the Church. Three yeao's' 
 indidf2:eiicc was bestowed on all who were fortunate enoujjh to 
 see them pass. Then came a scruple to perplex them. Every 
 indulgence proceeds from the pope, but among the powers con- 
 ferred upon them, that of granting indulgences had been omit- 
 ted. Legitimately, therefore, they could grant none — no, not 
 for three days ; and yet they had granted one for three years. 
 What, then, was to be done ? They wrote to Rome. The pope 
 could ask for nothing better than to have to confirm what his 
 legates had done. Three years I what is that to him ? Thirty 
 or three hundred years would have cost him no more. But, be- 
 
Chap. II. 1545. THE POPE'S SCRUPLES. 21 
 
 hold, he also finds a scruple to annoy him. It was all very easy 
 to give validity to the indulgence for the time that had to run ; 
 but was it possible, even for him, to declare it available for the 
 time during which it had been absolutely null ? God himself 
 cannot change the past. Let people do as they might, there 
 must always have elapsed a certain time during which the faith- 
 ful must have believed that they had what they had not. If 
 any of them had died during that interval, they must have passed 
 into the other world with a false passport. This apparently 
 childish embarrassment proved really a most serious afikir for a 
 Roman casuist. There was no getting rid of it directly ; but it 
 was evaded by sending the legates a brief, antedated by several 
 weeks, and which they were presumed to have brought with 
 them from Rome. Pallavicini has been at great pains to put 
 this historical incident in a proper light, but has succeeded only 
 in proving that he himself thought it very strange. 
 
 There had been a crowd, then, at the arrival of the legates, 
 but people began to ask themselves where was the council. Not 
 a bishop had appeared except Cardinal Madrucci, the bishop of 
 Trent, who had preceded the legates in order to do the honours 
 of his city and of his palace. Four hundred seats were never- 
 theless prepared in a place set apart for them in the cathedral. 
 Although the legates were far fiom having any desire to see all 
 these filled, yet such a huge void could not fail to be disquieting, 
 and to have much the appearance of an afiront. The pope felt 
 greatly annoyed. He was well aware that a number of bishops, 
 particularly in Italy, had thought to pay court to him by not re- 
 pairing to Trent ; but he felt at the same time, that their ab- 
 sence would be attributed to him. How was he to contrive to 
 bring together enough without their being too many ? 
 
 The 14th of March had now come, still there was nobody ; 
 the loth — still nobody, and the opening was adjourned. On the 
 23d, Diego de Mendoza, Charles Y.'s ambassador, arrived at 
 Trent, and begged that they would hasten proceedings. ' The 
 legates held council as to what should be done. Three bishops 
 had arrived, were they to open the council ? But how open a 
 general, oecumenical, and universal council with three Italian 
 bishops I Let us wait, they said, for a few days. These few 
 days were to be prolonged to nine months. 
 
 -We refrain from repeating the jests that passed from mouth 
 to mouth when people began to see the ridiculous issue of this 
 solemn convocation of Christendom, after being twenty-five years 
 of coming to the birth. Romanists and Reformed could not 
 avoid meeting on the common ground of an ancient apologue, 
 already suggested, no doubt, to our readers, and to which the 
 
22 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 name of the premier legate, Del Monte, or Of-the-Mountain, gave 
 a burlesque application. But let us not lau^h. This is a his- 
 tory, not a squib. It may, however, be very seriously remarked, 
 that among so many persons to whom the Council of Trent has 
 never appeared as anything but an immense and majestic as- 
 sembly, there is surely more than one with regard to whom 
 these first details must make us suspect at once, that the imag- 
 ination has had something to do with what they have said of it. 
 " The Council of Trent," says one of its apologists,^ " was com- 
 posed of all that was illustrious in Germany, Italy, France, 
 JSpain, Hungary, Bohemia, England, Ireland, Portugal, Poland, 
 Sweden, Belgium, Moravia, Illyria, and Greece." We shall 
 soon see what all this amounted to. When the imagiiuvtion 
 takes such a flight as this, it is very near deserving another 
 name. 
 
 And since we have touched on the question of number, we 
 crave leave to say a word on the subject. 
 
 We shall not go so far as to maintain that a council cannot 
 be properly called general, unless composed, literally, of all the 
 bishops of the Church ; but from this generality to that of the 
 Council of Trent, the distance was to prove so wide, that one 
 might Avell ask, in good faith, if no conclusion was to be drawn 
 from it. We do not think, indeed, that a more numerous assem- 
 bly would have voted differently ; the doctrinal decisions proba- 
 bly would have been the same. But, after all, had we as much 
 sympathy for the results, as we have little, it would always re- 
 main to be seen whether those results may be considered to have 
 been legally and honestly obtained. 
 
 In all deliberative assemblies, law, or custom, has fixed a 
 minimum of members entitled to vote. It may be the half, the 
 third, or at the least, a fourth part of the total number ; below 
 that proportion there can be no voting. In councils, although 
 there is no formal law on the subject, the dictates of common 
 sense are plain enough to make anything else unnecessary. If 
 you summon together a hundred persons, and there come only 
 ten, no doubt you may allow such a meeting, strictly speaking, 
 the name which it Avould have had, had it been complete ; but 
 it is clear that this would be a fiction. Now, let us see what 
 happened at Trent. 
 
 There were three convocations in all — the first (1545), un- 
 der Paul III., the second (1551), under Julius III., the third 
 (15G2), underpins IV. 
 
 ' Father Biner, a Jesuit. 
 
/ 
 
 Chap. 11. 1j4j. QUESTION OF NUMBER. 23 
 
 In the last, the number of voters rose, towards the clo.sc, to two 
 hundred and fifty. This was a considerable number ; still, it 
 was but a feeble minority of the bishops of Christendom. Italy 
 alone reckoned more than two hundred and fifty bishops. 
 
 Yet this number, relatively so small, was nearly fourfold w^hat 
 had appeared at the two other convocations. On the day of 
 opening, there Avere only five-and-twenty ; afterwards we find 
 sixty, at most seventy, but rarely all met at once ; in several of 
 the sessions they were even under fifty. And yet that was the 
 period at which were regulated and fixed, such fundamental 
 points as scripture, tradition, original sin, grace, the sacraments, 
 ho,. " What madness," said Paul IV. one day, in an access of 
 ill humour and candour, "to have sent threescore bishops, from 
 among the least capable, to a small city among the mountains, 
 there to decide so many things I" It is true that this madness, 
 according to him, consisted in not having simply left the matter 
 in the hands of the men of ability, of whom, he added, •' Rome 
 is "full ;" but if his conclusion is not ours, his exclamation about 
 the threescore bishops is not the less w^orth recording. 
 
 Nothing can be less clear, moreover, than the distinctions by 
 which Rome has come to endow councils with the imposing title 
 (Ecumenical,^ or to deprive them of it, according as it suits her 
 to accept or reject their decrees. "What legal difierence will she 
 show us between the Council of Nice condemning Arianisra, 
 and the Council of Tyre, ten years afterw^ards, condemning the 
 faith of Nice ? That of Tyre, you say, w^as composed only of 
 the enemies of Athanasius. An Arian will reply, that neither 
 were there in the other any but the enemies of Arius.^ But at 
 Nice there were delegates from the pope present ; at Tyre there 
 were none. No more were there any at Constantinople in 381. 
 That council, nevertheless, is admitted as cecumeiiical, although 
 there was but one Latin bishop there against a hundred and 
 forty-nine Greeks. At Nice, there had been three against 
 three hundred and fifteen ; at Chalcedon, there were again 
 three against three hundred and fifty. The greater number of 
 (Ecumenical councils have been, numerically and geographically, 
 much smaller than many of those to which that title has been 
 denied."^ " They became (Ecumenical," it is said, " by the sole 
 fact of their having been universally approved." This is a mere 
 
 ' Universal, met from the whole inliabitcd earth, a\ liic-li, in the Roman 
 system, implies infallibility. 
 
 - Be it remembered, that \re are here engaged in a question of legal 
 right {droit), of forms, and -we are not called upon to pronounce, for 
 the moment, either for or against any dogma. 
 
 ^ See Jtirieu, Referions sur leu Conciles. 
 
24 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 playing with words ; a particular assembly does not become a 
 general assembly in virtue of the fact alone of its decisions hav- 
 ing been generally received ; at the most, it will be said, that it 
 is equivalent to a general assembly. Then, is it well consid- 
 ered in this theory, to what it leads ? If the number and the 
 nationality of those present prove nothing — if four hundred 
 bishops, come from all parts of the Church, can form only a 
 paiiicular and fallible council, whilst another with forty, may 
 become oecumenical, infallible — what then are they both at the 
 moment of their taking their decisions ? Why, nothing. Their 
 authority depends on the posterior judgment of the Church. 
 Until the Church shall have pronounced, at least by its silence, 
 on all the points regulated by the assembly, neither the faithful, 
 nor the assembly itself, know whether they can, in conscience, 
 admit what has been decided. In this manner, therefore, you 
 escape from the objection founded on the small number of 
 bishops ; and had they been no more than ten, the council 
 might have been oecumenical ; but you can do so only by admit- 
 ting that every assembly of this kind, were it to be composed of 
 a thousand bishops, has no authority of itself. It is only a con- 
 sultative commission. Its judgments may be reformed. Infal- 
 libility comes to it from elsewhere. 
 
 " Was the Council of Trent," says Boyer,^ " infallible of itself, 
 or in virtue of having been subsequently accepted by the Church ? 
 This we may regard as a useless question." Yes, at the close of 
 three centuries; but we have now to do with 1545. We make 
 ourselves spectators of the first proceedings of the council ; here 
 then there is a question of right, which we cannot allow to be 
 omitted. Now, then, there can be no middle course ; either an 
 a3cumenical council is infallible of itself — but it is not so unless 
 it be veritably oecumenical, universal ; or it becomes infallible 
 by virtue of the general assent of the Church, in which case 
 until this assent is ascertained, its decrees are only opinions not 
 yet clothed with the authority of decrees. 
 
 This last concession, from which so many Roman Catholics 
 recoil, is made, on the contrary, by the ultramontanists with the 
 utmost eagerness. They view it, and with reason, as conduct- 
 ing right on to the superiority of the pope over councils, and 
 consequently to his infallibility. But as this part of the ques- 
 tion Avas debated at Trent itself, we shall recur to it at the 
 proper time and place. 
 
 To the question of the number of the bishops in attendance, 
 should be added, in justice to the subject, that of their assumed 
 exclusive right to sit in councils. 
 
 ^ Director of the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice. 
 
Chap. II. 1545. COUNCILS— HOW COMPOSED. 25 
 
 No society whatever can logically have for its representatives 
 any but men chosen by itself. Now, are bishops chosen by the 
 Church ? Twelve hundred years have past, during which the 
 people of Roman Catholic Christendom liave had no part in the 
 choice of their chief pastors. Were it otherwise, still it would 
 be no more than an ecclesiastical and human affair. Assuming 
 that you have proved the Church's infallibility, you will not 
 have thereby proved that the bishops are its only organs. As- 
 suming that you have proved the infallibility of councils-gen- 
 eral, you have still to demonstrate what is maintained at Rome — 
 " That it is by Divine right that councils are composed of 
 bishops."^ 
 
 On this subject one may well be confounded at seeing with 
 what assurance the most important doctrines and the most 
 formal theories are sometimes deduced from a phrase, from a 
 word — while conclusions from the plainest facts, and the most 
 circumstantial details, are obstinately resisted. You would call 
 by the name of council, and liken to posterior councils, the 
 humble meeting held by the a2)ostles at Jerusalem.^ Be it so. 
 That meeting having said — " It hath seemed good to the Holy 
 Ghost and to us" — here, as you will have it, is the intervention 
 of the Holy Ghost in the decrees of all legitimate councils. You 
 cannot well put them on the same footing, seeing that the 
 apostles were individually inspired, and that the bishops, you 
 admit, are not. But let this too be granted. Take these words, 
 if you will, but then, at least, take all of them. " Then pleased 
 it the apostles and elders, with the wlwle Church, to send," 
 &c., so the passage runs. Hence, it seems to follow, plainly 
 enough, that the inferior ministers, and even the laity, inter- 
 vened. Pallavicini is very merry at the expense of those who 
 would insist that the Church, the whole Church, that is to say, 
 several thousands of persons, took part in the deliberation, and 
 asks wliere in all Jerusalem a place could have been found 
 large enough for such a meeting ? " Evidently," he concludes, 
 " there was only a certain number, a small number of the laity." 
 What does it signify ? If a small number was there, is this less 
 embarrassing than a great? The author is compelled to add, 
 in order to escape from this embarrassment, that they did not 
 intervene in the decision. But this is a pure invention, con- 
 tradicted at once by the general tenor and by the details of the 
 narrative. The more you shall have sought to represent the 
 apostles, not as the merely spiritual founders, but as the legis- 
 lators and organizers of the Church, the better right would you 
 give us to regard nothing as having emanated from them, but 
 
 ' Father Binor. ^ Acts, ch. xv. 
 
 B 
 
26 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 what they appear to have made it a matter of conscience clearly 
 to teach. Had the author of the Book of Acts had the least idea 
 that the laity should be excluded from councils, who will believe 
 it possible that he could write, as the winding up of his nar- 
 rative — " Then 'pleased it the ajoostles, and elders, with the 
 Ivlwle Church?'" . . . That, as a general position, the laity 
 would do better to leave doctrinal questions to the decision of 
 the pastors, is incontestable ; that the Church, in convoking 
 councils, has done well in calling only bishops to them, may be 
 plausibly maintained ; but if there has been a single council 
 which was not prevented from being legitimate by the interven- 
 tion of the laity, and if this council be precisely that whose his- 
 tory has been transmitted to us by an inspired author — then it 
 cannot be of Divine right that bishops alone enter those assem- 
 blies, and thereby have seized the monopoly of infallibility. 
 
 " Scripture," says the Roman Catechism, " often enough em- 
 ploys the word Church in designating those who are its pastors, 
 and who preside in it. It is in this sense that Christ has said, 
 if he whom you reprove, does not hsten to you, tell it to the 
 Church — for here it is evident, that by the Church he means 
 the pastors of the Church." What is evident is just the con- 
 trary. " Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go 
 and tell him his fault between thee and him alone : if he shall 
 hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear 
 thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth 
 of tv/o or three witnesses every word may be established. And 
 if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the Church." 
 Thus, first of all, thou, quite alone ; next, one or two persons ; 
 then the entire community. The citation, we see, is doubly 
 false ; we might even say triply false. False, because the whole 
 flock, with or without its pastors as you choose, is spoken of; 
 false, because here the word Church does not mean the Church in 
 general, but that of which each is specially a member ; false, in 
 fine, when one would find here an argument in favour of the 
 dogmatical authority of the Church, seeing that the case in 
 hand is that of a quarrel between two individuals, not at all 
 a question to be resolved. 
 
 And now, let us return to our history. 
 
 By the end of March there were still but four bishops, and 
 two spoke of going away. To give them something to do, and 
 keep them there, a kind of provisional committee was constituted, 
 which the legates, as a matter of form, consulted on a certain 
 number of affairs. Into this Mendoza was admitted. Ere long 
 this committee, having the air of persons setting themselves to a 
 
Ckap. II. 1545. rilOVISIONAL COMMITTEE— DOUBLE DESI'ATCIIE.'^. 27 
 
 task ill good earnest, and viewing themselves as the commence- 
 ment of the council, it was necessary to find some means of 
 checking, without giving offence, a course of procedure which 
 could not fail to cause uneasiness as soon as the meetings were 
 at all numerous. There was an understanding, accordingly, be- 
 tM'ecn the legates and the pope, that there should always be two 
 despatches, the one confidential and secret, the other containing 
 no more than those parties were willing should be communicated 
 to the bishops. " Such was the prejjaration made for receiving 
 the communications of the Holy Ghost." ^ To be sure they were 
 only human afiairs that were as yet treated of; and no doubt a 
 sovereign has a right to send confidential notes to his ministers. 
 But this, in courts, is a thing admitted and known to every body ; 
 in the case before us, the bishops knew nothing about it. There 
 was deception, then, in their being left under the impression 
 that every thing was submitted to them. We shall see anon 
 whether political affairs Avere to have the pitiful honour exclu- 
 sively confined to them, of having double despatches and notes 
 secret or in cipher. 
 
 AYe shall not stop to review the angry disputes that arose in 
 the course of April on the subject of ranks and precedencies. 
 With these we do not charge the council as a crime ; it was no 
 fault of the bishops or of the pope, if Charles V. by his ambas- 
 sador, compelled them to make those matters the subject of regu- 
 lations. Still, let us note the fact. The more the council came 
 to resemble a purely human convention, the better right have 
 we to ask in what respects it was the work of God. 
 
 MeanAvhile the diet had met at Worms. The emperor was 
 still uncertain whether he should march against the Turks or 
 the Protestants. 
 
 The first thing done was to cause the convocation of the council 
 to be intimated to the Protestants, and this to remind them of 
 these two things : first, that they had been the first to speak of 
 a council ; second, that the truce was about to close, seeing that, 
 according to the terms of the decree, it was until the aiyproacliing 
 council that they were to be allowed toleration and peace. On 
 this last point any warning was superfluous. They could not 
 doubt that the emperor, to whom the pope was Avriting letters 
 upon letters, was really prepared to attack them the moment he 
 ceased to be disquieted on the side of the Turks. 
 
 On the other point, their sentiments had long been known. 
 It was to make a mere jest of them to say — " You wanted a 
 council ; here it is. You promised to submit to it ; now submit.*' 
 It was evident that in asking for a council, and in promising to 
 
 ^ Jurieu. 
 
28 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 surrender and obey, Luther had never meant, nor could have 
 meant, a council held by the pope, composed of bishops subject 
 to the pope, and, in fine, manifestly assembled not to examine, 
 but to condemn. Nevertheless, who could believe it ? this re- 
 proach of inconsistency and bad faith, addressed then to the Prot- 
 estants on their openly refusing beforehand to accept of the de- 
 cisions of Trent, has been repeated in our hearing, in our ovrn 
 day. It has been alleged that seeing they craved that council, 
 it argued a want of good faith to persist in repelhng it. 
 
 They might reply, first, that these are not thmgs in which the 
 engagements of the fathers can bind the children. Next, they 
 might ask if it be indeed true that they had promised obedience. 
 Could they have seriously promised it ? One may engage to do 
 a thing, but not to believe a thing. Is it fair to suppose that 
 men profoundly hostile to such or such a doctrine, could engage 
 to admit it so soon as a council should decree it anew ? 
 
 Aneiv, we say ; for one of the best proofs that there could not 
 have been any promise to obey a council of this sort is, that the 
 greater number of the doctrines then denied, had been solemnly 
 admitted by councils quite of the same kind. Transubstantia- 
 tion, with all that is attached to it, had been definitively voted as 
 true under Innocent III., at the fourth council of Lateran. The 
 depriving the laity of the cup had been confirmed at Constance, 
 in 1414 ; and the number of sacraments fixed at seven, at 
 Florence, in 1438. Could it possibly have been hoped that 
 all these decisions, when corroborated by time, would be an- 
 nulled by a court that was to meet with the same views and 
 mider the same influences? What, then, did the Protestants 
 mean, or rather, what had they wanted when they asked for a 
 council ? 
 
 Evidently they had formed to themselves no clear idea either of 
 the thing itself, or of the means by which it was to be accomplished. 
 Every epoch has its own fixed idea ; every minority is naturally 
 led to take advantage of that idea. Luther had found the word 
 council in all men's mouths, and the desire for a council in all 
 men's minds, and all their hearts ; he forthwith laid hold of it. 
 Shall we suppose that he really shared in all the illusions of 
 which other men were the dupes with respect to that alleged 
 remedy for all the Church's ills ? Perhaps he might ; but it was 
 rather from the need he felt of emboldening himself in his au- 
 dacity, by indulging the vague prospect of an authority which 
 should pronounce in the matter. Even Luther had trembled, 
 and had trembled long, before raising the standard. " No one 
 can know," he wrote long afterwards, " what my heart sufiered 
 those two first years, or in what depression, in what despair, I 
 
Chap. II. 1545. DOCTRINE OF INFALLIBILITY. 29 
 
 may say, I was often plunged. Even at this day, the pope's 
 splendour and majesty sometimes dazzle me, and it is with 
 trembling that 1 attack him." " Oh, how much pains it cost 
 me," he wrote in 1521, to the Augustinians of Wittemberg, " to 
 justify me to myself for having alone ventured to rise against the 
 pope I How often did I in bitterness of soul oppose to myself 
 that argument of the papists — Art thou alone wise ? Can all 
 besides have been deceiving themselves, and been deceived lor 
 so long ?" This responsibility frightened him. He felt that, at 
 any price, he must have something behind which to shelter 
 himself. 
 
 But he had traced the ideal to himself of that council amid 
 which he was to make his audacity disappear ; he intended it to 
 be " free and Christian ;" he meant, above all, that people should 
 proceed on an engagement to judge only according to Scripture. 
 There lay the illusion ; there began the impossible. To propose 
 shutting out Rome from the arsenal of tradition, was to require 
 that she should lay down all pretensions to the primacy, that she 
 should cease to be the Church, so as to be no more than ci church, 
 the sister, the fellow of those new churches, born but as yester- 
 day according to her, and whose very existence, according to 
 her, was no better than a permanent crime. In brief, it was to 
 require that Rome should connnence hy embracing, if not the 
 Reformation, at least the fundamental principle of the Reforma- 
 tion. 
 
 But if the one party erred in misplacing the question, or, to 
 speak more correctly, in not perceiving that it was insoluble, the 
 other party w^ere still more in the wrong, in believing that they 
 exclusively were called upon to decide it. To have the council 
 convened by the pope, and to have it meet under the direction 
 of the pope, was to assume as admitted and incontestable the 
 most contested of all the points in question, namely, the supremacy 
 of Rome. This was the vast and vicious circle in which Europe 
 was to be driven about for twenty years. 
 
 All this, however, leads to an important conclusion, which has 
 been too much forgotten : that the doctrine of the Church's in- 
 fallibility, so boldly advanced in our times by the Romish doctors 
 as the basis of the whole edifice, was at that time, we do not say 
 unknown, but certainly very far from being held so rigorously 
 as it has been since. Had it been a positive tenet that Rome 
 could change nothing, absolutely nothing, of aught she had once 
 decided in points of doctrine, it is evident that the idea of an ap- 
 peal from her, in the matter of dogmas, to a future council, never 
 could have entered any one's head, and no more that of Luther 
 than of any one else. To whom could such a thought suggest 
 
30 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 itself at the present day ? What Protestant would now dream of 
 asking Rome to change or even to modify her creed on a single 
 point ? If, therefore, there Avere demands of this sort in the six- 
 teenth centuiy, and if such demands could be preferred without 
 its being felt that what was asked was an impossibility — what, 
 we repeat, is the inevitable conclusion, but that the Church's 
 infallibility was not yet a formal dogma, and the pope's still less 
 so ? Of this we shall hereafter have proofs of another kind. 
 
 When the Lutherans, in protesting against all that was to be 
 done at Trent, craved an indefinite prolongation for the truce 
 granted until the opening of the council, the emperor replied, 
 that it did not belong to him to withdraw them from whatever 
 might be the judgment of that supreme tribunal. His proper 
 part would be to attack them as heretics, solemnly condemned, 
 rather than as his own proper enemies ; all he desired was, that 
 the condemnation might be delayed until the state of his afi'airs 
 should admit of his giving effect to it. On this side, therefore, 
 he was well content that there should be no precipitation. But, 
 on the other, numerous embarrassments were accumulating. 
 Though in no haste, for the moment, to see sentence pronounced 
 on the Reformed in general, still there was one individual who 
 gave him much disquiet, and of whom he was eager to be rid. 
 This was Hermann von Meurs, Archbishop of Cologne. A se- 
 cret partisan of Luther, he had introduced into his diocese a cer- 
 tain number of reforms, at first disciplinary, then, by little and 
 httle, some that touched more or less on doctrine. The defec- 
 tion of Cologne would have been a terrible blow, and the move- 
 ment that had commenced required to be checked at any cost. 
 So intent was Charles V, upon this being done, that he forgot 
 that a council was expected, nay, he seemed to forget even that 
 there Avas a pope. It was before himself, the emperor, that he 
 caused the archbishop to be summoned, nor did he even speak 
 of delivering him afterwards to the judgment of the Church. 
 From the council not having yet done anything, he seemed to 
 conclude that all questions remained untouched, and that it re- 
 mained for him to determine the grounds on which Hermann 
 was to be condemned. Once more, accordingly, he appointed a 
 public conference to be held, of certain doctors of both parties, 
 and even went so far as to give instructions for an abstract of 
 the discussion being laid before the diet the following year. 
 This was a plain enough intimation, that in the case in hand 
 he was to make the diet serve as council. As for the pope, 
 he was entirely left out of view. 
 
 Paul said nothing, and contented himself with summoning the 
 archbishop also. He devoured the afiiront in secret ; but the 
 
Chap. 11. 1515. AFFAIRS OF COLOGNE. 31 
 
 council narrowly escaped being di.ssolved by it. The fifteen or 
 twenty bishops who happened to be then at Trent, a.sked them- 
 selves what they had come there for, if the emperor employed 
 himself in summoning prelates, drawing up articles of faith, and 
 acting as council and as pope. These complaints found their 
 way to Rome, where it was not easy to know whether they 
 should be encouraged or suppressed. In itself the dissolving of 
 the council could not but gratify the pope ; but was he sure that 
 he would have restored to him, intact, that authority of which 
 he was partially deprived by the convocation of a council-gen- 
 eral ? The future diet might, at the voice of the emperor, act 
 as heir to the rights of the council, after it had expired at its 
 birth. The aOair of Hermann might also call for an explana- 
 tion on the subject of the limits of the two powers, and the em- 
 peror seemed little disposed to have all his rights comprised in 
 that of sending the archbishop to the pope. It was better, there- 
 fore, for the latter that no such explanation should take place, 
 and, in order to that, it was requisite that the council should 
 continue in prospect, even although it should remain indefi- 
 nitely thus. 
 
 Whom shall we pronounce to have been really in the wrong ? 
 We cannot but admit that it was the emperor. \Vliatever mio-ht 
 have been his opinion in the everlasting dispute about the supe- 
 riority of councils over popes, or of popes over councils, he could 
 not seriously believe himself authorized to pronounce on the 
 orthodoxy of an archbishop. In protesting, the pope would have 
 done no more than his duty. His councillors urged him to it ; 
 his silence was called treason. It is not for us to blame liim for 
 having persisted in it ; but as we hold ourselves bound to collect, 
 in passing, all that can throw light on what some were interested 
 in leaving in the shade, we w^ould here remark how much the 
 authority of the Church and of its head w^as still vague, obscure, 
 and little understood. It was rather a fact than a right. As a 
 fact, the strong made a jest of it ; as a right, from the moment 
 of its not being an absolute right over everything and everybody, 
 no man knew exactly how he stood with regard to it. Men 
 took the place of principles. A strong pope encroached on the 
 civil power ; a strong prince on the spiritual. At Rome, a priest 
 took away kingdoms ; at Cologne, a prince spoke of taking away 
 an archbishopric. And amid all this, that council which Rome 
 represents to us as a citadel built upon the rock, is shewn by 
 all the histories of the time, even the most Romanist of them, 
 to have held by a thread, a hair, a nothing — to have been de- 
 pendent to an incredible extent on the wretched springs of po- 
 litical intrigue and human passion. If in all this, some see only 
 
32 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 one farther proof of the Divine intervention such as alone, in 
 their opinion, could have removed so many obstacles — do we not 
 reverence God more, when we say, with this history in our hand, 
 that it would have heen unworthy of Him to have veiled the 
 august action of the Holy Ghost under such a tissue of human 
 frailty and sellisliness ? 
 
 Erelong there arose a new difficulty. 
 
 The kingdom of Naples had about a hundred bishops, the 
 greater part of whoni were devoted to the pope, and ready to 
 repair to the council as soon as he should signify a wish to see 
 them there. Now, the viceroy^ having proposed that four only 
 should go — these four acting at once for themselves and for all 
 the rest — to this they refused to agree. The matter was referred 
 to the pope, who pronounced them in the right. 
 
 In the Roman point of view, and in regard to a council, the 
 viceroy's idea was absurd. Nothing more legitimate or more 
 simple than to vote by procuration in a matter where a man's 
 self, his own interests, and his own rights are concerned ; but 
 who could reasonably dream of such a thing as to concur in the 
 same way by procuration, in dogmatical decisions, and in de- 
 crees viewed beforehand as infallible ? In fact, it is in the body 
 of the bishops that infallibility is supposed to reside. There could 
 be no assurance that each mandatory would vote on all points 
 as his constituents would have done. The viceroy had never 
 thought of this. And here we see a fresh proof of what we 
 have just remarked, as to the obscurity in which, in the six- 
 teenth century, those grand theories still fluctuated, which are 
 represented in our days as dating from the earliest times of the 
 Church. 
 
 But was this theory, obscure to a statesman, clear at least to 
 the understanding of the pope ? His bull makes no mention of 
 it. Nevertheless, that would have been the best way to make 
 it displease nobody. " The episcopal body," he might have said, 
 " cannot err ; but every bishop is fallible. Each, therefore, can 
 represent only himself To allow one to vote for several, would 
 be to trench upon the infallibility of the body." As for repre- 
 sentation by procurators who should not be bishops — for this 
 question also had been raised — the pope would have had even 
 less difficulty in demonstrating that it was impossible. " It is 
 of Divine right,''' he might have said, "that a council should 
 be composed of bishops. It is through them that the Holy Ghost 
 reaches it. We cannot, therefore, make Him pass through chan- 
 nels in which we have no warranty that His influences will not 
 
 1 Peter of Toledo. 
 
Chap. II. 1545. INFALLIBILITY BY DELEGATION. 33 
 
 be tampered with and altered." Such is the manner in "which 
 one would reason at the present day. ^ 
 
 Instead of reasoning, the pope confined himself to mere de- 
 fence, and condemned the idea, not as absurd, but simply as bad. 
 People settled down generally into the conviction that his first, 
 and perhaps his only motive, was the fear that the foreign bishop.s 
 might take advantage of it to secure for themselves the majority 
 in the council. Such even was his alarm that he declared every 
 bishop suspended and interdicted, ipso facto, who should dare to 
 vote by proxy. The legates thought the bull so absolute and so 
 harsh, that they durst not give the actual text. They craved 
 that the pope would allow them to publish the meaning only, 
 and even that with much softening of its pungency. 
 
 It was well that they did so, for it was to happen with this, 
 as with so many other bulls, which, notwithstanding the severity 
 of their terms, and the pretension of speaking in the name of 
 God, had accommodated themselves admirably to all the exi- 
 gencies which Rome had not the courage, or the ability, directly 
 to confront. Hardly had it been received at Trent, when, be- 
 hold, the procurators of Albert of Brandenburg, archbishop of 
 Mayence, arrived ; and although he could not have purposely 
 violated the pope's order, since he knew nothing of it, they did 
 not venture to apply it to him. No time was lost in assuring 
 him that the prohibition could not concern so eminent a person 
 — a cardinal-prince — as he was. An unjust distinction this, any 
 way, but passing strange when view-ed in the light of the coun- 
 cil's Divine mission. The members are equal — all share in the 
 council's infallibility ; but, if you are a mere bishop, it is lost un- 
 less you exercise it yourself; if you are a prince, you may trans- 
 mit and delegate it. 
 
 Dispensation followed dispensation, imtil at last the procura- 
 tors that were admitted, became sufiiciently numerous. At the 
 close of the council we find forty-nine. 
 
 In the beginning of May, the preparatory committee being a 
 little more numerous, various matters of form, costume, cere- 
 monies, &c., were regulated. After that, the opening of the 
 council was spoken of. The majority thought that this should 
 be done. It was said that it would be the best way to get those 
 bishops to come who desired to do so, but who grudged risking a 
 fruitless journey ; and, further, that it would be the best method 
 also of putting a stop to the liberties in which Charles Y. was 
 disposed to indulge. The legates decided that they must wait 
 for Cardinal Farnese, who was now papal nuncio at the court 
 of the emperor. But they did not fully speak out their mind. 
 
 This was because to the palpable difficulties of their position, 
 
 B* 
 
34: HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I 
 
 there was now daily added one or other of those which would 
 not bear to be openly avowed, and yet were all the more vexa- 
 tious. The pope could do nothing without the emperor ; the 
 emperor wanted nothing better than to dispense with the pope, 
 and what he had already done sufficiently indicated what he might 
 prove capable of doing, were the occasion to ofler. His love for 
 the Church, which he was constantly parading, did not prevent 
 his entering perpetually into conferences with those heretics that 
 were so heartily cursed by Rome, and he was more or less severe, 
 more or less insinuating, just in proportion as the Turks avoided 
 or approached the Austrian frontiers. Sometimes he merely 
 pressed them to agree to the council, promising for the rest, that 
 he would act mildly ; sometimes, renouncing the idea of religious 
 unity, he went so far as even to propose to them that it should 
 be dissolved immediately, provided they would sincerely resume 
 their places within the sphere of that political unity of which he 
 was resolved, above all things, to be the chief Was it his pur- 
 pose, as the Protestants generally thought, to crush them after- 
 wards ? This is possible, and even probable : but the pope felt 
 that this accord, were it to last no more than two months, could 
 only be at his expense. It was necessary, therefore, at any cost, 
 not only to retard it, but to make it impossible ; and for this it 
 was indispensable that war should commence without any longer 
 delay. Cardinal Farnese, accordingly, had received orders to 
 labour to that effect to the utmost of his power. On the pope's 
 part he offered twelve thousand men and live hundred horses. 
 
 Let us, on this subject, repeat what has been so often said, 
 or written, on this strange and fatal transformation of a bishop 
 into a king, of a priest into a warrior, of the professed father 
 of Christians into a man having soldiers to furnish by the 
 twelve thousand, and Avho offers them — we have seen for what 
 purpose I It is annoying that so many mere declaimers should 
 have meddled with the theme, and that so many infidels should 
 have laid hold of it for their own purposes. So much virulence 
 has been shewn in exclaiming against the jDope and the clergy, 
 that sober people have almost been condemned to say nothing 
 of a certain number of complaints, well-founded, no doubt, but 
 too often and too ambitiously repeated. Happily, a truth is not 
 the less a truth though often harped upon. Should we take 
 advantage of the occasion to say again that the temporal power 
 of the popes has often been as odious in practice as it is illegiti- 
 mate and anti-Christian in theory — would this be any the less 
 true, because Raynal and Diderot have demonstrated it be- 
 fore us ? 
 
 The same may be observed with respect to the morals of the 
 
Chap. II. 15-15. MOllALS OF THE POPES. 85 
 
 popes ; Ibr here, too, we might have aii. excellent opportunity of 
 speaking of those morals. Amid so many cares to engage and 
 distract him, Paul did not forget his family. We have seen how 
 he raised his two grandsons to the cardinalship ; but his son was 
 still nothing — nothing but a burden on his purse. Paul had no 
 wish to die without having first secured for him one of the first, 
 if possible the fir.st, place among the princes of Italy. So early 
 as in 1538, he had asked that he might have the Dukedom of 
 Milan. ^ In despair of being able to obtain this, he had dreamt 
 of that of Parma and Placentia. This last was a dependence of 
 the domain of the Church ; but the consent of the emperor also, 
 as lord-paramount, had to be obtained. Besides, it was at the 
 outset a question of no small gravity, if a pope, possessing the 
 usufruct of what was called St. Peter's patrimony, were autho- 
 rized to erect any portion of it into an independent sovereignty. 
 If he could give Parma to his son, he must also have had it in 
 his power to give him Rome. This M'as the emperor's objection. 
 In point of law he had nothing to answer ; but Cardinal Farnese 
 was not the man to leave the question on this ground. The 
 pope's son was his father. Now, he hoped, that once he were 
 the son of a duke, people would perhaps forget to reproach him 
 with being the son of a bastard and the grandson of a pope. 
 " If you give us Parma," said he to the emperor, " you will see 
 the dukedom in the possession of a family which will be indebted 
 to you for its elevation, and for ever devoted to you ; if you leave 
 it in the hands of the pope, who shall answer for Paul III.'s suc- 
 cessor not being your enemy?" In fine, Octavius, the heir of 
 Lewis Farnese, had married Margaret, Charles V.'s natural 
 daughter. Thus, in consenting to the elevation of the Farneses, 
 the emperor secured the rank and fortune of his own daughter. 
 Yet he yielded only with reluctance. The pope, in the begin- 
 ning of August, solemnly gave Lewis the investiture of the duke- 
 dom. 
 
 On this occasion the Protestants were not the only persons to 
 exclaim against the shamelessness of Paul III. Bitter reflections 
 were cast upon him throughout all Italy, at Trent, at Rome, and 
 even among the cardinals ; those even who were too much accus- 
 tomed to the pontifical disorders to censure them in the name of 
 religion and morals, not the less regarded the success achieved 
 by Paul as imprudent and fatal. In other times it Avould only 
 have been one scandal in addition to many others ; but at a 
 moment when all eyes were fixed on the court of Rome, when a 
 council was just about to open, when even those nations that 
 
 ' This fact, denied by Pallavicini, has been proved from incontestable 
 documents by Ranke. 
 
36 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 were most opposed to any reformation in the faith, loudly called 
 for reformation in the morals of the Church — Paul's conduct was 
 that of a person out of his senses and mad. 
 
 For the Protestants that madness was a triumph. Such an 
 affair as this told more against the pope and the popedom than 
 all the folios of the doctors ; they asked themselves whether 
 people would not he compelled hy seeing him scandalously fal- 
 lible in so many things, to end with admitting that he might be 
 fallible in all. 
 
 And we, too, ask ourselves the same thing. 
 
 It is true that we have no longer scandals of such magnitude 
 to appeal to. But of what consequence is this ? The theory of 
 papal infallibility has undergone no change since the faults of a 
 Paul III., or the orgies of an Alexander YI. ; on the contrary, it 
 is taught at the present day with less reserve and more generally 
 than ever. If the present pope is a respectable man, so much 
 the better ; but he might not be so, and yet not the less be pope.^ 
 Nothing, consequently, more illogical than the ignorant charity 
 of those people who profess not to understand how we reproach 
 the popedom of the present day with the faults and vices of the 
 popedom of three centuries ago. Whatever changes for the bet- 
 ter the court of Rome may have effected in its own immediate 
 circle, the question remains, and will for ever remain the same. 
 Should we find in the whole series of the popes but a single man 
 decidedly too bad for reason and conscience not to revolt at the 
 idea that he could have been infallible in point of doctrine, we 
 should be authorized to refuse, even to the best, a privilege which 
 has necessarily belonged either to all or to none. 
 
 What more curious, on this subject, than the embarrassment 
 into which they themselves are thrown when they have to speak 
 of such or such a pope among their predecessors ? It is the 
 usual practice, in official acts, that the name of every bygone 
 pope should be followed with the words " of liappy memory ;"" 
 
 ^ "Would the reader like to know how M. le Maistre, in his book en- 
 titled Du Pape, tries to elude this objection? " At a time when court- 
 esans, monsters of licentiousness and wickedness, taking advantage of 
 the public disorders, disposed of all things at Rome, and contrived to 
 place their sons and their lovers on the seat of St. Peter, I most ex- 
 pressly deny that those men were popes." Very convenient, no doubt; 
 but if every one has a right to decide who have been, and who have 
 not been popes, to what does this lead us? If there have been no law- 
 ful popes but such as have owed nothing to corruption and to intrigue, 
 the Church must then have remained for whole ages without a head. 
 Much more; as every election, even the best, may have been secretly 
 indebted to some disgraceful motive, it would follow that we cannot 
 be sure of the legitimacy of any pope. 
 
Chap. II. 1545. PAPAL INFALLIBILITY IN DISCIPLINE. Hi 
 
 but as there are several to wliorn these words very ill appi)', how 
 do people think it is contrived to avoid openly depriving such 
 popes of the title ? Why, they are quoted in notes. Thus 
 Gregory XVI., in his encyclical letter oi" 1832, having occasion 
 to speak of bad books, mentions first Leo X., then Clement 
 XIII., as the authors of certain decrees on the subject, and the 
 words of Juippy meinorif failed not to accompany these names ; 
 but Alexander VI.,- a bull of whose issuing, under the title Inter 
 Multiplices, ought to have figured in the first line, was named 
 merely in a slight reference. There, as the formula was not 
 strictly required, its omission was a matter of no difficulty. And 
 so, though to this man the heir of his throne is obliged to refuse 
 not only his esteem, but even the hackneyed homage of a vain 
 formula — yet even to him, pope, under the penalty of reduc- 
 ing yourself to nothing, you are compelled to say to his face, 
 that the Holy Ghost was in him. That mind teeming with so 
 many infamous ideas, had only to wish it, in order to its being 
 put into a condition for sounding the most unfathomable mys- 
 teries Avithout a chance of error. That hand, which was so 
 skilled in the management of poisons, it depended only on him- 
 self to employ in tracing lines as holy, as venerable, as infal- 
 lible as those of a St. Paul or a St. John. That body rendered 
 impure by every vice — but no ; you would not dare to do so. 
 You would find it hard to say whether it would be most odious 
 or most absurd. And yet, if you recoil, all is lost. The cause 
 of Borgia is identified with yours. On the pontiff's throne every 
 stain is indelible. 
 
 Are those Roman Catliolics who reject the doctrine of the 
 pope's infallibility in- a better position than others for declining 
 our conclusions ? W^e shall elsewhere examine whether it be 
 true that a man can be a Roman Catholic without belie vinsf in 
 that infallibility, and whether he has only to deny it, in order to 
 escape from the difficulties which it involves. It is incontestably 
 an article of faith for a great part of their Church, for those 
 countries that have the reputation of being most Roman Catholic, 
 for Italy, for Rome, for the cardinals, for the pope, inasmuch as 
 we are not aware that the popes of our age have ever withdrawn 
 the decrees in which so many bygone popes openly arrogate that 
 privilege. As for those persons who would say, ' We don't believe 
 in it, your objections do not affect us,' we might always prove 
 to them that in refusing to answer those objections, they only 
 make them recoil with augmented force — upon whom ? Why, 
 upon the pope and upon those whom the pope regards as his best, 
 
 * Felicia recordationis predecessor noster. 
 ' " A great rogue," says De Maistre. 
 
38 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT, Book. I. 
 
 indeed as his only true friends. It is Imown that Home would 
 never listen for a moment to the middle terms, imagined by 
 certain Romanists, for the purpose of getting rid of the papal 
 infallibility, without having the air of denying it. Jansenius 
 having said that " the Holy See sometimes condemns a doctrine 
 solely for the sake of peace, without thereby meaning to declare 
 it false," his assertion was formally reproved by Clement YIII. 
 
 As for those even who, while they admit the pope's infalli- 
 bility in matters of doctrine, think to render that position more 
 tenable by denying that he is infallible in point of discipline — 
 we might prove to them also, that this denial has never had the 
 consent of Rome. The Church cannot err, says the Hoinan 
 Catechism} either in the faith, or in the rule of manners. In 
 that same encyclical letter of 1832: "It would," wrote the 
 pope, ''he criminal'^ and altogether contrary to the respect 
 due to the laws of the Church, to carp at the disci'pline which 
 it has establislieciy Shall it be said that the pope, in this 
 passage, seems rather to ordain respect for established discipline 
 than belief in its infallibility in general ? Let us hear : " As it 
 is certain," he goes on to say, " to use the words of the Fathers 
 of the Council of Trent, in their thirteenth session, that the 
 Church has been taught by Jesus Christ and His apostles, that 
 she is under the constant teaching of the Holy Ghost, it is alto- 
 gether absurd to moot the idea of a restoration, of a regenera- 
 tion — as if she could be thought capable of falling." Behold 
 discipline put positively under the safeguard of the general infal- 
 libility admitted by the Council of Trent ; and as the pope, in 
 that document, puts no difference betwixt the laws of the Church 
 and the laws of the popes, as, moreover, discipline is the M'ork 
 of the popes much more than it is the work of the Church, all 
 that he has said of the Church he has virtually said of the 
 popes ; to them, as well as to the Church assigning that disci- 
 plinary infallibility quite as much as the infallibility in matters 
 of faith. Deny it ; say that it is a mistake, that you have only 
 to make the same objections as ours on that point — all well I 
 But remember, let us once more be allowed to say, that you 
 then send them back more strong, more direct, more crushing — 
 to whom ? To the pope, to the head of your Church, to all 
 who, according to him, exclusively hold the truth. 
 
 Of those last then — and we have already said that their 
 numbers are on the increase in the Roman Church — we would 
 ask what they would make of Pope Liberius, Avho for four years 
 was an Arian ; of Liberius excommunicating Athanasius, the 
 author of the Roman Symbol ; of Liberius, to whom Bishop 
 
 * Chap. ix. * Nefas esset. 
 
Chap. H. 1515. PAPAL INlALLiUILITV IN DISCIPLINE. 3^ 
 
 Hilary of Poitiers, champion of the Nicene Creed, wrote on tliat 
 occasion : " I anathematize thee, Liberius, both thee and thine. 
 I anathematize a second and a third time, Liberius, the pre- 
 varicator I" 
 
 We would ask them what they make of Innocent X., who, 
 shortly before condemning Jansenius, said : " Let me be left at 
 peace ; this is no business of mine ; I am old ; I have never 
 studied theology ;" which did not prcA'^ent him, however, from 
 pronouncing, and leaving others to teach as infallibly true, what 
 he himself had never taught but hesitatingly. 
 
 "We would ask them what they would make of Innocent XII., 
 approving, praising, admhing a book,^ and then, on being 
 solicited by a king, and after two years of resistance, condemn- 
 ing it ? 
 
 We would ask them where infallibility resided when there 
 were two, three, or four popes, all at once, a thing which 
 happened, not once or twice as is generally thought, but twenty- 
 four times ;2 where, when those popes mutually condemned and 
 anathematized each other ; where, when their rights — or their 
 crimes — were so equally balanced, that there was no means of 
 distinguishing the true pope from the anti-pope, and the direct 
 chain of succession from the violent and intrusive one ? 
 
 We would ask them — but to what purpose multiply these 
 questions ? — one or a hundred, what does it signify ? The 
 objection is the same. And who might best multiply these 
 questions, if not those who are brought into immediate contact 
 with Rome, and the popes, and the circle around the popes ? 
 It is in Italy, in fact it is at Rome, and in the palace of the 
 popes, that the idea of their infallibility must have had to en- 
 counter, it would seem, most oppo.sition. At a distance, people 
 see only the head of the Church, the vicar of Jesus Christ. His 
 words never reach them but in august phraseology ; he finds no 
 difficulty in gaining and preserving a certain grandeur in the 
 popular imagination. Close at hand, be he ever so respectable 
 as an individual, still he is a mere man ; often all that is to be 
 seen is a worn-out old man, a poor shrivelled body, a sinking 
 mind, a failing memory, a master, in fine, who has ceased to 
 see, to hear, to think, and who lives only in the persons of his 
 servants. What I you may have seen this old man last night ; 
 you may have conversed with him familiarly ; you may even 
 
 ^ Fen^lon's Maximes des Saints. 
 
 =^ 111 250, 336, 418, 498, 530, 686, 687, 767, 824, 855, 963, 984, 996, 
 1012, 1033, 1058, 1061, 1073, 1118, 1130, 1159, 1316, 1378, 1431. From 
 the third to the fifteenth century, one only did not witness a schism, 
 and the eleventh saw five. 
 
40 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book 1. 
 
 have corrected him in a mistake, and contradicted him, as will 
 sometimes happen in all the conversations in the world ; he 
 himself may sometimes have admitted that you were in the 
 right, and may have politely said, '•' Very true — I was mistaken." 
 And lo, at the close of this colloquy, he may have dictated some 
 lines on questions which the greatest genius would only study 
 with trembling. Now, these few lines you present to me 
 as infallible and sacred ; as a decision which I cannot attack 
 without revolting from God himself Further, who knows after 
 all whether it be really from him ? Who knows but that it 
 may have been you, his counsellor, wdio suggested, nay, per- 
 haps, who dictated the whole of it ? Elsewhere, ministers are 
 responsible, and the prince alone is irresponsible ; at Rome, in 
 everything not political, it is the pope alone who is responsible. 
 A fallible and irresponsible monarch may, without compromising 
 himself, put his signature to what is done in his name ; an infal- 
 lible doctor cannot avoid assuming the responsibility of all that 
 he signs. But those who direct him ; those who prepare his 
 decrees, those who put the pen into his hand to sign them ; those 
 who can say, " Such or such an article of faith was made by 
 me" — how can they, unless indeed they believe themselves to 
 be infallible — how can they seriously teach the pope's infalli- 
 bility ? Pallavicini, our historian, w^as one of the very men who 
 pushed on Innocent X., old and tremulous, to the condemnation 
 of Jansenius. He himself has preserved for us the details of the 
 pope's hesitations. " When he placed himself," says he, " on 
 the brink of the ditch, and measured in thought the space he 
 had to clear, he paused, and could not he made to go farther. '' 
 What lanjruajre I What a comment on our reasonings on the 
 authority of the pope ! Ah, however annoying it may be to mix 
 up a charge of bad faith with calm and serious arguments, how 
 can we but feel convinced that the folks at Rome, those who 
 proclaim most loudly the pope's infallibility, are certainly, of all 
 Roman Catholics, those who believe it least, and who can least 
 believe it ? 
 
 But why do we speak of the folks at Rome ? Beyond the 
 circle of those who have an interest in allowing the fundamental 
 principle of ultramontanism to live and revive to the utmost, 
 there is not a place in the world where the general body of pro- 
 fessing Christians is farther from according to the pope any 
 supernatural and divine authority. On arriving from France, 
 Germany, or Switzerland, w^here so many bow at the mere 
 name of our Holy FatJier tlce Pope, where those even who 
 least believe in him, generally speak of him with respect — one 
 is confounded at the boldness with which the lowest shopkeepers 
 
Chap. II. 1545. FAITH IN THE PUPE AT ROME. 41 
 
 ill Rome, the moment tlieir tongues are unloosed, express them- 
 selves with respect to his character, his person, the people he has 
 about him, and his doings. The very police, generally so act- 
 ive and so susceptible in matters aflecting the civil power, are 
 much less so with respect to the Head of the Church and God's 
 representative. They make no long speeches against his infal- 
 libility ; they have never asked themselves theoretically what it 
 means, and whether they beheve in it ; but the less they have 
 reflected on it, the less do they try, as so many Roman Catho- 
 lics do elsewhere, to conceal from you, and to conceal from 
 themselves, that they cannot believe in it. And how could 
 they ? With what powers of abstraction would they not need to 
 be indued in order to their seriously accepting as infallible, 
 sacred, above all attack, what they see emanating from the 
 same source with the decrees, political, or others, which they 
 may have attacked, criticised, possibly cursed ? Were you to 
 force them to reason, to draw conclusions, think you that you 
 would find much difficulty in wresting from them the confes- 
 sion of that which, without their being aware of it, is really at 
 the bottom of their thoughts?^ Think you, to return to our 
 history, that those who were so scandahzed at the decree by 
 which Paul III. gave a dukedom to his son, could have been 
 really and intimately convinced of his infallibility in such or such 
 a decree, pubhshed perhaps the same day, subscribed perhaps 
 with the same pen, and on the same parchment ? No, we will 
 venture to say, they did not believe in it. No more do those 
 Avho are about the pope at the present day believe in it ; or if 
 they do believe in it — for it were too painful to suppose there 
 could be hypocrisy so long persisted in — it is because they are 
 self-blinded ; it is because from the strong feeling they have of 
 the need there is for a pope in order to their reigning over peo- 
 ple's consciences in his name, they end at last in submitting 
 their own consciences to him. 
 
 Could those men Avho took part in the opening proceedings of 
 the council, have any more beheved in the infallibility of coun- 
 cils ? Let us proceed with our narrative ; that will be a 
 sufficient reply. 
 
 ^ "Rome knows tliis: it is long since the pope's authority bas been 
 anywhere less deeply rooted than in Italy. Not that the people do not, 
 from habit, respect it in all that does not travei-se theiiM)wu ideas, or 
 their favourite passions, or their interests; but, above the people, one 
 hardly finds any but censurers and enemies. Kot only does nobodv 
 believe in it, but they scout it and hate it." — Lamennais, Affaires de 
 Home. 
 
'■ "^CHAPTEE III. 
 
 ~"' (1515.) 
 
 THE COUNCIL AT LAST OPENED. SESSIONS I., II., lU. 
 
 The Bishops begin to be impatient^ — First Session, 13th December, 
 1545 — Formidable task — What Catholicism had been hitherto — 
 Bossuet and St. Augustine — Progress in Religion — Reasonable In- 
 consistencies and absurd Logic — A "vvise Decree — In whose name 
 was it to be published — Pope and Council — Prcesidentibus legatis — 
 Foxes — Second Session — Protests — Were appearances really saved 
 — People know not where to begin — Indecision and Alarm — "Day 
 of Battle! Glorious Day!" — Dangerous medley — What the weak- 
 minded may think — The Queen of the Virtues — Credo — Third Ses- 
 sion — An able General — The Italians at Trent — ^Their Oath — The 
 Consent of the Church. 
 
 The year was now drawing to a close. The bishops were 
 beginning to lose patience ; the legates had exhausted their 
 means of amusing them. It had even been found necessary to 
 grant some assistance in money gratifications — not pensions, the 
 legates would sa)^ for it was of essential consequence that the 
 pope should never be obnoxious to the charge of having mem- 
 bers of the council in his pay. By and by people became less 
 scrupulous. 
 
 Cardinal Farnese had returned from Germany, but without 
 having obtained more than the emperor's consent to his father's 
 elevation to the dukedom. Charles Y. had refused the ofler of 
 12,000 men; the news of an agreement between him and the 
 Lutherans was what might at any moment arrive. Then no 
 more council ; but the pope preferred risking its chances, to see- 
 ing it break up in a manner so humiliating for him. Resolving, 
 therefore, to be beforehand, he begged that a choice of one of 
 these three might be made, the suspension, the translation, or 
 the immediate opening of the council. Now, the suspension of 
 the council could not suit the emperor, as long as the agreement 
 with the Protestants remained unconcluded, and it was of 
 importance that he should continue to have it in his power to 
 threaten them, if not with the council — for they had no great 
 fear of it, yet at least with the crusade Avhich it would be sure 
 to ordain against the refractory. No more did it suit his views 
 
V 
 
 CHAP. III. 1545. OPENING OF THE COUNCIL. 43 
 
 that the council should he transferred to another place ; he knew 
 that the pope would never consent to its hein<^ held in a town 
 at a pfreater distance than Trent, and Trent was only too near 
 Rome. There remained the opening ; and the emperor had 
 always less and less cause to he eager lor that. In the end he 
 oflered to oppose it no longer, but upon one condition ; namely, 
 that the assembled bishops, at least, in the first stages of their 
 proceedings, should occupy themselves with matters of discipline, 
 should omit all decision of doctrinal questions, and, in one word, 
 abstain from everything that might oflend the Protestants. 
 
 The pope's patience was now exhausted. In asking that all 
 cause of irritation to the Lutherans should be avoided, Charles 
 let it be seen clearly enough, that, should he come at last to an 
 accommodation of his diflcrences with them, he would no longer 
 permit their being anathematized ; and what a strange part then 
 would be that of a council, forced to remain mute in presence 
 of such a schism I AYithout either refusing or promising, Paul 
 hastened to send to the legates, on the 31st of October, the order 
 to commence on the second Sunday of December. In the bull, 
 he confined himself to saying, that the council should proceed 
 " in full liberty." We shall see what was the real extent of this 
 " full liberty," promised, and even ordained, as the privilege of 
 the assembly. 
 
 ' On the 13th of December, accordingly, twenty-five bishops, 
 clothed in their pontifical robes, went in procession to the cathe- 
 dral church, and Cardinal del Monte, the first legate, celebrated 
 mass there. Then, after a sermon by Cornelio Musso, Bishop 
 of Bitonto, and an address composed by the legates, [the council 
 was declared to be opened, to the glory of the holy andundivided 
 Trinity — for the extirpation of heresies, the peace and the union 
 of the Church, the reformation of the clergy and the people, 
 the suppression and extinction of the enemies of the Christian 
 name31 Nothing further was done, except to decide that the 
 second formal session- should not be held until the 7th of Janu- 
 
 ^ " Ad laudem et gloriam sancto3 et individunS Triuitatis — ad extir- 
 pationem hfei*esuin, ad pacem et 111110110111 Ecclesire, ad dcpressionem 
 et extinctionem liostium Cliristiani noiniuis." 
 
 ^ [The reader must hereafter distina:uisli between sessions of the coun- 
 cil and congregations. The order of business in the council was fixed 
 as follows: (1) the subjects for discussion wore arranged hy committees 
 composed of bishops and doctors ; (2) these subjects were then debated 
 in meetings composed of all the members, called technically congrega- 
 tions, in which all decrees, (fcc, were to pass b}' a majority of votes, 
 reckoned, not by nations (as at the council of Constance), but by 
 heads; (3) the resolutions thus adopted were to be published and con- 
 firmed in the sessions, which were to be held operdy in the cathedral, 
 with mass and preaching, and in which no discussions were to be 
 
44 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 ary (1546). This delay, said the legates, was on account of the 
 Christmas holidays ; but the truth \\aB, that they had nothing 
 in a state of readiness, and that nobody knew where to begin. 
 
 The task, it must be allowed, which these few doctors were 
 about to undertake, that, too, under the burthen of an immense 
 responsibility, in the face of embarrassments and obstacles of all 
 sorts, and of innumerable uncertainties and obscurities, was truly 
 formidable. For it was to no purpose that they advertised them- 
 selves as the organs of the Holy Ghost ; not the less did they 
 feel what poor weak creatures they were when they came to 
 handle certain questions. Amid the labours which this history 
 has cost us, we have repeatedly forgot at once our antipathy to 
 their pride and their errors. The pen has dropt from our fingers ; 
 we have felt that we could only pity them ; we have thought 
 they must have had punishment enough in the frightful labours 
 of these endless eighteen years. Down to that period, in fact, 
 Roman Catholicism had never seriously attempted the systematic 
 arrangement of its doctrines and its laws. For more than a 
 thousand years, decisions, on each occasion when they had been 
 promulgated, had hardly touched more than one or a small 
 number of points ; councils and popes had never dreamt of 
 looking beyond the interests, the perils, and the desires of the 
 passing moment. Let Roman Catholic historians say what they 
 please,^ it is not true that the dogmatical theology, or the unity 
 of Trent, was that from which the Protestants separated. It is 
 true, no doubt, in this sense, that what was about to receive the 
 force of decrees at Trent, had already been, on the whole, the 
 Roman faith ; but to say that Luther had had such a teaching 
 body to break with as has existed since, would be an anachron- 
 ism. The Roman unity of the present day dates from the 
 Reformation ; its first cause, as well as its strongest bond of 
 union, must be sought for in the re-action against the Reforma- 
 tion. 
 
 Dov^m to this period, then, each workman had but brought 
 his own stone to the mass, and, accordingly, it was not before 
 an edifice, requiring repair and completion, that the council had 
 to set itself to work, but only before a heap of materials. And 
 these materials they were not even allowed to sift. To reject a 
 sinj^le stone would have been to unsettle the ri^ht of all the rest 
 to be employed in the edifice ; whether the builders desired it or 
 
 allowed. It is clear that by this arrangement the pope had the de- 
 cisions of the council entirely in his hands, as the committees were 
 appointed by the legates ; and in counting heads, the Italians were in 
 a majority. — Ed.] 
 
 * See in particular Moehler's Si/mboUsm. 
 
Chap. III. 1545. DIFFICULTIES OF THE TASK. 46 
 
 no, it behoved that all should be taken in. But, peihajts, the 
 plan had been clearly traced, and the foundations positively 
 laid I Not at all : the plan existed oidy in fragments, and in 
 fragments of dillerent proportions, varying with the diflerent 
 ages of the Church. The only entire plan they possessed was 
 that of the Bible, and that they would not have ; it was but too 
 evident that they could not find places lor all their materials 
 there. They were about to pronounce a curse on all who had 
 dared to take up that plan anew, and to hold to it. What a com- 
 plexity I And well surely may we forgive some trepidation ni 
 those who had to disentangle it, and those, in particular, who 
 had to superintend and direct the operation. 
 
 " Heresy," says Bossuet,' " feeble production of the human 
 mind, can constitute itself only in ill-assorted pieces ; catholic 
 truth, proceeding from God, is perfect from the outset." How 
 many things must have been forgotten before a man durst write 
 these words ! "What a defiance to histoiy — to that of the first 
 fifteen centuries of the Church, to that of the council whose 
 gropings in the dark are about to interrupt our progress at every 
 step I What I perfection stamped from the first those dogmas 
 which we behold, one after another, germinating, growing up, 
 struggling for admission, and at last, but only at the close of six 
 or ten centuries, effecting an entrance into the domain of the 
 faith I Those doctrines were perfect, forsooth, from the outset ; 
 doctrines which we shall see were admitted at Trent only after 
 debates without end, numerous modifications, and final votes 
 carried by a bare majority. And to give but one example, one, 
 however, which comprehends all, " perfection from the outset" 
 belonged, forsooth, to that grand fundamental dogma, that in- 
 fallibility, which the council itself declined to encounter face to 
 face, although it had occasion to meet it at every step, and in 
 which it has left the capital point undecided. Even although 
 it had decided that point, we should still have had to confront 
 Bossuet's allegation with the words of a man often quoted, but 
 who in our opinion ought to be quoted oftener still, for he is 
 sometimes the least Roman Catholic of the Fathers. " With 
 respect to scripture," says he, " there cannot be either discussion 
 or doubt on what it evidently teaches ; but the letters of bishops 
 may lawfully be reprehended by what may happen to be the 
 wiser discourse of a7^^J one more skilled in the matter, and by 
 the weightier authority of other bishops, and by councils."- 
 
 ^ Preface to " the Variations." 
 
 ^ "Quis autem nesciat Sanctam Scripturam canonieam omnibus pos- 
 terioribus episcoporum literis ita praeponi ut . . . ; episcoporum au- 
 tem literas . . . et per eermonem forte sapientiorem cujudibet in ei ro 
 
46 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Boos I, 
 
 Here, truly, we have what has very httle resemblance to the 
 mfallibility of the Fathers. They might be reprehended and 
 set right, not only " by other bishops," but " by the opinion 
 of one more skilled," bishop or not. They might be so, espe- 
 cially " by councils." Augustine, accordingly, would have been 
 not a little surprised to see them so often cited, and himself 
 among the number, in the decrees of many a council, as of the 
 same authority with Scripture. " National or provincial coun- 
 cils," he goes on to say, " ought to yield Avithout more ado to 
 councils-general ; but it often Jiappens tluit councils- general are 
 themselves amended by posterior councils, when experience opens 
 what was shut, and makes known what lay hid."^ Change one 
 or two words here, and you have one of the ideas which the 
 Homan Catholicism of the present day treats with most indigna- 
 tion,2 that of perfectibility in men's views of the faith. Pro- 
 ceeding from God, revelation in itself is perfect ; delivered to 
 man, it is necessarily perfectible in this sense that posterior 
 studies and meditations may always modify the manner in which 
 it shall be understood, whether in its details, or in its totalitv. 
 
 ' ^ 
 
 This mobility, with which Protestantism has been so often re- 
 proached, is accepted by Augustine as one of the necessities of 
 the human mind ; and while we see Protestants themselves com- 
 plain of it, and throw themselves, out of spite, either into infi- 
 delity, or into Roman Catholicism, the good bishop of the fifth 
 century speaks of it without a word of regret. In vain would 
 you seek to limit by other passages the disquieting latitude of 
 the above, and never could you so restrict its meaning as to ad- 
 mit of St. Augustine having been a Roman Catholic when he 
 wrote it. He seems to admit, indeed, that in passing through 
 this series of sifting processes,-^ the truth will become more and 
 more (whilst according to our apprehensions, it has often become 
 less and less) complete and pure ; but that is of little consequence ; 
 if such was his belief in the Church's infallibilitv, he did not be- 
 lieve in it at all, and he was quite as far as we are from admitting, 
 
 peritioris, et per aliorum episcoporum gravioretn auctoritatem ; et per 
 concilia licere reprehend!." — August, de Bapt., contra Donat. 1. ii. 1. 
 
 ^ " Et ipsa concilia qute per singulas regiones vel provincias sunt, 
 plenarioruni conciliorum auctoritate quce fiunt ex universe orbe sine 
 uUis jMnbagibus cedere ; ipsaque plenaria scepe priora posterioribus emen- 
 dari, cum aliquo experimento rerum aperitiu* quod clausum erat, et cog- 
 noscitur guod latebat." — August, de Bapt., contra Donat. 
 
 * See Lameunais' preface to the second volume of his Essais sur V In- 
 difference. 
 
 ^ Mark, let us observe in passing, the omission of the pope. Had 
 Augustine assigned to him we do not say infallibilit}', but a simple 
 doctrinal supremacy, how could he have left him out in this enumera- 
 tion? 
 
Chap. III. 1540. THE ADDRESS AND SERMON. 47 
 
 Avith Bossuet, that the Romish system of doctrine was perfect 
 from the outset. • 
 
 Strangle to say, at the opening of this council, which was to 
 he followed by the prevalence of the idea of an absolute infalli- 
 bility, it Avas rather according to St. Augustine's view that the 
 legates had composed their exhortation. That address, bating 
 certain forms, breathed throughout a high Christian spirit ; too 
 high, as we might easily demonstrate, to be considered strictly 
 Roman Catholic. After a frightful picture of the corruption of 
 the clergy — the first authors, according to them, of all the evils 
 of the Church, the legates declared that the first thing to be 
 done was to repent and debase themselves. " Without this pro- 
 found sense of our failings," they added, " in vain shall we enter 
 the council, in vain have we invoked the Holy Ghost. We can 
 not receive him." Nothing more wise, but what then were 
 they thinking about ? If infallibility depends, in however small 
 a degree, on the rehgious and moral dispositions of those who 
 are to be the organs of the Church, to what council, to what 
 pope can we trust ? Let a pope be notoriously immoral — we 
 should then be authorized to refuse him any dogmatical author- 
 ity. And as for a council — how shall it be known whether a 
 meeting of two or three hundred bishops shall have presented, 
 on the whole, enough of good individual dispositions, to secure 
 the direction of the decisions of the majority, by God himself, 
 who alone sees men's hearts ? Nobody remarked this. The ex- 
 hortation was extremely praised, and deserved to be so. We shall 
 have here and there more than one example of these passing re- 
 turns to good sense and the gospel. These were involuntary 
 and illogical ; but what would you have ? When people start 
 from false principles, it is only by reasonmg ill that they have 
 any chance of being reasonable. 
 
 The Bishop of Bitonto, in his sermon, reasoned much better, 
 at least much more logically. " The moment is come," he said ; 
 " God must speak, and he will speak." Next, like the legates, 
 he exhorted all the bishops to repentance and humiliation. 
 " But," he added, " were you even to remain in impenitence, 
 don't go on to imagine that thus you would have it in your 
 power to shut the mouth of God. Happen what may in that 
 respect, the Holy Ghost will find it easy to open yours, and em- 
 ploy it in his service." In other terms : "If your hearts are 
 pure, so much the better ; if they are not, still the voice of the 
 council will not the less be God's voice." This Avas absurd. 
 Let us rather say, it was impious. But was it anti-Roman 
 Catholic? duite the contrary. Listen to Pallavicini : "If the 
 illumination of the Holy Ghost can be looked for only in a coun- 
 
48 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 cil of men inwardly sanctified, that sanctity "being invisible and 
 uncertain, their authority and their decisions remain in like man- 
 ner uncertain."^ Cornelio Musso's sermon, then, was only, after 
 all, the candid expression of the system, on the strength of which 
 the council was about to fix and command the faith. People, 
 generally, however, were shocked at it. 
 
 They w^ere no less so at the ultramontane ideas with which 
 its author had interspersed it, with a garnishing, too, of conceits 
 and oddities of all sorts. Even at Rome people give him no 
 thanks for this stupid and unseasonable frankness. In an apos- 
 trophe to the mountains that rise around Trent, he called on 
 the rocks, the woods, and the torrents, to proclaim to the whole 
 universe, that all ought to submit to the council ; " And if it do 
 not," he added, "one might say with reason that the light of the 
 fo'pe hath come into the tcorld? and that the world hath pre- 
 ferred darkness to light." This was tantamount to a plain, and 
 withal ridiculous avowal, that nothing more was meant at Trent 
 than a mere consultative commission, an opaque star receiving 
 its light from the rays of Eome. Pallavicini does not see, so he 
 says, why one should be so indignant at the expression lumen 
 imjocB. Does not all the world know that iiaidce, in Latin, is 
 merely an exclamation signifying alas ! What more natural, 
 then, than to have said, "The light, alas I hath come into the 
 world, and the world," &c. ? We leave our readers to pronounce 
 on the fairness of this elucidation. Were they even to admit it, 
 not the less will it remain, and Pallavicini confesses it, a detest- 
 able play upon words. There were many besides. To open the 
 gates of the council is to open the gates of heaven, whence was 
 to descend the living water which shall fill the whole earth with 
 the knowledge of the Lord. Jesus Christ will be present there. 
 How could he refuse this favor to St. Vigil, the vigilant patron 
 saint of this blessed city ? At another place he indulged in a 
 grand eulogy of the pope, the emperor, the king of France, sev- 
 eral other sovereigns, and also of the legates ; but as for these 
 last, it was their names and surnames that furnished matter for 
 his praise. Behold the Cardinal del Monte, turning his heart 
 and his eyes toward the mountain which is Christ ; behold his 
 colleague della Santa Croce, Tolitian^^ and who now for a long 
 time has applied himself to the reformation of political affairs 
 among Christians ; behold the virtuous Polus, " An^lus by 
 birth, but who should be called Angehis rather than AnglusT 
 
 " In fine, seeing the council is open, let all who have the right, 
 hasten to repair to us, as if into the Trojan horse'' This last 
 
 1 Book V. ch. xviii. - Lumen papje venit in mundum. 
 
 ^ Poiitianzcs, born at Polizio, in Sicily. 
 
Chap. III. 1546. PASSAGE OF THE DECREE. 49 
 
 stroke of eloquence had no doubt some profound meaning which 
 escapes us, and which we shall not, like Pallavicini, take the 
 trouble to look for. Only, on reading so strange a producLioii, 
 we are apt to say to ourselves, that surely a man of good taste 
 must needs make great eiibrts before he can sincerely consent to 
 having among the supreme arbiters of his faith, one who was 
 capable of thinking and of writing thus, and who exercised, nev- 
 ertheless, a very great influence on his colleagues. ^ In vain 
 should we be told, that " such was the taste, such the eloquence, 
 of the time. Luther has done sometimes worse." Not in the 
 pulpit, we might observe. And even were it so, what of that ? 
 Betwixt a play upon words by the fallible Luther, and those 
 which we must listen to in an infallible assembly, no comparison 
 can be instituted. Luther, by himself, is nothing. When you 
 accept the articles of his creed, it is because, on inquiry, you find 
 there are good reasons for doing so. If some are set ofi' in bad 
 taste, so much the worse ; but that proves nothing either way. 
 With infallibility every thing becomes serious. With the man 
 who commands you to believe, the smallest mental aberration, 
 be the object of it what it may, is an argument against the au- 
 thority which he arrogates to himself He who makes bold to 
 build for eternity, more or less compromises his work by every 
 imperfection in the materials. 
 
 Most of the bishops had been displeased by the adjournment 
 to the 7th of January. After waiting so long, they thought it 
 singular that no plan for the preparation of the questions had 
 ever been dreamt of It was proposed to them, indeed, to begin 
 with a decree on the private conduct of members of the council. 
 This they thought a good idea, but they also thought that it was 
 no great matter for the occupation of a whole month, all the more 
 as they did not see to what they were next to apply themselves. 
 Meanwhile the decree^ passed with much applause. It is full 
 of excellent prescriptions, excellent counsels ; and we may add, 
 that from this time forward, in what respected morals, it was 
 religiously observed. The Reformation was beginning to bear its 
 fruits. The scandalous debaucheries of the Council of Constance 
 were no longer either permitted or possible ; a small part of what 
 was tolerated then, would have been sufficient now to deprive 
 the meeting of all respect, and perhaps to compel its dissolution. 
 
 • "He it was who, on this theatre of Christendom, had raised the cur- 
 tain by pronouncing the opening discourse, and after that, being always 
 emplo3'ed on the gravest deHberations, was no longer a mere ordinarv 
 meraber: he was the right arm of that whole body." — Pallav. 1. viii. ' 
 
 • [Decretum de niodo vivendi et a/iis in concilio servandis, passed at 
 Sess. II., Jan 7, 1516.— Ed.] 
 
 C 
 
60 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 The prelates, accordingly, had no difficulty in coming to a 
 general understanding on the tenor of the decree : but the next 
 thing to be done \vas to publish it, and then their embarrass- 
 ments began. That of the first session had been drawn up in 
 the form of a minute : " Is it your pleasure that the holy Coun- 
 cil of Trent should be declared opened ? To which the prelates 
 replied, Yes I"^ All explanation respecting the nature and the 
 rights of the assembly, and in particular of its attitude with re- 
 gard to the pope, had thus been avoided. But. now there was 
 required a formal decree and a preamble. In whose name were 
 they to speak ? In whose name was the decree to be publish- 
 ed ? In the name of the council alone, or of the pope alone, or 
 of the pope and the council, or the council and the pope ? for the 
 very order in which they were to be put, in case of their both 
 being introduced, was a matter of moment. Whatever form 
 they might adopt, a question had always to be determined, in 
 one sense or other, which it was felt could not be determined 
 without slaying the council. As for that assembly's being supe- 
 rior to the pope, this was what Paul had said he would rather 
 die than proclaim. Then, as for the pope's being superior to the 
 council, it was known that a decree to that effect would brins: 
 down upon its authors the most dangerous protestations from 
 Germany and from France. Three centuries have past, and the 
 question still remains undecided. That which you can read at 
 the head of all constitutions, even the most incomplete, to wit, 
 ^vhat is the source of authority, here you find an infallible 
 Church has never yet succeeded in putting at the head of hers. 
 She who has decided so many mysterious, so many useless points ; 
 she in whose name so many victims have been burned alive for 
 having desired to remain free in the midst of misery, behold her 
 permitting free opinions — on what ? On the question on which 
 it would have been most natural, and was most necessary, that 
 she should pronounce a clear decision.^ One feels curious to know 
 what would be the reply of a Roman doctor to an honest peas- 
 ant of his Church, who, happening to hear of these details, should 
 come to him with the simple question, " Instead of puzzling it- 
 
 ^ Placetne vobis? — Respondenint : Placet. 
 
 ' " Wliat are we to think of that famous session where the Council 
 of Constance declares itself superior to the pope ? The answer is easy: 
 the assembly talked nonsense Men of fine genius in the follow- 
 ing centuries reasoned no better." — Jos. de Maistre, Du Pape. 
 
 Those men of fine genius who talked nonsense were Bossuet, Arnold, 
 Pascal. 
 
 " And if certain persons persist," continues the author, "we, instead 
 of laughing at that session alone, will laugh at that session, and at all 
 who refuse to laugh at it." — Unity! unity! 
 
Chap. HI. 15-16. WHAT SHOULD UE ITS FORM? 61 
 
 self SO much as to the particular rnaiiucr in which it was to 
 word its decree, why did not this council, of which it had been 
 said that God would speak by its mouth, begin by deciding, once 
 for all. the question itself?" Ah, poor peasant I it Avas just be- 
 cause saying and believing are diilerent things. It is easy to 
 say we are infallible, and to give ourselves the air of being so, 
 as long as all we liave to do is to condemn, and when we are 
 sure of being agreed ; but to believe ourselves infallible, and se- 
 riously to act as such, when well aware that we cannot speak 
 without raising in the very bosom of the Church contentions 1 hat 
 M'ould rend it asunder, this is a very diflenent thing, and then 
 the very boldest men recoil. But we shall have again to return 
 to this. 
 
 The pope had thought of the matter. A commission of car- 
 dinals, recently created by him for directing, from Rome, the 
 operations of the assembly, had long tried to find a formula for 
 the decree which might satisfy all, or, at least, ofiend none. 
 They thought that they had succeeded at last. The moat holy 
 Council of Trent, legitimately assembled tinder the conduct of 
 the Holy Ghost, the three legates of the a/postolic see incsiding 
 at it, decrees,^ &c. To the words most holy council might be 
 added, should there be a request to that efiect, the words ecu- 
 menical and genercd. 
 
 The majority appeared satisfied ; but a numerous minority re- 
 quired, if not a formal admission of the pope's inferiority, at least 
 a clearer declaration of the equality of the two powers. The 
 words prcesidentibus legatis might, in fact, be very well under- 
 stood as implying, not only a mere presidency, in the ordinary 
 meaning of the word, but an authority superior, supreme, and 
 indispensable to the existence of the council ; and it was very 
 well known besides, that such was the meaning which the Ital- 
 ians attached to it. It was proposed, accordingly, that the word 
 (Ecumenical should be superseded by representing the universal 
 Church? These words being placed before prcesidentibns le- 
 gatis, the presidency of the legates ceased to be clearly indicated 
 as indispensable to the legitimacy of the council. An Italian 
 called those members /ar^i'^ who supported such an alteration ; 
 and, to say the truth, amid these contests in which no one spoke 
 out all he thought, that was an epithet which the members 
 might, in all justice, have given each other every day.^ The 
 
 ^ Sacro sancta Tridentina Synodus, in Spiritu sancto legitime congre- 
 gata, in ea prsesidentibus tribus apostolicje sedis legatis. 
 ^ Ecclesiam universalem representans. 
 ^ Vulpeculas. De Vargas's Memoirs. 
 * "There happened on this occasion what commonly makes endless 
 
52 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book L 
 
 majority, however, were inclined to grant, if not the thing, at 
 least the words ; but, in consequence of orders from the pope, the 
 legates made such a work about it, that this was refused. More 
 than that, the words (Ecumenical and genercd were deleted. 
 " What purpose could they serve ?" said the legates. " Is it not 
 sufficiently stated, in the pope's bull, that this council is obcu- 
 menical and general?" In a word, the first hankering for in- 
 dependence made them withdraw even the concessions already 
 made. AYe find these words, however, reoccur in the decree of 
 the third session. 
 
 The opposite party did not hold themselves defeated. On 
 the 7th of Januar}'', when the cathredal was at the fullest, after 
 the reading of the decree, they repeated their demand, and 
 obliged the others to repeat their refusal. 
 
 Now this public protestation against a decision of the majority 
 was a serious matter, especially at the commencement. It had 
 been understood that all should proceed as at the Council of 
 Lateran, under Julius II., that is to say, that all discussion 
 should be interdicted except in congregations, or meetings with 
 closed doors. The public assembly or sessio?i was to be exclu- 
 sively for the publication of laws, elaborated and voted at the 
 congregations. This was, in fact, the only means of keeping 
 out of sight the divisions that might exist among the members, 
 and of giving themselves, in default of a more real authority, 
 that, at least, of unanimity. 
 
 Accordingly, in the following congregation (13th January) the 
 legates made bitter complaints. They were at no loss to shew 
 that the greatest enemies of the council would do it less harm 
 than its own members, however little they might renew such 
 scenes in public. Nothing more true ; but in saving appear- 
 ances, why not also avoid the reality I Congregations with shut 
 doors ! why, we know almost all that past. Sarpi's revelations, 
 often inexact, compelled Pallavicini to publish a mass of facts 
 which would otherwise have remained in the archives of the 
 Vatican ; and the cardinal's corrections have already furnished 
 us, and will yet furnish us, with more weapons than the monk's 
 assertions have done.^ We shall abridge much ; yet there is 
 
 debates : the reason expressed by the legates was not that which touch- 
 ed them most, so that to oppose them with arguments was to attack 
 the shadow and not the substance. The}' themselves sent word to the 
 pope, that what had made them reject with horror that denomination 
 {representing the tmiversal Church) was, that they thought of the addi- 
 tion that had been made to it at Constance and at Basle, viz., that the 
 council has received immediately from Jesus Christ, a power to which all 
 dignitii, even that of the pope is bound to suhmi.ty — Pallav. B. v. eh. ii. 
 * Pallavicini, at this very passage, is much more curious than Sarpi. 
 
Chap. III. 1540. PLAN OF OPERATIONS DISCUSSED. 58 
 
 not a discussion, not a vote, on which we shall not have it in 
 our power to give a thousand details, and this will not be with- 
 out our having many a time asked ourselves, as we have already- 
 done, where there is to be seen any dilierence at all between the 
 deliberations of the Itoly council, and those of any ordinary and 
 merely human meeting. And who can doubt that diflerences 
 of sentiment, but for the immense interest whicli all alike — 
 Italians, French, and Germans — had in appearing united, par- 
 ticularly on questions of doctrine, Mould have been exhibited 
 with far more persistency and noise ? 
 
 To return to the 13th of January. The discussion of some 
 plan of operations was looked for, for it was said that the legates 
 had been occupied with layhig its bases, and were about to sub- 
 mit it to the assembly. Great, then, was the surprise that was 
 felt when they confined themselves to simply reminding the 
 members of the three leading points noted by the pope in the 
 bull of convocation : the extirpation of heresies, the reformation 
 of discipline, the re-establishment of peace. And when their 
 advice was asked on the course that was to be pursued, "Yours 
 shall be ours," was their reply. " Reflect and pray to God." 
 Excellent advice ; but unhappily it was too clear that the gi-and 
 object all the while was to gain time. The legates had received 
 no directions from Rome, and knew not what either to propose 
 or to do. Such, as several bishops said in the face of the whole 
 assembly, was the whole secret of their humble declaration. 
 Meanwhile, against all but the unanimous opinion of the mem- 
 bers, they obtained this point, that the council should not seal 
 its decrees and its letters with a seal of its own. They urged, 
 •' that there was no engraver at Trent that could make one. It 
 was necessary to send to Venice ; that would cause too long a 
 delay. It would be seen to afterwards." And nothing more 
 was said about it. The seal of the premier legate served for all. 
 Even down to the smallest matters, the council was condemned 
 to exist only by and for the pope. 
 
 On the 18th of January there w^as the same silence on the 
 part of the legates, the same indecision on the part of the as- 
 
 la liis statement of the reasons alleged against the titles wliich the 
 minority wished to give the eouneil, "Imitate," he makes the premier 
 legate say, " imitate much rather the pope, -who, though entitled to the 
 reasonable assumption of the sublimest names, prefers keeping to the 
 very humble title of servant of the servants of God." "Besides," he 
 makes others say, "the emphasis of that epithet {oecumenical) would ill 
 suit an assembly composed of so few bishops, and so poor in ambassa- 
 dors. The Lutherans would be sure to recall the old provei'h, tliat lit- 
 tle men arc apt to stand on their tiptoes" — Pallavicini, B. v. eh. vi. 
 Have we said anything else ? 
 
64 HISTORY OF TliE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book 1. 
 
 sembly. The discussion was opened, but came to no result. 
 The Itahans wanted the council to begin with the settlement 
 of doctrines ; to that the imperialists objected then, as always, 
 that the extirpation of heresies was not to be thought of until 
 scandals were first extirpated. The meeting adjourned itself to 
 the 22d, and then rose. 
 
 A majority now began to take shape, but it was on the Ger- 
 man side. Had the vote been taken at once, the matter would 
 have been at an end ; reforms were taken up ; they became the 
 grand affair. The pope was aware of plans being in agitation 
 against his court, and against himself The council once em- 
 barked in that course, what was he to do ? — " Make an inglori- 
 ous surrender ; permit the council, which he himself had con- 
 vened against heresy, to do him more harm than heresy itself? 
 Or should he resist ? Was he to deprive of all its credit the very 
 assembly whose sole weapon against heresy was the public ven- 
 eration ? Was the general to quarrel with his army at the mo- 
 ment of engaging in battle ? Was he to renew the troubles of 
 Basle, the results of which would be all the more to be feared, 
 inasmuch as the materials being still more ready to catch fire 
 now than they were then, the smallest of these sparks might 
 make them burst into a flame ?"i His whole hope lay in his 
 legates, whom he treated, however, very ill, for having so im- 
 jDrudently left the decision to the assembly. 
 
 On the 22d of January, the members were almost unanimous 
 in requiring the reforms should be taken up first, and doctrines 
 afterwards. This compelled the legates to raise the mask, and 
 to state plainly that such were not the views of the pope. The 
 council might well have asked why the pope had not explained 
 himself sooner ; they did not care, however, to allow themselves 
 to be drawn off to that ground. But said the legates, "Has 
 not the emperor spoken of convening a council himself for the 
 purpose of putting an end to the present disputes ? And who 
 will keep him from doing so, should Ave put off questions of 
 faith ?■' This argument prevailed. Indirectly charged with 
 delaying doctrinal questions for the mere purpose of giving the 
 emperor an opportunity of brealdng with the pope, the imperial- 
 ists dared not hold out any longer. " Day of battle I glorious 
 day for the apostolic see I" wrote the legates in transmitting to 
 Cardinal Farnese the details of their victory. Such, in their 
 view, had been the greatness of the danger. 
 
 And yet this victory was not complete. It had been found 
 necessary to yield so far as that the questions of discipline should 
 be mingled, as much as possible, with the doctrinal ones. The 
 
 ^ Pallav. B. V. ch. viii. 
 
Chap. HI. 154G. MINGLING OF DISCIPLINE AND DOCTRINE. 66 
 
 bishops recollected Constance and Pisa, where, on the latter 
 beino^ decided, the councils had been dismissed without havinf^ 
 had it in their power to occupy themselves with the former. 
 They had taken their precautionary measures, it remained for 
 the p3pe also to take his. 
 
 To the dangers which he suspected, there was added one 
 which he hardly dreamt of, but which time has made evident. 
 We refer to the intermingling of disciplinary and doctrinal de- 
 crees. For those who regard both as infalliable there is no- 
 thing untoward in this, but as respects those who do not believe 
 in disciplinary infallibility, it supplies a serious argument against 
 them. In that case, in fact, what an odd medley is presented 
 by the decrees of the council I Here we find one on discipline : 
 that is fallible. Next comes one on doctrine : this is infallible. 
 They stand side by side, lie parallel, and are closely coiniected 
 together — what of that I The one is the work of man, the 
 other is the work of God. Tliis you must receive at the peril 
 of your salvation ; that you may reject. And let us not forget 
 there are those — we shall see several — in which some articles 
 are doctrinal, others disciplinary. In that case behold the falli- 
 ble and the infallible, the mutable and the immutable, mingled, 
 interlaced, and running into each other, in the same chapter, on 
 the same page, sometimes even in the same phrase. No, there 
 is no middle course I Either be frankly ultramontane, and we 
 shall know with whom we have to do ; or admit, that if a coun- 
 cil is fallible in one of the halves of a chapter, of a page, of a 
 phrase, it cannot be infallible in the other. 
 
 The third session, fixed for the 4th of February, was now ap- 
 proaching, and yet nothing, absolutely nothing to be done at it. 
 Had they set to work immediately, it was impossible to have 
 any decree sufficiently matured for that date. The bishops mur- 
 mured ; forty had now arrived, and though that was but a small 
 number for a council, yet they were no longer the small body 
 which it had been found possible to keep so long idle. Already, 
 to prevent the irregularities that were dreaded, the Fathers, 
 says Pallavicini,^ "had been adroitly separated into three sev- 
 eral congregations, which were to meet at the houses of the 
 three legates respectively. The ajJjJarcnt rea-son adduced by 
 the legates for this was, that in three different places more busi- 
 ness would be done in less time. . . . But in their own secret 
 hearts, they proposed to themselves three other advantages. 
 One was that of being better able to lead the whole body, when 
 weakened by division, into three separate brooks, instead of be- 
 ing allowed to gather into a river. The other .... ire, ire," 
 
 ^ B. V. ch. vii. 
 
56 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 Here we find a Jesui^ frank enough. He adds, accordingly, 
 that for some iceah minds, this might seem to furnish arms to 
 the enemies of the council's authority. "VYe confess we are such 
 weak-minded persons, who have the unlucky humour of calling 
 intrigue — intrigue ; and thinking that where there is intrigue, 
 there the Holy Ghost is not. " But," says the author, " is there 
 intrigue, then, in the pope's desiring to preserve intact that sov- 
 ereign authority, of which God has made him the depositary ? 
 And if such a preservation is to he blamed because it is at the 
 same time agreeable to himself, we must blame the man also 
 who eats to live, because no more can one eat without gratify- 
 ing one of the senses. . . . And, as for his ministers, the more 
 address they showed in their efforts, the more praise do they de- 
 serve ; for prudence, that queen of the moral virtues, consists pre- 
 cisely in the art of attaining an honest end by using only allowa- 
 ble means." True ; it only remains that we be sure that all 
 that is allowable in politics, is allowable also in a council, and 
 that even policy would sanction all that the legates had to do. 
 This we shall have occasion more than once to ask themselves ; 
 and the cries of their conscience, their remonstrances to the pope, 
 and their confessions to intimate friends, will sufficiently prove 
 to us, either that they did not consider prudence to be tlie queen 
 of the virtues, or that, even in their own eyes, they had been 
 something else than prudent. 
 
 Already, notwithstanding its having been decided that doc- 
 trines and discipline were to be taken up simultaneously, they 
 cleverly contrived to prevent this plan from being indicated in a 
 decree. " To what purpose would you write it out ?" said they. 
 " Is it not enough that you follow it ?" Nothing bemg in readi- 
 ness for the session, it was proposed that it should be devoted to 
 the solemn reading and acceptation of the confession of faith, 
 called the Athanasian Creed, forming part of the canon of the 
 mass. Several councils, it was said, had done this. It was 
 like arming themselves with a buckler before marching to the 
 attack of heresies. Several had, in fact, placed it at the head 
 of their decrees ; but there never had been an instance of a ses- 
 sion having been devoted to it, especially after having had two 
 months to prepare for something else. Besides, the singularity 
 of proceeding with great pomp, to read what people could hear 
 every day at all the masses, it was objected that that creed was 
 not attacked by the Protestants, and furnished no arms against 
 them, if, on the contrary, it was not even in their hands, a 
 weapon rather against the Church. In fact, the circumstance 
 of a creed having been admitted at Nice as complete, having 
 been maintained afterwards without addition, and being still read 
 
Chap. III. 154C. ITALY ALWAYS IN MAJORITY. 67 
 
 daily in all the churches of Catholicity, containing nothing, or 
 almost nothing of Avhat was attacked by the Reiormation, Avas 
 one the bearing of which could hardly be dissembled. But what 
 was objected most, was that, after having promised to bring 
 forward discipline and doctrine abreast, they should commence 
 with doctrine alone. 
 
 Here, as in all cases, the legates carried their point. A pre- 
 amble was drawn up, in which it was said that the Fathers, 
 under a conviction of the immensity of their task, felt how need- 
 ful it was for them mutually to exhort each other to take, ac- 
 cording to the saying of an apostle, " the shield of faith, the hel- 
 met of salvation, and the sword of the spirit ?" Consequently, 
 they thought they could do nothing better than repeat, word lor 
 word {totidcm verbis), that ancient and venerable symbol, " by 
 means of which alone, on some occasions, infidels have been con- 
 verted and heretics overu-helmecir A piece of pure fanfaronade 
 at that moment, seeing that the heretics of the day declared their 
 belief in it. 
 
 The third session was held, accordingly, on the fourth of Feb- 
 ruary, 1546, at which nothing was done except to recite the 
 creed, and to fix upon the 8th of April for the fourth session. 
 
 Two months seemed a long time. Many of the bishops 
 complained ; but it was replied that several foreign prelates were 
 on their way, and that it was proper that they should wait for 
 them. In point of fact, the parties meant were twelve Spanish 
 bishops sent by the emperor. 
 
 The pope, on his side, was about to send much the same num- 
 ber of Italians. We shall see that Italy never ceased to be at 
 all times in the majority in the assembly, but that no more did 
 the number of its bishops much exceed that of those from other 
 countries. Like an able general who knows the exact number 
 of soldiers required for each aflair, Rome sent or recalled her 
 partisans, according to the necessities of the moment. Certain 
 of victory, she did not wish to give herself the air of being able 
 to overwhelm her foes.^ 
 
 Notwithstanding this precaution, and although there were 
 always some independent men among the Italians, there is no 
 fact shown by the annals of the time to have been more fre- 
 quently or more universally alleged, Avhether against the council, 
 or against the pope. On the least check, the foreign (non-Italian) 
 bishops wrote to all Europe, that they could do nothing, that they 
 were nothing, that the Italians voted as one man ; on the least 
 
 ^ "\N"e have calculated, on this occasion, the total number of bishops 
 or abbeys who figured at Trent. It was about 450 ; of whom there 
 were 180 foreigners, and 2Y0 Italians; 27 to 18, or 3 to 2. 
 
58 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 discontent being felt against the pope, the secular princes ex- 
 claimed with still more vehemence, that he was the master, the 
 only master ; and that the Italians swept all before them. 
 
 Now, what are we to think of this ? 
 
 In point of right, it could be no objection. The council was 
 open to all bishops ; all had been invited in the bull by which 
 it was convoked. Had there been but one foreigner against a 
 hundred Italians, the assembly was regular, and its decisions 
 legal. 
 
 In point of fact, the matter stood quite otherwise. If injustice 
 was done to the Italians, when they were accused of being always 
 Italians above all things, it is incontestable that they brought 
 with them ideas more or less peculiar to their nation, and the 
 constant triumph of which, in a council-general, might easily 
 appear contrary to the very end and essence of such a council. 
 The independence of which some gave proof, hardly lasted longer 
 than the first few months ; and when these were over, we see 
 them openly form a party. Private meetings, compact votings, 
 reproaches of treason against all who refused to follow the tor- 
 rent — nothing was wanting. While, however, we blame the 
 Italians, we nowise mean to exculpate others. Each of the 
 nations showed plainly enough, that it only wanted appearing in 
 sufficient number, to do likewise. " Count not up the Fathers 
 at Trent," says one of its apologists;^ '' ashthemnot froimvhat 
 country they come ; a Christian's country is the universe." Fine 
 words these, of which the whole history of the comicil is nothing 
 but a perpetual refutation ; and which of the two are we to be- 
 lieve, the author who at the close of three centuries has pictured 
 to us this magnificent unity, or the members themselves of the 
 council, who never passed a day without mutually accusing each 
 other of violating it ? And all were right. It was impossible 
 to be more French than were the French — more German than 
 the Germans — more Italian, to return to them, than the Italians. 
 How could it be otherwise ? The Lutherans, it is true, asked 
 for what was impossible, when they would have had the bishops, 
 first of all, loosed from obligations by oath to the pope ; but the 
 oath which many Italian bishops had to swear, comprised, 
 even in the eyes of some who were not Lutherans, clauses that 
 were incompatible with the liberty which every member of a 
 deliberative assembly ought to enjoy. It ran thus : " I engage 
 to preserve, to defend, to augment, to advance the rights, the 
 honours, the privileges, and the authority of the holy church, 
 and of our lord the pope ; not to take part in any deliberation, 
 any act, any transactions, in which there is set on foot, against 
 ' Tho Ahb;^ Prompsault, almoner of Quinze-Vingt?. 
 
Chap. III. 151G. OATH TAKEN BY ITALIAN BISHOPS. 69 
 
 our said Lord, or the said cliurch, any thinj^ whatsoever contrary 
 to, or to the prejudice of, their rights, their honours, their posi- 
 tion, and their authority."' k^uch had been the oath sworn on 
 the day of their consecration, by the numerous prelates of the 
 papal states ; and the same formula was in use, with but a few 
 words of difference, in other states of Italy. Those prelates, then, 
 were in the hands of the pope, not only as subjects are which 
 have merely sworn to be faithful, and are left free to see, in 
 their oAvn conscience, in what this allegiance consists — but fully, 
 absolutely. Whatever displeased, or might displease the pope — 
 whatever his ministers combated, or even did not support, all 
 this they could not, without perjury, either accept or allow to 
 pass unopposed. This does not prove that they were always 
 kept, in point of fact, in this absolute incapacity for doing any- 
 thing, or wishing anything, of themselves ; but it is not neces- 
 sary that a judge should have been actually deprived of his 
 liberty : it is enough that he might have been deprived of it, in 
 order to a legal exception lying against his decision. Accord- 
 ingly, we see that in all that has been written, in a legal point 
 of view, against the council of Trent,^ this oath taken by the 
 Italian members is the first alleged ground of nullity. "Will it 
 be said, with an author already quoted,^ that they remained free 
 in the discussion of matters relating to the faith ? jSTo I the pope 
 as doirmatical head of the Church was then more than ever 
 mixed up and confounded with that same pope as head of the 
 hierarchy. Granting that if those bishops remained free in some 
 points not as yet delinitely settled, it is clear that they were no 
 longer free on those upon wdiich the pope had pronounced a de- 
 cision ; the slightest resistance to his doctrinal decisions w^ould 
 have been an insult, a rebellion, of much more serious conse- 
 quence than the most vigorous assaults by word or deed against 
 his usurpations as a sovereign. Nor was this enthralment of the 
 faith so peculiar to the Italians, as that a still more general juri- 
 dical nullity might not be deduced from it against the acts of the 
 council. All had sworn to believe what the Church taught ; all 
 were bound beforehand to a certain course, both as respects the 
 general result, and the details of the process. 
 
 As for us, Ave attach httle importance to these considerations, 
 
 ^ Jura, honores, privilegia et auctoritatem Sanctse Rom. Ecclesiaj et 
 domini nostri papte conservare, defendere, augere et promovere curabo. 
 Neque ero in consiho, vel facto, vel tractatu in quibus contra ipsum 
 dominum nostrum vel eandem Rom. Ecclesiam, uliqua sinistra vel pre- 
 judiciaHa juris, lionoris, status, et potestatis eorum machinentur. 
 
 =* Gentillet, Dumoulin, Ranohin, Spanheini, Ileideggex', Jurieu, Leib- 
 nitz, <fec., (fee. 
 
 ' Prompsault. 
 
60 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT, Book I 
 
 all the more as they have not been left without reply. Illegal 
 or not at the date of its being held, the council has been accepted 
 by the Roman Church. Have not the ample folds of her infal- 
 libility been throAvn over all irregularities, intrigues, and nulli- 
 ties both of form and principle ? If, then, we have to complain 
 of the enthralment of the members of the council, it is of another 
 enthralment that we would speak ; it is that which bears down 
 and trammels the pope as the ultimate bishop or priest. There 
 is something stronger than an oath, stronger even than con- 
 science. Habit, interest, espnt-du-corios, true or false shame, 
 the impossibility of retracting on one point without retracting on 
 many more, the desire of unity for the sake of domination, and 
 of domination for the preservation of unity — here we see what 
 would explain to us much better than an oath to the pope, both 
 the council and its votes, and the maintenance of the Roman 
 system. How ridiculous, be it said in passing, this pretended 
 approbation of the Church as the last seal of infallibility ! At 
 the consecration of the kings of France, just as the crown was 
 placed on their head, a herald proceeded to the gate of the 
 church and called aloud, " Are the people content with the 
 king that has been given them?" On this the crowd called 
 out, " Yes ;" and the herald returned to say that the people had 
 signified their approval. Such is the history of many articles 
 of faith, except that the crowd has not always even heard the 
 question put to it, whether it approved or not. It has said 
 nothing, and that has been held enough ; its consent is inferred. 
 As if from the moment that an idea has made some progress, 
 and that Rome appears to favour it, it were not morally impos- 
 sible that a bishop should A^enture to write, or even to speak 
 against it I For we all know that the Church means the bish- 
 ops. Rome admits to the right of protesting those only whose 
 position guarantees their never exercising that right. She has 
 never even acknowledged their right to do so. The popes have 
 submitted, when necessary, to the doctrine of the consent of the 
 bishops, but they have not acknowledged it, and still less have 
 they taught it. The pure ultramontanists laugh at it. " This 
 right," says De Maistre, " was exercised in the case of Fenelon, 
 with a iiomf tliat was quite amusing'' Such is the very 
 episcopate in the Roman system. 
 
CHAPTEE lY. 
 
 DEATH OF LUTHER. THE AUTHORITY OF THE COUNCIL. FIC- 
 TITIOUS UNITY. 
 
 Lxither dies — Shut, shut the Bible! — Let us open it — The question of 
 Authority — Its bearing exaggerated — Wliat is Authority in Religion 
 — What can it be — Dilemma — What, at bottom, is the Submission 
 of those who think — What is Authority -without Force — God might 
 have, God oucjlit to have — What know you of that — Three Objects — 
 To regulate the faith, to preserve the faith, to maintain unit}* — 
 Regulate the Faith — What that supposes and to what it leads — To 
 preserve the Faith — Have they succeeded — ^Variations — An eternal 
 Burthen — Unity — Does God intend it — Conclusion. 
 
 In fine, for the first time (it was now the 22d of February) 
 the council met to deliberate in good earnest. The legates 
 appeared radiant with smiles. Why so ? Nobody could tell. 
 Could it be because the council was now about to put itself in 
 motion, and because, after having held a session for the Credo, 
 they would not be obliged to hold one for the Pater, as was 
 remarked by some mischievous wits ? This Avas doubted. The 
 legates had not hitherto looked like men who were eager for the 
 council proceeding to business. Could it be that the emperor 
 had at last consented to declare war against the Protestants ? 
 possibly so ; a courier had arrived from Germany that very 
 morning. No. It was because of something else ; something 
 better still — Luther was dead I 
 
 Yes ; the veteran father of the Reformation was dead — if the 
 Reformation had any father but God, any mother but the Word 
 of God. He was dead, but only after having viewed with a 
 smile of pity the grand projects and the small intrigues of men, 
 so infatuated as to think of arresting by their decrees the move- 
 ments of human thought and the very breath of God. And see 
 now how glad they are, these very men I Even when feeble 
 and dying, the old monk of Wittemberg still terrified them. 
 One might have said, that they could never turn round to look 
 at Germany without their eyes meeting his, and without quail- 
 ing before that eagle glance which had once embraced all 
 Europe from the top of the donjon towers of the Wartburg. 
 
62 HISTORY OF THE COUxNXIL OF TRpNT. Book I. 
 
 At Trent, at Rome, at Vienna, wherever the partisans and cham- 
 pions of the popedom were to be found, never could they meet 
 by two or three, without a voice, at once serious and sarcastic, 
 seeming to pierce the wall, to overawe theirs and to silence 
 them. Now, then, ye oracles of the council, you may proceed 
 at your ease. Shut, shut the Bible I Luther no longer lives 
 to open it. Poor insensate creatures I see you not, that once 
 opened, no human power shall shut it ? " My good princes 
 and lords," said Luther shortly before his death, "you are truly 
 far too eager to see me die — me who am but a poor man. You 
 fancy, then, that after that you shall have got the victory I" 
 But no ; they did not think so, for they proceeded to close their 
 ranks, and to advance more vigorously than ever against the 
 book which he had used as his own buckler, and that of his 
 adherents. 
 
 Now, then, let us open that Bible, and let us not take our 
 eyes off it, we who, after the lapse of three centuries, are about 
 to relate the doings of that famous assembly which laboured so 
 hard to have it closed. If it is by history and reason that we 
 can shake the authority of the Council of Trent, it is by the 
 Bible only that we can hope to subvert it altogether. 
 
 Here our First Book should close. The council was about to 
 open, questions of quite another kind will now present them- 
 selves. It is bv desiirn that we have broufjht too^ether in this 
 first part, at the risk of weakening its interest, all the prelimi- 
 nary objections bearing on the convocation and the composition 
 of the assembly, on its relations with the pope and the secular 
 sovereigns ; in a word, on its position, and the part that it had 
 to perform in the Church. But there is another question Avhich 
 is paramount to all the rest, and with which we shall close this 
 first series of our observations — the question, to wit, of the 
 council's authority. 
 
 Let us say frankly at the outset, that there has been a little, 
 if we may not rather say a great deal, of exaggeration in the 
 importance people have given to it. One thing strikes us in the 
 preaching and the writings of the Roman Catholicism of our 
 day : it is the care with which it avoids discussions in detail, 
 and controversies positively doctrinal. The course almost inva- 
 riably pursued by the great preachers of the day,^ is to preach 
 authority, the Church, and then to assume as admitted all that 
 the Church teaches. Think you that they have proved tran- 
 substantiation to the thousands whom they sometimes, in large 
 
 ^ It is also, in general, that of Wiseman in his Conferences : "This 
 sole demonstration," says he, "suffices to put beyond the I'eaeh of at- 
 tack all the points on which we have been accused of being in error." 
 
Chap. IV. 1M6. THE COUNCIL'S AUTHORITY. 63 
 
 cities, succeed in inducing to communicate ? Not at all. After 
 long discourses on the authority of the Church, they have not 
 even said to them, " She teaches transubstantiation ; yoic ought 
 thereibrc to believe in it." That yoit ougid would have spoiled 
 all. They feel that the smallest objection of detail which they 
 could not fully overmaster, would instantly deprive the princi- 
 ples they had so laboriously laid down, ol" all worth, all force 
 In vain would you have led people to say with you that there 
 must be an authority, that there actually is one, and that it is 
 that of the Church : should there happen to be a single point 
 in what you shall have taught them in its name, which they 
 cannot decidedly admit, it will be all one as if you had done 
 nothing. 
 
 Such is the sense in which we would say that the importance 
 of the question of authority is at the present day exaggerated. 
 People start with the idea that it is everything, when in reality 
 it is nothing. Although we should commence here with the 
 confession that we have not a word to say in reply, in theory, 
 to such or such a book, in which this system is eloquently set 
 forth, a Roman Catholic doctor would not the less be bound, 
 under the penalty of yieldmg to us with one hand the victory 
 carried off by the other, to reply to all which w^e shall after- 
 wards object in detail to the decisions of Trent. Let him then 
 be beaten on a single point, and we shall be entitled to say to 
 him, " Your authority has been mistaken ; wdiat you have told 
 us of its infallibility, therefore, is necessarily false. It makes no 
 answ^er to objections ; in fact, it exists only for the man who 
 renounces objecting." Shall we after this discuss in detail the 
 texts which the Church brings in support of her infallibility? 
 " The Church," she says, " is, according to St. Paul, the pillar 
 and stay of the truth." '' The gates of hell," according to Jesus 
 Christ himself, " shall not prevail against it." And is it not 
 Jesus Christ, too, who promised to St. Peter, to pray for him — 
 tliat thy faith fail not ? 
 
 Much might be said about the very meaning of these decla- 
 rations, and of that last one in particular ; lor faith, in the 
 Saviour's discourses, means generally confidence, fidelity, de- 
 votedness, not belief in such and such doctrines. But had we 
 no such objection, it is a question on which texts of Scripture 
 prove nothing more than a 2^^'iori reasonings do. If Jesus 
 Christ has said to his apostles, " I am with you always even to 
 the end of the world ;" it is he also who declared, that " wher- 
 ever two or three are met together in his name, there is he in 
 the midst of them ;" if he has promised to his Church the aids 
 of bis Holy Spirit, he has said by the mouth of one of his apos- 
 
64 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 ties, that " God giveth the Holy Spirit to those who ask him." 
 What would you reply to him who, resting on that last passage, 
 should insist that he is infallibly in the right ? Would you 
 object to him that he has asked for the Holy Spirit, but that he 
 cannot affirm that he has obtained it ? No, he will say, for 
 the promise is express : " God giveth the spirit to them who 
 ask it ;" and Jesus Christ has elsewhere said, " Whatsoever ye 
 shall ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you." 
 We should find, in short, as many and more passages in favour 
 of individual infallibility than of the infallibility of the Church. 
 If the former are evidently figurative, the latter may be so too. 
 In order to prove that they are not so — that God has promised 
 to his Church never to suffer it to err, we must ever revert to 
 the proof that it has not erred. 
 
 Of what avail, in fine, in this question, can be any appeal 
 whatever to Scripture ? To quote it, is neither more nor less 
 than to assume the very contrary of what one wants to estab- 
 lish ; it is to call us to the exercise of the right that is refused 
 to us. A¥e are told that we must renounce our own individual 
 judgment ; that to the Church alone belongs the right to inter- 
 pret the Bible ; and, lo, the first thing done, is to give us the 
 Bible to interpret. If the passages adduced seem insufficient, 
 what shall be done ? Should they appear conclusive, should the 
 Church, happy to see us enter into her views, tell us that we 
 have judged rightly — we then come to a very simple conclusion, 
 which is this : that if we have made a good use of our judgment 
 once, we cannot believe ourselves incapable of making an equally 
 good use of it another time. 
 
 Thus every demonstration of the Church's infallibility is, of 
 itself, a vicious circle. Infallibility gains converts by imposture, 
 not by demonstration. 
 
 We might ask then, in the first place, if the Roman authority, 
 if any authority whatever — in the Roman sense of that word — 
 can be anything but a word, a misconception, an illusion ? 
 
 " My body is in your hands," said a philosopher to a tyrant. 
 " You may sew up my mouth, shut me up, load me with chains, 
 reduce me to eternal immobility ; but my soul is firee, and will 
 remain free." 
 
 For twenty centuries and more these words have been admired, 
 not only as courageous, but also and above all as profoundly true. 
 Well, then, if the philosopher was right before a pagan tyrant, 
 could he be wrong before an inquisitor ? 
 
 The only being to whom we cannot hold this language is God. 
 For man, with respect to all that pertains to thought, the sole 
 means of his acting upon man, is persuasion. To this add two 
 
Chap. IV. IMC. ROME'S METHODS OF ACTING ON MEN. 65 
 
 indirect methods ; the one, to habituate the mind to he silent ; 
 the other, to constrain it by external acts of violence. 
 
 Let us first denion.strate — and it will not take us long — that 
 none of these three means, the only means possible, is really 
 authority. 
 
 Logically, we have said, the only one possible is persuasion. 
 And, accordingly, we do not see that our adversaries are unwill- 
 ing to place it in the lirst line, be it ever so little feasible, or 
 though there be the means of doing otherwise. They will not 
 tell an atheist to believe in God because the Church ordains 
 him to do so ; and even, whoever the person may be who is to 
 be convinced, before proceeding to the grand argument, " the 
 Church lues said it,'' they will always put forward, at least for 
 form's sake, some rational arguments. 
 
 Then, of two things, one must happen : either these arguments 
 suffice for conviction, or they do not suffice. 
 
 If they suffice, you then submit ; but how ? Precisely as you 
 would to any mere man, who alone, armed with nothing but his 
 reason, should labour to inculcate his ideas on you. On this field, 
 the priest's authority is just that of every man who reasons. 
 That of the Church is not required. If these arguments do not 
 suffice, you resist. Then you are told to believe, for so the 
 Church ordains. But here, again, of two things we have one ; 
 either you make up your mind to believe, or you persist in not 
 believing. If you persist in not believing, the man who has ad- 
 dressed you in the name of the Church, ffiids himself exactly m 
 the same position a» one who should have addressed you in his 
 own name, and failed at last for want of new arguments. If 
 you make up your mind to believe, will it be, really and truly, 
 because you have been commanded to do so ? No ; it does not 
 depend on you to obey an order of this nature. VYhat then has 
 been the result ? 
 
 First of all, it is possible that the testimony of the Church may 
 have reinforced in your eyes the reasons which you had previous- 
 ly found wanting in force. But, then, it is still to reasons that 
 you yield ; the Church's part is reduced to that of every per- 
 son of weight placed in a position to augment the probability 
 of an opinion, by his example and his Avords. It is an aitthor- 
 ity in the vulgar sense of the word ; it is not authority in the 
 Roman sense. 
 
 It may happen, in the second place, that, without ceasing to 
 consider the reasons weak, you come at last to distrust yourself, 
 and to think it more prudent, more conformable with Christian 
 humility, more convenient also, to bow the head and be silent. 
 
 It is this — Rome makes no secret of it — it is this disposition 
 
G6 HISTORY OF THE C0U^X1L OF TKENT. Book L 
 
 which Rome chiefly requires, and which she has constantly 
 sought to maintain, both among individuals and nations. Thus 
 we come to the second of the three means indicated above : the 
 habituating of the mind to silence and to keep aloof. 
 
 It is the surest of the three ; and the Roman Church has 
 largely and ably employed it. She found it attended with two 
 advantages : first, it enabled her to reign ; next, to reign with- 
 out obstacle, without having the air of oppressing, without seem- 
 ing to rest on anything but the unanimous assent of her members. 
 Can it be said that her doctors and her chiefs have really had 
 among them a regular, positive, invariable plan for the enslave- 
 ment of mankind ? No ; her doctors and her chiefs themselves, 
 as we have already remarked, have merely yielded to that mys- 
 terious spirit under whose influence their part has been at once 
 active and passive, haughty and humble. If there was any cal- 
 culation, it was a calculation altogether of instinct. They were 
 sufficiently aware, that in order to demand submission with effect, 
 they must begin with submission on their own part. Hence the 
 astonishing docility of which so many men of fine genius have 
 given proof towards the Church of Rome ; hence that respectful 
 silence which they have shown on so many difficulties, which we 
 could not conceive their not having seen as we see them,, and 
 even better than we. 
 
 But Rome has not always succeeded in obtaining this silence 
 so completely as that we should not be able to analyze it and 
 discover its true meaning. " God has permitted a bad success," 
 wrote Fenelon,^ on learning that he had been condemned by the 
 pope. Certainly the man who says, " God has 'permitted me to 
 be condemned," is far from having abjured, in his own secret 
 heart, the ideas for which he has been condemned. " I hold my 
 peace, but not the less convinced am I that I was right ;" such, 
 according to this letter, and several others,^ was what Fenelon's 
 submission came to at last. 
 
 Listen to Luther as he expressed himself in 1518 : "I present 
 myself to you, and throw myself at your feet. Most Holy Father, 
 myself, and all that is in me. Bestow life or death ; call, recall, 
 approve, disapprove. I recognise your voice as the voice of 
 Christ, who speaks and reigns in you." The voice spoke — and 
 Luther remained none the less Luther. 
 
 Listen to Lamennais in 1S31 : "0 Father, condescend to look 
 down on some of thy children who are accused of being rebels 
 against thine infallible authority. If one thought, one single 
 thought of theirs, departs from thine, they disavow it, they abj ure 
 
 ^ Letter to the Abb6 de Chanterac, his agent at Rome. 
 
 " These will be foiand in his Life^ by the Cardinal de Bausset. 
 
Chap. IV. 1546. AUTHORITY HAS NO DIRECT INFLUENCE. 67 
 
 it." Tlie voice spoke — and Lamcniiais not the less became, 
 what he is, an infidel. 
 
 Accordingly, we repeat, authority exists for him only who has 
 the wish, tor him only who has the power to submit to it. Di- 
 rect intluencc it has none. Even with the most ardent desire to 
 be docile under it, still this may be beyond your power. In that 
 case, either you submit, but with a submission altogether exter- 
 nal, altogether in show, like that of Fenelon, of the Jansenists, 
 and many more ;^ or, like Luther, like all whom reason, right or 
 wrong, has kept from obeying— •j'ou resist. 
 
 In that case there remains the third means — constraint. 
 This is the natural, the indispensable complement of the Roman 
 system ; and it is in fact always associated with it, everywhere, 
 at least, wherever it has the power. Unaided by the civil au- 
 thority, it is clear that the Church's authority is in the same con- 
 ditions as every other intellectual and moral authority : a little 
 weaker, a little stronger, according to individuals — that is all. 
 Let the humblest plebeian get some new idea into his mind : 
 twenty popes, twenty councils,- the Avhole Christian world leagued 
 against him, will not change his conviction by commanding him 
 to change it. If he persist in calling for proofs, you must give 
 them to him ; if you have none, or if he think them bad, what 
 can you do ? Imprison him, torture him, you may ; convince 
 him you cannot. Accordingly, now-a-days, in those countries 
 where the secular power is not at the service of the Roman 
 Church, Avhat does its authority amount to ? Does it arrest the 
 progress of a single idea ? "Where are there printed most immor- 
 al and infidel books — at London or at Paris ? Where are relig- 
 ion and its ministers subjected to most contemptuous ridicule ? 
 Although Rome should succeed in reconquering, wdthout any ex- 
 ternal aid, all the power she has ever possessed only through the 
 assistance of physical force, still this would be a fact which could 
 prove nothing in point of right. Although you were to show us 
 the entire world laid prostrate before the Roman infallibility, not 
 the less might we say, " It may rise again to-morrow, and, should 
 it rise again, it escapes from you." 
 
 To recapitulate : If you persuade me by dint of reasons, you 
 deal with me on a footing of equality. There will be no au- 
 thority there. If you habituate me to dispense with reasons, no 
 more do you exercise any empire over my understanding. It 
 holds itself aloof, but it does not submit. The proof of this is, 
 that at any moment it may rise again with all its rights, all its 
 
 ^ The pope threatens us with thuiulering constitutions. A good in- 
 tention, with little enlightenment, is a great evil in high phices. — Bossuet, 
 Letter to the Abbe de Ranee. 
 
68 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 audacity, all its doubts. Neither is there authority here. If 
 you have recourse to physical force — you have, then, to do with 
 my body ; my soul is, and remains free. Still less is there au- 
 thority in this case. The best way, therefore, of combating au- 
 thority, such as Rome arrogates, is to deny it. Legitimate or 
 not, infallible or not, one word decides all ; it is impossible. 
 Either there is persuasion, or there is nothing, nothing but a 
 brute force which the first tyrant that comes may quite as well 
 put forth to the advantage of any idea, any ambition whatever. 
 But if the authority of the Roftian Church, let people do what 
 they please, reduces itself necessarily to two means altogether 
 human, persuasion or constraint — does not this prove at once 
 that it has not received that authority from God ? God would 
 have trifled with the Church had he authorized her to impose 
 creeds, without at the same time enabling her to operate inter- 
 nally on men's souls so as to make them accept those creeds. 
 But the Church has never pretended to be endowed with any 
 such power. She has only had that of persecuting, and that, it 
 is clear, God never gave her any more than he had given it be- 
 fore to a Nero or a Diocletian. He left her to do as she pleased, 
 as he had left them to do as they pleased. P aliens quia 
 ceternus. 
 
 After this, what becomes of reasonings a 'priori ? What do 
 they prove at bottom, even although all we have said should go 
 for nothing ? If there has been a revelation, it is said, there 
 ought to be an authority accompanying it. How reconcile the 
 idea of a revelation given by a God, with the idea that revela- 
 tion has not been secured, from its origin, against all alteration ? 
 How could Luther have been able to believe in the divinity of 
 Jesus Christ, and yet doubt for a moment that that same Jesus 
 behoved to guard, and knew how to guard his religion against 
 all which . . . bzc,} This we find reiterated in every form, from 
 the pulpit, in books, everywhere. 
 
 Let us see. We, too, venture to reason. " How can you 
 reconcile the idea of God's holiness with the idea that the creat- 
 ure of his predilection, the creature made hi his imuge, man in 
 short, has not been secured from his origin, against all invasion 
 of moral evil ?" Well, then, if evil had not been there, evident, 
 palpable, Ave might defy any one to demonstrate wherein this 
 reasoning is less conclusive than the former. 
 
 God inis^hi liave ! No doubt. God ou2,}it to have ! What 
 know you of that ? Are there not enough of other things which, 
 to our poor human eyes, seem necessary, and which God, never- 
 theless, has not done ? 
 
 ^ Robelot, Injluence de la Reformation de Luther. 
 
Chap. IV. 1510. THE BIBLE ADDRESSED TO EVERYBODY. 69 
 
 All authority is necessary. — Why ? For three things, v/c are 
 told — to regidate the faith ; to preserve it ; to maintain unity. 
 One Avord on each of these three points. 
 
 To regulate the faith. — This presupposes, \st, the insuffi- 
 ciency of written revelation ; 2d, the possibility of remedying 
 that insufficiency. 
 
 Now, let us go back eighteen centuries. Suppose yourself at 
 Rome ; a pagan, but, like Plato, sighing for an illumination Irom 
 above. Suppose the history of the Jews, of the Saviour, of the 
 apostles, to be entirely unknown to you. A book is announced 
 to you, and in that you are told is to be found the desideratum 
 you have longed for. 
 
 What idea would men naturally form, before being acquainted 
 with it, of the much desired volume ? Some would figure to 
 themselves a book of philosophy ; others, a dialogue between 
 God and man ; these w^ould expect to find it a course of theology, 
 those a positive and compact code of laws. In a word, each 
 would construct the work after his own manner, and put into it 
 his own ideas, his own tastes, perhaps even his own passions. 
 But if there be one idea which, according to all probabihties, 
 w^ould never enter any one's head, it is that the book should not 
 be for everybody, and that there should be men exclusively com- 
 missioned to read it, and to impose upon others what they shall 
 have beheved that they have found in it. " There will be some," 
 people would naturally think, " who shall make it their special 
 study. And to such men it will be natural for people to listen 
 with the deference due to their superior intelhgence and their 
 labours ; but not the less must the book remain the common 
 property of all. To study it must be considered as the right of 
 all and the duty of all." 
 
 Here, too, we admit, there is an argument a 2>riori. We 
 draw no conclusion from it. Let us only see what shall be 
 thought of it afterwards by those who shall have formed it. 
 
 What shall they think of it ? They will not even have any 
 occasion to return to it. When they come to read the book, will 
 they find in it a single word likely to suggest a doubt as to the 
 justness of their anticipations ? Will they find a single word 
 indicating that the instructions which it contains must neces- 
 sarily pass through the mouths of certain men ? A single word, 
 in fine, which does not appear to be addressed to everybody, in 
 order that each may take from it whatever his mind, his con- 
 science, his heart shall have found in it. No ; it required sever- 
 al ages and all the perspicacity of ambition to discover in some 
 of the Master's words, the germs of that power which Rome 
 has arrogated to herself. Even although we should accept, as 
 
70 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I, 
 
 addressed to her, all the promises of aid and inspiration made 
 to the Church in general, still she would be far from having re- 
 ceived as many of them as the Jewish Church, of which God 
 was so long the head, and almost the visible head, so direct was 
 his intervention in the smallest details of that Church's destiny. 
 Was the Jewish Church, on that account, exempt from error ? 
 Did Jesus Christ find nothing to reproach her with ? Did she 
 open her eyes to that new light which had been announced to 
 her for a thousand years? The Jews called themselves "the 
 chosen race," and hence they concluded that the truth could 
 never depart from among them. AVhat less reason had they for 
 this, than Rome has at the present day ? If they erred, nothing 
 will demonstrate that Rome may not err. 
 
 Thus, although there were as much proof as there is little of 
 the insufficiency of the Bible, still nothing could prove that the 
 Roman Church is charged, and alone charged, v/ith the task of 
 supplying what is wanting in it. And what if, passing to facts, 
 we should now inquire how she has done this ? With what has 
 she filled up those vacuities which she has thought good to per- 
 ceive in written revelation ? Are those doctrines of which, ac- 
 cording to her own admission, there are few, and according to 
 our conviction, no traces in the Bible — are they, at least, so 
 much in accordance with the spirit of the rest, that one can 
 readily believe them to have emanated from the same source ? 
 What I the God who could dictate several hundreds of pages 
 without there being a single word in them about such and such 
 Roman doctrines, it is He who long afterwards dictated the 
 decrees by virtue of which those doctrines have obtained a place 
 — and what place I often the first among the doctrines of Chris- 
 tianity ! But let us not anticipate. We have here to do with a 
 question of principles, and must say nothing that is not followed 
 up with proof. 
 
 Nevertheless, it would be by facts that we should again be 
 able best to reply to the second thing alleged, that authority is 
 necessary /o?* the 'preservation of the faith. We would ask our- 
 selves how it has preserved it ; we would call upon it to justify, 
 one by one, the alterations of all sorts to which it has lent itself, 
 and, as we said at the commencement of these reflections, one 
 single unjustifiable point would suffice to annihilate the very 
 strongest pleas that could have been urged in favour of authority. 
 This is just what we have had chiefly in view in the composi- 
 tion of the present history, and here we can but refer the reader 
 to it. 
 
 As long as Christian doctrines preserved their primitive sim- 
 plicity — as long as the Scripture was in every one's hands — as 
 
Chap. IV. 1546. TWO AUTHORITIES MERGED IN ONE. 71 
 
 long as the pulpits resounded with invitations to study it — we 
 do not see that the idea ever entered any one's head of setting 
 up that abstract being, the Church, as the regulator and the 
 preserver of doctrine, still less of granting her any right to lord 
 it over the conscience and the reason of her members. There 
 were councils ; be it so ; still there was none in the course of the 
 first three centuries. But it is one thing to meet for the pur- 
 pose of coming to a common understanding as to what is to bo 
 taught, to condemn accidentally such or such an opinion which 
 is believed to be mischievous, and quite another thing to arro- 
 gate, as with Divine authority, the absolute right of teaching 
 and condemning. We deny that this right was arrogated. If 
 there was in the third, the fourth, or even the fifth century, any- 
 thing resembling it, what could be the meaning of those constant 
 calls on the part of the Fathers, to the reading, the study, the 
 examination of tlie Holy Scriptures ? Accordingly, it was not 
 till after having admitted certain articles of faith, which, to say 
 the least, were liazardous and controvertible, that it was found 
 necessary to fall upon some means of binding them up with those 
 which nobody contested ; in short, the protection of that w4iich 
 was not sufficiently protected by the authority of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures, was the desideratum which gave birth to the authority of 
 the Church. By little and little this protection was extended 
 to the Bible itself ; it was no longer from the hands of God, but 
 from the hands of the Church, that men had to believe they 
 got the sacred volume. Henceforward the two authorities were 
 merged in one. And this fusion, altogether to the advantage of 
 the Church, became every day more complete ; the Bible disap- 
 pearing as, wl>en a building is finished, the first laid stones dis- 
 appear in the foundations. At this very day, three centuries 
 after the Reformation, there are people whom an appeal to the 
 Bible profoundly astonishes, whom a quotation from the Bible, 
 even when they have no reply to make to it, does not in the 
 least shake. And yet they will not tell you either that it is 
 wrong, or that it has been abrogated ; they very well know that 
 their Church sometimes quotes it ; but to quote it otherwise than 
 the Church does, is a novelty which confounds them. Why 
 should that Bible interfere ? No doubt, the instrument is good ; 
 but just because it is good, why should it produce any sounds 
 different from those that the Church extracts from it. 
 
 We admit, on the credit of science, things quite contrary to 
 the evidence of the senses, the earth's motion round the sun, for 
 example ; why, then, not admit, on the credit of the Church, 
 something different from what seems to be said in the Bible ? 
 So, then, this is the way in which some remain Roman Catholics, 
 
 •/ 
 
12 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 although they see clearly in the Bible the contrary of what they 
 believe.^ 
 
 Yes, doubtless, an authority was necessary, absolutely neces- 
 sary, for the preservation of so many things which reason, con- 
 science, and most of all, the Gospel, would so soon have exploded ; 
 but, would that same Gospel, abandoned to itself, delivered into 
 men's hands as it came from the apostles, with nothing but its 
 divine beauty to defend it, without other means of constraint 
 than are to be found in the majesty of its doctrines, and the re- 
 sistless charm of its morality — would that Gospel run any risk 
 of being lost ? Would it not always have been there, an in- 
 spired guide, an immutable regulator, to keep people in the M^ay 
 of truth, or to bring them back to it ? Throw into one heap all 
 the variations, all the divergences, all the modifications, to which 
 the Gospel may have been subjected among those countless sects 
 which have been made a matter of reproach against the Re- 
 formation — and let it be shown us, with the Bible in our hand, 
 whether all of them taken together, have altered it more than 
 Homan Catholicism alone has done. With authority the Bible 
 was eclipsed ; with liberty never, whatever some men may have 
 ■said or done, never have men's eyes ceased 1o be fixed on it. 
 Amid the most violent disputes, amid troubles and convulsions, 
 amid attack and retaliation with the pen and the sword, it has 
 kept its place on the altar, ever circled about with men's homage, 
 ever studied, ever pondered, ever ready to produce its fruits of 
 peace and salvation. Read those eloquent counsels of a Chry- 
 sostom, of a Basil, of an Augustine, of all the Fathers, in fine, 
 on the duty of seeking in the Book of Life the daily food of our 
 
 ^ It is an observation, which "we will take the liberty of recommend- 
 ing to Protestant controversialists, that they forget too much, in general, 
 that they have to do with people for whom the Bible is nothing — no- 
 thing at least by itself, from the moment it does not seem to be in ac- 
 cordance with the Church ; they make it too much their only battle-axe, 
 and are not aware of the slight effect of their heaviest blows. Were 
 these only blows that had missed their proper aim, one would only 
 have to take a surer aim the next time. But the worst of it is, that by 
 having recourse to the Bible against people who have not yet recognised 
 its supreme authority, we are always habituating them more and more 
 to recognise it only as a secondary authority, and not to look upon it 
 as pronouncing in the last resort. Thus in all polemics with people 
 who have not yet approached the Bible with the most profound re- 
 spect, call not in the Bible to your aid, until you have in some sort 
 driven them from all other positions on to it, by means of every other 
 argument that you have been able to find ; do not allow the sword of 
 God to be employed in uselessly beating the air. Let this observation, 
 at the same time, be our excuse, with such as may find fault with this 
 book for not being biblical enough. For Protestants it is sufficiently 
 so; for Roman Catholics, it is better to have it no more so than it is. 
 
Chap. IV. 1546. ROMAN VAGARIES— PROTESTANT VARIATIONS. 73 
 
 souls, and say if ever there wns an epoch in which their counsels 
 were better followed than in the first times of the Reformation. 
 By way of answer we arc told to look at the picture of the ex- 
 travagancies occasioned, in some places, by this superabundance 
 of religious and theological life ; but though some minds, on 
 being set free by the Reformation, may have here and there 
 given birth to things that by no means embellished its history, 
 would it be difficult, on the other hand, to find in that of Roman 
 Catholicism, vagaries which it would fain obliterate ? To sub- 
 vert authority, say you, is to surrender the faith to all the 
 caprices of the human mind ; but you may long ransack the 
 annals of the Reformation before you shall find any thing there 
 to equal the lucubrations of your mystics, the ecstasies of some, 
 the macerations of others, the stigmata of this saint, and the mir- 
 acles of that. When the infidelity of the last century gathered 
 in with so much care all that could throw ridicule on Christian- 
 ity, on what field did it collect the largest harvest ? Besides, 
 let us not forget, that nothing then gleaned in the field of the 
 Reformation had ever been so sanctioned by it, as to make it 
 responsible for such scandals ; they could permanently affect the 
 character of the particular sect or individual only that was guilty 
 of them. But you have canonized by hundreds your illuminati, 
 your innumerable dreamers of every age, of every country, and 
 of either sex ; and though there may not have been any approval 
 of follies, there has always been a bond of attachment which 
 Rome will never break. While interdicting all discussion of the 
 essence of doctrines, the mind has been allowed a frightful lati- 
 tude in the way of analyzing them, diving into them, and setting 
 them off with a thousand fancies. What has been lost in Hberty 
 in one sense, has been regained, for better or worse, in another ; 
 and the Church has shut her eyes, like a sovereign who allows 
 his subjects to sing, provided they obey and pay. What a strange 
 book might be made by collecting the products' of this passive and 
 hampered half-liberty I The mind of man cannot remain inactive. 
 Authority, while it prevented it straying to the right, was com- 
 pelled, by doing so, to tolerate much erratic movement on the left. 
 " Did Protestants," says Bossuet, " really know with how many 
 variations their confessions of faith have been framed, that Ref- 
 ormation of which they boast would inspire them only with con- 
 tempt."^ We could Avish that some one would explain to us, 
 once for all, what is proved, in good logic, by the argument 
 drawn from the variations of Protestantism. When, for example, 
 it shall have been demonstrated that Protestants have not been 
 all, and always, agreed on the subject of the Eucharist, what 
 
 * Preface to the Variatioym. 
 D 
 
 •'/ 
 
14: HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book. I. 
 
 weight will this have taken from any single direct argument of 
 theirs against the mass ? When it shall have been proved, that 
 with a pope they would have been more united, in what will this 
 have weakened their historical and doctrinal attacks against the 
 popedom ? '' Before accusing us of variations," says Bossuet 
 again, ^ " let them begin with clearing themselves." To what 
 purpose ? The two positions are totally different. After having 
 written four volumes on the variations of Protestantism, a system 
 of liberty, you have made less progress than he who shall have 
 found a sinj^le variation in E.oman Catholicism, a svstem of au- 
 thority and infallible unity. 
 
 With liberty, any party whatever — individual, congregation, 
 or people, that momentarily loses the true doctrines of the Bible, 
 never loses, at least, the thread by which it may be ]ed back to 
 them. The Roman Catholic, if he reject one single error of his 
 Church, must break with a past, extending over twelve centu- 
 ries — must repudiate a whole world of traditions, and sever ties 
 of every kind. The child of the Reformation, should his ances- 
 tors have erred, is not ri vetted by any such chain to their errors ; 
 these had not at their side, like the Roman Catholic's ancestors, 
 an immutable power ready to stereotype all their imaginations. 
 In all churches it may constantly happen that Christianity may 
 be mingled M'ith more or less alloy, according to times and places. 
 With authority, the alloy and the metal are thrown into one ; it 
 would be rebellion and sacrilege to separate them. With liber- 
 ty, the alloy, should any remain, ever lies in the crucible of the 
 Bible, and is ever subject to the action of that divine fire which 
 alone is capable of separating it and expelling it. 
 
 This operation, which Rome does not desire, should be left to 
 proceed of itself with the aid of the Bible ; she must, wherever 
 she is not as much mistress of men's bodies as she desires to be 
 of their souls, allow to proceed of itself, and that, too often, under 
 the empire of the most untoward passions. Do people suppose 
 that Voltaire, had he had the Bible put into his hands from his 
 earliest years, even admitting that he might have become an in- 
 fidel, would have persecuted it so ruthlessly ? Witness Rousseau, 
 who at bottom believed in the Bible no more than Voltaire did. 
 A Protestant may become an unbeliever, but not an impious 
 blasphemer. He may abandon, he may attack Christianity, but 
 he will not hate it ; he will not call it the infamous icretch 
 {rinfame) ; he will not insist on crushing it {I'ecraser). Without 
 the deplorable identity which authority had established between 
 that of the Bible and that of Rome, never should ignorance, 
 never should dishonesty, have gone so far as to charge religion 
 itself with whatever might be found ridiculous, or odious, iw its 
 
 * Prefa'ce to the Variations. 
 
Chap. IV. ijlO. TMTV DESIRAHLE— IS IT NECESSARY? 76 
 
 history. Eslablished for the purpose of conservation, autliority 
 behoves to preserve everythiiif^, and this is the greatest evil she 
 has done to rehgion and to herself. At the present day, among 
 so many new obstacles, docs any believe that she would not 
 think herself all too happy could she but lay down part of the 
 burthen which she has bound herself to carry to the end of time ? 
 She does in fact so far make it lighter, by the care with which 
 she allows so many ideas to fall out of notice, the mere announce- 
 ment of which would ruin her for ever ; but all that she thus 
 abandons without its being perceived, we are entitled to gather 
 up and replace on her shoulders, and at the same time to repeat 
 to her, that unless she would repudiate herself, she must take it 
 with her to the last. 
 
 But, we arc told, without authority there can be no unity. 
 
 This argument, from which so much is attempted to be drawn 
 every day, is, in itself, the most incorrect of the three. It as- 
 sumes as admitted and incontrovertible what has first of all to 
 be demonstrated. Has it entered into God's purpose that there 
 should be an entire unity of faith in the Church ? This is the 
 question. Authority is required to maintain unity. Be it so. 
 But is unity itself necessary ? 
 
 Let us not be misunderstood. That it is desirable, infinitely 
 desirable ; that we ought to be disposed to concur towards it 
 with all our efibrts, all our prayers, all the concessions that con- 
 science will permit, is what we suppose none will deny. Who 
 doubts or ever doubted it ? A Church at once zealous and 
 peaceable, is one of the most ravishing spectacles the earth can 
 present ; and the day on which all Christians shall unite to form 
 but one will be the brightest that shall ever have shone on this 
 scene of discords and contentions. 
 
 But Avhat do we say ? The brightest of days has already 
 shone on the world. It was the day on which the earth beheld 
 the arrival of Him who was announced as the Saviour of men ; 
 of tnen, mark well the word, that is to say, of every man, of 
 every soul. What is the Church, after all ? The Church, in 
 the eye of God, means the individuals who go to compose it; for 
 it, as the Church, no more than for a nation as nation, is there 
 responsibility, or judgment, or a future, or a paradise, or hell. 
 Promises and threatenings, all that you read in the Scripture, all 
 that you hear from the mouth of Gospel preachers, all is from 
 time to time pressed in vain under a collective form ; there does 
 not, and there cannot exist any responsibility but that of the in- 
 dividual. Rehgion, let people do what they please, remains an 
 afiair between each hidividual and God. If my rehgion be in 
 
V6 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book I. 
 
 conformity with that of my fellow-citizens, so much the better, 
 and I ought to wish it may be so ; if it be not, it is an evil, an 
 evil which I ought to combat, as far as may be, with charity 
 and forbearance ; but any real, direct, logical relation between 
 the salvation of my soul and the greater or less conformity there 
 may be betwixt their views and mine, is what I cannot in the 
 least perceive. United or not united with others in this world, 
 each of us will not the less be judged alone, condemned alone, 
 saved alone. Though unity have important advantages, though 
 it powerfully concur towards obtaining many of the objects of 
 religion here below, such as union, peace and civil order — it is 
 not the less clear, that it is not indispensable as respects the 
 first, the greatest of all those objects — the essential object, the 
 sanctification and salvation of each individual soul. 
 
 If it is not indispensable, nothing authorizes us to affirm that 
 Grod behoves to have desired it. And now, have we facts to 
 support the affirmation that God has desired it ? 
 
 " Grod is holy. God has made man. God, therefore, must have 
 desired that man should be holy and should remain holy." Such 
 is the reasoning, the falseness of which, we have already said, 
 cannot be logically demonstrated. What, then, should we do to 
 refute it ? We should say — " Evil exists. There are vices, there 
 are crimes. Then, God has not wished that there should not 
 be either vices or crimes." Why has he not wished that there 
 should be neither ? This we cannot tell. There stands the fact ; 
 the argument to the contrary vanishes. Facto cedit argitmentuin. 
 
 Well, then, when we see the Christian world so profoundly 
 divided, when we see all that is factitious in the Roman unity, 
 and all that is atrocious in the means which it has been found 
 necessary, nevertheless, to employ for maintaining that unity for 
 good or evil ; when we say to ourselves that so many anxious 
 thoughts, so much vigilance, so much blood, have not prevented 
 Rome from losing a third, almost the half of Europe, and that 
 a reduplication of horrors was required in order to shut the gates 
 of Spain and Italy on the Reformation, countries the conquest 
 of which would have been the death of Roman Catholicism — 
 we think it proved to demonstration that unity, meaning thereby 
 the system to which that name is given, is a human invention, 
 a mere dream, very fine in theory, often most hideous in prac- 
 tice, and the realization of which, if it is to take place at all, 
 pertains only to the Great Master of all hearts. 
 
 The question, then, remains entire. Nothing proves to us, in 
 theory, either the authority or the infallibility of the council. 
 Let us see how far it will itself prove it by its decrees and the 
 history of its decrees. 
 
BOOK 11. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL FROM ITS THIRD SESSION" (154G) 
 TO ITS REMOVAL FROM TRENT (154V). 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 (1546.) 
 
 SESSION IV. DECREES ON THE RULE OF FAITH, THE CANON AND 
 USE OF SCRIPTURE, AND THE VULGATE. 
 
 Homage to tlie Bible — What is Tradition — Limits to credibility — "What 
 the Fathers thought of it; and the councils — What it had" hitherto 
 been — Papal aberration — Of what is Holy Scripture composed — 
 Why had this still to be decided — The divines at the council — The 
 Apocrypha — Three opinions — Strange omnipotence — The Vulgate — 
 Its history down to the time of the council — ^The decree would admit 
 no delay — Results — The Vulgate as it stands — Whose province is 
 it to interpret Scripture — Demi-liberalism — Absolute bondage — The 
 god of Epicurus — Historical question — The Old Testament — The New 
 — The Fathers — The last of the Fathers — ^Saint Augustine and the 
 Bible Societies — A false quotation — Decree on the reading and the 
 interpretation of the Bible — Fate of this decree in the hands of the 
 popes — Deadly Pastures — Port-Royal — Libert}^ in Roman Catholic- 
 ism — Sophisms — Difficulties in drawing up the decree — ^The Anath- 
 emas — Historical aspect of the case — Hesitations in the council — 
 Decrees on the faith — Decrees on reformation — Alarms — Precautions 
 — Fourth Session — ^The pope's confirmation — What had been gained 
 — Perpetual compromise — External difficulties. 
 
 The selection that had been made of the subjects that were 
 first to be treated by the Council, implied an homage, no doubt 
 very involuntarily paid, to the supreme authority of the Bible, 
 and to the opinions of the man whose recent death had been 
 thought so auspicious. Met for the purpose of systematically 
 arranging and fixing the Church's creed, why should not the 
 council have, first of all, defined the right in virtue of wliich 
 they were to proceed to do so ? This question, like that of the 
 relative position of the pope, was not yet so clear but that manv 
 of the faithful, those even most disposed to obedience, would 
 have been liappy to receive some new light upon it. But with 
 whatever sincerity the assembled prelates may have behevcd in 
 
 / 
 
is HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book U. 
 
 the divine authority of their mission, they could not fail to see 
 how strange it would have looked for them to issue a declara- 
 tion, amounting in fine to this — " "VYe are infallible, because we 
 affirm that we are mfallible, and our affirmation is true, be- 
 cause we are infallible/' An inevitable sophism, with regard 
 to which, as well as many others, men may indeed delude them- 
 selves, but which, even insincerely, one would hardly venture 
 openly to propound. 
 
 The assembly, therefore, passed at once (in the congregation 
 of February 22, 1546) to the question which ought to have stood 
 second — "What is the source of the faith?" And to this the 
 reply had to be — " It is Scripture." Luther could hardly have 
 spoken better. 
 
 This, accordingly, was not the point at which it stopped. Is 
 it Scripture alone ? A Roman council which should reply. 
 Yes I and which at the same time would prove its consistency, 
 could have had no other course than to break np and disperse. 
 The reply, therefore, as might be expected, w^as this — Scripture 
 and Tradition. 
 
 But what is tradition ? Nothing more easy to define, pro- 
 vided you keep to vague description. The New Testament is 
 not a large book. But the apostles spoke and preached ior a 
 course of years and in many churches ; it follows, therefore, that 
 we do not possess in writing all the words that fell fix)m their 
 lips. Several of the apostles even wrote nothing ; nothing at 
 least that we possess. Tradition, consequently, is the entire 
 body of those apostolic instructions and facts which have been 
 transmitted, or were capable of being transmitted, otherwise 
 than by writing, otherwise than by the New Testament, in the 
 state in which it has reached us. 
 
 Here all, it will be observed, seems very simple ; and yet 
 even here, without departing from the vagueness in which peo- 
 ple would appear to be so nearly agreed, we find already, if not 
 positive objections, at least improbabilities, of little less weight 
 than arguments. That the apostles may have given expression, 
 in their oral discourses, to ideas which unhappily Ave do not find 
 in their v^aitings, is possible ; still, it is very little probable that 
 a single truth of any importance can have been omitted in four 
 gospels and so many epistles. But this possibility has limits, 
 and very narrow limits too. Had the worship of the Virgin, 
 for example, occupied in the primitive Church, we do not say 
 the place it has at this day in the Roman Church, but any 
 place, however insignificant, can it be admitted that the apos- 
 tles would have failed to say one Avord about it ? Utterly im- 
 probable this would be, had even no more of their writings come 
 
Chap. I. IMG. WHAT IS TR.\DITIC)N ? 19 
 
 down to US tliuii four or five epistles, of four or five pages each. 
 Were the primacy of Rome and of the pope an apostohc idea, 
 who shall explain to us how St. Paul could have written, from 
 Rome itself, to several important churches, without making the 
 slightest mention of any tie established, or to be established, 
 betwixt theni and it? Shall it be said that God has thus per- 
 mitted it, and that it is not ibr us to ask why ? God has per- 
 mitted it I Still this would not be enough. In order to their 
 having been able to omit things of so much importance, it is not 
 enoagh that God may have permitted it ; it must be maintained 
 that he himself commanded their silence in such a case. 
 
 Is tradition at least favourable to itself? And could we for- 
 get the evil that Scripture says of it,^ does it appear in the Fa- 
 thers, and in the decrees of the first councils, with a part at 
 least of that supreme authority which it was to assume at 
 Trent ? 
 
 No. Never did Luther or Calvin appeal more formally to 
 Scripture, and to Scripture alone, than did the authors of the 
 four first centuries. " This gospel," says one of them, " was 
 first preached by the apostles ; then, by the ivill of God, they 
 wrote it, in order that it might become the foundation and the 
 pillar of our faith." AVho is it that speaks thus? Why, it is 
 Irenseus," a disciple of a disciple of St. John. He who had re- 
 ceived the instructions of an apostle so fresh from their first 
 source; he it is, further, who thus writes in a homily-^ — "We 
 must necessarily appeal to the testimony of the Scriptures, ivitli- 
 out ivhich our discourses are entitled to no credit.'' 
 - "Let the disciples of Hermogenes," says TertuUian,* "shew 
 that what they teach is written ; and if it be not written, let 
 them tremble at the anathema pronounced on whosoever takes 
 from or adds to Scripture." 
 
 "It is necessary," says St. Basil, ^ "that every one instruct 
 himself, by means of the divine Scriptures, in the necessary 
 verities, both that he may make progress in piety, and not ac- 
 custom himself to human traditions What is written, do 
 
 thou believe ; what is not written, seek thou not after." 
 
 " If you take away, or add ought," says St. Ambrose,^ "this 
 
 seems to be a prevarication When the Scriptures do not 
 
 speak, who shall speak ? ' 
 
 And now, mark what Augustine says — " Let us not stop at 
 what I have said, or you have said, but at Avhat the Lord hath 
 
 ^ Matt. XV. 3, 6, 9. - Against heresies, b. iii. 1. 
 
 ' Homilv I. on Jeremiah. * Ac/ahist Hermog., ch. xxi. 
 
 * Moral Rules, Quest. O."). Homily on the Trinity. 
 ' On Paradise, ch. xii. On the calling of the Gentiles, ii. 3. 
 
80 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book H. 
 
 said. We have the Lord's books there let us look for the 
 
 Church."! 
 
 Mark Chrysostom : " When impious heresy shall occupy the 
 churches, know that then there will be no proof of true faith, 
 but by Holy Scripture. Have recourse, therefore, only to it, for 
 those who go elsewhere shall perish. "^ 
 
 In fine, to that oft-repeated assertion, that there behoves to 
 have been some means of preserving what was written by the 
 apostles, it is Augustine again who Avill lend us his answer. 
 " Under pretext of the Lord's having said, ' I have yet more 
 things to say to you,' heretics try to give a plausible colour to 
 their inventions. But if the Lord has not said, who among us 
 will venture to say. It is this, it is that I And if he is rash 
 enough to say it, how will he prove it ? And who will be pre- 
 sumptuous enough to affirm, without any divine testimony, that 
 what he says, even although it were true, is precisely what the 
 Lord meant to say."-^ Does the author, doubtless, proceed to 
 add, that though individuals have no such right, yet the Church 
 has it ? No ; there is not a word of restriction. The expres- 
 sions are as precise, as absolute as possible. And if he grant 
 elsewhere, as was quite natural at that epoch, a certain author- 
 ity to traditions guarded by certain warranties, these lines, as 
 well as many others, sufficiently prove that he had no faith, 
 either in infallible traditions, or in the possibility of discerning 
 them infallibly. Athanasius, before him, had been still more pre- 
 cise. " The Scriptures suffice, of themselves alone, for making 
 
 known the truth We are resolved to listen to nothing, to 
 
 say nothing, beyond what has been Avritten It is a mock- 
 
 erj'^to raise questions or discussions on what has not been writ- 
 ten."* 
 
 Thus did the hero of the Council of Nice express himself. 
 Do we find any trace of that council and those following having 
 thought otherwise ? Not the smallest. It was not until the 
 sixth ^ that it was decided to be necessary to recur, in case of 
 need, to sources not written. This must not be understood, it 
 is true, as if people had never yet allowed themselves to recur 
 to these ; but as little do we find anything that approaches to 
 an official recognition of them ; and the passages we have 
 adduced sufficiently shew how far they were from anything of 
 the sort. The decrees of Nice, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, are 
 
 ^ Oyi the Unity of the Chxirch. - Homily XLIX, on St. Matthew. 
 
 ^ Ninety-seventh Treatise on St. John. 
 
 * Against the Gentiles. Treatise ou the Incarnation — Epistle to 
 Serapion, 
 
 ^ (Constantinople in 680. 
 
Chap. I. 1546. OLD OPINION.S ON TRADITION. 81 
 
 framed as resting on Scripture alone, and as being incompetent 
 to rest on anything but tScripture ; if here and there we find 
 appeals to tradition, it is never except in the form of an acces- 
 sory ; the council would never have had the idea of proving 
 anything by it that should not have been sufficiently demon- 
 strated already. Now, even had the Church all the power that 
 Romanists arrogate for her, still it would be matter of doubt if 
 she could exercise that power in favour of tradition. Not to 
 grant it in the first ages, and at a short distance from its 
 sources, more than a restricted and conditional authority, was 
 this not tantamount to interdicting herself from granting it any 
 more a thousand years after ? There is no middle position : 
 either tradition has always been one of the legitimate sources of 
 the faith, and then we beg to know why the fathers made so 
 little account of it ; or it was not so originally, and then, being 
 human and alterable, it never could be so. 
 
 Whatever, in point of fact, it from of old had been, its position, 
 in point of right, had never been regulated. Popes, doctors, 
 councils, had vied with each other in drawing from it ; but on 
 this point there did not exist, as yet, either special decrees or 
 precise rules. As for rules, no one could dream of making them , 
 for how could it be exactly determined at what degree of credi- 
 bility a point of tradition shall become an article of faith ? As 
 for a special decree, one was made, but not without difficulty. 
 However accustomed people had become to regard tradition 
 with as much, and even more respect than Scripture, many felt 
 reluctant to declare this. The way had first been opened by 
 the Council of Florence, but in 1441, at a time when it was 
 disorganized, and when doubts might have been felt as to the 
 validity of its decrees ; besides, that was not a council-general, 
 and its sentence could not be held as definitive. Several bishops, 
 accordingly, gave expression to their scruples. A few went so 
 far as to call for a decree declaring the inferiority of tradition, 
 when it was suggested that it were better not to say anything 
 about it. Those even who desired as explicit and as favourable a 
 decree as possible, were far from being agreed on what should 
 be inserted in it. The very word tradition, in the vague and 
 absolute sense which it has since taken, was then unknown. 
 People did not say tradition, but the traditions, and this plural 
 seemed to require that they should be enumerated, that they 
 should be arranged at least under several heads, for the council 
 could not reasonably seem to sanction, with their eyes open, 
 every kind of tradition. The discussion accordingly was very 
 long. Sarpi and Pallavicini are not at all agreed in the de- 
 tails they have given ; but the latter says, that " there were 
 
82 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book H. 
 
 almost as many opinions as there were heads. "^ Let us pass 
 over the details, then, curious as they are. Let us do no more 
 than remark how far these tentative efforts are from indicating 
 that confidence with which "tradition" is now spoken of by 
 Romanists, as a Protestant would speak of " Scripture," or as an 
 advocate speaks of " the law." 
 
 It is true, that on the decision being once taken, Rome was 
 not slow to give precision, for her own interest, to what the 
 council had left in it vague and obscure. The council went no 
 farther than to say, "that the truth being in the traditions as 
 well as in Scripture, they were received with equal piety. "^ 
 Equality — this was a great step ; but it was not enough. Al- 
 ready, in 1520, Prierio, one of the first theologians of Leo X., 
 had said, " He is a heretic whosoever does not rest on the doc- 
 trine of the Roman Church, and of the Roman pontiff, as the 
 infallible rule of iaith, from ivhich Holy Scripture itself derives 
 its force and its authority.^'' A year after the close of the 
 council, a bull of Pius IV. fixes the oath to be taken by all 
 ecclesiastics. " I admit," they behoved to say, " I firmly em- 
 brace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions, and all the con- 
 stitutions of the mother Church ; onor cover, I admit holy Scrip- 
 ture, according to the sense which the said Church holds, and 
 has held, to which Church it appertains to judge," &c. More- 
 over ! Here we see the principal formally become the acces- 
 sory. The door was opened ; divines rushed into it ; and ere 
 long you will see them as far removed from the decree itself of 
 Trent, as that decree had been already from the view entertain- 
 ed by the fathers. " "We shall endeavour to demonstrate," says 
 _Bellarmine,^ " that the Scriptures without the traditions are 
 rTeither sufficient, nor simply necessary T " Tradition is the 
 foundation of the Scriptures," says Baronius,^ " and surpasses 
 them in this, to wit, that the Scriptures cannot subsist unless 
 fortified by tradition, whereas tradition has sufficient force with- 
 out Scripture." " The excellence of the non-written word," 
 says another,^ " far surpasses that of the Scriptures Tra- 
 dition comprises in itself all truth We ought not to ap- 
 peal from it to any other judge." And Lindanus :" " Scripture 
 is a nose of wax, a dead letter, and that kills, a very husk with- 
 out a kernel, a leaden rule, a school for heretics, a forest that 
 serves as a refuge for robbers." Chrysostom, Augustine, where 
 
 ^ Book vi. ch. xi. 
 
 ^ Necnon traditiones ipsas .... pari pietatis affectu ac reveratione 
 suscipit et veneratur. 
 
 ^ A qua etiam Scriptura sacra robiir traliit et aiictoritateni. 
 
 * On the Word of God, b. iv. cli. iv. ^ Annals, year 58, No. 11. 
 
 ^ Coster, Enchiridion, ch. i. ' Panoplia, books i. and vi. 
 
Chap. I. 1546. THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE. 83 
 
 are you ? Can you believe that it is a Christian who thus 
 speaks, and not rattier a pagan, who of set purpose takes the direct 
 opposite of what you used daily to inculcate on your flocks ? 
 
 Thus had the council broken down the last remaining bridge 
 that spanned the abyss between the Reformation and Rome. 
 Tradition, "that impenetrable buckler of Ajax," as Lindanus 
 also says, had been declared to be of the same tissue with the 
 buckler of the enemies of Rome, and that " after the example 
 of the orthodox fathers," said the decree. The passages, accord- 
 ingly, ^vhich we have borrowed from them, figure among those 
 which the Inquisition was afterwards audacious enough to order 
 to be efiaced irom their works. ^ 
 
 Scripture had been named. The council was called upon to 
 state precisely where it was to be found, and what the books are 
 which compose it. 
 
 How happened it that such questions still remained to be de- 
 cided ? To be infallible, and to remain for fifteen centuries with- 
 out saying precisely what went to make up the Bible, was, on 
 the Church's part, either a singular forgetfulness of her mission, 
 or a singular avowal of her impotence. And one cannot say 
 here, that if she had neglected to pronounce, it was because there 
 was no doubt on the subject. The discussion showed that there 
 was more than one. 
 
 For the rest this is an objection which we might renew on 
 many occasions. Does not the Church, in arrogating to herself 
 this absolute right of teaching, and of being the only teacher, 
 authorize us to demand of her a reckoning of what she has not 
 done, as well as of what she has done ? An infallible authority 
 charged with the regulation of the faith, and a fundamental 
 question that has remained for ages doubtful, will always, people 
 may say what they will, present a contradiction. We shall re- 
 turn to it again. What is certain is, that on the 7th of April, 
 1546, the day before that on which the council's decision came 
 to be known, there was not" a single Roman Catholic in the 
 whole world that could tell, either of his own authority, for none 
 had the right to do so, or on his Church's part, seeing she had 
 never formally pronounced her opinion — the exact number of 
 the canonical books. " Many," says Pallavicini, '• lived in the 
 most distressing ignorance with regard to this ; the same book 
 being adored by some as the expression of the Holy Ghost, and 
 
 * See the Indices Expxirgatorii, published in Spain and in Italy in 
 consequence of a decree of the eighteenth session. An edition of Au- 
 gustine published at A^enice in 1584, omits all the passages favourable 
 to Protestants. " Curavimus removeri," say the editors " ea omnia guce 
 fidelium mentes haretica pravitate possent inficerc." 
 
84 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT Book XL 
 
 execrated by others as the work of a sacrilegious impostor." 
 The divisions of Protestants on this subject have never gone 
 nearly so far as this. 
 
 The discussion was warm, and even in some respects suffi- 
 ciently learned, but not on the part of the bishops. Pallavicini, 
 at this very place, would fain make them out to have been men 
 of high theological capacity. He mentions as men of particular 
 ability the three legates, two other cardinals, and the heads of 
 religious orders ;^ for the rest, he is obliged to say, without men- 
 tioning names, that they were the elite of the bishops. Why 
 the elite ? There was no choice ; most of them were, and still 
 continue to be, unknown to the theological world. Their hesi- 
 tations, their embarrassments in a multitude of cases, their perpet- 
 ual recourse to divines by profession, all being things which Pal- 
 lavicini does not attempt to deny, sufficiently refute his assertion. 
 
 Here, then, should be the place for noticing the intervention 
 of that other class of members, the divines, who had been called 
 to the council for the purpose of elucidating the questions under 
 discussion, but without voting, that privilege being exclusively 
 confined to bishops, mitred abbots, and the heads of religious 
 orders. From the first sessions there had been for some time 
 thirty ; their number was at all times much about the same as 
 that of the voting members. Were we not too tired of the sub- 
 ject to return again to the question of infallibility, viewed in the 
 relation to forms, we might be tempted to ask if their presence 
 accorded with the spirit of the system in virtue of which the 
 body of bishops is alone infallible ; with the spirit we say, for, as 
 respects the letter, the reply would be, that they did not vote. 
 A great many questions were, in fact, handed over to them ; the 
 majority of votes was in many instances determined by the con- 
 fidence reposed in their Matements. The bishops were, doubt- 
 less, right in collecting all the elucidations possible ; but one 
 can hardly understand how a court should remain incapable of 
 error, and yet pronounce its seiitences according to the opinions 
 of certain adepts who are not infallible. 
 
 Nevertheless, in the question of the canonical books, the contrary 
 was about to take place, for in that case the decision came from the 
 bishops. Let us see how far this was to the honour of the council. 
 
 The divines were unanimous in recognizing the inferiority of 
 the books which Protestants regarded then, and still regard, as 
 apocryphal.^ Could they hesitate ? Josephus, Eusebius, Origen, 
 
 ^ There Tt'ere, then, eight at the council, and five of lliese •were of 
 mendicant orders. "When we speak of the members under tlie general 
 name of bishops, the chiefs of the orders are meant to be included. 
 
 ^ Tobit, Judith, Esther, Maccabees, <tc. 
 
Chap. I. 154G. THE APOCRYPIIALS PRONOUNCED CANONICAL. 85 
 
 Atliauasius, Epiphaiiius, Cyril, Gregory of Naziaiizcn, Hilary of 
 Poictiers, Augustine,^ Jerome above all, lie who of all the Fa- 
 thers had laboured most on the Bible, speak of it as a generally 
 acknowledged fact ; and if, after all that these have said, there 
 is still some room for discussion as to the views they entertained 
 of such or such a particular book of those in question, it is not 
 the less beyond doubt that they all believed in the non-authen- 
 ticity of some, and the inferiority of all. 
 
 Such, then, was the state of matters ; but this unanimity on 
 the part of the divines did not extend to their being agreed as 
 to the rank to be assigned to those books in the Bible. Some 
 wanted a simple statement of their inferiority without determ- 
 ining the degree ; others that they should be divided into two 
 classes, one of which should serve as an intermediate betM'een 
 those universally admitted as canonical, and the apocryphal 
 which had been generally reputed as doubtful. A third party 
 merely required that there should simply be a list drawn up, 
 without explanation, of all the books ; and, last of all, a fourth, 
 consisting of but a feeble minority among the divines, without 
 denying that the apocryphals had held hitherto a more or less 
 inferior rank, proposed to put an end to the matter by declaring 
 them canonical. 
 
 "Will it be believed ? The last of these opinions carried the 
 day. This was to trample under foot the testimony of twenty 
 Fathers ; it was to deny the superabundantly demonstrated fact 
 that the ancient Jews did not believe in the canonicity of those 
 books ; it was to brave the general opinion of the Roman Cath- 
 olics, as well as the recriminations of the Protestants ; it was 
 even to overlook the scruples of the very divines of the council. 
 No matter I Was the assembly not omnipotent ? And had 
 the bishops been pleased to insert Plato's Phtcdo, or Aristotle's 
 Logic, in the Bible, what could a Roman Catholic say against 
 it ? Ah, when we see how much sweating and sophistry it has 
 cost during the last three centuries, in order to sustain this un- 
 tenable decree^ one may be allowed to think that the champions 
 
 ^ It was he who, at the councils of Hippona and Carthage, caxised 
 these books to be received into the canon of the Bible, but with this 
 clause that the advice of other Churches should first be taken. Fur- 
 ther, they were not put on the same rank with the canonical books; it 
 was only decided that they might be read and quoted. 
 
 ^ This was the subject of the last letters exclianged between Bossuet 
 and Leibnitz. Their long discussion was gradually concentrated on the 
 Council of Trent, and this point had appeared to Leibnitz, if not the 
 most false, at least the most clearly false. A hundred and ticcnti/-fouy 
 arguments, neither more nor less, were enumerated in support of his at- 
 tack; and although the council, said he, had introduced no innovation 
 
J 
 
 86 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 of Rome have more than once cursed, in their heart, the day on 
 which so imprudent a denial was given to one of the most un- 
 questionable facts in the whole history of the' Church. But 
 what is sadder still than the infatuation of the men who imasf- 
 ined that they could change the past as they fettered the future, 
 is the impudent fury with which some would dare, down to this 
 very day, to repeat that the Protestants mutilate the Bible ; and 
 why ? Because, forsooth, they allow themselves to print it with- 
 out those books which Rome herself, down to the Council of 
 Trent, had never declared canonical. 
 
 It has happened, accordingly, with this decree as with that 
 on tradition. Hardly was it made, when it was rested on as if 
 it had existed for a thousand years ; as if its roots had reached 
 down to the very earliest days of the Church. " In like man- 
 ner," St. Jerome^ had said, "as- the Church reads the books of 
 Judith, of Tobit, and the Maccabees, tvithmit, receiving them, 
 Jwwever, into the number of the canonical Scriptures, those of 
 Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus may also be read for the edification 
 of the people, but not to prove or sanction any article of faith.'' 
 "VYell, now, there are Latin Bibles in which the decree of 1546 
 is printed at the beginning of the book, and St. Jerome's disserta- 
 tion a little farther on. At the distance of some pages you will 
 learn from St. Jerome that there are apocryphal books, and if 
 you turn to the council's verdict, you will be told that there are 
 none. " I always thought that the heart had been on the left 
 side," says one of the dramatis personam in the play, astonished 
 to hear it spoken of as on the right. " Yes, so it was once," 
 replies the physician, "but we have changed all that." We are 
 ashamed, we confess, to have a scene from Moliere suggested to 
 us in speaking about the Bible ; but who is to be blamed for 
 that ? It would be quite as easy to change the position of the 
 heart as to prevent St. Jerome, his contemporaries, his predeces- 
 sors, his successors, the whole Church, in fine, daring more than 
 fifteen hundred years, from having regarded as inferior those 
 books which were placed at Trent on the same rank with the 
 others. 
 
 This decision, of which Romanists have sought to avail them- 
 selves with such hardihood since that time, has not even the 
 merit of clearly belonging to the category of those which every 
 Roman Catholic is bound to admit. It is generally acknowledged 
 that the Church, that the pope, may be mistaken about facts, 
 
 when it decreed the canonicit}' of those books, where could one find, in 
 ancient times, in the middle ages, down to that session in fine, the 
 slightest trace of the anathema by which that decree is sanctioned? 
 * Preface to the books of Solomon. 
 
Chap. 1. I51G. IN WHAT LANGUAGE IS THE BI13LE INSPIRED? 87 
 
 may admit, for example, a false miracle on false testimony. Now, 
 the authenticity of a book is a question of fact, of history; it 
 may be excellent in point of doctrine, without beint^ any the 
 more admissible in point of canonicity. Hence, though the 
 Church has proclaimed it canonical, the only thin^ a Roman 
 Catholic is bound to believe is, that it is good and orthodox ; the 
 historical question remains intact, and the Church's testimony 
 on that part of the inquest remains purely human. Some authors 
 have maintained, it is true, that certain questions of fact, and this 
 one in particular, come within the domain of infallibility, but 
 they do not agree upon the characteristic points by which ques- 
 tions of this class are to be recognised, and this distinction, be- 
 sides, is too manifestly ex 2J0st facto for our observation to be at 
 all weakened by it. 
 
 It remained to be decided in what language the books of the 
 Bible — from henceforth all put on the same level in point of 
 authority — should be reputed inspired and infallible. Here, 
 again, a point occurred on which the council's decision was about 
 to be opposed to the clearest data of learning, history, and com- 
 mon sense. 
 
 At bottom, it was not a matter about Avhich there could rea- 
 sonably be a question. Inspired or not, a man writes. Is it in 
 Hebrew ? Then it is in Hebrew and in Hebrew alone that you 
 are sure of having his thoughts, all his thoughts, nothing but 
 his thoughts. Is it in Greek ? Then it is in Greek you will 
 find what he meant. If you do not understand those tongues, 
 nothing is more natural than that you should make use of a 
 translation ; but if you do understand them, why should you be 
 prevented from going to the book as it came from the hands of 
 the author ? The only way would be to prove to you that the 
 translation is of an absolutely perfect accuracy. But if you have 
 to do with an inspired book, it is only by bringing the translator 
 to an equahty with the author, and making him inspired also, 
 that we can make the translation 'equal to the original. 
 
 Now, St. Jerome, the chief author of the Vulgate,! j^^s no- 
 where said a word from which it might be conjectured that he 
 thought himself aided in his translation by any assistance from 
 on high. Had he affirmed this, we should have appealed against 
 it on the ground of the numerous faults which, as we shall see 
 anon, have been corrected in that still very imperfect work. 
 Was the work, at least, all done by him ? No ; several parts 
 are taken from a more ancient version, ^ done by nobody knows 
 
 ^ Edltio vidgata, the edition in general circulation. Hence the name 
 Vulgate given to the Latin Bible used in the Roman Church. 
 ^ Italica veUi^ 
 
88 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book. II. 
 
 whom, and which he thought far from good, seeing that it was 
 in order to have it superseded by a better, that he undertook his 
 own. Notwithstanding the superiority of the latter : " Tliose 
 who speak Latin," says Augustine, "require, in order to the 
 understanding of the Scriptures, to be acquainted with two other 
 languages, Hebrew and Greek, so that they may have recourse 
 to ancient copies when the disagreement of Latin interpreters 
 suggests any doubt."^ Thus, notwithstanding his esteem for St. 
 Jerome, he confounds him with the Latin interpreters, whose 
 disagreement, he says, produces doubts which can be removed 
 only by going to the originals. A century and a half after him, 
 two versions only were in use, that of Jerome, which took the 
 name of the New, and the Italic or Old one. Gregory the 
 Great, in his commentary on Job, says that he prefers the New 
 as being more conformed to the Hebrew, but that he quotes them 
 both indifferently ; this, he adds, is what is usually done by 
 popes and their doctors. Gradually the two versions passed into 
 each other. AVhatever could not be changed without inconven- 
 ience in the Old, was retained — the Psalms, in particular, being 
 what every body knew by heart ; the rest was taken from the 
 New. One sole book was at length the result, namely, the Vul- 
 gate. But, for a series of centuries, the Church made use of it 
 as one uses a book absolutely in his power, without disapproving 
 of it, but yet no more approving of it otherwise than by the 
 mere fact of its using it, in fine, without forbidding any one to 
 have recourse to some other quarter. 
 
 No one, it is true, had any idea of doing so, Greek and 
 Hebrew were not only dead tongues — they were annihilated. 
 The Latin, by unanimous consent, had succeeded to their rights ; 
 and it had no more to reckon with those tonsues than a son 
 with a father many years dead. Accordingly, when the fifteenth 
 century drew them from the dust with which they were covered, 
 you would have said they were like dead men reappearing amid 
 their confounded heirs. "A new language," said a monk from 
 the pulpit, " has been discovered, which is called the Greek. 
 It must be carefully avoided. This language is the mother of 
 all heresies. I see in the hands of many a book written in 
 that tongue ; it is called the New Testament. It is a book full 
 of briars and vipers. As for Hebrew, those who learn it imme- 
 diately become Jews." Whether such was or was not the 
 monk's discourse — and a very grave historian^ reports it as 
 authentic — it admirably expresses the astonishment and the fears 
 of the time. Those two tongues, new in virtue of being old, 
 
 ^ Christian Doctrine, b. ii. 
 
 ^ Sismondi, Hist of the French, xvi. 
 
Chap. I. 1516. GEREK AND HEBREW VIEWED WITH JEALOUSY. 89 
 
 people were tempted to look upon as intruders, and to ask them 
 what right they had to come and disturb the Latin in its occupa- 
 tion of the throne which it had now so long engrossed. They 
 crowded around it ; they confnmed it in the enjoyment of all 
 the rights which it held from usage. Both Greek and Hebrew 
 were to be allowed to subsist, but they were to be neither its 
 superiors nor its equals ; and, in 1502, in the famous Bible of 
 Alcala, in putting the Vulgate between the Hebrew text and 
 the Greek text, it was Cardinal Ximenes who said, in the pre- 
 face, that it was Christ betwixt the two thieves. 
 
 Thus we see that the foundations of the strange decree that 
 was about to be passed, had been laid at the commencement of 
 that century. And yet, when the subject began to be more 
 closely examined, the members were far from agreed about it. 
 
 At fu-st, although the council was by no means rich in Hel- 
 lenists, and still less in Hebrew scholars, several of its divines 
 were not without having made the discovery, either by their 
 own labours or by those of others, of some, at least, of the imper- 
 fections of the Vulgate. These were interdicted at once by 
 common sense and by conscience from putting their hands to a 
 law, carried in the face of facts proved by evidence, patent, in- 
 contestable. The idea, therefore, was entertained for a moment, 
 of taking up some certain copy of the original texts, and trans- 
 lating it into Latin, advantage being taken of all the lights that 
 the age could supply ; but people were alarmed at the immens- 
 ity of the labour that this would entail, all the more, inasmuch 
 as to .proceed logically, all doctrinal decisions would have to be 
 supended until the entire completion of the new translation. 
 For surely a judge is not competent to pronounce in a cause, as 
 long as he admits his not being sure of having in his possession 
 the exact text, or a faithful translation of the law. 
 
 Despatch, therefore, was required, and those who wanted a 
 new translation were not listened to. 
 
 Even after admitting the Vulgate in principle, all was not 
 over : it was necessary that the title on which it was received 
 should be declared. Some wished that the approbation should 
 be full, entire, without restriction of any kind. " Either God 
 has failed in his promise of keeping his Church from error, or it 
 is impossible," said they, "that he can have left her to make 
 use of an erroneous translation. If Providence has given an 
 authentic Scripture to the Jews, and an authentic Scripture to 
 the Greeks, is it not insulting to that Providence to suppose 
 God's well-beloved Uoman Church should have been left with- 
 out such an advantage?" Others, without going back so far, 
 gave an artless picture of the embarrassment people would bring 
 
t/ 
 
 90 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 on themselves if tliey did not "begin by shutting up the source 
 of all embarrassment for ever. " It would be grammarians, 
 then, that Avould become the arbiters of the faith 1 An inquisi- 
 tor would have to listen to answers made in Greek and in 
 Hebrew I Passages from Scripture that have been intercalated 
 for ages in the Church's prayers, the decrees of popes, the 
 canons of councils, might be attacked, refashioned, and dissect- 
 ed I This would be to yield the victoiy to Luther, Zwingli, 
 and, in short, to all heretics past, present, and to come." All, 
 in fine, with a little more or a little less bashfulness in the rea- 
 sons they assigned, were agreed in practically assuming the 
 necessity of immediately estabhshing one fixed and immutable 
 basis. 
 
 It is from this alleged necessity that the council's apologists 
 still argue in their attempts to find an excuse for the strange 
 decree which was adopted on the strength of it. " Had one of 
 the doctors," says the Abbe Prompsault, " quoted the Hebrew 
 text, another the Greek text, another the Syriac, another the 
 version of Luther or of Servetus, the confusion would have been 
 worse than at the tower of Babel." Possibly it might ; but 
 what has that to do with the proof of the authenticity and cor- 
 rectness of the Yulgate ? How did the embarrassment resulting 
 from the variety of the texts sanction the council's choosing one 
 from the rest for the purpose of declaring it authentic ? And, 
 accordingly, great efforts have been made to prove that such 
 was not the meaning of the decree. The council, it has been 
 said, does not pronounce the Yulgate infallible. " Its decision 
 is not a dogmatical decision ; it is merely a disciplinary regula- 
 tion, made in view of the circimistances and the wants of the 
 moment."^ Be it so ; but where is this to be seen ? Certainly 
 not in the text of the decree. The council ordains and declares 
 that in all public lessons, discussions, preachings, and exposi- 
 tions, this ancient version shall be held as authentic, and that 
 no one shall dare, or shall presume, to reject it, under any 
 pi-etext U'hatever? Not even, consequently, under pretext that 
 such or such a passage shall have been recognized as false, 
 and the future, in this manner, is as much fettered as the past. 
 But let us accept the explanation. We had only to do with the 
 false ; we have now to do with the absurd. The Yulgate is 
 not infallible, and it is the Yulgate which alone, without con- 
 trol, without its being permissible to reject a single word of it, 
 is to serA'-e the purpose of infallibly fixing the faith. The doctor, 
 
 ^ Hug, Introduction to the Books of the New Testament. 
 ^ Statuit et declarat ut . . . pro authentica; lit earn nemo rejicere 
 quovis prffitextu aiideat vel proesumat. 
 
Chap. I. 151G. THE VULGATE CORRECTED. 91 
 
 in his prol'esdor's chair, is not authorized to quote it -as rigor- 
 ously correct, and he is authorized to declare the nullity of all 
 the corrections you may presume to suggest. Each passage, 
 theu, is like a piece of money bearing the image of the Council 
 of Trent. You are not held bound to believe it good, but you 
 have no right to refuse it.' " The council," says an author 
 already quoted, " has not said that the Vulgate alone shall be 
 authentic ; it has onhj declared that it shall be held as authen- 
 tic." This only is curious. The council has not denied that 
 the original texts are authentic ; it has only declared that the 
 Vulgate is so also, although it departs from them at a thousand 
 points. This is what the expression really implies. 
 
 Was there, at least, an edition universally admitted, correct, 
 and unique ? No ; it had to be decided that one should be 
 made. There was much wisdom in this ; but it made the pre- 
 ceding decree only all the more strange. It would have been 
 not more reasonable, but certainly more rational, to deny the 
 faults of the Vulgate, and to proclaim it at once infallible and 
 perfect, thau to declare it inviolable, even while confessing it 
 faulty, and that it was about to be corrected. 
 
 In. consequence of this last decision, one naturally desires to 
 know through what process it has passed. 
 
 A commissiou had been named which did nothing. Towards 
 the close of the council Pius IV. appointed another, but at Rome. 
 Pius V. renewed it, and accelerated its labours. Twelve years 
 afterwards, at the accession of Sixtus-Cluintus, the work had 
 hardly commenced, and that impetuous pontiff began to lose 
 patience. He made it his own affair, and, at the commence- 
 meut of 1589, announced by a bull, that the work was drawing 
 to a close. The new Vulgate was printed under his own eyes 
 at the Vatican, and he himself revised the proofs. " We have 
 corrected them with our own hand,'"-^ he says in the preface. 
 " The work appeared, and it was impossible," says Hug, " that 
 
 ^ This strange reasoning has been carried into a much more serious 
 question, that of infallibility. " Infallibility in the spiritual order," 
 says De .Maistre, "and sovereignty in the temporal order, are two 
 perfectly synonymous words. \Vhen we sa}' that the Church is infal- 
 lible, we do not ask any special privilege for it; we onl\' ask tliat it 
 should enjoy rights common to all possible sovereignties, all of which 
 should necessarily reign as infallible, for all government is absolute; 
 and from the moment that it may be resisted under the pretext of error 
 and injustice, it no longer exists." What flows most clearly from this 
 passage is that, provided a man submit to the Church's decisions, he is 
 not bound to think the Church in the right, any more than a citizen in 
 obeying a law is bound to believe it good. To" understand infallibility 
 in this sense is to deny it. 
 
 * Xostra nos ipsi manu correximus. 
 
92 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book H. 
 
 it should not have given occasion for criticism and pleasantry. 
 Many passages were found, particularly in the Old Testament, 
 covered with slips of paper, on which new corrections had been 
 printed ; others were scratched out, or merely corrected with a 
 pen. ... In fine, the copies issued were far from all present- 
 ing the same corrections." 
 
 It had accordingly to he done over again. Gregory XIV., 
 the successor of Sixtus-duintus, set to work without delay, and 
 after him Clement VIII . had the satisfaction of publishing, in 
 1592, the text which was to undergo no change. But what 
 was the public to think ? How were corrections to be acknowl- 
 edged, of which there were about six thousand on matters of 
 detail, and a hundred that were important ? Bellarmine under- 
 took the preface. The honour of Sixtus V. was saved : all the 
 imperfections of his Vulgate were — errors of the press. 
 
 Was this version, which, after forty-six years of corrections 
 and recorrections, was to enter into full possession of the privi- 
 leo-es announced in the decree, issued at least in the best state 
 possible ? No ; Bellarmine admits, in that same preface, that 
 the revisers had allowed many things to pass that needed a 
 stricter examination. But enough of this. AVere it at this day 
 the best of all the translations of the Bible, we have seen what 
 it was when the council placed it on the altar, and how much 
 audacity or ignorance it must have taken to declare it authentic, 
 even in that indirect and weakened sense which people were 
 afterwards compelled to attach to the word. 
 
 A fourth point, in fine, had been submitted to the assembly. 
 To whom does the interpretation of Scripture belong ? 
 
 Here, too, the divines showed themselves men of larger and 
 more reasonable minds than the bishops. However they might 
 hate the reformers, they themselves being men of study, could 
 not propose that the study of the Bible should be interdicted ; 
 the utmost they could venture, was to seek for some means 
 of reconciling this exercise of liberty with the Church's au- 
 thority, and the maintenance of her dogmas. This, it is true, 
 was no easy task. Some said that new interpretations ought 
 not to be rejected, inovided they icere not contrarij to the 
 faith ; others would not have people frightened at diversity of 
 interpretations, _/Jroi-zV/£'<:Z that this did noi go the length of co7i- 
 trariety. As if it were possible, after having once permitted 
 examination, to come under an engagement never to be in 
 contradiction with received ideas I Let us thank the divines 
 for these feeble yearnings after liberty ; but they should have 
 seen that this was a point in which no middle term is admissi- 
 ble. There is but one choice, subjection or liberty. 
 
Chap. I. 1546. THE CHURCH ONLY CAN INTERPRET SCRIPTURE. 
 
 93 
 
 Such was the view taken of it by the bisliops ; and \vc 
 need not add to which side of the alternative they leaned. 
 They were told by Cardinal Pacheco, that " bJcripture having 
 been explained by so many persons ernnient for piety and doc- 
 trhial learning:, it could not be hoped that anything better could 
 be added. Had not all new heresies arisen from the new 
 meanings that had been given to h?criptuie ?" The advances 
 made by the Reformation were little calculated, indeed, to rec- 
 ommend free inquiry to the eyes of any one that desired the 
 maintenance of Rome ; it would have required more than hu- 
 man largeness of mind and tolerance to accept a principle, the 
 consequences of which it was impossible to avoid regarding as 
 so fatal and so impious. Here, accordingly, the bishops of Trent 
 lay under the pressure of a vital and absolute necessity. 
 
 More than this, once under that pressure, they were compelled 
 to go on to the end. To forbid the teaching of any new opinion 
 would have been but tacitly to permit the search for it, and the 
 conception of it, provided it was not published. But there is 
 but a short way Irom the heart to the lips. In interdicting the 
 teaching, unless you take measures at the same time for re- 
 straining thought, you have done nothing. People were pro- 
 hibited, therefore — such are the very terms of the decree — were 
 prohibited from interpreting Scripture " in a sense contrary to 
 that which the Church has held, and holds ;" and that " €ven 
 although a num should have the intention of holding these 
 inteiyrctatio7is secret! ' ^ 
 
 This last clause evidently annihilated what little liberty one 
 might suppose to have been accorded in other parts of the decree. 
 If I cannot, without crime, I will not say teach, but even con- 
 ceive, in the depths of my conscience, interpretations contrary to 
 the laws of the Church, what means can I then take to keep 
 myself without reproach ? One only ; that is, never to open the 
 book where I might risk seeing, right or wrong, what the Church 
 does not wish me to see. " Scripture must not be given," says 
 Fenelon,2 to any but those who, receiving it only as from the 
 hands of the Church, only desire to look for the Church's mean- 
 ing therein." " To look for it" — that we can understand ; "to 
 find it" — Avho can be sure of that beforehand? And if the 
 council forbids the finding of anything else, is not this, we 
 repeat, to forbid search? "When Doctor Usingen," says Lu- 
 ther,^ " saw me reading the Bible so much : Ah, brother Mar- 
 tin, he would say to me, what is the Bible ? Read, read rather 
 
 ^ Etiamsi luijiismodi interpretationes nullo imquam tempore in lii- 
 cem edendse forent. 
 
 ' Letter to the Bishop of Arras. ^ Hschreden (Table-Talk). 
 
94 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book U. 
 
 the old doctors, who have sucked the honey out of it." Doctor 
 Usingen ought to have Uved until 1546, and to have gone to 
 the council ; he would have been sure to make the same reflec- 
 tion with ourselves on the inconsistency of the decree. Better 
 had it been frankly to decide, as was desired by a certain Nor- 
 man divine, called Richard, that Scripture from henceforth is 
 useless, since it is long since the Church has taken out of it 
 all that it was proper to take. "It is true," he added, " that 
 it was read in former days in the churches for the instruction of 
 the people, and that it was studied also with that view ; but 
 now-a-days it is used only in the way of prayer. Let it still be 
 employed for that purpose ; but not as an object of study. Such 
 is the mode in which we ought now to shew our respect for the 
 Bible." Would not one say that it was the god of Epicurus 
 momentarily proceeding from nothing to create the world, and 
 returning to nothing immediately on his work being done ? 
 The Franciscan's opinion seemed strange and almost blas- 
 phemous ; and yet, leaving out of view the bluntness of the 
 terms, was it not the equivalent of the decree ? Take the 
 E-oman system in its rigour ; doctrmes irrevocably fixed ; an 
 omnipotent authority charged with the maintenance of them, 
 prohibition against change, or exposing one's self to the risk of 
 changing anything, even in the secret of the conscience, and you 
 must admit, that with all this, it is not easy to find for Scripture 
 any place to occupy, or part to fulfil, even in reducing it to that 
 of a mere book of edification. 
 
 And now, should we think of taking up the same question in 
 the historical and critical point of view, we should have quite a 
 book to make ; a book, moreover, of which we should not have 
 much to do in searching for the materials, so manifest are the 
 objections, and so abundant are the testimonies. 
 
 First, then, in the Scripture itself, there is not a word, not a 
 syllable, from which one might deduce an authority for not leav- 
 ing it at the disposition of everybody. 
 
 The Old Testament — we there read in a hundred passages 
 that the reading of it was not only permitted, but formally com- 
 manded. 
 
 The jSTew — what do we find there ? Historical books emi- 
 nently popular, epistles addressed to numerous churches, not to 
 pastors or to leadmg men, but to all the members without dis- 
 tinction. Epistle to the Roniaiis, to the Corinthia7is, to the 
 Fhilijipians, say all the Bibles, the Vulgate as well as others. 
 In the book of the Acts (xvii.), when St. Paul preached at 
 Berea, what did the Bereans do ? — they searched the Scrip- 
 tures daily, whether these things ivere so. Did Paul blame 
 
CiiAP. I. 1M6. THE IJIDLE RECOMMENDED BY JJIE FATHERS. 95 
 
 them for this ? By no means ; St. Luke, who records the fact, 
 mentions it on the contrary as a proof of their zeal. And could 
 this same Paul, who saw notliing wrong in people going to the 
 Scriptures, when it was he, the Apostle, who taught, blame us 
 for going to them, and to his own writings among others, ta 
 see, like the faithful of Berea, whether things are as %ve are 
 
 told! 
 
 Does this idea, receiving no support from the Bible, emanate 
 at least from an ancient tradition ? No. It receives no coun- 
 tenance from the writers of the first ages of the Church. Of re- 
 commendations touching the respect with which Scripture ought 
 to be read, of advices on the methods of reading it to advantage, 
 of reproaches addressed to those who read it ill, of regrets ibr 
 those who have allowed themselves to be led astray in reading 
 it — you will iind as many as you could wish ; but what do all 
 those regrets, counsels, and reproaches prove, if not this — that it 
 was read ? And yet never, never did the Fathers proceed from 
 this, to restrain, or to deny the right to read it. The abuse does 
 not destroy the right. After having enumerated all the varia- 
 tions, all the errors, all the extravagances even, which may 
 have arisen from the free interpretation of the Bible, you will 
 not have proved that any single individual, or body of individ- 
 uals, any pope or Church, is authorized to forbid its use. 
 
 And, far from confining themselves to not interdicting, with 
 what urgency do not the Fathers recommend it I Must we 
 quote instances ? Why, the difficulty is to choose ; for were 
 all the passages over which we have cast our eyes to be ad- 
 duced, they would amount, without exaggeration, to several hun- 
 dreds, besides entire discourses, quite as positive, and as strong 
 as anything ever said by the Bible Societies. 
 
 " Search the Scriptures," says Clement of E-ome ; and his 
 famous epistle to the Corinthians, so much venerated, that it 
 has been sometimes proposed to have it introduced into the New 
 Testament, perpetually recalls or assumes this precept. 
 
 "I am confident," says Polycarp,^ "that you are well exer- 
 cised in the Holy Scriptures, and that no part of them is un- 
 known to you." 
 
 " Each of you," says another of the Fathers,^ " in meditating 
 on the Avord,\vill find there a treasure of succours for all spirit- 
 ual evils." Each of you — and he that thus spoke, uttered 
 these words from the pulpit, while a whole people heard theni. 
 Elsewhere, in a letter, " If thou knowest how to search in 
 Scripture, for the succours that it ofiers, thou wilt not have need 
 
 ' Epistle to the Philippian?. 
 
 2 Basil, Homily on the First Psalta. 
 
96 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 either of me or of any one." And it is to a woman that he 
 writes this. 
 
 Ambrose^ says, " Holy Scripture edifies everybody. We speak 
 to Christ when we pray ; we Hsten to him when we read the 
 Scriptures." 
 
 Origen,2 " The true nourishment of our soul, is the reading 
 of the Word of God. Let us nourish ourselves on the Gospels. 
 Let us quench our thirst by the reading of the writings of the 
 Apostles." 
 
 Isodorus of Pelusium,^ " The heavenly oracles have been 
 written for the whole human race. Even husbandmen are in 
 a condition to learn there what it is fitting for them to know. 
 The learned and the ignorant, children and women, may equally 
 instruct themselves there." 
 
 Jerome,-* " It is for the whole people that the Apostles wrote. 
 The laity ought to abound in the knowledge of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures." And at another place, writing to a woman too, "What 
 I shall never cease to recommend to you, is to love the Scripture 
 and to read it." 
 
 Augustine,^ "What happens to our flesh when it takes nour- 
 ishment only once in the course of several days, happens to our 
 soul when it does not nourish itself frequently on the Word of 
 God. Continue, then, to listen at church to the reading of Holy 
 Scripture, and read it over again in your houses." 
 
 But of all the Fathers, the most ardent on this point is 
 Chrysostom. Besides a host of direct exhortations which it is 
 needless to adduce after having given so many others, let us 
 hear him refuting all the objections which this subject might 
 suggest. " When we receive money," says he,^ " we like to 
 count it over ourselves ; and when divine things are what we 
 have to do with, should we bend our necks and submit at once 
 to the opinions of others? Consult, then, the Scriptures." But 
 it may be alleged that they are not sufficiently clear. " The 
 Holy Ghost intrusted the composition of them expressly to illit- 
 erate men, in order that every one, even the least educated, 
 might understand the Word, and profit by it."'^ But have we 
 time to occupy ourselves with these things ? " Let none," says 
 he, " ofler me these wretched excuses : 1 must earn my bread ; 
 I must find food lor my children. It is not for me to read the 
 
 ^ Ps. xlviii. On the office of the Ministry, B. 1. 
 
 ^ Homily on Leviticus. Philocalia, 11. ^ Epistles 91 and 67. 
 
 * On Ps. Ixxxvi. On the Epistle to the Colossians. Epistle 97. 
 ^ Homily Ixvi. On time. 
 
 * Homily xiii. On the Epistle to the Corinthians. 
 ' Homily iii. On Lazarus. 
 
Chap. I. 1546. ST. BERNARD— COUNCIL OF AIX-LA-CIIAPELLE. 9Y 
 
 Scriptures, but for those who have renounced the world. Poor 
 man I Is it then because thou art too much distracted with a 
 thousand cares, that it docs not belong to thee to read the Scrip- 
 tures ? But thou hast still more need of this than those who 
 have withdrawn from the world in order to devote all their time 
 to God."i 
 
 After the Fathers, let us turn to him who has been sometimes 
 called the last of the Fathers. Later than they by several ages, 
 his testimony is all the stronger. "Persevere," says St. I3er- 
 nard,2 " persevere in nourishing yourselves with the Word of 
 God. Exercise yourselves in it continually, until your spirits 
 fail, that is, until death." 
 
 Must you have the opinion of a pope? "Scripture," says 
 Gregory the Great,^ " is an epistle addressed by God to his creat- 
 ure. Meditate, then, upon it every day, and through the Word 
 of God, learn to know God." 
 
 Must you, in fine, have the opinion of a council itself? We 
 shall not go a hunting after those of the first ages, at times when 
 the reading of the Sacred Books was so natural, and so univer- 
 sally recommended, that it was not even a question about which 
 there was anything to decree ; but mark what the council of 
 ALx-la-Chapelle said in the year 816, " Let young women even 
 love the Holy Scriptures. Let them draw wisdom from the 
 books of Solomon ; form themselves to patience by reading the 
 book of Job ; and then take up the Holy Gospels, never to quit 
 them again r 
 
 Yet there were at Trent, and there are still people who are 
 ready to denounce as new, the idea that the Bible is for all I 
 It was thought monstrous that Luther should have translated it 
 into the vulgar tongue ; what then did Jerome do when he trans- 
 lated it into Latin ? What did Ulphilas, one of the Fathers of 
 Nice do, when he translated it into the language of the Goths ? 
 Why did the venerable Bedc say with joy, that in his time 
 Scripture was read in England in five diflerent languages? 
 Why, according to Augustine,* is it ''by the wisdom of God" 
 that Scripture, " from one sole language in which it was origin- 
 ally, has been multiplied into an infinity of languages and dia- 
 lects, in order that it may be difiused ever)^where ?" Where- 
 fore so many ages, so many councils, without the smallest word 
 of blame directed against those daily exhortations, against that 
 " infinity" of translations, against those eflbrts to prevent there 
 being a country, a village, a house, without the Bible ? 
 
 But let us take care. " Not a word of blame," we have said ; 
 
 * Homily iii. On Lazarus. ' Sermon xxiv. 
 
 3 Book iv. Ep. 40. * Christian Doctrine, ii. 5. 
 
 E 
 
98 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 and yet a pope has not long since' affirmed the contrary. 
 " Thus," says he, " that ichiclb St. Jerome deplored so early as 
 in his time, the interpretation of the Scriptures is left to the 
 babbling of old women, to the dotage of decrepit old men, to the 
 pert sophist, to all men, in short, of all conditions, provided they 
 can but read." What answer shall we make ? 
 
 Just none at all. The citation is false ; and even had we had 
 no means of verifying this, we should not have believed it. It 
 cannot be true, we should have said ; if any one ever Avrote this, 
 it must have been any one rather than St. Jerome. 
 
 And, in fact, this is what he wrote : " Labourers, masons, car- 
 penters — those even who engage in the vilest employments, 
 cannot become masters of their trades without having learnt 
 them — there is nothing but the art of the Scriptures that every 
 one claims for himself — the old woman, the old dotard, the pert 
 sopliist, pretend to know it, and mangle it and teach it — before 
 liavins^ learnt it!""^ 
 
 Thus, what the pope thought he might travesty into a re- 
 proach against the Scriptures, was a reproach — to whom ? To 
 those who did not read and study them enough. 
 
 The decree of Trent on this point is more discreet than people 
 have been since. The Roman Church was not yet in a condi- 
 tion to say her last word ; she behoved to confine herself to sur- 
 round the printing, the sale, and the reading of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures with restrictions, some of which are good. But by that 
 very act she constituted herself supreme dispensatrix of those 
 books, and of all that they contain. Though this decree does 
 not forbid the reading of the Bible, not the less does it avoid 
 recognizing the reading of it as a right, still less as a duty ; the 
 interdiction appears in no part of it, and yet it may be deduced 
 as a consequence from every part of it. If proofs are wanted, 
 we have only to mark what were its results. 
 
 Three months after the close of the council, Pius lY., in 
 publishing a catalogue of forbidden books, caused it to be pre- 
 faced with ten rules, the fourth of which is conceived thus — 
 " Experience having proved that the reading of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures, granted without distinction to everybody, does more harm 
 than good, because of the rashness of men, it will thenceforth 
 depend on the judgment of the bishop, or of the inquisitor, to 
 grant, according as he may be advised by the parish priest or 
 confessor, leave to read those books, translated into the vulgar 
 tongue by (Roman) Cathohc authors, to those who they know 
 
 ^ May 1844. 
 
 ^ Lacerant, decent, antequam discant. Second epistle to Paulinus, 
 On the Study of the Scriptures. 
 
Chap. I. 151G. ENMITY OF THE POPEDOM TO THE JHULE. 99 
 
 can derive from them nothing prejudicial to faith and piety. 
 That permission ought to be given in w^ritiug. Whoever shall 
 not be furnished with it, and who, nevertheless, shall have the 
 presumption to read or to possess the Scriptures, shall not have 
 it in his power to obtain th<? absolution of his sin, if he shall 
 not have previously handed them over to the bishop." 
 
 See now what begins to be clear : the bishop might refuse on 
 the previous recommendation of a mere priest, that which thou- 
 sands of bishops have, during many centuries, pressed, besought, 
 conjured the souls committed to their charge, to have perpetually 
 in their hands. 
 
 He might refuse, but he might also grant the leave in ques- 
 tion. Even this is too much. Thirty years after the publica- 
 tion of this rule, it was confiscated by one pope for the exclusive 
 advantage of all popes. " It is to be observed," says Clement 
 VIII., " that this rule has not conferred on bishops and inquisi- 
 tors any new powers of granting licenses to buy, read, or possess 
 the Bible in the vulgar tongue, seeing that hitherto, by the 
 order and usage of the holy and universal Roman Inquisition, 
 that power had been withdrawn from them — which thing ought 
 to be rigorously observed." So well w'as it observed, that mat- 
 ters were often carried farther than the pope had prescribed 
 Alphonso de Castro, highly praises^ Ferdinand and Isabella for 
 having, at their own instance, interdicted all translation. In 
 1750, Perez del Prado, an inquisitor-general, exclaims with 
 groans, that " Some men had pushed their audacity to the exe- 
 crable extremity'' — of reading the Bible in the vulgar tongue? 
 No ; of asking permission to read it.^ 
 
 Thus, wherever the Church was mistress, we see the decree 
 of Trent transforming itself rapidly into an absolute prohibition 
 to read or to possess the Bible. The penalties are not always 
 the same. In Spain it is death by fire ; in other places only im- 
 prisonment ; but everywhere it is made a crime, or, at the least, 
 a serious misdemeanour. At this day, in Savoy, at two leagues 
 from Geneva, you have but to have a Bible in your house, and 
 you will be sent for ten years to the Castle of Pignerol, incon- 
 testably a more monstrous proceeding in the nineteenth century 
 than torture or the flames in the sixteenth. It often happens 
 in France, that a Protestant colpmteur, after having sold many 
 copies of the Bible in a village, finds they have all disappeared 
 on his paying it a second visit. The parish priest has burnt 
 them all. " They are Protestant Bibles," he has said, and the 
 terrified parishioner has hastened to rid himself of them. But, 
 
 ' On Hcrcaics, chap. xiii. 
 
 * Llorentc's History of the Inqtiisition, chap, xiii. 
 
100 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT, Book H. 
 
 for the greater part of the time that this has been going on, the 
 version has been that of Sacy, a Roman Cathohc version, ap- 
 proved in former times by many bishops, and in which pains had 
 been taken not to change a single word, albeit that, from having 
 been made from the Vulgate, it is very often faulty. It was not, 
 therefore, the Protestant Bible that the priest burnt ; it was the 
 Bible, and this he well knew. But what he knows still better, 
 is the impossibility of refuting, on a multitude of points, those 
 who shall accept of it as their battle-field. Emser, that wise 
 man, was not quite sure, he would say, if it was well that the 
 Bible had been translated into German. Perhaps he did not 
 fully know how far it was well that it should have been written 
 in Hebrew, in Greek, or in Latin. It and the Church are too 
 much at variance.^ It is against the versions of the Bible, 
 accordingly, into the vernacular tongues that Rome has set her- 
 self to exhale the spite which she dared not express against the 
 Bible itself From the pope to the village priest, from the Vat- 
 ican to the poor huts into which the Roman missionary carries 
 his faith, that is to say, before all else, the pope and the virgin 
 — we have now for thirty years been hearing a concert of male- 
 dictions raised against the translators, the colporteurs, the readers 
 of that book which an Augustine blessed God for having " mul- 
 tiplied" in all the languages of the world. It was Pius VII. 
 who, in 1816, gave the signal. What was it that men had done ? 
 Why, tliey had printed a new edition in Polish, first published, 
 however, in 1599, by Wink, the Jesuit, with the approbation of 
 Gregory XIII. and of Clement VIII. But, not content with 
 reprinting it, they had sent it out in profusion. Hence the 
 wrath of the pope ; hence that torrent of epithets, very common 
 in former times, in pamphlets, but which are no longer to be 
 found in the style of the Roman Chancery. All this, accord- 
 ingly, in the eye of Pius VII., was " the most malignant of in- 
 ventions, a pestilence, the destruction of the faith, the conception 
 of a new kind of tares, an impious machination, an irreparable 
 ruin, the malice of a villanous society,"^ &c., &c. But that so- 
 ciety had not been singular in dipping into this villany ; a priest, 
 a bishop had openly advised people to purchase those Bibles. 
 Anon, a new brief; fresh lamentations. " We have been over- 
 whelmed with much profound distress, on being made acquainted 
 with the dismal project, such as was never conceived before, of 
 disseminating everywhere the most holy books of the Bible in 
 the new translations made contrary to the Church's salutary 
 regulations. , , . But we have been seized with an infinitely 
 
 ' Luther in one of his prefaces. 
 
 ^ Brief to the Archbishop of Gnesen 
 
Chap. I. 1540. ASSAULT OF LEO XII. ON THE UIHLE. 101 
 
 greater afllictlon still, on perusing certain letters in which thou 
 dost exhort the people to purchase these new versions, to accept 
 them when ofiered gratuitously, lor the purpose of attentively 
 studying them. Nothing, assuredly, more distressing could hap- 
 pen to us,"^ &CC. What could ho added to these lines ? Had 
 we given a rhetorician the task of drawing up a piece of wTiting 
 diametrically opposite to all that we have quoted from earlier 
 times, could he have performed it better ? Other times, other 
 laws, wall it be said ? Very true ; and we do not allege that 
 all that was good fifteen centuries ago is necessarily good now. 
 But between the opinion of the Fathers and that of the pope in 
 these two briefs, there lies a gulf which not fifteen hundred, no, 
 not fifteen thousand years could have created, had men's prin- 
 ciples on the subject remained in the least the same. And w^hat 
 mean these words — such as was never conceived before ? Yes, 
 doubtless, the Bible societies are later in date than the invention 
 of printing ; but when Chiysostom said — " Read, read the hjcrip- 
 tures in your houses," while others are delighted with the enum- 
 eration, such as the Bible societies are wont to make in our day, 
 of the languages into which the Bible has been translated, who 
 will ever be brought to believe that the Fathers w^ould not have 
 blessed God for an institution having for its object the deposit- 
 ing of the Scriptures, if possible, in all houses throughout the 
 world ? 
 
 In 1824, on the occasion of the jubilee for 1825 being pro- 
 claimed, a new assault w^as made on that book on which Luther 
 had rested, just three hundred years before, as liis authority for 
 saying — " We know, thank God, that those who believe in the 
 Gospel have a jubilee every day."^' " Several of our predeces- 
 sors," says Leo XII., " have made laws for averting this scourge 
 (the Bible societies). In our own time, Pius YIL, of happy 
 memory, issued two briefs. In those briefs, we find testimonies 
 drawn either from Holy Scripture or from tradition, to shew how 
 hurtful this invention is to faith and to morals." We have no 
 need, after what we have laid before our readers, to say what 
 sophistry, what an abuse of ideas and of words, have been re- 
 quired for the purpose of concocting " these testimonies taken 
 from tradition and from Scripture.'' The pope does not repro- 
 duce them. " And w^e, too," he proceeds to say, " that we may 
 acquit ourselves of our apostolic duty, exhort you to withdraw 
 your flocks from these deadly pastures." " Deadly pastures !'' 
 The Bible I And if he says this, it is in virtue " of his apostolic 
 duty/'' Oh, ye popes I if you cannot have any modesty in your 
 
 ' Brief to the Archbishop of Mohilew. 
 2 On the Jubilee Bull of 1525. 
 
102 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 ideas, you ought to preserve some at least in the use you make 
 of words, and avoid courting, from sheer wilfulness, contrasts so 
 scandalous, so crushing. 
 
 More recently,^ Gregory XYI. also entered the arena. His 
 bull, though more moderate in its terms, is still more inijust in 
 its attacks, and still more severe in its injunctions. The Protest- 
 ants are formally accused of adulterating the Bible ; the pope 
 positively refuses to believe that they can have any intention 
 but that of subverting the Church and destroying souls ;2 it is 
 in this bull that the strange falsification of which we have 
 spoken occurs. Next, " Be it yours, then," says he, addressing 
 the bishops, "be it yours to remove from the hands of the faith- 
 ful, the Bible translated into the vulgar tongue," that is, in 
 plain terms, "to take the Bible from them;" for what difier- 
 ence can there be between a French Bible, for example, for the 
 man who speaks French, and a Latin Bible for the man who 
 knows Latin ? 
 
 "Will it be said, forsooth, that acquaintance with Latin pre- 
 supposes a certain amount of instruction, a favorable condition 
 to which the Bible is less dangerous ? Let us listen to Alex- 
 ander VII. 2 " Unless, in all their thoughts — those who apply 
 to letters, cleave immutably to all the decisions of the Holy See 
 — the more penetration and force a man's mind has, the more 
 is he apt to be led away from the right path." But who risk 
 most not adhering immutably to the decisions of the Holy See, 
 if not those to whom, just because they are educated, that which 
 is refused to the vulgar, must perforce be granted ? To these, 
 therefore, the law ought to be specially applied. If Rome dared 
 to be consistent, they would be the first to be designated for re- 
 fusal. 
 
 And let us not be told, in reply, of those whom the highest 
 talents have not prevented from being, and from remaining, 
 Roman Catholics, and that, too, while they read and studied the 
 Bible. We have already seen what we must think of their 
 alleged submission to the decrees of their Church ; only let us 
 note, to keep within the bounds of our subject, that while these 
 great men were, or appeared to be, Roman Catholics on various 
 points, there was certainly one point at least on which they 
 were little so in reality, and troubled themselves little about ap- 
 pearing to be so ; that point was the very reading of the book 
 
 1 May, 1844. 
 
 - Pius IX., in his encydical letter of December, 1849, calls those also 
 who circulate the Bible " the enemies of human society." On this ques- 
 tion the popes will all and always be of the same opinion. 
 
 ^ Letter to the University of Louvain, 1665. 
 
Chap. I. 154G. CHURCH TAKES PRECEDENCE OF TIIK TUl TH. 108 
 
 which they so much loved and admired. "Was there mucli of 
 the Roman CathoHc in Pascal when he said, in contradiction to 
 so many papal decisions^ — " Mahomet established his authority 
 in a prohibition to read, and Jesus Christ his, in commanding 
 people to read ?" The book so proscribed was spoken of" by the 
 Port- Royal men just as the ancient Fathers spoke of" it, just as 
 Luther spoke of it. They desired to see it in everybody's hands ; 
 in fact, towards this they did everything but found a Bible so- 
 ciety. Hence De Sacy's version ; hence those bold Avords which 
 were condemned at Rome in 1713 ^ — " The reading of Sacred 
 Scripture is useful at all times, in all places, and to all sorts of 
 persons^ How they contrived to reconcile this idea with the 
 Tridentine decree, we shall not attempt to explain ; in any case 
 this were more easy than to comprehend how Clement XI. could 
 dare to denounce as false, captious, scandalous, impious, and 
 blasphemous,"^ &c., assertions which might have been shewn to 
 him, word for Avord, in the writings of twenty Fathers. But 
 there is something consolatory in .seeing that long chain of testi- 
 monies in favour of the Bible being left free to all, and being 
 read by all, a hundred and fifty years after it had been broken 
 by the council, taken up again and continued by such men. It 
 is owing to this, that at the risk of being inconsistent, they gave 
 truth the precedency of the Church ; while our council, on the 
 contrary, we shall find, always placed the Church before the 
 truth. The Church, the maintenance of the Church, such was 
 the settled idea, the ultima ratio of almost all the bishops, in all 
 the discussions, and all the decrees. " Is there a God ?" said a 
 grand lady of last century to a young libertine abbe. " Certain- 
 ly," he replied, "seeing that I am an abbe." This argument, 
 which in that case was but an impious quibble, will be found at 
 the base of all the Roman decisions. Shall tradition be put on 
 a level with Scripture ? Certainly, seeing that the Church 
 equally rests upon it. Shall the apocryphal books be pro- 
 nounced canonical ? Certainlv, seeing that the Church avails 
 herself of them as such. Shall the Vulgate be made the sole 
 official and unassailable text ? Certainly, for new translations 
 might shake the Church and disquiet her doctors. Shall the 
 free interpretation of the Sacred Books be interdicted ? Certain- 
 ly, for the Reformation sprang from that. It is not fifteen years 
 since a cardinal said, with an amusing candour, to Lamennais — 
 " With your liberty, what will become of the Inquisition ?" Ever 
 the same system. This is, it therefore ought to be. " The In- 
 quisition exists ; that, therefore, which is contrary to it, ought 
 
 ^ Pascal's Thoughts, Art. 12. ' Bull Unigenitus. 
 
 ' Nineteen epithets in all. 
 
104 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book U. 
 
 not to exist." Ever the bed of Procrustes ; excepting that he, 
 while he was cutting people short, made no attempt to convince 
 them that he did them no harni. The Roman Catholicism of 
 the present day, wherever it has not the mastery, is the most 
 noisy of all parties in proclaiming the rights of conscience and of 
 reason. To hear it speak, one must needs believe that it is pre- 
 pared to acknowledge and to sanction all the liberties acquired 
 by mankind in the course of three centuries, in the freest states. 
 But, though it might desire this — flatly contradicting its conduct 
 wherever it reigns supreme — could it do so ? "Would it depend 
 on itself to abjure laws in which it has preached the contrary, 
 not temporarily, but in virtue of principles which it has declared 
 to be immutable, eternal ? In the matter of promises, which 
 party are we to believe ? The Gazette de France, or the 
 Council of Trent ? The Abbe de Genoude preaching a liberty 
 without bounds, or Pope Gregory XYI. calling liberty of con- 
 science " an absurd maxim, an idle dream," ^ and the liberty of 
 the press " a monstrous liberty which cannot be sufficiently de- 
 tested, sufficiently execrated."^ Shall we forget that in 1804, 
 one of the first of the motives put forth by the pope for refusing 
 to come and consecrate Napoleon, was that the consecration 
 oath mentioned the liberty of worship ? Shall we forget that, 
 in 1832, the famous Cardinal Pacca, the pope's prime minister, 
 wrote as follows : "If, under certain circumstances, prudence 
 demands their toleration (that is, toleration of liberty of worship 
 and liberty of the press) as one tolerates a less evil to avoid a 
 greater, such doctrines never can be presented by a Roman 
 Catholic as a good or as a desirable thing." This, at least, is 
 frank ; and Avhat is hardly so is that, in presence of such declar- 
 ations, there are still to be seen books, sermons, and journals, in 
 which the name of Roman Catholicism is mixed up with the most 
 enlarged ideas of toleration and emancipation. Let us beware 
 of trusting to this pretended Romanism which is not that of 
 councils, or that of popes, and wliich could not reign for two days 
 without falling back perforce into what it has ever been, what 
 it is wherever it has the power, what it declares, when it durst 
 venture, that it ought always to be. But how should these men 
 be so scrupulous in their promises, who are so little scrupulous 
 in speaking of the past ? At the moment we are writing, it is 
 not a month since, at Paris, from the pulpit, in Notre Dame, be- 
 fore thousands of auditors, people were told that the Roman 
 Church had never had recourse to violence whether for the pur- 
 pose of extension or self-preservation. It is not two years since 
 
 - Encydical Letter of 1832. 
 
 ^ Libertas ilia teterrima, ac 7nmquam satis c.rccranda, ac detestahilis. 
 
Chap. I. 1516. VIEWS OF THE LIBERAL ROMANISTS 100 
 
 a Roman Catholic pamphlet, published at Geneva, contained 
 these words — " The Inquisition never ibrced any one to become 
 a llonian Catholic. The Inquisition never punished any but 
 revolutionists in arms. Never will it penetrate into the secret 
 court of a man's conscience to ask people, What do ye be- 
 lieve?"^ Seriously to refute such assertions were almost as ridic- 
 ulous as to have made them ; but these travesties of the past are 
 w^iat may best supply the least distrustful, if they be ever so 
 little not incurably blind, with the proper measure for estima- 
 ting the worth of engagements taken for the future. 
 
 There is yet another thesis, moreover, which is neither the less 
 false nor the less strange for being less indicative of bad faith. 
 That for which Roman Catholicism has been most reproached, 
 that for which all candid men, even the most Romanist in their 
 religious tenets, have come at last to reproach it for, to wit, its 
 intolerance, its despotism, its frightful persecutions at no very 
 distant period, that has been pertinaciously attributed by some, 
 not to Roman Cathohcism, but, on the contrary, to its decline. 
 This is the position now maintained by the self-called hberal 
 Romanists ; it was this, in particular, which Lamennais and his 
 disciples were developing in their journal, the Avenir, when 
 Rome shut their mouths. Three years later, Lamennais, in his 
 Affaires de Rome, still recurred to it. Profoundly detached as 
 the sequel has proved him to be, not only from the Roman dis- 
 ciphne, but from all the Roman, and, alas I from more than one 
 Christian doctrine, he could not make up his mind to abandon 
 his old sophistry. If the pope, in his famous encyclical letter of 
 1832, condemned in the lump both political liberty and civil 
 liberty, both the liberty of worships and the liberty of the press 
 — the author can see nothing in this but " a distressing decline 
 of the Roman Catholic spirit." Then, is it not so ? if the 
 Catholic sjyirit w^ere in full vigour, were the pope and his court 
 no longer under the yoke of Austria, he would have nothing more 
 at heart than to give his people all the liberties wdiich he exe- 
 crated in 1832. You do not believe this at bottom more than 
 we do, and under this form you would not dare to affirm it ; but 
 as you cannot dream of making us accept of the men of the pres- 
 ent day, or of your popedom as it is at iiresent, or of your Cathol- 
 icism such as it has ever been, some method must be taken for 
 associating them, for good or evil, with the ideas and the in- 
 stincts of the present age. Thus, men of sincerity may be found 
 even among those whom our first impulse would urge us to ac- 
 cuse of dishonesty. Fondly clinging at once to the past and to 
 the present, to their Church's tenets and to the hberal ideas of 
 ^ Defense de la religion Catholiqne, par im Cur^. Geneve, 1844. 
 
 E* 
 
106 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book H. 
 
 their own times, they cannot resign themselves, in spite of the 
 plainest acts and the most formal declarations, to the belief that 
 between Rome and the present age there lies so wide a gulf. 
 They see in futurity the popedom, better informed, extending 
 its hand to all that is reasonable and good in the ideas which it 
 has hitherto abhorred ; but as they would not dare to exhibit it 
 contradicting itself, this, according to them, would be but a re- 
 turn to the true and eternal principles of Catholicism and the 
 Church. Consolatory fiction — which has nowhere been worse 
 received than at E-ome, or more keenly repelled than by the 
 very power which ought, we are told, to make it a reality.^ 
 
 Here, it would seem, we have got far from Trent ; but really 
 we have never left it. It would not be doing justice to the his- 
 tory of a law, were we not to follow it out, in the effects that it 
 has produced. 
 
 After having voted the principles, the question then arose, 
 under what form were they to be embodied in decrees ? 
 
 Now, it was usual for the decrees of councils either to be, or 
 not to be, accompanied with anathemas, according as the infrac- 
 tion of them should be deemed heresy or mere disobedience. 
 The anathema is, as it were, the seal, on seeing which the faith- 
 ful recognise an article to be one touching the faith, and one 
 which it would be a crime to deny or to doubt. 
 
 First of all, this method of sealing and sanctioning all that is 
 alleged to be a matter of faith, calls for more than one observa- 
 tion. 
 
 What, then, is the meaning of a curse attached to the admis- 
 sion or the non-admission of a dogma ? "When we have to do 
 with an overt act, all well. " Cursed is lie who shall have 
 struck his father." " Cursed is he who knowingly causes his 
 brother to sin." Still it must not be abused ; this would ere 
 lonof be found far from Christian. But when we have to do 
 with an idea, a dogma, as it is not directly in our power to be 
 able to believe it, or not to believe it, in such matters there can 
 be no farther blame than the negligence one may have shewn 
 in procuring instruction. But, in the Homan Church, there is 
 no room for negligence : all that you have to believe is present- 
 ed to you and imposed on you. When, accordingly, you are 
 anathematized for not believing, it is uertainly on the non-ac- 
 ceptance of an idea ; that is to say, it is on a fact independent 
 
 ^ These reflections were written under Gregory XVI. Will they re- 
 quire modification under his successor? That he has the will, is pos- 
 sible; that he has the power, we do not believe. The libei-ties grant- 
 ed by a pope will always of necessity be of small consequence com- 
 pared with what is elsewhere understood b}'- that term. 
 
Chap. I. 154G. ANATHEMAS— HOW EMPLOYED BY THE COUNCIL 107 
 
 of your Avill that the malediction falls. " Believe this," you are 
 told. " In my soul and conscience," you reply, " I can not." 
 " Well, then, be accursed." Such is the exact translation of 
 every decree on matters of faith accompanied with an anathema. 
 It is either this, or it is nothing ; nothing but a big "word with 
 which to frighten the simple. 
 
 That -word Rome understood, and had always caused it to 
 be understood in the most terrifying sense that it could bear. 
 Anathema, among the Greeks, signified originally deposited in 
 a tcmph consecrated to a god ; afterwards it meant consecra- 
 ted to the infernal gods, that is, accursed. In passing over to 
 Christianity, this last meaning Avas farther aggravated by the 
 idea of a far more terrible hell than that of the pagans. To be 
 anathema, meant to be damned, and damned to all eternity. 
 
 Will it be said that St. Paul used this expression ? In fact, 
 " If any man preach any other Gospel, let him be anathema," 
 Gal. i. 9. But besides that this formula, still quite pagan, could 
 not have had any A^ery precise meaning under his pen, it is one 
 thing to curse, in general, whosoever announces aJiother Gospel, 
 and quite another thing to attach this awful sanction to each of 
 the points of detail of which it is maintained that the Christian 
 faith is composed. Then, again, has the Church necessarily the 
 right to do what an Apostle did under the guidance of the Holy 
 Ghost ? Every objection to its infallibility — and we have seen, 
 whether there be few of them — is an objection to the right of 
 the anathema. 
 
 Just as it was about to exercise this formidable right the 
 council hesitated. Not that it did not believe it was fully in 
 possession of it ; but the four decrees that had been made^ were 
 of a nature diverse enough to admit of the question being put, 
 how far it was right that they should be placed in the same 
 line, and be followed by the same sanction ? The doctors who 
 were consulted did not agree. They sent back the question to 
 the bishops, and still less mutual agreement was there among 
 them. Truly an odd spectacle, that of a council directed from 
 on hifrh for the regulation of the faith, and which, after havino; 
 pronounced on four points, did not well know whether it had 
 made decrees on articles of faith, or mere decrees on discipline I 
 
 Two parties were seen from the first to take shape ; the one 
 wanting four anathemas, the other desiring that there might be 
 none. To the latter it was objected that the council would 
 have the appearance of not having made articles of faith, or of 
 having not believed that it had the power to make them ; to the 
 
 ^ Tradition, the Apocryphal books, the Vulgate, the Interpretation 
 of the Scriptures. 
 
108 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 former, that it would be very hard to envelop in the same con- 
 demnation an infidel who should reject the Bible, and a learned 
 man who should reject the Vulgate. After long parley ings a 
 middle course was adopted, and the decision was as follows : 
 
 On the first point, anathema. Anathema, accordingly, to 
 whosoever should appeal from tradition to the Scriptures, from 
 revelation falsified, or at least falsijiable, to revelation remain- 
 ing intact. 
 
 On the second point, again an anathema. Anathema, ac- 
 cordingly, to whosoever shall deny the canonicity of any one of 
 those books which had passed for two thousand years as apocry- 
 phal, and which no doctor until then, even of those who accept- 
 ed them, had dared to place in the same rank with the rest of 
 the Scriptures. 
 
 On the third and fourth point (the Yulgate and the interpre- 
 tation of the Scriptures), a mere prohibition, but, as we have 
 seen, a prohibition formal and absolute. Let none, on any pre- 
 text, reject the Vulgate ; let none take it into his head to inter- 
 pret Scripture against the sense which the Church has held and 
 holds, or against the unanmious consent of the fathers ;^ that 
 unanimous consent which, be it said in passing, hardly goes be- 
 yond the existence of God,^ 
 
 These prohibitions entered, accordingly, into a decree said to 
 be of reformation, and decrees of that kind were considered as 
 not bearing anathema. This, doubtless, was the best thing that 
 could be done ; but it was complained of by many. They called 
 to mind that, in speaking of reformation, and of the reforms that 
 were to be efi^ected by means of a council, everj'body had in view 
 the abuses that prevailed in the Church ; why, then, they would 
 say, attack first of all abuses that exist only among the Pro- 
 testants ? Is this the practical interpretation that is to be put 
 on the decision that discipline and faith should be treated simul- 
 taneously ? These reproaches were rather specious than just ; 
 the assembly thus far had been unable to pursue any other 
 course. But when it was added that the legates were very 
 well pleased at being able to delay as long as possible the ex- 
 amination of real abuses, nothing was said that the sequel did 
 not justify. 
 
 Let us mention, to conclude this subject, the prohibition against 
 
 ^ Aut etiam contra unanimura consensum patrum. 
 
 2 On this last subject we refer the reader to q\ute a late production 
 by a priest who has broken with Rome, M. Trivier of Dijon. There is 
 a curious chapter in it on the perplexities of the man who should seri- 
 ously set himself to search in the two hundred 4to vols, of the Collection 
 of the Fathers, what he has to believe on any point whatever. 
 
Chap. I. 1546. THE LEGATES' DISTRUST OF THE MINORITY. 109 
 
 employing words of Scripture in pleasantry, sorcery, flattery to 
 the great, &c. A prohibition, also, against ])ubhsliing aught on 
 religion without the consent and approval ot" the bishops. Tliis 
 naturally followed all the rest, but with the addition of an en- 
 croachment on the civil authority, mention being made of fines 
 to be inflicted on contraveners. This decree, accordingly, was 
 never admitted beyond the states of the pope. Governments the 
 farthest from wishing to establish freedom of the press among 
 their subjects, have not recognised the Church's right to pre- 
 vent it. 
 
 Everything, then, was now ready for the session ; and yet 
 the legates were not without apprehension. The greater num- 
 ber of the decisions that had been taken had not been unani- 
 mous. There had been disquieting minorities which, even after 
 the vote, had nowise shewn by their looks and manner, that 
 they believed the voice of the majority to have been the voice 
 of God. Naclantus, bishop of Chioggia, went so far as to treat 
 as impious the idea of putting tradition on an equality with 
 Scripture. 
 
 At a final preparatory meeting, the Cardinal del Monte made 
 a speech, in which, after much commendation of the wisdom 
 and the learning of the fathers, he adroitly insisted on the neces- 
 sity of having at the public meeting but one heart, one soul, 
 and, above all, but one voice. As some distrust was still felt 
 on this head, the Cardinal Santa Croce called a special meet- 
 ing of those who had shown themselves the most intractable 
 on the article of the Vulgate, and conjured them anew not to 
 disturb, by an imprudent veto, the imposing harmony of the 
 public voting. 
 
 The session was held, accordingly, on the 8th of April, 1546. 
 Five cardinals and forty-eight prelates were present. The ex- 
 hortations of the legates had not been thrown away : there 
 was no protest. Only histead of replying by the word x>lncet 
 (I approve), the Bishop of Chioggia said, I ivill obey. Another 
 bishop repeated, but in writing, the petition that the title of 
 representing the ^miversal Church should be added to those 
 of the council. Two others, in fine, declared that they did 
 not demand the adoption, at that moment, of this title, but with 
 the understanding that the council should assume it when it 
 saw fit. 
 
 Notwithstanding the happy issue of the public sitting, and 
 the incontestable legality of the decrees thus admitted, no little 
 trepidation was felt at the council's having cut through, at the 
 first stroke, so many questions, so much controverted and so 
 
110 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book U. 
 
 grave ; and it was not clear that, in particular, the pope would 
 not be in some trepidation from the same cause. In sending 
 him the decrees, his legates made no secret that they were far 
 from having entire confidence in the solidity of the structure 
 they had just erected ; they almost prevailed on him to put off^ 
 from a dread of compromising himself, the confirmation and 
 publication of these first acts. But the pope was not a man to 
 disquiet himself about so little. The decrees suited his purposes : 
 that was enough. Besides, was not any defect they might have 
 in point of authority about to be supplied by his confirming 
 them ? Accordingly he did confirm them, and nothing more 
 needed be said. 
 
 All was said, in fact, in the Roman point of view, seeing that 
 it acknowledges nothing superior to a council-general approved 
 by the pope. In reality, what had been gained ? 
 
 For the present nothing. The spectacle had been presented 
 to the Protestants of the numerous uncertainties amid which the 
 very foundations of the faith that people pretended to impose on 
 them shook and tottered ; the council had thrust itself, at the 
 very entrance, on questions which could not be treated without 
 letting it be seen that tradition itself was on the Protestant side ; 
 it had pronounced itself, in fine, on two points, perhaps on three, 
 in a sense which had never yet been held by any one university, 
 or any one doctor of any estimation. 
 
 For the future a great deal. " Fortune," said the ancients, 
 " helps those who dare ;" and this is not less true in the world 
 of ideas than in that of politics or of arms. Every principle 
 boldly laid down, every doctrine which takes a fixed position, 
 by that very fact, acquires a solidity which is almost independent 
 of the solidity or fragility of the foundations. When an army is 
 routed, let but a single man stop in his flight, and it may happen 
 that all will stop. In a brook that sweeps away a mass of in- 
 coherent bodies, let but one of these fiLX itself in the bed of the 
 stream, and you have an island begun which will perhaps out- 
 last even the banks at the side. Such has been the history, 
 such is the present state, of the Roman faith. Until 1546, 
 although a certain number of points appeared to be fixed, it was 
 no more in reality than a huge river in which the elements of 
 the future land lay tossing about. Let but one of these become 
 fixed, and were it no more than a pile of grass, all would be 
 done. But whence was this pile of grass to be taken ? To 
 what should be hooked on (let us be forgiven this word) the 
 equality of tradition and the Scriptures? For it was neces- 
 sarily with that they had to begin, and, as long as that point 
 
Caap. I. 1546. TACIT COMPROMISE BETWEEN ROME AND TRENT. HI 
 
 should remain afloat, the utmost result Avould have hccn but a 
 floating island. To what ? the council has not told u.s, and it 
 would have found it not a little diflicult to do so. It assumed 
 the thing to be admitted, demonstrated, incontestable. The con- 
 temporary generation doubted and said nothing ; the following 
 generation believed. But the question, the eternal question, is 
 to know whether a man of common sense can admit on the faith 
 of the council, what the very presidents of that council admitted 
 only while pale and trembling at the very thought of their 
 audacity. 
 
 Meanwhile, in spite of their having been solemnly proclaimed 
 at Trent, the pope ordained the publication of the decrees as if 
 that had still remained to be done, and as if, without his con- 
 currence, it were of no signification. AVe have said elsewhere 
 how false this position of his was. "We observed that, hoAvever 
 people may try to elude the question, we have only to transport 
 ourselves to the epoch of the holding of the council, in order to 
 see that the difficulties it presents are incapable of any solution. 
 What was most dreaded M^as being led oft into an explanation. 
 The pope would have shuddered to think Df provoking such 
 manifestations as those of Basle and of Constance, where the 
 councils declared that they could dispense wdtli the pontifical 
 sanction ; the council, on its side, did not like either to break 
 with the pope, for the Church had more need of a chief than ever, 
 or to submit ostensibly to that chief, for that would have been 
 to renounce all influence beyond Italy. Hence the tacit com- 
 promise that had united Rome and Trent. People wdio at bot- 
 tom are least agreed, are often the very persons who apparently 
 are most agreed. A friend with whom you are generally on 
 good terms, you are not afraid to contend with on some points ; 
 but you studiously avoid touching on what may give oflence to 
 a person from whom you feel that you are separated by a pro- 
 found difierence of sentiments, and nothing, to all external ap- 
 pearance, prevents your being thought intimate friends. As a 
 farther precaution, the pope ordered his legates to communicate 
 to him, before the final voting, all the drafts of decrees, or, to speak 
 more correctly, all the amendments discussed in the asssembly, 
 for the drafts themselves behoved to come from Rome. The 
 legates, to the best of their powers, were not to allow the vote 
 to be taken until after the pope should have replied ; it would be 
 for them to prevent anything from being voted in opposition to 
 his views, and, in this manner, all confliction would be avoided. 
 It was quite understood, moreover, that this arrangement was to 
 remain secret, and that the decrees were to be understood as not 
 
112 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 transmitted to Rome, until after the session in which they were 
 to be promulgated. Were there nothing to be saved but appear- 
 ances, this was much — it was everything. 
 
 But there were things in which appearances could be saved 
 no longer. The emperor kept himself aloof. The pope felt 
 himself affronted both by his silence and by his words. 
 
 First, there was not a single German bishop at Trent, and 
 none could doubt that their absence was owing to secret orders 
 to that effect. The procurators of the Archbishop of Mayence 
 had remained only a few weeks ; the Bishop of Augsburg had 
 sent one, but he was a native of Savoy. A most severe sum- 
 mons had been prepared for the session of 8 th April, to be ad- 
 dressed to the absent bishops, particularly those who might be 
 seen from the windows of Trent, says Pallavicini, that is to say, 
 to the Germans, several of whom were, in pomt of fact, situate 
 but a few leagues from the council ; but the emperor took offence 
 at this, and the decree, though voted, had to be left out. Thus 
 he was evidently reserving for himself the possibility of refusing 
 to recognise the council, and his prelates were no more to be 
 reckoned upon than liimself. 
 
 It was much worse to see him continue to treat as an arch- 
 bishop and a prince that same Fleeter of Cologne whom the 
 pope had first summoned to appear before him, and next had 
 excommunicated. And yet the sentence was anything but se- 
 cret. It had been solemnly published at Home, and that, too, 
 in the strongest terms. The prince-archbishop's subjects had 
 been loosed from their oath of allegirance ; his rights and his 
 title had been given to his coadjutor, Adolphus von Schauen- 
 burg. It pertained to the emperor to execute this decree ; but 
 Hermann, although a Lutheran, or almost a Lutheran, had re- 
 mained faithful to him, and he had no wish to throw him into 
 the ranks of the Protestant confederation. In vain did Paul 
 III. entreat and urge ; the emperor turned a deaf ear to all he 
 said. It was Hermann who gave way, but witliout appearing 
 to obey the pope ; he quitted Cologne and resigned, as if of his 
 own free will. For the rest we do not approve what the Ger- 
 man Protestants said on this occasion, alleging that the pope, 
 during the sitting of a council, could not condemn a person on 
 points upon which that council had not yet come to any vote. 
 The pope was incontestably in the right ; and we have seen 
 with pain, be it said in passing, that the greater number of 
 priests converted in our days to Protestantism, have indulged in 
 recriminations of this sort. They admit that they are no longer 
 Roman Catholics, and they exclaim against despotism because 
 
Chap. I. 1540. LET US CONDUCT THE WAR FAlllLY. 113 
 
 they are turned out of their places. The bishops have only done 
 their duty. Declare war against the Church, all well ; but let 
 it be in lair fight, not by chicane. ^ 
 
 * Here our national views, as well as individual convictions, compel 
 us to dissent from the author. AVcre the Church autocratic in the 
 person of the pope or of the bishops, difference from them might legit- 
 imate the deposition or dismissal of parish priests. But it is as min- 
 isters of Christ's Church that those priests de jure hold office, exercise 
 their functions, and are paid. That Church is an absolute monarch}-, 
 and against the rights of Christ's crown no prescription runs. Ue jiire 
 therefore the pi-iest's office, functions, and stipend commence, not with 
 his allegiance to a usurper in the person of the pope, and with liis pro- 
 fession of doctrines that are not those of Christ's Gospel, but with liis 
 abjuring that allegiance and those doctrines. To submit without pro- 
 test to dismissal when converted to the Gospel, may be prudent, but 
 cannot surely consist with the testimony required on such an occasion 
 from the priest. — To. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 (1546.) 
 
 SESSION V. DECREES ON ORIGINAL SIN AND ON PREACHING. 
 THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 
 
 Altercations about the clioice of subjects — Preaching — The bishops and 
 the monks — Mutual recriminations — Indemnifications to the bishops 
 — General relaxation of morals to the advantage of the popes — Lu- 
 theran opinion — Question of original sin — Four problems — Infants 
 dying without baptism — The Roman catechism — All explanations 
 but by anathemas, abandoned — Reflections on this subject — Five 
 canons — The immaculate conception — Historical views — Fluctua- 
 tions — How the Roman dogmas establish themselves — Fifth Session 
 — ^Disputed votings. 
 
 The fifth session had been fixed for the 17th of June. Pre- 
 parations had now to be made for it. 
 
 Then were renewed the disputes about the selection of sub- 
 jects. The legates had been ordered so to arrange matters that 
 original sin should occupy the council next ; Charles the Fifth's 
 ambassador,^ supported by some bishops, called Germans al- 
 though all of them were Spaniards or Italians,^ insisted anew 
 that the council should keep to subjects calling for reformation. 
 As for the determination to which they had come to keep the 
 two things abreast, these prelates observed, that in soliciting 
 that course, their main object had been to prevent their being 
 absorbed with questions of faith, to the exclusion of the others ; 
 there were to be no sessions, consequently, without disciplinary 
 decrees, but nothing obliged them to mingle with these, decrees 
 on matters of faith. This was, no doubt, a sophism, but the 
 emperor was behind. After many twistings and windings, the 
 legates were once more compelled to allow the tenor of their 
 instructions to be seen ; they declared that such was the will of 
 the pope, but offered, at the same time, to write to him anew. 
 
 This proposal was accepted ; and while waiting for the reply, 
 the members occupied themselves with some internal regulations. 
 It was ordered that there should be three sorts of congregations, 
 first, those in which the divines should deliver their views on 
 
 ^ Francis de Toledo, successor to Diego de Mendoza. 
 ^ Of the Emperor's states in Italy. 
 
Chap. II. 1540. RELIGIOUS TEACHING— BISHOPS AND MONKS. 115 
 
 points of doctrine ; next, those in which the doctors of the canon 
 law should discuss questions of discipline ; the third, in fine, 
 where none hut the bishops should be admitted, and in which 
 the decrees should be drawn up. 
 
 Tliis over, as the pope shewed no haste to reply, an important 
 point was resumed, wliich had repeatedly been touched upon in 
 the course of the labours of the fourth session, to wit, religious 
 teaching, and in particular, preachinf^. 
 
 The question was a thorny one. Were they not all that ? "We 
 shall hardly find one in which Rome had not to hold the balance 
 between opposing ambitions and interests, yet, though opposite, 
 equally necessary to the existence and consolidation of her em- 
 pire. 
 
 In the case in hand, the bishops were ranged on the one 
 side, and the monks on the other ; the bishops, charged in point 
 of rio-ht with all that bore on religious instruction, the monks, 
 charged in point of fact, and for more than three centuries, with 
 the delivery of sermons, and now with catechising. The bishops 
 made no demand to have the monks deprived of those functions ; 
 but they wished to regain the power of investing them with 
 that trust. As the religious orders held only of the pope, the 
 episcopal authority had been constantly exposed to encroach- 
 ments from men who could plant themselves, with the pope's 
 sanction, in the midst of a diocese, preaching, hearing confessions, 
 and drawing to themselves the minds and hearts of the people. 
 It was like a second net thrown over that of the hierarchy, and 
 enveloping the hierarchy itself, "The monks," said Luther, 
 " are the best fowlers the pope has." And when Henry YIIL, 
 in the first commencements of his reformation, seemed disposed 
 to preserve them, " It is as if he had done nothing," said the old 
 monk ; " he torments the body of the popedom, but he preserves 
 its soul." And it was, in fact, for the bishops a perpetual sub- 
 ject of unpleasantness, contestation, and disgusts. 
 
 Great keenness was shewn, accordingly, in the council, in at- 
 tacking the pretensions and intrigues of the monks ; but the de- 
 fence was no less keenly maintained than the attack. As there 
 were, among the divines, representatives of all the orders, they 
 spoke, they wrote, and the episcopate was forced to listen to some 
 harsh truths. They proved that if they had taken possession of 
 the pulpits, they had found them unoccupied, seeing that the 
 bishops and parish priests had altogether abandoned preaching ; 
 they shewed that the papal bulls, in virtue of which they taught 
 and preached, had been granted generally in view only of posi- 
 tive wants, incontestably proved to exist. The popes, it is true, 
 Ir.id often let it be seen that this neglect of preaching was any- 
 
116 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 thing but displeasing to them ; and that the desire of instructing 
 the populations of Christendom, was neither their only, nor their 
 principal motive ;i but the monks were at bottom in the right ; 
 and this discussion fully bore out the Protestants in one of their 
 heaviest charges against the Church. They accused it of having 
 suffered the habit of instructing and preaching to die out among 
 the whole body of the clergy to whom was committed the care ot 
 souls ; and it was easy for them to shew, both from Scripture 
 and by history, how opposed this neglect was to the laws and 
 to the practice of the first ages. Look to the epistles of St. Paul, 
 and see if a pastor, a bishop, be not, before all else, a preacher. 
 Rome had turned him into a priest, in the pagan sense of the 
 word ; at the very most, in the Hebrew sense of it ; a sacrificer, 
 a Levite, an arranger of ceremonies. There have been certain 
 ameliorations in this respect, still these are not found in countries 
 where Roman Catholicism prevails without control ; but, in the 
 sixteenth century, this reproach attached to almost the entire 
 body of the clergy. 
 
 Thus the council had first to put the Church in a condition 
 to dispense with the services of the preaching monks, before it 
 proceeded to attack them. Besides, as they had got their priv- 
 ileges from the popes, it was felt that the pope alone could 
 meddle with them ; the smallest decision to the contrary, would 
 have been an invasion of his rights, and would have led to the 
 verification of those rights themselves — that is, to the most dan- 
 gerous of all investigations. The more incontestable it was that 
 a pope of the sixteenth century could not have entertained the 
 idea of sending into a diocese men who should be independent 
 of the bishop, the greater would have been the imprudence of de- 
 claring this by a vote ; for a door would thus have been opened 
 for the historical examination of all rights, and there were many 
 which the most independent bishops were as little desirous 
 as the pope was to submit to the ordeal of verification. Thus, 
 some from devotion to the pope, others from necessity, or frt)m 
 reason, all were of one mind in thinking that on this point, with- 
 out his sanction, nothing could be done. 
 
 He declared, in fact, that the council had no concern with the 
 privileges of the monks ; but, reserving his own rights in the 
 matter, he authorized the legates to grant the bishops all the in- 
 demnifications that would not endanger that principle. Two 
 were found ; one, that no monk or friar should preach without 
 
 * See St. Bernard, De consideratione. Besides, he speaks with great 
 force against tlie independence of the monk;^. " O liberty, worse than 
 slavery ! I would not have a liberty that imposes on me the debasing 
 yoke of pride." 
 
Chap. II. 1546. THE BISHOPS COMMANDED TO PREACH. 117 
 
 the bishop's permission, beyond the monasteries and convents of 
 his order ; the other, that in every cathedral there should be a 
 doctor of theolo<ry, nominated and directed by the bishop. Jt 
 was also decreed that there should be one in each of the princi- 
 pal monasteries ; but it was not well known what right the bishop 
 could exercise over him, that would not infringe on the inde- 
 pendence of the order. The idea was therefore entertained of 
 putting him under the superintendence of the bishop, acting, not 
 as bishop of the place, but as the pope's delegate ; a distinction 
 which, as we shall see, was very helpful m the sequel. This was 
 the best measure that could be fallen upon for restoring to the 
 bishops, without afl'ecting the rights of the popes, part of those 
 of which the Holy See had deprived them ; but we shali al.'o 
 find that they did not always lend themselves with a good grace 
 to the acceptance of that as a favour which they could claim as 
 a right. 
 
 As for the rest, the abbots themselves, much embarrassment 
 as they caused to the bishops, were not altogether secure from 
 the encroachments of Rome. In the face of his vow of obedi- 
 ence to his own superior, every monk could purchase the pope's 
 intervention, and practically escape from the authority of his 
 chiefs. In 1517, some abbots in Germany having forbidden their 
 monks to accept Tctzel's scandalous indulgences, the latter, in 
 virtue of a papal commission, forced upon them confessors, with 
 power to absolve all who had recourse to them, even against the 
 rules of their order. Thus, provided all things should be found 
 more and more directly hnked to the papal throne, Rome troubled 
 itself little about relaxing all the bonds of obedience and order 
 in the inferior regions of the Church. 
 
 The replies given by the monks were not without effect. 
 The decree on preaching commences with rules which Luther 
 might have subscribed. "As it is no less necessary to preach 
 the Gospel than to teach it in the schools, and as it is even the 
 'prindiml fimction of bishops} the holy council ordains that all 
 bishops, archbishops, primates, and others set over the conduct 
 of the churches, shall be held and obliged thevi selves to preach 
 the holy Gospel of Jesus Christ." Nothing could be better, but 
 never was a decree worse observed. How many bishops are 
 there that preach ? The decree adds, it is true, " unless they 
 shall be legitimately prevented." Judging by the actual state 
 of matters, it would seem that it is the episcopate itself that is 
 considered as the legitimate hindrance. But after this solemn 
 declaration that preaching is the principal fimctimt of bishops, 
 there ought at least to have been candour enough not to twit 
 * Et bcc est prfficipuum episcoporuni nninn>j. 
 
118 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 Protestantism with making preaching the main function of its 
 ministers. 
 
 During these discussions, Paul III. had repeated his first orders. 
 He no longer asked, he insisted that the council should proceed 
 to doctrines, beginning with that of original sin. This had 
 therefore to be done, but the prelates of the emperor's party did 
 not even try to dissimulate any longer their desire to put off to 
 the last possible moment, the decrees that were to mark out the 
 Protestants, and to condemn them. The farther the council 
 advanced, the more clearly might the political question be seen 
 occupying the first rank. Had it ever ceased, could it ever 
 cease to be there ? All that can be said is, that it was more or 
 less apparent there, more or less veiled, according to circun> 
 stances. 
 
 The legates who, on the contrary, wanted nothing better than 
 to have the party fully committed, in order that there might be 
 no longer any possible agreement betwixt the emperor and the 
 Protestants, had prepared a list of nine propositions for condem- 
 nation. They had taken care to include in this list those only 
 in condemning which they could coinit on perfect unanimity; a 
 few hours of deliberation, and all would be done. Upon this the 
 imperialists changed their tactics. They craved that the Church's 
 doctrine on the subject in question, should first be established ; 
 they were sensible that the discussion once begun, the council 
 would not be long in a condition to draw up decrees. The 
 legates felt this also, but how refuse ? 
 
 Four questions, consequently, were set down for debate : 
 
 I. What was the nature of Adam's sin ? 
 
 n. In what sense are we to say that it passes to his pos- 
 terity ? 
 
 III. How is it transmitted ? 
 
 IV. How is it effaced ? 
 
 Before proceeding farther, we would remind the reader that 
 our plan could not admit of the theological discussion of any of 
 the questions mooted in the council. Wherever we shall have 
 merely to allow Scripture, common sense, and history to speak, 
 we shall do so, as we have done already ; wherever we should 
 have to enter into the labyrinth of human opinions, and to choose 
 between ideas equally probable, or equally improbable, we shall 
 be silent. 
 
 Now, nothing can be more natural than to try to ascertain, 
 according to the Bible, if we must believe in original sin, that is 
 to say, in a certain transmission of Adam's sin ; but this fact 
 once admitted, we apprehend there would be rashness, pride, 
 folly, in getting ourselves to analyze and to explain it. The 
 
Chap. II. 1546. THE QUESTION OF ORIGINAL SIN. 119 
 
 Christian who is most disposed to sec in it a fundamental doc- 
 trine, is compelled to avow, if he reasons, that it is one of the 
 points on which God has evidently not seen fit that our view 
 should penetrate into the full depth of its bearings. 
 
 The divines, accordingly, were far from being agreed even on 
 the first question. More clear, it would seem, than the other 
 three, it is in reality perhaps the most obscure. What, in fact, 
 Avas the sin of the first man ? Had it been related to us as an 
 ordinary sin, we could have figured to ourselves well enough its 
 nature and its seriousness. It was, we should have said, curi- 
 osity, gluttony, pride ; and as these vices are not rare, we should 
 find no great difficulty in determining to Avhat degree they were 
 to be blamed in the case. But when we behold them followed 
 by terrible consequences, permanent in duration, and quite dis- 
 proportioned, in the eye of mere man, to the gravity of the crime 
 — here there was evidently a relation which escapes us, and 
 which God only knows. 
 
 On the second and third questions, the divines did not even 
 dispute, so sensible were they of the impossibility of coming to a 
 common understanding. Unanimous in affirming that Adam's 
 sin has had certain consequences for his posterity, how could they 
 expect to be so when they came to state precisely in what these 
 consequences consist ? But they were not circumspect enough 
 to decline any such precise statement. Each had his own system ; 
 one followed Augustine, another Thomas Aquinas, a third Duns 
 Scotus ; but they confined themselves each to saying what his 
 own view was, leaving to the bishops the task of selection and 
 arrangement. 
 
 None of the questions, even to the fourth, on being narrowly 
 examined, failed to become a source of embarrassment. The 
 members were agreed in saying, that original sin is efiaced by 
 baptism ; but the door once opened to the questions tchij and 
 lioiv, a cloud of obscurities gathered round the subject. From 
 the moment you give baptism any other bearing but that of an 
 external sign, announcing the fact of entrance into the Church, 
 and figuring by water the purification of the soul — where would 
 you stop ? You are then caught, in particular, in the question 
 as to infants dying without baptism, and, in spite of your reason 
 and your sensibility, which revolt from the idea, it is impossible 
 for you not to declare them shut out from salvation. 
 
 The council ventured, however, not to confine themselves 
 altogether to St. Augustine's opinion, who, with his merciless 
 logic, makes those infants to be so many lost souls ; nay. Doctor 
 Ambrose Catharini went so far as to beg that that opinion 
 might be declared heretical. Condemn Augustine I They 
 
120 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book H. 
 
 recoiled from that ;^ but these infants once out of hell, they knew 
 not where to put them. Some Franciscan divines ventured to 
 say that their dwelling was not under the earth, like that of the 
 lost, but somewhere on the earth, in the air, or in the sun ; 
 some placed them in a sort of terrestrial paradise, where they 
 employed themselves in reasoning on the marvels of nature, 
 but without thinking, or having the power to think, of God. 
 Catharini, who had constituted himself their patron, found even 
 this last opinion too hard : the angels and saints, he affirmed, 
 are constantly visiting them. The Jacobin divines chose a 
 middle course, which, without having been decreed, has become 
 the ordinary doctrine of the Church, According to them, in- 
 fants dying without baptism have their abode between paradise 
 and hell ; they are neither happy nor miserable, neither joyous 
 nor sad. In short, one would have said, that the council were 
 called, not to say where these infants were, but to determine 
 where they themselves should put them ; and this was what was 
 done. What folly I And but for the necessity of keeping one's 
 gravity in all that is connected, even remotely and by ties that 
 are absurd, with the grand ideas of religion, who could seriously 
 relate such monstrous extravagances ? All well to explain and 
 develop doctrines, though one ought to know where to stop even 
 there. But to wish to guess out, fix, and set up as doctrines, 
 facts of which revelation does not inform us, and which are 
 utterly beyond every kind of observation and verification — this 
 is a freak which we should consider as incredible were it less 
 established by evidence, and as what might be presented in a 
 history of paganism, as an unheard-of instance of the temerity 
 of the learned, the credulity of their disciples, and the senseless- 
 ness of the people. If this reproach is not precisely applicable 
 to the present decree, seeing that explanation on the state of 
 infants dying without baptism was abandoned, how much was 
 there not attempted afterwards on points of which we have no- 
 thing more taught us in the Bible, and which are equally 
 incapable of being elucidated without it ! Besides, on this very 
 point, why, seeing the council decreed nothing, are details given 
 in the catechisms, which it did not give ? 
 
 For the rest, while withal it teaches, according to the council, 
 that there is "no other means but baptism for procuring the 
 salvation of infants," the famous Catechisinus Roma?ius, com- 
 
 ^ The dogmatical authority of the fathers was, however, still far 
 enough from what it has been since. Cardinal Cajetan had written at 
 the commencement of the century, that a di%'ine might sometimes inter- 
 pret Scripture without following the torrent of the Fathers {contra 
 torrentem Patriim). What ultra-montanist would say as much at the 
 present day ? 
 
Chap. II. 1546. NO DECISION AS TO ITS NATURE. }'ll 
 
 monly called the Catechism of the Council of Trent, ^ adnnit.s a 
 fact which would sutfice for the subversion of that doctrine, if 
 for this common sense were not already all that is required. 
 That fact is, that in the primitive Church, Easterday and Whit- 
 .«unday were the only ones on which baptism was administered.^ 
 Although the Catechism adds, " saving cases of necessity," how 
 exceedingly improbable that infants, however thriving, would 
 have been left for so many months without baptism, had it 
 been thought that their salvation might thus have been com- 
 promised ? 
 
 After long and fruitless conferences, the majority returned to 
 its first opinion ; there was to be nothing directly taught on 
 original sin, but only the simple condemnation of a certain num- 
 ber of heretical ideas on that subject. It was in vain that sev- 
 eral bishops, and still more the divines, remonstrated that a 
 council is convened for the instruction of the faithful as well as 
 for the condemnation of error ; in vain did some, and Jerome 
 Seripandi, the general of the Augustinians in particular, give it 
 to be understood that here this would be a confession of the coun- 
 cil's impotency. The bishops felt themselves decidedly incapa- 
 ble of drawing up articles in which they themselves should have 
 sufficient confidence to authorize their imposing them upon the 
 Church. They persisted accordingly. Shall we commend them 
 for doing so ? Their reserve ought to have been more steadily 
 maintained ; and as we shall see them often pronounce without 
 hesHation, without their being, at bottom, either better informed, 
 or more sure, we cannot give them much credit for a modesty 
 so transient, when preceded, accompanied, and followed by so 
 much pride and audacity. Then, in another view, how recon- 
 cile this silence with the council's authority and divine inspira- 
 tion ? If it has recoiled from original sin, what right will it 
 have to impose what it shall decree on justification, on grace, 
 on twenty other subjects, before which it must have had quite 
 as many motives to fall back and be silent ? The great induce- 
 ment, we have said, was that the members felt that they were 
 not of one mind ; and on the questions of the same kind which 
 they had to decide afterwards, they were a little better agreed. 
 Such is the secret of the matter ; but then there starts up a new 
 
 * We shall often have occasion to quote it. Published under the ex- 
 press order of the council (session xxiv.), based on the council's decrees, 
 approved b}^ Pius V. in 1570, and by Gregory XIII. in 1583, this book 
 has been placed, in the Church of Rome, almost in the same line with 
 the decrees of councils, and is, in fact, the basis of religious instruction 
 throughout the whole Roman Catholic world. 
 
 ^ Quibus tantura diebus, nisi necessitas aliter facere eo-egisset, in 
 veteris ecclesise more positum fuit ut baptismus administraretur. 
 
 F 
 
122 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 objection. This agreement which, in other cases, has given you 
 the courage to pronounce a decision, was, you say, a token of 
 the divine assistance ; God could not permit your being unani- 
 mous in decreeing an error. Be it so. But then, to what a 
 strange part you condemn the Holy Spirit I Here we have two 
 parallel questions, original sin, on which you have said nothing, 
 and grace, on which you are about to indite (for this was what 
 was done) sixteen chapters. On the latter subject, accordingly, 
 the aid of the Holy Spirit was full and entire ; on the former, 
 nothing or next to nothing. What caprice I And how strange 
 should we deem the conduct of a protector to be, Avho should 
 sometimes succour, sometimes abandon, sometimes maintain una- 
 nimity, sometimes leave to stray in all directions those who, 
 he knows, cannot dispense with him, and are nothing without 
 him I " To insist," says Father Biner, " that so numerous an 
 assembly should present no example of dissidence, would be to 
 go out of the world, and to have a mind to look on at a meeting 
 of a council held by the angels." "We, too, think it quite a thing 
 to be expected that there should have been questions on Avhich 
 members were not agreed ; but the farther we shall conceive 
 the assembly to have been from resembling a council of angels, 
 the more reason shall we have for thinking it rash to have pre- 
 tended to pronounce infallibly on things of which the angels 
 themselves, say the Scriptures, do not penetrate the depths. 
 
 The council, therefore, confined itself to the forming of five 
 decrees with accompanying anathemas. The first was directed 
 against those who deny that Adam lost original righteousness ; 
 the second, against those who deny the transmission of original 
 sin ; the third, against those who think that baptism does not 
 entirely obliterate it ; the fifth, against those who say that after 
 baptism, concupiscence is still sin.^ 
 
 On the occasion of the second of these decrees, a quarrel, al- 
 ready of four centuries' standing, burst out afresh between the 
 Cordeliers and the Jacobins, a quarrel which the council was 
 not to compose, and which lasts to this day.^ 
 
 Was the Virgin Mary comprehended in the decree which de- 
 
 ' In theolog}- the collective desires of revolt existing in man (the re- 
 volt of the flesh against the spirit, of the spirit against God, <fec.) are 
 called concupiscence. Those desires, viewed as the consequences of orig- 
 inal sin, cease through baptism to be sins: they become criminal only 
 when we yield to them ; whilst in the man who is not baptized, they 
 are culpable by the simple fact of their existence. — Such is the Roman 
 doctrine, and it is in that sense that the council condemns those who 
 shall attack the efficacy of baptism, while they maintain that it does 
 not prevent concupiscence from being sin. 
 
 ' [Settled by Papal decree, without a council, 1854. — Ed.] 
 
Chap. H. 154C. THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 123 
 
 clarcs all llie children of Adam subject to original sin ? tSucli 
 Avas the question. 
 
 An idle question, if ever there was one. Idle in itself: as 
 long as the Bible says nothing about it, what means shall we 
 iind for resolving it ? Idle in its results : of what moment to us 
 whetlier the Virgin Mary was conceived under the empire of 
 original sin or not ? Wherein can this circumstance influence 
 in the least our laith or our works ? And although the immac- 
 ulate conception of the Virgin were a fact capable of being es- 
 tablished, shall we hold that Christianity was incomplete until 
 people began to speak about it ? 
 
 Until the twellth century, in fact, we find nothing formal on 
 this strange problem. Of this we have a proof in the quotations 
 accumulated by Pallavicini, at this part of his work, for the 
 purpose of demonstrating the antiquity of the acts of homage 
 rendered to the sanctity of the Virgin. The stronger these dec- 
 larations, the more inconceivable would it be that the exemption 
 from the stain of original sin should not be mentioned in them, 
 if it were believed ever so little or even so much as dreamt of 
 It was towards 1130, at the very height of the kind of fever 
 that led to a continual addition of new honours to the worship 
 of Mary, and of new marvels to her history, that the canons of 
 Lyons set themselves all at once to preach this new doctrine ; 
 they spoke even of instituting a festival in honour of it. St. Ber- 
 nard opposed this. He wrote them a severe letter, which it has 
 been attempted, but in vain,^ to transform into a simple repri- 
 mand, for their not having begun by referring the matter to the 
 pope. The man who called that idea a presiimptiious novelty, 
 mother of temerity, sister of super stitimt, daughter of feJde- 
 ness, could not have intended to attack it merely in point of 
 form. It did not arise, however, from his being habitually chary 
 of his expressions of homage to the Virgin, for he calls her else- 
 where, in language more picturesque than noble, " the neck of 
 the Church, the channel through which all good influences and 
 divine graces pass from the head to the members ;" but as he, 
 after all, was a superior man, he resisted a little better than the 
 rest of his age, the passion for ransacking the worlds of fancy for 
 the purpose of finding there what was futile or absurd. Eighty 
 years after we see John Scot taking up the question, and on 
 reading him, find it had made some progress. The idea of the 
 immaculate conception had charms for him that led him to 
 maintain it, but only as a possibility. Direct proofs ol" it he nei- 
 ther gives nor seeks, and seems to think that they are never to 
 
 ^ Pallavicini, 1. vii. — Cardinal de Bonald, mandcmcnt of 21st Novem- 
 ber, 1843. 
 
124 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book H. 
 
 be had. In his latest writings he decidedly leans to its being 
 admitted, but always as a matter of sentiment. He feels re- 
 pugnant at the thought that the Virgin ever could have been 
 for a single moment under condemnation. Christ redeemed all 
 mankind ; nevertheless he could not have been a perfect re- 
 deemer had there not been one being, at least, whom he should 
 save, not only from the consequences of origmal sin, but from 
 orio-inal sin itself. And who could this being have been but his 
 own mother ? Admirable reasonings these, on which a man 
 of science could not admit the existence of a single plant, 
 of an insect, of an atom — yet with which people have so often 
 been content in establishing the sublimest mysteries I As the 
 disciples of John Scot, the Cordeliers went much farther than 
 he did, and thus the immaculate conception was openly main- 
 tained as a dogma, but was keenly attacked, at the same time, 
 by their enemies, the Jacobins. As the Church did not pro- 
 nounce a decision, the field remained open, and hence arose 
 wranglings, writmgs p;-o and con, and deadly animosities with- 
 out end. Another subject began likewise to be discussed with 
 an ever increasing vivacity, that of the virginity of Mary, held 
 to have been perpetual, according to some, ending, according to 
 others, with the birth of Jesus Christ, or with that of other chil- 
 dren born after him. The former of these opinions gained 
 ground every day. There were purposes to be served by it, and 
 this was enough to secure its being believed to rest on a sound 
 foundation. In vain do the gospels shew us the Virgin married 
 to Joseph, living long years with him, altogether a stranger to 
 the mystical notions imputed to her, and which, besides, would 
 have been in positive contradiction to Jewish ideas, seeing that 
 with them virginity in marriage was a kind of opprobrium ; in 
 vain do these same books present her to us as several times ac- 
 companied by those whom they call the brethren of Jesus : all 
 these difficulties have been overleapt. Mary is not only a "Vir- 
 gin," as saith the Scripture in its charming introduction to the 
 wonders of Bethlehem, she is " the Virgin," the type of virgin- 
 ity, and of all the perfections of which that state, according to 
 Rome, is the source. The council has not said this, but the 
 Church of Rome teaches it ; the Roman catechism enlarges 
 upon it with explanations which we would not dare to quote, 
 even in Latin. Nevertheless, were the reasons adduced in sup- 
 port of it as strong as they are feeble, not to say ridiculous ; 
 were the '' brethroi'' of Jesus not his brethren, as has been 
 alleged, but his cousins ; it must ever be admitted, that the 
 evangelists attached very little importance to the doctrine, see- 
 ing that they have given, without a single hint to the contrary, 
 
Chap. II. 1546. A MIDDLE COURSE ADOPTED. 126 
 
 SO many details -which could not hut render it improbahlc, and 
 dispel the very idea of it. 
 
 Meanwhile, on the question of the Immaculate Conception 
 the popes have fluctuated like the doctors. Some would declare 
 themselves for, and others against it, but always as divines, not 
 as popes ; in short, opinions have been too much divided for 
 any of them to venture upon an ofhcial decision. From time to 
 time some steps have been made in favor of or against it. John 
 XXII., from hatred of the Cordeliers,^ seemed for a moment pre- 
 pared to condemn their doctrine; Sixtus IV., a Cordelier him- 
 self, openly favored them. In 147G he forbade their being ac- 
 cused of heresy, and sanctioned the festival first conceived at 
 Lyons. The fact, however, still remained undecided, Sixtus IV. 
 not affirming, but only forbidding the condemnation of those who 
 did affirm it. 
 
 Such then, in 1546, was the state of the question. If not yet 
 sufficiently advanced for the one party to venture on deciding it 
 in the way prepared by Sixtus IV., it was too much so for the 
 Jacobins to attempt having it decided in the other. They con- 
 fined themselves, therefore, to insisting that no exception to the 
 law of original sin should be mentioned.* More bold, because 
 they felt themselves more popular, the Cordeliers called for the 
 express exception of the Virgin. The legates, although divided 
 on the question at bottom," were agreed as to the necessity of 
 saying nothing about it ; nevertheless, anxious to screen them- 
 selves from responsibility, they referred the matter to the pope, 
 and, at his suggestion, a middle course w^as again adopted. 
 The decree was left as it stood, only it was added, that the 
 question remained intact ; that the Virgin was neither com- 
 prised nor excepted, that the bull of Sixtus IV., in fine, should 
 rule the case. 
 
 Has that rule been kept ? The Immaculate Conception had 
 been voted at Basle,^ and that, no doubt, was one of the reasons 
 that prevented its being voted at Trent. Here, then, there was 
 a step backwards. But time has advanced. The idea has made 
 progress ; it only had to be left to itself in order to its regaining, 
 and more than regaining, all that it had lost. At the present 
 day matters stand thus. There aie no positive decrees ; but 
 every bishop that asks leave to establish the w^orship of the Im- 
 maculate Conception in his diocese, has this granted to him by 
 
 ^ Tliey had supported the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria, whom he had 
 excommunicated. On such threads hung tlie fate of the Immaculate 
 Conception ! 
 
 ^ Del Monte was for, Cervini against, and Pole wavered, 
 
 ^ Session xxxiv. 
 
126 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 the pope, and hence it has now become almost universal. Let 
 but some years more elapse and nothing will prevent the fact 
 from taking its place definitively among the articles of faith. ^ 
 
 Some years hence, then, ^ye may expect it to be pronounced 
 heresy to deny what as yet one may safely deny or believe. 
 The history of this point, were it to remain for ever undecided, is 
 that of many others. Is this not, in fact, the course that all the 
 Roman dogmas have run ? An idea starts up. Some defend, 
 others attack it. It fluctuates for two or three centuries, some- 
 times for five or six, sometimes for more, in the midst of desires, 
 of fears, of interests, which invite or repel it ; next, some day, 
 when the Church seems to be sufficiently impregnated with it to 
 secure the step from being assailed with too much violence of 
 protest, behold, it is made an article of faith. And then at least 
 people know^ how they stand ; but until then what an indescrib- 
 able medley of certainty and uncertainty, of bondage and of 
 freedom I Was the Virgin exempt from original sin ? You are 
 invited to believe that she was, but without your being assured 
 that it is true. Perhaps it will be affirmed to-morrow, and then 
 anathema to him who shall deny it ; possibly it will never be 
 affirmed ; perhaps, for this is no more impossible than the rest, 
 the contrary will one day be affirmed. Here then we have an 
 infallible Church which shall have remained for a thousand 
 years, perhaps two thousand, before regulating — what ? why a 
 pure matter of fact ; a question, consequently, on which time 
 brings no new light. If one can decide it to-morrow, there 
 should be the power of deciding it to-day, there should have 
 been power to do so in the sixteenth century ; and if there was 
 no power of deciding it in the sixteenth century, there ought to 
 be none to-day or to-morrow. The present pope goes farther 
 than had ever been done before ; why this advance ? have any 
 new proofs been discovered ? No. There are not even any old 
 ones, for had there been any the question would have been de- 
 cided long ago. Has the pope received any revelation more than 
 his predecessors ? On a matter of positive fact there can be no 
 half-revelation ; it must be ay or no. Wherefore, then, we 
 repeat, wherefore this half-affirmation ? Wherefore these exhor- 
 tations to believe what neither the Church nor the pope can yet 
 affirm to be true ? 
 
 The fifth session accordingly took place on the 17th of June. 
 Pallavicini, as usual, after having peevishly noticed some of Fa- 
 ther Paul's mistakes, says more even than he does on the divis- 
 ions in the assembly. The following passage is extracted from 
 him word for word, it is only abridged in some places : 
 
 1 [See Note 2, page 122.] 
 
Chaf. II 1540. EVIDENCES OF DISSENSION. 127 
 
 " TIio decree on original sin was approved, notwithslaiiding 
 the opposition of Cardinal Pacheco and those who in the con- 
 gregation had desired that the exception with respect to the 
 Virgin, should be expressed in more favourable terms. Some of 
 these craved that at least silence should be imposed on the 
 partisans of the contrary opinion, either generally or only in 
 public preaching. There were some who advised that of the 
 two opinions, that in favour of the Virgin's exception was simply 
 pious ; others required that it should be declared the more pi- 
 ous of the two. The Archbishop of Sassari alleged that — 
 this decree did not please the Bishop of Cava I Not the less 
 did protests continue to be made against the title of the coun- 
 cil, «Scc.''^ 
 
 And when we reflect that all this transpired in full session, 
 in an assembly of at most sixty persons, in view of a numerous 
 pubhc, or, more properly, before the eyes of all Europe, after 
 so many private sittings, where the members might have come 
 to a common understanding, after so many exhortations on the 
 necessity of being united, and on the immense inconvenience of 
 their not being so — one may judge as to what that general agree- 
 ment was at bottom, in virtue of which they proceeded to fix the 
 faith of the Church, and to anathematize all that was not the 
 faith so constituted. 
 
 ' Pallavicini, book vii. ch. xiii. 
 
CHAPTEE III. 
 
 (1546.) •■ 
 
 SESSION VI. TROUBLES IX THE COUNCIL. EPISCOPAL RESIDENCE. 
 DECREES ON GRACE AND JUSTIFICATION. 
 
 The ambassadors — Peter Danes — Holy War — Jubilee — ^Miscalculations 
 — Alarms on the side of Trent — Projects for transferring the council 
 to another place — Victories of Charles Y. — Fresh altercations on the 
 choice of subjects — Residence — Historical view — ^The legates severe 
 at the expense of the bishops, and the bishops severe at the expense 
 of the pope — Grace — Two extremes — "What is in truth the Romish 
 doctrine — "Warm disputes — What we are to believe respecting grace 
 — Draft of the decree — Herculean task — Inconsistency and audacity 
 — Quarrel betwixt Soto and Catherini — Xo solution — Benefices — 
 Historical view — Pious donations — Origin of the quarrel about the 
 Divine right — Efforts to keep the pope out of it — Decree on residence 
 — Abuses without end — Samson's courage — Sixth Session — To be 
 still and adore. 
 
 The ambassadors of Francis I. arrived a few days after. 
 These w^ere Claude d'Urfe, Jacques de Ligneris, and Pierre 
 Danes, afterwards Bishop of Lavaur. What did they come to 
 do ? The part properly belonging to the ambassadors who at- 
 tended the council was never well defined. We behold them 
 there doing a little of everything, from la haute iwliiique, Avhich 
 never ought to have found access there, to the most insignificant 
 doctrinal squabbles, in which they protested they had no call 
 to intervene. We see them, according as their masters w^ere on 
 good or bad terms with the Court of Rome, repressing or en- 
 couraging the opposition made by their bishops. That same 
 ambassador from Spain who, a month before, hatl asked leave 
 to be present at the congregations, that he might, as he said, 
 restrain the bishops of fliat country, was the first, afterwards, to 
 excite them against the pope. We cannot blame, absolutely, 
 the presence of a diplomatic body at Trent. It was one of the 
 necessities of the moment. We Avill not accuse, either the pope 
 for having asked ambassadors, or the secular sovereigns for hav- 
 ing sent them, but if they enhanced the external lustre of the 
 council, still more did they contribute to deprive it of the very 
 appearance of what it behoved to have been, in order to its 
 commanding respect and confidence. 
 
Chap. III. 1516. PAUL III. LENDS TROOPS TO CHARLES V. 129 
 
 The Fieiicli ambassadors were adniittcd 1o the general coiipre- 
 gatioii on tlic fcith oi" July, and there expressed themselves, by the 
 mouth of Danes, with a boldness and independence that were 
 but thinly veiled by courtesy in point of forms. In reminding 
 his audience that his royal master had resisted the example and 
 sohcitations of Henry YIIL, he almost hinted that for this the 
 council and the pope ought to be extremely grateful ; then, go- 
 ing back to the early times of the French monarchy, he drew a 
 pompous picture of the services it had rendered to the Church, 
 and particularly to the popes. He quoted the humble thanks 
 with which a pope had repaid the succour and the ho.=:pitality 
 of the Kings of France ; he even advanced a fact, which has not 
 been proved, namely, that Adrian I. had recognised in Charle- 
 magne the right not only of confirming, but of naming the pope ; 
 a right which would never have been lost but ibr the renuncia- 
 tion of Louis le Debonnaire. He was allowed to speak on, but 
 the pope's friends Avere excniciated. If some of the facts which 
 this speech comprised were inexact, there were others to which 
 there could be no reply ; and all these recollections, which Rome 
 might have despised when she was at the pinnacle of her glory, 
 formed a melancholy addition to the checks which this century 
 had seen her receive. 
 
 Meanwhile the Bishop of Trent had brought to a success- 
 ful termination the negotiations begun with Cardinal Farnese. 
 Charles Y. had accepted the offered twelve thousand men, and 
 was about to open the campaign. By a secret convention the 
 pope engaged to excommunicate the King of France should he, 
 directly or indirectly, furnish any aid to the Protestants of Ger- 
 many. But while nothing was neglected on the part of Paul III. 
 to give the opening hostilities the character of a Jwly Avar, and 
 while, with this in view, he went so far as to permit the emperor 
 to appropriate the half of the ecclesiastical revenues of Spain, the 
 emperor persisted, at least in Gemiany, in denying that religion 
 had anything to do with it, as respected him. Solely intent on 
 retaining on his own side those Lutheran princes who had not 
 yet deserted him, he would say that he attacked the others only 
 as faithless and revolted vassals. Their rebellion ajrainst the 
 Church and the pope was no affair of his, and still less were the 
 council's anathemas. 
 
 Paul III. thought to shew the hand of a master in publishing 
 a jubilee ''for the success of the Cliurch and the emperor ^ 
 He thought he should thus compel the latter to avow the 
 alliance, and to advertise himself as the champion of the Church. 
 This too was in vain. Charles was not the man to put himself 
 in an inferior position. Like the pope, and in general like all the 
 
130 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 popes, all obstacles which he could not throw down, or which, 
 lor the moment, it was not convenient for him to throw down, 
 he would pass, affecting not to notice them. Eight days after 
 the celebration of the jubilee, he quietly put the Elector of Sax- 
 ony, and the Landgrave of Hesse to the ban of the empire, with- 
 out altering a word of the formularies usually employed in those 
 cases. He reproached them, it is true, among other misdeeds, 
 with laying violent hands on Church property, but without seem- 
 ing to be aware whether this had been done systematically and 
 heretic ally. 
 
 The pope's situation became daily more and more painful. 
 Not only did the undertaking not assume the character he had 
 desired, at all costs, to give to it, but his efforts caused uneasiness 
 and discontent in most of the Italian princes. Good Roman 
 Catholics, but extremely tired of the imperial tutelage, they felt 
 an interest, in spite of themselves, in the German prmces who 
 dared to think of casting it off; they could perceive that Charles 
 V. could not again become absolute in Germany without his yoke 
 becoming more hard to bear in Italy, and beheld with grief the 
 pope supplying him with the means for being so. 
 
 Is it true, as Sarpi will have it, that the ruin of the Protest- 
 ants was not the sole object of the wily pontiff^ and that he still 
 hoped to find, amid the engrossing contingencies of war, a pretext 
 for ridding himself, in an honest way, of the council ? Although 
 nothing had as yet been done for which he had any positive 
 ground of complaint, and although, besides, all due measures had 
 been taken to enable him to manage the threads of secret influ- 
 ence to the last, it was with an ever increasing anguish that he 
 felt himself watched by the eye of that hitherto benevolent rival, 
 whose sopited rights might reawake some day, under the slight- 
 est breath of wind wafted from Ratisbon or Spires. Then, too, 
 although the ability of the legates, and still more, the feeling of 
 a common interest, had succeeded hitherto in keeping off storms, 
 more than one black cloud had appeared on the horizon. " The 
 council is not free I" one bishop had exclaimed. " The coun- 
 cil," cried another, pointing to the legates, " is composed of 
 only three members I" These legates had been openly assailed 
 a hundred times ; and as the system of the responsibility of min- 
 isters was not yet admitted, either in the laws or the manners 
 of society, their master felt himself really and truly reached by 
 all the strokes directed apparently only against them. " It 
 must not be imagined," they wrote to him in confidence at the 
 time of the first session, " that the bishops here are such as we 
 are accustomed to see at Rome. They feel their importance ; 
 and they desire that it should be felt." And, in fact, although 
 
Chap. HI. 1546. INTRACTABLE SPIRITS IN THE COUNCIL. 181 
 
 the f^rcat mass of the Italians were devoted to a degree that 
 nothiii"- could shake, it was amongst them that some of the 
 most disquieting members were to be found. To such as were 
 so from the spirit of opposition, or from asperity of character, 
 were joined those who were so from conscience and from piety. 
 The most dangerous to Rome were those who honestly believed 
 in the divine authority of the council ; these it was found impo.s- 
 sible to convince, that while voting against reason and conscience 
 alike, still they were the oracles of the Holy Ghost. Add to this 
 the prospect of so many difficult, obscure, and in.soluble questions, 
 of w^iich they already had many a specimen, of so many reforms 
 that M^ere called for, and promised, yet wdiich there was no 
 disposition to grant ; and one can very easily comprehend that 
 Paul III. was burning with easfcrness to have done with it. 
 
 This, at least, was the opinion so generally entertained, that 
 nobody felt a moment's scruple in giving a corresponding inter- 
 pretation to all that he did, and said, and thought. The legates 
 had done nothing hitherto that had not been done in concert 
 with him ; when they w^ere heard alleging the near approach of 
 the armies as a reason for proposing what was known to be one 
 of his most cherished wishes — the translation of the council into 
 his own states — who could doubt that they did so by orders from 
 him ? Pallavicini positively says no, and his reasons, we must 
 admit, are good. But though he may prove tolerably well that 
 the legates acted at their own instance, he proves also, uninten- 
 tionally, that nothing but dread of the emperor had prevented 
 Paul ill. from announcing this to be his wish. Besides, to trans- 
 late the council, would, at such a crisis, have been tantamount 
 to dissolving it ; without the council, the pope could no longer 
 expect that the war which was about to commence would as- 
 sume the aspect of a war of religion. The legates, consequently, 
 were disavowed and censured ; but, says the historian, to miti- 
 gate the bitterness of this censure, word was sent them that the 
 pope would fain believe that they had not so much yielded to a 
 shameful panic, as to their excessive eagerness for the transla- 
 tion ; that meanwhile, the more honourable it was to desire it, 
 the more unseasonable was it to speak of it at that moment. 
 In fact, it was positively said that the emperor had spoken of 
 nothino- short of tossing into the Adige whoever should dare to 
 propose such a thing. They had no choice, then, but to pro- 
 rogue, for six months, the session appointed for the 29th July. 
 
 The two armies remained long enough in presence of each 
 other. If the Protestants had not had two chiefs, an untoward 
 circumstance at all times, but especially in war, they might have 
 acted on the offensive ; their united forces were for a short time 
 
132 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 decidedly superior to those of the emperor. Once, indeed, they 
 made an advance to within some leagues of Trent. The em- 
 peror had engaged to see to the safety of the council ; had they 
 pursued their advantage, could he have done that ? The council 
 might have been dispersed or captured, before he could come up 
 to its defence. They went off; having no desire, it was said, to 
 do the pope so signal a service as to rid him of it. 
 
 Notwithstanding the disagreement of the elector and the land- 
 grave, their affairs were at first tolerably successful Until the 
 end of October success was about equally divided. But, then, 
 the imperialists having invaded Saxony and Hesse, those two 
 leaders had to fly to the defence of their estates, and the em- 
 peror, almost without any fighting, found himself master of all 
 Upper Germany. Meanwhile, more eager to beat those who 
 still held out against him, than to crush those whom he had 
 beaten, he merely levied contributions in money and men from 
 the latter. Religion was left free, or almost free ; he openly 
 promised the electorate of Saxony to Duke Maurice, who was 
 devoted to Austria, but qiiite as much a Lutheran withal as the 
 prince who had been deprived of it. 
 
 Then it was that the pope opened his eyes, or, to speak more 
 correctly — for he was not the man to have had them shut — he 
 ventured at last to let the world know that they were open, He 
 recalled his troops. The emperor had the bad I'aith to complain 
 of this, and Paul, the weakness to excuse himself on the score of 
 its being impossible for him to support any longer so heavy an 
 expenditure. 
 
 We shall ere long resume the march of events. Meanwhile, 
 let us return to what was passing at Trent. 
 
 The very next day after that of the session held in June, wit- 
 nessed the revival of keen disputes and busy intrigues, about the 
 selection of the subjects to be treated in the session that was to 
 follow. The pope's divines said that after having spoken of the 
 evil, it behoved them to speak next of the remedy ; first, origin- 
 al sin, then grace. This was sound logic ; but logic, it was too 
 well known, was no more their real motive in proposing this 
 course, than the good of the Church was that of the others when 
 they persisted in rejecting everything but decrees of internal re- 
 formation. 
 
 In order to propitiate these opponents, the legates gave out 
 that the subject of grace, committed to the divines, would not be 
 long of being in a fit state to be resumed in a general congrega- 
 tion. While waiting for that, then, they might take up some 
 subjects of a different nature. The legates suggested that of resi- 
 denno, and after some difficulties it was accepted. 
 
Chap. 111. ir)4r). QL'ESTION OF EPISCOPAL RESIDENCE. 188 
 
 This question is in theory one of the simplest that can be im- 
 agined. Ought a bishop to reside within the bounds of his 
 church ? Does he do wrong when he does not reside there ? 
 Nobody ever rephed in the negative ; and tlie Christians of the 
 first ao"es of the Church would have been scandalized at the 
 mere utterance of a doubt on the subject. 
 
 In point of fact, it is otherwise. For a course of at least eight 
 centuries — for it is not threescore years since the reform in this 
 respect lias been actually in operation — the history of the Church 
 has been saddened by the complaints of the faithful on account 
 of the non-residence of their first pastors. 
 
 It were impossible, therefore, for us to attack this abuse more 
 warmly than has been done, amid the applauding shouts of the 
 people everywhere, by the most eminent men of the Roman 
 Church. Much more than this, to all that we might say, it 
 may be objected that not only mere authors, but councils, and 
 even popes themselves, have been of one mind in holding resi- 
 dence to be the law, and in censuring non-residents. What 
 then have we to do here ? And how can we reproach Koman 
 Catholicism for what it has never ordained, never approved ? 
 
 If these decrees absolve it, its owai acts condemn it. How 
 could you prove that an abuse which you find prevalent, for 
 whole centuries, everywhere, always, universally ;^ an abuse 
 which has stood out not only against the unanimous reprobation 
 of the faithful, against apparently the most stringent decrees, 
 those of the Council of Trent, as well as the constitutions of 
 Innocent III. — how could you prove that it was not profoundly 
 inherent in the Church's tendencies, and that it may at this day 
 wash its hands of it, by merely pointing to certain law^s, more or 
 less severe, intended for its repression ? 
 
 And can it be said that the regularity observed at present has 
 been the effect of those decrees and those laws ? No. This 
 abuse, like so many others, has disappeared only in consequence 
 of the timely aid of the Church's enemies. But for the Revolu- 
 tion, we see no reason to suppose that the bishops of France 
 would not have been at this day what they were in Louis the 
 Fourteenth and Louis the Fifteenth's times, when to send a bishop 
 to his diocese was, according to the approved phraseology, to 
 banish him. Without the diminution of the revenues of the 
 clergy, without the active superintendence of the civil author- 
 ity and of the press, why should we suppose that Roman Cath- 
 
 ^ " "What a sight for a Christian who traverses the Christian world ! 
 All the pastors have abandoned their flocks; all the flocks are in the 
 hands of mercenaries." — Memorial to Paul III. on the amelioration of 
 the Church, 1538. 
 
134 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 olicism would all at once have found in itself that power of 
 self-reform which it did not possess wdien it reigned without 
 control ? 
 
 As for the effects of non-residence, as little could we speak of 
 them more severely than the Roman Catholic historians have 
 done, or than the Cardinal del Monte did, when he opened the 
 discussion. He went, however, a little too far. The Reforma- 
 tion itself, according to him, was but one of the results of that 
 same abuse. Had all the bishops, said he, been at their posts, 
 heresy would not have found its way among their flocks. This 
 might have been true in some places ; but we see that the 
 bishops were not generally wanting, either in zeal or in courage, 
 from the moment they had to struggle against the Reformation. 
 It was because it is not enough that a general be at his post ; 
 he must also have troops to light with. What could scho- 
 lasticism and authority do against those soldiers of the Bible 
 who went right to the heart of the citadel ? The cardinal did as 
 many do still. Compelled to own that the Church had given 
 occasion for attacks under which it risked being destroyed, he 
 purposely exaggerated its errors and vices in discipline, with the 
 view of making people think that these formed the source of all 
 that was wrong. Then, this was a subject on which Rome 
 could be severe without condemning herself, and there were so 
 few such, that we cannot wonder at her anxiety to profit by 
 them. 
 
 The president, therefore, had sought to acquire popularity at 
 the expense of the bishops ; he forgot that the bishops had am- 
 ple materials for doing the same thing at the expense of the 
 Court of Rome and of the pope. Residence, said James Cortesi, 
 bishop of Fiesoli, I admit to have been at one time absolutely 
 necessary ; but at the present day, what use can it serve ? To 
 preserve purity of doctrine ? Why, the first monk that comes 
 may preach what doctrines he thinks fit, without the bishop 
 having any power to silence him. To check the corruption of 
 the clergy ? The most corrupt portion of them — the monks — 
 are out of their jurisdiction, and there is not a paltry priest who 
 cannot purchase, or procure the purchase, at Rome, of exemp- 
 tions, with which to screen himself from episcopal authority. 
 To exercise a stricter oversight in admitting men to the priest- 
 hood ? There are itinerant bishops sent out from Rome, Avho, 
 for ready cash, make priests of those wdiom the bishop has 
 rejected. If the bishops don't reside, it is because they have 
 nothing to do. Give them a true authority, or, rather, restore 
 that of which they ought never to have been deprived, and then 
 they will reside. 
 
Chap. III. 154G. SALVATION HY GRACE. 135 
 
 These remarks, though bitterly severe, were not the less 
 generally just. The greater number of the bishops would not 
 venture to express themselves thus ; all they durst do, and it was 
 a great deal, was to decide, that in treating of the residence of 
 the bishops, the re-establishment of their authority should also 
 be seen to. We shall have frequent occasion to revert to the 
 difficulties with which the question, thus stated, was encom- 
 passed, and which kept it for sixteen years before the council 
 before it could be brought to a conclusion. 
 
 Five-and-twenty propositions on grace, extracted from the 
 books written by Luther and other divines, were to serve the 
 purpose of fixing the limits of the field for debate. We do not 
 reproduce the discussions that followed. Without explanation 
 they would be little understood by the common reader ; to ex- 
 plain them we must defend some, and attack others, all which 
 would take us far too much out of our regular course. 
 
 In the face of a religion in which works were tending more 
 and more to be everything, Luther may possibly have failed to 
 explain, with sufficient clearness, from the very first, in what 
 sense he considered works to be nothing. " If at the com- 
 mencement," he afterwards said,i u j gpoke and wrote with 
 such asperity against Avorks, it was because Christ had been 
 hidden and obscured in the Church, and buried under a load of 
 superstitions. My desire was to liberato from this tyranny pious 
 and God-fearing souls. But never, never have I rejected works." 
 Thus, in his alarm at the consequences of a system in which 
 people seemed hardly to have any more need of a Saviour to 
 merit, to effect their salvation, he had not sufficiently kept in 
 mind that one extreme never can justify another. But if guilty 
 of exaggeration it was more in words than in ideas, and the 
 twenty-live propositions submitted to the council did not repro- 
 duce his ideas so much as his words. 
 
 Bossuet would fain prove that the reformer's exaggerations 
 had not even a pretext to excuse them. " The Roman Church," 
 says he,- " fully admits salvation by grace ; never has she 
 taught that it may be bought, paid for, by the eflbrts and the 
 works of man." He demonstrates this by some expressions in the 
 decree itself, which was to be promulgated in the sixth session. 
 
 But when Luther spoke, where was that decree ? Shall m'c 
 be told that there were others ? In fact, Ave know that several 
 councils, several popes even. Innocent III. in particular, had 
 written some fine things on the subject of justification by faith. 
 In theory, and with the pen in their hand, how could they 
 
 * Table-Talk. ^ Variations, book iii. 
 
136 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 speak otherwise ? Unless they would maintain that man could 
 save himself, and that Jesus Christ might have dispensed with 
 coming, there must always have been the necessity of abiding 
 more or less in the ideas preached by Luther. But did those 
 ideas pass into practice ? Were they to be found, we will not 
 say among the common people, with the strong tendency they 
 have, whatever doctrines they hear preached, to believe in justi- 
 fication by works, but in the ordinary instructions, in the usages, 
 in the laws, in the manners, in the ceremonies of the Church ? 
 What can be adduced from these sources that did not, in spite 
 of those few words hidden in books, lead at that time directly, 
 inevitably, to that tyranny of works from which Luther desired 
 to dehver Christendom ? But, after the council, was there any 
 change ? And supposing that the council had frankly decreed 
 that it is by works that we are to be saved, what would there 
 have been to change in the actual religion that was then to be 
 found in those countries where Roman Catholicism was all 
 powerful, in Italy, at Rome, under the eyes of the pope ? 
 
 Luther's commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, published 
 at Rome under the assumed name of Fregoso, had met with 
 great success there. ^ It had been found necessary to know who 
 the author was, in order to discover the poison wdiich the council 
 was about to analyze. But on the question of original sin, it 
 was much more easy to condemn than to say why they con- 
 demned, and still more, to come to agree as to what should be 
 put in the place of the propositions that were condemned. We 
 should find twenty pages too little for the shortest possible 
 abridgment of the opinions that were expressed in the course 
 of the discussion. Not an idea, true or false, that was not pre- 
 sented with an interminable train of scholastical divisions and 
 subdivisions ; not a single point on which there were not at 
 least two quite diflerent opinions, and as for different shades of 
 sentiment, there were almost as many as there were divines. 
 Hence endless contentions ; hence scenes in which the disputants 
 went so far as to seize each other by the beard,^ and in which 
 the dignity of the assembly was miserably frittered away and 
 disappeared. 
 
 ^ See ia Ranke how nearly, at the time of Luther's first publieatious, 
 his doctrine of justification wa? about to become that of all the learned 
 and pious Italians. Thou hast brought to the light that precious stone 
 tohich the Church kept half concealed, wrote Pole himself to Contarini, 
 afterwards cardinal, but at that time the most Lutheran of the Roman 
 Catliolics. The dread of consequences alone had led to the abandon- 
 ment of the principle. 
 
 = San Felix, bishop of Cava, and Zannetino, bishop of Chiron. Pal- 
 lavicini, b. viii. eh. vi. 
 
Chap. 111. 1546. DIFFICULTY OF THE QUESTION OF GRACE. 137 
 
 Faitlitul to their old promise of dclayinj^ to the utmost the 
 condemnation oi' tlic Lutherans, the legates lelt no uneasiness at 
 the leu'i^th ol" the disputes ; people did not seem to be sensible oi' 
 the dama<!^e thus done beiorcluind to the authority o(" the decrees 
 that were to issue from so troubled a source. However, when 
 it was seen that they could not last longer without the council's 
 being transformed into a school of angry theologues, the drawing 
 up oi" the decrees began to be seriously considered. Here, then, 
 it was for the bishops to set themselves to work ; but their pre- 
 vious embarrassments had been mere child's play compared with 
 those into which they were now about to plunge. In the ques- 
 tion of original sin, two or three points had at least remained 
 free IVoin all attempts at unsettlement ; here there was nothing 
 that was not contested, or, at least, explained so variously, that 
 the variety of forms was equivalent to a complete disagreement 
 in the essence. Grace presents one of those problems which 
 the heart can alone resolve ; the moment you Avould reduce it 
 into articles it eludes your grasp. You believe, of course, in 
 heat, in light. Try to seize, to imprison it. This you think 
 would be insanity. Do you therefore deny its existence ? I\o ; 
 that would be still greater insanity. AVell, then, believe in grace 
 as you believe in light, in heat, in life, in love. Love I what- 
 ever be the kind of love in question, if you set yourself to study 
 it as a schoolman would do, you will not find four men in a 
 thousand who agree on the definition that should be given to 
 it, or on the divisions and subdivisions to be introduced into it. 
 Leave to it its own undefined and noble amplitude, and there 
 will nowhere be found a man who, however he may deny it in 
 theory, is not compelled to open to it, under one form or another, 
 some one of the thousand entrances into his heart. 
 
 • 
 
 To the difficulty of drawing up any decree on a subject of this 
 nature there was added that of veiling the infinite diversity of 
 views that had come to light. It was not, however, proposed, 
 not at least openly, to get rid of the matter by paying no atten- 
 tion to these. Many indeed would have been delighted at this 
 being done. After what has been seen in the preceding session 
 we seem fully warranted to believe this ; but the general feeling 
 was that it was too soon to return tg that course. Besides, the 
 observations of parties beyond the council had not been wanting ; 
 the epithet most prudent had been ironically added in many a 
 pamphlet to the titles assumed by the council. In fine, as it 
 was in the course of discussions on grace that the Reformation 
 had made such an explosion, the council felt itself not in a posi- 
 tion to condemn it Avithout having fixed this first ground of doc- 
 trine. 
 
138 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 It was Cervini, cardinal of Santa Croce, the second legate, 
 who undertook this thorny and bold piece of business. A com- 
 mission, however few the members, would never have brought 
 it to a close ; it was necessary that there should be one man to 
 do it, and that a person who was not to be lightly trifled with. 
 Yet the cardinal shewed himself beyond measure kindly and com- 
 plaisant. So accessible was he to the smallest observations, so 
 ready was he to modify and change words and ideas, that you 
 would have said that he was not the president but the humble 
 clerk, writing out everything, preserving ever}-thing, elaborating 
 everything. His sole object, his sole thought, was to bring the 
 matter to a close to everybody's content, or at least so to con- 
 trive that there should be no one discontented enough to pro- 
 test. 
 
 And he succeeded, but not until the close of three fatiguing 
 months and fifty sittings, particular or general. Sarpi asserts 
 that he had seen the minutes of countless changes made by the 
 cardinal on the first draft ; he shews that the greater number of 
 those modifications tended to substitute vagueness for what was 
 positive, obscurity for clearness, and for contested points ambig- 
 uous expressions, in which the most diverse, nay, the most con- 
 tradictory opinions, as we shall yet see, might equally claim the 
 credit of having made the law. We know nothing more de- 
 plorably astute than the sixteen chapters of that decree. It pre- 
 sents one of those Herculean labours which we admire in spite 
 of ourselves, not for their intrinsic worth, but in consideration of 
 the pains, the time, the imperturbable patience of which they are 
 the fruit. But here, together with perseverance and art, what 
 incredible audacity ! "What, pretend that this decree, which has 
 cost, you three months' hard labour, and in the arrangement of 
 which you have so often felt your absolute inability to decide 
 with precision any of the points to be found in it ; this decree, 
 in which you have openly made concessions to the most opposite 
 opinions, and which, only yesterday, you held yourself quite pre- 
 pared to modify, here and there erasing or putting in, just as you 
 would do with any other piece of writing — this decree, on the 
 arrival of the session, has been read with the usual ceremony, 
 and, lo 1 it is forthwith inviolable and sacred I It will traverse 
 ages without man, angel, prophet, no, not the Son of God him- 
 self, were he to return to this world, having the power to alter 
 a word of it, seeing that would infer a disavowal of the Church, 
 to which, according to you, he himself dictated it. Nothing is 
 more curious than the sincerity with which, by way of compli- 
 ment to the council, this tedious operation has been acknowl- 
 edged, although its very length and laboriousness form, self- 
 
Chap. III. 1540. ATROCIOUS INCONSISTENCY. 139 
 
 evidently, so strong an argument against that very council's 
 authority. " It is not to be believed," says Pallaviciui,^ " with 
 what eare, with what subtlety, with what perseveranee, ever}' 
 syllable of it was weighed and discussed, first in the congrega- 
 tions of the divines, who only advisinl in the matter, and after- 
 wards in that of the fathers who had the definitive voice." " In 
 vain," says Father Biner, " would any one charge the council 
 with having treated subjects superficially Long deliber- 
 ations were often thought necessary before a single word could 
 be added, taken away, or altered." This does not prove, be it 
 remarked in passing, that there may not also have been subjects 
 that were treated with far too much haste, and we shall see that 
 there was more than one such ; but to keep to the point of view 
 thus indicated, what an imprudent apology I When called upon 
 to speak, said Jesus Christ to his apostles, " take no thought 
 beforehand what ye shall speak." This is inspiration : this is 
 infallibility. Without this we cannot have any conception of it. 
 If you required whole hours, whole days to decide upon a word, 
 who shall guarantee that by prolonging your deliberations a little 
 more you would not at last have decided in favour of some 
 other ? You prove to us the matureness of the decrees ; but 
 matureness, quite a human thing, necessarily supposes the pos- 
 sibility of a still higher degree of matureness ; the moment you 
 make it of any avail in favour of a decree, you acknowledge the 
 introduction of an element that is human, variable, fallible. If 
 not, then would you have it that God, by the medium of your 
 hand, has made those innumerable erasures. These gropings 
 in all directions — shall we say of them that it was the Holy 
 Ghost, who, before dictating his last word to you, led you dancing 
 about from error to error ? Go, after this, go and declaim against 
 the vagaries of Paganism I Never did Greece, never did Italy, 
 or India, adopt any such monstrous improbability. When the 
 Brahmin ordains anything to be believed, it is at least in the 
 name of decrees which he himself has not made, and whose 
 origin is lost in the night of time ; but to command faith, to shut 
 and to open heaven, on the strength of a law which may be 
 found in its rough draft with blots and erasures, why, this is 
 an audacity which has never been approached by the very falsest 
 religions. 
 
 The fruits of all this were not long in making their appear- 
 ance. The council had sown the wind and could expect only 
 to reap the whirlwind. " Some men speak in order to be under- 
 stood," wrote afterwards Gui de Pibrach to the Chancellor de 
 
 ^ B. viii. oil. xi. 
 
140 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. . Book II. 
 
 I'Hopital ; " these men speak that they may not be understood."^ 
 This was soon to be proved by a strange occurrence. 
 
 Shortly after the pubhcation of the decree upon grace a book 
 appeared with the title, " De JSfaticra et Gratia.'' Dominick 
 Soto, the author, was one of the council's leading divines. To 
 the council itself he dedicated his work. Before the authority 
 ot that venerable body he humbly prostrates himself in his pre- 
 face ; he speaks of the decree with profound admiration, a feeling 
 to which he was no doubt all the more alive, inasmuch as that 
 decree was partly his own work. " The book,*' he says, " will 
 be no more than a feeble commentary upon it." And, in fact, 
 there is not a page of it in which he has not the air of a man 
 who rests implicitly on the ideas and the expressions of that de- 
 cree. Never were the Scriptures themselves more respectfully 
 turned to account. 
 
 The book was read, and it suggested reflections ; it was viewed 
 with a certain feeling of anxiety. Some readers, at a great loss 
 to recognise in the commentary what they had put, or thought 
 they had put, into the text, were ready to exclaim with Socrates 
 in reference to Plato — " What things he makes us say I" Others, 
 although they leant to Soto's views, hesitated to accept from his 
 hand a victory which the council had left undecided. Not a 
 word was said on either side ; it was felt that a single word was 
 all that was required to re-open an abyss. 
 
 That word was launched by Catharini. Passing by all the 
 points on which there was scope for shifts and evasions, he went 
 straight to the one that was most susceptible of being decided 
 by a yes or a 7io. Can the just man be sure of his having grace ? 
 No had been Soto's answer, and according to him it was the 
 opinion also of the council. Yes, replied Catharini, and so, 
 according to him, had the council decreed. Which was in the 
 wrong ? Why, neither the one nor the other, for the council 
 had said neither yes nor no; b .fc both were wrong in wishing to 
 extract from the decree what both well knew not to be there. 
 Soto resumed his thesis ; Catharini returned to the charge. And 
 it was always to the council that they addressed themselves, 
 always to the council that they complained, with equal bitter- 
 ness, that its decisions were perverted from their proper sense ; 
 always to the council, in fine, each of them presented himself as 
 the true and sole defender of its infallible authority. And the 
 council held its peace, and was to do so to the last. Neither the 
 urgent appeals of the two champions, nor the solicitations of 
 some of the members, neither the visible uneasiness of all good 
 
 ' " Cum cseteri homines loquuntur \\i intelligi possint, isti nihil magis 
 vohmt quam ne intelligantur." 
 
Chap. III. 1546 DISCUSSIONS ON VARIOUS POINTS. 141 
 
 Roman Catholics, nor the jests which were current all over 
 Europe,^ nothing, in short, could prevail with it to put an end 
 to the contest by saying, once lor all, what the meaning was 
 which it wished to be attached to its decree. 
 
 But why press this ? It is a case in which, if ever, the facts 
 speak for themselves. Any ordinary assembly which should see 
 serious controversies occasioned by the vagueness of one of its 
 decisions, and should refuse to give a precise statement of its 
 bearing, would be of itself a singularity perhaps unique in his- 
 tory ; but should that assembly, at the very time that it main- 
 tained this silence, persist in holding itself out to the Christian 
 world as the regulator of its faith, it would present an instance 
 of contempt for common sense which it would be difficult to find 
 terms to describe. 
 
 Let us now resume the thread of our history. The picture of 
 dissension would be incomplete without adding that of the de- 
 bates of another kind, which had never ceased to obstruct the 
 tedious elaboration of the decree. We have seen the emperor, 
 up to the commencement of hostilities, do his best to retard the 
 condemnation of the Lutherans, with whom he did not despair 
 of coming to a settlement of differences. At the moment of his 
 marching against them he had seemed to desire that Trent should 
 have its thunders in readiness ; after vanquishing them he 
 thought his own were enough, and had begun to slacken fire. 
 As for the translation of the council, he persisted in refusing his 
 consent, and the pope, consequently, ceased to have the ap- 
 pearance of desiring it. We have seen that the legates wished 
 it ; with the conviction that the pontiff would like it as soon as 
 it was possible, all their efforts were directed to procuring the 
 consent of the emperor. Meanwhile, at Trent, they loudly opposed 
 the idea of it ; they even menaced with the pope's indignation 
 those who spoke of going away ; but their sentiments were so 
 well known, that this was a task they had to begin afresh every 
 day. Those who returned to the charge well knew whose favour 
 they were courting. 
 
 From all this there arose a medley of the most heterogeneous 
 discussions. One day there would be a meeting to discuss one 
 of the most abstruse articles of the decree on grace, but hardly 
 would the members be assembled when they would begin to 
 
 ^ The council prophesied, it was said, like Caiaphas, -who prophesied 
 without knowing what he said. And the sting of the jest lay in this, 
 that it was but the reproduction of one of the ligures employed by the 
 Bishop of Bitonto in that famous sermon in which he had tried to prove, 
 that whether it meant it or not, the council would be the organ of God. 
 
142 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book U. 
 
 debate about the chances of war, the urgent reasons for quitting 
 the city, the best means of diminishing the dearth of provisions, 
 kc. Another day, with their minds absorbed with such sub- 
 jects of anxiety and alarm, they would bravely set themselves 
 to the task of weighing the syllables of that chef-cV (Euvi'e of 
 obscurity, which they must needs terminate at some time. 
 
 Finally, and at the same time too, the decree on the residence 
 of bishops had to be elaborated. We have spoken of the diffi- 
 culties that beset the subject, and will now present some farther 
 explanations. 
 
 From the fourth or the fifth century, perhaps even earlier, the 
 practice had been introduced of ordaining priests without attach- 
 ing them to any church. Those priests received no pay ; those 
 even who belonged nominally to a church, but without perma- 
 nent residence or the discharge of ministerial functions there, 
 had no share in the revenues of their working colleagues. So 
 strictly were those revenues regarded as solely destined to the 
 men who had earned them as their wages, that the very savings 
 of a priest did not belong to him, but reverted at his death to 
 the general fund. A testament to the contraiy would have been 
 null and void, and it was even looked upon as a fraud to attempt 
 the evasion of this law by disposing of them in the way of a do- 
 nation inter vivos. ^ By little and little, in proportion as the 
 Church grew in wealth, and as its charges became dignities in 
 the worldly sense of that word, secular princes arrogated to 
 themselves the right of bestowing them as a recompense for 
 services rendered to the state or to them. Hence the name 
 of benefices {beneficia, favours), under which people came at 
 last to designate all those of which the revenues exceeded a 
 mere stipend, barely proportioned to the work performed ; hence, 
 also, the custom of leaving that work to be done by an inferior 
 minister, paying him shabbily for his trouble, and leaving the spot 
 to reside elsewhere. From the sixth to the thirteenth century, 
 ecclesiastical charges were multiplied beyond measure. Gifts 
 bestowed on the Church were generally converted into founda- 
 tions of places to be endowed ; this, in most instances, was the 
 express desire of the donors. People wished to carrj' to the 
 grave with them the assurance that a priest would be main- 
 tained, in all time, on their donations to the Church. In found- 
 ing chapels — and who, that had the ability, did not then found 
 them ? — the founders would have thought their purpose but 
 half accomplished if they did not bequeath enough of property 
 for the maintenance of one or more priests, to perform divine 
 service in them. In the greater number of cathedrals, the num- 
 * See Hurler's Institutions of the OJmrch, h. iv. 
 
Chap. HI. 1510. HISTORICAL REVIEW-PIOUS DONATIONS. 143 
 
 bor of canons far exceeded, \vc do not say the actual needs, lor 
 they could have been dispensed with altogether, but what rniglit 
 have been reasonably allotted for the external necessities of wor- 
 ship. At Rouen, at Clermont, at Saintes, and in many other 
 cities, there Avere as many as Ibrty ; at Autun, fifty ; at Toul, 
 sixty ; at Blois, eighty. The number of vicars attached to those 
 churches was generally gi'eater still : Toul cathedral had nearly a 
 hundred. Some mere parish churches were in the same case. 
 That of St. Alban, at Namur, had twenty canons and twenty 
 vicars. Campclt, a village three leagues from Paris, had also 
 twenty canons. At the commencement of the last century 
 there were about an hundred and sixty thousand priests in 
 France, four times the number at present, although the popula- 
 tion was less by a third. No laAv, in fine, regulated their dis- 
 tribution over the country. At the side of a village having a 
 complement of twenty canons, you would find another where a 
 single priest had hardly wherewithal to live.^ The donors scat- 
 tered their gifts where they pleased ; there was nothing to com- 
 pel them to take the real wants of the people into consideration. 
 Often a mere casual circumstance would enrich a church and 
 multiply its priests. A nobleman, setting oft' for war, might 
 have a sudden access of piety. Stopping at the first village 
 that ofiered itself, he would enter the church, make a vow, and, 
 if he returned safe and sound, the humble parish living would 
 become perhaps a wealthy benefice. A petty Savoyard herds- 
 man takes a fancy for entering into orders, and w^ith this in view 
 leaves his home for Avignon. At Geneva he covets a pair of 
 shoes. But how is he to pay for them, for he has nothing ? 
 " Take them," says the shoemaker, " and pay me when you are 
 a cardinal." Forty years afterwards, on the spot where once 
 stood that humble shop, a sumptuous chapel arose,- served by 
 tJiirteen priests. This was the Cardinal de Brogny's payment 
 of his debt. 
 
 Far be it from us, then, to pretend to censure, in themselves, 
 such exhibitions of a piety, sometimes very unenlightened, but 
 certainly lively and sincere. The history of pious foundations 
 teems with affecting facts, and with admirable legends ; but 
 the more these facts, each viewed apart, interest and disarm 
 you, the more occasion will you find for being surprised, if not 
 
 ' It oddly happens that one of the countries in which these whimsi- 
 cal inequalities are most preserved is a Protestant country. But what 
 is more curious still, is the declamation of Roman Cathohcism against 
 Anglican opulence and the vices of that organization. What then has 
 England done but made no change on this point from what existed 
 previous to Henry VIII. ? 
 
 ^ Called the Chapel of the Maccabees, at the side of the Cathedral. 
 
144 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 scandalized, at the abuses of all sorts which could not fail to 
 spring out of them. The greater number of the beneficiaries 
 having literally nothing to do, nothing, at least, which they 
 could not do equally well elsewhere,* it would have been absurd 
 to force them to reside on their benefices. Hence, for all others 
 as well as them, a perpetual encouragement to negligence, to 
 sloth, and to the disorders that arise from sloth. Had they all 
 been either absolutely bound to residence or absolutely released 
 from it, the evil might possibly have been less ; but from the 
 beneficiary without functions, to the parish priest burdened with 
 ministerial duties, there was a multitude of degrees, none of 
 w^iich was far enough removed from its neighbour for non-resi- 
 dence, when once established with respect to the one, not to 
 estabhsh itself in the other also. In fine, notwithstanding the 
 severity of general rules, made or renewed from time to time by 
 councils and popes, there ceased to be any benefices in which 
 exemption from obligation to residence, might not be either 
 taken at once, or procured. The bishops, in particular, an-o- 
 gated for themselves full liberty in this respect, and their in- 
 dulo-ence for themselves forced them to wink at all disorders of 
 
 c 
 
 the same sort. 
 
 Of one mind in acknowledging that here there was an evil, 
 and a great evil too, the members of the council ere long fell out 
 among themselves when a remedy had to be sought for, and the 
 nature of that remedy determined. 
 
 Is residence a matter of divine or only of ecclesiastical obliga- 
 tion ? In other terms, when a bishop dispenses with residence in 
 his own case, does he disobey God or the pope ? And if it be with 
 the papal sanction, can he be considered as guilty towards God ? 
 
 Here we have another of those questions the very statement 
 of which is of itself an indictment against the Church in which 
 they could have possibly occurred. That a pastor called to pre- 
 side over a flock might forsake it without sinning against God, 
 or that, after having obtained authorization to do so from a man, 
 he should be, before God, free from blame, is an opinion which 
 the primitive Christians would not even have condemned as an 
 error. He who could have entertained it, would have seemed 
 rather to be pitied as having lost his senses, than held guilty of 
 a heresy. 
 
 At Trent, not only was this opinion announced, but it found 
 warm defenders. 
 
 Their adversaries, to say the truth, did not well know what 
 to adduce in reply. Often the plainer a truth is, the more diffi- 
 
 ^ Many were bound to nothing but reading the Breviary, and dis- 
 pensations might be obtained even from that. 
 
Chap. HI. 154G. RESIDENCE OF BISHOPS. U5 
 
 cult it is to demonstrate it in set phrases. Were we to be asked 
 why we think that a priest oiiends God, directly God, and not 
 the pope or God in the pope, when he abandons his Church and 
 keeps his revenues, in truth we should not know what to reply. 
 AVe should say that there can be no doubt about it ; that the 
 plainest common sense sufficiently demonstrates it ;' but as for 
 arguments and proofs, to what quarter could we go for them? 
 At the most we might quote St. Paul, " Take heed to the flock 
 over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers;"^ or St. 
 Peter, " Feed the flock of God which is among you ;"2 still we 
 might possibly meet with the reply, on the latter text, that, see- 
 ing it is from St. Peter, it ought rather to prove the papal right. 
 Such, in fact, was the drift of the reasoning adopted at Trent by 
 the partisans of the opinion that was cherished by the popes. One 
 might have been able, without going beyond that same chapter, 
 to defy them to shew a single word in it where Peter speaks 
 with the air of a chief speaking of his own authority. "The 
 elders," says he, " which are among you I exhort, who also ajn 
 an elder. Feed the flock of God, and when the Chief Shepherd 
 shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not 
 away." But how shall we think to convince by proofs from 
 Scripture men who have so far rid themselves of respect for its 
 authority as to build up the system on which they are fool-hardy 
 enough to lean? "The episcopate," said some, "is of divine 
 institution, only hi the person of the pope ; among all other 
 bishops, consequently, it is of papal institution. Suice it per- 
 tains to the pope to assign to them the number of sheep they 
 have to feed, it is for him also to prescribe the manner ; and 
 seeing that he may, if he shall think fit, deprive them of the 
 power, may he not also permit them to abstain from exercising 
 it?" Then, is not this the case? — should a pope think fit to 
 consider himself, as, literally, the sole necessary bishop, to dis- 
 miss all others, and to extinguish with them the whole inferior 
 clergy, so as to remain sole and only pastor of all the K-oman 
 Catholic parishes in the world, would he not have the right to 
 do so ? It is absurd, but it is logical ; and we have already seen 
 whether these words are not often synonymous when people 
 would press the consequences of the Roman system. 
 
 Now, this absolute concentration in the hands of the pope of 
 all the powers of the Church is, although many Roman Catholics 
 are ignorant of it or conceal it — the Roman system, is the pure 
 and invariable ultramontane doctrine, that of the court of Rome, 
 that of the popes. This we shall ere long prove, and to do so 
 we shall only have to leave those divines and bishops to speak 
 ' Acts XX. = 1 Pet. V. 
 
 G 
 
146 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Uook H. 
 
 who were regarded, at Trent, as the pope's procurators — the 
 avowed representatives of the papal doctrines. 
 
 Meanwhile the dispute became envenomed. The legates saw 
 that the moment had arrived wdien the authority itself of the 
 Holy See, in so far as it is the source of the episcopal power, 
 was about to be questioned ; and of all the posts they had to 
 defend there was none worse than this. '• We shall return to 
 that," they said; "let us proceed to what is more urgent." 
 Thev did return to it, in fact, but at the end of fifteen years, 
 quite at the close of the council, and the storm was only all the 
 more violent. 
 
 The pope being thus put out of the discussion, the sound part 
 of the council could hardly have any farther confidence in the 
 efficacy of what was about to be laid down as the law in these 
 matters. Of what use was it to prescribe residence, as long as 
 the Court of Rome should be free to exempt whomsoever it 
 pleased from the operation of the law, or to shut its eyes on all 
 contraventions ? The course taken was that of laying dowai the 
 rules, without disquieting themselves, and, above all, without 
 appearing to disquiet themselves about future consequences. 
 Those rules, besides, were by no means hard. The prelate w^ho 
 Avithout sufficient reason should remain six months continuously 
 absent from his diocese, was to lose the fourth part of his rev- 
 enues ; an absence of a year was to infer deprivation of the half. 
 Nothing more easy, therefore, than to keep within the rule, and 
 yet be absent nearly all the year ; the bishop had only to reside 
 one month in six, or even one month in twelve, provided that 
 month was laid out in two fortnights properly placed. Then, 
 who was to deprive a delinquent of the quarter or half revenue 
 he might forfeit ? The metropolitan ? It is doubtful whether 
 he w^ould be disposed to do so, and, were he disposed, whether 
 he would have the power. The pope ? But, according to the 
 terms of the decree, the affair ought not to reach the pope until it 
 had passed the hands of the metropolitan. And if it be the 
 latter who offends, where then will the sanction be ? This is 
 all evident ; it would have availed as much to have said nothing, 
 and to have done nothing. Had all the members of the council 
 been profoundly desirous of remedying the evil, what could they 
 have done ? They had their hands tied and their tongues also ; 
 for if individually free, up to a certain point, to say all that they 
 thought, as a body they were not so. They were bid to look at 
 abysses on all sides ; " Take care," they were told, " if the pope 
 should tumble into one of these, you will tumble in along with 
 him I" And it was all true. In order to correct the abuses of 
 which we have spoken, they could only betake themselves, in 
 
Chap. III. 1546. CONSTANT INCREASE OF THE POPE'S POWER 147 
 
 the last resort, to the very power which had been their first and 
 permanent cause ; and as ibr those grand ideas of order, piety, 
 morahty, duty, which alone could have formed an adequate 
 barrier against like disorders, it would not have been possible 
 seriously to appeal to these without engaging in a contest with 
 him whose will, it was thought desirable, should hold the place 
 of all laws, and exclusively determine all duties. 
 
 Non-residence accordingly was, on the whole, rather facilitated 
 than interdicted, inasmuch as the law furnished bishops with 
 the means of reducing it to rules. Henceforward, how could 
 they be reckoned on in compelling the holders of inferior bene- 
 fices to reside ? It was decided, however, that they should, not 
 as bishops, but as the delegates of the pope, have a certain 
 authority over those even who had or might have pontifical 
 dispensations. Those dispensations they behoved to verify, to 
 see also that the absentee had provided a suitable substitute, that 
 this substitute had a suitable salary, kc. Excellent measures 
 these in detail, but which ended only, in point of legal principle 
 {droit), in the confirmation of the papal omnipotence, since 
 bishops could only give a regular execution to the dispensations, 
 but could neither reject nor annul them. It was also decided 
 that no bishop could ordain priests in another's diocese without 
 that other bishop's sanction ; finally, that every bishop should, for 
 the future, notwithstanding any contrary usage or even any 
 exemption that might have been granted, have the inspection 
 and the direction of the chapter of his cathedral church. This 
 last article presented, of itself, the measure of excess into which 
 the abuse of dispensations had fallen. What could we suppose 
 the position of a bishop to be in the face of a body created of old 
 to serve as his council, and transformed, by the will of the pope, 
 into an independent and rival power ? It was enough to drive 
 out of his diocese any bishop that hated bickerings and intrigues. 
 
 Such, nevertheless, was the point now reached, even in spite 
 of the episcopal body, by the Roman system when left to itself 
 and to its own encroaching tendencies. There had not been in 
 the Homan Church a single struggle, a single. innovation, a 
 single decree, which had not ended at last, directly or indirectly, 
 in the extension of the pope's authority. As lor the public 
 advantage and the salvation of souls, these were as little thought 
 of as if the whole concern had been some vast industrial enter- 
 prise ; there was not even the affectation of these objects being 
 cared for. See with what keenness, in this very session, the 
 Italians made residence an affair of papal right. This was very 
 impolitic, it seems, and very imprudent ; it involved the trans- 
 ference to the pope's shoulders of all the disorders and all the 
 
148 HISTORV OF THE (JUUJNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 evils arising frbm non-residence, and of which the legates them- 
 selves had, at the opening of the council, drawn so frightful a 
 picture. Well, strange to say, this danger did not disquiet them 
 in the least. Provided the question of right was settled, they 
 did not mind what reproaches might arise from matters of fact. 
 Little 'cared they though the court of Rome were accused of 
 having ruined the Church, by pushing the abuse of dispensations 
 to its very utmost verge, provided it should become the standing 
 law that of these dispensations she was to be sole arbitress, and 
 that it should depend only on herself, should she see fit, to do as 
 much in time to come as had been done in time past. Then, 
 even had they desired it, how could they break with that past 
 accumulation of abuses and disorders ? Often had the council 
 allowed an intention of doing so to escape ; but we should greatly 
 err were we to suppose that the members were diverted from that 
 intention only by the resistance made by the pope and by the 
 skilful management of his agents. Not a step could be taken in 
 that direction without making the council press against one of 
 the supporting pillars of the edifice, and all men have not the 
 courage of Sampson. 
 
 After so many months spent in trying to come to a common 
 understanding, the contending parties were still so far from this, 
 that the public sitting (Session YL, 13th January, 1547) wit- 
 nessed the recommencement of the debate on residence ; the 
 decree, a circumstance which had not occurred before, could not 
 be admitted. " The voting slips," says Pallavicini,^ " were 
 covered with so many conflicting remarks, that it was found 
 impossible then to decide anything ; the legates reserved to them- 
 selves the power of examining these, and of determining the 
 result according to the views of the majority in a general con- 
 gregation." This congregation did not meet until the 25th of 
 February, and as the decree had in the interval undergone sev- 
 eral modifications, we do not see how it could have been legally 
 maintained at the 13th of January, which is the date it bears in 
 all the collections. 2 
 
 As for the decree on grace, it had passed without opposition. 
 
 ^ Book viii. ch. xviii. 
 
 2 Had we any wish to engage in disputes about forms, we should 
 find plenty of them on this occasion. Thus, for example, in the deci*ee 
 of the first session, no mention is made of the legates ; and in that of the 
 second, it is said — "Under the presidency of the same three legates." 
 This could not have been a slip of the memory ; it is evident that there 
 had been a wish to evade, at the commencement, the serious question 
 of the presidency, and to resolve it afterwards by assuming it as a past 
 fact. The same irregularity reappears in the 12th session, at the re- 
 sumption of the council in 1551. In strict justice, the act should be 
 null. 
 
Chap. HI. 1540. THE DECREE ON GRACE. 149 
 
 " Tnily it was on that day," says Pallavicini, " that the council 
 might glorify itself on the most sublime of its works, lor that 
 was the first day ou which the Church, enlightened by the Holy 
 Ghost, taught fully to man the sequel of his origin and the true 
 l)roperty of his nature." Between what the historian tells us of 
 the interminable labours attending the birth of this decree, and 
 all that he is afterwards compelled to say about the obscurities 
 that were allowed to remain in it, what are we to think of these 
 words ? Is this sarcasm, or is it falsehood ? It is neither. 
 Pallavicini does not lie ; still less does he sneer. The decree is 
 passed. He submits to it. The statue, after six months' efforts, 
 has reached the altar : what did it signify to him in what man- 
 ner, or of what metal, it had been made ? It is there, and so 
 lie falls down and worships. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 (1547.) 
 
 SESSION VII. CANONS AND DECREES ON THE SACRAMENTS. PLU- 
 RALITIES. GOVERNMENT OF CATHEDRALS. 
 
 Question of the Sacraments — ^The number seven — Historical and dog- 
 matical difficulties— Oddities— Omnia a CAres^o instituted— How this 
 decree was twisted — The sacraments — Their necessity — Inaccuracies 
 and sophisms — Intention necessary — Occasions or causes of grace — 
 "Warm disputes — What does the Roman Church really teach? — The 
 intention of the priest— Objections — What is to be done? — Baptism 
 — Baptism of heretics— Holy Chrism — Confirmation — Historical view 
 — Anathemas — Whose province it is to confirm — Receiving the holy 
 Chrism — Gratuitously — Historical view — Sad realities — Twenty- 
 seven anathemas — AVater of baptism — Human arrangements — Plu- 
 ralities — Historical view — Unions and commendams — The pope, 
 always the pope — The eleven articles of the Spanish prelates — 
 Reference to the pope — Replies — Salva semper — Results — Roman 
 immutability. 
 
 The seventh session was fixed for the 3d of March, 1547 ; 
 the council then had two months before it. It had been previ- 
 ously resolved that the order to be followed should be as much 
 as possible that which appears in the Confession of Augsburg ; 
 but as this course would have led them to treat next of the 
 Church and its authority, points which many were fain to treat, 
 but more were afraid to touch, the legates contrived to have it 
 decided that they should be passed over. 
 
 This then brought them to the grand question of the sacra- 
 ments. Cardinal Santa Croce undertook the charge of the 
 congregations in which the subject was to be discussed in its 
 doctrinal aspect, and Cardinal del Monte those which were to 
 take up the disciplinary questions attached to it. But notwith- 
 standing the novehy and the interest of the subject, the legates 
 found if beyond their power to divert a great many bishops from 
 proposing that the question of residence sliould be discussed con- 
 currently. " Declare it to be of divine right," said the Spaniards, 
 " and there will no longer be any need for entering into so many 
 details, and removing so many obstacles. It will speak sufH- 
 ciently for itself" They were not mistaken, but this was pre- 
 cisely what their opponents were resolved not 1o have at any 
 
Chap. IV. 1547. NUMBER OF THE SACRAMENTS. 151 
 
 price. To declare openly that it was not a matter of papal 
 right, all well; but that it was of divine right, never. Cardinal 
 del Monte began by representing that they should at least leave 
 time for the passions to cool ; next, as they still pressed the 
 matter, he had recourse to what cut all knots : he told them that 
 the pope did not wish them to take that side of the question. 
 It was decided, nevertheless, that the examination of the causes 
 of non-residence should be continued, and that the plurality of 
 benefices in particular should be discussed. 
 
 How many sacraments are there ? This is what had, first of" 
 all, to be determined. 
 
 When the E-oman Catholics of our day tell us that there are 
 seven, they do so with so much confidence that one could hardly 
 think it possible that this was still an open question three cen- 
 turies ago. They themselves, for the most part, suspect this less 
 than any one. They have not the most distant idea that it has 
 not been recognised and taught in their Church since its founda- 
 tion, and it is with the most perfect good faith that they ask how 
 any man can be bold enough to attack that venerated number. 
 
 True it is, that the number seven had then for a long time 
 been generally acknowledged. But although admitted at the 
 council of Florence, this was still an opinion only, not a dogma ; 
 and when it was seriously proposed to make it a dogma, the sub- 
 ject was beset with uncertainties. 
 
 First of all, it was found impossible to justify by Scripture, 
 not only the number seven, but the existence even of such or 
 such an one of the seven. This we shall have occasion to dem- 
 onstrate ere long. 
 
 In the second place — a still more serious matter for the Ro- 
 man divines — it was found impossible to discover anything at 
 all settled among the Fathers on this point. In Augustine, for 
 example, the word sacrament is sometimes used in the sense of 
 sacred thing, and applied to all the Church's ceremonies; some- 
 times it is restricted,^ as among Protestants, to baptism and the 
 Lord's supper. St. Ambrose, under the general title, De Sacra- 
 nientis, speaks also of those two only. This number, two, occurs, 
 once and again, even in the waitings of St. Thomas (Aquinas).-^ 
 " As Eve," he says, " was taken from Adam's side, so from the 
 pierced side of Jesus Christ have proceeded the two sacraments 
 that form the Church ;" that is to say, according to the explana- 
 tion which he adds. Baptism represented by the water, and the 
 Supper represented by the blood. In St. Bernard also, the mean- 
 ing of the word is so far from, fixed, that we see it applied to the 
 act known in the Roman Church under the Xqith foot-washing. 
 
 ' Christian Doctrine, iii. 0. - Questions 62, o; G6, 3. 
 
/ 
 
 y 
 
 152 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 After this we should hke to know how the Roman Catechisna 
 could venture to say that the number seven has come ''from 
 the tradition of the Father sT^ 
 
 That same catechism might, on this subject, furnish us with 
 a curious specimen of exegesis. " The Latin Fathers," it tells 
 us, " have employed this word in the same meaning with that of 
 mystery^ as employed by the Greeks. It is thus that St. Paul 
 employs it in those words (Eph. i.) : ' Having onade hnoivn 
 unto us the sacrament of Ids tcill ;' and in these (1 Tim. iii.), 
 ' Great is the sacrament of godliness.''' And the explanation 
 continues. Now, in the Greek text the word is mystery. Thus, 
 the catechism begins by putting sacrament for mystery, and 
 reasons, then, as if St. Paul had Avritten sacrame^it. It is true 
 that it is the Yulgate that has made the change, and, of course, 
 after that, all error is impossible. 
 
 The best proof of the vagueness and uncertainty that still pre- 
 vailed on the subject, is to be seen in the discussions that took 
 place. Several divines proposed that the simple enumeration 
 of the sacraments should be thought enough, without saying 
 whether they were seven, or naore, or fewer. They remarked, 
 that by following any other course, the council could hardly 
 dispense with defining what was meant by the general term 
 sacrament, and this would be found a very knotty undertaking 
 as soon as two or at the most three were admitted. In fact, if 
 the definition be made wide enough to comprise things so dif- 
 ferent as marriage and holy orders, it is impossible that it should 
 not comprise also things which the Church does not call sacra- 
 ments, as, for example, monastic vows. The schoolmen had 
 tried to provide for this. The sacraments, they said, confer 
 grace ex opere operato ; the vow^s confer it e.v ojoere operantis? 
 A poor subtlety, manifestly contrived to meet the emergency, by 
 justifying the exclusion of the vows and the number seven, but 
 which could n*. stand for a moment before evident reason and 
 common sense. 
 
 Here, then, lay the difficulty which frightened many of the 
 divines. But among these, as well as among the bishops, there 
 were many who longed to see the matter set at rest. They held 
 the dignity of the Church and of the council to be interested in 
 it ; nor were they mistaken. If there were really seven sacra- 
 ments, it was very strange that the Church should have allowed 
 fifteen centuries to pass without teaching this to the faithful. 
 They behoved, therefore, to bring the matter to a conclusion. 
 Next, had they not already the seven cardinal virtues, the seven 
 
 * Patrum traditione ad nos pervenit. 
 
 ^ By the work done — By the "work of liim Avho <loo'-. it. 
 
Chap. IV. 1547. REASONS ADDUCED FOR THE NUMBER SEVEN. 153 
 
 capital sins, the seven days of the week, the seven planets, the 
 seven candlesticks of the Apocalypse, which had been so felici- 
 tously taken advantage of in the golden bull, for fixing at seven 
 the number of the electors in the empire — without reckoning 
 the mysterious anciently acknowledged excellence of that num- 
 ber in itself? "Being certain," says Pallavicini,' "that God 
 is an infinite wisdom, that no rea.son, no fitness, however subtle, 
 can present itself to us before having first presented itself to him, 
 we need be under no apprehension, that in the interpretation of 
 his works and of his words, it may be with us, as it was with 
 Plutarch, when he found in Homer's verses so many mysterious 
 meanings of which that author had never dreamt." It is evi- 
 dent, then, according to this grave historian, that in conceiving 
 the most uncouth idea, a man may always say to himself, " God 
 has had it before it suggested itself to me." This is truly a 
 novel way of understanding the injiiiite wisdom of God. Te- 
 merity for temerity, we should prefer that of Luther when he 
 said, with unaflected simplicity, " We doctors say such subtle 
 things, that God himself is astonished at them !" 
 
 It was not thought fit, however, to insert any of these fine 
 reasons in the decree ; and as there were no others for holding to 
 the number seven, none were inserted at all. "If any one shall 
 maintain that there are more or fewer than seven sacraments, 
 let him be anathema. "^ The Roman Catechism is less laconic. 
 " Seven things," it says, " are necessary to man in order to his 
 living and preserving life. He must be born, he must grow, 
 he must take food, he must use remedies for the recovery of his 
 health when he has lost it, he must regain his strength when 
 his energies are weakened, he must have magistrates to govern 
 him, he must by means of lawful children perpetuate the human 
 race. All these having corresponding points in the life by which 
 the soul lives to God, one may easily deduce from them what 
 ought to be the number of the sacraments. By baptism, we are 
 born anew in Jesus Christ ; by confirmation, divine grace makes 
 us grow and strengthens us ; by the Eucharist, our soul is fed 
 and sustained ; by penance, we are cured of the plagues caused 
 by sin in our souls," &:c. Mark that this odd catalogue has not 
 even the merit of being complete, and it is the only merit that 
 anything so extremely silly can have. Sleep is far more univer- 
 sally necessary to life than the use of cordials or of remedies. 
 What sacrament shall be made to correspond with sleep ? And 
 yet it is not as a figure of rhetoric that the catechism employs, 
 
 ^ Book ix. ch. iv. 
 
 ^ Si quis dixerit sacramenta esse plura vel pauciora qiiam septem 
 .... anathema sit. 
 
 G* 
 
154 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 and counsels the employment of such reasoning. It gives it as 
 a good reason;^ and the French translation of 1844 is still more 
 expUcit, " In order to shew the faithful that there are seven 
 sacraments, neither more nor less, pastors may employ this rea- 
 soning, luhich is very fit for convincing them of it'' We may 
 be allowed to suppose, that before reasonable people, they, on 
 the contrary, take good care not to employ it. 
 
 Here, then, we have seven sacraments, and now who has in- 
 stituted them ? 
 
 To say that such or such an one was instituted by Jesus 
 Christ, would be to admit that others were not instituted by 
 him, and by doing so, to assign to them an inferior rank. "What 
 was to be done ? Nothing more simple : they must all be at- 
 tributed to Jesus Christ. 
 
 This was to trifle with tradition quite as much as with Scrip- 
 ture. Hitherto, in fact, nothing but baptism and the supper had 
 been regarded universally as instituted by the Saviour. For 
 all the rest, people had seldom gone farther than the Apostles. 
 Many Roman Catholics, and those among the best, did not even 
 go so far, at least for one or two of them ; many left marriage 
 expressly out, not that they denied it a place among the sacra- 
 ments, but because it seemed by no means natural to attribute 
 to Jesus Christ, what he spoke of so often without anywise at- 
 tributing it to himself All this was said ; but it was one of 
 those moments with the council when the wind of omnipotence 
 seemed to have turned the heads of all the members. They 
 would have been terrified at the least exception, as it might ap- 
 pear to be a triumph conceded to the Lutherans. They gave 
 no reasons, and entered into no details : anathema to whosoever 
 should deny that all the sacraments were instituted by Jesus 
 Christ ; and it was even with this that the decree was to open, 
 " Si quis dixerit sacramenta non fuisse omnia a Christo mstituta 
 — anathema sit." 
 
 In spite of the anathema, it was found necessary to find some 
 means of mitigating a little the palpable falseness of the decree. 
 Even as early as in the oath of the bishops, drawn up by Pius IV. 
 immediately after the close of the council, the word all is left out. 
 " I acknowledge that there are seven sacraments, instituted by 
 Jesus Christ." The sense is the same, but already the assertion 
 is a httle less formal. From this time forth it has been inter- 
 preted generally by saying, that the sacraments were all, indeed, 
 instituted by Jesus Christ, but some immediately, that is to say, 
 from his own mouth, the rest mediately, that is to say, by the 
 Apostles or by the Church, under an inspiration derived from 
 
 ^ Probabilis ratio. 
 
Chap. IV. 1547. NECESSITY OF THE SACRAMENTS. 165 
 
 him. 11" tliis is not more true, it is assuredly more reasonable ; 
 what is certain is, that it is not in the decree, and that if the 
 council, foreseeing this interpretation, had wished, on the con- 
 trary, to proscribe it, it could not have expressed itself more 
 clearly than it has (ione. Yet listen to what Bossuct says, 
 " The divine institution of the Sacraments appears in the Scrip- 
 ture, either by the express words of Jesus Christ who established 
 them, or by the grace which, according to the same Scripture, is 
 attached to them, and which necessarily marks an order from 
 God."i After this, if Claude and Juricu were wrong in accus- 
 ing Bossuet of having made the decrees of Trent suit his own 
 purposes, we must give up insisting that black and white are 
 not the same colour. To bring this subject to a close, Ave have 
 still one word, one only word to say, but we defy any man to 
 gainsay it ; it is this, that a reader altogether ignorant as yet of 
 Christian doctrines, and who should look for them in the decrees 
 of the council, never could avoid the conclusion, and would be- 
 lieve without any kind of hesitation, that all the sacraments 
 were positively instituted by Jesus Christ — being what Bossuet 
 and what all the Roman Catholic doctors of the present day 
 admit to be false. 
 
 As it was thought a matter of principal importance to give 
 expression to nothing but absolute decisions, where the authority 
 of the form might supplement whatever was wanting in the 
 principle, the council were sufficiently embarrassed at first on 
 the great question of the use of the sacraments, and, in particular, 
 of their necessity. Not that too many bishops were not quite 
 ready to say, without disquieting themselves about reasons or 
 consequences, that the sacraments are necessary ; but it was re- 
 plied that there is none of them that is so in the same manner 
 with the rest. Baptism had been declared indispensable to sal- 
 vation ; and whatever opinion might be formed of the excellence 
 of the others, it was evidently the only one of which this could 
 be thought. An infant dying immediately after baptism, a 
 Christian living far from any church, in a desert island, or among 
 heathens, never had been regarded as lost, even although they 
 had never participated in six out of the seven sacraments. On 
 the other hand, the Protestants had never maintained that the 
 sacraments which they admitted, were not necessary in the sense 
 of there being no impropriety in abolishing them ; they only 
 maintained that they were not the necessary and indispensable 
 channels of saving grace. But Luther had said, " The sacra- 
 ments are not iiecessary ;'' and this was enough for the council 
 to think itself obliged to say that they are necessary. Notwith- 
 ' Expedition de \sx foi catholique. oh. ix. 
 
156 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 standing the remonstrances of the most sensible of the divines, 
 the article passed. " Anathema to whosoever shall maintain 
 that the sacraments are not necessary, hut su^erfiiwusy^ A 
 mere play upon words. Betwixt indispensable and superfluous 
 there is a middle point, which the Protestants have constantly 
 maintained. On whom and on what, then, did this anathema 
 fall ? Besides, can it be logically correct to range under the 
 same epithet, things that receive it in a different sense ? The 
 sacraments are necessary, says the decree. But necessary ap- 
 plied to baptism, and necessary applied to the supper, and to 
 marriage, are, in reahty, two different words. The decree adds, 
 that " all are not necessary to all men;'"^ an elucidation which 
 is only an additional obscurity. If necessary, in that part of the 
 phrase, means 'hidispensable, it ought not to have been said that 
 " all are not necessary to all," but that one alone, baptism, is 
 universally necessary. If it be something else than indispens- 
 able, still baptism ought to have been mentioned apart, and the 
 assertion, that " all are not necessary to all," could apply only 
 to the other six. To get rid of these uncertainties, it has been 
 suggested that the decree should be understood as merely teach- 
 ing, " that it is necessary there should be sacraments." Strictly 
 speaking, this is not in opposition with the text ; but the simpler 
 this last proposition, the more must it be admitted that the text 
 is confused. But is even this proposition clear ? It is suscep- 
 tible of two meanings. Do you mean to say that it is good, 
 useful, excellent, that there should be sacraments ? The Prot- 
 estants have never said the contrar}\ Mean you to say that 
 we must absolutely have them? Then, what know you of 
 that ? Who has told you that God may not save by quite other 
 means ? And what do you make of so many passages of Scrip- 
 ture, in which salvation is promised either to faith or to works 
 emanating from faith, without any mention of the sacraments ? 
 In the hypothesis of their absolute necessity, the omission is 
 inexplicable. 
 
 Still further to augment this indistinctness, there has been 
 added an old scholastical distinction between necessity of fact 
 and necessity of intention.^ Thus, for example, extreme unction 
 is to be held as necessary, not in this sense, that it must abso- 
 lutely have been received in order to a man's dying in a state of 
 grace, but in this sense, that he must have desired it. And if 
 Eome have died in a state of grace without having desired it, with- 
 
 ^ Si qiiis dixerit sacramenta non esse ad salutem necessaria sed su- 
 perflua. . . . anathema sit. 
 
 2 Licet omnia singulis necessaria non sint. 
 ^ Si quis dixerit sine eis aiit eonim voto. 
 
Chap. IV. 1547. OPERATION OF THE SACRAMENTS. 157 
 
 out even having thought of it, w^ithout having so much as ever 
 heard it mentioned, it vi^as because they were in such a state of 
 mind that they vi^ould have desired it had they know^n of it, or 
 had they thought of it. Reduced to such proportions, the ne- 
 cessity of the sacraments ends at last in hecoming something 
 altogether reasonable ; but then all the more unreasonable is it, 
 to have called that necessary which turns out to be so lar from 
 necessary. It is, besides, inconsistent with the absolute neces- 
 sity of baptism. Those infants who have not the happiness to 
 receive it would most certainly desire it, if they knew of it. If, 
 then, this last proposition is well founded, why exclude them 
 from heaven only because of their not having received it ? And 
 if that sacrament be an exception, why does the council con- 
 tinue to speak of all of them at once ? 
 
 These are criticisms that may be made by anybody. Although 
 we were to receive this decree as true, it strikes us that still we 
 should find it singularly ill drawn up ; the more we cleaved to 
 its doctrines, the more annoyed should we be at .so faulty 
 an exposition of them. Many other decrees are in this case. 
 We shall give here and there some specimens of such. 
 
 It had yet to be decided, in fine, how the sacraments take 
 effect. Are they the occasions of grace or the causes of grace ? 
 Or, have they any virtue independent of the sentiments of the 
 recipient ? 
 
 Common sense says, no ; so also does the Scripture. This we 
 shall ere long demonstrate with respect to each of them. Un- 
 fortunately, after what had been already voted on the influence 
 of baptism, it was hardly any longer possible to abide by either 
 common sense or Scripture. If baptism works such a marvellous 
 result upon a babe, who can have no idea of what it is, nor can 
 in any way accept it, it is, in fact, not easy to admit that the 
 other sacraments have not, of themselves, by the fact of their 
 having been received, opeix operato, any influence whatever. 
 If the babe has been saved by a ceremony in which it has not 
 taken, and could not take, any part whatever, wherefore should 
 the dying and unconscious invalid not be saved by a ceremony 
 to which he remains a stranger ? It is thus that one error 
 leads on to another. What had been pronounced to hold true 
 with respect to an infant, had to be repeated with respect to the 
 sacraments in general. They were proclaimed, therefore, to be 
 causes of grace. * 
 
 And now, how were they to be said to be so ? This was 
 another question which could not be forgotten. Upon this there 
 flared up among the divines one of the fiercest disputes that the 
 council had yet witnessed. Some maintained that the sacra- 
 
158 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 ments are only physical and instrumental causes of grace, which 
 amounted to this, for example, that the good effects of com- 
 munion in a soul are essentially connected with the act itself 
 of receiving and swallowing a wafer. The rest, more reason- 
 able, said, that a spiritual effect cannot depend on a physical 
 cause ; that hence the efficacy of the sacraments arises from 
 this, that God has engaged to operate on the soul within, ever\^ 
 time that such or such a material act shall have taken place 
 without. The latter, not without reason, were charged with 
 being Lutherans ; the former were charged by the Lutherans 
 with teaching an absurdity ; and as for us, we are compelled to 
 add, that this absurdity is the thing that best agrees with the 
 totality of Roman doctrines and usages. With Roman doctrines, 
 as a whole, we say, for one does not see to what, if not to this, 
 we are led by the eighth canon, which rans thus : " If any one 
 says that the sacraments do not confer grace of themselves 
 ex opere operato — let him be anathema. "^ With the Roman 
 usages, as a whole, we further say — for the adoration of the wa- 
 fer, the character so profoundly sacred attributed to the chrism, 
 endless minute ceremonies employed in the administration of the 
 sacraments, everything in fine sanctions the belief, whatever 
 attempts there may have been at times to deny it — that the 
 Roman Church ascribes, or allows its members to ascribe, a 
 certain direct action on the human soul to thinsfs that are alto- 
 gether and purely material. 
 
 Be this as it may, so keen was the contention, that the legates 
 complained to the chiefs of the monastic orders, of the want of 
 moderation exhibited by their members ; they even wrote to the 
 pope that something must be done in order to keep them down. 
 But how ? They could not be dispensed with ; and it cannot 
 be wondered at that, on the strength of their seeing this, they 
 permitted themselves, from time to time, to fancy that they were 
 not only the assessors of a council, but a council itself. 
 
 After divers discussions more or less futile, the council pro- 
 ceeded to ask, up to what point is the intention of the priest 
 necessary to the validity of the sacrament which he has admin- 
 istered ? " The smallest mistake, even thousfh made involun- 
 tarily," a pope had said,^ " nullifies the whole act." The coun- 
 cil of Florence had pronounced the same opinion, and it was a 
 link which people durst not break ; but they took fright at the 
 consequences. They were, indeed, frightful. Let an infidel, or 
 a dreamy priest, baptize a child without having seriously the 
 
 ^ Si quis dixerit per ipsa iiovse legis sacramenta ex opere operato non 
 conferre gratiam . . . anathema sit. 
 * Innocent III., Ep. ix. 
 
Ciixr. lY. 1517. NECESSITY OF INTENTION.— CONSEl^UKNCES. l^jQ 
 
 idea of baptiziiijT it, ihat child, if it die, is lost ; let a Lislioj) or- 
 dain a priest, \Yithoiit having actually and formally, from ab.scncc 
 of mind or any other cause, the idea of conferring the priesthood, 
 and behold we have a priest who is not a priest, and those whom 
 he shall baptize, marry, or absolve, ♦will not be baptized, married, 
 or absolved. The pope himself, without suspecting it, might 
 have been ordained in this manner ; and as it is from him that 
 everything flows, all the bishops of the Church might some day 
 find themselves to be false bishofis, and all the priests false 
 priests, without their being any possibility of restoring the broken 
 linlv. 
 
 Pallavicini begins with treating all these suppositions, which 
 Catharini had enlarged upon with great warmth, as " marvellous 
 tragedies ;" and when reproduced by Sarpi, they become no bet- 
 ter, always according to the cardinal historian, than " specious 
 tricks." "There is nothing new," says he, "in these argu- 
 ments." Have they not been refuted a hundred times after the 
 decree of Florence ? He makes a jest of Catharini '' painting in 
 affecting terms the anxiety of a father who having a child in the 
 agonies of death, should say that the poor child has not been 
 baptized, perhaps, and is about to be excluded from heaven." 
 And yet the historian comes at last to admit that that anxiety is 
 perfectly justifiable "As for the rest," says he, "there is no- 
 thing repugnant in the idea that no person in particular, after 
 all possible researches, can come to be perfectly sure of his bap- 
 tism. Nobody can complain that he suffers this evil without 
 having deserved it. God, by a goodness purely arbitrary, deliv- 
 ers the one without delivering the other." Admirable reasoning ; 
 but behold, we are brought at once by it to the very predestina- 
 tion which has been made such a matter of reproach against Cal- 
 vin ; and while Calvin makes it at least depend solely on the will 
 of God, here we have it made to depend on the inattention of a 
 priest. 
 
 This was remarked by Catharini. jSTo reply vras made. The 
 votes were taken. The decree of Florence was maintained ; 
 there was only a slight softening of the terms, but,- after alb 
 without any change in the substance. " If any one say that 
 the intention, that, at least, of doing what the Church does, ir 
 not required in the priest — let him be anathema." This is not 
 clear ; but we should in vain take it in the widest possible 
 meaning, and say, for example, that baptism is valid, provided 
 that the priest, in administering it, has not the formal intention 
 of makino- it null — not the less will there remain with the 
 priest the infernal power of excluding from heaven an infant 
 whom he makes a show of baptizing. From the moment you 
 
160 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book H. 
 
 shall admit the very smallest possibility that God may save that 
 child — and Pallaviciiii himself is compelled to say that the thing- 
 is not impossible — you would upset the decree. "With or with- 
 out reservations, it is of little consequence : you admit that the 
 intention is not indispensable^ 
 
 But, it will be said, what then ought the council to have 
 done ? Ought it to have said, that the intention is useless ? 
 That certain movements of the hands and lips suffice for the 
 baptism of a child, for the ordination of a priest, for bringing 
 Jesus Christ from heaven and incarnating him in a wafer ? It 
 is then, indeed, that the cry of formalism might be raised I No 
 doubt, but why pronounce at all ? Say that the intention is 
 necessary, and you open an abyss of improbabilities ; say that 
 it is not necessary, and you land yourself in gross formalism. 
 There might readily have been found a rational solution, and it 
 was that which Luther had had in view when he denied the 
 necessity of intention on the part of the priest ; but this the 
 council did not wish, and could not wish to adopt. It would 
 have been, as we have already remarked, to connect the effect 
 of the sacrament, not with the intention of him who administers 
 it, but with the disposition of mind in the person receiving it. 
 Then, of what consequence is it how, or by whom, you have 
 been baptized ? To you, and to you alone, it pertains to ratify 
 your baptism by accepting the engagements taken for you ; for, 
 as St. Paul says, the baptism that saves " is the engagement 
 of a good conscience before God." From the hands of a worth- 
 less priest there is nothing to prevent your having been legiti- 
 mately sealed with the seal of divine grace ; from the hands of 
 an unbeliever who, in giving you the bread of angels, shall 
 have made a jest both of God and of you, you may have com- 
 municated, and that in all holmess. Of course the priest would 
 be a miserable wretch, were he to tliink himself authorized on 
 that account to administer the sacraments without intention and 
 without piety ; but not the less is it the only idea which does 
 no offence to reason, to justice, and to the general character of a 
 worship " in spirit and in truth." 
 
 But why should we seek to justify our criticisms? The 
 Roman Church herself has sufficiently justified them by the 
 changes she has made, or permitted to be made, in this decree. 
 Hardly a year after its publication, Catharini wrote a book, in 
 which he ventured to affirm that the council had voted according 
 to his view. He was exclaimed against, but was not condemned. 
 " I think," says Pallavicini, " that his view is a false one, hut 
 has oiot been expressly condemned by the decree ; and therefore 
 he could legitimately maintain that it was not opposed to the 
 
Chap. IV. 1M7. SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM. 101 
 
 council." Since that, what do avc find lias been done ? In the 
 article of the sacraments in general, the Roman Catechism 
 admits fully, as the council had done, the necessity of the inten- 
 tion, but in the details it abandons it. Thus, in speaking of the 
 Eucharist, " It will be recollected," it says, " as we have said 
 above, that the sacraments may be legitimately administered by 
 wicked priests, provided the things necessary to the consumma- 
 tion of the act be exactly observed ;" and the word which we 
 translate by exactly, rife, is hardly ever used in speaking of 
 anything but exactness in forms. In fact, saving the circum- 
 locutions necessary for saving the council's honour, the non- 
 necessity of the intention ended at last with being universally 
 taught. The Tridentine anathema has been transformed by 
 little and little into mere exhortations on the seriousness which 
 ought to be felt in the administration of the sacraments. This 
 is most reasonable, it is most Christian — but it is no longer the 
 decree. 
 
 Let us notice, on this subject, a striking difference between 
 the modifications that time has introduced into the council's de- 
 cisions. Modifications of dogma — these have, for the most part, 
 been made in a reasonable and Christian sense ; but in matters 
 of practice, it is the council, on the contrary, as we shall see, 
 that was more reasonable and more Christian than the Church. 
 In both cases we might ask, what becomes of the authority of 
 the supreme code written at Trent ? 
 
 After having thus regulated what bore upon the seven sacra- 
 ments in general, the council applied itself to its next duty — 
 that of examining them apart, beginning with baptism. Who 
 could have imagined that it would be fifteen years before they 
 reached the last of them ? 
 
 Several of the points relating to baptism had been previously 
 decided in the question of original sin ; a few only remained, 
 and on these there was little difficulty in coming to an agree- 
 ment. One alone occupied the council some little time. Is the 
 baptism of heretics a true baptism ? May their re-baptism be 
 dispensed wdth when they become Catholics ? 
 
 For a considerable time E-omanists had been agreed in con- 
 sidering their baptism as valid, and in making no difierence 
 amongst them in this respect ; but it coidd not be forgotten that 
 the time had been when the Church shewed herself much less 
 liberal. At several epochs there had seemed to be a disposition 
 rather to re-baptize all heretics, without exception. The Coun- 
 cils of Nice and Constantinople having thought that they ought 
 to specify those who should be re-baptized, and those \A'ho might 
 not be so, some bishops made propositions to that effect, but the 
 
162 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book H. 
 
 majority saw that tliey could never bring the matter to a bear- 
 ing. So it was decided that a sanction should be given to the 
 opinion generally received ; only to avoid the appearance of con- 
 travening former decisions and former usages, they confined them- 
 selves to declaring the validity of every baptism administered 
 " in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, icith 
 the intention of doing what the Church does.''^ But in what 
 did this intention consist ? The decree does not say. Had it 
 told us, it would still have had to say, up to what point there 
 must be this intention, for it is clear that all men cannot have it 
 in the same degree, or in the same way. The Roman Catechism 
 is still more liberal. " Every body may baptize, men or women, 
 whatever be their sect or profession, Jews, pagans, or heretics. "^ 
 How Jews and pagans can have, in any degree whatever, the 
 intention of doing, when baptizing, what the Church does, it is 
 not easy to comprehend ; and one may very well be excused for 
 seeing here the abandonment of the necessity of intention. Next, 
 how admirable this gradation I — Jews, pagans, heretics. Pro- 
 testant minister, know that you are less fit to baptize than a 
 rabbin or a brahmin. 
 
 This decree ends at last in committing the matter to the 
 caprice of bishops, and often of mere priests. When the case is 
 that of a Protestant who, on being perverted into E-oman Catho- 
 licism, is not disposed to make a public spectacle of himself, any 
 such proposal as that he should be baptized again would be 
 studiously avoided ; but when notoriety is thought desirable, 
 and the pervert lends himself to that object, it is thought impos- 
 sible to refuse. It is then made the first step in the proceedings. 
 But as baptism, according to another article of the decree, stamps 
 an indelible impression on the soul, and cannot without sacrilege 
 be received twice, " If thou art baptized," says the priest in 
 these cases, " I baptize thee not ; if thou art not baptized, I 
 baptize thee." 
 
 What finally remained to be done, was so to contrive, that in 
 acknowledging the validity of the baptism of heretics, there 
 should be no appearance of admitting the uselessness of the ac- 
 cessory ceremonies,^ of which they had disencumbered the ad- 
 
 ^ Cum intentione faciendi quod facit Eeclesia. 
 
 2 The manifest object of this extraordinary liberality in making all 
 men capable of celebrating the sacrament of initiation into the Church, 
 is the multiplication of her subjects, of those to -whom she may after- 
 wards apply the laws against apostates. — Tr. 
 
 ^ Exorcism fur chasing awav the devil, salt placed in the mouth, 
 making the sign of the cross on the forehead, the eyes, and the shoul- 
 ders, putting spittle on the nostrils and the ears, chrism on the top of 
 the head, etc 
 
Chap. IV. 1547. SACRAMENT OF CONFIRMATION. 103 
 
 ministration of that sacrament. It Ava.s therefore declared, tliat 
 saving the greater impos.sibility, the priest could not omit in any 
 sacrament any of the rites approved by the Church. The coun- 
 cil was prudent enough to avoid saying a word about their an- 
 tiquity and their apostolicity ; but doctors of divinity are left 
 free to carry these as far back as they may think proper ; and 
 the Church has never, in so far as we know, condemned those 
 who have boldly attributed them to the Apostles. " Although 
 natural water suffices," says the Roman Catechism, " the prac- 
 tice has been always observed in the Church, in conformity with 
 the tradition of the Apostles, when baptism is solemnly admin- 
 istered, of accompanying it with the holy chrism." Here we 
 have the chrism carried up to the time of the Apostles. But let 
 us not be too loud in our reclamation ; we shall find it traced 
 back anon to Jesus Christ. 
 
 On the whole, then, in the decree on bapti.sm, certain con- 
 cessions, were made ; on confirmation, with which the council 
 was next to be occupied, there could be none. The Roman 
 Church's teachings, where she has departed most from apostolic 
 Christianity, are, in general, those with respect to which she 
 is least disposed to make concessions, and those, too, where she 
 can least afford to make them ; for, as soon as she shall have 
 yielded on one detail, there would be no reason for her not 
 yielding on others. Here it was not on details that she had 
 been attacked ; it was the sacrament itself that was denied, 
 and there was no middle course betwixt abandoning it and 
 maintaining it. 
 
 If confirmation, in itself, has nothing bad or absurd in it, it is 
 nevertheless one of the points on which it will be found most 
 difficult to be consistent with the Bible, and even with tradition ; 
 with the Bible, for it says nothing about it ; Avith tradition, for 
 it had long spoken of something quite different. The early 
 fathers speak of a ceremony, in which young Christians, at their 
 admission to the supper, came previously to declare themselves 
 members of the Church, and to confirm, in public, the engage- 
 ments they had made, or that had been made for them ; this is 
 what takes place, in most Protestant churches, under the name of 
 reception of catechumens. The priest's part was confined to the 
 inteiTogation of the neophytes, the receiving of their oath, mak- 
 ing them an exhortation, and, finally, ofTering up a solemn prayer 
 for them. As it was natural, considering the occasion, that that 
 prayer should have for its special object their obtaining grace to 
 be steadfast in their faith, there came to be gradually attached to 
 it a certain sacramental importance. Next, there followed, it is 
 not known at what period, the use of a certain anointing ; it was, 
 
164 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book U. 
 
 as it were, a second baptism, or, if you will, the complement of the 
 first. In proportion as baptism assumed a more formal and com- 
 plete signification, confirmation could not but become more and 
 more dissociated from it ; from being the portion of a sacrament 
 it became a distinct sacrament itself Upon that, both word and 
 thing underwent a change. The word, for uistead of indicating 
 a ceremony in which certain vows tvo'e confirmed, it designated 
 that only in which young Christians were confirmed in their re- 
 solution to be Christians ; the thing also, for the accessory be- 
 came the principal, the custom of pronouncing certain vows, cer- 
 tain declarations of faith, fell into disuse, and the anointing only 
 remained. 1 
 
 It is the anointing, then, accompanied by a certain formula, 
 that now constitutes confirmation in the Roman Church. Under 
 that form it is clear that it could not be maintained either that 
 the first Christians made a sacrament of it, or that they had 
 any idea of it at all. Accordingly, more than one scruple arose 
 in the very midst of the council. Some members went so far as 
 timidly to recall the old ceremony of the confirmation of vows. 
 " In opposition to this," says Sarpi, " it was urged that since 
 that was no longer practiced, it must be believed that it had 
 never been practiced, seeing that the Church never tcoidd 
 have abolished so iisefid a ceremony!'' An argument this, it 
 will be seen, quite irrefutable. Next, if it was thought useful, 
 why not re-establish it without abandoning confirmation by 
 anointing ? Far from that, precisely the contrary had been al- 
 ready voted. "If any one," it is said in one of the canons on 
 baptism, " maintains that children, come to the age of reason, 
 ought to be called upon to confirm the vows taken in their 
 name by their godfathers and godmothers, let him be anathema." 
 Anathema, also, to whosoever shall maintain that the privation 
 of the sacraments ought to be the only penalty inflicted on those 
 who should refuse to sanction that which their godfathers and 
 godmothers have promised for them. "VMiat, then, shall their 
 punishment be ? Of this the decree says nothing. The sen- 
 tence is left blank, to be afterward filled up by the Inquisition. 
 Thus when the Roman Church leaves those at peace who have 
 broken with her, let us be well aware that it is not from tolera- 
 
 ^ The Roman Catechism does not even attempt to estabhsh confirm- 
 ation by Scripture: it contents itself with quoting two passages which 
 two of the Fathers, it says, applied to this sacrament. One, quoted by 
 St. Ambrose, is the following, " Grieve not the Hoh' Spirit, by whom 
 ye have been sealed as with a seal." The other, quoted by St. Augus- 
 tine is this, " The love of God has been shed abroad in your hearts, \)j 
 the Iloly Spirit whom he hath given to us." To cite this is tantamount 
 to a confession tliat there is nothing: to cite. 
 
Chap. IV. 1547. CAN THE BISHOP ALONE CONFIRM? l65 
 
 tion. The council has pronounced an anathema on all who 
 should believe that she ought not to punish them. 
 
 A point remained which had never yet been definitively 
 settled. Is the bishop alone competent to administer confirma- 
 tion ? 
 
 To this idea church usage had long been favourable ; but one 
 would fain have said why, and this was not easy. In fact, it is 
 impossible to give any other reason than custom. The Cate- 
 chism, which never recoils from a difficulty, thinks it has found 
 one. " Holy Scri'pture'' it says, " infonns us that the bishop 
 alone can confirm. We read in the Acts that those of Samaria 
 having received the Gospel, Peter and John jorayed fo)- them, 
 that they might receive the Holy Ghost — they having only as 
 yet been hai^tizcdT Where do we find the bishop here ? it will 
 be asked, and it might quite as well be asked, Where is there 
 any anointing ? Where is there confirmation ? For what is 
 here related singularly resembles all those cases in which the 
 Holy Ghost is spoken of as conferred by the Apostles. But 
 wait — " Phihp, who had baptized the Christians of Samaria, 
 was only a deacon. It is seen, then, according to what is here 
 stated, that he had not had the power to confirm them." What 
 is seen here is that the Apostles alone conferred the Holy G host ; 
 but that that means confirmation is what nobody would ever 
 have the idea of seeing if not suggested to him beforehand. 
 Next, what are people thinkmg of? If this incident prove any 
 thing it would prove, in fact, that a deacon can not confirm ; 
 could it prove that a priest can no more do so than a deacon ? 
 
 As for logical motives, they were completely wanting. Con- 
 firmation is neither as important as baptism, seeing that it is 
 not held to be indispensable to salvation, nor so solemn as the 
 supper, seeing that nothing can be imagined more awful than 
 the act of in some sort creating the divine body of the Saviour. 
 If, therefore, a mere priest is competent to administer these two 
 sacraments, why not thp other also ? By the light of the his- 
 toric details given above this may be well enough understood. 
 When confirmation was what we have said it was, it was natural 
 for the bishop, the first pastor of the place, to preside at the 
 ceremony ; when anointing was made an additional part of it, 
 it was further natural that the honor of performing it should be 
 left to him ; but there is nothing to prove that it was an ex- 
 clusive right, or, still less, that the hand of a bishop was con- 
 sidered as necessary to the spiritual validity of the sacrament. 
 In the Greek Church mere priests have always had the right to 
 confirm. We might refer, moreover, to what we shall afterwards 
 have occasion to say on the impossibility of finding, in the early 
 
166 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 times of the Church, any appreciable difference betwixt bishops 
 and simple pastors. 
 
 The majority of the council shewed itself, nevertheless, in- 
 clined to decide the question definitively in favour of the bishops ; 
 but as some instances were adduced of priests who had confirmed 
 in virtue of a papal commission, it was found necessary to say 
 no more than that " the bishop is the ordbiary minister of con- 
 firmation." 
 
 As for the act in itself, neither its nature nor its object was 
 explained. The first canon bore anathema against whosoever 
 should refuse to call it a sacrament, and the second against 
 Avhosoever should maintain that there is no virtue in the sacred 
 oil with which it is administered. It is upon this that the 
 Roman Catechism displays a naivete, we had almost said an 
 impudence, at which many Roman Catholics might well feel as 
 much confounded as ourselves. " In order that the faithful," it 
 says, " may be more penetrated Avith the sacredness of this 
 sacrament, they ought to be shewn, not only that Jesus Christ 
 is its author, but that it is he who, as Pope Saint Fabian 
 attests, prescribed the use of the chrism. As for the consecra- 
 tion of the chrism, it is the bishop that performs it A\ith particu- 
 lar ceremonies, and those ceremonies, as Pope Fabian attests, 
 were prescribed to the Apostles by Jesus Christ at the last sup- 
 per, ivhere he shewed them the way in ivhich the cliristn teas 
 to be 'inade" Had we not the text before our eyes in Latin, in 
 French, in two different editions, we should feel apprehensive 
 lest, in quoting the above lines, we might be oidy repeating a 
 m.alicious bit of fun taken from some anti-Romanist pamphlet.^ 
 
 The other congregation, that of the Cardinal Del Monte, had 
 taken up the same questions under their disciplinar}'' point of 
 view. 2 They had succeeded tolerably well in putting together, 
 without serious disputes, the old regulations made by councils 
 and by popes. Only after having placed at the head of the draft 
 of the decree, that the administration of the sacraments should 
 be gratuitous, there was much difference of opinion as to what 
 that should mean. Some desired that not only should the priest 
 ask nothing, but that he should accept of nothing. " Freely ye 
 have received," says the Gospel, " freely give." It was replied, 
 
 ^ "Where ? In one of his decretals, " quas dubias esse non duhmm est,'' 
 says Baronius. "The Church," adds tlie latter, "has no need of these 
 intruded documents." We know that such is not the opinion of the 
 Catechism, It is right. The day that the Roman Church should pro- 
 scribe all such documents it would sign its own abdication. 
 
 = It is not certain that this examination took place at this time ; but 
 the precise date is of little consequence in relation to what we have to 
 say about it. 
 
Chap. IV. 1517. sllolLl) TUli SACKAMEM'S UE GKATLlTOUis .' I tW 
 
 also out of kSoripturc, " Tliat he that serves the altar should live 
 by the altar," and that the prohibition to accept any pay, how- 
 ever good in the case of churches rich enough to support their 
 priests, evidently could not be applied to those which had no 
 revenues. In support of this, a canon of the fourth Council of 
 Carthage was adduced, which canon permits the receiving of 
 what may be offered by the parents of a child who has been 
 baptized; the Council of Latcran also, under Innocent III., was 
 adduced, which authorizes and even approves the custom of 
 making offerings on sacramental occasions. Notwithstanding 
 this, it was found impossible to come to a common understanding 
 on the point. The drafts that were proposed always said either 
 too much or too little, opened the door for making a traffic ol" 
 sacred thincfB, or shut it on law^ful resources. The matter was 
 resumed in a general congregation, but there the nicmbers were 
 as little of one mind upon it, and the idea of pronouncing any 
 decision was abandoned. The great majority of priests, it is 
 known, have not thought themselves interdicted from interpret- 
 mg this silence in the sense of a sanction. 
 
 At all events, taking the thing in its general aspect, and apart 
 from the abuses that have mingled with it, we could not have 
 reproached the council with not having forbidden tho acceptance 
 of any offering. At an epoch in which the clergy nowhere had 
 any llxed stipend, there were many churches which, without the 
 casual (fees), could not have had ministers at all. There, all 
 that could reasonably be required of the priests was, that they 
 should not refuse the sacraments to those who might wdsh to 
 have them gratis. Even in wealthy churches the acceptance of 
 voluntary offerings had not, in itself, anything contrary to good 
 order, to the spirit of Christianity, to the dignity of religion and 
 its ministers. 
 
 The evil, an inevitable evil, is that offerings of this kind soon 
 end in being neither voluntary nor free. Have you a child to 
 present to baptism ? You will not, it is trae, be made to pay 
 in advance, and, if known to be not in a condition to pay, your 
 child Avill nevertheless be baptized ; but however near you may 
 be to a state of entire and absolute incapability of paying, you 
 will pay ; you will, though it should be while murmuring, nay, 
 perhaps, while cursing the priest, and possibly religion too, sub- 
 mit to the miserable tariff, in w^iich all that is most holy in this 
 world is charged for in shillings and pence. Your father, your 
 son, may have died. A good Catholic, you would fain, that a 
 mass were said for his soul's repose ; but the tariff is there, and 
 money you have none. VYell, then, it is very possible that the 
 priest to whom you shall apply, may consent to say for nothing 
 
168 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 a mass for which you have not wherewithal to pay ; but it is 
 very possible also that he may refuse ; most of all, it is very 
 possible that you wall not venture to ask it of him. Let him 
 refuse it, or let him grant it, it will not the less be received, 
 acknowledged, and universally admitted that in the Roman 
 Church if one wants a mass, he must pay ; and the more con- 
 vinced you shall be of the efficaciousness of masses for the 
 deliverance from the flames of purgatory of some soul who is 
 dear to you, the more monstrous will it appear in your eyes that 
 that inequality between poor and rich which already seems so 
 sad and deplorable in this world, should perpetuate itself beyond 
 the tomb. 
 
 Such are the natural inconveniences attending this dangerous 
 state of things. But we have thus far supposed the priests to 
 be as accommodating and as charitable as possible, as desirous 
 as all ought to be to lessen by kindly concession the suffering 
 which the natural inequality of conditions may produce. Is it 
 generally so ? This is what the most devoted champion of 
 Roman Catholic honour would not dare to affirm. Wherever 
 Roman Catholicism has not been obliged to moderate, under the 
 eye of the Reformation, or of the vigilant superintendence of the 
 press, the shameless dealings with Avhich it has been reproached, 
 how many priests do we see that seem to have the slightest 
 suspicion that there can be the smallest harm, the very least 
 impropriety, in openly making money of everything ? In such 
 places, it is true, the people are no more scandalized than 
 the priests are ashamed ; but this accordance between the 
 brutishness of the one party, and the greed of the other, this 
 silence on the part of the populace with such' abuses before their 
 eyes, this absence of any suspicion that all this is not the due 
 course of things, forms only an additional and a permanent plea 
 against the religion which has so far deprived people and priests 
 alike of the capacity for perceiving the commonest proprieties. 
 In other countries, for the rest, with a little more modesty in 
 respect of forms, the system is ever the same. In France, for 
 example, little as the public are allowed to peep behind the 
 curtain, not a day passes without the discovery of things alike 
 incredible and scandalous. When a French Roman Catholic, on 
 his return from Italy, takes occasion to praise the Catholicism of 
 his own country, as infinitely purer and nobler than that which 
 he has left, you will only have to shew him in France, in the 
 towns as well as in the villages, at Paris as well as in the heart 
 of Brittany and of Provence, the greater number of the things he 
 had been most scandalized with at Rome, at Naples, at Palermo. 
 Yet well does the Roman Church know, and a hundred times 
 
Chap. IV. 1547. SALE OF INDULGENCES, &c. 109 
 
 has she proved it to lier cost, that it is by questions bearing on 
 money that her opponents succeed best in decrying her among 
 the masses. She cannot have forgotten that the sale of indul- 
 gences was, not indeed the cause, but certainly the occasion, of 
 the most terrible bloM^ she has ever received. And yet nothing 
 is changed. Indulgences, masses, dispensations, all continue to 
 be sold, to be negotiated we ought to say, for the spirit of the 
 age has passed over this quarter, and it presents one of the rare 
 instances in which Roman Catholicism keeps pace with the 
 modern march of ideas. Of all the details recently given by the 
 journals on the trade in masses, not one has been contradicted. 
 More than that, the result of these has been to prove that it was 
 not an abuse but a necessity. A priest can say only one mass 
 in the day. As soon as a church has more demands upon it 
 than it can meet, it must, unless it would embezzle the money 
 it has received, contrive that the masses with which it is charged 
 shall be said somewhere. It will content itself, therefore, with 
 deducting a certain per centage, and a mass ordered at Paris 
 shall be said at a hundred, at two hundred leagues' distance, per- 
 haps beyond France altogether. This is one way among others 
 of honestly doing business ; but while these details supply excuses 
 for individuals, they not the less cast a bitter reflection on the 
 system. And what shall we say of that Agency of the Catlwlic 
 Apostolate, established at Rome as the commerical go-between 
 for the clergy of all countries in transacting with the Roman 
 chancery ? All may have read that famous circular in which 
 commerical forms, oddly accoutred in pious phraseology, re- 
 appeared with a curious mysticism.' Shall we be told that the 
 pope neither created nor sanctioned that agency ? It may be 
 so, but where then did the agency find the tariff^ annexed to the 
 
 ^ "I have tlie honour to transmit to you the table of the principal 
 petitions -which the Agency undertakes to obtain at Rome. Your zeal 
 for the glory of God and the salvation of souls inspire me with the 
 confident assurance that you will select such articles as are best fitted 
 for obtaining that end in 3'our parish." 
 
 P^ lenary indulgence 10 fr. 80 c. equal to £0 9 
 
 Right of giving it 12 " 80 " " 10 
 
 Right to indulgence-ch.ai>\ets, crosses, 
 
 &c 12 " 80 " •' 10 8 
 
 Right to obtain from an ordinary 
 confessor absolution in cases re- 
 served to the pope 25 " " 10 
 
 Dispensation from the celebration 
 of masses with which one has been 
 
 charged 27 " " 118 
 
 Dispensations from the recitation of the bi-eviary, dispensations of all 
 sorts, in marriage affairs, dispensations from vows of virginity, power to 
 read forbidden books, to give dying persons the papal benediction, <fee. 
 
 H 
 
170 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 circular ? If it has somewhat enhanced the sums charged, 
 since it must be allowed to reimburse itself for it outlay, it has 
 not changed the nature of the articles. And if such be the 
 state of matters at the centre, why should it be otherwise at the 
 extremities ? Each parish, accordingly, has its chancery, its 
 articles, its tariff; and although it might be shewn that, after 
 all, the average income of Roman Catholic priests is not more 
 than that of Protestant ecclesiastics, we might repeat, that here 
 we have not to do with persons but with principles. The 
 question is not how little or how much this way of making 
 money may at the present day produce. We make bold to 
 assert, in accordance with thousands of Roman Catholics, as 
 well as with a notable part of the council itself, that fiscality 
 played, and has not ceased to play in their Church, a part which 
 is incompatible alike with the true interests of religion and the 
 true dignity of the priesthood. 
 
 In congregation general (Session VII., March 3, 1547), the 
 sacraments had the same fate with original sin ; the members 
 shirked the difficulty of exhibiting what had been so often called, 
 in the course of discussion, the doctrine of the Church. They 
 voted the twenty-seven anathemas (fourteen on the sacraments 
 in general, ten on baptism, and three on confirmation), and to 
 this they confined themselves. Many bishops began to be seri- 
 ously uneasy about the reception which this silence on the part 
 of the council, with respect to so many important questions, 
 might provoke in other quarters. Protestants have been much 
 censured for exhibiting their own creed only in attacking that of 
 Roman Catholics. To this reproach, often just, often exagger- 
 ated, and which, moreover, applies only to individuals, who 
 shall forbid our opposing the course which, on so many occa- 
 sions, the council itself pursued ? On the sacraments in general, 
 on baptism, on confirmation, we are told what must not be be- 
 lieved ; but where are we to find what is to be believed ? In 
 the Roman Catechism, no doubt ? It is very true, we find no 
 lack of assertions there. We have quoted it for light on certain 
 details ; taken as a whole it would not be less curious. "It is 
 certain," it says, " that Jesus Christ instituted baptism." All 
 well I you think, here is what is reasonable and not to be doubted. 
 But wait I something more must be said-; that alone would be 
 far too scriptural and too simple. Jesus Christ instituted bap- 
 tism ; but when ? You believe that it was when he said to the 
 Apostles — " Go, baptize all nations ?" Q.uite a mistake ; it was 
 when, after being himself baptized by St. John, he communi- 
 cated to the water, by contact with his divine body, the power 
 to sanctify men. " All the world is satisfied of this," adds the 
 
Chap. IV. 1517. I'LURALITY OF BENEFICES. 171 
 
 French translation. It is unfortunately true tliat some of the 
 Fathers have taught, or have appeared to teach, this rniracuhnis 
 consecration of Mater by the baptism of Christ ; but if this was 
 anything more than a figure, if a certain character was really 
 communicated to water in general — who shall explain to us how 
 there should be no profanation or sacrilege in employing it daily 
 for the vilest purposes ? What becomes of tJds so great and 
 divine virtue^ in the water of a brook or a sewer — that virtue 
 which, as you w^ould have it, has passed from Jordan into all 
 the M'aters of the universe ? One feels ashamed at having any- 
 thing to do with such miserable questions ; but to whom belongs 
 the shame, if not to those who provoke them ? 
 
 And on what has been said of all Jews, pagans, heretics even, 
 being competent to baptize, " who would not," says the cate- 
 chism, " admire the goodness and the wisdom of our God I" 
 Certainly, once make baptism indispensable to salvation, and it 
 would have been a piece of frightful barbarity not to have facil- 
 itated the administration of it ; but where do we discover that 
 God has granted to baptism greater facilities than to the other 
 sacraments ? Shall we say, in the institution of it ? No ; when 
 the Saviour said, " Go, baptize," it was to the Apostles that he 
 addressed himself, quite as much as when he instituted the sup- 
 per. Shall we say, in the writings of the Apostles ? But there 
 is not a trace of it there. In the usages of the primitive Church ? 
 No more shall we find it there. If, at that epoch, there were 
 facilities, it was much rather for the supper, which we see gen- 
 erally celebrated under the form of a repast, while baptism re- 
 mained a ceremony, and a ceremony, we have said, occurring 
 but twice a year. Thus, in all this, there is no divine order but 
 the ingenuity of the Church, no concessions but those which 
 were indispensable to the Church's being able to teach, since 
 she had made it a tenet, the absolute necessity of baptism. 
 
 And now, leaving doctrines, let us proceed to decrees of refor- 
 mation. 
 
 The question of the plurality of benefices was of immense ex- 
 tent ; immense from the number of cases which it embraced, and 
 still more from the number of difficulties which it started. To 
 elude it was impossible. If a man have two bishoprics, it is 
 evident that, with the best intentions, he must always be out of 
 one of them. As for the inferior benefices, the same man had 
 often four or five, sometimes ten or twelve, sometimes twenty. 
 There had been cases of cardinals having thirty. Leo X., on the 
 coming to the popedom, had tiventy-eiglit, and those of the richest, 
 ^ Tanta et tarn divina virtue a Domino aqtiii^ tnbuta. 
 
172 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 Sad as this state of things must have been, the abuse had not 
 been carried so far in all cases as one might think. Many bene- 
 fices being too poor for a priest to live by them, the holding of 
 more than one became, in many instances, positively necessitated 
 by the inadequacy of the revenues ; but this inadequacy of rev- 
 enue, people soon became habituated to estimate much less by 
 the legitimate wants of the titular than by the exigencies of his 
 rank m the world or in the Church, The son of a nobleman 
 would have thought it beneath his dignity not to have more than 
 one. In default of nobility, the very possession of one important 
 benefice gave a man a pretext for possessing others, in order that 
 he might with the better grace support the first. Almost all the 
 bishop's held abbacies, let us add, and we shall then have noted 
 beforehand the feeble efficacy of the regulations which were to 
 be made, let us add, we say, that they continued to have as many 
 and more of them than ever. One day, a century and a half 
 after the time of the council, a French bishop, in the course 
 of conversation, happened to inveigh against pluralities. This 
 caused no small astonishment, and naturally enough. The man 
 who spoke was abbot of St. Lucien, prior of Gassicourt and of 
 Plessis-Grimaux. He then began to explain how, looking at the 
 expenses he had to meet, he thought himself authorized to in- 
 fringe the rules he preached. And yet that bishop was Bossuet. 
 The liberty he allowed himself from motives which we may be- 
 lieve to have been justifiable, might be taken by others quite as 
 well, although with less to justify them. When Fenelon, on 
 his being appointed Archbishop of Cambray, resigned the only 
 abbacy he had, that of St. Valery, " You are ruining us," said 
 the Archbishop of Rheims, who had a dozen at least. " Let 
 each do as his conscience bids him," said Fenelon in reply. 
 "Well, then," rejoined Le Tellier, "my conscience ordains me 
 to keep what 1 have." Hear, too, John Carrero, relating to the 
 Senate of Venice in 1569, five years after the close of the coun- 
 cil, what he had seen in France, whence he had just returned : 
 " Things," said he, " are come to that pass, that people trade 
 openly in bishoprics and abbacies, as they would do in pepper 
 and cinnamon. It is seldom that the collation of a benefice does 
 not bring much money to the man who gives notice of it, to the 
 man who obtains it, and to the broker who takes it up as a 
 job. In most instances they are given away before they are 
 vacant. Thus, in my time, some one found it difficult to con- 
 vince people that he was not dead."^ And a Roman Catholic 
 
 ^ Thus Leo X., when at the age of seven, was nominated by the King 
 of France to the archbishopric of Aix, and while the papal confirmation 
 was in course of being got, word came that the titular was still alive. 
 
Chap. IV. 1547. COMMENDAMS— PENSIONS. 173 
 
 writer,^ after having adduced tliis pas.sage, adds, " There was 
 a little more modesty at Home, but, at bottom, things went on in 
 no other way." • 
 
 Originally, care was taken to unite in the same hands what 
 were called ccnniKitUAc. benefices only, that is to say, without 
 the cure of souls and without any obligation to residency. But 
 for a long time all distinction had been eflaced. The plurality 
 of incompatihles had only to be paid for at a somewhat higher 
 rate. 
 
 Often, by a curious subterfuge, people contrived to have the 
 union of two benefices pronounced at Rome, and the beneficiary 
 was then considered to have only one. The pope ordinarily re- 
 quired that these benefices should be adjacent to each other, 
 but distance was not an absolute hindcrance. Such or such a 
 benefice lay half in France, half in Italy, or in Germany. On 
 the death of the beneficiary the union ceased, but might be re- 
 newed by a fresh act of the will of the pope. 
 
 Let us recall, finally, the commendams, the most fertile of all 
 those sources of abuse. Amid the disorders of the middle asfes, 
 it often happened that a benefice, in danger of perishing by usur- 
 pation or pillage, was remitted, recommended {commendatimi) 
 either to a lord or to some other person in a condition to protect 
 it. Tliis kind of tutelage was given at first only for a time, and 
 until the election of a titulary ; but as the commendatory, mean- 
 while, drew the revenues, a taste was acquired for the office. 
 The popes, on their side, had discovered it to be an excellent 
 raieans of adding to the number of their creatures ; the com- 
 mendatory, besides, was always willing to purchase the indefi- 
 nite prolongation of his right with a portion of the revenues. 
 Commendams, accordingly, came to be granted for life ; new 
 ones were erected every day, and it was long since any anxiety 
 had been felt about justifying them on the plea of their being 
 necessary for the protection of the benefice. " Were an Indian to 
 come among us," says Montesquieu,- " it would take six months 
 before he could be made to comprehend what a commendatory 
 abbe is, as he paces the pavements of Paris." Those abbes, in 
 fact, were not priests ; they were only what was called in orders ; 
 they could go out of these and marry, on condition of relinquish- 
 ing their commendams ; still there were ways and means of es- 
 caping from this condition. It was thus that, under Lewis XIII., 
 the Count de Soissons had accumulated several abbacies on the 
 head of a poor abbe irom Poitou, his preceptor, to whom he gave 
 a thousand crowns a year, while he took from him a hundred 
 thousand. Even bishoprics had been sometimes put in com- 
 ' The Abbe Pi-ompsault. ' See his Pensees diverses. 
 
1*74 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book H. 
 
 mendam, in the hands of laymen, by means of their having a 
 coadjutator ad sacra, that is to say, charged with the ecclesias- 
 tical functions of the bishopric. In short, the most fertile imag- 
 ination could not invent anything, in point of abuses of this sort, 
 which had not existed somewhere, and often everywhere. Sov- 
 ereigns, we are aware, had much to do with these disorders. 
 Shall we hold this to be an excuse ? We have seen that " There 
 was a little more modesty at Rome, but, at bottom, things went 
 on in the same way." The most respectful objection had al- 
 ways met with a worse reception than the most exorbitant de- 
 mands, always flattering as these were, in one sense, to him in 
 whom the right of granting them was acknowledged to reside. 
 In fine, if the abuse of the commendams was a little less exces- 
 sive in Italy than in other countries, that of pensions secured on 
 benefices was pushed farther there than anywhere else. A cen- 
 tury after the council, in 1663, we find De Angelis, bishop of Ur- 
 bino, complaining that his rich see, after deducting the pensions 
 charged upon it, only brought him sixty crowns. About the 
 same period we see the bishoprics of Ancona and Pesaro vacant 
 for several years, none being found willing to occupy them under 
 the burdensome conditions that were required. In 1667, there 
 were at Naples twenty bishops or archbishops who had preferred 
 quitting their sees to ruining themselves by paying the pensions 
 with which they were burdened. It was the same thing with 
 parish hvings. The owner of the richest of them had some- 
 times hardly wherewithal to live. Down to the country livings 
 there was hardly one the petty casual income of which was not 
 burdened with obligations of this sort. Such was the state of 
 the clergy in Italy under the eyes of the pope. 
 
 Never had the plurality of benefices, under all its forms, been 
 more severely stigmatized than it was now in full council ; and 
 all that was said on the subject was so true, so incontestable, 
 that there was nothing to say in reply. The legates allowed the 
 torrent to pass ; aware that every objection would only serve to 
 provoke details that would become always more and more pre- 
 cise. Already, not a word could be said that was not an allu- 
 sion to facts generally known, and which did not call up proper 
 names on all lips. 
 
 But there was one name which none durst pronounce, and 
 which yet was only all the more clearly to be read alike in the 
 quailing looks of some, and in the dehght shewn by others — it 
 was that of the pope. Of three cases marked out for the ani- 
 madversion of the assembly, there were always at least two in 
 which he was an interested party, and really the only interested 
 party. From whom had those countless dispensations been 
 
Chap. IV. 1517. THE MATTER REFERRED TO THE POPE. IVf) 
 
 bought which subverted everything ? From the pope. "Who 
 had erected those scandalous cominendams ? The pope. Who 
 had granted those benefices without end, enjoyed by Cardinal 
 Ridolri, who was unceasingly adduced as the very type of pre- 
 lates born to snatch up everything and do nothing ? The pope. 
 One could not thump the shoulders of such delinquents without 
 the pope's shoulders feelmg the whole weight of the blow. 
 
 But as there had been an afiectatioa of criticising particu- 
 larly the abuses that prevailed among the cardinals and his 
 holiness's officers, the legates cleverly availed themselves of this 
 fact, to obtain from the assembly an order to write to him about 
 these. He alone, said the Italians, is fit to reform his own 
 court. This was true ; men of the best intentions felt only too 
 sensibly that nothing could be done without him. After having 
 discoursed at great length on the evil, a round of consultation had 
 been made as to the remedies that should be determined upon, 
 and the severest canonists had been unable to suggest anything 
 that had not been oft-times decreed by other councils, nay, 
 by popes themselves, without its having ever resulted in any 
 true and lasting amelioration. What made the question still 
 more complicated was, that there were several points which 
 none could dream of regulating by precise laws, many outlets 
 which it was impossible to close effectually. However scandal- 
 ous the abuses of dispensations might have been, it would have 
 been unreasonable to deprive the pope absolutely of the right of 
 granting them, after assuming that he had the power; what- 
 ever evil might arise from the plurality of benefices, still there 
 were cases in which it was natural and necessary ; so that it 
 could not but remain permitted. But on what conditions ? 
 There was nothing to forbid the fixing of a certain number. 
 But who should be the person to judge of these ? The pope, 
 ever the pope. If, then, they were to accept the proposal 
 of remitting the affair to him, it was quite as much from their 
 own embarrassment as from deference to him. Next, to put a 
 stop to murmuring, the legates affirmed that Paul would confine 
 himself to the reformation of his own court, and would leave 
 the rest to the deliberations of the assembly. 
 
 There is no need to shew that this distinction was illusory. 
 " Could we make a single regulation," said those who ventured 
 to speak freely, " in which some of the officers of the pope 
 would not be found interested ? There is nothing for it, then, 
 but either to be for ever falling back and keeping quiet, or ask- 
 ing the pope's permission to go on." This became still more 
 evident on the arrival of the brief by which he authorized the 
 assembly to regulate certain points relative to benefices, and, in 
 
176 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book XL 
 
 particular, to restrain unions. The legates durst not even give 
 official information of it. The authorization assumed far too 
 plainly inferiority, dependence, and the boldest felt, nevertheless, 
 that in things of this kind the council could not regulate mat- 
 ters alone. This twitching sense of the indignity done to the 
 council may be perceived in all those articles of the decree that 
 emanated from those deliberations. 
 
 But it had first to pass through many modifications. Discus- 
 sion tending only at first to augment uncertainty and embarrass- 
 ment, some bishops asked w^hether it would not be better for 
 each to produce his own plan. They should thus have at least 
 some clear ideas before them, and would know what they had 
 to discuss. " As for themselves," they said, " they were about 
 to set about doing this." Now, there were twenty of them, and 
 those of the least timid, some devoted to the emperor, others, 
 and this was still more disquieting, determined to quail before 
 no difficulty in having done with a state of things which they 
 looked upon as deadly to religion and the Church. Great, 
 therefore, was the anxiety of the legates. 
 
 Those bishops kept their word. After several meetings had 
 been held. Cardinal Pacheco, their president, presented a m.enio- 
 rial, in which they craved : 
 
 Before all, and as the first foundation of all true reformation 
 in these matters, that residence be declared of divine right ; 
 
 That those cardinals who had several bishoprics should imme- 
 diately be compelled to make their option, and to keep only one ; 
 
 That all the dispensations should be revoked where the ne- 
 cessity for them should not be sufficiently demonstrated ; 
 
 That the union of offices should be abolished ; 
 
 That pluralities should be confined to cases of evident neces- 
 sity ; 
 
 And other analogous measures. In all, there were eleven 
 articles, forming the ground-work of a complete code on the 
 subject. 
 
 It was an admirably well-concocted plan ; but it was clear 
 that unless the council meant to declare itself above the pope, 
 it could not pretend to decree all this. And yet the legates 
 were so much afraid of any direct discussion on the respective 
 authority of the two powers, that they dared not attack, nor 
 prompt others to attack the document as tending to weaken 
 that of the pope. "What especially alarmed them was, not so 
 much the boldness of the articles, as the fact itself of meetings 
 held without their cognizance, and beyond the reach of their 
 influence. Twenty bishops I Ten or twelve more and they 
 would be the majority. ... .^.. . ., 
 
Chap. IV. 1547. THE POl'E AUTHORIZES SOME c;ONCESS10NS. Ill 
 
 The lcp:atcs hastened, therefore, to send ofl' the memorial to 
 Rome. The pope Avould no more venture than they to reject it 
 as invasive of his rights. Most of its authors were Spaniards ; 
 there was an impression that Charles V. was at their back. 
 The pope appointed a commission, and, contrary to the advice 
 previously given hy Del Monte, that commission recommended 
 concessions on some points ; it being clearly understood that 
 there should be nothing yielded on principles, and that means 
 should be reserved for retaining with one hand what might be 
 '' yielded by the other. Each of the eleven demands was the ob- 
 ject, therefore, of a reply more or less favourable, more or less 
 evasive ; still the pope did not deem it fit to cause the work of 
 the commission to be communicated to the assembly. He sent 
 it to the legates, instructing them to use their discretion in 
 yielding nothing if they could possibly avoid it, or in conceding, 
 within those limits, what it might seem to them impossible to 
 refuse. It is but doing justice to Paul III. to admit, that amid 
 all his efforts for the maintenance of his privileges, he viewed 
 them, in theory, with far more reason and coolness than other 
 popes have done. He defended them as acquired rights, rather 
 than as rights inherent in the popedom. A man of a practical 
 mind, he had Httle taste for the doating sophisms with which 
 others had attempted to stay up papal omnipotence. If he 
 committed faults, he did not at least insist on people giving 
 them the stamp of divinity ; if he made little use of the lessons 
 of reason, at least he made no shew of setting it at defiance and 
 believing himself above it. It was to him that Contarini ven- 
 tured to say in an epistle, " Christ's law is a law of liberty. 
 It forbids that gross servitude which the Lutherans have justly 
 compared to the Babylonish captivity." 
 
 He had given permission, accordingly, for some concessions 
 being made. Cervini, the second legate, wished to avail him- 
 self of that permission ; Del Monte, more candid, or more able, 
 opposed this. Provided that the votings were, in the end, such 
 as he should desire, he treated it as of little consequence that an 
 imposing minority should acquire shape and consistence in the 
 debates. Was he already thinking of the tiara ? We know not ; 
 but he said to himself, no doubt, that the council would come to 
 an end while the popedom would not come to an end ; that the 
 rubs and annoyances therefore would be of short duration, while 
 the advantages would be peraianent. At all events the sequel 
 shewed that he had struck on the right path. Such as we see 
 him when cardinal at Trent, the same we shall find him when 
 pope at Rome. 
 
 The Spaniards had already protested against the transmission 
 
178 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book 11. 
 
 of their memorial to the pope. In fact, to put the question to 
 himself on what matters he would permit them to vote, was to 
 enter into the spirit of his last bull, and to condemn themselves 
 never to pronounce on a single point beyond what it might be 
 his good pleasure to leave to the decision of the assembly. Fresh 
 protests met with no better success, and when the decree came 
 to be drawn up, the Spaniards were beaten at all points. The 
 legates had brought a plan conceived after their own fashion, and 
 with which at first it seemed impossible that all should not be 
 satisfied. A host of abuses were noticed in it, and among these, 
 several that the Spaniards themselves had not specifically men- 
 tioned. But, at bottom, there were hardly any that were seri- 
 ously proscribed ; and, indeed, strictly speaking, none were pro- 
 scribed. The preamble of the decree bore these words, " saving 
 always in all things the authority of the apostolic see ;"^ and as 
 it was not declared that the holy see had ever exceeded its rights, 
 this was as much as to say, that its power, for the future, would 
 be absolutely the same as during the past. There was some 
 courage in having thus plainly avowed that the pope meant to 
 remain master ; it was really throwing down the gauntlet to the 
 council and to the Church. A Spanish doctor went so far as to 
 apply the epithet diabolical to the opinion that residence was a 
 matter of papal right. Several begged that the clause salva 
 sempe?' might be removed ; many also complained that the canons 
 drawn up by the legates, frequently referred to the pontifical 
 decrees, which were placed, by this fact, on the same footing 
 with those of the council, and even above them ; for they seemed 
 less to confirm them than to seek to be confirmed by them. Care 
 had been taken, in truth, to put this honour only on popes that 
 were even then of ancient date ; but, in point of legal principle, 
 of what consequence was antiquity ? They were popes ; it was 
 the pope. And, moreover, among the decrees quoted in those 
 of the council, there was not one in which the superiority of the 
 pope, if not taught, was not at least constantly assumed. Thus, 
 in the question of benefices, reference was made to a constitution 
 of Innocent III., where the plurality of benefices is forbidden, it 
 is true, but always saving those cases in which it shall have been 
 permitted by the pope. To condemn the abuse they did only 
 what confirmed the right. As for the salva semper of the pre- 
 amble, not only was it allowed to remain, but it re-occurs, under 
 all forms, in the greater number of the articles. 
 
 This decree has fifteen. Had we to prove in detail the cor- 
 rectness of the preceding observations, we should take the sixth, 
 being that which treats of the unions of benefices. It has been 
 ^ Salva semper in omnibus sedis apostolicse auctoritate. 
 
Chap. IV. 1517. THE COUNCIL SUBJECT TO THE TOPE. 179 
 
 seen that of all the ahuses that were attacked, this, if not the 
 most dcplorahlc, -was often the most strange. The pope had 
 noted it in his bull as one of those which he allowed the council 
 to discuss. Hence, it appeared at once that it was less as mem- 
 bers of a council, than as councillors of the pope, that the prelates 
 had to pronounce on this point Did they proceed at least to 
 make a liberal use of the permission ? But they could decide 
 nothing for the future which would not go to bind the hands of 
 the pope, and it is clear that this was not what he meant to per- 
 mit them to do. They proceeded, then, to the more limited task 
 of repairing the past ; but here, again, they behoved, in applying 
 a remedy to an evil, not to appear as if the pope were its author. 
 The bishop, accordingly, not as bishop, but as the pope's dele- 
 gate, might demand an inspection of the titles of all the unions 
 dating within the last bygone forty years. Those which should 
 have been fraudulently obtained, he should declare to be null 
 and void ; those which did not appear to be justified by sufficient 
 reasons, he should declare to have been fraudulently obtained, 
 and nullity was to follow. Thus the bishop has no part in the 
 proceedings at all ; it is a delegate of the pope, who in the name 
 of the pope, verifies an act that emanates from the pope. Is that 
 act of the nature of an abuse ; is it bad ? The pope then is not 
 supposed to have anything to do with it ; but this does not pre- 
 vent its being competent lor him, in spite of the judgment pro- 
 nounced by the bishop, and without his ceasing to pass for 
 nothing in all that is bad and improper in the act, to renew and 
 to uphold it. " The union shall be null," says the decree, " un- 
 less the 2^ope sJuill judge otherwise.''^ Thus he remained in 
 everything, and everywhere supreme. And not only could he 
 reverse all that might be done by the bishops, but one might 
 foresee that the bishops would care little to commence the strug- 
 gle and set themselves up as judges of the sovereign judge. 
 
 Accordingly, although the prospect of this verification by the 
 bishops may from time to time have inspired more or less shy- 
 ness and caution, there is hardly one of those abuses which, as 
 we have already said, may not be found re-occurring long after 
 the council had had its day ; that is to say, if they have disap- 
 peared at last, we can hardly give the credit of this either to the 
 assembly that condemned them, or to the bishops who were 
 charged with the duty of prosecuting them, or to the supreme 
 authority which remained the principal source of them. We 
 have already seen what residence practically was in the seven- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries. All those abbes who were so 
 famed under Louis XV. for their wit, their gallantry, and often, 
 * Nisi aliter a sede apostolica declaratum fuerit 
 
180 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book J I 
 
 too, for their infidel opinions, held abbacies m cmnmendam. 
 Cardinal Mazarin held forty abbacies. The infamous Cardinal 
 Dubois had, in addition to the archbishopric of Cambray, within 
 which he never set a foot, above a million and a half (of francs) 
 in revenues drawn from various benefices. The last abbe of St. 
 Denis was a bastard of Louis XIV. ; he was three years old 
 when his father conferred that dignity on him. Down to the 
 close of the last century, we everj'^where see prelates devouring 
 what might have sufiRced for the support of two or three hundred 
 priests ; everywhere we see, at the same time, priests, parish 
 priests, living in the deepest distress ; almost everywhere also, in 
 contempt of another canon, we see sacred buildings, monuments 
 of the piety of the fathers, falling into ruins in the hands of their 
 children. Many cathedrals suffered less from Jacobin vandalism 
 than from the long continued neglect of their bishops. " This 
 is mine, or it is the Church's," Henri IV. would say when he saw 
 a building in a dilapidated state. Bishops, abbes, beneficiaries 
 of all kinds, thought of nothing but making money. Exceptions 
 there were, no doubt, but how many ? The general mass were 
 all infected with this vice ; all seemed to say with Louis XV., 
 *' This will last out my time at least." The Revolution came. 
 It rendered the same service to the Church that it did to the 
 states which it entered. It made a clean sweep of abuses ; it 
 took from Roman Catholicism the possessions that impaired her 
 respectability, and were destroying her. It compelled her to re- 
 constitute herself, at least partially, on bases more in harmony 
 with the new ideas and the ancient wishes of the populations 
 around her. There is but one country in which as yet nothing 
 is changed, and that country is Rome. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 (1547.) • 
 SESSION VIII. TRANSLATION OF THE COUNCIL TO BOLOGNA. 
 
 Projects of trauslatiou — The plague — Great hurry — Decree of transla- 
 tion — Eighth Session — Minority — Resistance — To obey in order to 
 be obeyed. 
 
 The seventh session had gone off better than expected. The 
 doctrinal canons had passed unanimously ; the others had been 
 contested by only thirteen bishops, several of the opposing mem- 
 bers having accepted the assurance that there would be a return 
 to those subjects, and that the making of more efficacious regu- 
 lations would be seen to. 
 
 Meanwhile, Paul III. began to be tired of the sleepless nights 
 that the council cost him. It was long since he had been weary- 
 ing to get rid of a tribunal where such bold truths might be ut- 
 tered with impunity. The very decrees, although the work of 
 his ministers, nevertheless, were always saying what was still 
 too much. Thus, in the last, notwithstanding the precautions 
 that had been taken to avoid censure, and to prescribe nothing, 
 the decree as a whole was not the less a censure on the past and 
 a formal vow for the future. Those unions which, in respect of 
 the scandalous nullity of the motives alleged in their favour, 
 were about to pass for having been obtained by fraud, the pope 
 well knew he himself had oft-times granted, knowingly, wilfully, 
 without having been in the least taken at unawares or deceived. 
 The more, therefore, there was the affectation of his being sup- 
 posed incapable of doing such things, the more plainly were they 
 declared to be heinous offences, and he himself interdicted from 
 relapsing into them. And what was to be made of that canon, 
 the first of the decree, where it was said that no man sliould be 
 a bishop who was not born in lawful wedlock ? More fortunate 
 then his predecessor, Paul III. could name his father ; but he 
 who ought not to have been a father, had children ; and those 
 children he had created cardinals I 
 
 In fine, notwithstanding the devotedness and tlie ability of his 
 legates, he could see that the assembly might, in a moment, es- 
 
182 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book H. 
 
 cape their grasp, and that the least step taken out of the course 
 traced out for it, would infallibly be Ibllowed by many more. 
 Any moment, too, the emperor might end in placmg himself at 
 the head of the pope's opponents. Was it not to him that even 
 already the kind of insurrection on the part of the Spanish pre- 
 lates was attributed ? Had he not himself said to the nuncio, 
 at the time of the departure of the pontifical troops, that he 
 had no greater enemy than the pope ? Had he not openly im- 
 puted to the pope's son, the Duke of Parma, the sedition that 
 had nearly cost him Genoa ? And one may be allowed to 
 suppose that Paul HI., pre-occupied as he might be with the 
 pohtical side of all the questions then agitated, had not remained 
 insensible to the untowardness of theological quarrels, and to 
 the danger of exposing to the public gaze so many divisions 
 that had hitherto remained hid within the bowels of the Roman 
 unity. 
 
 The memorial of the Spanish bishops had filled up the measure. 
 There was now an absolute necessity to have done with such 
 risks, but neither the pope nor his councillors knew how to set 
 about it. They durst not dream either of closing the council, see- 
 ing so much still remamed for it to do, or of suspending it, since 
 it would have been impossible to say why, and ere long there 
 would be a cry for the suspension being taken off. There re- 
 mained a third course to follow, and that was to transfer the 
 assembly to some locality where the pope would be its master ; 
 yet it did not well appear how, unless he were to employ actual 
 force, he could be more its master, wherever else it might meet, 
 than at Trent. In any event a pretext was necessary ; and see- 
 ing they had remained at Trent, at the very height of the agita- 
 tion caused by the war, how could they excuse their quitting it, 
 when the emperor was quite in a condition to provide for the 
 security of the city ? Thus the pope could do no more than sim- 
 ply recommend his legates to hold themselves ready to seize the 
 slightest occasion thaf might occur. They behoved, for the rest, 
 to beware of alleging that they had the pope's orders, but were 
 to act, as if at their own instance, in virtue of the bull which 
 they had received two years before. The sequel shewed that it 
 was not without having an object that he had ordered them to 
 act in virtue of general powers, now somewhat old in date. Thus 
 he reserved to himself the means not only of appearing a stranger 
 to the translation, but of disavowing it, in case the scheme should 
 not have the majority in its favour, or should raise too many 
 storms in other quarters after being voted by the assembly. He 
 was sure, besides, that the legates would not hesitate either to 
 take upon themselves the whole responsibility, or to submit, if 
 
Chap. V. 1317. PROJECTS OF TRANSLATION— THE l'LA(;i'E. 183 
 
 necessary, to a public disavowal. Was not his cause that of all 
 the cardinals ? And of what consequence was it that a legate 
 should compromise hinisell" in the eyes of all Europe, jjrovided 
 he thereby saved or strengthened that ancient throne on which 
 he might hope to sit one day himself"? But here devotcdness was 
 not enough. All the questions that people had put to themselves 
 at Rome, without seeing what answer could be given, were found 
 again, at Trent, as insoluble as ever. To gain all the voices 
 underhand, supposing even that that had been possible, would 
 have availed nothing ; there behoved to be some reason, good or 
 bad, put forward in the decree of translation. 
 
 The session, accordingly, was held on the 3d of March. One 
 day, two days passed. The members began to talk over the 
 matters to be treated of at the next, fixed for the 21st of April. 
 Should it not be the Eucharist ? The legates hesitated ; the 
 little ardour they shewed in organizing the debates contrasted 
 strangely with the importance of the subject. They seemed to 
 be absorbed with some grand problem ; and so, in fact, they 
 were. They consulted their confidential friends. Still nothing, 
 absolutely nothing, turned up. At last a bishop happened to die. 
 Magnificent obsequies were ordered on the occasion. The legates 
 were present, and all the council along wdth them ; it was at 
 least another day gained. All at once it was recollected that 
 two or three other persons had died that same week, and that 
 several were seriously ill. A light seemed to flash upon their 
 minds. The problem was resolved ; the pretext was found at 
 last. The Plague was at Trent ; there was nothing for it but 
 to leave as speedily as possible. 
 
 "Was it not," says Father Paul, "merely an artifice of the 
 legates ?" This question has given rise to keen controversy. 
 One party, perhaps, has yielded too much to the pleasure de- 
 rived from relating a scene worthy of a comedy ; the other, per- 
 haps, ought to have abandoned the idea of representing the 
 legates as having followed, instead of having given the impul- 
 sion. That a disease prevailed is incontestable. But whether 
 the legates seriously behoved that it was pestilential, and that, 
 as such, it was dangerous, is what we shall never know. At 
 all events, if we have no proof that they were not sincere, we 
 consider that neither have we enough of proof on the other side 
 justly to banish all suspicion of insincerity. After all, of Avhat 
 consequence is it ? It was at the worst no great crime to take 
 advantage of a risk which came so miraculously to their aid ; 
 the essential and the truly characteristic fact is the order that 
 they had received to do all that was in their power to get the 
 council transferred to another place. Now, this fact is admitted 
 
184 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 by Pallaviciiii. "It appeared to them,"^ he says, "that they 
 would never have a better opportunity of transferring the coun- 
 cil, a measure which they thought of great consequence to the 
 security of the Church. They resolved to avail themselves of 
 previous orders, orders quite recent and reiterated. These 
 orders prescribed to them to proceed to the translation, if the 
 majority should consent to it, and should they themselves reck- 
 on that the Holy See was threatened with some serious mis- 
 chief." 
 
 They made great haste, therefore, too much haste, perhaps, 
 not to make their eagerness, if not suspected, at least suspicious ; 
 but however small the delay, was there not a risk of all being 
 lost ? The sick might recover, as, in fact, they almost all did ; 
 the public panic, after having been increasing for about a week, 
 might subside. It did not seem good, therefore, to go after the 
 9th of March, six days after the session. It was when uneasy 
 feelings were at their greatest height, several prelates, wrong- 
 fully accused, perhaps, of collusion with them, but who, never- 
 theless, were afterwards among their friends, had set off in all 
 haste. The legates had caused an inquest to be held on the 
 sanitary condition of the city. The result was the certification 
 of a dangerous disease being present ; but the report had been 
 drawn up by two physicians, both of whom were devoted to the 
 pope, 2 and those belonging to the city had refused to sign it. 
 They pursued their purpose. Just as they had decided, in theo- 
 logical questions, so many points that were manifestly uncer- 
 tain, they now pronounced, and that too in the strongest terms,-^ 
 that it was dangerous to remain any longer in Trent. Then it 
 was that the legates made known the bull, kept two years se- 
 cret, authorizing them to transfer the council to another place, and 
 the assembly adjourned to the following day, when they were to 
 fix what that place should be. 
 
 It was not without difiiculty that that vote had been ob- 
 tained. The imperialists had said that they were not to be 
 duped ; and though there might have been some of them, as is 
 likely, who did not at bottom feel very comfortable, the dread 
 of the emperor prevailed far more with them than that of the 
 plague. " Let us wait at least a few days longer, they had 
 said. Let us allow the most timid, if necessary, to go to Verona 
 
 ^ Book ix. chap. xiii. 
 
 ^ Jerome Frascator, physician to the council, and Balduino Balduini, 
 physician to the premier legate. 
 
 ^ De hujusmodi morbo ita manifeste et notarie constat, iit prselati in 
 hac civitate sine vita? discriraine commorari, et in ca idcireo minima 
 retineri possint et debeant. 
 
I 
 Chap.V. 1547. LEGATES AND PAPAL PARTY LEAVE TRENT. 185 
 
 or to Venice. If the disease disappears, they will return ; if it 
 shall continue, we can act accordingly ; but let it not be said 
 that we fled at the first shadow of danger." Why did they 
 speak of a shadow ? Nothing was more real, in the eyes of the 
 legates and of the pope, than the danger with which they had 
 menaced themselves with their terrible articles. 
 
 Meanwhile the panic was increasing. Word came that the 
 towns in the neighbourhood, in serious alarm, already talked of 
 shutting their gates on everything coming from Trent, and the 
 decision that they had taken, by accrediting the rumours that 
 were afloat, risked the immediate declaration of such a measure. 
 On the day following, the imperialists were no less opposed, the 
 others no less docile. The legates remarked that they could not 
 pass into the territories of any prince without having first asked 
 and obtained his permission ; that thus, looking to the urgency 
 of the case, the place for resuming their sittings must be selected 
 from the Papal States. That place had been already chosen. 
 It was Bologna. All the prelates that had voted for the trans- 
 lation voted for that city. Finally, on the 11th of March, 
 a public session (the eighth) was held. The decree of transla- 
 tion was read . Thirty-eight prelates approved, and fourteen pro- 
 tested. 
 
 The legates left Trent on the 12th, and were followed by all 
 that remained of the papal party. The rest refused to leave. 
 And yet it was said in the bull of 1545, that on the translation 
 being once decided on by the legates, all the prelates should be 
 bound to follow them, and that " even under ecclesiastical cen- 
 sures and penalties," even " under the pains of perjury," even, 
 in fine, " under pain of incurring God's indignation, and that 
 of the blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul."^ What then was 
 thought of these menaces by those who persisted in remaining ? 
 The majority had pronounced the decision ; the legates acted in 
 virtue of powers regularly exercised. The decision may have 
 been a bad one, but it was perfectly legal. What right then 
 had fourteen bishops to pretend to exemption from it? Did 
 they not, by acting thus with respect to one of the decisions of 
 the assembly, virtually give their sanction to others doing the 
 like by whatever did not meet their views ? And yet it is not 
 unlikely that, once returned to their dioceses, those same bish- 
 ops made no more scruple than others in commanding obedience 
 in the name of that very pope whom they had braved, and of 
 that very council which they had mocked. Thus it is, thus has 
 
 ^ Sub censuris et poenis ecclesiasticis. Sub perjurii poenis. Indig- 
 nationem oranipotentis Dei, ac beatorum Petri et Pauli apostoloruni 
 ejus. 
 
186 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book II. 
 
 it ever been with the Church of Rome. The most refractory 
 doctor as respects the Church, the most refractory bishop as 
 respects the pope, the most refractory parish priest as respects 
 his bishop, all of them, no sooner than the power of reigning is 
 in question, contrive to speak of their superiors as they would 
 speak, and, perhaps, as they would not speak of God himself 
 
BOOK 111. 
 
 FROM TIIE TRANSLATION OF THE COUNCIL TO BOLOGNA 
 (1547) TO THE SECOND SUSPENSION AT TRENT (1562). 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 (1547-1549.) 
 
 SESSIONS IX AND X. THE COUNCIL AT BOLOGNA AND THE RUMP 
 AT TRENT. PROROGATIONS AND POLITICAL COMPLICATIONS. 
 THE INTERIM. 
 
 Two councils instead of one — ^The pope says nothing — Ninth a^d Tenth 
 • Sessions — All is brought to a halt — Victories of Charles V. — Paul IlL 
 allies himself with France — Old dotard — Protestation — "What Rome 
 has read at all times in the hearts of her friends — Fi*esh protests — 
 New mask — Mutual affronts — ^Thunder and finesse — Fourteen months 
 already lost — The pope's death universally expected and desired — 
 The Interim — Criticisms — Resistances — Conferences resumed — Nun- 
 cios sent into Germany — Their powers — Checks and affronts. 
 
 And now, behold, we have two councils instead of one. The 
 bishops that remained at Trent did not go so far as to say that 
 they were authorized to continue the deliberations by themselves 
 alone ; but not the less did they persist in considering themselves 
 as the true council, momentarily suspended for want of a suf- 
 ficient number of members present. Those at Bologna, with 
 better reason, considered themselves as the lawful council ; but 
 no more durst they on that account do anything, well knowing 
 that there could be no means of publishing their decisions as the 
 decrees of a general council. A curious correspondence com- 
 menced between the rival assemblies. The Bologna fathers 
 intituled themselves plainly, tlw Holy Council of Bologna 
 {Sajwta Synodiis Bononicnsis) ] the Tridentine fathers durst 
 not call themselves Council of Trent : they were the Holy 
 Council, in whatever 'place it inay he (in quocunque sit loco). 
 
 Strange to say, and it clearly shews how false the position of 
 both parties was, they did not anathematize one another. The 
 divines of both wrote letters upon letters, issued memorials and 
 counter-memorials, absolutely as if it were some philosophical or 
 
188 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 theological dispute that had to be brought to an issue between 
 two universities. Neither party seemed to have the least idea 
 that there existed a judge. 
 
 It was because the judge was still more embarrassed than the 
 parties were, and that all were interested in not pressing him to 
 decide, the one that they might not force him to compromise 
 himself, the other, that they might not force him to condemn 
 them, in which case, unless they were prepared to make a schism, 
 they would certainly have had rather to obey him than the 
 emperor. In point of law, however, he had no need to sanction 
 the translation in order to its being and remaining legal ; it was 
 enough that he did not condemn it. But he was well aware 
 that Europe expected more than this : from the moment that 
 there is an appeal from the decision of raiinisters, the sovereign 
 is morally bound to pronounce. The pope was so much the 
 more under this obligation, as his bull of 1545 made no mention 
 of any consent to be obtained from the assembly ; had the 
 majority voted against the translation, the legates, in virtue of 
 that bull, might still have commanded it. " Of our own move- 
 ment," the pope had said, "of our certain laiowledge, and in 
 virtue of the plentitude of the apostolical authority, we give you 
 a full and free power and faculty to transfer the council. "^ 
 Thus the translation had been, in itself, an act of the papal 
 authority ; how then could they shelter themselves logically be- 
 hind the vote of the assembly, seeing that, according to the bull, 
 that had been no more than a mere formality which might have 
 been dispensed with ? On the other hand, the bishops who 
 remained at Trent kept their health desperately well ; all dread 
 of the plague had disappeared ; and as that had been the sole 
 reason alleged for quitting that city, there was no longer any for 
 not returning to it. 
 
 The eighth session (which had become the ninth, on account 
 of the j)^'o re 7Utta session of the 11th of March) took place on 
 the day that had been fixed (21st April), in one of the churches 
 of Bologna, but with only thirty-four bishops. No decree had 
 been prepared. They confined themselves to confirming that of 
 11th March, by declaring that the translation had been voted 
 for reasons " then instant, urgent, and legitimate, "^ and to fixing 
 the following session for the 2d of June. 
 
 On the 2d of June another session met, but only to be ad- 
 journed to the 15th of September. It was wished, said the de- 
 
 ^ "Motu proprio et ex certa scientia ac de apostolicaj potestatis 
 plenitudine, transferendi coneilii plenam et liberam concedimus potes- 
 tatem et facultatem." 
 
 ^ Ex oausM hmc instantibus, iirgentibus, et legitimis. 
 
Chap. I. 1547. INDEFINITE ADJOURNMENT. 180 
 
 cree, " to shew farther indulgence to those who had not come."' 
 Moreover, nothing was ready. There had been held, indeed, in 
 the interval, some congregations as sequels to those that had been 
 held at Trent, but without any voting. The Eucharist was the 
 subject that had been treated of in these. What a medley I How 
 oddly does the Eucharist figure in this labyrinth of intrigues and 
 deceptions I 
 
 The loth of September, in fine, was doomed to be no more 
 auspicious than the 2d of June. News arrived of the tragical 
 death of the Duke of Placentia, son of the pope. Universally 
 despised for his debaucheries, and hated for his cruelty, he had 
 been murdered in his own palace ; his body, dragged through 
 the streets, had been subjected to the most disgraceful outrages. 
 Nor was this all. A few hours after the murder, the governor 
 of Milan had entered the city with troops, and had taken pos- 
 session of it in the name of the emperor. In such circumstances, 
 how could a session be held ? Besides, as on the 2d of June, 
 nothing was ready, a fact that manifestly contradicts Pallavi- 
 cini's assertion, that the meetings had been frequent and active ; 
 it was more and more evident that the members did not yet feel 
 themselves to be in a condition to vote anything. It was not 
 even thought reasonable to have a public meeting of the mem- 
 bers, or to fix a new period. The legates caused an indefinite 
 adjournment to be pronounced. 
 
 The occupation of Placentia by the imperial troops was con- 
 nected with occurrences, for a short summary of which this is 
 the proper place. 
 
 The army of the emperor and that of the elector of Saxony 
 had met on the 24th of April. The elector had been defeated 
 and taken prisoner ; Charles V. had sentenced him to death as a 
 rebel, but afterwards spared his life. The electorate had passed 
 to his cousin Maurice, a Lutheran, as we have already said ; 
 which did not prevent the assembly at Bologna from paying its 
 court to the emperor, and trying to mollify him on the subject 
 of the translation, by chanting a Te Deiim in honour of his 
 victory. The landgrave of Hesse had submitted. He had been 
 left under the impression that he had only to humble himself in 
 order to obtain forgiveness, and had been retained as a prisoner. 
 Charles V. now became absolute master of Germany. 
 
 Paul III., therefore, had more reason than ever to fear him, 
 and to fortify himself against him i^ all the more as Francis I., 
 
 ^ Volens tamen cum lis qui non venerunt etiam adhuc benigne agerc. 
 
 ^ "Mendoza'.s correspondence with his coiu't, during tliese contests, 
 is something unheard of. Notliing at all equals tlie tenor of those let- 
 ters. They shew a profound hatred, an unutterable contempt, a bitlor 
 
190 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book Irt. 
 
 the only man in a condition to counterbalance his influence in 
 Europe, had died. But his successor, Henry II., shewed a dis- 
 position to follow in his father's footsteps. He gave a favourable 
 reception to all the overtures sent to him by the pope ; he 
 promised to give his natural daughter, Diana, then nine years 
 old, in marriage to the pope's grandson Horace Farnese ; in 
 fine, he recognized the council of Bologna, and promised to send 
 bishops there. The pope on his side was never more accom- 
 modating. On various points bearing upon the collation of ben- 
 efices, he granted the king several things contrary to the regu- 
 lations of the last session. An early public specimen this of the 
 manner in which he meant to be executor of the assembly's 
 decisions. 
 
 Meanwhile, the emperor, after having openly approved and 
 encouraged the bishops that had staid at Trent, had thought 
 himself obliged to seek a reconciliation, if not with the pope, 
 whom he treated as an old dotard, at least with the Church. 
 He could think of nothing better for this end, than to establish 
 the Inquisition at Naples. A sedition arose ; the Spaniards 
 narrowly escaped being chased out of the kingdom, and the em- 
 peror had to yield. Of what consequence was the Inquisition 
 to him ? He had merely wanted to perform an act of Roman 
 Catholicism. The act was done ; Paul had to pay the cost. 
 
 The diet (1st September) had been opened at Augsburg. 
 There the emperor bitterly represented the uselessness of his ef- 
 forts for the pacification of Europe by means of a council ; then, 
 after having wrested from the Protestants a promise to submit to 
 it as soon as it resumed the course of its deliberations, he caused 
 a letter to be addressed to the pope by the prelates in the diet, 
 " commencing," says Pallavicini, " with a honied prayer, and 
 ending with the sting of a menacing protest." It was with pro- 
 found surprise, said the prelates, that they had heard of the 
 translation ; and they represented it in plam terms as annihila- 
 ting the authority of the assembly. In fact, they were right, and 
 the inaction of the Bologna Fathers proved it better than any- 
 thing else could have done ; but it was nevertheless a curious 
 spectacle — that of a council becoming a nullity in the eyes of 
 the prelates of a great nation, by the mere fact of its having 
 passed into a city that belonged to the head of the Church. 
 
 It would, then, be a curious subject also for the historian to 
 trace the distrust which the most Roman Catholic sovereigns 
 have at aU times shewed they have felt towards the court of 
 
 ness which reflection strives to soften, and onl}- makes more bitter; a 
 distrust, in fine, which one wouhl hardl}' expect to see the like of be- 
 tween the worst criminals." — Ranke, History of the Popedom. 
 
Chap. 1. 1547. CATHOLIC KINGS SUSPICIOUS OF ROME. I'Jl 
 
 Home. Charles V. and his people, in this instance, merely ex- 
 pressed, only a little more frankly than others, because they felt 
 themselves stronger, what the popes have read, or to speak more 
 correctly, what they continue to read in the hearts of all their 
 crowned friends, nothing in this respect having changed. You 
 will hear every day complaints, and cries of indignation, and of 
 scandal, against the few trammels to which the French law 
 subjects the relations of the Roman Church with its head ; as if 
 France, forsooth, were the 'only country where the pope is not 
 trusted. Distrust is more candidly expressed there, that is all. 
 Elsewhere, it is a very different thing. Governments that are 
 most Roman Catholic, are most severe as respects their bishops, 
 and the most suspicious on the side of Rome. In France, a 
 bishop may publish all that he thinks fit ; he is afterwards sub- 
 ject, and then only for his official acts, to the harmless jurisdic- 
 tion of the council of state. In Austria, in Piedmont, in Tus- 
 cany, in several other states in Germany and Italy, he could not 
 publish a line, either as bishop, or simply as author, without 
 having submitted it beforehand to the government's censors. 
 In France, the official communications of the clergy with the 
 pope, must pass through the muiister of religious worship, but 
 there is nothing to prevent the bishops from having inofficially 
 as many relations with Rome as they think proper ; in the states 
 we have just named all correspondence, even private, if not in- 
 terdicted, is at least sedulously watched. As for the receiving 
 of briefs from the popes, these governments hold themselves no 
 less entitled than others, to give or refuse leave to publish them. 
 There was a great outcry quite lately against the King of Prussia 
 for having interdicted his Roman Catholic subjects from study- 
 ing theology at Rome ; yet he did nothing more than several 
 Roman Catholic princes, even Italians, had done before. What 
 would the ultramontanists of Paris say, were the government 
 to think of taking a saint out of the breviary ? The Austrian 
 government removed from it Gregory VII. Of course we do not 
 equally approve all the measures mentioned above. We do not 
 like to see a bishop subjected, in his most insignificant acts, to 
 the humiliating yoke of the police ; we merely quote facts, and 
 say, See what — under these fair shows of union and filial sub- 
 mission — are the real relations of Roman Catholicity with its 
 chief; see what is the confidence that the pope inspires in the 
 governments which make most use of his name, on the other 
 hand, in all that ministers to their projects or their ambition. 
 
 Paul III. had, however, neglected nothing in his preparations 
 to meet the menacing attitude assumed by the emperor's pre- 
 lates. He had gone so far as to offer to proclaim him king of 
 
192 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT Book lU. 
 
 England, and even to furnish him with troops for the conquest 
 of that kingdom, held as it was, to have been vacant since the 
 excommunication of Henry VIIl. ; but it was too palpably evi- 
 dent that the wily old man thought mainly of keeping him at a 
 distance, and distracting his attention. Accordingly, the emperor 
 replied only by sending Cardinal Madrucci, the bishop of Trent, 
 to Rome, anew to solicit the return of the council to that city. 
 The cardinal, on his arrival, obtained an excellent reception from 
 the pope, but was left without any explanation. He was only 
 permitted to state to the consistory the object of his mission. 
 On the 9th of December, in presence of the cardinals, Madrucci 
 solemnly restated his request. It was in the name of God, he 
 said, in the name of the emperor, in the name of the empire, in 
 the name of all the friends of religion, that he besought the pope 
 to send back the bishops from Bologna to Trent ; he craved, also, 
 that it might be decided whether it was to the cardinals, or to 
 the council, that the election of the new pope should belong, in 
 the event of the see becoming vacant.^ This was plainly enough 
 to recall to the pope's recollection — what ? The eighty years of 
 his by-past life, and the account that he would soon have to give 
 to God ? Alas I religious ideas had not habitually much to do 
 in all this. All that was intended, was to attack Paul IH. on 
 his weak side, by giving him to understand that ere long he 
 would not be in a condition to guard his children from tbe wrath 
 of the emperor. But there was something which Paul HI. loved 
 more than his children, more even than himself; it was the om- 
 nipotence of the Holy See. The question had grown more and 
 more into importance, in his eyes, in proportion as the emperor 
 pressed his suit, and had affronted him by what he had caused 
 his prelates to do. Placentia, even Placentia, which he had 
 kept, " as a loadstone held in his hand for the purpose of attract- 
 ing the iron soul of the pope,"^ no longer influenced him. On 
 no account would he consent to the return to Trent ; but as his 
 courage could not embolden him to avow what would have imme- 
 diately caused a schism, it was impossible to wrest an answer 
 from him by prayers, threats, anything. The cardinal set ofi on 
 his return to Germany, leaving the matter in the hands of Diego 
 de Mendoza, formerly ambassador to the council, and now charged 
 with the same functions at the court of the pope. A few days 
 after, Mendoza again set forth all the emperor's grievances, and 
 all his demands. Without protesting as yet, he stated that he 
 
 ^ Several of these details, denied by Pallavicini, have seemed to us 
 sufficiently proved by the testimonies of other authors, and particular- 
 ly Raj-naldus, Sleidan, and De Thou, in accordance with Paul Sarpi. 
 
 ^ Pallavicini, Book x. cli. vil. 
 
Chap. I. 1543 PRDTLST OF THE EMPEROR 193 
 
 had orders to protest, however httle tho pope might delay grant- 
 ing satisraction. 
 
 Then it was that Paul III., raising the mask, or, if you will, 
 changing the mask, thought fit to act a part which we have seen 
 him long preparing for ; and this was to treat the afiair as that 
 of a controversy between the two assemblies. He thus with- 
 drew, as it were, from being a party in the quarrel, and assumed 
 the air of one who was influenced only by respect for the inde- 
 pendence of the council and the wish of the majority ; in fine, 
 he gained time. 
 
 His first step in this new path was to say that he could give 
 no decision wdthout having first advised with the bishops at 
 Bologna. The question was about to stand more and more on 
 false ground, as both parties were now to quit their original 
 position. Charles V. reclaimed on the ground of what was fit- 
 ting and necessary, and the assembly was to reply on the ground 
 of right. 
 
 It did reply, in fact, as might have been expected, that it 
 considered itself, and could not but consider itself, the only legi- 
 timate assembly. "Without absolutely rejecting the idea of a re- 
 turn to Trent, it declared that the only Avay to obtain a reversal 
 of the decision it had taken was for the bishops at Trent, in the 
 first place, to submit to that decision, and to come to Bologna, 
 or, at least, to declare their readiness to come. Then, but only 
 then, it might be considered what was best to be done. 
 
 This answer in itself had nothing in it unreasonable ; but to 
 be satisfied with it one would have required to forget that it Avas 
 dictated by the pope, that the prelates of Bologna had no desire 
 to return to Trent, and that, in fine, there was hardly any hope 
 of the council ever being seen there again. Charles V., how- 
 ever, seemed ready to accept the question in its new terms, but 
 only, as was his custom, in order that he might decide it accord- 
 ing to his own views. Taking, therefore, the Bologna assembly 
 directly in hand as the party in fault, he ordained the two agents 
 who acted for him there, Francis Yargas and Martin Yelasco, to 
 use, without delay, the po\yers with which they had been in- 
 vested, but the nature of which was still unknown. Conse- 
 quently, on the 26th of January, 1548, they craved an audience. 
 The case was taken into consideration, and Avas referred by the 
 assembly to Cardinal del Monte, the only legate present, for his 
 colleajrue was at Rome. Del Monte caused them to be intro- 
 duced, and they presented their mandate, " Constrained to pro- 
 test, for the good of religion and of the Church, against certain 
 men calling themselves apostolic legates, and against a certain 
 assembly intituling itself Council, the emperor has named, and 
 
 I 
 
194 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 names, for the purpose of acting on his behalf, the two personages 
 here present."^ And not content with this insulting introduc- 
 tion, the envoys demanded that admission should be granted to 
 five witnesses and two notaries, whom they had brought with 
 them in order that their protest might be minuted in due form. 
 The assembly again deliberated ; it was voted that they should 
 be put ofi' till next day. But they insisted, and after some 
 parleying the assembly yielded the point. Only, before giving 
 them an audience, a minute was intimated to them, bearing that 
 they should not be held bomid to listen to them, inasmuch as it 
 was not as the council that the emperor addressed them, but 
 as a certain unlawful assembly which sm'ely w^as not that of 
 Bologna. Then Vargas, before coming to the protest, warmly 
 exhorted the assembly, as he uniformly called it, to ponder well 
 what it was about to say or do. And on his calling out, " Here 
 we are, we, the lawful procurators of the emperor !" "I too," 
 said the cardinal, " I am here, the true legate of a true and in- 
 dubitable pontiff, and here is a lawful council, lawfully trans- 
 ferred, for the glory of God and the good of the Church I" The 
 glory of God and the good of the Church, grand words these, 
 w^hich, however, for the preceding thirty years, people had known 
 how to estimate at their proper value ; but, for all that, Del 
 Monte had incontestably the finest part to play. Those legates, 
 rendered illegitimate for having made use of powers manifestly 
 legitimate, that council, ceasing to be a council because it had 
 pronounced against the opinion of fourteen of its own members — 
 all this reminded one rather of the rude unmannerliness of a 
 soldier than of the dignity of a prince. 
 
 With a greater show of reason and more calm, the written 
 protest, which Yelasco then read, was hardly more logical. After 
 a long picture of all that Charles V. had done in order to prepare 
 for and facilitate the council, the translation was declared un- 
 reasonable, precipitate, null ; the recommendation of the assembly 
 in virtue of which it had taken place, was called deceptive, vain, 
 captious, infinitely worthy of being rejected by the pope. How, 
 then, did the pope dare, it went on to say, to give to that 
 culpable division the name of translation, to that illegitimate 
 assembly the name of council-general ? The emperor declared, 
 in fine, to the bishops, that he w^ould thenceforth hold them 
 responsible for all the evils that might occur, and from wdiich he 
 was about to look for the means of guaranteeing his states. 
 
 The oral reply was full of spirit ; the written one extremely 
 mild. It was jDublished four days afterwards. It contained but 
 one sentence : " The things alleged are manifestly in disaccord- 
 ' All these last details are taken from Pi^llavicini. 
 
Chap. I. 1M8. REPLY OF THE POPE. 195 
 
 ancc M'ith the pious and Catholic intention of tlie most invincible 
 emperor, the holy council is convinced that they have been spoken 
 either without any mandate on his part, or upon a false exposi- 
 tion of the case to him." 
 
 Yet never did the emperor seem less in a way to amend his 
 doings. A week after the delivery of the Bologna protest, Men- 
 doza reproduced it at Rome, in full consistory, before the pope. 
 The same ideas, the same forms, except that the ambassador 
 threw himself upon his knees, an action that threw into si ill 
 stronger relief the incredible audaciousness of what he said. 
 " Let any one figure to himself," says Pallavicini, " the terror 
 of such auditors, met in so large a number, in the most august 
 court in the universe, at the noise of this thunder-clap, launched 
 by a Jupiter who had the lightning in his hand." 
 
 The only refuge of Paul III. now lay in the last part of the 
 course which we have said ho had resolved to pursue. JSome 
 days after Mendoza's protest he sent for him to come to the con- 
 sistory. The ambassador found him apparently more calm, and 
 his manner more natural than ever. The reply, written, it is 
 said, by Cardinal Pole, was read by the pope's secretary, the 
 bishop of Foligno. It was not less than five-and-twenty pages 
 long, but, from the first, it was clear what the pope wished to 
 come to. According to him, then, the whole affair had been a 
 mistake. The emperor's protest was not meant to be read eX' 
 cept in the case of his, the pope's, refusing to take cognizance of 
 the difference that had arisen beticixt Ids majesty and the 
 cmmcit of Bolog7ia. But he had not refused ; he was ready to 
 do this, and had even appointed four cardinals to present to him a 
 report on that subject. Accordingly, he had not to reply to the 
 protest. He only regretted that the terms of it should have been 
 so severe, but he was not the less sensible of the zeal of the em- 
 peror. He Avas happy, in particular, to see so great a prince 
 openly recognise in him the quality of sovereign judge in this 
 affair. He ended by saying that he was about to interdict both 
 assemblies from proceeding to any synodical acts, and that they 
 should have a month for submitting their reasons to him. 
 
 Upon this, although Mcndoza went away declaring that he 
 had been made to say what was quite different from what he 
 had really said, and quite different from what the emperor had 
 expressly charged him to say — Paul wrote to the bishops at 
 Trent that he was ready to hear what they had to say for them- 
 selves. Hitherto, he said, he had regarded the translation as 
 good, judging the matter according to the public rumour ; but 
 since that point had been called in question, he was now pre- 
 pared to act only as an impartial judge, hstening to the state- 
 
196 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OK TRENT. Book. III. 
 
 ments of all parties, and carefully weighing the reasons pro and 
 con. This impartiahty at the end of a whole year, this pro- 
 found disinterestedness in an affair in which he was known to 
 be so much interested, this curious allegation that hitherto he 
 had not looked narrowly into it, all this, in a less serious docu- 
 ment, would almost have tempted one to ask if he was not in- 
 dulging a little jocularity. Accordingly, he received in return 
 only an ambiguous reply, in which, without contesting the char- 
 acter he assumed of judge, any appearance of pleading before 
 him was studiously avoided. The letter of the bishops was, in 
 short, only an urgent request that he would disapprove of the 
 translation. 
 
 Those at Bologna, also invited to plead their cause, were more 
 clear, but quite as disquieting. They had come at last to take 
 up the matter seriously. Strong in their legal position, they 
 pleaded with precision and directness. They pressed, they al- 
 most summoned the pope to justify them ; but, as there was no 
 pleading on the other side, the case was no longer a process be- 
 fore a judge, and Paul no longer felt himself to be a judge in the 
 sense in which he thought it of so much consequence to be one. 
 The month had for some time been rmi out ; less than ever had 
 he any wish to pronounce a decision. 
 
 Meanwhile, another year (1548) had come romid, and it was 
 now about the close of April. The council had been interrupted 
 for fourteen months. 
 
 Germany was now comiected by a mere thread with Rome, 
 and the pope still found means to negotiate with the emperor for 
 the restitution of Placentia. Charles first eluded, and then re- 
 fused. Fresh solicitations were followed by fresh refusals. Paul 
 at last spoke of excommunicating, not the emperor, he durst not 
 do that, but those ivho occupied the city, as if those who occu- 
 pied the city were not there for the emperor. At the same time 
 he was secretly laying the foundations of a league against him. 
 But the Venetians, on whom he had counted much, gave it to 
 be understood that they did not care to ally themselves with so 
 old a pope. His successor might have other views, and leave 
 the empire on their hands. The king of France, says Pallavicini, 
 was a little desirous " to embark on so worn out a vessel." 
 Thus there was neither excommunication nor war. 
 
 Charles, on his side, began to see that he could obtain no- 
 thing. He contented himself, therefore, with waiting for the 
 death of the pope, an event that had long been spoken of as the 
 only thing likely to unravel so many entanglements. But as 
 Paul ni. was still almost as vigorous in body as he was in mind, 
 it was of importance to the pacification of Germany that so many 
 
Chap. I. 1548. THE INTERIM— IT PLEASES NO PARTY. 197 
 
 questions should not remain in suspense. Charles had not re- 
 linquished the chimera ol' bringing back luiity by means of a 
 council. He did not seem to be sensible of the absurdity in- 
 volved in the promise wrested anew from the Protestants, to re- 
 ceive the decrees that were to come, after they had repelled 
 those that were already published ; and though, as is most prob- 
 able, he might not think that that promise was ever to be real- 
 ized as respected doctrines, he attached to it, politically, im- 
 mense importance. As long as it subsisted, as long as tlie pos- 
 sibility of a reconciliation was admitted, or seemed to be ad- 
 mitted, the rending was not complete, the empire might still be 
 one whole. But that promise, it was clear, once that the coun- 
 cil was broken up, and the idea of a council definitively aban- 
 doned, would be considered no more binding on those who had 
 made it. A German council would not have served any good 
 purpose. The emperor had often threatened the pope with it ; 
 but betAvixt the Protestants and him, it was a council-general 
 that had been ever talked of. He took it into his head, therefore, 
 to publish a decree in which all the points in litigation should 
 be regulated provisionally ; Roman Catholics and Protestants 
 should remain subject to it until the resumption of the council. 
 Hence the name of Interim by which that act is known in 
 history. 
 
 There was something singular in the idea of regulating pro- 
 visionally what of all things seems to have the least of a provis- 
 ional character in it — articles of faith. But if the Interim com- 
 prised important concessions, such as the marriage of priests and 
 the communion under both kinds, there were many points, also, 
 on which Charles V. could make no concession without lending 
 a hand to the subversion of Romanism. With regard to these 
 last, then, there was concession only in the fiict of their being 
 represented as only provisional ; but that of itself was still an 
 insult to the Church, an insult to the pope, for there were few 
 of them that were not of long standing as articles of faith, or 
 that a Roman Catholic was free to regard as not definitively 
 regulated. 
 
 The result, accordingly, was what any one might expect : no- 
 body was satisfied. Those bishops even that were most devoted 
 to the emperor could not dissemble to themselves that he had 
 far overstept the reasonable limits of the civil power. As a 
 prince, he had the power of allowing the Protestants to remain 
 free : to make a selection of what they were to believe and not 
 to believe, to concede some points to them while he withheld 
 others, was tantamount to setting up as pope, and without ceas- 
 ing to profess being a Roman Cathohc, to do just what Henry 
 
198 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 VIII. had done in ceasing to "be one. Moreover, those who 
 drew up the decree had not even restrained themselves so far as 
 exactly to follow the canons passed at Trent ; the chapter on 
 Justification, in particular, seemed as if it had been Avritten by 
 Luther. What signified those appeals to a future council, seeing 
 the decrees of a quite recent council were treated as null and 
 void ? Did the emperor intend, then, that those very decrees 
 should be revised ? This was impossible, it was said — it was 
 absurd, for he himself had owned the legality, and consequently 
 the infallibility of the assembly, as long as it had not quitted 
 Trent. And if Roman Catholics spoke thus in Germany, under 
 the very hand of Charles Y., what was to be expected in Italy ? 
 
 While he alienated the Roman Catholics, what had he gained 
 among the Protestants ? Nothing, or almost nothing. Though 
 the Interim might gratify them as paving the way for a rupture 
 with the pope, they saw nothing in it, at bottom, to satisfy them. 
 What were those few concessions which the emperor had made 
 them, in comparison with what he had lacked either the will or 
 the power to concede ? The marriage of the priests did not rec- 
 oncile them to the supremacy of the pope ; leave to communi- 
 cate under both kinds, did not make it more easy for them to be- 
 lieve in the mass, the seven sacraments, the invocation of saints, 
 and many other things necessarily preserved in the Interim. In 
 fine, they knew that the Church would never recognise in the 
 emperor the right which he had arrogated to himself, and they 
 could not feel much obliged to him for giving them that which 
 it did not belong to him to give at all. 
 
 All eyes were now turned to Rome. A terrible explosion was 
 expected, and the emperor probably was not one ot" those who 
 were least disquieted. He had interfered in matters of faith ; 
 he had not even respected the lawful decisions of the council ; 
 he might be excommunicated without a single sincere and con- 
 sistent Roman Catholic having the means of declaring for him, 
 and excommunication would have pushed him straight to either 
 a humiliating retractation or to a schism. But side by side with 
 these audacities in doctrine, the Interim contained all the ele- 
 ments of a violent ruptiA'c. The eleven articles of the Spaniards 
 at Trent had been incorporated into it, almost word for word 
 Episcopal authority was declared in it to be of divine right ; the 
 pope was recognised in it as head of the Church, only in the 
 character of its chief magistrate, necessary for its unity, as the 
 king is in a kingdom, but not absolutely necessary and such as 
 the Church cannot exist without him — whereas, in the papal or 
 ultramontane system, the pope is the base, the corner -stone, the 
 source of all power. 
 
Chap. I lil^ TlIK INTERIM LEFT TO DESTROY 1T.*SEJ.I\ 1 '"J 
 
 It was the pope, nevertheless, wlio, notwithstanding so many 
 subjects of complaint, kept his temper best, and best understood 
 how matters were situated. Were it for us to judge him from 
 the Roman Catholic point of view, we should say that it was 
 his duty to excommunicate the emperor ; we might find ground 
 to charge him with treason towards the Holy ISee, in maintain' 
 ing an obstinate silence after so many aggressions. But, polit 
 ically, the future was to justify him. He could see that the 
 Interim must eventually destroy itself. The best punishment 
 he could inflict on the emperor was to leave him to look on, as 
 his own work went to ruin, and to let him enjoy the renown of 
 having laboured in behalf of heretics, without having obtained 
 anything from them in return. 
 
 It was from them, in fact, that the resistance especially came. 
 The emperor having declared, in the preamble of the decree, 
 that he did not intend either to adopt himself, or to compel any 
 one to adopt the doctrines that had been modified from defer- 
 ence to the Protestants, the Interim obliged the Roman Catho- 
 lics to nothing ; it was only in theory that they could be dis- 
 satisfied with it ; but as for the reformed, they either openly 
 repulsed it, or obeyed it only in matters of form and with a 
 repugnance which they did not even seek to dissemble. Fred- 
 erick of Saxony, although a prisoner, obstinately refused to sub- 
 mit to it ; many towns submitted to it only undei threats of 
 war and ruin. It is true that Charles V. did not insist on peo- 
 ple declaring that they were convinced of the truth of all that 
 was taught in his decree. Provided they re-established the 
 Roman forms, the mass, images, &c., he carried his inquiries no 
 farther ; but those forms which some viewed, or affected to view 
 as indifferent, were not the less for many others an idolatry in 
 which their conscience forbade them to take any part. 
 
 Add to this the embarrassment created in the midst of Roman 
 Catholic populations, by the reformatory decree published along 
 with the Interim.^ As long as nothing more was attempted 
 than the putting upon paper, out of spite for the pope, a host of 
 reforms hitherto refused by the court of Rome, the emperor had 
 only to congratulate himself on the zeal and docility of his 
 bishops ; but speaking and doing are difierent things, especially 
 when one has to give an example at his OM'n cost of the thing 
 he has been lauding. Moreover, not a single step could be 
 taken without obstacles occurring which the pope alone could 
 remove, and which could not have been overthrown, without by 
 the same blow snapping the last tie of connexion with Rome. 
 There was a prevailing conviction that all that people might 
 
 1 2d July, 1548. 
 
200 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 attempt to build must be founded on sand, unless the pope were 
 to concur in laying the foundations ; all that they sought to 
 destroy was found to rest on papal regulations, or on papal dis- 
 pensations, and without a nipture with the pope how could 
 either be annulled ? After many tentative efforts the emperor 
 saw that without his aid nothing could be done. That aid he 
 caused him to be asked to grant. Of the Interim, as may be 
 believed, not a word was said ; the pope was presumed to know 
 nothing about it. It was only in the carr\'ing out of some dis- 
 ciplinary reforms that he was besought to lend his assistance. 
 
 Happy at this return, and very sure of gaining something by 
 it, the pope was in no haste to accede to the emperor's desire. 
 This was not only, it is true, in order to enhance the value of 
 the service to be rendered ; among the reforms in which his 
 concurrence was wanted, there was more than one which he 
 was by no means anxious to see accomplished. Hence there 
 arose a negotiation between the emperor and Peter Bertano, 
 bishop of Fano, and nuncio at the imperial court. In fine, 
 Pliul consented ; but it soon came to be seen in what sense he 
 had put himself at the service of the imperial will. 
 
 In the first place, instead of the two legates whom the em- 
 peror had asked for, he contented himself with sending two nun- 
 cios. This was no more, in reality, than a difTerence of names, 
 but sometimes there is a great deal in a name. A legate is the 
 representative of the pope ; he is as it were pope himself A 
 nuncio is no more than an envoy, an agent, an ordinary ambas- 
 sador ; in most instances he is but a simple bishop, whereas the 
 legate is always a cardinal. There were two bishops, therefore, 
 Lippomani, coadjutor of Yerona, and Pighini, bishop of Feren- 
 tino, who were added to Bertano. 
 
 They arrived in Germany with a bull in which there was 
 scarcely a word said about the reforms decreed by the emperor, 
 and the co-operation for which he had applied. The pope pre- 
 tended that he had understood nothing more to have been asked 
 of him than the means only of re-opening the Church to those 
 who should present themselves with a view to re-admission. He 
 had confined himself therefore to investing the three nuncios 
 with power to take off every kind of excommunication and cen- 
 sures, even for the offence of bigamy, said the bull ; an ingenious 
 method of accrediting the old falsehood that bigamy was one of 
 the tilings sanctioned by the Reformation. For the rest the pope 
 had not confined himself to perfidious insinuations ; the bull 
 exhibited, on some other points, an alarming frankness. The 
 nuncios might grant dispensations from all obligations, taken 
 even upon oath, with heretical princes and peoples ; they could 
 
Chap. I. 1519. THE NUNCIOS ILL RECEIVED IN GERMANY, 201 
 
 absolve from all pe.rjury committed at their expense. This, it 
 will be seen, was a wretched commencement of the work of 
 bringin«^ back the Protestants to a spirit of respect and obedience 
 to the Church ; it was also destructive of the entire policy of 
 the emperor, by annihilating any little confidence that they still 
 might have in his promises. 
 
 A'^cordingly, he was more discontented than ever ; all the 
 more as the pope, in this same bull, took all the compensation in 
 his power, for the encroachments made on him by the Interim. 
 It bore among other things, that the princes whose forfeiture had 
 been pronounced, on their return to the communion of the Church, 
 should be immediately restored to the possession of their states. 
 This was assuming, in the first place, that the emperor had de- 
 prived them of their states, as heretics, whereas he had always 
 maintained that he attacked them only as rebels ; it was assum- 
 ing, ill the second place, that his consent would not be required 
 in order to their being restored to their rights. 
 
 The nuncios were generally ill received. " As Pighini," says 
 Pallavicini,^ " was pursuing his journey through Germany, he 
 could see some feeble outward manifestations of religion,^ which 
 the emperor's victories and edicts had with much difficulty in- 
 troduced ; but the minds of the people he found more heretical 
 than ever, so much so that the masses were celebrated without 
 anybody being present. Hardly was there found any one that 
 thought of applying to the nuncios for the exercise of their 
 powers, or that received them even with ordinary politeness ;" 
 to which the historian artlessly adds, " It was evident that all 
 their eflbrts would be useless imlcss they ivere siq^ported tvith 
 arms." Thus the Protestants hardly gave the nuncios any oc- 
 casion to open the fold again for the return of the stray sheep. 
 And yet the opening had been made wide enough. The monks 
 that had renounced their orders, had only, in order to their return 
 to favour, to wear their old monkish dress iinder their secular 
 clothes ; and as for those that had married, the pope, without 
 absolving them by any general measure, offered to make a 
 special enactment for each, conceived in the most indulgent 
 'spirit possible. 
 
 Ill received by the Protestants, the nuncios met with a yet 
 worse reception I'rom the Eoman Catholics. The ambiguousness 
 of their mission, the palpable uselessness of its results, the ani- 
 mosity kept up by the maintenance of the translation to Bologna, 
 all contributed to their being looked upon with an evil eye, and 
 the emperor, without breaking with them, no longer cared about 
 giving them anything to do. After a stay of six months spent 
 
 ^ Book xi. ch. ii. '-' Of Roman Catholicism, 
 
 l4^ 
 
202 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book HI. 
 
 in different cities of Germany, they spoke of going away. 
 Charles V. then asked them to delegate part of their powers to 
 the bishops. After lengthened conferences a kind of decree was 
 drawn up, half imperial, half papal, in which the bull was in- 
 serted without modification, but accompanied with regulations to 
 which it was considered to give the sanction of the court of 
 Rome. 
 
CIIAPTEE II. 
 
 (1549-1551.) 
 
 SESSIONS XI. AXD XII. DEATH OF PAUL lU. COUNCIL llE-CON- 
 ' VENED BY JULIUS III. QUARREL OF THE POPE WITH HENRY II. 
 
 Death of Paul III. — Glance at his life — The conclaves — Historical Re- 
 view — Tedious delays — Sad heroism — Factious — Combinations — Ju- 
 lius III. — All difficulties return — They seem to grow easy — Fresh 
 ones appear — The pope eludes tliem — Second convocation of the 
 council — The bull is keenly criticised — How interpreted by Cliarles 
 V. — The council opened anew with fifteen bishops — Eleventh Ses- 
 sion — Was it still-born — Political occurrences — Rupture with France 
 — Galilean inconsistencies — How redeemed by Henry II, — Xew 
 causes of distrust — "Will the Protestants come — John IIuss — Twelptu 
 Session — Adjournments — Amyot — Parliamentary audacities. 
 
 The year 1549 was now drawing to a close, so that the 
 council had been asleep for nearly three years. h>ome Spanish 
 "bishops still remained at Trent ; some Italians at Bologna. 
 These were permanent protests against and for the translation. 
 
 That death which had so long been the subject of conversa- 
 tion, and the object of men's desires in Europe, now happened 
 at last. After a pontificate of fifteen years Paul expired, on the 
 10th November, regretted by the Romans whom he had con- 
 trived to attach to himself, admired by statesmen who had 
 acknowledged in him a master, but charged with a very heavy 
 load of deeds to be answered for in the eyes of religion and ot' 
 history. God struck him in the quarter where his ofiences had 
 been greatest. After having trampled under foot all laws, and 
 all the proprieties of life, in his eagerness to load with wealth 
 and honours the children whom he should have blushed to own, 
 it was on hearing of the treason of his grandson Oclavius, 
 secretly in league with the emperor, that he felt hh end ap- 
 proach. In less than three days he died. Had he in his last 
 moments any re-awakenings of conscience and serious piety ? 
 Did the first gleams of eternity, as he approached it, make him 
 see at last in its true light his long course of trickery with the 
 strong, of violence with the weak, of lies to men and to God ? 
 Possibly so ; possibly likewise, and this is but too likely, possibly 
 he persisted to the last in taking no blame to himself And of 
 
204 ' HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 what, after all, shall we accuse him ? A soldier, he had held 
 his post ; a general, he had made stratagem supply the want of 
 force ; " Prince of glorious memory," says the historian of the 
 council, " he shewed himself man only in the excess of his affec- 
 tion for his own ; in all other respects he merited, in the eyes 
 of the Church, the name of hero."^ For him, the Church was 
 himself; and who knows that he was not prepared to make a 
 ground of merit before God, of all the guiltiest deeds that his 
 devotedness to his own glory had led him to perpetrate ? 
 
 After all, we venture to say, a life like his is perhaps more 
 shameful in reality for the Church and the popedom than that of 
 such or such a pope, whose very name excites our horror. Great 
 crimes are in some sort more personal. Those of Alexander VI., 
 for example, pertain rather to the man than to the pope ; a Roman 
 Catholic may execrate them as well as we, except, indeed, that 
 he must afterwards explain how infallibility could have resided 
 in such a man. In Paul III. we have not to do with striking 
 and isolated crimes ; his life exhibits a long tissue of immoralities, 
 that are neither murders nor incests, but for which Roman 
 Catholicism and the popedom remain aiid will eternally remain 
 in part responsible. With history in our hand we might prove 
 that Paul III. was the representative, and, as it were, the per- 
 sonification of Roman Catholicism such as it was, such as it must 
 necessarily be, in the face of the Reformation and of the tendencies 
 developed by it. Repugnance to convoke a council, precautions 
 taken to retain the command of it, artifices of all sorts for the pur- 
 pose of dictating its decrees or giving them a false meaning ; aU 
 that he felt, all that he did or that he wished to do, another pope 
 in his place would, like him, have felt, and done, and wished to 
 do. God has judged him ; let us say nothing. When we look 
 at the anguish he must often have suffered during the last years 
 of his life, it requires no great effort of charity to feel more com- 
 passion than hatred for an old man sinking under such a load ; 
 but the more indulgent we shall be towards those who bore that 
 load of errors and abuses, the more, as we have already said else- 
 where, we shall feel ourselves entitled to be severe towards the 
 Church that placed it on their shoulders. 
 
 To whom was this load now to pass ? Seldom has Europe 
 ever put this question to herself with more interest and disqui- 
 etude. 
 
 All that could be said has been said already on the conclaves. 
 The most Roman Catholic historians have been forced to groan 
 over all that is vexatious, according to them, and profoundly 
 scandalous, according to others, in the manner in which these 
 
 * Pallayicini, book xi. ch. vi. 
 
C«AP. II. 1519. INTERNAL HISTORY OF THE CONCLAVES. 205 
 
 meetings are licld, in the intrigues by which their sittings are 
 prolonged, in that preponderance which is openly given to po- 
 litical interests over those of religion and the fia-ith. What is, 
 still more, what M^as the election of a pope but a debate among 
 the powers called to concur in it by their cardinals ? The few 
 religious formalities thrown over that heap of earthly aflairs, 
 seem to have been imagined for the purpose of inviting hypocrisy 
 to that congress of all the passions. What an insult to the Holy 
 Ghost and to God, to commence by solemnly invoking the pres- 
 ence of the Holy Ghost each of those days which are forthwith 
 to be so filled up with faction and cabal ! What an insult to 
 religion, to conscience, to common sense, to proclaim the result 
 of all these long machinations as the work of God I But no : 
 these men are so familiarized with all that is most strange, that 
 neither their reason nor their conscience is any longer revolted 
 by it. Listen again to him whom we ever find at the breach 
 whenever there is a paradox or an abuse to be defended. " God 
 himself," says he, " in not producing, till after the creation of all 
 other things, the greatest and most perfect being that he has 
 placed upon the earth, has desired to teach us that slowness, in 
 important works, is no proof that they are less the result of his 
 will, but, on the contrary, the most expressive seal of that very 
 will." Of what then do we complain ? The longer a conclave 
 has lasted, the more intrigues it has had, the more the chances 
 that the person elected is the elected of God. 
 
 The internal history of conclaves, accordingly, would make 
 one of the most interesting, but also, alas ! one of the most mel- 
 ancholy books that could be composed. This very word con- 
 clave, which should signify shut, shut ivith a key, and which is 
 sought to be justified by an unheard of superfluity of gates and 
 sentinels — is at once a lie. In spite of the oath of secrecy and 
 that triple guard, it is a matter of public notoriety that letters 
 and emissaries pass and repass almost without any difficulty. 
 That loaf, that piece of meat, brought for such or such a cardinal, 
 may be found, if you open it up, to contain the note in writing 
 which is perhaps to decide the election. All this is known and 
 seen. Nobody is deceived, but everybody is willing to be so, 
 because everybody has need of this, in order to deceive in his 
 turn. Here, moreover, as everywhere else, we must distinguish 
 between persons and things. The pope being a personal sove- 
 reign, and still more, a sovereign called to meddle more or less 
 in the afiairs of all the others, it is natural and inevitable that 
 politics should share in his election. Although the cardinals 
 were to try to banish them, they would find they could not. As 
 long as the popedom shall be what it is — and how sliall it ever 
 
206 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book HI. 
 
 be anything else ? — a conclave must be an afflicting spectacle 
 to all the friends of religion, to whatever communion they may 
 belong. Perhaps there never was one in which the cardinals 
 did not groan over such a state of things, but no more has there 
 hardly ever been one in which the great majority have not ac- 
 cepted, without scruple, the consequences of the part that each 
 has had to act, and have not appeared more happy than pained 
 at having to move about for days, and weeks, and months, in 
 that atmosphere of intrigues. Weeks, months I Were it a matter 
 of ancient history, should we beheve it ? Can we figure what 
 forty or fifty men, condemned to remain shut up together until 
 they shall have made choice of one of them, may have to say to 
 each other, to calculate, to combine, during fifty, sixty, or seventy 
 days ? It bewilders one. It is almost heroism. 
 
 It was during no less than seventy-one days (from 2Sth No- 
 vember, 1549, to 7th Februar}'-, 1550), that the cardmals remain- 
 ed in conclave, employed in giving a successor to Paul III. And 
 yet, to all ordinar}^ motives for hastening the election, there was 
 added this time, one altogether new, and withal very pressing. 
 The year 1550 had commenced. A solemn jubilee had been 
 published ; it was proposed to have it opened on the 24th of De- 
 cember, with certain ceremonies which the pope alone could 
 perform. The city was chokefull of pilgrims. Every evening 
 an immense crowd assembled round the conclave to learn the 
 result of the voting of that day ; every night they returned dis- 
 contented, angry, cursing the cardinals and the conclave, as if 
 there was not among them the man whose feet they were ready 
 to kiss the moment that he should be pope. 
 
 The cause lay in the fact, that few conclaves had ever been 
 so strongly divided. Three factions, as usual — the Imperial, the 
 French, and the Italian, divided the assembly. The Italian 
 wished to have one of the creatures of Paul III. elected. Car- 
 dinal Farnese, the head of that faction, was too young as yet 
 seriously to think of the tiara ; but it was of consequence to him 
 to be able to reckon on the protection of a future pope for his 
 family and for himself This faction, however, did not include 
 all the Italian cardinals. The aggrandizement of the Farneses 
 had procured them enemies ; a pope who, owing his greatness 
 to them, should be expected to place it at their service, was not 
 thought to be desirable. The French favoured Cardinal Sal- 
 viati, the imperialists Cardinal Pole. A candidate had therefore 
 to be looked for who should unite the suffrages of two out of the 
 three factions, and such was lO be found in the late» president of 
 the council. Cardinal Del Monte. The Farneses had seen him 
 entirely devoted to Paul III. ; the French had seen him engaged 
 
CiiAP. II. 1550. DEL MONTE REIGNS A.S JULIUS III. 207 
 
 in conllict Avitli the emperor. The majority Inid been led to vote 
 for him — still that was not enough. Former custom had not 
 permitted the elevation to the pa])al throne of" a cardinal whom 
 the emperor had formally declared beforehand that he did not 
 desire to have as pope. Thus the previous consent of Charles V. 
 was requisite, and iJel Monte, the principal author of the trans- 
 lation of the council, seemed less likely than any of them ever to 
 obtain it. Cosmo, Duke of Florence, negotiated for him, and on 
 the 7th of February he was pope. 
 
 Now, among the engagements discussed in the conclave, and 
 to which each of the cardinals, according to usage, had promised 
 to submit in the event of his election, the imperial party had 
 caused the insertion of one bearing that the council was to be 
 continued. In consequence of this, Julius III. was hardly in- 
 stalled, when an ambassador extraordinaiy, Louis d'Avila, ar- 
 rived in Rome, bringing along with the emperor's official compli- 
 ments, the pressing request that he would take into consideration 
 the performance of his promise. Juhus III. replied that he w^as 
 ready ; he had but one condition to interpose — it was that the 
 council, said he, should serve for tlie ruin of heresy, not for the 
 demolition of the authority of the Holy See. This was at once 
 almost tantamount to a refusal. On such a condition as that 
 no pope would ever have felt repugnant at the holding of a coun- 
 cil. Besides, who could guarantee it to him ? Could the em- 
 peror himself prevent the most delicate points being at any mo- 
 ment touched upon ? What was in any case clear, was that 
 JuHus reserved to himself the power of regulating, as his prede- 
 cessor had done, the rights and the competence of the council. 
 To the old motives that actuated Paul III., and which still sub- 
 sisted, were added those of the new pope. He who had perti- 
 naciously remained at Bologna until the death of Paul III. could 
 not well yield, as a sovereign, without condemning his own con- 
 duct as a minister. 
 
 He yielded, nevertheless. The sohcitations addressed to him 
 were too warm, and the expectation too general ; necessity 
 proved an overmatch for wounded vanity. Perhaps it cost him 
 less than one might be disposed to think. Since his elevation 
 to the popedom he was no longer the same man. Although he 
 had always loved the pleasures of life, he had contrived, till then, 
 to give the precedence to business ; but now that he was pope, 
 he devoted himself to them so entirely, that his councillors Ibund 
 it difficult to wrest a few hours from him for the most pressing 
 interests. As little disposed as any one could be to surrender any 
 of the prerogatives of the popedom, he considered them only as, 
 in some sort, a deposit to be transmitted intact to his successors ; 
 
208 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book HI. 
 
 they were not to him the object of that deep-felt worship to 
 which so many other popes had been, soul and body, devoted, 
 and of which he himself had till now been the inflexible minis- 
 ter. AYhat still farther contributed to smooth away difficulties, 
 was that he had only to apply to liis own case the old policy of 
 Paul III. AA^e have seen, in fact, that the business remained 
 under the form of a suit at law between the emperor and the 
 Bologna assembly, a suit that was to be brought to an issue be- 
 fore the pope. The representative of the assembly having be- 
 come pope himself, he could not be both judge and party. The 
 matter dropt accordingly ; all that he had to do was to call the 
 council without saying a word about what had passed. 
 
 All this, it may well be thought, took infinitely more time 
 than from our rapid narrative one might suppose. It was not 
 until after the lapse of six months that the parties began to 
 understand each other. 
 
 The consent of the king of France, however, had yet to be 
 obtained. The French had never liked the selection of Trent 
 for the council ; we have seen that they thought it at once too 
 Italian and too German, albeit that it was impossible, as we 
 have also seen, to find a city not more German, or more Italian. 
 It was from antipathy to the emperor that Henry II. had 
 appeared to approve the translation to Bologna ; thither he had 
 sent an ambassador, but very few of his bishops. The view 
 now pressed on him was, that by refusing to send them to 
 Trent, he would thenceforward be the sole author of the impos- 
 sibility of the council. He was flattered with the idea of being 
 arbiter, in case of need, between- the emperor and the pope ; and 
 he was gained over at last by being reminded of the character 
 of "protector of the Holy See," m which so many of his prede- 
 cessors had gloried. The promise had also to be made to him, 
 in order that he might promise it in his turn to his parliament 
 and bishops, that no encroachment should be made on the liber- 
 ties of the Galilean Church. A very wise promise, but a very 
 odd one also. How could the pope logically say what the 
 assembly would or would not do ? Was not this tantamount to 
 the avowal, that he was preparing to allow it to do nothing 
 without his leave ? 
 
 This point gained, there was much else to regulate. First, 
 there was the eternal question of the submission of the Protest- 
 ants to the decrees of the council, a question now more compli- 
 cated than ever, since the council had decided things to which 
 they neither would nor could submit. Accordingly, at the diet, 
 when the emperor announced to them the resumption of the 
 
Chap. II. 1550. HULL OF CONVOCATION oK JLLll S IIL 209 
 
 council, they with one voice said that, first of all, there ouglit to 
 be a declaration that all that had been done at Trent was null. 
 To the pope's great displeasure, Charles did not receive this 
 proposal with the indignation to be expected from a true Catho- 
 hc. He replied to the Protestants that it would be for the coun- 
 cil to examine the question ; the pope could not obtain from 
 him an explicit engagement for the maintenance of what had 
 been done. And as there was no doubt that the assembly, were 
 it to deliberate under the same conditions as before, would not 
 liasten to ratify the whole, the Protestants craved, as before, that 
 their divines should be admitted, that the pope should not pre- 
 side either directly or indirectly ; that he should begin, in fine, 
 by absolving all the bishops from their oath of fidelity to him ; 
 conditions always renewed, always inacceptable, but which the 
 emperor did not reject with so much warmth as the pope might 
 desire. 
 
 Julius took the course which we have ever seen taken by the 
 popes on such an occasion ; he went straight on. In the bull 
 of convocation (November, 1550), he assumed as admitted and 
 incontestable, that the new council was to be a continuation of 
 the old ;^ at the same time he started from the fact, that a coun- 
 cil-general held without an acknowledgment of his authority, 
 would not be a council. ^ The emperor had begged that this 
 piece might be communicated to him before being published. 
 The pope sent it to him, but dated and sealed, not wishing 
 to appear as consulting him about its composition. Charles 
 made a vain attempt to prevail on him to alter it. He replied, 
 with much reason, that a bull wdth nothing in it to startle 
 the Protestants, would necessarily be a lie. The ambassador 
 requested that one expression might at least be altered — that in 
 which it was said that the pope sought not only to preside in 
 the council, but to direct it, an assertion which Roman Cath- 
 olics even might consider as exaggerated Julius replied, in 
 plain w^ords, that if certain Catholics had forgot that truth, he 
 did no more than his duty in reminding them of it ; and to cut 
 short all such demands, he ordered the publication of the bull. 
 
 It was read accordingly in the diet, and immediately produced 
 the effect that had been dreaded. Consistent and sincere Roman 
 Catholics were very well pleased with the frankness shewn by 
 the pope ; but all the emperor's party thought it imprudent and 
 ill-timed. The Protestants, on their side, repeated for the hun- 
 dredth time, that this was not the council to which they liad 
 
 ^ Decernimus et declaramus — ipsius concilii continuationi et prose- 
 cutioni — iucumbei'e veliiit. 
 
 ' Nos ad quo3 spectat generalia consilia indicere et dirigere. 
 
210 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 promised to submit. The emperor once more intervened ; he 
 promised solemnly, to both parties, that all should pass to the 
 satisfaction of Germany. But something more than words was 
 wanted. He had to give a precise expression to his promises, 
 and to allow them to be minuted ; accordingly, the decree of 
 the diet (13th February, 1551) was almost point for point, the 
 counterpart of the bull that it was expected to homologate. 
 The pope had spoken of the continuati(yn of the council ; the 
 emperor declared, by the medium of the diet, that everybody 
 should be free to propose, according to the dictates of his own 
 conscience, what he should believe likely to promote the good of 
 the Church. It might be proposed, therefore, that all should be 
 recommenced. The pope had spoken of directing the council ; 
 the emperor affirmed that he would take care that all things 
 should be done according to law and order Now, many peo- 
 ple thought, that according to lata and order implied either the 
 cessation, or at least a great diminution of the pope's influence. 
 The pope had spoken of setting forth the doctrine of the Church; 
 the emperor announced a pious and free council, at which all 
 the questions should be decided in a Christian manner, accard- 
 ing to Scrii%ure and the Fathers. In a word, the edict pro- 
 fessed to be no more than a commentary on the bull, but the 
 commentary carried away the text. 
 
 Julius dissembled, officially at least, for in conversation he 
 always expressed himself with a frankness that quite bewildered 
 the politicians. He was a wit. He never met with a check 
 for which he did not console himself with some sufficiently 
 biting sarcasm, and he was no more put out of sorts by the 
 emperor than by any one else. 
 
 The re-opening was fixed for the 1st of May, 1551. One 
 sole legate, Marcellus Crescentio, cardinal of St Marcellus, was 
 charged to preside ; two prelates, Sebastian Pighini, archbishop 
 of Manfredonia, and Lippomani, bishop of Verona, were given 
 him as coadjutors Crescentio, if we are to believe the buU of 
 legation, was a zealous, prudent, and pious man ; but if we are 
 to believe the ambassador Vargas, ^ he was a man full of pride 
 and effi-ontery, who treated the bishops as if they were his foot- 
 men, and flew into a passion the moment he met with any con- 
 tradiction. We shall see which of these two portraits most 
 agreed with facts. 
 
 The council opened on the day fixed (eleventh session), but 
 with only fifteen bishops. Notwithstanding this small number, 
 from the very first meeting held the evening before, " God per- 
 mitted that there should reign in that new assembly more lib- 
 * Letter of 26th November, 1551. 
 
Chap. II. 1510. CONFLICT UETWEEN FRANCE AND THE POPE. till 
 
 erty than concord."^ The discussion bore principally on llu; 
 time to bo fixed lor the next session. The president wanted a 
 delay of lour months. The majority were opposed to this — and 
 yielded. A first success this to the pope. In this, at least, it is 
 impossible to deny that the new council was the continuation 
 of the old. 
 
 In this session (the eleventh datiii<»' from the commence- 
 ment), all that was done was to declare the council open, and 
 to adjourn to the 1st of September. 
 
 New complications had now arisen, so that on the very day 
 of the opening it was doubtful that the council could live. 
 
 The sole result of the reconciliation of Octavius Farnese with 
 the emperor w^as its having hastened the death of Paul III. 
 Threatened with seeing his city of Parma occupied as Placentia 
 had been with the imperial troops, tlie duke put himself under 
 the protection of France, and received a French garrison. He 
 had previously asked the pope to continue to assist him against 
 the emperor ; but whether from a dread of irritating the latter, 
 or from antipathy to the Farneses, of whom he was beginning 
 to be tired, Julius had replied that he must himself provide for 
 the safety of his city. It did not appear, however, that the pope 
 meant by this to sanction his putting himself under the protec- 
 tion of another prince ; perhaps, too, as some believed, he was 
 not really angry at it, but only durst not venture to share the 
 responsibility of a proceeding so likely to irritate the emperor. 
 The latter flattered him, besides, by representing that the con- 
 duct of the young duke was an outrage on the Holy See, from 
 which he held his city and his title. Strange assertion in the 
 mouth of the man who had dared to seize Placentia as belonging 
 to the empire, and said not a word about restoring it I None 
 ventured to expose this contradiction. Julius launched a mani- 
 festo against Octavius, summoned him personally to Rome, and 
 declared that he would hand over to the emperor the task of 
 punishing him if he did not submit. 
 
 It was now the king's part to be angry. Is it the case, as 
 some will have it, that the pope's true object must have been to 
 set him at enmity with Charles Y. in order to find a pretext for 
 breaking up the council ? We cannot think that the Roman 
 court would have voluntarily purchased this result at the cost 
 of a war in Italy, especially at a moment when the goodwill of 
 the emperor permitted the hope that the assembly would not be 
 disposed to attempt too much. Be that as it may, war erelong 
 seemed inevitable. Julius remonstrated with Henry II. that it 
 was not allowable for him to undertake the defence of a vassal 
 ' Pallavicini, book xi. ch. xiv. 
 
212 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 without the sanction of his suzerain ; Henry II. dropt the ques- 
 tion of right, and asked him if the emperor, then, had laid him 
 under so many obhgations that he could not tolerate any barrier 
 in the way of the encroaclunents of the empire in Italy. The 
 quarrel waxed fierce. Henry threatened to keep Parma ; the 
 pope to excommunicate Henry. " If he takes Parma from me," 
 he would say, " I, yes I, will take France from him." And the 
 emperor forbore to interfere, so that a quarrel between the king 
 and him rapidly took the form of a quarrel betwixt France and 
 the pope. 
 
 Erelong Henry kept no measures. The prelates of the king- 
 dom had orders to prepare for a national council ; those even 
 who were at Trent or at Rome were to return immediately to 
 France. Upon this the pope became a little more tractable. 
 Yet he had right on his side ; but what is right in politics ? 
 And what was all this but politics under a slight varnish of re- 
 ligion ? Ascanius della Cornia, his nephew, was despatched to 
 the king. Henry gave him a tolerably good reception, and mat- 
 ters were discussed at first without excessive bitterness, but with- 
 out coming to an understanding. Anon the bitterness reap- 
 peared ; and the king ended at last by causing a protest on his 
 part against the council itself to be intimated to the pope. " This 
 could not," he said, " be a council-general, seemg the ill-will of 
 the pope towards France was about to prevent that country's 
 taking a part in it." In this, with all respect for the chivalrous 
 Henry II., there was neither loyalty nor logic. Was the pope 
 then bound to permit, without even reclaiming, a foreign prince 
 to occupy one of the cities in his domain ? Next, in so far as a 
 nation is Roman Catholic, and calls itself so, how admit that its 
 refusal to take part in a council-general can suffice to make it a 
 particular council ? The parliament, on being consulted by the 
 king, went, however, so far as to declare that a nation is always 
 free to accept or to reject the canons of a council, and even to 
 make a selection from them, accepting some and rejecting others. 
 It is easy to prove, as was excellently done in the parliament, 
 that this liberty existed in the first ages ; but it is clear, also, 
 that this was before the constitution of the Roman Catholic 
 unity. What would the parliament even have said had some 
 small nation, some Swiss canton, that of Zug, for example, with 
 the eight or ten thousand inhabitants which it then had, de- 
 clared itself entitled to reject a council that had been admitted 
 by the rest of Europe ? Now, the canton of Zug was a sover- 
 eign state. What France wanted to do Zug had the right to do 
 also ; but, like France, it could do so only on the condition of 
 breaking, in fact, that unity which people knew so well how to 
 
Chap. II. 1051. PROTEST OF HENRY II.-IIOW PARRIED. 213 
 
 employ as a A\eapon in combating those who dared frankly to 
 deny it. 
 
 As "svith Charles V., in fact, it was at the expense of the Prot- 
 estants that Henry II. redeemed his irreverent conduct towards 
 the Holy See. We have seen how the emperor, when his con- 
 tentions with Paul III. were at the very worst, wished to estab- 
 lish the Inquisition at Naples ; two years afterwards, when the 
 debates on the translation of the council ran highest, he actually 
 established it in the Netherlands. In France, it was by the 
 light of the fires at which the reformed were burnt, that Henry 
 II. may be said to have written his anti-papal protests ; it was 
 while providing those fires with victims that the parliament ex- 
 culpated itself from having violated the Church's unity, and by 
 its bold procedure furnished weapons for the Church's enemies. 
 A century and a half later we shall find that it was still by pun- 
 ishments that Lewis XIV. desired to purchase forgiveness for his 
 Gallican temerities. Alas, how does the history of humanity 
 seem to be made up of biood and inconsistencies I 
 
 Null and baseless in point of reason as it was, still the protest 
 of the king of France, together with the absence of his bishops, 
 struck a rude blow at the future authority of the council. That 
 blow Charles V. did his best to parry. He sent off to Trent all 
 the German and Spanish bishops he could muster ; he even saw 
 to the electors of Cologne, of Mayence, and of Treves, proceed- 
 ing thither, conceiving that their high rank and princely mag- 
 nificence would powerfully contribute to secure the credit of the 
 assembly. At the same time he had himself represented in it 
 by three ambassadors, one for the empire, another for Spain, and 
 one for Austria and his hereditary estates. But in proportion as 
 his ardour augmented that of the papal party was perceived to 
 decline. His history, already a long one, sufficiently warrants 
 the suspicion that he had some secret objects in view. Why so 
 many Germans in 1551 when there had been none in 1545? 
 Distrust was daily on the increase. 
 
 He had, also, put himself to a great deal of trouble in order 
 to oblige the Protestants to take part in the council by sending 
 their deputies to it. Julius III. had made no positive promise 
 that they would be received ; he had even said, in language 
 more picturesque than dignified, that he had no wish to fight 
 with a cat in a cage. There was nothing very attractive, it 
 must be allowed, in the prospective arrival in full council, with 
 the Bible under their arms, of men, everything said by whom 
 must inevitably tend, with whatever mildness they might temper 
 their expressions, to deny all the rights, and to demolish all the 
 pretensions, of the assembly and the pope. The political pro- 
 
214 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book HI. 
 
 tests had been disposed of; the rehgious protests it was of im- 
 portance that they should hear at a distance only, in order that 
 they might at least have the appearance of persons that heard 
 them not, and therefore might be excused lor not replying to 
 them. The Protestants, on their side, made very little account 
 of the pretended favour intended to be done to them. They saw 
 plainly enough that there w^as no intention of giving them any 
 substantial influence in the votings of the assembly ; they asked 
 themselves if their presence, after having served no purpose, per- 
 haps, but that of irritating their judges, and preventing all conces- 
 sion, would not be interpreted as implying acquiescence. Finally, 
 they behoved certainly not altogether to leave out of reckoning 
 that John Huss had been burnt at the council of Constance, not- 
 withstanding the safe-conduct of the Emperor Sigismond. The 
 Fathers of Trent were asked to begin by giving such a safe-con- 
 duct themselves, in the name of the council and of the pope, to 
 the Protestant doctors who should be chosen for the purpose of 
 attending. • 
 
 At Trent, meanwhile, nothing had been done ; hardly had it 
 been proposed to do anything. The four months had been spent 
 in waiting for, receiving, and talking over news ; in the few 
 congregations that had met, the documents bequeathed by the 
 Council of Bologna had been put into order. The twelfth session 
 took place on the 1st of September. All that was done was to 
 adjourn to the 11th of October, intimating at the same time that 
 the chief subject to be treated was the eucharist. 
 
 It was on the 1st of September, also, that the ambassadors 
 had their first official audience. The Count dc Montfort, who 
 appeared for the empire, spoke of the council and the pope in 
 the most flattering terms ; none could have imagined, to hear 
 him, that there could ever have been the slightest misunder- 
 standing between the emperor and the court of Rome. The 
 French Ambassador, Amyot, the translator of Plutarch, pro- 
 ceeded in quite another tone. The letters accrediting him were 
 addressed, " To the most holy Fathers in Christ of the asseynhly 
 of Trent." Assembly not council ; this was a revival of the late 
 quarrel about Bologna, now about to recommence with the king 
 instead of continuing with the emperor. Before opening the 
 letter it was asked w^hether, with that address upon it, it could 
 fitly be opened ? After some deliberation it was opened, but 
 with the declaration that this was done from respect for the king 
 of France, and without anywise admitting the insulting title he 
 had given to the council ; a title, it was added, which his majesty 
 had surely not adopted in an ill sense. It was also from respect, 
 as the letter ran, but only from respect, and without holding 
 
> 
 
 Chap. II. 1551. REPETITION OF THE FRE.NCII PROTEST. 215 
 
 himself anywise bound to do so, that the kinr^ wished to explain 
 to the assembly why he had not sent his bishops. He then re- 
 lated, but in moderate terms, his quarrel with the pope, a quar- 
 rel which at that moment took the shape of skirmishes, between 
 the garriso]! of 1 arma and the pontifical army. He ended by 
 asking the bishops to receive his letter, as that not of an enemy, 
 but of the eldest son of the Church, full of respect for the Holy 
 Sec, although unfortunately at war with him who occupied it, 
 as ready, in fine, to submit to all the assembly's decrees, pro- 
 vided they were made legitimately and legally. 
 
 Great was the buzz of voices on hearing this, but it rose to a 
 tumult when Amyot declared that he was commissioned to re- 
 peat, as a complement to the letter, the protest already made at 
 Rome in the name of Henry 11. That protest said nothing at 
 bottom that was not already in the writing, and that had not 
 been seen by everybody ; but with the letter, which, from be- 
 ginning to end, was calm and polite, none could seem to be 
 ofleiided ; whereas how could any one dissemble with respect to 
 the protest, which was equally clear and animated, and was 
 made still more so by the incisive tone of the ambassador ? The 
 example set by Paul HI. with respect to the ambassador Mendoza 
 was foUoAved, and a declaration made to the eflect, that as no- 
 thing guaranteed the authenticity of the msulting commentary 
 added by Amyot, Yio regard should be paid to it ; that they 
 should keep to the letter as the only authentic document. 
 
 Amyot's w^ords, notwithstanding, were not long of receiving a 
 most striking confirmation in France, and one that at all times 
 m.ost sensibly aflected the popes. A royal edict prohibited the 
 remittance to Rome of any money, on any account whatsoever. 
 The verification of this measure in the parhament gave occasion 
 for the boldest speeches, so that a meeting of Protestants could 
 not have expressed themselves with more severity on the extor- 
 tions of the Court of Rome. " Who shall prevent us," said the 
 Procurator-general, " from dispensing w^ith sending sums Ox 
 money to the pope ? Could these do anything towards assuring 
 men's consciences ? Not only did they not justify matters before 
 God, but it is long since they have ceased even to colour matters 
 in the eyes of men." The people w'honi they were burning said 
 nothing worse of them. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 (1551.) 
 
 SESSION Xm. DECREES ON THE EUCHARIST. TRANSUBSTANTIA- 
 TION AND EPISCOPAL JURISDICTION. 
 
 The communion under both kinds — State of tbe question in the six- 
 teenth century — Discussion — Authorities — Trent and Constance — 
 Drink ye all of it — Sophisms — True motives — A safe-conduct granted 
 — Transubstantiation — Production and adduction — Did Luther be- 
 lieve in transubstantiation? — Physical objections — Miracle upon 
 miracle — Axioms — Is transubstantiation a miracle like any other — 
 This is my body — Scriptural objections — Analysis of the narrative — 
 Historical objections — The Apostles and the New Testament — The 
 Fathers — The idea advances but slowl}" — Admissions — The Mass — 
 The priest — Indiscreet questions — Theory and practice — Adoration 
 of the host — Jesus Christ whole and entire — What purpose does 
 transubstantiation really serve — Ignoble questions — Dilemma — Su- 
 perstitions — Idolatry — Episcopal jurisdiction — Origin — Objections 
 — Historical review — How the pope became its centre — The coun- 
 cil avoids going back to principles — Concessions — TmRTEENXH Ses- 
 sion. 
 
 It was in the midst of this fierce agitation, then, that the 
 council proceeded to dogmatize on the eucharist. 
 
 In the first congregation after the twelfth session, the mem- 
 bers were employed in collecting the articles which the divines 
 would have to examine. Transubstantiation naturally found a 
 place in the first hne, as the foundation of Roman doctrine in 
 these matters. There were nine other articles, of which one 
 only was of importance, that of communion under both kinds. 
 
 First of all, let us say a word on this last. 
 
 There was some exaggeration in the importance attached to 
 it by the Protestants. The more you spiritualize the holy supper, 
 the easier, it would seem, you ought to find it to be accommoda- 
 ting as to the manner of receiving it. The contrary proved to be 
 the case. Wherever the Reformation had appeared there was 
 not a more exciting question than that about restoring the cup 
 to the people. 
 
 It was because neither was there any question in which more 
 audacious violence had been done to the plain letter of Scripture 
 by the Church of Rome. In spite of the few passages in which 
 
Chap. III. 1551, COMMUNION UNDER BOTH KINDS. 2lY 
 
 bread is spoken of without wine^ being mentioned, it is clear 
 that after having read in the Gospels, and in vii. Paul, the de- 
 tailed narrative of the institution of the supper,- nobody would 
 suppose that any one could have dreamt of suppressing one of 
 the two elements. Protestants, it is true, do not regard wine as 
 indispensable to the validity of the act. NoAvherc have they 
 refused the supper to persons who absolutely cannot drink wine ; 
 their synod at Poitiers, in 15G0, has declared this.^ Nowhere, 
 any more, have they affirmed that a country without wine and 
 without the possibility of having it, ought to be deprived of the 
 supper. But as for taking the cup from all, always and every- 
 where, if that is not the most untoward of the alterations to 
 which Apostolical Christianity has been subjected, it is at least 
 the most palpable, and that which we need feel least surprised 
 to see most warmly resented by all who were beginning to open 
 their eyes to the errors of the Church. Then, if the Protestants 
 did exaggerate the importance of the cup, they had been justified 
 in this by two popes, centuries before. Leo the Great, in one of 
 his discourses, accuses the Manichaeans of sacrilege, because they 
 would communicate without wine, Gelasius I., in one of his 
 decrees, expresses himself still more forcibly. " The division of 
 one sole and the same mystery," says he in speaking of the sup- 
 per, "cannot take place without great sacrilege.""* Bellarmine 
 maintains, it is true, that Gelasius addressed himself to priests 
 only ; but, as Baronius admits, there is not in the whole piece a 
 single word that permits that supposition. 
 
 As for demonstrating historically that the communion under 
 both kinds long prevailed, that would be useless ; it has never 
 been denied. Only people are mistaken in limiting this loiig 
 time to three or four centuries. " Until the commencement of 
 the twelfth," says Mabillon in his treatise In ordinem Ro- 
 Qnamim, " the communion under both kinds was invariably 
 maintained by the Church."^ It is curious to contrast this 
 positive declaration of a Roman Catholic as candid as he was 
 learned, with the manner in which two councils have admitted 
 the fact. At Constance, in voting the communion under one 
 kind : " It is true," it is added, " that in the j)rimitive Church, 
 
 ^ In Acts ii. and xx. The supper in these two passages is called the 
 breaking of bread; but it is spoken of there only incidentally, without 
 any detail, and wherever there are details, there the wine occurs. 
 
 ^ Matthew xxvi. ; Mark xiv. ; Luke xxii. ; 1 Cor. xi. 
 
 ^ Discipline, ch. xii. art. 7. 
 
 * Divisio xmius ejusdemque mystcrii sub grandl sacHlegio non potest 
 provenire. • , 
 
 ^ Ante annum 1120, commnnio sub utraque specie ab ecclesia im- 
 mutabiliter retinebatur. — Sess. xiii. 
 
 K 
 
218 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 the sacrament was received under both kinds." ^ Then comes 
 another council, and this admission, incomplete as it is, still 
 appears too candid : ''At the commencement of the Christian 
 religion" the Tridentine Fathers proceed to say, " the practice 
 of the communion under both kinds was not rare.'"^ See how 
 the truth, even when purely historical, makes progress in the 
 successive decisions of the Church. "Why should not a third 
 council declare that it was %'ery rare ? A fourth, that it was 
 quite unknown ? There would be less distance between these 
 last assertions and that of Trent, than between that of Trent 
 and the actual fact, clearer than day, that the Church existed 
 for ages without such a thing as communicatmg without wine 
 being dreamt of, and, above all, without people having the idea 
 that the Church could have made it a law.^ 
 
 This last, in fact, is the most serious point in the question. 
 The Christian who may be most disposed to allow the Church 
 all the rights she arrofjates to herself, mipfht still on reflection 
 doubt that she could have this. When Jesus Christ had said, 
 " Drink ye all of it," when twenty or thirty generations of 
 Christians, when the fathers, when the councils have been 
 unanimous for ages, in translating this word all by everybody, 
 was it still a matter that could reasonably be changed? The 
 Church, according to this, might have taken away, had she so 
 desired, not the wine only, but the bread also. She might have 
 still more plausibly done so, seemg that Jesus Christ simply 
 said, " Take, eat ;" it might at least have been alleged that the 
 word all does not occur in the phrase. Might it not be said that 
 the Saviour wished to prevent the very thing which has hap- 
 pened ? With the bread he says " Eat," with the wine, " Drmk 
 ye all I " This word accordingly has ever given peculiar annoy- 
 ance to the defenders of the Roman practice. Mark how Bossuet 
 gets rid of it. Nothing, says he, more clear than this passage ; 
 but no more is there anything more clear than the order given 
 to the Jews to eat the passover in a standing position. Did 
 they observe that command ? No. Jesus Christ himself vio- 
 lated it. If then the Jewish Church could change something in 
 
 ^ Licet in primitiva Ecclesia hiijusmodi sacramentum reciperetur a 
 fidelibus sub utraque specie. 
 
 ^ Licet ab initio Christianfc religionis non infreqnens utriusque 
 specie! nsus fuisset. — Sess. xxi. 
 
 ^ Angelo Manrique, in his Annates des Citeaiix, speaks of several 
 ancient public chalices preserved down to his time in various churches. 
 On that of the Cathedral of Rheims, the gift, according to tradition, of 
 St. Remi, the following line was engraved: 
 
 " Hauriat hine populus vitam de sanguine saci'o." 
 "Hence let the people drink life from the sacred blood." 
 
Chap. HI. 1551. ROME'S REASONS FOR REFUSING THE CUP. 219 
 
 its passover, "svliy should not we also have modified somethiiip: in 
 ours ?' A sophism tliis, a pure sophism ; and bad must the 
 cause indeed be when we find Bossuet reduced to this. The 
 Jews did not eat standing, agreed ; but when they read in their 
 law the positive command to do so, where do we see that they 
 were allowed themselves to give the force of a law to the prac- 
 tice of remaining seated ? It is one thing to neglect a precept, 
 because thought to be of small importance, and another thing to 
 decree the contrary. Had Christians begun of themselves, from 
 negligence, to communicate only with bread, the Church would 
 have been none the better authorized to refuse the wine to those 
 who might ask for it. In fine, what proportion could there be 
 between an act so purely accessory as that of eating in a stand- 
 ing or sitting position, and an act positively pointed out, in the 
 institution, as a half of the sacrament? 
 
 AYherefore, then, has the Roman Church shewn so much per- 
 severance in extending, and so much obstinacy in maintaining, 
 a practice apparently so indifierent as that of withholding the 
 cup ? Controversialists have seen nothing in this but infatua- 
 tion, a false sense of shame at the idea of retracting the ostenta- 
 tion of omnipotence. This last motive has not, doubtless, been 
 without its influence. To say no precisely where Jesus Christ 
 has said yes, might be at certain epochs a powerful means of 
 making an impression on men's minds, by exhibiting the au- 
 thority of the Church as equal if not superior to that of its 
 founder. But there has been another reason besides these. A 
 matter of indiflerence as it is in a dogmatical point of view, the 
 taking away of the cup is of immense importance in a sacerdotal 
 point of view. It forms the most continuous and the most 
 sacred of the barriers that have been raised by the Roman 
 Church betwixt the flock and the pastors ; it has given occasion 
 for a privilege which has the double advantage of not being bur- 
 densome to the people, and yet of being exercised daily before 
 the eyes of all, and in the midst of the performance of one of the 
 most solemn of all acts. Add to this, that nothing had been 
 neglected that could enhance its value. After the wine had 
 been taken from the people, it was still conceded for two cen- 
 turies as a very great favour, to those who received the com- 
 munion from the hands of the pope. Towards the close of the 
 fourteenth century,- this last vestige disappeared ; we see no 
 longer any one but the king of France, who in his quality of 
 Most Christian King, and of eldest son of the Church, still com- 
 municated under both kinds, but only on the day of his conse- 
 cration and in the article of death. Thus an honour which the 
 
 * Variations, book viii. ' See Mabillon, same treatise. 
 
220 ■ HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book HI. 
 
 most powertul of the monarchs of Europe obtained only as a fa- 
 vour twice in his hfe, the most petty village priest enjoys every 
 day, as a right inherent in the priesthood. How can we be sur- 
 prised after this to find so much repugnance to concession on 
 this article, even although dogmatic infaUibility had no direct 
 interest in it. 
 
 The Protestants, on their side, had not ceased to make it one 
 of the primary conditions of their return to the E-oman Church. 
 The emperor felt that were this point once to be decided in the 
 Roman sense, all hope must be abandoned either of gaining the 
 Lutherans, or of preventing their protesting formally against 
 the council. His ambassadors, accordingly, insisted that there 
 should be no discussion of its merits. The presidents wrote 
 about it to the pope. He replied that the omission of a point 
 of such importance was not to be thought of; all he permitted 
 was that it should be put off for three months. To what pur- 
 pose ? After the manner in which it had been already treated 
 in the preparatory meetings, the Protestants could not imagine 
 that there ever would be a vote in their favour upon it. There 
 had been a talk of conceding the cup to them, but on condition 
 that they should declare that they did not regard it as necessary, 
 the body of Christ being entire under each species. An illusory 
 concession which came, in fact, too late, as we shall see, and 
 which no Protestant ever accepted with that qualification. 
 
 On this occasion was resumed the delicate question of their 
 coming to the council. Neither pope, nor assembly, neither the 
 Protestants themselves nor any one in Europe, looked for any 
 good from their coming. The emperor always pressed it. He 
 had directed that a safe-conduct should be asked for them, to 
 which he was to add one from himself, so as to remove any ap- 
 prehension that their deputies might feel with respect to their 
 personal safety. The assembly hesitated. Besides the repug- 
 nance felt by its members to facilitate the access of heretics to 
 Trent, they doubted how far they were competent to give a 
 safe-conduct ; apprehending, not without reason, that such an 
 act of sovereignty might be regarded as an invasion of the papal 
 authority. At last the idea was entertained, at the suggestion 
 of the pope himself, of drawing up one in which the Protestants 
 should not be named. They were comprised under the title of 
 " Ecclesiastics and seculars from all Germany," to whom the 
 council guaranteed, " as far as it was in its power," liberty and 
 security. "With this as far as it was in their j)oicer,^ the 
 pope's authority remained intact, but the safe-conduct was no 
 longer a safe-conduct. The pope was left free to cause the 
 ' Quantum ad ipsum sanctum synodum spectat. 
 
CiiAP. 111. 1551. TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 221 
 
 deputies to be seized ;• and who could leel sure that the emperor 
 •would leel disposed to deleiid them ? 
 
 Transubstantiatiou had been voted without a debate. No 
 voice had been raised against it. It is easier sometimes for 
 people to agree in what is altogether false or absurd, than in 
 what is only partially so. 
 
 The agreement among the divines did not, however, go be- 
 yond what was required in order to the anathematizing, in the 
 gross, of" the adversaries of transubstantiation. After having 
 called it a mystery, it was found impossible to resist the fancy 
 to have it explained. Some prelates, more ignorant or more 
 wise, had begged that the council would keep to the anathemas ; 
 but the majority thought themselves able enough to draw up, 
 in the sixth session, a doctrinal decree. Hardly had it com- 
 menced when a keen dispute arose between the Dominicans and 
 the Franciscans. • According to the one, the Saviour's body is 
 made present in the eucharist in the way oi iirGclnction, that is 
 to say, without quitting heaven, it is reproduced in the wafer ; 
 according to the others, it is produced by adduction, that is to 
 say, it really arrives from heaven to take the place of the sub- 
 stance of the bread. In the former case, consequently, the bread 
 subsists, but is changed ; in the latter it is annihilated, and 
 replaced by another substance. 
 
 Both might well have been asked what they knew of the 
 matter, what they could ever hope to know of it, and, above 
 all, what possible interest either faith or piety could have in 
 such details. Believers, forsooth, were greatly distressed to know 
 whether it w^as by production or by adduction that they had 
 Christ's body administered to them I It is true, that if the 
 miracle be once admitted, it is by production that one may best 
 try to explain it ; but in that case you challenge against the 
 miracle in itself, one of the strongest objections that it can en- 
 counter. What becomes of the identity and the unity of the 
 body produced in several different places simultaneously ? This 
 was asked by the Franciscans ; but revenge was taken on their 
 adduction. Nothing in nature, said the Dominicans, is anni- 
 hilated. If the eucharistic bread is not changed, but only re- 
 placed, what, then, becomes of it ? And so both were right 
 and both wrong, the inevitable result when people are such 
 fools as to contend in the dark, without anything really to con- 
 tend about. 
 
 Some things are prevented by their very strangeness from 
 being attacked so vigorously as they seem to require. Transub- 
 stantiation is one of these. In the eyes of all who do not be- 
 
222 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 lieve it, no greater or more inconceivable error ever entered the 
 mind of man. But having once resolved to keep our temper, 
 and to respect honest convictions, we naturally recoil from a 
 contest in Avhich the insulting words, dishonesty, silliness, and so 
 forth, are so apt to drop from our pen. Shall this be a reason 
 for our saying nothing ? No ; while we abstain from insult, we 
 shall speak out everything. 
 
 First of all, be it well understood that we speak of transub- 
 stantiation Roman, material, absolute, such, in fine, as was de- 
 creed by the council. Many beHeve to this day that Luther 
 admitted it ; and these, if there be any among our readers, have 
 perhaps asked themselves, why, from respect for Luther, we do 
 not leave this point in the shade ? Our respect for Luther and 
 for his disciples never shall make us shut our mouth where 
 we thmk he has erred ; but here, the more narrowly we have 
 looked into the matter, the more have we become convinced 
 that in attacking the gross materialism of the Roman supper, 
 we should be rather for Luther than against him. He has ad- 
 mitted the word, and this is vexatious. As for the thing, he so 
 spiritualized it that the word in his mouth, especially towards 
 the close of his life, became a complete contradiction. Accord- 
 ingly, after the sixteenth centmy, and when the first heat of the 
 controversy had passed, Lutheranism and Calvinism have gen- 
 erally considered themselves as agreed on this point, and very 
 few Lutherans in our times would refuse to subscribe to all that 
 we are about to say. 
 
 We shall not insist on physical objections. That body en- 
 closed entire within a space some thousand times less than its 
 natural size, and lyroduced or adduced, as you will, in a hun- 
 dred thousand places at once without ceasing to be the same ; 
 that wafer which becomes flesh, true flesh, without any change 
 whatever being wrought in its colour, in its form, and in its 
 taste ; that wine which becomes blood, true blood, while it pre- 
 serves all the qualities of wine — in all this there is abundant 
 scope for sneers at improbabilities, if we chose to indulge them. 
 And as if this were not enough of a miracle, so utterly unheard 
 of, the Roman Catechism tells us of a second, not so ordinarily 
 spoken of, but which must certainly be admitted if we admit the 
 first. " The bread becoming flesh," it says, " and the wine be- 
 coming blood, by a farther miracle they preserve their appear- 
 ance and their taste." Thus, the thing is still more mysterious 
 and wonderful than if the wafer had visibly become flesh, and 
 the wine visibly become blood. You would in that case have 
 had but one miracle, but now you have two. Great and glo- 
 rious act, assuredly, of the power and the wisdom of God I He 
 
cuAP. III. i5ji. transubstantiation contrary to KEASON. 223 
 
 performs a miracle, and immediately beliold a second miracle 
 for the purpose of concealing the lirst.' 
 
 We are not in the least surprised, says Bossuct,- at the difli- 
 culties that arise from the senses. " The other mysteries of re- 
 ligion have accustomed us to subject our understandings to the 
 obedience of the faith." It is no more diificult for the k^jon of 
 God, he elsewhere says, to make his body be present in the eucha- 
 rist by saying. Tills is my body, than to make a sick man whole 
 by saying, Be thou ivliole. In fme, according to the Catechism, 
 " If the bread and the wine which we take at our meals, change, 
 by the sole force of nature, into flesh and blood, why should the 
 bread and the wine of the supper not become changed by the 
 force of the sacrament, into the body and the blood of Jesus 
 Christ.""^ Answers which all amount to this : " Speak not of 
 improbabilities, all things are possible to God." 
 
 No, all things are not possible to God. There are things 
 Avhich he cannot do ; there are things, if you prefer the expres- 
 sion, which he could not desire to do without ceasing to be rea- 
 sonable and wise, without ceasing to be God. Can he make a 
 thing to be and not to be ? That an event that is past should 
 not have been ? Can he create a square which is round, or a 
 circle of which the radii are not all equal ? " You are obliged 
 to suppose," replies Bossuet, " that it is impossible to God to make 
 one body to be at the same time in diflerent places ; but this is 
 what you have not even attempted to prove by any passage of 
 Scripture." The Scriptures have never said, in so far as we are 
 aware, that a part is less than its whole, or that a straight line 
 is the shortest that can be drawn from one point to another ; but 
 are we any the less sure of the thing on that account, less ready 
 to repel, as insulting to God, the idea that he could ever have 
 commanded us to believe the contrary ? 
 
 Well, then, we defy any one to shew us that these impossibil- 
 ities differ from that of transubstantiation. Reason can no bet- 
 ter accommodate itself to the presence of one body in two differ- 
 ent places, than to a square being not a square, to a circle which 
 shall not be round, to an event which is past and which never- 
 theless is yet to come. 
 
 Shall we be told that reason has nothing to do here ? Take 
 care. That which is only above reason may, in fact, give rea- 
 son nothing to exercise itself upon ; but never can you deprive 
 
 ' We may add that all other miracles as sensible proofs of divine pow- 
 er tend to weaken temptations to unbelief, whereas this, by deceiving 
 the senses, presents a perpetual temptation to unbelief. Now, "God 
 cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man." — Tr. 
 
 - Treatise on the Eucharist. ^ Expos, of the Catholic Faith, eh. x. 
 
224 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TllENT. Book III. 
 
 reason of the right to reject what is contrary to it. The making 
 whole of a sick person, the resurrection of a dead person, are no 
 doubt miracles that astonish us ; but when attacked by the in- 
 fidel, it is on the ground of improbability,' not of impossibihty ; 
 he is compelled to acknowledge that if God willed them, they 
 might have happened, and must have happened. Transubstan- 
 tiation is a different thing. You cannot attack it without your 
 arguments falling full on its very possibility ; you cannot charge 
 it with improbability without at the same time charging it with 
 absurdity. This important destinction betwixt what is above 
 reason and what is contrary to reason, Bossuet admits ; he con- 
 tests only the right of applying it. " Thus," says he, " every 
 time that a man shall object that a point of faith is not only 
 above reason, but directly contrary to reason, must we enter 
 with him into this inquiry ?" Refuse, if you will ; but in that 
 case, abandon the discussion. All your arguments are null be- 
 forehand. A thing that is contrary to reason cannot be proved ; 
 how, then, could you prove it as long as you shall not have 
 shewn that it is not so ? Homan controversialists are the first to 
 follow this course, when it does not run against them. When, 
 for example, they would prove the credibility of miracles, they 
 set about it just as if they were Protestants ; they prove, first 
 of all, that reason can admit them. Why refuse to do as much 
 when they have to do with transubstantiation ? Is this not an 
 admission that they would not succeed ? In fact, you have only 
 to ask those who believe in it. Force them to analyze what 
 they experience in thinking of it, and they will tell you that 
 they do not believe in it in the same manner that they believe 
 in the miracles of Scripture. The latter, as soon as you are 
 convinced of the authenticity of the book that records them, you 
 believe without efibrt ; they are only acts, exceptional, no doubt, 
 but quite natural and simple, of God's poAver. But the former 
 you come to believe, or to persuade yourself that you believe, 
 only by putting a force upon yourself, by trampling upon your 
 reason, in fine, by infatuating yourself. The mind acquiesces in 
 the miracles of Scripture ; but here, it can only withdraw from 
 exercising itself and be silent. The moment we have to do, not 
 with a momentary suspension of the law of nature, but with the 
 reversal of an axiom, all acquiescence is impossible. We shaU 
 have occasion to return to these considerations in Book IV. in 
 speaking of the Mass. 
 
 Even were it but a simple miracle, it would always remain 
 to be proved that this miracle really happened. 
 
 ^ Unlikelihood would perhap.s be a better -word here than improba- 
 bility—TR. 
 
Chap. III. 1551. CHRIST'S LANGUAGE FIGURATIVE. 225 
 
 This is mil body, said Jesus Christ ; and this, according to 
 the Roman Churcli, is the foundation of its doctrine. On which 
 we might fn-st of all object — 
 
 That Jesus Christ was there, in flesh, in bones, still a com- 
 plete man ; and that the- idea of a man holding his own body 
 in his hands is a monstrous oddity ; 
 
 That in saying, " This is my body ivMch is broken for you,'' 
 he would have expressed, had it been really his body, a fact that 
 was not correct ; since it was on the evening before his death, 
 and his body as yet was nowise broken ;^ 
 
 That after having called the wine his blood, he called it this 
 fndt of the vine ; 
 
 That if the words of St. Luke, " this cup is the Nciv Testa- 
 ment in my blood," evidently make the cup, not a testament, 
 but the symbol of a testament, there is no reason for the preced- 
 ing phrase not being figurative also, and for the wine not being 
 the symbol of the blood, the bread that of the body ; 
 
 That Jesus Christ often used expressions not less figurative, I 
 am the door, I am the vine, I am the ivay ; 
 
 In fine, that if he said (John vi.), " The bread that I will give 
 is my flesh," and " he that eateth me, even he shall live by me," 
 in the same chapter we read also, " the flesh profiteth nothing ; 
 the words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are 
 life." Suppose that a man holding bread, and employed further 
 in breaking it into twelve parts, were to say, " This is my body 
 which is broken for you," to what Avould you apply the word 
 this"} Evidently to the whole bread, for it is the whole bread 
 that is broken, not the separate pieces. Thus, in order to our 
 being able to understand the first four words, this is my body, in 
 their literal meaning, we must leave out of view those that fol- 
 low, at least they must be taken in a figurative sense, for there 
 is evidently a figure in calling that broken which is not so. After 
 this, what ground can we have for denying that the whole phrase 
 is figurative ? 
 
 Without going beyond the narrative of the institution, we 
 should still find there more than one detail positively contrary 
 to the literal sense of the four words on which Romanists would 
 fain concentrate the debate. And what, would the reader know, 
 has the Catechism, which had seen them before we did, done 
 with these details ? The pains it takes to attenuate them, is 
 the best proof of the annoyance they must have given. " Jesus," 
 says St. Matthew, " having taken the bread and given thanks." 
 This to give thanks {to bless God, for that is the Greek), is first 
 
 ^ The Vulgate accordingly makes it shall be broken (frangetur), while 
 the Greek verb is in the present tenpo. 
 
226 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 changed into blessing, consecrating the bread, a change previ- 
 ously made, but with more reserve, in the decree of the council, 
 where it is merely said, " After the benediction of the bread and 
 the wine."^ Here then is the consecration, but as the words re- 
 puted to be consecratory, tliis is my body, do not, nevertheless, 
 occur in the narrative, until a line or two lower down, the Cate- 
 chism takes care to bring the two ideas into closer coiuiexion. 
 This, it says, is as if the Evangelist had made it run thus : 
 " Having taken the bread, Jesus blessed it, saying, This is my 
 body." So here we have the mass disco vered.^ Notwithstand- 
 ing this, however, the canon of the mass has taken a farther 
 precaution. *' Take and eat," says the priest, ^^for this is my 
 body. "3 " This for, however," adds the Catechism, " is not 
 necessary to the validity of the sacrament." Why, then, put it 
 there, when none of the Evangelists has done so ? Had the 
 sacred authors attached the smallest importance to the order and 
 the regularity of these details, if, in particular, they had seen in 
 the words, This is my body, the consecration of the bread, the 
 sio^nal of its beinfj changed into flesh — how can we conceive 
 that they should all have fallen into the incredible inadvertence 
 of not introducing them until after the fact of the distribution 
 of the bread ? " He brake it, and divided it among them, and 
 said, Take, eat." Then follows, as a mere explanation, " This 
 is my body." With an historian believing in transubstantiation, 
 and believing it to be effected by those four last words, it would 
 not be an inadvertence, but folly, to introduce them only at the 
 end. Where should we find a Roman Catholic, who being asked 
 to say over the mass, would put the consecration after the dis- 
 tribution ? And if it be at all admitted that some ignorant 
 
 ^ Post panis vinique benedictionem. 
 
 ^ Yet the Roman Catholic doctors did not light upon it so cleverly 
 as one might suppose. Transubstantiation was taught long before it 
 was thought possible to indicate the precise moment when the miracle 
 took place. Innocent III. (De sacrificio Missai) admits, that in order to 
 be able to say with truth, "This is my body," Jesus must have effected 
 the change which they announce some time before. But if they were 
 no more in his mouth than the announcement of something already 
 done, how could they have in the mouth of the priest the power of 
 operating that very thing? Innocent, accordingly, attributed the sacra- 
 mental consecration, not to these words, but to the prayer made by the 
 priest before pronouncing them. This was more reasonable, but it was 
 vague. More precision was wanted, and people kept to the words. 
 This is my body. Innocent's opinion, however, was not abandoned; 
 shortly before the council, it re-occurs in Biel and Catharini. Thus it 
 is hardly three centuries since the consecrating virtue was definitely 
 attributed to those four words. Tiiis is one more of those things which 
 the greater number of Roman Catholics, and even of their priests, are 
 far from suspecting. ^ Hoc enim est corpus meum. 
 
Chap. 111. 1551. ST. PAUL'S VIEW OF THE EUCHARIST. 227 
 
 clown, kiioAviiig nothiiif]^ of the matter, miglit make such a blun- 
 der, wlio will admit that four or five doctors, writing coolly and 
 calmly, could all have lallen into the same error, or rather into 
 the same absurdity ? 
 
 And now, let us leave the details. It is a history \vc arc 
 writing ; let us see what history says on the subject. 
 
 To begin with that of the Apostles, taken from the Acts and 
 the Epistles, we might ask any man of good faith, if he could 
 J come away from the perusal of it with the idea that the com- 
 munion was at that time what Rome has made it since. Some 
 expressions might be cited, more or less copied from those used 
 by Jesus Christ ; but others would have to be adduced also, 
 which, as they can only be taken literally, must necessarily out- 
 weigh the others. We may say and demonstrate, that all that 
 can be found in favour of transubstantiation are figurative ; but 
 with respect to all that are opposed to it, it is impossible to de- 
 part from their plain and obvious meaning. In short, all that 
 Home adduces might have been perfectly well spoken by men 
 who did not believe in transubstantiation ; what is opposed to it 
 could not have been said by men who believed in it. What 
 shall we make, for example, of those passages in which the sup- 
 per is called simply " The breaking of bread ?" What, in par- 
 ticular, of that famous chapter, in which St. Paul repeats, not 
 as an historian, but with a positively practical purpose in view, 
 the detailed narrative of the evangelists ? Is not the eucharist 
 formally represented there as a repast taken in common ? The 
 Apostle complains of certain abuses that had crept into meet- 
 ings of that kind. He recalls, on this occasion, the institution of 
 the supper ; he desires that the repast should be more fraternal, 
 more serious, more Christian ; he threatens and condemns those 
 who should take part in it luiicorthily ; but as respects the re- 
 past itself, he says not a word from which one might conjecture 
 that he thought the custom extraordinary or bad. With tran- 
 substantiation is this admissible ? Much more, in deducing con- 
 sequences from the fact of the supper's having been instituted 
 by Jesus Christ, and from his having called the bread his body, 
 what does he say ? Now was the time, if ever, for him to state 
 positively, "Christ is there; it is his body; it is he himself;" 
 and this Avould have been at once the strongest and the simplest 
 of motives to urge in recommending respect. Instead of this, 
 what says the Apostle ? " But let a inan examine himself, 
 and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup ; for he 
 that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh his 
 own condemnation, not discerning the Lords body'' The 
 Homan Catechism hastens to translate these words thus, " Not 
 
228 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 discerning, under the bread and wine, the Lord's body which is 
 concealed in them."^ And the reason for this is, " That if, as 
 the heretics say, there be nothing to be venerated in this sacra- 
 ment but the memorial and the sign of Christ's passion, what 
 need for so warmly exhorting behevers to examine themselves?" 
 What ! because of Christ's not being corporeally present, there 
 would be less need for being well prepared for the communion ? 
 These words of St. Paul, viewed more closely, are quite as contrary 
 as the rest to the idea of the real presence. In fact, the commu- 
 nicant either believes in it, or he does not believe in it. If he 
 believes in it, whether he examine himself or not, he discerns the 
 body concealed under the bread ; if he does not believe in it, it is 
 not by examining himself that he will come to believe in it. In 
 both cases there is no connexion between the counsel given, and 
 the consequence indicated. This discernment of the Lm'cVs body, 
 then, can only be what arises from self-examination ; that is to 
 say, from the right dispositions taken altogether, which ought to 
 be brought to the act, and from a profound sense of its sacredness. 
 
 After this, although transubstantiation were proved to us to 
 have been established from the close of the first century, or from 
 the commencement of the second, still we should be entitled at 
 once to deny that it can be traced to the Apostles. 
 
 But there is nothing of the kind to be found in history. Only 
 let us acknowledge that the Church's ideas on the subject of the 
 supper, speedily began to be modified. As the increase in the 
 number of Christians no longer admitted of their partaking of a 
 repast in common, it had become necessary to conduct it with 
 more solemn forms ; and with these new forms there crept in a 
 tendency to regard the substance also luider an aspect more or 
 less new. Jewish or pagan reminiscences, the mystery with 
 which the early Christians were often compelled to surround 
 themselves, the excitement caused by a sense of danger, the need 
 of a protection from on high ever more present and more sensibly 
 felt, everything, in fine, had concurred to enhance the eucharist 
 in proportion to the miracles of grace that were expected from it 
 every day. That bread, that wine, people could no longer make 
 up their minds, in some sort, to look upon as no more than bread 
 and wine ; they attached themselves more and more closely to 
 those passages of Scripture which seemed to make them some- 
 thing else ; they advanced by long strides towards transubstan- 
 tiation ; and yet ages were destined to elapse before they durst 
 venture to make it an article of faith. 
 
 Why so long of coming to the birth ? Because even amid the 
 
 ' Corpus Domini, quod in Eucharistia occulto latet, ab alio ciborum 
 genere non distinguit. 
 
Chap. III. 1551. OPINIONS OF THE FATHERS. 229 
 
 general tendencies, people were ottcu thrown back against tlieir 
 will upon the precise statements of the Bible and the plain con- 
 clusions of reason. What wc said above of Scripture, we may 
 now say of the Fathers : to whatever they have written that 
 seems to favour the doctrine of the real presence, we may oppose 
 things which they manifestly would not have said, had they be- 
 lieved in it. 
 
 See Justin, first, in his famous apology : " On the day of the 
 sun we meet. The Scriptures are read, and then, an elder ex- 
 horts the people to follow such beautiful examples. We rise, 
 we pray anew ; water, bread, and wine are set down. The priest 
 (presbyter) gives thanks, and those present reply, Amen. A 
 part of the consecrated things are distributed, and the deacons 
 take the rest to the absent." W^ere the real presence, were tran- 
 substantiation here, it might be said that the Protestants believe 
 in it, for it is precisely, with hardly any exception, a represent- 
 ation of their meetings. 
 
 Read Tertullian :^ " Jesus Christ having taken bread, and 
 having distributed it among his disciples, made it liis body, 
 saying. This is my body, that is to say, the figure of my body." 
 Besides these last words, note, that as in the narratives of the 
 Evangelists, the consecvaiion folloivs the distribution. 
 
 Read Origen :^ " If Christ, as the Marcionites maintain, had 
 neither flesh nor blood, of what body and of what blood were ^ 
 that bread and that wine the signs and images? Elsewhere^ 
 he calls the bread of the eucharist a figurative body. At this 
 passage and at two or three others of this kind, " Origen was a 
 heretic," replies Cardinal Duperron. Heretic if you will ; but 
 all his heresies have been adopted by Epiphanius, by Augustine, 
 by Jerome, and never, in so far as we know, have these words 
 been made a charge against him. 
 
 Read Ephrem :* " Taking bread in his hands he gives thanks, 
 and breaks it in figure of (his immacidate body^ 
 
 Read Macarius :^ " Bread and wine are offered, being the 
 figure of the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. They who pat- 
 
 ^ Against Mareion,book iii. — Acceptum panein et distributum disci- 
 pulis corpus suum fecit, dicendo hoc est corpus meum, id est figura cor- 
 poris mei. Duperron, in quoting this passage, changes id est into scilicet, 
 and makes Tertullian say: " This, to wit, the figure of my body, is my 
 body." Bellarmine (Eucharist xx.) is not content with twisting the 
 meaning, but mutilates the phrase. He suppresses altogether id est 
 figxira. Tliese falsifications shew plainly enough how clear this passage 
 has appeared, and how embarrassing. 
 
 - Against the Marcionites. ^ Commentary on St. Matthew. 
 
 * Against the curious inquirers into the body of Chri.st. 
 
 ' Homily xxvii. 
 
230 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 ticipate in this visible bread, eat spiritually the flesh of the 
 Lord." 
 
 Read Theodoret :^ " The Lord has honoured these visible signs 
 with the name of his body and his blood, not in changing their 
 nature, but in adding grace to nature." 
 
 Read Vigilius i^ " When Christ's flesh was on the earth, it was 
 not in heaven ; and now that it is in heaven, it is not on the 
 earth." 
 
 Read Chrysostom,^ and this passage is all the more remarkable 
 against the real presence, as the first words seem to lead to it : 
 " Before the bread is consecrated it is called bread ; but when 
 divine grace has sanctified it through the intervention of the 
 priest, then it no longer bears the name of bread ; it becomes 
 ivorthy of being called the Lord's body, altlwugh the nature of 
 bread remains in itT 
 
 Finally, read St. Augustme. That one among the Fathers 
 who has furnished the most arms to the partisans of the real 
 presence, is the one also who, when he reasons and speaks with- 
 out figures, furnishes us with the most against that same opinion. 
 Listen to him in one of his treatises :^ " The Lord had no difli- 
 culty in saying. This is my body, when he gave the sign of his 
 body." Listen to him in an epistle :^ " This sacrifice (of the • 
 eucharist) is a thanksgiving and a corrmnemoration of the blood 
 of Christ which he ofiered for us." Listen to him m another 
 epistle :^ " Had the sacraments no resemblance to the thmgs 
 whereof they are the sacraments, they would not be sacraments. 
 But, in consequence of that resemblance, tliey take most fre- 
 quently the name of the things themselves^ And what, then, 
 does he give as an example ? Why, the bread and the wine of 
 the eucharist. Hear him, finally, in one of his works, in which 
 we may feel most assured of having his veritable sentiments, his 
 Christian Doctrine: " If a commandment forbids anything that 
 is shameful or criminal, or recommends what is useful and good, 
 that command is not figurative ; but if he commands a bad thing 
 or forbids a good thing, it must not be taken literally." And 
 
 ' First Dialogue against the Eutycliians. 
 
 - Against Eutj'cliius, book iv. ^ Letter to Csesarius. 
 
 * Against Adimant, ch. xii. 
 
 * To the Deacon Peter, on the Faith. (This book has been attributed 
 also to Fulgentius, the disciple of St. Augustine.) In isto sacrificio gra- 
 tiarum actio atque commemoratio est carnis Christi, quam pro nobis 
 ohtulit. 
 
 * To Boniface. Si sacramenta quandam similitudinem harum rerum 
 quarum sacramenta sunt non haberent, omnino sacramenta non essent. 
 Ex hac autem simihtudine plerumque etiam ipsarum nomina accipiunt. 
 Mark the expression: Quarum sacramenta sunt, of wliich they are the 
 sacraments; as if lie had said, Of which thev are the sacred emblems. 
 
Chap. III. 1531. WHAT A COURAGE HAD THE COUNCIL! 231 
 
 what does he give as an instance ? Why, still the eucharist. 
 " ' If yc eat not,' saith the Saviour, ' the flesh of the Son of Man, 
 and drink not his blood, ye have no life in you.' It looks as if in 
 these words he commanded a crime ; it is a figure, then, by which 
 we are recommended to communicate in our Saviour's passion, 
 by engraving in our memory, in a manner at once affecting and 
 useful, the killing and crucifying of his body for us."i What, 
 after this, and we have far from quoted all that has been col- 
 lected of an analogous kind, from the writings of that Father — 
 what, we say, become of those passages in which Augustine, 
 reproducing, without comment, the figure employed by Jesus 
 Christ, appears to teach the real presence.^ And what a lament- 
 able courage must the Fathers of Trent have had when they 
 ventured to say, " All our ancestors . . . have taught thus in 
 the most open manner. . . . And since these words of the Saviour 
 present this proper and most evident meaning, according to which 
 they were understood by the Fathers, it is assuredly a most hein- 
 ous crime, that these words, against the universal sentiment of 
 the Church, should be twisted by certain quibbling and depraved 
 persons, into certain fictitious and imaginary figures ; the Church, 
 accordingly, has always detested as satanical these explanations 
 imagined by impious men."^ 
 
 Among these impious men, as the crowning of the work, there 
 ought to have been ranged all the Roman Catholic historians 
 who have been candid enough to relate the origin and progress 
 
 ^ Si praeceptiva locutio est aut flagitium aiit facinus vetans, aut util- 
 itatem, aut beneficentiam jubens, non est figurata. Si autem flagitium 
 aut facinus videturjubere, aut utilitatem aut beneficentiam vetare, figu- 
 rata est. "Nisi manducaveritis," inquit, " earn em filii liominis," «tc. 
 Facinus vel flagitium videtur jubere ; figura est ergo, pra?cipiens pas- 
 sioni dominicae communicandum, et suaviter atque utiliter reconden- 
 dum in memoria quod pro nobis caro ejus crucifixa et vulnerata sit. 
 (De Doctr. Clir. iii. 16.) 
 
 * At Geneva, too, in this manner, and m the Reformed Church of 
 France, it would appear to be taught, for one of the liturgical hymns 
 contains these verses : 
 
 Sa chair sacree est le seul aliment His sacred flesh supplies the only food 
 
 Qui donne a Tame un vrai contentement. That fills the hungry soul with real good, 
 
 Son divin sang, qu'il offre pour breuvage. His blood, whence he our beverage supplies, 
 
 Nous a des cicux merite I'heritage . . . Has merited our kingdom in the skies. . . 
 
 Mais qui pourrait ainsi manger et boire But who the body and the blood could think 
 
 Le corps sacre, le sang du roi de gloirc ? Of glory's king to feed upon and drink ? 
 
 C'est le Chretien qui, &c. It is the Christian who, &c. 
 
 ^ Ita enim majores nostri omnes . . . apertissime profcssi sunt. Quje 
 verba . . . quum propriam illam et apertissimam significationem praj se 
 ferant, secundum quam a Patribus intellecta sunt,"indignissimum sane 
 flagitium est ea a quibusdam contentiosis et pravis hominibus ad ficti- 
 tios et imaginarios tropos converti, contra universum Ecdesiaj sensum; 
 qua; ha;c ab impiis hominibus excogitata commenta, velut satanica detes- 
 tata est, semper agnoscens, &c. 
 
232 HISTORY OP THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 of this idea, which one would beheve, looking to the decree, 
 could have had no other commencement but that of Christianity 
 itself Through whom do we know, if not through them, and 
 in particular through one of the most devoted champions of 
 , Rome, Bellarmine, that it was Paschasius Rathbert, abbot of 
 / Corbie, in the ninth century, who first positively taught the real 
 presence ? Through whom do we know, if not through them, 
 that though his opinion may already have been that, as is pos- 
 sible, of the majority of doctors, still it met with quite a suffi- 
 cient amount of opposition to prove that it was not an admitted 
 doctrine ? Rathbert himself, in a letter to Frudegard, admits 
 that many accused him of having exaggerated the meaning of 
 the words of Jesus Christ. Does he say that they were, there- 
 fore, heretics ? Does he attack them in the name of the Church ? 
 Not at all. Had he done so, we should only have had to adduce 
 the names of those who, either during his lifetime or afterwards, 
 impugned his doctrine, ^ and to ask if so many eminent person- 
 ages, abbots, bishops, archbishops, could have dreamt of im- 
 pugning what they regarded as sanctioned by the Church. 
 Thus, whatever date may be assigned to the first commence- 
 ment of transubstantiation, it remains demonstrated that in the 
 ninth or tenth centuries people wrote freely for and against it. 
 It was an opinion, not an article of faith. 
 
 Finally, in 1059, under Nicolas II., it was adopted at Rome, 
 but at a private council, and not very clearly In 1215, under 
 Innocent, it was definitively voted at the council of Lateran, and 
 took the name which has since been given to it. 
 
 All opposition was now, no doubt, to be at an end. But no. 
 Between the council of Lateran and that of Trent we find doc- 
 tors who, even while declaring their belief in it, admit that they 
 do not see it in the Scriptures. First there is Duns Scotus ; he 
 knows not, he says,^ any Scriptural declaration which, by itself, 
 ^ and without the determination of the Church, can oblige one to 
 \J admit it. Then we have Cardinal D'Ailly.^ " This opinion," 
 says he, " that the substance of the bread always remains, is not 
 repugnant either to reason or to Scripture. It is even easier of 
 comprehension, and more rational, if it could accord with the 
 determination of the Church." Then Gabriel Biel, in his lessons 
 on the mass : "We do not find in the Bible ^ in what manner 
 Christ's body is there. That is proved by the authority of the 
 
 ^ Amalaire, Arcbbisliop of Treves; Heribald, Bishop of Auxerre; 
 Rabau, Archbishop of Mayence ; Waldfrid, Abbot of Saint Gall ; Loup, 
 Abbot of Ferrieres ; Bertram, Monk of Corbie, <fec. 
 
 * Coninientar yon Book IV. of Sentences. ^ Ibid. 
 
 * Xon iiivenitur in canone Biblire. 
 
Chap. III. 1561. DOUBTS OF THE DOCTORS. 233 
 
 Churcli iiiiil of llie saints, for by reasons it cannot be proved. 
 But wliy should the Cliurch and the saints have determined so 
 difficult a meaning, seeing the Scriptures might be expounded 
 on tliis article in a manner much more easy to be understood? 
 The Church has so determined." tSee again, shortly beibrc the 
 council of Trent, two great doctors that entertained the same 
 view. The one is Cardinal Cajetan :^ " That which the Gos- 
 pel has not explained expressly, to wit, the manner in which the 
 hread is changed into the body of Christ, we have received from 
 ^^he Church." The other is Bishop Fischer i^ "Here (in the 
 narrative of the institution of the supper) there is not a word by 
 which one might prove the true presence of the body and the 
 blood of Jesus Clirist. One cannot prove that, then, by any 
 Scripture." And although the council aflected to rest on 
 Scripture alone, although it has declared the meaning to be 
 clear, evident, incontestable, which it has given to the words 
 this is my body, lo, here we find Cardinal Bellarmine returning, 
 forty years afterwards, almost to the same thesis : For him, 
 says he,3 he believes, like the council, that transubstantiation 
 may be proved by Scripture, but it may, nevertheless, be doubt- 
 ed whether it be so, since very learned and very ingenious men 
 have been of a contrary opinion. 
 
 "VYhat more could we ask than these admissions ? What could 
 we find more positively corroborative of what we have said, under 
 the scriptural point of view, against transubstantiation ? Say, 
 if you will, that these authors were wrong in not clearly seeing 
 it in Scripture ; the mere fact that they, good Roman Catholics, 
 have admitted that they had not seen it there, will ever prove 
 that it is not clearly there ; and we should then ask if it be ad- 
 missible that a dogma w4iich was to be in relation to worship 
 that which the existence of God is to faith, that is to say, the cen- 
 tre and foundation of all the rest, should not have been distinctly 
 announced, distinctly alluded to, in a single passage of the holy 
 books. 
 
 Now, then, all that we have said of it we might repeat, did 
 we so choose, in speaking of all the dogmas and all the practices 
 of Avhich it is the source. 
 
 We should ask first, not if the mass is in Scripture — for that 
 would be almost a jest — but whether the supper holds a place 
 there which can in any way be compared with that now held by 
 the mass at the present day in the Roman Church ? We may 
 be allowed, on this matter, to make an observation which Prot- 
 estants themselves may deem too bold, but to which a man of 
 
 ' Question Ixxv. ^ Against the Captivity of Babylon, ch. x. 
 
 ^ On the Eucharist, book iii. ch. 25. 
 
 y 
 
234 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book HI. 
 
 calm and sound mind will not, we think, be able to refuse his 
 assent. 
 
 This observation is that the supper — ^by which we mean, of 
 course, the materiel of the supper — has not in Scripture the im- 
 portance that Christians have generally given to it. We would 
 not, assuredly, be understood to mean by that, that it can ever 
 be surrounded with too much respect, or that one can prepare 
 himself for it too carefully ; it is the holiest of the accessories, 
 but still an accessory, since it may be dispensed with. Observe, 
 that St. John, the most spiritual of the four evangelists, has 
 omitted recording it. The greater number of the Epistles do not 
 mention it. The fact that the first Christians communicated at 
 all their meetings, far from contradicting us, favours our view, 
 if it proves, which we admit without difficulty, that the first 
 Christians always and everywhere obeyed the command — "Do 
 this in remembrance of me." It proves also, looking to the 
 simple manner in which they observed it, and the daily partici- 
 pation in it by one and all, that they were very far from seeing 
 in the supper the foundation and the essential part of worship. 
 The augmentation of its solemn accompaniments is what we 
 quite approve ; but if one cannot say that this is contrary to the 
 ideas of the primitive Church, no more can one say that it was 
 in conformity with its usages. 
 
 What, consequently, shall we say of the transformation that 
 has taken place in the supper becoming the mass ? The mass is 
 the abstract, the centre, and, for many, the whole of religion and 
 of worship. In like manner as Christ is thought to be incarnated 
 in the wafer, Christianity is viewed as, in some sort, incarnated 
 in the mass. The mass, always and everywhere the mass. The 
 mass on all occasions ; the mass for all objects. From Rome 
 down to the merest hamlet, not a temple where the general 
 plan, or the details of the edifice, where all, in fine, does not 
 announce the mass, is not made for the mass, and does not ex- 
 clude, at the first glance, every other idea but that of the mass. 
 The mass, accordingly, is the first thing that a Roman Catholic, 
 if he begins to open his eyes, is astonished at not finding in the 
 Bible. Judging of it by the importance that he has been taught 
 to attach to it, he might expect to meet with it at every page. 
 In vain will it be attempted, after that, to show it to him in its 
 germ in the narrative of the supper, in some isolated passages. 
 If still too little versed in theology and history to reply from the 
 grounds of either, it will always be enough lor him to say that 
 what occupies so large a space in his creed, in his worship, be- 
 hoves to occupy, in the picture left us of the early years of the 
 
Chap. III. 1551. WONDERFUL POWER OF THE PRIEST. 235 
 
 Churoh, siilHcient space at least not to escape his notice on a 
 first reading. 
 
 Assuredly a priest who believes in the real presence may boast 
 of possessing the greatest and most miraculous of the powers 
 witli which a creature, man or angel, was ever invested. " We 
 confess that the priest is greater than Mary herself, the mother 
 of (rod. She gave birth to Christ but once ; but the priest cre- 
 ates him when he pleases, and as often as he pleases." Such 
 is the tenor of a form of abjuiation imposed at the commence- 
 ment of the last century on the peasants of Hungary. Although 
 the authenticity of this has been disputed, these lines, extraordi- 
 nary as they are to reasonable Roman Catholics, are not the less, 
 if we admit the real presence; rigorously true. What Mary, 
 blessed among all women, viewed as the most glorious and sacred 
 of favours, there are three or four hundred thousand priests 
 throughout the world to whom it is a thing of daily and very 
 simple occurrence. And when one thinks that the most impure 
 and criminal of men may, in a few seconds, with a few hastily 
 uttered words, perform, when he pleases, this prodigy of pro- 
 digies,' your head swims, in truth, in the view of such an abyss 
 of inconsistencies and pride. All that Egypt or India ever im- 
 agined in the way of fabulous monstrosity for the elevation of 
 their priests above the ordinary level of humanity, has been out- 
 done by Rome in teaching transubstantiation. Did not the num- 
 ber of the priests and the frequency of the masses attenuate the 
 importance attached to it — were, for example, one sole priest in 
 the world thought to perform it, he would be almost a god. 
 
 A priest, ivho believes i?i the real jnesence, we have said. Do 
 we mean to hint that all do not believe in it ? When Luther, 
 at that time a fervent Roman Catholic, went on his journey into 
 Italy, nothing more profoundly shocked him than to see priests 
 laughing in secret at their public performances. " Bread thou 
 art, and bread thou shalt remain,'"- they would say in the mass, 
 
 'Let ITS not forget that this power, if it exists at all, is necessarily 
 unlimited. All the wine that may be contained in a cellar, all the 
 bread that may be found in a baker's shop, the priest may by a few 
 words transubstantiate into the body and the blood of Christ. Conse- 
 crare potest multos cophinos panis et vini dolium. si pra?sentia ista ha- 
 beret, says Cardinal Tolet, (De Instructione Sacerdotum, lib. ii.) Llo- 
 rente relates that a priest amused himself one day by consecrating in 
 passing all the bread exposed for sale in a market. He was punished, 
 and passed for a person who had lost his mind ; but not the less was 
 the bread regarded as transubstantiated. Nobody dared to touch it. 
 Priests came to take it away, and nobody knowing what to do with it, 
 it was burnt. When a doctrine can lead to such enormous absurdities, 
 is it not doing it too much honour to combat it with reasons ? 
 
 ^ Panis es, et panis manebis. 
 
236 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 instead of the sacramental words. Are there still any such 
 priests ? We know not, and it is not for us to inquire. "We 
 could not even approve of people saying, as is sometimes done, 
 that a priest cannot believe in the mass ; all we say is, and this 
 at least is true, that it must be more difficult for him to believe 
 it than any one else. That wafer which the people contemplate 
 at a distance, and always under the influence of a certain charm, 
 he sees close at hand, he touches it, he breaks it, he eats it every 
 day ; every day he must admit, while apart, that such as it was 
 before consecration the same it has every appearance of being 
 after. That wine -which he alone has the right to drink he finds 
 possessing at the altar the same taste and the same properties 
 as at his ordinar}'' meals. Those words which are thought to 
 work the miracle — where shall we find the priest, however 
 pious, who cannot recollect many occasions on which he has pro- 
 nounced them without seriously pondering them, perhaps with- 
 out thniking of them at all, perhaps with his mind full of bad 
 thoughts ? And shall we be told that such a man never can 
 doubt the virtue of such an operation ! Never feel the slightest 
 difficulty at the thought of a result so enormously out of propor- 
 tion to the means I Charity commands us to believe this ; but 
 the more we think of it the more does reason refuse. 
 
 At Trent, too, before proceeding to decree transubstantiation, 
 the council had been led to examine whether practice correspond- 
 ed with theory on this point, and the existence of strange disor- 
 ders had to be admitted. Besides the small degree of seriousness 
 with which many priests set themselves to perform this dread 
 act, there were few churches in which custom did not give its 
 sanction to superstitions or abuses more or less contrary to the 
 awfulness of the sacrament. These abuses, condemned after- 
 wards by the council, have generally disappeared ; but even at 
 this day the forms are far indeed from being always worthy of 
 the essence. Nothing more pompous, no doubt, than a grand 
 mass at Home, at Milan, at Vienna, at Paris ; did God descend in 
 visible form on this earth, hardly could he be received with 
 greater splendour. But for one of these grand spectacle masses, 
 how many thousands are said in which the greatness of the 
 mystery vanishes under the paltriness of the forms I Shall we 
 be told that the cup used by the Saviour was very probably 
 neither of gold nor silver ? True, and it were misapphed rail- 
 leiy, indeed, were we to attack the tin vessels of the poor village 
 priest ; but it is not of anything paltry in that M-ay that we 
 mean to speak. No. Look to that cathedral in which so many 
 marvels have been displayed at Christmas or Easter ; look to 
 that St. Peter's at Rome where you seem to have witnessed the 
 
/ 
 
 Chap. 111. 1051. ADORATION OF THE HOST. 237 
 
 pomps of heaven, then return on the following morning. The 
 tapers have been put out, the hangings have been removed. 
 No one is at the liigh aUar. In passing before a small chapel 
 you hear a few words murmured. You see there, in the corner, 
 an altar for a priest, and a boy who at certain moments repeats 
 with the utmost rapidity of which his lips are capable seme 
 Latin words which he blunders. The priest takes no notice of 
 this. He also has his lesson to recite, and that lesson he finds 
 rather long ; he may have recited it these twenty, these thirty 
 years, perhaps for half a century. At last he says his last Amen. 
 He walks off to other business, and the boy to school. And this 
 that you have been witnessing is the mass ! It w^as, if we are 
 to beheve the Roman Church, the most awful, the most pro- 
 foundly sacred act that could take place in the world I Ah I 
 Protestants can well afford to proiess their disbelief in the real 
 presence, and to avoid celebrating the communion Avith pcmp 
 and shew ; the bread and the wine of the supper, without ceas- 
 ing to be bread and wine in their eyes, meet with a ver}' dif- 
 ferent respect in their Churches from that which the wafer — 
 the body of the Saviour — daily meets with in those of the Ro- 
 man Catholics. 
 
 Do men hope to compensate by the adoration of the wafer 
 for the irreverence with which it is so often treated in so many 
 masses said with precipitation or mechanically ? Adoration being 
 regarded as one of the consequences of the real presence, it too 
 was one of the points admitted without difficulty by the council. 
 And yet there was no such close connexion between the two dog- 
 mas as seemed to be thought. Even were the wafer incontest- 
 ably the body of Jesus Christ, it may still be doubted whether 
 it be agreeable to the spirit of Christianity to adore a body, be 
 it what it may, however divine the soul to which it serves or 
 may have served as an envelope. Will it be said, that since 
 we honour the mortal remains of great men, the stronger reason 
 have we to honour those of the Son of God ? Honour them ! 
 Who denies that ? See whether, among Protestants, that bread 
 which to them is only the representation of Christ's body, be not 
 the object of the most profound respect. But between the high- 
 est honours and adoration the distance is great, it is immense. 
 Honours prejudge nothing as to the nature of the object to M^hich 
 they are paid; adoration makes that object a God. Can a body, 
 then, be a God ? No. The Church itself has felt this. In 
 order to get at the deification of the wafer, it was necessary that 
 the body of Jesus Christ should have a certain divinity of its 
 own, subsisting even after the departure of the divine soul with 
 which that body had been animated. " Divinity," says the 
 
238 HISTORY OF THE COUNCU. OF TRENT. Book HI. 
 
 Roman Catechism, " never deserted it even in the sepulchre." 
 Does this mean, perad venture, that after having been subject to 
 all the necessities and to all the suHerings of the flesh, that body, 
 nevertheless, would not have corrupted in the tomb had it re- 
 mained there ? In that case it must be confessed that the wafer 
 hardly resembles it, seeing that like every other kind of bread it 
 can dry up and moulder away. Be that as it may, the Cate- 
 chism insists much on this idea, it being the necessary comple- 
 ment of the more vague decree by which the council ordained 
 the adoration of the wafer. " Not only," does it say, " is the 
 true body of Jesus Christ, to wit, all that is proper to the human 
 body, the bones, the nerves, contained in this sacrament, but, 
 farther, Jesus Christ ivliole and eyitirer Thus it is not only a 
 body that is there under this morsel of paste, there is himself, 
 the Saviour, living, thinking, acting, such, in a word, as he was 
 on the day of the supper. It must be admitted that the pagans 
 shewed more respect for their gods. The man who would have 
 ventured to say that Jupiter was wliole and entire in one of his 
 statues, would have risked passing for a madman or an impious 
 wretch. 
 
 The Church acknowledged, however, that one raiight in aU 
 places address the Saviour in prayer. Will he hear you when 
 on your knees before the wafer better than elsewhere ? No ; for 
 he is everywhere. One does not see what the material presence 
 can add to that of a being already present everywhere. When 
 we speak of the Deity as inhabiting a temple, we know well that 
 it is a figure ; what is the wafer in this sense but a temple, and 
 how could a divme being be any more enclosed in it than in any 
 temple whatever ? This would lead us to a final objection. 
 What purpose is really served by transubstantiation and its con- 
 sequences? Does it augment the priest's respect for the supper? 
 No : we defy any man to find in any Protestant Church any- 
 thing comparable to the perfunctory character of common masses. 
 Does it augment the awe felt by simple believers ? No : the 
 piety of the two parties being equal, the Protestant communicant 
 is no less deeply affected than the Roman communicant. Does it 
 enhance the dignity of the priesthood in the eyes of the people ? 
 No : we have already remarked, that the frequency of the 
 miracle, and the numerousness of the priests, have made it quite 
 a common affair. Is the real presence necessary for the interior 
 efiect of the sacrament ? The Church, to preserve her con- 
 sistency, has been obliged to maintain this. " The host," says 
 the Catechism, " does not change into our substance, like bread 
 and wine." What then becomes of it ? This question naturally 
 suggests itself; and hence angry disputes, of which we could 
 
Chap. 111. 1551. THE WORSHIPPED WAFER BECOMES A GOD. 239 
 
 not give even an idea without soiling this page with the most 
 ignoble details. Innocent III., in his Treatise on the Mans} 
 passes them complacently under review. He inquires what 
 would become of the wafer if eaten by an animal, a mouse, for 
 example, &c., &c. After having sunk as low as would appear 
 to be possible, " there are other questions, to be sure," he says, 
 ",but in these matters it is better not to be too much inquisitive 
 than to be inquisitive about too much." And, to say the truth, 
 he rightly considered himself as very reserved in comparison with 
 many others, for there is no extravagance that has not been said 
 or written on this subject. Returning simply then to our first 
 question, " Is the real presence necessary for the interior efi'ect 
 of the sacrament?" the following is the answer we would give 
 to those who should affirm it : Several persons equally pious, 
 equally well prepared, communicate together. Among the wafers 
 which the priest is about to give them there is one which, from 
 some oversight, has not been consecrated. Christ is not there ; 
 it is mere bread. AYill he who shall receive it have communi- 
 cated ? If you say no, you insult common sense. If you say 
 yes, what purpose is served by transubstantiation ? 
 
 Although it tended, which we have denied, to augment men's 
 respect for the supper, for the priesthood, and for religion in 
 general, still it must be seen whether this advantage be not 
 more than counterbalanced by the superstitions that flow from 
 it. The mere adoration of the wafer, disengaged though it were 
 from all idolatrous accompaniments, is at once an immense step 
 in that pious materialism over which enlightened Romanists are 
 the first to groan. The worshipped wafer, we have said, be- 
 comes thereby a god ; a god less gross, if you will, than a statue 
 of wood or stone would be, but nevertheless a material and 
 visible god. Now, though there may be some apparent ad- 
 vantage in fixing the eyes and the mind of rude populations on 
 a visible god, not the less is it a breach of the spirituality of the 
 Christian religion. Instead of making efforts to raise mankind 
 to the lofty standard of Christian ideas, the Roman Church has 
 found it more easy, and, above all, more advantageous to bring 
 Christianity down to their level. The adoration of the wafer 
 ere long ceased to be limited to the time of mass. The deified 
 bread remains exposed upon the altar. Ceremonies, festivals, 
 processions are got up in its honour. It is at the sound of cannon 
 that it leaves the temples, and at the sound of cannon that it re- 
 enters them. An eminently spiritual religion has fixed itself and 
 been incarnated in the most material part of an act instituted 
 as a simple memorial. 
 
 ^ Book iv. 
 
240 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 Whilst one party among the divines and bishops thus fixed 
 for ever, reserving the correction of some abuses in detail, the 
 greatest and the most intolerable of the Roman abuses — others 
 had resumed the questions of discipline, and specially, that of 
 episcopal jurisdiction. Their object was to settle its limits, and 
 still more, although the bishops took care not to announce this, 
 to put an end to encroachments on the part of the jurisdiction of 
 the pope. 
 
 " Dare any of you, having a matter against another," says St. 
 Paul,' " go to law before the unjust and not before the saints 
 (the members of the Church ?) . . . If then ye have judgments 
 of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least 
 esteemed in the Church." Such was the first foundation of 
 episcopal jurisdiction. It is hardly necessary to remark : 
 
 1st, That St. Paul speaks here of arbiters, and not at all of 
 judges or of regular courts. 
 
 2d, That the only reason he gives is, that civil judges are 
 pagans. Then, Christianity once established, and the courts of 
 justice having become Christian, the recommendation fell to the 
 ground. 
 
 3d, That he speaks of the Church, of the members of the 
 Church, even " the least esteemed," says he, and nowise of pas- 
 tors in particular. 
 
 The faithful, nevertheless, were led, particularly during the 
 persecutions, to give a regular shape to this part of the Church's 
 internal administration ; the bishop naturally found hims.elf at 
 the head of it. When Christianity became the religion of the 
 empire, the ecclesiastical courts had acquired too much consist- 
 ency for their sudden abolition not to risk being an outrage to 
 religion and the clergy. They found a place accordingly in the 
 general administration of justice ; episcopal sentences became 
 obligatory like those of other judges. Anon privileges were be- 
 stowed on these courts. Even so early as under Constantine, if 
 one of the parties chose, a suit might be transferred from the civil 
 judge before whom it had commenced, to the bishop's court. 
 Notwithstanding the less favourable arrangements of other 
 emperors, these privileges always went on increasing. The 
 bishops drew at last into their courts everything that touched 
 more or less remotely, on religion and the Church ; testaments, 
 because the Church was deemed to be the guardian of orphans 
 and widows ; contracts of marriage, because marriage was a 
 religious act ; engagements of all sorts, under the pretext that 
 the oath, a religious act, formed a part of them. Finally, all 
 the power which princes and peoples had originally conceded to 
 
 ' 1 Cor. vi. 
 
CHAP. HI. 1551. PAPAL ENCROACHMENTS ON BISHOPS' COURTS. 241 
 
 the episcopate only from respect for religion, and without the 
 episcopate arrogating to itself any part of it as a right, was by 
 a gradual advance in boldness declared to be independent of the 
 civil authority. It was from God, from God alone, and directly 
 Irom God, that the bishops maintained they held it. 
 
 At the same time, as isolated bishops had no great success in 
 imposing this doctrine on princes, they had been compelled, in 
 this as in everything else, to close their ranks around the pope ; 
 they had been forced to recognise in him the chief of this vast 
 judiciary body, pretending to have been instituted by Him of 
 whom the pope claimed to be the representative on earth. But 
 Rome gives nothing, even to her own servants, without making 
 them pay for it. Availing herself, therefore, of the need which 
 the bishops had of her, in resisting the civil authority, ere long 
 she considered them in their character of judges, only as insti- 
 tuted by her. It was to the pope, to the pope alone, that God 
 had given jurisdiction ; the bishops were only his mandatories, as 
 the civil judges are those of their prince. But while, in a well- 
 regulated state, the prince never intervenes in the administration 
 of justice, the practice of carrying causes by appeal to Rome, 
 adroitly encouraged by the popes, had become universal. The 
 bishop saw all important causes taken away from him. "When 
 he began to attend to a process before him, he was never sure 
 of its being left in his hands. His very priests might slip from 
 his grasp, not only for breaches of discipline, but even for mis- 
 demeanours and crimes. Papal jurisdiction, it will be seen, had 
 poached largely on the domains of episcopal usurpation. 
 
 No man in the council had shcAvn any wish to trace things to 
 their source, and to ask himself, putting abuses out of the ques- 
 tion, what was the foundation of the assumed right from which 
 they flowed. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction might have had, amid 
 the disorders of the Middle Ages, more than one happy eflect ; 
 but services rendered, however disinterested they may have been 
 deemed, which assuredly they were not, never could create a 
 positive right. Accordingly, long before the Reformation, and 
 without at all trenching on the domain of doctrine, more than 
 one author, to the great satisfaction of the civil princes, had set 
 himself to weigh the titles of the episcopate, and had found them 
 very much wanting. On going back, what was there found ? 
 Either the concessions made by princes, or nothing ; nothing but 
 the Scripture, that is, four lines of St. Paul, which, as we have 
 seen, said rather quite the contrary of what the Church had 
 found in them.^ In 1551, after so many works on public law, 
 
 ' We have seen already (in Book First) ^vhat is to be thought of the 
 fanious passage, "If any one hear not tlio Church." 
 
 L 
 
242 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 in the face of Charles V. and the Parhament of Paris, the ques- 
 tion could no longer be one of law ; it was necessary for the 
 Church to keep to the utmost to fact, and to preserve as much 
 of that as possible, considering it still fortunate that the princes 
 did not speak of resuming everything. At the head of the de- 
 cree, accordingly, there was no declaration of principles. Such 
 being the case, what are we to regard as the Church's doctrine 
 on this point ? Is ecclesiastical jurisdiction of divine right ? 
 On the side of the council, the faithful have been left free to be- 
 lieve it to be so, or not ; on the side of E.ome, it is long now since 
 no such liberty has been allowed. From the time of Gregory 
 YIL, the popes have plainly set themselves up as judges of the 
 Christian world. Boniface VIII., in particular, had so formally 
 decreed this, that one does not see how it can fail to be a point 
 of faith with all who admit the pope's infallibility. 
 
 Thus constantly in danger of coming into collision with either 
 the rights of the pope or those of the prmces, the council could 
 decide nothing of importance. Besides, view in what manner 
 you please, in theory, the jurisdiction of bishops, it would have 
 been unreasonable not to admit the superiority of that of the 
 pope. And so the main source of the abuses complained of, the 
 appellate jurisdiction of Home, behoved still to exist. That be- 
 ing assumed, what restrictions were there to be imposed upon it ? 
 The independent bishops demanded that before appealing, the 
 parties should be compelled to wait until sentence should be pro- 
 nounced ; they desired, also, that appeals should be taken from 
 the bishop to the pope, only by passing through the intermediate 
 jurisdiction of the metropolitan. These reclamations, however 
 moderately made, found little echo in the majority of the assem- 
 bly. The Italian bishops were the first to suffer from the papal 
 power ; but they were the first also to profit by it, and the most 
 interested in maintaining it. The permission, accordingly, of 
 appealing from the bishop to the pope was suffered to subsist 
 without passing through the metropolitan's court ; the council 
 contented itself with pointing out certain classes of causes in 
 which the appeal should not suspend procedure, and could not 
 be admitted until after the bishop had pronounced sentence. 
 
 Some small concession had also to be made on the article of 
 ecclesiastical degradations. A priest, as a general principle, 
 could be tried only by the Church ; but as it was an establish- 
 ed rule that the Church could not condemn to death, a priest ac- 
 cused of a capital crime had to be handed over to the civil juris- 
 diction. Now, in order to that, he had to be degraded ; and the 
 endless formalities with which the Church had encumbered that 
 act, had but the effect at last of allowing many crimes to go un- 
 
Chat. 111. 1551. SU13JECTi()N OF THE STATE TO THE CHURCH. 243 
 
 punished. For the tlcgradalioii of a bishop, thirteen were 
 required ; for that of a priest, six ; for a mere deacon, three. 
 Everywhere, and under all the formalities, might be traced the 
 grand outlines of that immense scheme, put together with so 
 much ability, for placing the State at the mercy of the Church, 
 even in the very things in which she affected to declare her in- 
 competency. It w^as decided that a priest might be degraded 
 by a single bishop, assisted by a certain number of abbots, or 
 failing these, a certain, number of priests. 
 
 These decrees, as well as that of the cucharist, W'ere published 
 on the 11th of October (thirteenth session). The ambiguous 
 safe-conduct which was to be transmitted to the emperor for the 
 Protestant divines, was also read. They had asked, so it was 
 said, in an appendix to the decrees, to be heard on divers points, 
 and particularly upon the communion under both kinds. On 
 that account, it Avas added, the council had suspended deciding 
 on those points, and sent them the safe-conduct. This was far 
 from correct. The Protestants had not asked to be heard on 
 those more than on any other points, and to say the truth, they 
 had asked for nothing ; but there must needs have been some 
 form for granting them the safe-conduct, since the emperor in- 
 sisted upon it, and this was the form that best saved the coun- 
 cil's dignity. 
 
 At this same sitting there appeared the ambassadors of the 
 Elector of Brandenburg. Much anxious expectation had been 
 felt al5out what might be said to the council by the envoys of a 
 Lutheran. Protestants looked for a bold speech ; Roman Cath- 
 olics durst not hope for more than cold respect and unmeaning 
 compliments. Christopher Strassen, the spokesman, displeased 
 everybody ; Protestants by his submissiveness, Romanists by the 
 very excess of a submissiveness which was infinitely greater than 
 what on the Elector's part could be sincere, or could even appear 
 to be so. 
 
 As for the ambassador from Henry II., he had set off imme- 
 diately after the delivery of his protest. Yet the council's reply 
 to the king's letter was read as if he had been present. That 
 reply was generally calm and dignified. The king was be- 
 sought, at the close, to send his prelates to Trent, and to remem- 
 ber his title of m^st Christian king. If he thought oflence had 
 been done to him, let him sacrifice his oflended feelings to the 
 good of the Church and the peace of Europe. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 (1551.) 
 
 SESSION XTV. PENANCE. ABSOLUTION. THE CONFESSIONAL. EX- 
 TREME UNCTION. 
 
 Complaints against the divines — Regulations on tliat head — The sacra- 
 ment of Penance — The confession — Scriptural objections — Falsifica- 
 tions and sophisms — Let every man examine himself — To loose is the 
 most miraculous and the most divine of powers — ^The more it is al- 
 leged to be necessary, the more is it objectionable — Have the Prot- 
 estants renounced what is reasonable and good in confession — What 
 the Church ordains at present is not what was recommended in 
 primitive times — The council shuts its eyes and pursues its own 
 course — Other difficulties — In what manner is penance a sacrament 
 — What proves too much proves nothing — Was the right to bind and 
 loose given to the priests alone — Reserved cases — A conclusion drawn 
 in passing — ^What there is most false and most dangerous in confes- 
 sion — Good results, the value of which, however, must not be exag- 
 gerated — Peoples — Kings — Phrases and facts — Absolution — Absolute 
 or conditional — Logically it can only be absolute — Questions ad- 
 dressed to a good woman — Deplorable results, to which everything 
 concurs — Inconveniences in detail — The Cornpendium — Admissions — 
 Conclusion — Extreme unction — One Apostle only speaks of it — Scrip- 
 tural discussion — Contradiction — Difficulties arising out of the only 
 passage that can be adduced in favour of this sacrament — Elders and 
 priests — Formula in common use — Reiteration — Extreme imction oi 
 little use, and often dangerous — Fresh discussions on episcopal juris- 
 diction — Numerous abuses — Insufficient corrections — Dispensations 
 more rare but more dear — Fourteenth Session. 
 
 The day following, on meeting again in congregation, great 
 complaints were made against the divines. In the course of the 
 last discussions, twenty times over had they thrown all into dis- 
 order by their subtleties and contentions. It had been thought 
 necessary, therefore, to fix the order in which they should speak. 
 Those from the pope were to be allowed to speak first, next those 
 from the emperor, then those from kings, electors, simple princes, 
 kc. The number of times that each should be allowed to speak, 
 and the time he was not to exceed, were also fixed. Finally, 
 there was a renewal of the order, that they should always com- 
 mence with proofs taken from Scripture. An illusory concession 
 this, as we have already said, seeing that there was always an 
 understanding, that in default of scriptural proofs, they might be 
 
Chap. IV. 1551. PENANCE— TRICKS IN TRANSLATION. ii45 
 
 taken from the Fathers, and, failing the Fathers, from the very 
 accommodating arsenal of tradition. 
 
 The sacrament of Penance, with "which the council w^as about 
 to occupy itself, is not, at the first view of it, a point on which 
 Roman Cathohcism is reduced to this. "Whatsoever ye shall 
 bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven." " "Whosesoever sins 
 ye remit, they are remitted unto them ; and whosesoever sins ye 
 retain, they are retained." Such are the words which it will be 
 enough, it would appear, to inscribe on all the confessionals, in 
 order to shut the mouths of all the adversaries of the Roman 
 confession. We can, therefore, reply to them only by inquiring 
 whether, in the view of those to whom they were addressed by 
 Jesus Christ, these words bore the meaning attributed to them 
 since ? 
 
 But, of a thousand persons to whom the collection of the 
 Epistles, including the Acts, should be given to peruse for the 
 first time, we ask if tlicre would be one who, on being asked to 
 trace the primitive histoiy of the Church, as represented in these 
 \vritings, would give Confession, in the Roman sense, a place in 
 it ? We ask whether those often quoted words, " Confess your 
 faults one to another,'"'^ far from giving any support to the Ro- 
 man Confession, be not rather positively contrary to it? We 
 ask whether those other words, as often quoted, " And many 
 that believed came and confessed,"^ do not clearly indicate a 
 mere act of humility, without reference to any obhgation, any 
 general law ? We ask if St. Paul, in his directions on the sup- 
 per, could possibly have confined himself to concluding with these 
 words, " But let a man examine himself V^ We ask, in fine, if 
 it be credible that among so many councils and commands ad- 
 dressed to so many Churches, there should not be found a single 
 direct mention of a thing of such daily and universal occuiTence, 
 if it existed then at all ? 
 
 This absence of all direct and available mention we could not 
 better prove, than by shewing what the Church has been obhged 
 to cite, in order to give a faint colour of an evangehcal and scrip- 
 tural kind to Confession. 
 
 In the first place, wherever it could be done without too much 
 violence to the context, to rejJeiit has been translated to do i^cn- 
 ancc,^ an expression which, in common parlance, implies the 
 idea of the sacrament. Thus, in the decree that the council 
 proceeded to make, this abuse of words re-occurs thrice. " Re- 
 pent and do pena7icc,'' says Ezekiel. "Unless ye do fenancc 
 ye shall perish," says Jesus Christ in St. Luke. " Do 'penance 
 and be baptized every one of you," says St. Peter in the Acts. 
 ' James v. 16. = Acts xix. 18. ^ 1 Cor. xi. * Poenitentiam agere. 
 
246 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 In this last passage, besides the play upon words, let us note a 
 singular inadvertence. The council declares that penance is a 
 sacrament for those only who have received baptism. Seeing, 
 then, that St. Peter here puts baptism after repentance or pen- 
 ance, he cannot, according to the decree itself, refer to the sacra- 
 ment of penance. 
 
 But it is mainly in the Roman Catechism that we must look 
 for the efibrts that have been made to keep the words of Jesus 
 Christ — " Whatsoever ye have bound," &c., from the isolation 
 in which they are left in the midst of the New Testament, by 
 the sacramental interpretation of them. First, before instituting 
 the sacrament, Jesus Christ is said to have insinuated it, when, 
 on raising Lazarus from the dead, he caused him to be unboicnd 
 by his disciples. " It was," says St. Augustine, quoted by the 
 Catechism, '' to shew that priests have the power of unbind- 
 ing T Note that the passage runs thus in St. John, " Jesus 
 saith unto them, loose him and let him. go ;" and as the evan- 
 gelist had spoken of a crowd of bystanders, it cannot be affirmed 
 that this them applies exclusively to the disciples, who, moreover, 
 were nowise priests, seeing that, according to a decision of the 
 council, it was not until he was just about to leave them, that 
 Jesus Christ stamped them with that character. Priests or not 
 priests, in what science, in what branch of human study, would 
 such an abuse of words, of ideas, of deductions, be tolerated ? 
 " At whatever hour," the Catechism goes on to say,^ " a sinner 
 desires to repent, our Lord has taught us not to reject him." 
 Q,uite right ; but where did he particularly teach this ? " When 
 St. Peter asked^ him how many times we must forgive sinners^ 
 and if seven times were enough ?" Sinners, you see how it is. 
 St. Peter received power to forgive sins. He asks for directions 
 as to the manner of doing so. What more clear ? There is but 
 one difficulty ; it is that the Apostles said quite another thing. 
 " How oft shall my brother sin against me and I forgive himV^ 
 Of sins and sinners, not a word. Elsewhere the Catechism 
 quotes these words faithfully, but always with an eflbrt to enlist 
 them into its system. " Penance," it says, " is not, like baptism, 
 a sacrament that cannot be repeated ; " and the proof is that 
 Jesus Christ sets no limits to the pardon of offences : it is natu- 
 ral, then, that he sets none, he who is so infinitely good, to the re- 
 mission of sins by the sacrament of penance. In this manner, 
 it will be seen, there is no reason why penance, instead of being 
 nowhere, should not be everywhere. To the very words, " let a 
 man examine himself,'' all is converted by the Catechism into 
 something favourable to confession. " Let a man examine him- 
 
 ' Part i. Art. 10. = Matt xviii. 
 
CiiAP. IV. 1551. SILENCE OF THE APOSTLES ON CONFESSION. 2i'7 
 
 self," and if he fiiuLs liiniself in a state of sin, let him beware of 
 cornmnnicatinf^ without having gone to confession. " Give me 
 four hncs of a man's writing," said llicheheu, " and I will un- 
 dertake to find enough in them to have him hanged." "Give. 
 mc four lines of Scripture," the Roman Church seems to say, 
 " and I undertake to find in them all that I have taught." 
 
 Such, then, is our first objection : sacramental penance, con- 
 fession, are not in Scripture. Il-^.d we to write a theological 
 treatise, we should now set ourselves to investigate what we are 
 to luiderstand by this power of binding and loosing, of remitting 
 and retaining, with which the Saviour invested his Apostles. 
 We should see whether their altogether exceptional position, the 
 perpetual aid of the Holy Ghost, the possession of other mirac- 
 ulous gifts, not transmissible, w^ould permit us to believe in the 
 transmission of this. And yet it was in reality the most mirac- 
 ulous of them all. "Thy sins be forgiven thee," said the Sav- 
 iour to a paralytic, and anon the Jews were more surprised at 
 those words than at the most amazing miracles. " Who," they 
 exclaimed, " can forgive sins but God only ?" They were right. 
 If priests have not inherited the power of performing other mira- 
 cles, whence should they have retained the gift of performing 
 this ? In writing to Timothy two epistles on the rights, the 
 duties, the prerogatives, the functions of the minister of the Gos- 
 pel, what says St. Paul about this divine function ? Nothing ; 
 nothing even which any one has been bold enough to attempt to 
 twist into such a meaning. 
 
 Accordingly, either the Apostles did not believe themselves 
 entitled to communicate this power, or, which is still more likely, 
 they were far from interpreting it in the Roman sense. When 
 St. Paul, on being assailed as a minister, sets himself to enumer- 
 ate his privileges as such,^ he says nothing, absolutely nothing 
 of this. 
 
 Premising these remarks, what most fortifies the objection 
 drawn from the silence of the Apostles, is the very importance 
 that has been given to this sacrament. The more you shall say 
 that it is necessary, the more reasonable will you make it for 
 others to think it impossible that the Apostles should never have 
 spoken of it. But, with the exception of baptism, the necessity 
 for which is deemed to be absolute, no sacrament, according to 
 the council, is so necessary as this ; and even, interpreting the 
 decree literally, it, too, is absolutely necessary. " God being- 
 rich in mercy, he has granted a second remedy of life to those 
 who, after baptism, shall have delivered themselves to sin, and 
 this remedy is the sacrament of penance, whereby the benefit of 
 
 ' In various parts of his epistles, and particularly 2 Cor. x. and xi. 
 
248 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book HI. 
 
 Christ's death is appUed to those who have fallen after baptism. " 
 Such is the opening of the decree. AYithout saying in so many 
 terms that this is the only remedy, the council speaks of it as the 
 only one, nor does it mention any other. For original sin, bap- 
 tism ; for all subsequent sins, the sacrament of penance ; no other 
 means, no other door. AYould you have proof? Go to the 
 Roman Catechism, the avowed interpreter of the decrees of 
 Trent — "It is not enough," it says, "to believe that Jesus 
 Christ has instituted confession ; we must farther be persuaded 
 that he has commanded the practice as necessary" (as absolutely 
 necessary, says the French translation). " In like manner," it 
 says a little farther on, " as one cannot enter into a place that is 
 shut, unless by means of him who has the keys, no more can one 
 enter into heaven, when he has shut the door against himself by 
 a mortal sin, unless the priest, to whom Jesus Christ has com- 
 mitted the keys, shall open the gate to him. Otherwise, in fact, 
 the use of the keys would be entirely null ; and could the door 
 be opened by any other means, in vain should he to whom the 
 power of the keys has been given, interdict entrance to any one." 
 Here, then, we have the power not only of loosing, but of bind- 
 ing. Impossible to enter unless the priest shall open : impossible 
 to enter if he shall shut. Ah, what infamous treason must have 
 been that of the Apostles, if, although quite aware of such a secret, 
 they have not written it on ever}' page of their book, and have 
 allowed so many wretched creatures to perish under the delusion 
 that heaven stands open to whosoever believes, repents, and loves I 
 We shall not stop to shew how far down we must come from 
 those early times, to find some citations, some facts, that begin 
 really to signify something in favour of the Koman penance. 
 Really, we say, for it is clear that we cannot accept in support of 
 Confession properly so called — obligatory, necessary, sacramental 
 Confession — what the early Fathers have written about a free 
 and irregular confession, a simple avowal made to a priest with 
 the view of easing the conscience, obtaining of advice, and re- 
 ceiving from the mouth of his minister the assurances of God's 
 love and mercy. Such confession the Protestants have never 
 rejected. It is expressly recommended by Luther, in his Cate- 
 chism, published in 1530. Calvin, in a letter to Farel,^ congrat- 
 ulates himself on the faithful being in the habit of coming and 
 opening their minds to him before communicating. At the pre- 
 sent day, if that practice is not so general as one could wish, it 
 is, nevertheless, much more so than Roman Catholics believe, 
 and would be much more general still, were it not that people 
 dread the abuses that result from the Roman confession. " The 
 
 ' May 1340. 
 
Chap. IV. 1551. IN WHAT SENSE IS PENANCE A SACRAMENT? 249 
 
 pastor," says a Roman Catholic writer,^ " is not authorized to 
 enter the house of his parishioner, and to ask him to account for 
 the tears he sees him shed. He cannot, without dread of indis- 
 cretion, interrogate the man who suiicrs, groans, murmurs, or 
 blasphemes." It would be difiicult to write anything in more 
 direct contradiction to facts. In Protestant states, it is a tliintr 
 unheard of, and a public scandal for a door to be shut upon the 
 pastor ; is this the case in Roman Catholic states (those of course 
 in which the clergy do not reign absolutely)? How much dis- 
 trust I What affronts, often unjust, no doubt, yet almost un- 
 known among the Protestant clergy ! This is easily accounted 
 for. The one presents himself as a friend, the other as a mas- 
 ter. The one says that he can shut heaven ; the other does not 
 say that he can open it, but he sends you to him who alone, let 
 people say what they will, has veritably the keys thereof. 
 
 Will it be said that the Church could, for the good of souls, 
 render obligatory that which at first she was content to recom- 
 mend ? This opinion would be at once in disaccordance with that 
 which traces up to Jesus Christ the institution and the necessity 
 of the sacrament of penance, an opinion, nevertheless, held by 
 the council. But the question does not lie there. It must be 
 proved, before all, that what the Church commanded in the six- 
 teenth century is really what she recommended in the first or 
 the second. And here, as we have already said, we have what 
 is altogether impossible, what many divines, at the council, 
 begged in vain that the members would examine. How could 
 they consent to such a request ? From the very first step taken 
 in this course, the council would have found itself encompassed 
 with more elucidations on the subject than the majority could 
 desire, ay, more than even those who proposed this inquiry 
 would have liked, for hardly could they have anyhow contrived 
 after that to maintain that penance was necessary, or obligatory, 
 or even so much as a sacrament. They thought it better to shut 
 their eyes and say, with an assurance proportioned to the little 
 truth there was in the assertion, that such had been always the 
 unanimous opinion of all the Fathers.^ 
 
 All these difficulties, however, were not got rid of. At the 
 seventh session penance had been declared a sacrament. There 
 was no need, therefore, of going back to that ; but it had still 
 to be explained how and in what sense it is a sacrament. 
 
 Now, whole ages had witnessed keen disputes in the schools 
 on the question, where exactly lay that which caused this desig- 
 nation to be given to it. The sacrament of i^cnance evidently 
 
 * Audin, Vic de Calvin (Life of Calvin). 
 2 Universorum Patrum consensus semper. 
 
250 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 does not lie in penance, or repentance, itself. A man who should 
 repent of his sins, but without having had recourse to Confession, 
 would not pass for having received it. Is it in the confession 
 of sins ? No ; for absolution must follow. It is in absolution 
 then ? No more in that than the other ; confession must have 
 preceded it. The only conclusion, you think, must be that it 
 lies in the union of these two things. You will be told that a 
 sacrament is a sign, and that there must be something material 
 and actual in it in order to its being so. In baptism we have 
 water ; in the supper bread and wine ; in penance what shall it 
 be ? And so you are forced to make it reside in the very words 
 of absolution pronounced by the priest. This was what the 
 council did.^ We shall see ere long to what it leads ? 
 
 But there was another difficulty. The third canon anathema- 
 tizes whosoever shall deny that Jesus Christ established the sacra- 
 ment of penance by these words: "Whosesoever sins ye remit, 
 whosesoever sins ye retain," &c. Now, it was observed that they 
 had often been understood as applying not to this sacrament in 
 particular, not even to repentance in general, but to all the means 
 by which the remission of sins may be obtained, and in which the 
 priest may be called to intervene. Those words, in fact, however 
 little they naay bear the meaning that has been given to them, 
 have necessarily a far wider signification, which they knew not 
 how to suppress. Confession is not naentioned in them. Not a 
 word is said as to any previous formality, or any condition what- 
 ever to be fulfilled by the person whose sins are to be forgiven. 
 Therefore, if the right exist at all it is absolute. Wherever the 
 priest shall see sentiments, circumstances, what you will, in fine, 
 seeming to him to call for absolution, on him alone will depend 
 the granting of it ; he could, in a word, condemn or absolve, 
 without being subject to any rule but his own good pleasure, 
 whomsoever he happens to meet. The Roman Church has 
 thought to be prudent in not recognising in him the unlimited 
 possession of this power, but in this has only brought upon her- 
 self a serious objection. What proves too much proves nothing. 
 Let us repeat, if the priest have the power to bind and loose, and 
 if that power be founded on the words quoted, it is not limited 
 to Confession ; it is indefinite. This objection, it may w^ell be 
 thought, was not listened to. 
 
 Yet another difficulty meets us, still under the Roman point 
 of view. The tenth canon anathematizes those who shall say 
 that the right of binding and loosing has not been given to the 
 
 ' Docet paiicta synodus sacramenti poeiiitentiffi formam, in qua prsc- 
 cipue ipsius vis sita est, in illis miiiistri verbis positam esse: Ego te ab- 
 solyo. 
 
Chap. IV. 1551. DIVERSITIES OF OPINION ON PENANCE. 251 
 
 priests alone. Now, some of the divines remonstrated that tliis 
 was a matter of discipHne, not of faith. " In the primitive 
 times," they said, " we see the sacerdotal functions discharged, 
 in more than one rising church, by men who evidently were not 
 priests in the modern sense of the word." If they baptized, if 
 they administered the supper, there is nothing to prove that they 
 did not confess, and it is to this that we may reasonably refer 
 the exhortation given by St. James — " Coniess your sins one 
 jto another." The objectors, accordingly, drew this conclusion, 
 not that the Church had done wrong in depriving the laity of 
 Confession, but that, since this Avas a matter of discipline, and 
 not of faith, it ought not to be made the subject of an anathema. 
 Thus the divines, as well as others, went wrong in tracing Con- 
 fession to the earliest times of the Church ; but they were right 
 in saying that it had not always been exclusively in the hands 
 of the priests, and that an act that was tolerated by the Apostles 
 could not be condemned as contrary to the faith. But they were 
 not listened to. 
 
 Others remonstrated also, in the same point of view, against the 
 dogmatical condemnation of the idea that a mere priest can ab- 
 solve from every kind of sins. They did not deny the propriety 
 of reserving certain cases to the bishops and the pope ; but still 
 they thought that this distinction, omitted by Jesus Christ in the 
 institution of the sacrament, could not thenceforth be more than 
 an aflair of discipline, not of divine right or of faith. Hso atten- 
 tion was paid to them. 
 
 Setting aside the value of these details as precious examples 
 of the diversities of opinion then to be found in the Church, on 
 so many things that are taught in our day as matters that have 
 been settled from the earliest antiquity, they would still be val- 
 uable as corroborative of what we have said elsewhere on the 
 medley the council had made of discipline and faith. Among 
 the fifteen anathemas of the decree on penance, we have seen 
 three at least that bear on objects manifestly disciplinary. From 
 these, consequently, a Roman Catholic is entitled to withhold the 
 respect due to what is infallible ; but it is evident, on the other 
 hand, that the council did not so understand it, and that its in- 
 fallibihty, in its own eyes, was quite as much engaged on these 
 as on other points. If they are incorrect, Avhat becomes of the 
 authority of all the rest ? 
 
 It is not what is most false and dangerous in the Romanist 
 doctrine of Confession that has subjected it to most assaults. It 
 has become too much a habit, especially among those Roman 
 Catholics Avho reject it, to consider it as only a yoke imposed by 
 the clergy on the people. It is a yoke, no doubt, and we deem 
 
252 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 those to be fully in the right who throw it off; but if you attack 
 it only as a yoke, you are greatly in risk of finding yourself on 
 bad ground. To all you may have to say on the inconveniences 
 of a spiritual superintendence, which so easily degenerates into 
 espionage and tyranny, numerous instances will be adduced in 
 reply, in which its influence has been beneficial, nay, it will even 
 be said, necessary. Crimes abandoned or expiated, restitutions, 
 reconciliations, divers returns to religion and virtue — such are 
 happily not unfrequent facts in the history of Confession. 
 
 Now, the more unjust it would be to deny these facts, the more 
 should we err in acceptmg them as arguments. 
 
 First of all, let us beware of allowing their value to be exag- 
 gerated. Are the Roman Catholic, on the whole, more moral 
 than the Protestant populations of Christendom ? JSTobody, to 
 our knowledge, has yet maintained this ; nobody, at least, who 
 has seen with his own eyes and judged fairly. Much more, the 
 most Roman Catholic countries are those which can least bear 
 the comparison. What do we find contributed most to shake 
 Luther's faith as a Romanist ? His journey to Italy ; still more 
 his residence at Rome. And yet he did not come from a coun- 
 try of saints and angels. Germany, too, had its vices ; the Ger- 
 man clergy had their turpitudes ; but all that was little, it was 
 almost nothing compared with what Luther had to witness in 
 the ancient seat of the popes. Tliirty years afterwards, he could 
 never say enough of the painful surprise with which it had over- 
 whelmed him. " For a hundred thousand florins," he would 
 say to his friends, " I would not have missed the sight of Rome. 
 I might dread being too severe ; but you see I am cool. Never 
 could I say too much about it." " The nearer people live to the 
 capital of Christendom," writes Macchiavel,^ " the less will you 
 find in them of a Christian spirit. We Italians have chiefly the 
 Church — the priests, to thank for having become profligate and 
 ungodly wretches." Macchiavel did not go there from the sanc- 
 tity of a monastery. But let us dismiss words — they may be 
 somewhat too strong — and keep to the fact, universally admit- 
 ted at that epoch, that nowhere was there less morality than in 
 Italy. 2 Has that fact undergone a change ? The inquiiy is 
 too delicate for us to pursue it. But to those who may reproach 
 us for having merely pointed to it, we would say, were you to 
 draw up a general table of Christian nations, placing them in 
 the order of their morals, would the Roman Cathohc be at the 
 beginning or at the end ? Had you to put down in such a table 
 
 ' Dissertation on Livy. 
 
 ^ We know what was the ordinary theme of Savonarola's preachings 
 and predictions. 
 
Chap. IV. 1551. VALUE OF THE CONFESSIONAL EXAGGERATED. 253 
 
 the Roman Catholic people alone, where would you place those 
 who attended Confession most ? Hear what Lamennais said, 
 at an epoch when he thought himself more Roman Catholic than 
 any one else. He speaks of Spain ; and mark well whether it 
 bo of Spain only that he could speak thus : " People indulge in 
 all violations of the (moral) precepts, taking refuge under the 
 shelter of religious worship. The compensation which some 
 consciences dream of establishing between such or such a crime 
 and such or such an act of devotion, their unreasoning {naive) 
 security in habits of vice, the strange motives of that security, 
 those souls, full of hell, and at ease before the altar, all this pro- 
 duces amazement and consternation." " Behold," says the au- 
 thor, " the great misfortune of Catholicism in Spain I" Misfor- 
 tune of Christianity, we admit ; but why say misfortune of 
 Catholicism ? Do we see it complained of, or groaned over ? 
 Do the clergy in those lands seem in the least to conceive that 
 there can be any other Catholicism than their own ? Has 
 Rome ceased to regard their inhabitants as her most devoted 
 children ? We do not say that she approves of such a state of 
 degradation ; but this state of things is profoundly associated with 
 all the methods she employs for being and remaining mistress 
 of men's souls. 
 
 What we have said of nations we might say of kings. Look 
 at your sovereigns who have confessors ; have they been, are they 
 now, generally more moral, more honourable, than Protestants ? 
 No one, we think, can any more maintain this. A few princes 
 will be cited, whom Confession may probably have made better 
 than they would otherwise have been ; many might be cited for 
 Avhom it was nothing but a pillow for lulling the conscience 
 asleep amid immoralities, and sometimes amid crimes. More 
 than one has been seen to become an object of pity from excess 
 of docihty ; very few who, with ardent passions, found in Con- 
 fession a veritable restraint on their indulgence. 
 
 " Were Confession abolished," says the Roman Catechism, 
 " not only would the world overflow with an infinity of secret 
 crimes, but men would cease to feel ashamed to commit them 
 openly, or to indulge in the most shameful disorders." Before the 
 Reformation, this might have been dreaded ; since the Reforma- 
 tion, the statement is false. Everywhere, from its earliest pro- 
 gress, we see it harbinger a moral regeneration, which its great- 
 est enemies owned and admired. In France, the preachers of 
 the sixteenth century never ceased to put Romanists to the blush, 
 by displaying the austere virtue of the Huguenots. Under Cal- 
 vin, Geneva became a new Sparta.^ Beza, the Roman Cath- 
 
 ^ Unable to deny this, some writers have shifted their ground, and 
 
254 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book HI. 
 
 olic, was a debauchee ; Beza, the Protestant, a Cato. Henry 
 lY. of France, as a Protestant, was a debauchee ; as a Roman 
 Cathohc, he remained a debauchee still. Pass the sea ; go into 
 England, into Scotland. Do you laugh at the Puritans ? They 
 have at times been ridiculous, but it is easier to laugh at them 
 than to shew wherein they were not, in point of morals, the 
 gravest and most irreproachable of men. Pass the ocean. The 
 Old World has begun to people the New. From Spain, with 
 her colonists, there went out troops of confessors ; from England, 
 the Bible. And now what find you in those regions ? The 
 Spanish colonies became sinks of vice ; the Enghsh were the re- 
 production of Scotland in the seventeenth century ; you behold 
 purity of morals, seriousness of maimers, civilization resulting 
 from piety ; you have Penn, you have Washington. Such has 
 been the sequel, instead of the frightful dissolution predicted of 
 the fall of Confession. 
 
 Q,uite assured, therefore, as to its pretended moral necessity, 
 we need not refute at any great length what has been said of its 
 religious necessity. "Without this salutary institution," says 
 Chateaubriand, 1 "the guilty would sink into despair. Into what 
 breast shall he discharge the burthen that oppresses his heart ? 
 Shall it be into that of a friend ? Ah, who can reckon safely 
 on the friendship of men ? Shall he fly to the desert for a con- 
 fidant ? The deserts ever resound, to the criminal's ears, with 
 the noise of those trumpets which the parricide Nero thought 
 he heard around his mother's tomb." Fine phrases, but mere 
 phrases. We detect a sophism at once in his speaking of great 
 crimes, when we have to do only with sins of daily occurrence. 
 Even on that ground, is the author not mistaken ? Men with- 
 out religion hardly know anything of such despair ; and did they 
 experience it, it is not to the confessional they would go in search 
 of consolation. Religious men might go, perhaps ; but who will 
 say that they might not lay hold, of themselves, without a con- 
 fessor, without formal confession, still more without absolution, 
 of those promises of grace with which the Gospel abounds ? 
 Would such an advocate of Confession be so good as adduce, we 
 shall not even say a single Protestant, but a single enlightened 
 
 set themselves to declaim against Calvin's despotism. His last biog- 
 rapher, Audin, adduces as an act of tyrann}^ the ordinance of 1561, that 
 " No one shall remain confined to bed for three days, without letting the 
 pastor know, in order that he may receive admonitions and consola- 
 tions from him;" which the pope prescribed in 1845 to the physicians 
 throughout his states, that they should cease to attend every sick per- 
 son who, on their third visit, shall be found not to have made confes- 
 sion to a priest. 
 
 ^ Genie dtt Christianisme, lere partie. 
 
ClIAP. IV. 1551. IS ABSOLUTlOxV ABSOLUTE OR CONDITIONAL? 265 
 
 Roman Ciitholio, a Christian, though not avaihug himself of 
 the confessional, who ever fell into this alleged despair ? At 
 the very most, we shall be told of some who, from indolence, from 
 weakness of the moral sense, may have sighed lor the peace that 
 absohition gives ; a mendacious peace which nothing but a de- 
 plorable forgetfulness of the first notions of the Gospel, could lead 
 any one to view as an argument in favor of Confession. 
 
 All that we have been considering, in fact, however eagerly 
 it has been sought, especially in our own days, to make it the 
 principal, is not, and cannot be more than an accessory. No 
 happy results that the Romish Confession might have, can bar 
 our right to say. Let us go to the bottom of the matter, and see 
 what it is. This we proceed to do. 
 
 I have committed a fault. I am about to confess. The priest 
 asks me some questions, gives me some advices, imposes on me 
 a certain penance, and absolves me. I ask myself how both he 
 and I stand with regard to all this ? 
 
 I absolve thcc,^ he has said. Is this declaration absolute, or 
 is it conditional ? 
 
 If absolute, if at the instant those words passed from his 
 mouth, they were necessarily ratified in heaven — I say to my- 
 self, I may have deceived him with false semblances of repent- 
 ance, yet those words have been not the less pronounced, and 
 God must have ratified a pardon which has been stolen. 
 
 If conditional, if God confirms the absolution only in the case 
 of his seeing in me sentiments worthy of grace — this is reasona- 
 ble ; but what then becomes of the authority of the priest ? He 
 has not really absolved me ; he has neither loosed nor bound. 
 All is but a mere promise, that if I fulfil the necessary condi- 
 tions God will absolve me. May not the first that comes tell 
 me as much ? May not I myself say as much to any sinner 
 who may consult me on the state of his soul ? 
 
 In this last case, consequently, the priest is only an ad\aser. 
 He helps you in self-examination ; he gives you directions, which 
 may be excellent, on the means of being absolved ; but he does 
 not absolve you. You are thus compelled, if you hold to leav- 
 ing him anything to do at all, to return to the other alternative, 
 that is to say, to leave him too much, far too much, enormously 
 too much ; you are compelled to admit that once absolved at the 
 confessional, the greatest villain stands also absolved before God. 
 
 And this incredible system, which nobody on earth, it seems, 
 
 ^ Here, perhaps, may be the proper place to remind tlie reader, that 
 until the definitive erection of penance into a sacrament, that is, until 
 about the twelfth century, the priest did not say, / absolve thee but 
 God absolves thee. It was no less rash, but more humble. 
 
256 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book HI. 
 
 would dare to maintain in its naked reality, is the only one, 
 nevertheless, to Avhich the usage of Confession can lead, in prac- 
 tice, unless you make a halt on the way. Read the decree of 
 the council ; is there any indication there that the absolution 
 pronounced by the priest, may possibly not be ratified in heaven ? 
 No. To say that, in any way, would be to overturn the whole 
 structure. The penitent is, no doubt, told beforehand that he 
 ought not to be silent on any sin, and that he is held bound to 
 perform the penance imposed ; but here we find precisely what 
 authorizes him to believe that after a sincere confession, and the 
 exact performance of the penance imposed, the absolution is ne- 
 cessarily valid. Take hold now of that idea, analyze it, and see 
 to what you are led. A pious woman was asked one day, what 
 penalty the priest had imposed at the confessional whence she 
 had just returned. Five Paters and five Ave Marias, she re- 
 plied. And if you should not say them ? My sins will not be 
 forgiven. And if you say them ill, without attention, with 
 weariness and disgust ? No more will they be forgiven in that 
 case. Therefore you have not received absolution ? Certainly ; 
 but I must work for it. The priest has not then given you any- 
 thing ? He gave me absolution. Nay, for you still have your 
 sins ; and you will continue to have them until your penance be 
 performed, and you will keep them too unless you perform it in 
 a proper way. Again we ask, what has the priest given you ? 
 Either a definitive absolution which you are conscious that you 
 have not received, or a mere promise of absolution, which any 
 other man might have given you. And the poor woman was 
 confounded at seeing no middle point betwixt this reducing of 
 the priest to the level of mere believers, and that exorbitant 
 power with which her conscience forbade her to believe him to 
 be invested. Hitherto, however, it was betwixt these two ex- 
 tremes that she had found, or thought to find repose ; it is also 
 in this cloudy middle that most Romanists find, or think to find, 
 theirs. Absolution is not, in their eyes, either a sovereign par- 
 don, or a mere promise ; but let us add, those who have been 
 led to comprehend that it must necessarily be either the one or 
 the other, cannot but reject Confession. 
 
 But unhappily there are many who do not look narrowly 
 enough into the matter to stop in their course, so as to rest on 
 this false middle ground, where there is room at least for a little 
 conscience and piety. They will not go so far as to tell you 
 directly, that once absolved by the priest, it matters not how, 
 they believe themselves pure from all sin ; but though they say 
 it not, though, strictly speaking, they may not positively think 
 it, that fatal error is not the less the natural, the direct, and, it 
 
Chap. IV. 1551. DEPLORADLE RESl'LTS INEVITABLE, 267 
 
 must be said, the perfectly logical consequence of the system 
 that has been imposed on them. What is confession in those 
 countries into which a little true Christianity, and a little good 
 sense, liave not by some means or other penetrated ? Did pa- 
 ganism, with its impure priests and cheap expiations, ever pre- 
 sent anything so unheard of as the brigand who goes from the 
 confessional to his place of ambuscade, tasting all the tranquillity 
 of virtue between the crime he has committed, and that which 
 he meditates committing ? And why should he not be tranquil ? 
 Of his past crimes he is absolved ; only let him take care not to 
 be killed before he has murmured a few prayers imposed on him 
 as penance. Of his future crimes he knows he can be acquitted 
 at the same cost. He never dreams of repentance ; still less of 
 amendment of life. Shall we be challenged to cite a book, or a 
 priest, that has taught this ? True, these are not things that 
 are written or said. But we, in our turn, defy any one to pro- 
 duce a book, or a priest, able enough to refute that brigand so as 
 to deprive him of his frightful security, without a deep breach 
 on the very doctrine of Confession, the right of absolution, and 
 all their consequences. Everything, to the very title of sacra- 
 ment, bestowed on penance, concurs to produce these deplorable 
 results. "When the priest has said, " I baptize thee," the infant 
 is baptized. When he has said in the mass, " This is my body," 
 the wafer is changed, infallibly changed into flesh. When he 
 has said, " I absolve thee," how can it be, if penance be a sacra- 
 ment, if these words be pronounced with the same authority as 
 the others, how can it be that there should not be absolution ? 
 To refute the* brigand who deems himself absolved, well and 
 duly absolved, you must begin by telling him that absolution, 
 in itself, signifies nothing. 
 
 And what might not one have to say on a thousand inconven- 
 iences in detail, on a thousand errors more or less serious, all 
 of which, it is true, Rome does not preach, and several of which 
 she disowns, but in which one might prove to her that, alike in 
 fact and theory, there is nothing but the consequences of her 
 doctrine ; on the mischief done to piety in favouring, by the im- 
 position of penalties, the idea that man can pay his debts to 
 divine justice, while the very contrary idea lies at the founda- 
 tion of all the teachings of Christianity ; on the ridiculous light- 
 ness of those penalties, seeing that in most cases they are nothing 
 more than the repeating of a few prayers ; on the risk of trans- 
 forming prayer into a task, whereas it is uniibrmly represented 
 to us in Scripture as a privilege and a happiness ; on the incon- 
 venience, in fine, of concentrating within this narrow and puerile 
 circle all the good feelings wherewith the sinner may or might 
 
258 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 be animated I " I often confessed myself to Dr. Staupitz," says 
 Luther, " not on carnal matters, but on what makes the essence 
 of the question. Like all other confessors he replied, I don't 
 understand you." Read the Compendium, that gospel of the 
 confessors, and say whether it is not always the same. Speak 
 to them of all sorts of abominations, they will confound you by 
 the knowledge they shew in these foul matters ; speak to them, 
 like Luther to Staupitz, who nevertheless was a fine character, 
 of your soul, of its wants, of its thirst for life and grace, " I 
 don't understand you " they will say. If they did understand 
 you, would they be Romanists ? And if there be some who 
 could understand you — for, thank God, there are such — ask 
 these last if they seriously believe in the power of opening and 
 shutting heaven. 
 
 And if to corroborate all this, we now require some admissions 
 of the same kind with those we should expect from such priests, 
 know you where we should look for them ? 
 
 First of all, in Bossuet •} " It is Jesus Christ," says he, " it is 
 that invisible pontiff who absolves the penitent inwardly, whilst 
 the priest exercises the outward ministry." A.nd should this zVz- 
 visible i^ontiff, who reads what is passing in the penitent's heart, 
 see something quite different there from what the priest thinks 
 that he sees, will he equally absolve him ? You would not dare 
 to affirm it. This comes then to saying that the penitent is 
 never sure of the absolution received, and to believe in that par- 
 don he must feel the dispositions required for obtaining it. Thus 
 he will either believe in it blindly, or he will not really believe 
 in it at all. 
 
 To whom shall we go next ? To a pope ; to Innocent III.^ 
 " As the Church," he says, " may sometimes err with respect to 
 persons, it may happen that such an one who shall have been 
 loosed in the eyes of the Church, maybe bound before God, and 
 that he whom the Church shall have bound, may be loosed when 
 he shall appear before him who knoweth all things." Do we 
 say more than this ? And if this be so, what signifies absolu- 
 tion? 
 
 Finally, on one of the very banners of Rome — the banner that 
 Luther first seized and tore to shreds, we read further the tacit 
 condemnation of this system. The formula of the Indulgences 
 of 1517 ran thus : " May our Lord Jesus Christ fiave inty iipo7i 
 thee and absolve thee by the merits of his most holy passion ! 
 and I, in virtue of the Apostolic power that has been confided 
 to me, absolve thee from, &c." If the first phrase signify any- 
 thing, what means the second ? If you must begin by send- 
 
 ^ Exposition of the Catholic Faith. - Epistle ii. 
 
Chap. IV. 1551. EXTREME UNCTION— ITS ORIGIN. 259 
 
 ing mc to Christ, what need have I of you ? Who shall hinder 
 my goin«^ to him myself? What is it that you can secure for 
 me ? 
 
 On the whole some happy results may, in human affairs, make 
 us pass over many inconveniences ; but when the things of re- 
 ligion are at stake, and where the inconveniences go at once to 
 sap fundamental principles, to approve, to tolerate — whatever 
 honesty of intention there may be, involves the application of 
 that odious tenet, that the end justifies the means. 
 
 Extreme unction, which was next considered, does not present 
 the same dangers. It has, we must own, all the outward guise 
 of a sacrament, and, which is of moment, an Apostle speaks of 
 it. What then are we to think of it ? 
 
 First, if one Apostle speaks, the rest do not ; and this silence, 
 which might astonish us even had it been no more than a cere- 
 mony in general use, is incomprehensible on the supposition of its 
 having been a Christian sacrament. 
 
 In the second place, does St. James speak of it as if it were 
 a sacrament ? Put the theological question out of view ; let us 
 look to common sense, and that the plainest. It is incidentally, 
 in three lines, in the midst of a series of counsels,* that the 
 Apostle speaks of anointing the sick. But for the teaching of 
 the Church, wdio could suppose that this practice had, in the 
 mind of St. James, the importance of a sacrament, the rank of 
 baptism and the supper ? 
 
 Only one Apostle mentions it. Two words in St. Mark, how- 
 ever, have been laid hold of, " They anointed with oil many that 
 were sick."^ Here, according to the council, the sacrament Avas 
 insinuated. We have already seen this forcing of a text at 
 another place. Without dwelling on the strange idea of a legis- 
 lator insinuating, let us remark, that the w'ords refer to sick per- 
 sons and cures, not at all to spiritual aids procured or figured by 
 anointing. " They anointed with oil many that were sick, and 
 liealcd them.'"'^ The healing of the sick is in St. James likewise 
 the first of the indicated results. After the anointing he says, 
 " the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise 
 him up." Although the Apostle did not certainly mean to say 
 that the cure was certain provided the prayer was fervent, the 
 idea of healing, thus put in the first line, is a circumstance not 
 to be neglected. The extreme unction of the Roman Church,, a 
 sacrament, a ceremony altogether spiritual in its meaning and 
 effects, hence cannot be that anointing, partly curative, partly 
 miraculous, mentioned by St. Mark and St. James. This is the 
 
 ' James v. 14, 15. ~ Mark vi. 1-3. ^ See Marginal addition. 
 
260 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book HI. 
 
 opinion of Cardinal Cajetan. " Neither the words," says he, 
 " nor the results announced here, indicate the sacramental unc- 
 tion of extreme unction."^ So true is it that the Roman Cate- 
 chism has heen obliged to explain why, being the same, it has 
 not, nevertheless, the cure of the sick for its result. " If all sick 
 persons do not experience its virtue in this respect, we must 
 think that this arises, not from the sacrament having lost its 
 vigour, but from a want of faith in those who receive or those 
 who administer it." Is it meant by this that if it were always 
 received and administered with sufficient faith, nobody would 
 any longer die ? That would be rather too strong an explana- 
 tion. It may be remarked, too, that it would be in contradiction 
 to what the Church teaches on the power of the priest being 
 independent of his private dispositions. Here we have a sacra- 
 ment which fails in one of its effects, it is said, because of the 
 want of faith in those who administer it, Who, after this, will 
 warrant us that the priest's want of faith may not make baptism 
 fail, transubstantiation fail, absolution fail, all the sacraments, in 
 fine, prove abortive ? 
 
 Nor is this the only difficulty ; and what is remarkable, they 
 all spring from the same text in St. James, the only positive 
 passage that can be adduced in favour of extreme unction. 
 
 First, " If any one is sick," says the Apostle, " let him call 
 ^01 the elders of the Church." Are those elders the pastors? 
 There is nothing to prove this. "Were the pastors in St James's 
 time priests in the Roman sense of the term ? Consequently, is 
 it to the priests alone that this sacrament of divine right belongs ? 
 The council says yes ; but beyond its own affirmation it neither 
 gives nor can give any proof of this. The Presbyteri of St. 
 James are, according to the decree, priests duly ordained by the 
 bishop — and anathema to all who believe it not. 
 
 The Apostle having said, " Let them pray," it has been 
 thought necessary to give the form of a prayer to the sacra- 
 mental words that accompany the anointing, and hence a fresh 
 difficulty. In all the other sacraments, in virtue of the power 
 supposed to reside in him, the priest affirms and gives; in this 
 he affirms nothing, he gives nothing. " By this holy anointing 
 may God forgive thee all that thou hast done, be it . . .or be 
 it . . . &c." The priest therefore exercises in reality no power. 
 He prays for the sick man, and does not warrant the success of 
 his . prayer. This is more wise ; but if in the sacrament of 
 penance also he were to confine himself to saying, " May God 
 
 ^ Nee ex verbis nee ex effectis, verba h£EC loquantur de sacramentah 
 unctione extx'emai tinctionis. — He is in the right. But if extreme unc- 
 tion does not come from this, where then does he make it come from? 
 
CHAP. IV. 1551. EXTREME UNCTION OF LITTLE USE. 261 
 
 forgive thee," would it still be a sacrament ? In what sense, 
 then, can extreme unction be one ? This certainly required ex- 
 planation. It is an optative sacrament, shall it be said, and the 
 others are coUative. This carries you far indeed I Nor is this 
 all. Before receiving it you must have confessed. That same 
 priest who has said to you / absolve thee, behold him now pray- 
 ing to God to absolve you. Of what avail was his first pardon ? 
 In fine, as this sacrament is administered in several anointings, 
 at each of which the formula is repeated, it was only by subtle- 
 ties that it could be explained how the sacrament remains one, 
 how it is not complete from the first utterance of the formula, 
 how, in the view of an object so purely spiritual, two anointings 
 should be of more avail than one, and three more than two. 
 The same difficulty re-appears, but much more seriously, in the 
 sacrament of Orders, one also according to the council, although 
 administered in seven successive acts. All this in itself is of no 
 great importance ; but it is well to shew how the Roman the- 
 ory of the sacraments, so plain and so one at a first look, should 
 involve, even for a Romanist, so many difficulties and embar- 
 rassments. 
 
 On the whole, then, although we cannot charge it as a crime 
 against the Roman Church that it has maintained extreme unc- 
 tion, viewed merely as a ceremony known to the primitive Church, 
 we are of opinion that that ceremony was not originally either 
 recommended or interpreted in such a manner as that Protest- 
 ants behoved to retain it, if they saw inconveniences arising 
 from it. 
 
 Now, of these there are two. It is of little use — it is often 
 dangerous. 
 
 It is of little use, for one cannot attribute to it any effect 
 which shall not have been already more or less produced or 
 figured by another sacrament. What will it add to the graces 
 which the sick person has already been enabled to receive by 
 means of penance or the communion? "A sacrament," says 
 Chateaubriand, " opened to this righteous person the gates of 
 this world ; a sacrament is about to close them. The liberating 
 sacrament breaks by degrees the ties of the believer. Already 
 he seems to hear the concerts sung by the seraphim. Already 
 he is prepared to fly towards those regions whither he is invited 
 by that divine hope which is the daughter of virtue and of death. 
 He dies at last, and no one has heard his last sigh — so sweetly 
 has this Christian passed away." But how would this Christian, 
 " this righteous person," so full of resignation and hope, have 
 " passed away" with less tranquillity had he failed to receive the 
 unction, had you repeated to him, not the formula five times 
 
262 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book HI. 
 
 over, but one only of those admirable exhortations with which 
 the Gospel is full ? Go, poet, go I the most affecting pictures in 
 the world can never supply the place of the smallest amount of 
 conclusive reasoning. 
 
 Extreme unction is often dangerous, is our second objection. 
 This, first, because people easily glide into attributing to it 
 virtues which it has not and never can have. At so solemn a 
 moment as a man's last dying struggle, the mind is hardly in a 
 state to calculate the true bearing of an act, the meaning of 
 Avhich is so far from clear even m the decrees and the treatises 
 in which it has been attempted to elucidate it. Instead of going 
 to the sense, people cleave to the sign. It has been made a sort 
 of charm ; the commonalty, if they want to know whether a 
 man has died a Christian, ask no more than whether he has 
 received extreme miction.^ And what still further tends to 
 foster such erroneous ideas is, that it is administered every day 
 to sick persons who are incapable of thinking, seeing, or even 
 of feeling. In all cases of that sort, if we do not consider it as 
 useless, we are compelled to recognise in it an action entirely 
 independent of the sentiments of the person who receives it. 
 The body is all but a corpse, and lo, a few drops of oil poured 
 on members already devoted to the worms, are nevertheless to 
 influence the soul's eternal destiny ! 
 
 In the first century, among men whose lives were but a long 
 and laborious preparation for death, we can conceive that this 
 error was less to be dreaded ; but since extreme unction was 
 neither instituted by Jesus Christ, nor recommended after his 
 departure as a sacrament behoved to have been — it might and 
 ought to have disappeared among those who have seen more 
 dangers than good results attending it. 
 
 "While one of the congregations was employed in elaborating 
 the dogmatical decrees, the other had resumed in detail some 
 points relative to episcopal jurisdiction. 
 
 Each new point gave rise to new complaints, most of which 
 were so evidently legitimate, that there was no means of escape 
 from making some concessions. Thus some bishops having com- 
 plained that a priest suspended or interdicted, even for immoral 
 conduct or notorious scandal, could procure his rehabilitation by 
 the pope, the legate allowed it to be decided that such rehabili- 
 tations should not take place ; exacting only that the pope should 
 
 ^ It is with the view of avoiding this evil (ecueil) that some Protest- 
 ant Churches interdict themselves from giving the supper itself to the 
 dying. The precaution is perhaps exaggerated, but it springs from a 
 principle which cannot be too much borne in mind. 
 
Chap. IV. 1551. CONCESSIONS AS TO EIMSCOI'AL JURISDICTION. 2G3 
 
 not be named in the decree. Siupi will have it that this was 
 only that lie might remain free from its ohhgation ; but as that 
 kind of dispensations emanated entirely from him, this omission 
 of his name could not have that ellect. All that was wished, 
 then, was to avoid addressing him too directly, on what was felt 
 to be a serious reproach. The same precaution was taken in 
 another decree, relative to what were called conservatory ex- 
 penses. A man accused before the bishop might purchase at 
 Rome permission to choose a judge, and that judge in most cases 
 never acted, but confined himself to sheltering the accused from 
 the episcopal jurisdiction. The thing w^as prohibited ; but uni- 
 versities, colleges, hospitals, and convents were excepted from 
 the prohibition, and this considerably reduced the application of 
 it. It is true that the council had hardly the power of touching 
 the ancient privileges of those corporations — the popes them- 
 selves durst not, and those privileges, besides, w^ere often the safe- 
 guards of necessary liberties. Everywhere the evil was found 
 bound up with what had in the first instance been a good, and 
 the council w^as incessantly in the position of an operator who is 
 stopped at every incision he makes, by the cries of the patient or 
 the dread of wounding a healthy part. 
 
 They had the courage, nevertheless, to take up anew two de- 
 crees of the sixth and the seventh sessions, for the purpose of 
 giving precision to their meaning, and making their regulations 
 more severe. In this last we have seen what the council had 
 done in the way of restraining, as much as in it lay — unions of 
 benefices ; it was added that the union could not take place, in 
 any instance, where the benefices lay in different dioceses. In 
 the sixth, bishops had been prohibited from ordaining priests in 
 any diocese but their own ; but ambulatory ^ bishops w^ere free to 
 establish themselves in monasteries, and there, in spite of the 
 diocesan, they ordained whom they chose, that is to say, in most 
 cases, all that were least worthy of the priesthood.- The pope 
 levied a tribute on these ordinations. They were forbidden, but 
 the facility with which Rome had tolerated, while regulating 
 for her own advantage, such a violation of quite a recent decree, 
 sufficiently shewed how little good faith was to be expected from 
 her in the execution of all that did not suit her views " As for 
 the disciplinary decrees published in this session," wrote the 
 bishop of Astorga to Cardinal Granville, the emperor's minister, 
 *' they are not of a nature to cause scandals to cease. "VMiat we 
 do here is not what we wish to do, but what we are allowed to 
 
 ^ Fere vagal)undi. Second canon. 
 
 ' Minus idonei, et rudes, ac ignavi, et qui a sue episcopo tauquani 
 inhabiles et indigni rejecti fuerant. Second canon. 
 
264 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book HI. 
 
 do." " A pretty reformation, forsooth," exclaimed the Bishop of 
 Verdun one day ; on which the legate told him he was an im- 
 pertinent fellow, a blockhead, a raiv youth. " For my part," 
 wrote Vargas, "of all these reforming decrees, I have but one 
 word to say — they are useless ; they are unfortunate for us ; but 
 the court of Rome will well know how to turn them to good ac- 
 count." In fact, it was already said all over Europe, that the 
 only result of the efforts of the assembly to make dispensations 
 more rare, had been to cause a rise in the price of them. And 
 this was true. The papal chancery openly rested on the coun- 
 cil's prohibitions as a ground for enhancing the payment of the 
 violations it authorized. 
 
 The session (the fourteenth) was held on the 25th November, 
 1551. Nothing of importance was done. The dogmatical de- 
 crees (penance and extreme unction) were voted at once ; the 
 disciplinary regulations gave occasion for repeating that they 
 were accepted only as an instalment, and that much yet remained 
 to be done. It became known next day that the legate had for- 
 bidden the printing of the acts of this session ; but, as might 
 have been foreseen, copies were taken and sent away in all di- 
 rections, and these were printed, read, and criticised with more 
 eagerness than ever. 
 
OHAPTEE V. 
 
 (1552.) 
 
 SESSIONS XV AND XVI. PROTESTANT DEMANDS. PAPAL FEARS. 
 
 SUSPENSION OF THE COUNCIL. 
 
 The affair of the safe-conduct taken up again — Reception of the Prot- 
 estant ambassadors — Fifteexth Session — Prorogation — The situa- 
 tion again becomes menacing — Fears and precautions of the pope — 
 Am-ival of some Protestant doctors — All ceases and dies — War bursts 
 out in Germany — The emperor takes to flight — Suspension for two 
 years — Involuntary Gallicanism — Peace of Passau and abolition of 
 the Interim — The council no more talked of — Rome thinks she has 
 got rid of it. 
 
 A FEW days before the sitting, the Duke of Wurtemberg's 
 envoys had arrived at Trent. According to custom, every am- 
 bassador, before having an official audience, communicated his 
 instructions to the president of the council. Those of the Elect- 
 or of Brandenburg had yielded on this point, but the duke's had 
 come v\^ith orders to accept neither de jure nor cle facto the pre- 
 sidency of the pope or of his representatives. It was Cardinal 
 Madrucci, bishop of Trent, who acted as intermediate between 
 them and the assembly. They first resumed the subject of the 
 free-conduct. A more explicit one had to be given, or their 
 divines would not come. Now, nothing could have been more 
 agreeable to the legate, and almost the totality of the council, 
 than to find those hindrances thus raised in a question of form, 
 which they durst no more raise on the ground of principle. The 
 legate and the nuncios replied, accordingly, that it did not be- 
 come the dignity of the council to grant a safe-conduct anew ; 
 that this would be to admit the insufficiency of that first issued, 
 and the bad faith they were accused of having shewn in it. 
 The same difficulties occurred on the arrival of the deputies 
 from Strasbourg and other Protestant cities, which, as Avell as 
 the princes, had been compelled by the emperor to have them- 
 selves represented at the council ; and when they joined in a 
 demand that in conformity with the promises of Charles V., 
 they should be allow^ed at least to present to the council an ex- 
 position of their faith, the legate declared that neither he nor his 
 
 M 
 
266 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Bock III. 
 
 colleagues, neither the assembly nor the pope, could ever consent 
 to such a thing. 
 
 Finally, there arrived the envoys from the Elector of Saxony, 
 and as their master, daily more and more powerful, shewed 
 himself little disposed to suffer their not being received, some 
 means had to be fallen upon for doing so. It was decided that 
 the Protestant ambassadors should all be received on the same 
 day, but not, however, at a public sitting. It was to be, there- 
 fore, at a general congregation, and in the legate's palace. 
 
 At this very sitting other questions had to be resolved. What 
 place should be given to the ambassadors ? As heretics they 
 should get to their knees, or at best remain standing and uncov- 
 ered, an indignity which could not be asked of them, and still 
 less imposed upon them. It was decided, therefore, that they 
 should have seats, and even honourable ones ; but, " from char- 
 ity and compassion," say the minutes, and without any deroga- 
 tion from the rights of the assembly. The conferences had 
 lasted two months. 
 
 That sitting was held at last on the 24th of January. Leon- 
 ard Badehorn, the Saxon ambassador, saluted the bishops by the 
 title of Most Revere7id Fathers and Lords. His speech was 
 calm, his demands exorbitant ; but it was plain that had they 
 been less moderate they would have been insincere, and he 
 ought rather to have been commended for having prevented 
 beforehand all equivocation. He insisted, before all, that the 
 pope should be declared inferior to the council ; in the second 
 place, that all the decrees should be reviewed, and that they 
 should wait for the Protestant divines before setting to work ; in 
 fine, that these should have a deliberative voice, and that they 
 should begin by drawing up the safe-conduct in such a way as 
 to free them from all apprehension. He was patiently listened 
 to, and the reply was that the assembly would take his speech 
 into deliberation. 
 
 One of those points had been settled beforehand : this M^as that 
 the deliberations should be suspended until the arrival of the 
 Protestant divines. The following day, accordingly, the 25th of 
 January, 1552, a session (the fifteenth) was held, but only to de- 
 clare that the council would wait for them until the 19th of 
 March. It had been agreed also that a second safe-conduct 
 should be given, and it was read at that same sitthig. Although 
 conceived in the most precise terms, the compulsory omission of. 
 the name of the pope, whom the council could in no way what- 
 soever make a party to it, prevented its signifying anything 
 more than the preceding one. The ambassadors at first refused 
 it ; then, at the instance of the Count de Montfort, premier am- 
 
Chap. V. 1552. CREATION OF FOURTEEN CARDINALS. 2C7 
 
 bassador of Charles V., they consented to send it to their ma-s- 
 ters. 
 
 The decree of prorogation bore that the council had discussed 
 the articles bearing on the mass and the sacrament of Orders, as 
 well as the points previously adjourned ; that they were about 
 to proceed to treat of the sacrament of marriage, and that the 
 whole would be published together at the next session. Several 
 of these details were far from exact. The decree seems to say that 
 the mass and orders were ready, and this was far from being the 
 case. There had as yet been only a few preparatory discussions ; 
 orders, in particular, had hardly been touched upon. The coun- 
 cil wished to shew that their discussions were not stopped by other 
 discussions elsewhere ; forgetting that Europe had known, from 
 day to day, how the business stood. It was probably, too, for the 
 purpose of veiling these blanks, that the session was celebrated 
 with more than ordinary pomp. With the crowd of ambassadors 
 present, this, it is true, seemed natural. They might have 
 thought they were attending a new birth of the council, whereas 
 it was its funeral. 
 
 In fact, it Avas about to come to an end. 
 
 The legate and the Italians began to perceive a disquieting 
 intimacy between the Protestant ambassadors and those of the 
 emperor, an intimacy shared, to a certain point, by several of 
 the German prelates. As much divided as ever upon dogmat- 
 ical questions, they had only to come upon the chapter of the 
 pope and the court of Rome, to find themselves almost at one. 
 The Protestants were delighted to hear Roman Catholics admit 
 the scandals of an organization to which they attributed all the 
 woes of the Church and Europe ; the imperialists, on their side, 
 seemed to feel no repugnance at having them for auxiliaries in 
 the abasement of the pope. The latter, at the Christmas hol- 
 idays, had created fourteen cardinals, all Italians, at a stroke, 
 betraying sufficiently his fears by such eagerness to reinforce his 
 party. At the same time he turned his regards to Henry II. of 
 France. His secret negotiators represented him to that prince 
 as ready to break with the emperor, and even, in the event of 
 war, to declare for France. In fine, he wearied for nothing so 
 much as to see taken away from both the most dangerous instru- 
 ment they could bring into play against him — the council. He 
 sent orders, accordingly, to the legate so to arrange matters that 
 all might be brought to a close in two sessions, or at most, three ; 
 but as the council had promised to wait for the Protestants, they 
 had either to do nothiii£r, or next to nothing. Although it had 
 been decreed that there should be no interruption of the discus- 
 
268 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book III. 
 
 sions, it was felt that they could not well do anything until they 
 had waited for them for a certain time. 
 
 It would appear, moreover, that the hope had always been 
 cherished that they would not come, for, we find that, on their 
 arrival, everything was changed. And yet they were but six 
 doctors, two from Strasbourg, and two from Wurtemberg. In- 
 stead of a new life, there now followed death. Legate, nuncios, 
 and bishops, would no longer do anything ; those whose ardour 
 it had been found most difficult to restrain when it was proposed 
 to close at the end of some weeks, were the very persons that 
 now shewed most reluctance to do anything. The horizon, it is 
 true, had again begun to lower. A general league of the Prot- 
 estants against the emperor was spoken of; the Electors of Co- 
 logne and Mayence had left Trent to be ready for any emergency. 
 On the 19th of March, instead of a session, a congregation only 
 was held, and an adjournment made to the 1st of May. At 
 this sitting the Protestants were neither heard nor admitted, and, 
 several days afterwards, nothing was yet said either about admit- 
 ting them or resuming business. No one could foresee how mat- 
 ters were to end. The legate was intently occupied about this. 
 He was not long of furnishing in his own person a pretext for 
 new delays. Devoured with anxiety, worn out with watching 
 and with the impetuosity of his character, he suddenly lost his 
 reason. A black dog, he said, was always pursuing him, and 
 staring: at him with flaminsf eyes. The Protestants wanted one 
 of the nuncios to take his place, but the pope was referred to. 
 His reply was waited for, but never came. 
 
 All at once news arrived that a Protestant army was besieg- 
 ing Augsburg. The Elector of Saxony had declared himself 
 against the emperor, and having given the signal, had found all 
 the Protestant princes ready to march under his banner. After 
 having spent the winter in ably preparing his alliances and his 
 forces, he had issued his manifesto. As a Protestant he declared 
 that he had no account to render either to the emperor or to the 
 council ; as a prince he called upon all the princes of the em- 
 pire, Roman Catholic and Protestant, to throw otY the yoke of 
 Charles V., and this new course he briskly began by besieging 
 Augsburg, the city of the diets. In three days the city was his. 
 Straightway he flies to Inspruck. There he enters by one gate 
 a few hours after Charles V. had gone out by another, and he 
 who a few days before might have thought himself master of 
 Europe, flies, almost alone, into the heart of Carinthia. 
 
 At the first noise of this eruption a great many of the bishops 
 fled to Verona, and the nuncios asked the pope for authority to 
 suspend the council. Julius did not wait to be asked. He had 
 
Chap. V. 1552. COUNCIL SUSPENDED FOR TWO YEARS. 2C() 
 
 made a treaty with Hcury II. ; he felt himself no lonrfcr bound 
 to any forbearance toward.s the emperor. He gave orders, how- 
 ever, lor the suspension to be voted, and a large majority having 
 given their voices in favour of that measure, a session was held on 
 the 28th of April, at which the council was declared suspended 
 for two years, and longer if necessary. It was added, that in the 
 meantime all the decrees already made should he religiously ob- 
 served ; but this article, inserted probably without reflection, for 
 the lunicios could have no thought of offending the pope, was 
 looked upon with a very evil eye at Rome. The last decrees had 
 not yet received the papal sanction ; to ordain their observance 
 was to say that they did not require that sanction. And what 
 put the omission in still stronger relief, was that the pope's inter- 
 vention, forgotten at this place, was mentioned further up, in 
 the article on the future resumption of the council. It seemed, 
 accordingly, to be thought necessar}'' to the legitimacy of the 
 council, but superfluous as respected the validity of its decrees. 
 Here there was Gallicanism without its being intended. 
 
 Maurice had known how to conquer ; but he was either una- 
 ble or unwilling to draw from his victory all the advantages it 
 seemed to offer him. Perhaps he felt reluctant to reduce to ex- 
 tremity the man to whom he had owed his greatness ; besides, 
 if all the acts of imperial injustice were to be remedied, he be- 
 hoved to begin by giving back the electorship to the man who 
 had been despoiled of it five years before, This proved the 
 salvation of Charles V. The greater he had been seen to be, 
 the more stupefaction had his fall produced. Abandoned by 
 several of his allies, feebly defended by his few remaining friends, 
 and particularly by his brother and his nephew, confounded him- 
 self by so sudden a catastrophe, he did not hesitate to humble 
 himself before his own vassal. He sued for peace, and within 
 four months from the commencement of hostilities it was con- 
 cluded. ^ Liberty of conscience was restored to Germany, and 
 the Interim, which had served only to put eveiybody in a false 
 position, was abolished. This liberty of conscience did not, how- 
 ever, imply that the emperor was obliged to tolerate Protestant- 
 ism in his own states ; all that he was bound to was to leave the 
 princes free to act in this matter, each for himself, as he might 
 think fit. 
 
 After having had the suspension of the council decreed, the 
 pope had at first thought of making some compensation to those 
 who had felt aggrieved by that step. He had, accordingly, nom- 
 inated a commission, charged with the task of submitting to him 
 those projects of internal reform with which the council had not 
 
 ^ Peace of Passau, August, 1552. 
 
270 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book HI. 
 
 found time to occupy itself. The news of this was coldly received. 
 People did not doubt that the reforms decreed by the pope would 
 be better executed than those of the council, and in this respect 
 nothing was lost ; but it was doubted whether any would be de- 
 creed at all, and it was thought time enough to be glad when 
 they really appeared. Had he not, at the beginning oi" his reign, 
 named a commission also — what had been the result ? He 
 seemed, however, on this occasion, to attach much interest to it. 
 He composed it of the most eminent personages ; he saw also to 
 its being numerous. This was, he would say, that it might have 
 the utmost possible authority, and keep people from regretting 
 the absence of the council ; but the grumblers said it was in 
 order that it might not proceed so quickly to work. Whether 
 that was the pope's intention or not, the event justified them. 
 The commission met some five or six times, completed nothing 
 that it had begun, and was soon no more spoken of. 
 
 Nor was the council any more spoken of either ; never for 
 nearly forty years had princes or their subjects seemed to make 
 less account of it. Now that the Interim was abolished, not only 
 had the emperor no need of a council, but he could no longer de- 
 sire to see the publication of decrees that his vassals would repel 
 with impunity before his very eyes. The Protestants had lost 
 all desire of appealing to a council ; the Roman Catholics, even 
 on their own account, were much more afraid of the contentions 
 that preceded the decrees than gratified at the prospect, then so 
 doubtful, of the unity and the authority that were afterwards to 
 result from them. And Rome, Rome which for forty years had 
 never ceased to tremble alike at the wishes of the former and 
 the recriminations of the latter, Rome could believe that she had 
 gained her suit both against her enemies and against her friends. 
 
 She was mistaken. We are but at the middle of our task. 
 
BOOK IV. 
 
 FROM THE SUSPENSIOX IN 1552 TO THE END OF THE 
 TWENTY-SECOND SESSION IN 1562. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 (1555-1561.) 
 
 COUNCIL SUSPENDED. 'POPES MARCELLUS II., PAUL IV., AND 
 PIUS IV. POLITICAL COMPLICATIONS. 
 
 Ten years' interruption — Death of Julius III. — ^Election of Marcellus II. 
 — ^He reigns only one-and-twenty days — Election of Paul IV. — Ilis 
 character — His incoherent projects — Manoeuvres — The States of the 
 Church invaded — A^iolent acts of the pope — His deliverance — What 
 he meant to make of the council — His pretensions with respect to 
 kings and kingdoms — Ferdinand resumes the offensive — ^The Refor- 
 mation spreads in all directions — The Inquisition — Servetus and Ro- 
 man Catholic historians — Pius IV. — New tactics — Delays on the part 
 of Rome and impatience of France — Attempts to create a diversion — 
 Geneva and its history — David before Goliath — The charity of St. 
 Francis de Sales — SJioivs and appearance!^, infinite protraction of biisi- 
 ness and disguising of real intentions — Plan of a European confedera- 
 tion against the Protestants — The project miscarries — Anew council 
 is desired, and not the continuation of the old — It is proposed that 
 one should be held in France — The pope is compelled to hasten mat- 
 ters — ^Third convocation of the council — Difficulties eluded — Of the 
 unity of the Council of Trent — The bull satisfies no one — The six 
 legates — Meeting of the States at Orleans — Bold demands — Catherine 
 de Medicis and the Reformation. 
 
 Ten years were destined to elapse before the third and last 
 convocation of the council ; and all that we shall have to notice 
 in the course of that period, will be comprised in the events 
 which, in our apprehension, led from the council of Julius III. 
 to that of Pius IV. 
 
 It is not until the diet of Augsburg in 1555, three years after 
 the suspension of the council's sittings, that we come again upon 
 any serious traces of what had long been, as it were, the fixed 
 idea of Europe. Little regard was paid to it. Ferdinand, who, 
 as king of the Romans, presided in the Emperor's name, and 
 knew how little inclination his brother at this time felt for it. 
 
272 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 plainly said that it was not to be dreamt of ; that there was no 
 room to expect its proving more auspicious than before ; that if 
 people would have something really done, they should endeav- 
 our, as a last resource, to bring about a conference betwixt the 
 doctors of the two parties. 
 
 This idea was neither a new nor a happy one ; accordingly, it 
 was ill received in Germany, and still worse in Italy. Cardinal 
 Morone was instantly despatched from Rome, with orders to op- 
 pose any such course to the utmost ; and he was to do his best, 
 also, to press on the Protestants of Germany the example of 
 England, which had returned to the unity of the Roman Cath- 
 olic Church. 
 
 This apparent submission of England, the joint result of the 
 pope's skilful management, and of Q.ueen Mary's rigorous pro- 
 ceedings, had been ielt by Julius to be a grateful compensation 
 for many painful disappointments, but he was doomed to a short 
 enjoyment of it. Scarcely had Morone reached Augsburg, when 
 he had to leave it again, in order to take part in a new election 
 of a pope. Julius had died. (23d March, 1555.) 
 
 The conclave did not sit long ; mdeed, it rose so soon, that 
 Cardinal Morone and the Cardinal of Augsburg, although they 
 had made all haste, found the election over. This was not the 
 first time that complaints were made of the law which fixes the 
 opening of the conclave for business for the tenth day following 
 the pope's decease. On most occasions that term is deferred, 
 but there being no obligation to that effect, the election is al- 
 together in the hands of the cardinals that happen to be then 
 at E-ome. ^ 
 
 This time they made a happy choice. Marcellus Cervini, 
 Cardinal of Santa Croce, whom we saw appear as legate at the 
 first opening of the council, was a man of serious character and 
 pure morals, no bigot, profoundly devoted to the papal cause, but 
 at the same time sincerely desirous of all such internal reforms 
 as should not compromise that cause. In this tribute to his 
 worth, we rest, we confess, rather on the intentions he mani- 
 fested as pope, than on what little we know of his previous opin- 
 ions ; and although he showed in the council that he was sensi- 
 bly less of a papist than his colleague. Cardinal del Monte, who 
 died pope, we cannot suppress our conviction that had he given 
 any previous hint of what his projects were to be, he never 
 would have ascended the papal throne. Much was thought to 
 be already implied in his retaining his baptismal name Marcel- 
 lus, contrary to a practice which the popes had followed for 
 ages, of changing theirs as soon as they put the tiara upon their 
 head. Adrian VI., thirty-three years before, had also retained 
 
Chap. I. 1555. ELECTION AND DEATH OF MARCELLUS II. 273 
 
 his, but only at the sugf^cstioii of his pupil, Charles V., who had 
 observed to him that all the Adrians had been good popes. 
 Now, it was at his own instance that Marcellus Cervini re- 
 mained Marcellus ; and this i'act, though it might not have all 
 the importance some attached to it, proved at least that he was 
 a man who was himself ready to shake off, and who could allow 
 others to shake off, whatever might appear to him non-essen- 
 tial. Besides, as Luther had written some very severe and well- 
 known comments on those changes of name, ^ it was quite possi- 
 ble that people might ask if there was not here a triumph yielded 
 to the Reformer, and if this first concession might not harbinger 
 others that were to follow. Be this as it may, hardly was Mar- 
 cellus elected, when he openly announced it as his intention to 
 continue the council. Notwithstanding: his having had so near 
 a view of the perils threatened by such meetings to the Holy 
 See, he knew, he said, an easy method of ridding them of all 
 that was formidable ; this was that the Holy See should leave 
 them nothing to criticise in the Church's administration and dis- 
 cipline. Never was there a greater mistake, inasmuch as a coun- 
 cil with no abuses in discipline to occupy its attention, would 
 run a greater risk than any other, of touching on points that, for 
 very different reasons, could ill bear handling. But it was the 
 mistake of a man who meant well. It is painful to have to 
 add, for Pallavicini's denials are not sufficient in our opinion to 
 weaken what has been related by Sarpi and De Thou, that he 
 gave no little thought to astrology, and consulted the planets 
 fully as much as the Scriptures. This weakness, however, was 
 even then more general than one would believe. Paul HI., 
 with all his genius, had not been exempt from it. " Never," 
 says Ranke, " would he open any important meeting of the Sa- 
 cred College ; never would he set out on a journey, without con- 
 sulting the constellations. An alliance with France met with 
 several delays, because he had not found a conformity between 
 the birth of the king and his own." This is ridiculous ; what 
 follows is odious. While sorcery had thus its adepts, even on 
 the pontifical throne, obscure sorcerers were not the less perse- 
 cuted and burnt. 
 
 Elected on the 9th of April, Marcellus died on the 30th, and 
 all his projects ended with his life. The short lifetime of the 
 popes is not one of the least defects of the Roman constitution. 
 Bad popes have always time enough for doing mischief ; while 
 good popes have rarely time to do good. Few not far advanced 
 in life have attamed the popedom ; and if it be very natural, on 
 the one hand, that the Church's chief should be a man venera- 
 
 '■ On Genesis xxiv. 3. 
 
274 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 "ble Oil account of liis years, it has this result, on the other, that 
 the tiara ahiiost always graces either a head that is weak and 
 null, or one rather obstinate than strong. 
 
 This last was now to he the case. Paul lY.,^ elected on the 
 4th of May, 1555, was a severe man also, and full of good in- 
 tentions. The day that Paul III. had proclaimed his son Duke 
 of Parma, one of the cardinals had dared to absent himself from 
 the consistory, and had openly made a pilgrimage to the princi- 
 pal churches of Rome, as if to ask pardon of God for the griev- 
 ous scandal that had been committed. That cardinal was Peter 
 CarafTa ; he was now Paul IV. All the good sentiments with 
 which he had been animated, he preserved, but they were ill 
 seconded by his temper, which was that of a surely, morose, and 
 obstinate old man. Scarcely had a month elapsed after his elec- 
 tion, when this became so evident, that the first personages in 
 Rome addressed him only with fear and trembling. If he de- 
 sired that there should be reforms, it was only provided none 
 should ask for them. Never did papal omnipotence reproduce 
 itself in a stranger medley of weakness and vigour, of greatness 
 and childishness. Simple in his own person, he surrounded him- 
 self with a pomp that had never been equalled ; with the ut- 
 most contempt for brute force, he committed affairs of the ut- 
 most delicacy to his nephew Charles Carafia, one of the greatest 
 fighting men in Italy, whose helmet he had lost no time m con- 
 verting into a cardinal's hat. After discoursing, in a pompous 
 strain, on the absolute and divine authority with which he con- 
 sidered himself invested, it was only like an angry child, stamp- 
 ing with passion, that he spoke of compelling kings to humble 
 themselves before his throne. He wished well, but all the good 
 that did not emanate from himself he viewed beforehand as 
 mischievous and criminal. As for the council, it will be recol- 
 lected that it was he who said that he could not understand how 
 sixty bishops, in a petty tow^i among the mountains, should know 
 more than the pope and the clever folks at Rome. 
 
 These clever folks he on one occasion designed to consult, but 
 in a singular enough manner. He had entertained the idea of 
 commencing his reforms with the rooting out of Simony, or the 
 traffic in spiritual favours. Such a commencement it will be 
 seen at once, had its inconveniences. Not that Simony was not 
 widely prevalent and highly mischievous, but being an evil very 
 difficult to be laid hold of, from the diversity of forms which it 
 assumed, and its almost countless ramifications, it would have 
 been better to proceed first against abuses more positive, and 
 easier both to be defined and to be reached. A commission, ac- 
 
 ^ Peter Caraffa. 
 
Chap. 1. 1555. VIOLENCE AND ECCENTRICITY OF PAUL IV. 275 
 
 cordinjjly, ^vas appointed. Always in extremes, the pope made 
 it consist oid Jiu/ulrcd and fijfij members, of whom twenty-lour 
 were eardinals, and twenty-live bishops ; in all, more thari double 
 the number of doctors that had yet appeared at Trent. Never- 
 theless, in speaking of it, he took care to add that he, the vicar 
 of Jesus Christ, knew perfectly what was to be done; although, 
 therefore, he held this sort of council, it was nowise with the in- 
 tention of following any opinion not entirely conformable with 
 his own.^ 
 
 Great, accordingly, was his anger, when from the very bo&om 
 of that assembly which owed its existence entirely to him, there 
 issued certain observations on the necessity for a general council. 
 Cardinal du Bcllai, dean of the sacred college, endeavoured to 
 appease his wrath, by saying that if a council were desirable, it 
 was not that it might dictate to him the measures necessar}' to 
 be taken, but to inquire about the means of executing them. 
 On this he exclaimed, that if a council there must be, he would 
 hold it, but at Rome ; that he would rather die than see it again 
 met at Trent, in the midst of tlie Lutherans. Then, taking 
 up seriously what had been at first in his mouth only one of the 
 sallies that people had become accustomed to, he caused it to be 
 intimated to all the princes of Christendom, as quite settled, that 
 he was about to hold a council at Rome. In a few^ days this 
 became his favourite idea. He spoke of it to everybody, particu- 
 larly to the ambassadors of the various courts ; but warning them 
 at the same time not to ibrget to tell their masters, that on the 
 council being once formally opened, if the bishops from beyond 
 Italy did not appear, their presence would be dispensed with. 
 As for the emperor, and the consent and concurrence of the em- 
 
 * " The infallibilit}' presupposed as residing in the pope, is not meant 
 as implying that he is aided by God's Spirit in having the necessary 
 illumination for deciding all questions, but it consists "in this, that all 
 the questions in ^vhich he feels himself sufficiently assisted with the 
 light required forjudging them, he decides, but with respect to others 
 in which he does not feel himself sufficiently assisted with light, lie re- 
 mits to the council." — Bnperron. Plere we liave another theorv ! Were 
 the infallibility fully and frankly admitted, which Romanists fa^in would 
 maintain, would there be any such seeking for refinements? The state- 
 ment is ingenious, but we have not written a page, and will not have 
 to write one, in which it is not contradicted by facts. Few popes, in- 
 deed, have professed the doctrine of their infallibility so very bluntly 
 as Paul lY. ; but no more is there any one who has ever remitted 'a 
 question to a council with the avowal, that it was out of his power to 
 resolve it. "What right, moreover, could they, after such an avowal, 
 pretertd to the power of confirming the council's decrees? After having 
 declared that you are unable of yourself to try a question, how could 
 you decide infallibly that it has been rightly tried and determined by 
 others? ' ' 
 
276 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 peror, not a word must be said. " The emperor I" he would say, 
 " why, he is a heretic." 
 
 All at once he learned that this dreadful heretic had just 
 agreed to a truce of five years with Henry II. of France, where- 
 upon he, the very man who had so often said that a pope had 
 only to will a thing in order to have the power of doing it, dis- 
 missed at once the contempt he had shewn for oblique methods 
 of effecting his purposes. Two legates were despatched, one to 
 Germany, another to France, for the purpose, say their instruc- 
 tions, of entering into some arrangements with the two courts 
 about the holding of the Council. One of the two, however. 
 Cardinal Hebiba, whose mission was to Germany, was enjoined 
 to travel as slowly as possible, while the other, Cardinal Caraffa, 
 was to use the utmost expedition, their real object, as the reader 
 must have perceived, having been to bring about a rupture of 
 the truce. In fact, before Rebiba had accomplished his journey, 
 Caraffa had seen and gained over the king of France. But the 
 truce had been ratified by the oaths of the parties. What of 
 that ? the pope had anticipated its being so, and was prepared to 
 annul their oaths. But — here there was an objection of greater 
 delicacy — the pope was a greybeard of eighty-three. What 
 warranty could he offer ? Neither had tliis escaped him. He 
 engaged to create, from among the most devoted partisans of 
 France, enough of cardinals to secure the election after himself 
 of a pope who should be hostile to the emperor. The negotia- 
 tion succeeded ; the truce was broken. " Seated for whole hours 
 at the table, drinking that black volcanic wine which is still 
 called Mangiaguerra, he broke out with impetuous eloquence 
 against those schismatics, those heretics, those accursed of God, 
 that seed of the Jews and the Moors, that refuse of the icorld, 
 in fine, as he called the Spaniards, But he took comfort, he 
 would say, from those words of Scripture, ' Thou shalt tread 
 upon the lion and the adder : the young lion and the dragon 
 shalt thou trample under feet.' He saw the moment at hand 
 when Charles and his son would be punished for their sins, and 
 when he, Paul IV., should deliver Italy out of their hands, "^ 
 
 Had he any hope then of remaining at peace after France and 
 Germany had recommenced tearing each other to pieces ? Yet 
 he had at his gates a man sufficiently accustomed to inspire 
 dread, the Duke of Alva, who now held Naples in the name 
 of the emperor. After some parleying, which only brought out 
 more strongly the growing eccentricity of the old pope, the duke 
 opened the campaign, and ere the close of the year (1556), 
 almost v/ithout having struck a blow, his troops had occupied 
 * Ranke, History of the Popedom. 
 
Chap. I. 1556. ENERGY OF THE POPE, 277 
 
 the entire State of the Church. He would restore it, he said, to 
 the pope that was to be. Yet he did not attennpt to take Rome, 
 and even had he made the attempt, it is doubtful how far he 
 would have succeeded, for in fortifying that city Paul had found 
 all the energy of a young man, and all the skill of a general ; 
 possibly, too, there was no real desire to push matters to that 
 extremity. Charles V. had by this time abdicated his throne. 
 His brother Ferdinand, who succeeded him in the empire, was 
 too pacific ; his brother Philip, who succeeded him in Spain, too 
 devout. He was the very Philip whom we shall find ere long 
 seriously questioning with himself whether he should not cause 
 the body of his father, Charles Y., to be disinterred and burnt 
 as that of a heretic. As for that, setting aside the atrocity of 
 causing his father's body to be burnt, and supposing that it can 
 ever be right to burn any one, it would only have been justice. 
 We have had opportunities of seeing, almost at every page, what 
 sort of Catholic Charles V. had been. 
 
 Be this as it might, none in the rest of Europe could doubt 
 that Paul was blockaded in his capital, and menaced with a siege. 
 Never did pope at the very acme of his power and glory, issue 
 his directions or his commands with more unflinchingr courage. 
 Even in Rome itself the more the danger increased, the better 
 he contrived to make himself obeyed. The cardinals that op- 
 posed his views lay imprisoned in the castle of St. Angelo ; and 
 as all opposition was in his eyes not only revolt but heresy, he 
 talked of delivering several of them to the Inquisition. At the 
 first murmur of discontent the highest dignitaries were cashiered 
 as if mere clerks. Legates employed at the remotest distances 
 trembled at the thought of ofTending him as much as the cardi- 
 nals of his household ; nations and kings asked themselves who 
 then was this man that he should thus use persons who had al- 
 ways been seen surrounded with tokens of deference, prelates but 
 lately his equals, and any of whom, in the course of a few days, 
 might occupy his throne. But the incoherence of his orders, the 
 feverish violence of his threats, and the odd forms he employed, 
 shewed plainly enough that the pope was neither a Gregory YIL, 
 nor an Innocent III., but a poor old creature whose head had 
 been turned on mounting St. Peter's throne. 
 
 In the first months of the year 1557, his afTairs seemed to take 
 a more favourable turn. " The Duke of Alva hesitated, paused 
 at every step, fought worshipping j" says John von Muller.^ 
 The Duke of Guise passed into Italy with a sufficient force to 
 keep the Spaniards in check. But Paul had imagined that the 
 French would march straight to Naples ; there was no getting 
 ^ History of Switzerland, book x. 
 
2*78 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT, Book IV. 
 
 him to understand that this would be contrary to all the rules 
 of good tactics, and that what an army has first to look to is to 
 secure itself against being attacked in its rear. It was found 
 necessary to humour him, but in proportion as the French went 
 down into Italy, the Spaniards went up to Rome. Every step 
 towards bringing him succour threatened to prove his ruin. At 
 last the news of the loss of the battle of St. (iuentin reached the 
 French, and a disaster so deplorable to France, and which 
 seemed to place the pope in the absolute power of his enemies, 
 proved, on the contrary, his salvation. The Duke of Guise 
 having returned to France, the Duke of Alva returned to Naples, 
 and soon began to speak about peace. The vanquished now 
 dictated terms to the victor, and Alva went himself to Rome to 
 seek absolution from the censures he had incurred. This was 
 about the end of September, 1557. 
 
 Not a moment of peace could the Church and Europe enjoy 
 that the grand affair of the council did not occupy all men's 
 thoughts afresh ; but the pope, with the usual originality of his 
 views, had given a singularly new face to it. That which the 
 monarchs of Christendom had hitherto made a bugbear for over- 
 awing the Court of Rome, he made bold to use as a bugbear for 
 overawing those monarchs. He spoke of nothing less than of 
 procuring the trial and condemnation by the future council of 
 all who had profited by the disorders in the Church, or had in- 
 troduced new disorders into it, of all who had anyhow interfered 
 in Church affairs, of all, in fine, who had favoured or tolerated the 
 Reformation ; and although none could see well how he should 
 set about executing such condemnations, such a threat produced 
 some alarm. AYas it, as some said, a mere trick meant to deter 
 princes from having any wish to see the council again at work ? 
 We think not. There is nothing improbable in a man of his 
 impetuous imagination, and with such preposterous ideas of the 
 rights and position of a pope, seriously intending to make the 
 council a court of Justice for the trial of kings. The latter, 
 meanwhile, continued as actively as ever to imbrue their hands 
 in the blood of the so-called heretics. Philip II. proceeded with 
 the consolidation of the Inquisition in Spain, and went along 
 with his court, very devoutly, to inhale the smoke of the fires at 
 which its victims were bunit. Henry, or his parliament rather, 
 rejected the Inquisition, but he took care to prove by the number 
 and the cruelty of the punishments inflicted on the Re termed, 
 that the Church of Rome should be no loser on that account. 
 
 Nor did this testy pontiff' lay claim only to the right of trying 
 kings, or causing them to be tried. Their kingdoms, the empire 
 itself, were but the gifts of the Holy See ; and this old dictum. 
 
Chap. I. 1558. THE POPE'S RIGHT TO APPOINT KINGS. 279 
 
 •which one might suppose to huvo been forgotten, was openly 
 avowed anew in liis words and deeds. Henry Vlll. liad erected 
 Irekind into a kingdom. Paul IV. pronounced the erection null ; 
 to the pope alone it belonged to erect a province into a kingdom, 
 as well as to reduce a kingdom to the state of a mere province. 
 If dueen Mary was to be (olueen of Ireland, it behoved to be 
 through him. Mary made the request, and the pope granted 
 it. Charles V. having abdicated, the empire passed to Ferdi- 
 nand, Avhereupon a furious manifesto was discharged from Rome. 
 " The pope alone," says Sarpi, " has the right of appointing the 
 emperor." And though the popes had been willing to yield that 
 right to the electors, it was in the case of vacancy by death only, 
 not in that of abdication. The election which had taken place 
 was accordingly null, and the pope was to give the empire to 
 whomsoever he should think best. He engaged liimself to 
 nothing ; nevertheless if Ferdinand would at once make an ac- 
 knowledgment that he had not been legitimately elected, and 
 that he had erred in allowing himself to be elected, the choice 
 might fall upon him. 
 
 Though Ferdinand might have been in the humour to yield, 
 the electors would not have allowed him, and rather than that, 
 would have nominated another emperor. The death of Charles 
 V. (21st September, 1558) seemed at first to have simphfied the 
 question ; but Paul was not the man to avail himself of a back 
 door, however wide and however honourable for him to use it. 
 Null he insisted the election had been, and null it must remain, 
 as long as the right claimed by the pope should not be formally 
 acknowledged. 
 
 " I have often heard it asked," says De Maistre, " by what 
 right the popes deposed the emperors ? It is easy to reply, By 
 the right on which all legitimate authority reposes, possession on 
 the one hand, and assent on the other." 
 
 This possession, one knows however, besides being very far 
 from dating from the first centuries, was never left uncontested ; 
 that assent was never universal or free. Even were it other- 
 wise, the above reasoning would still be a mere play upon 
 words. Incontested possession proves human legitimacy ; but, 
 when asked by what right popes disposed of thrones, it is clear 
 that what is meant by the question, is by what divine right they 
 did so. And this question is all the more pertinent, inasmuch 
 as the popes themselves, in exercising that right, have always 
 maintained that they exercised it in the name of God. 
 
 The council was then made the ground for resuminir the of- 
 fensive. Ferdinand spoke of it in full diet, in the same sense that 
 his brother had done, and as a dyke to oppose to the encroach- 
 
280 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 ments of Rome. Much more than this, without saying abso- 
 lutely that the decrees ah-eady published should be quashed, the 
 Protestants were allowed to throw out the idea that what was 
 now to be thought of, was quite a new council, summoned and 
 regulated on quite a new system, such, in a word, as they might 
 ofier to submit to. Parties, however, could not come to any such 
 mutual understanding as should lead to a definite conclusion ; 
 but, shortly afterwards (April, 1559), France and Spain having 
 made peace, one of the articles of the treaty bore that the two 
 monarchs should co-operate towards the resumption of the coun- 
 cil. Although less threatening to the pope than the resolutions 
 that had nearly emanated from the diet, this accord in such a 
 quarter was not the less a severe check. Paul saw that he was 
 overmatched, and sank under a surcharge of chagrin and resent- 
 ment. Germany had completely broken with him, and coolly 
 waited for his death, England, delivered from Mar}', had de- 
 clared itself Protestant, not on this occasion at the command of a 
 prince, but with an all but universal enthusiasm. France might 
 any day do the same, and indeed was more ripe for the Reforma- 
 tion than had at first been the case with more than one of the 
 countries that afterwards became Protestant. Italy, Italy itself 
 was profoundly shaken in its attachment to Rome ; there was 
 not a town in it where there did not exist, more or less known, 
 more or less concealed, a knot of Calvinists which might become, 
 at the first shock, the centre of an Anti-Roman Church. In this 
 extremity Paul clung to the Inquisition, as to the sole and last 
 remaining plank of safety for the Church and for himself. In 
 public and in private, in his discourses and in his letters, every- 
 where, in short, he could speak of nothing else. The ambassa- 
 dors placed daily before his eyes a hst of the executions ordered 
 by their masters ; the only balm that could now be poured on 
 his deeply wounded pride. Never had Europe been covered 
 with so frightful a network of persecutions and tortures ; and 
 as the tyrant of old ordered the bodies of his slaves to be opened 
 that he might warm his feet in their reeking bowels, the fires 
 at which the Protestants were consumed, seemed to burn afar 
 only to keep up a little heat and life in the ice-cold limbs of the 
 miserable greybeard. At last he died ; and his last looks were 
 still turned to the schedules of the executions ; and the last words 
 he uttered were a recommendation of the Inquisition, as a father, 
 at the point of death, would recommend his daughter to his friends. 
 Yet in the midst of that frightful period which had commenced 
 long before the time of Paul IV., and was to last till long after, 
 among the thirty or forty thousand victims delivered or promised 
 to the Roman flames, there was one that escaped, one destined to 
 
Chap. I. 1559. ELECTION OF PIUS IV. 281 
 
 be burnt at Geneva instead of Lyons, Paris, Brussels, Madrid, or 
 Vienna, wherever, in line. Koine might have him in her power ; 
 a victim, moreover, whose punishment might liave appeared, we 
 do not say just, but certainly more just than all the rest, to such 
 a pitch had the man carried his Ibolhardiness. And, behold, how 
 the historians of Rome exclaim from age to age against the au- 
 thor of the death of Servetus I Would to God that the Relbrma- 
 lion could snatch from its annals that sad page of" intolerance and 
 horror I But if those who reproach her with it would begin by 
 first tearing all pages of the same kind from their own, how many, 
 we should like to know, would be left ? 
 
 After entering the conclave amid the yells and hootiiigs of the 
 mobs that were mutilating and dragging through the city the 
 abhorred statue of Paul IV., the cardinals were sensible that 
 another such reign would, both at home and abroad, prove the 
 ruin of the popedom. They found no great difficulty, accord- 
 ingly, in coming to a general understanding as to the engage- 
 ments to be taken before proceeding to the election, and, as in 
 preceding conclaves, among these the calhng of a council held a 
 chief place. 
 
 Notwithstanding this unanimity in preliminary proceedings, 
 they required more than three months before they could come to 
 agree about the pope they were to elect. At last, on Christmas 
 night (1559), the votes all fell on John de Medicis, who took 
 the name of Pius IV. 
 
 With more decency of outward manners and a calmer mind, 
 the new pope but too closely resembled, at bottom, his deplorable 
 predecessor. If, from the veiy commencement of his reign, he 
 shewed a disposition, for he had promised as much before his 
 election, to recognise Ferdinand as legitimate emperor, he nearly 
 spoilt all by demanding compliments conceived in terms that 
 would have sanctioned by implication all the pretensions of Paul. 
 After lengthened conferences, the ambassador, Scipio d'Arco, con- 
 sented to depart a little from the letter of his instructions. A 
 formula was drawn up, which, without giving too much offence 
 to the emperor, should not wound the pride of the pope. Fer- 
 dinand blamed his ambassador, but did not think proper to go 
 the length of an official disavowal of what he had done. 
 
 As for the council, Pius had promised that also, and he did 
 not make bold to say, as Paul IV. had done, that a pope could 
 not suppose himself bound by the promises of a cardinal ; but the 
 more he looked at the matter, the more he saw difficulties and 
 dangers attending it. Still he was sensible that in manifesting 
 opposition to it, besides proving false to his promise, he would 
 escape those difficulties only to draw on others, and those dan- 
 
282 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 gers only to incur possibly greater. The more, then, thought he, 
 that he should pretend to enter into the views of the secular 
 princes, the better placed he should be afterwards for shewing 
 the inconveniences that would result from them. At last he 
 clearly saw that the question must come to an issue at one time 
 or another, and he had sufficient confidence in himself not to de- 
 sire at any price to bequeath the hazards of the contest to anoth- 
 er. Accordingly, Count d'Arco was agreeably surprised when, 
 at his second audience, the pope spoke of the council as of a very 
 simple affair, and one on wliich his mind was fully made up. 
 
 Meanwhile, month after month passed, the pope renewed his 
 promise on every occasion, and yet made it little a matter of 
 conscience to execute it In France, where, right or wrong, the 
 council was viewed mainly as the grand cure for heresies, the 
 daily advances achieved by the Reformation made the Roman 
 Catholics fret at the tardy procedure of Pius IV. " The confla- 
 gration is at Paris," said John de Montlac, bishop of Valence ; 
 " we have the waters of the Seine, and wait for those of the 
 Tiber !" The idea of a national council, so often put forward, 
 abandoned, taken up again, and again abandoned, came in the 
 end to captivate men of all characters ; and before coming to 
 any common understanding as to the forms to be adopted, the 
 opening of it was fixed, happen what might, for the 20th of 
 January, 1561. Henry 11. was dead. His widow, Catherine 
 de Medicis, now governed in the name of Francis II. 
 
 Although no offence had been meant to the pope, no small un- 
 easiness was felt as to how he would view the matter. In point 
 of fact, he took it so ill, that unless there was to be an entire 
 rupture with him, which, as matters stood, and in the face of 
 the Reformation, would have been madness, it was soon seen 
 to be impossible to persist in it. "What shocked him almost as 
 much as the convocation of the national council, was the am- 
 nesty granted to the Protestants who had taken up arms in Lan- 
 guedoc and Poitou. " V/ho, then, is your king," said he to the 
 French ambassador, " that he should take upon himself to par- 
 don sins committed against God ? Can any one be surprised if 
 the wrath of God press heavily on a country where the author- 
 ity of the Holy See, and of the sacred canons, is trampled under 
 feet?" Philip II. at the same time besought the queen regent 
 to recall the unlucky convocation, or at least to let it pass with- 
 out effect. She yielded the point. The idea seemed to be aban- 
 doned ; but this very condescension gave Roman Catholic France 
 the right to insist on the pope no longer keeping her waiting for 
 the remedy to which she looked for her salvation. 
 
 Had he come to see that a council would be of no use in op- 
 
 1 
 
Chap. 1.15G0. MARVELLOUS PRESERVATION OF GENEVA. 283 
 
 posing llic proofress of the Kcformation, or was he still influcDced 
 by nothing but antipathy and distrust ? We cannot say ; but, 
 notwithstanding all tins urgency, he nnade no greater haste. 
 " The French fret with impatience," he would say ; " well, 
 then, let them begin by seizing Geneva, seeing it is the focus of 
 the contagion ?" And forthwith his mmcios were charged to 
 propose that undertaking simultaneously to the King of France 
 and the Duke of Savoy. 
 
 How happened it, in fact, that Geneva still stood erect ? It 
 had now for thirty years openly declared for the Reformation, 
 and had audaciously offered an asylum to all the proscribed. 
 France was inundated with its missionaries and its books With- 
 out arrogating to itself any supremacy as a matter of right, it 
 had not the less become, in point of fact, the metropolis and the 
 Rome of all the Protestantism of tJie West. It was, without 
 contradiction, a spectacle unparalleled in history, to see a repub- 
 lic of twenty-five thousand souls, braving with impunity at one 
 and the same time, several states, any one of which, it might be 
 thought, could have destroyed it with a breath. The preserva- 
 tion of Geneva, in the 1 6th century, is in itself a more extraor- 
 dinary fact than the successive conquest of Italy and of Europe 
 by the Roman republic, which also was a small city when it 
 began its career; and when it vaunts its having been guarded 
 by Providence, its greatest enemies cannot deny that it has a 
 thousand reasons for believing it. 
 
 As little can they deny the invincible confidence it reposed in 
 the goodness of its cause, and in the protection of God. "It was 
 David before Goliath," says its old chronicler. Reset ; " but be- 
 fore a Goliath all the more formidable, in that he made gold to 
 flash in his hand as well as steel." In 1559, Alardi, bishop of 
 Mondovi, came to Geneva, commissioned by Emmanuel-Phili- 
 bert, Duke of Savoy, who had recently mounted the throne, and 
 now would fain try whether words might not succeed better 
 than arms. Alardi was allowed to appear before the council 
 of the city. " What a life I" said he. " Wliat, always on the 
 watch I Not a man in this city which I once knew so flourish- 
 ing, who now can call two thousand crowns his own. Ah I 
 how much otherwise would it be, had you the support of the 
 flower of chivalry, the most magnificent prince of the age I" 
 " The prince is great," replied tJic Geneva gentlemen, " but 
 God is greater still." And so the bishop went as he came. 
 " Thanks to the intrigues of a man called Calvin," says a Savoy 
 chronicler. 
 
 This time, accordingly, at the voice of Pius IV., it was with 
 the sword that Gohath was to come to the attack. " The ser- 
 
284 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 pent," wrote the pontiff^ "must be strangled in its nest. Do 
 you require money ? You are authorized to raise, for the holy 
 war, tithes from your clergy. I for one have taken the initia- 
 tive, by getting ready my men at arms, and twenty thousand 
 crowns."^ Of the three states then invited to the ruin of Ge- 
 neva, there was not one that had not long cast an angry and 
 covetous eye upon it. The dukes of Savoy have never ceased to 
 claim it back as a part of their heritage ; Spain would have been 
 too happy to unite it with its possessions in Franche-Comte ; 
 France viewed it as an important post between Savoy and the 
 possessions of Spain. Nothing more easy than for the three to 
 unite for the purpose of taking it ; but then, to whom was it 
 afterwards to be given ? That question which had saved it 
 hitherto, was to save it once more. The pope had succeeded 
 only in raising one rampart more around that retreat which he 
 pointed out to the hatred and the cupidity of its crowned neigh- 
 bours. Collectively invited to this holy war, the three princes 
 came to consider themselves bound by a sort of oifensive treaty, 
 by which each forfeited in some sort the right to proceed to the 
 attack alone ; he could not take Geneva, without reclamations 
 on the part of the other two. And Geneva was destined to sur- 
 vive ; and it was to be in vain, ever in vain, that the pope and 
 his satellites were to press to its downfall ; in vain was Dubar- 
 tas to express his amazement at the sovereign's allowing it to 
 live on ; like those peasants, we find him say, 
 
 "... whose useless hands 
 Leave on the apple-tree some withered branch, 
 Where, during winter, may survive till spring 
 The noxious caterpillar's brood secure ;" 
 
 in vain was St. Francis de Sales, the titular bishop of the re- 
 bellious city, indignant at seeing it comprised in the treaty of 
 peace between Henry IV. and the duke, to exclaim that " it is a 
 scandalous blot on that happy peace, which the impious ought 
 not to be allowed to enjoy ;"^ in vain was he to exclaim, on 
 another occasion, "Geneva is to the devils what Rome is to 
 the angels. All Catholics, especially the pope and the secular 
 princes, ought to devote themselves wholly, either to the con- 
 version or the destruction of that Babylon ;"^ the lowly Babylon 
 was to live on ; and if one day it is to perish, it will be because 
 it has accomplished its task. The miracle of its life shall have 
 lasted long enough for it to carry with it to the tomb, the thought 
 that its death is not God's doing, but man's. 
 
 Thus the pope's appeal had been without effect ; nor did he 
 
 ^ J. von Muller, Hist, of Switzerland, 1. x. 
 
 ^ Letter to Clement VIII. ^ Memoir addressed to the pope. 
 
 1 
 
Chap. 1. 1500. THE COUNCIL TO BE ASSEMBLED. 286 
 
 conceal his chaf^riii. Since it was neither from humanity nor 
 toleration that tlie three sovereigns respected the independence 
 of Geneva, the court of Rome had reason to consider it far from 
 honourahlo in Roman Catholic princes, to dare giving thus far 
 the precedence to politics over religion, and to the interests of 
 their glory over those of their faith, but in order to be consist- 
 ent, the pope himself ought to have had less the air of doing the 
 same thing, and of speaking of Geneva only to escape from hav- 
 ing anything to say about Trent. " The further we proceed," 
 w^rote the queen regent^ on this occasion, " the more does it ap- 
 pear that nothing is done towards the calling of the council, ex- 
 cept in the way of dissembling and mere show, and with infinite 
 delays and disguises." 
 
 Renouncing, then, all hope of making a diversion, the pope 
 called to him all the ambassadors then present in Rome. He 
 told them to announce to their respective courts, that the bull 
 for the convocation would shortly appear, adding, that after hav- 
 ing passed a great many cities under review, he had found none 
 so suitable as Trent. But, if he, on his part, was to engage to 
 summon the council, the princes were to engage, on theirs, to 
 cause its decisions to be observed. Why not proceed at once to 
 form a kind of armed confederation, ready to act at a moment's 
 notice, against whatever party, prince or people, should refuse 
 to obey ? A very simple idea, no doubt, and eminently Roman 
 Catholic, but, withal, manifestly impracticable ; a useless sub- 
 ject for new conferences and new delays. 
 
 Not only was no attention paid to this, but the choice of the 
 place raised more objections than ever. Philip II. was the only 
 prince that declared himself satisfied with it ; still he required, 
 as if in return for an act of great condescension, permission to 
 levy a subsidy on the clergy of Spain. The court of France ob- 
 jected, as it had always done, that Trent was too much mider 
 the hand of the emperor ; the emperor that it was too much 
 under the hand of the pope, if not in reality, at least in appear- 
 ance ; and that tliis would be enough to make the Protestants 
 revolt against all that might be done there. 
 
 Both courts, moreover, agreed in saying that there must be a 
 new council, not the resumption and winding up of the old. 
 This was more serious, and went to upset all. The pope, ac- 
 cordingly, hesitated not to reply that he should consider himself 
 as a traitor to the Church, a traitor to the Holy See, were he 
 to allow the questioning of a single point of faith of those that 
 had been previously decided. He was right. On the part of 
 Roman Catholic princes it would have been preposterous and 
 ' Letter to the ambassador of France at Rome. 
 
286 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 criminal ; but we have already shewn how much meaning there 
 was in the fact. Fourteen years only had elapsed since the 
 publication of the first decrees, when lo I Roman Catholics ap- 
 pear, who, without rejecting these themselves, yet propose that 
 they shall be held as never having been passed. AVho after 
 this will maintain that the dogma of the Church's infalhbility 
 was then admitted in the same sense and in the same manner 
 as it has been since ? 
 
 Meanwhile, the idea of a national council recovered favour in 
 France. At a great meeting of the royal council held at Fon- 
 tainebleau (August 21), the bishop of Valence repeated his 
 former advice, and urged it strongly ; Charles de Marillac, 
 archbishop of Yiemie (in Dauphiny), spoke warmly in the same 
 sense. The Protestants were for this council ; not that they 
 looked for any good directly from it, or that they were disposed 
 to submit to it, but in the conviction that it would lead to a 
 rupture with Rome, and, by that alone, would prove a great 
 step towards them. Coligny, their organ in the council, con- 
 fined himself accordingly to an exposition of their petitions and 
 complaints. His language was that of a serious man and a sub- 
 m.issive subject ; but the simplicity of his words only placed in 
 stronger relief the immensity of the resources which his party 
 was beginning to have at its disposition. The Duke of Guise, 
 and the Cardinal of Lorraine, acting as the organs of extreme 
 Roman Catholicism, replied only by soliciting more and more 
 rigorous measures. Why, said they, have a council in France ? 
 Wherefore even a council-general ? Could there be a doubt 
 that the Protestant opinions were heresies, long ago condemned 
 by the Church ? There was truth in what they said. In a 
 dogmatical point of view, any council whatever could not fail to 
 prove useless. The Roman Catholics knew well that they 
 would condemn ; the Protestants that they would be condemn- 
 ed. On these representations a middle course was adopted. It 
 was resolved that the bishops of the kingdom should be con- 
 vened, not as a comicil, but to deliberate whether it would be 
 proper to hold one. 
 
 This pretended preparatory assembly so much resembled that 
 which had apparently been abandoned, that in so far as the pope 
 was concerned, it was almost all the same ; and it having been 
 proposed that it should meet on the 20th of January, he saw that 
 his bull must absolutely appear before that date. Pallavicini 
 tries to assign the least influence possible to fear on this determ- 
 ination of the pope ; but the details which he himself relates, 
 leave no doubt on this head. Other details may be seen, not 
 only in Sarpi and De Thou, but also in a collection of pieces be- 
 
Chap. I. 1560. HOW SHOULD THE UbLL BE WORDED? 287 
 
 longing to lliat period,^ publi-shed at Gotha, a century ago, and 
 which throMS a very vahuiblo hght on several parts of the his- 
 tory of the council of Trent. It is there we found, in a letter 
 from Cardinal Borromeo to Cardinal Hosius, bishop of Warrrria, 
 among other admissions, the following : " Considering what 
 scandal it would be for all Christendom, his Holiness has re- 
 solved to prevent this national council by the celebration of a 
 general and o'cnmcnical council.'"" This alleged universal scan- 
 dal would hardly have scandalized, at that moment, more than 
 the court of Rome, and who could foresee at what point the con- 
 tagion would stop ? 
 
 The question now was hoAV the bull should 1bc worded. A 
 commission was appointed for this task. Among so many con- 
 flicting interests and susceptibilities, the arrangement of a piece 
 of writing which should give these the least possible offence, was 
 no small afiair, and what was most of all requisite, was to fall 
 on some mode of evading the question of the continuation of the 
 council. After many attempts this was accomplished, but not 
 without some strange shifts and fetches. Pallavicini, according 
 to custom, denies the fact in the lump, and then admits it in de- 
 tail. After a brief analysis of the bull, " In this manner," says 
 he, " the odious term continuation was thrown out, but its equi- 
 valent was put in." The equivalent is there without doubt, and 
 the sequel sutRciently proved that the pope quite intended to put 
 it there ; but yet it presents a curious triumph of skill, for we 
 have a bull several pages in length, after the reading of which, 
 supposing that its history were lost, one might ask whether it re- 
 lated to a council that was to be continued or to one that was to 
 be commenced anew. 
 
 As to the question of the place, it having necessarily to be 
 settled, care was taken to give the principal parties opposed to it, 
 to understand beforehand, that the choice made was provisional 
 only, and that the assembly once met at Trent, there was nothing 
 to hinder its being translerred elsewhere. In reality the pope's 
 choice had been fixed invincibly. In the new aspect which the 
 aliair now assumed, he could no longer desire to see a translation 
 even to Bologna, or to Rome itself, for that would have made 
 the connexion which it was necessary that he should succeed in 
 establishing between the old sessions and the new, more and more 
 difficult, if not impossible. It Avas only at Trent that one could 
 thenceforth have the continuation and the close of the council of 
 
 ' Tabulariura Ecclesijc Ronianre, by Solonaon Cyprianua. 
 
 ^ Consideraus Sua Sanotitas quanli id scandali univei-so populo chris- 
 tiano esset, decrevit celebratione universalis cecumeuicique concilii na- 
 tionale illud pvajvenire. 
 
288 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 Trent, and this, indeed, must have been long felt to be the case. 
 The translation of the sittings to Bologna, which had been so 
 ardently desired, and so eagerly pleaded for, must, as any one 
 may perceive, have had a most untoward influence, in all future 
 time, on the authority of the council. If the decrees had been 
 issued, some from Trent, others from Bologna or elsewhere, they 
 might indeed, legally, have had the same weight, but collectively 
 they would not have had that imposing unity with which the 
 council of Trent has been invested in the eyes of those who are 
 ignorant of its history. Will the common herd ever think of 
 inquiring whether ten years elapsed between the decree on the 
 eucharist and that on the mass, two decrees so closely related to 
 each other ? Will they ever know that of the seventy bishops 
 who voted the former of these decrees, four or five only concurred 
 in drawing up the latter ? Both pass as The Council of Trent, 
 and no further inquiry is made. 
 
 Yet this bull, so painfully elaborated with the view of content- 
 ing everybody, contented none. The secular princes persisted, 
 each for himself, in making no account of the difficulties with 
 which the pope was beset. The emperor and the court of France 
 even went so far as to call for another bull, in which the council 
 to be summoned should be one entirely new ; the king of Spain 
 complained, on the contrary, that the pope had not had the cour- 
 age to clearly announce the continuation of the other : the Protest- 
 ants, in fine, had been saying over and over again that they wanted 
 neither the old nor a new of the same kind as the old. Hence con- 
 ferences without end, which it were useless to detail. The bull 
 had appeared on the 29th of November ; it appointed Easterday 
 1561 for the opening. Easter had arrived , and parties were as far 
 from a common understanding as they had been at Christmas. 
 
 The pope, nevertheless, had nominated his legates ; these 
 being at first but two, Hercules of Gonzaga, commonly called 
 bishop of Mantua, and Cardinal Du Puy of Nice. Four others 
 were appointed afterwards : these were Cardinals Hosius, Seri- 
 pandi, Simonetta, and Altemps, the last being the pope's nephew. 
 The Cardinal of Mantua was to preside. 
 
 On their arrival at Trent two days after Easter, nine bishops 
 only were found there, and all of these Italians. Leaving these 
 to hold some preparatory conferences with shut doors, let us see 
 what was passing elsewhere. 
 
 Francis II. had died on the 2d of December, 1560, and had been 
 succeeded by his brother Charles IX., under the regency of his 
 mother and of Anthony of Bourbon, king of Navarre. A meeting 
 of the States-general, held shortly afterwards at Orleans, had 
 served only to throw light on the divisions in the Roman Catholic 
 
Chap. I. 1561. DEMANDS OF CATHERINE DE MEDICIS. 289 
 
 party. The nobility and the ticrs-ctat had declaimed against 
 the clergy ; the clergy had found they could not attack the Prot- 
 estants without attacking those who, without being Protestants, 
 yet scrupled little to agree with them in many things. Now, 
 these half Protestants were daily becoming more numerous The 
 States of Orleans had almost unanimously voted resolutions, w^liich 
 were, it is true, either left unexecuted or were marred in the 
 execution, yet the boldness of which is a curious symptom of the 
 progress that had been made, unintentionally, in the ways of the 
 Reformation. The meeting had petitioned for the election of 
 bishops by the clergy, with the intervention of a certain number 
 of the nobility and of electors from the tiers-etat ; that the obli- 
 gation to residence should be absolute ; that censures should be 
 pronounced for public scandals ; that monastic vows should not 
 be received at any age under five-and-twenty for men, and twenty 
 for women, ho,. As for questions of doctrine or bearing upon doc- 
 trine, a letter from the queen regent, addressed to the pope in 
 1561, sufficiently proves how nearly the two parties, notwith- 
 standing their growing animosities, had really come to a common 
 understanding. In that letter Catherine required, most of all, 
 the supper in both kinds, and the celebration of worship in the 
 vulgar tongue. The mass would be preserved, but without the 
 adoration of the host, which amounted almost to an abandon- 
 ment of transubstantiation. The worship of images was to be 
 renounced, as having been, unknown in the early times of the 
 Church, and forbidden by God in the second commandment. 
 Baptism was to be restored to its ancient simplicity. All cere- 
 monies, the apostolic origin of which should not be sufficiently 
 demonstrated, were to be abolished. In fine, as the regent con- 
 cluded with an intimation to the pope of the calling of the col- 
 loquy of Poissy, which it was well known would amount in his 
 eyes to an invasion of his rights, that letter, notwithstanding the 
 polite terms in which it was couched, was very nearly tantamount 
 to a denial of the Roman supremacy. We cannot know how far 
 it exactly represented the queen's own sentiments, but such a 
 document evidently did not emanate either from a mind or heart 
 very deeply Roman Catholic, The more we study the history 
 of those times, the more we become convinced that had Reforma- 
 tion ideas been allowed to ferment for eight or ten years longer 
 without any intermingling of politics, and without being com- 
 promised by the grandees, with their rivalries and their intrigues, 
 France would have been lost to Rome, Catherine de Medicis 
 may have wished the St. Bartholomew massacre out of hatred 
 to the Reformed ; but after having written such a letter, she 
 could not have wished it from hatred to the Reformation. 
 
 N 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 THE CONFERENCE OF POISSY, GALLICANISM NOT ROJLA.NISM. 
 
 Colloquy of Poissy — ^The Chancellor de I'Hopital — Did he attack the 
 pope alone — The Protestants have the ball at their feet — Beza and 
 the Cardinal de Lorraine — Lainez — ^The praises he receives — What 
 Gallicanism is in the eyes of the popes — Philip II. — The sympathies 
 he could reckon upon in France — The true country of a priest's affec- 
 tions — ^The colloquy concludes that the cup should be conceded to 
 the laity — The pope consults the cardinals — Their unanimous refusal 
 — ^The matter referred to the council. 
 
 The famous Conference of Poissy, held in 1561, has had no 
 lack of authors to relate its proceedings ; we confine ourselves to 
 those parts only that bear on the history \ve have in hand. 
 
 In spite of the pope, but with the advice of the bishops, it had 
 been convoked ; in spite both of the pope and the bishops the 
 court had required the attendance of the Protestants. At the 
 very first sitting the Chancellor de I'Hopital appeared as the or- 
 gan of Gallican sentiments, and announced these with a frank- 
 ness, the very echoes of which alarmed and seemed to confound 
 E-ome. The chancellor commenced by stating as a principle 
 what the popes had never ceased to regard as a heresy, or at 
 least as a dangerous and culpable error, that in default of a gen- 
 eral council, it was at once the right and the duty of all secular 
 princes, each for himself, to apply a remedy to the Church's 
 wants and defects. " And were there," said he, " at this very 
 hour a general council met, would that be a reason for renounc- 
 ing the present meeting, or any other such as the king might 
 appoint for the same object ? No. A majority of the council- 
 general would be made up of strangers to France, and hence in- 
 capable of rightly appreciating the wishes and the wants of the 
 kingdom. Have we not seen in the reign of Charlemagne, sev- 
 eral councils met at the same time ? Have we not seen a coun- 
 cil-general, that of Rimini, where Arianism triumphed, con- 
 demned in France by a synod presided over by Hilary of Poi- 
 tiers ? And it was the doctrine of the latter of these synods 
 which, in spite of the council-general, became that of the Church." 
 
 Did the chancellor honestly suppose that he attacked only the 
 
Chap. II, 15G1. COLLOQUY OF POISSY— GALLICANISM. 291 
 
 pope ? Assuredly the Protestants could not have said anything 
 stronger against the Roman Church itself; in our general re- 
 marks on infallibility we have quoted this same fact. If it be 
 admitted — and how can it be denied ? — that the synod of Poi- 
 tiers was in the right as opposed to the council of Rimini, the 
 first synod that meets may hope to be justified in opposing the 
 council of Trent. 
 
 After such a speech from the chancellor, the Protestants had 
 the ball at their feet, and they will always have the advantage 
 in contending with the Galileans, however little they may press 
 them. Accordingly, notwithstanding the eflbrts of the prelates, 
 of the queen, and of the chancellor himself, to make them appear 
 only in the character of accused persons, the simple recital of 
 their faith and of their grievances gave them that of accusers 
 and judges. It was in vain that Beza,^ who spoke for them, 
 softened the terms he used ; it was not in his power to prevent 
 all that he said from having a fearfully telling effect. Did he 
 speak of the persecutions inflicted on his brethren ? It was their 
 blood which as he spoke cried aloud against the authors of so 
 much carnage, and the victim is always eloquent when it speaks 
 in presence of its butchers. Did he say nothing of those fright- 
 ful scenes ? This only gave him the air of pardoning them, only 
 made him all the more eloquent. Did he attack the clergy ? 
 He then said scarcely more than had been said at the states met 
 at Orleans, and that Cardinal Ferrara, who represented the pope 
 at the conference, was the son of Lucretia Borgia. Did he give 
 an exposition of his doctrine ? It was mingled throughout with 
 matter in which he felt he had the support of two-thirds of the 
 court and of the parliament. He was listened to accordingly 
 with a degree of attention as flattering to him as it was calcu- 
 lated to unnerve the prelates. " I could well have wished," 
 said the Cardinal of Lorraine to his intimate friends, " either 
 that this man had been dumb, or that we had been deaf I" But 
 Beza had spoken; the audience had not been deaf; a reply was 
 necessary. The cardinal, to the great annoyance of many of 
 the prelates, who thought it would detract from his dignity, had 
 declared that he would undertake the task ; but to avoid the 
 inconsistency of him, a cardinal and a prince, disputing with a 
 heretic of no note, he did what many champions of Romanism 
 do to this day, he laid down, ex professo, with great plausibility 
 certain theories and certain facts, and sneered at objections, as 
 if a single unresolved objection were not sufficient to subvert the 
 
 ^ They consisted of fourteen ministers. On the side of the Roman 
 Catholics there were five cardinals, forty bishops, and a score of doc- 
 tors. 
 
292 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 finest and best constructed theory. On this we have said enough 
 elsewhere ; in presence of the smallest error on any point what- 
 soever, what becomes of the most magnificent exposition of the 
 Roman system on the Church's authority and infalhbility ? The 
 cardinal struck beside the point ; theories never can refute facts. 
 Compelled, besides, to retain his footing on the slippery ground 
 of Gallican ideas, he was perpetually hazarding the introduction 
 of questions of the utmost delicacy. How maintain in one breath 
 . the authority of the pope and those liberties which the pope had 
 never acknowledged ? How speak in the name of the universal 
 Church, when a right had been assumed to control the decrees 
 of a general council ? How press the necessity for there being 
 a chief in the Church, when all the world knew that that meet- 
 ing had been called in the face of his disapproval ? And all 
 that we say of the famous colloquy of Poissy may be said of the 
 famous assembly of the clergy under Lewis XIV. Like the car- 
 dinal of Lorraine in 1561, Bossuet in 1G82, required more talent' 
 and tact to avoid the appearance of demolishing E-ome, than he 
 had ever shewn in attacking Geneva. 
 
 But at Poissy there was a man to whom Gallicanism was 
 hardly less odious than the Reformation. This was the irascible 
 Lainez, soon afterwards general of the Jesuits, and at that time 
 attached to the cardinal of Ferrara, the pope's legate at the 
 court of Charles IX. To the calling of the colloquy none had 
 been more bitterly opposed than Lainez. He groaned in spirit 
 while attending its sittings, and even the utter defeat of the 
 Calvinist doctors could not have made him digest the affront of 
 an assembly having been held without the pope, and in spite of 
 the pope. At last he made an impassioned speech, but it was 
 directed against the queen and the court still more than against 
 Beza. The Protestants escaped with merely having to hear 
 themselves called foxes, seryents, and aj^es ; the court was cen- 
 sured at great length, and point by point, for having made a 
 breach in the Church by meddling with matters in which it had 
 no concern. This was heard in silence. What, indeed, could 
 have been said in reply without producing an open rupture ? 
 The court had further to submit to hear the praises lavished by 
 Pius IV. on his fervid champion, while he threatened to excom- 
 municate the chancellor, and almost openly undertook the defence 
 of one Tanquerel, who had been condemned by the parliament 
 for having maintained that the pope might deprive of their do- 
 minions princes that should rebel against the papal authority. 
 In short, it must be admitted that the Roman unity, of which so 
 terrible an argument has since been made, could not have much 
 impressed the anti-Romanists of that period. Even although 
 
Chap. II. 1501. THE GALLICANS ACCOUNTED HERETICS. 293 
 
 the tentative proceeding's at Trent liad not demonstrated liow 
 little reality there was in it, even in matters oi" faith, what im- 
 portance could have been attached to it by people so entirely 
 disagreed with respect to the constitution, the seat, the very es- 
 sence of that power which was said to be charged with the es- 
 tablishment and preservation of this boasted unity ? Could that 
 very disagreement be viewed as a thing beyond the sphere of 
 matters of faith ? Here we find again, only exhibited in action, 
 all the arguments of our first book. On all occasions on which 
 the popes have thought they might call, or allow others to call, 
 Gallicanism a heresy, they have done it ; on all occasions when 
 it has suited them to excite any hatred against France or the 
 French, it has been as heretics that they have denounced them 
 to fanatical nations. In Italy, in Spain, in the Spanish and 
 Portuguese colonies, heretic and Frenchman have been synony- 
 mous terms. Some of the heroes of St. Bartholomew went and 
 settled in America. Smeared as they were wdth Protestant 
 blood, Avhat were they in the eyes of the ultramontanists of the 
 New World ? Why, nothing but heretics. Philip V. mounted 
 the Spanish throne. He had taken part in the dragonnades 
 against the French Reformed ; - he appears in Spain under the 
 auspices of the monarch who commanded those dragoonings and 
 who believed himself the most zealous Roman Catholic in Eu- 
 rope, the Church's first-born, a second Theodosius, in fine, as w^as 
 said of him by Bossuet. For all that he was but a heretic in 
 the eyes of his new subjects. He goes to Naples, and lo I the 
 blood of St. Januarius refuses to liquefy, because, say the priests, 
 the miracle cannot take place where a heretic reigns. Even in 
 the wars of our own age, down to 1823, wdien official France 
 was more Roman Catholic than ever, but still Gallican, it was 
 on a sentiment of religious horror still more than of national in- 
 dependence, that Spain rested her resistance to French inter- 
 vention. 
 
 To return to the colloquy, it was in Spain also that the gov- 
 ernment and the clergy were most agreed in blaming its authors. 
 Nor did Philip confine himself to censure. He was deeply in- 
 terested in the divisions that distracted France, and had long 
 desired to interfere in them. Hence that fatal intervention 
 which was to end in the follies and the horrors of the League. 
 He began by complaining of the dangers which, as he alleged, 
 threatened his own states, from the vicinity of a kingdom where 
 so little regard was shewn to the interests of the faith ; he should 
 take good care that after having been at such pains to root out the 
 last remains of heresy from Spain he should not be compelled to 
 see it flourishing at his own gates. He gave no farther explana- 
 
294 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT, Book IV. 
 
 tion, but enough was known to make his meaning sufficiently 
 understood. Two months previous to the colloquy there had 
 been seized at Orleans a sort of petition presented to him by the 
 clergy of France, and that document, notwithstanding the am- 
 biguity of its terms, pointed clearly enough to the necessity for 
 an armed intervention. Although the clergy, as a body, were 
 not guilty of complicity, so many persons were found compro- 
 mised by it that the government felt it necessary to put a stop to 
 further investigation ; it was fain to wink at what it had not 
 the power to punish. Philip II., accordingly, was assured of 
 powerful sympathies ; of this sufficient proofs appeared in the 
 course of time. With the Romish clergy the interests of the 
 Church and of Home have necessarily the precedence of those of 
 their native country. It is only at the expense of his consistency, 
 and at the hazard of seeing himself placed in the falsest positions, 
 that a priest can be a good Frenchman, a good German, and, in 
 general, a good citizen. Be this happy inconsistency frequent or 
 rare, that is a delicate question which we are not called to ex- 
 amine ; the answer to it, moreover, must vary greatly, according 
 to times and places. There are priests, thank God, who are also 
 good citizens, as there are priests also who are tolerant ; but 
 just as these last are not and cannot be so without disobedience 
 to their Church, so also, the only consistent and finished priest 
 is he who has no country but Rome and no sovereign but the 
 pope. 
 
 The bishops at the colloquy, meanwhile, were fain to grant 
 something, or, if not inclined to do so, felt at least that it would 
 seem strange to have called the Protestants together, all whose 
 opinions, be it remembered, they perfectly knew, without mak- 
 ing any concession to them. The supper in both kinds had the 
 double advantage of not being a point of doctrine and of exciting 
 the greatest interest. The council had not decided the question ; 
 in consenting to its adjournment it had given room to believe 
 that it was not irrevocably decided in the Roman sense. It was 
 resolved, therefore, that the pope should be asked to yield on 
 that point. Some of the bishops even thought that it was com- 
 petent for the king to regulate the matter by an edict ; but it 
 Avas deemed more prudent not to commit themselves to so mis- 
 chievous a step. 
 
 The pope replied that that request had been already made 
 to him by the emperor, that, personally, he would have found 
 no great difficulty in consenting to it, but that the cardinals 
 had almost with one mind advised him to reject it. Notwith- 
 standing, out of regard for France, he would consult them once 
 more. 
 
Chap. II. 15G1. THE SUPPER IN BOTH KINDS REFUSED. 295 
 
 A consistory was held accordingly (lOlh November), and not 
 only was the request refused, hut it was made the occasion of 
 the severest recriminations against the country from which it 
 had come. All that the pope thought the cardinals said. Court, 
 parliament, and bishops, were openly accused of heresy. The 
 Cardinal della (^ueva, who had nearly been elected pope, ven- 
 tured to say that if ever the pope consented to such a request he 
 himself would go and supplicate for mercy on the steps of St. 
 Peter's, thus intimating that even the pope would in his eyes be 
 a heretic were he to have a hand in such things. The Cardinal 
 of St. Angelo added, that because the French were sick, that was 
 no reason for giving them, under the guise of medicine, a cupful 
 of poison. And when the ambassador from France asked him 
 if the bishops of the first ages had then been poisoners, seeing 
 they gave the cup to all, another replied that the cup would 
 really have been poisoned for whoever should partake of it in 
 the belief that it Avas necessary, since this was to deny, against 
 the opinion of the Church, that the entire body of the Saviour 
 was in the bread. 
 
 Notwithstanding this unanimity, the pope hesitated ; he pon- 
 dered with alarm the consequences that might possibly follow 
 his refusal. , First, he would fain have had the ambassador with- 
 draw his request ; but that minister having rephed that this was 
 beyond his power, he then thought of applying for advice to the 
 council. Not, said he, that he did not believe himself fully 
 competent to pronounce on the question, but since the council 
 was about to open, why should he withdraw from its cognizance 
 a matter so closely allied to the questions which it would have 
 to study? Pius promised, moreover, to take steps for its being 
 among the first points to be submitted to examination. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 (1562.) 
 
 SESSIONS XVII.-XX. DISPUTES ABOUT THE AUTHORITY OF THE LE- 
 GATES AND INDEX EXPURGATORIUS. TREACHEROUS SAFE-CON- 
 DUCT. DmXE RIGHT OF BISHOPS. 
 
 Bad feeling on the part of the court of France — Re-opening of the 
 council— Seve>teenth Session — Ambiguous decree — False reasoning 
 — Precautions taken — Proponentibus legatis — Question about forbid- 
 den books — Historical review — Gelasius, Leo X., and Paul lY. — Em- 
 barrassment and puerilities — A tnonstroxisVihevty — Absolute enslave- 
 ment — An illusory appeal made to the Protestants — Eighteenth Ses- 
 sion — The safe-conduct and the Inquisition — Spanish Gallicanism — 
 The question of residence taken up anew — It becomes complicated 
 and envenomed — Voting upon it — Reference to the pope — Murmurs 
 — Pius IV. dreads pronouncing upon it — Momentary calm — Several 
 questions of detail examined — Abuses pointed out — These none durst 
 touch without the consent of the pope — His evasive reply on the 
 question of the Divine Right — Nineteenth Session — Xo result — Pius 
 IV. conceives a dislike for the council — AVould fain dismiss it or have 
 it entirely under his hand — Jealousies among the members — The 
 pope's pensionaries — Offers of money to the king of France — Arrival 
 of the French ambassadors — Satirical harangue — Dissimulation — 
 Another Session (Twentieth) without result. 
 
 Notwithstanding this, the court of France was less disposed 
 than ever either to send its bishops or to acknowledge a council 
 in which they should not have had a place. By dint of chican- 
 ery and ill-nature it had come at last to put legal right, one 
 might almost say reason, on the side of the court of Rome, 
 seeing that for a year the pope had been doing his best to bring 
 the council into a state which might authorize its being opened. 
 "Whatever were in reality his feelings and his fears, he could no 
 longer be reproached either with neghgence or tergiversations. 
 The sending of six legates from Rome sufficiently shewed that 
 he had no longer any wish to draw back. In consequence of the 
 pains he had taken, near a hundred bishops were at Trent, that 
 is to say, a third more than had appeared at any of the old ses- 
 sions. In this number there were, no doubt, many Italians ; but 
 it was no longer the pope's fault if those belonging to other coun- 
 tries persisted in refusing to come. He thought, therefore, that 
 
Chap. III. 1562. THE COUNCIL REOPENED. 29Y 
 
 after waiting for eight months, he might safely undertake the 
 responsibility of opening it, and it was decided accordingly that 
 the first session should take place on the 18th January, 15G2. 
 
 The drawing up of the decree for the opening proved a still 
 more thorny afiair than that of its convocation had been. Could 
 the meeting evade explaining its real character ? Surely it must 
 present itself to the world either as a new council or as a contin- 
 uation of the old. The Spanish bishops were strongly in favour 
 of the second alternative ; nay, several threatened to withdraw 
 were there any concession, or appearance of concession, on that 
 point. The Italians were no less unwilling to yield ; but they 
 were as much aware as the pope was that any explicit state- 
 ment would call forth the most dangerous protests from Germany 
 and France. Means were still found, accordingly, for leaving 
 the matter undecided. Nothing is impossible in diplomacy ; but 
 it was. a sorry commencement to have too little courage for say- 
 mg what all were unanimous in thinking. " Is it your pleasure 
 that the holy council of Trent, cecumenical and general, be cele- 
 brated, commencing from this day, all suspension being removed, 
 according to the form and tenor of our holy father the pope's 
 letters, and that there shall be brought under discussion, proper 
 order being observed, what shall seem expedient as a remedy 
 for present evils ?" &c. Thus, all suspension being removed, 
 which assumes, it is true, a convocation anterior to the present ; 
 but it is not said that that convocation had produced anything. 
 Reference is made to the bull, but that we have seen said no- 
 thing more precise. All this, humanly speaking, is very excusable. 
 To have done otherwise would have been to subvert all. But 
 this mendacious decree is not the less associated with those who, 
 we are told, were holy and infallible persons ; the council not 
 the less gives itself, in that as well as in the' other decrees, the 
 titles of holy, (Ecumenical, and legitimately assembled, with the 
 assistance of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 The opening then took place. A hundred and ten prelates in 
 full costume, accompanied by their officers, their priests, and 
 their doctors, solemnly took possession of the cathedral, amid the 
 sound of artillery and of steeple bells, and between two lines of 
 soldiers. No ambassador had as yet arrived ; a circumstance 
 that greatly disappointed Pallavicini. " It looked,"^ says he, 
 "as if the theatre on which such fine things were passing, had 
 not all the splendour that it required, as long as the representa- 
 tives of the kings did not figure there."' But from quite a 
 different cause than a defect in external splendour, there still 
 prevailed, in fact, a painful sense of isolation and weakness. 
 
 * Book XV, ch. xvi. 
 N* 
 
298 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book. IV. 
 
 The number was above a hundred ; but better had there been 
 only fifty, had there been among these only a dozen of French 
 and Germans. Yet with all tliese reasons for humility and fear, 
 the opening sermon displayed as much hardihood as ever. Gas- 
 pard del Fosso, archbishop of Reggio, had chosen for his subject 
 the authority of the Church and the power of councils. The bish- 
 ops had the satisfaction of hearing it declared, as in the too fa- 
 mous sermon of Musso, that the Holy Spirit was about to speak 
 by their mouth. And as for the Church's authority, " Is it not it," 
 said he, among other reasons, " that substituted the Lord's day for 
 the Sabbath, whicli was instituted by God himself ? Did it not 
 aboHsh circumcision, also instituted by God ?" "Whence it must 
 be concluded, little room as there was for such reasoning, not 
 that the Church is equal to the Word of God, but that it is 
 much superior. If this were the place to reply, we might ob- 
 serve further, that the Sabbath and circumcision were practices, 
 not doctrines ; that these practices have been not abolished, but 
 replaced, the one by the Lord's day, the other by baptism ; that 
 this substitution was the work of the Apostles ; that, were it 
 even the Church's doing, the right of modifying practices by no 
 means draws along with it that of teaching new doctrines. Did 
 the abolition of the Sabbath, and of circumcision, date as so 
 many Romanist ideas do, from the tenth, nay, the twelfth cen- 
 tury, should we be bound to subscribe to it ? How prove the 
 authority of the Church by decisions which we should be author- 
 ized to reject, did they emanate only from the Church ? The 
 argument, nevertheless, is in great favour, down to our own days 
 even, in the writings of Romanist controversialists. 
 
 A single word which had found its way into the decree, was 
 destined afterwards to excite stormy discussions. 
 
 The bishops that had arrived first at Trent, had for several 
 months enjoyed opportunities of visiting each other, and having 
 a mutual interchange of ideas. From such strictly private de- 
 liberations, there issued certain projected decrees, prepared for 
 being submitted to the council when fully constituted, but not 
 all equally accordant with the views of the pope. The legates 
 were not much afraid that the council would adopt them ; but 
 it was of consequence, further, that they should not even be 
 brought under deliberation ; and of still more consequence that 
 even as respected decrees perfectly innocuous, a check should be 
 put at once to the perilous course of entertaining individual or 
 collective propositions. Nevertheless, to have it decreed that the 
 legates alone should have the right of introducing subjects for 
 discussion, was impossible ; all but the Italians would have pro- 
 tested, and the Italians themselves would not all have subscribed 
 
Chap. III. 1502. INTERDICTION OF HERETICAL BOOKS. 299 
 
 it. An atlcmpt was made, accordingly, to have inserted in the 
 decree for the opcnin<r, at least the germ of tlie right which it 
 was aiitici})atcd would he so necessary. The decrees had hith- 
 erto run simply thus, '' The holy council, the legates of the apos- 
 tolic see presiding." This was already a great deal ; time was 
 when we have seen what pains were taken to elude the question 
 of this presidency being honorary merely, or of divine right ; 
 indispensable, or not indi.?pensable, to the council's legitimacy. 
 This time, it was not sim-ply 2Jrcsidi?ig, but " proposing and pre- 
 siding."^ The terms did not thereby say that it was for tliem 
 aIo?ie to propose, but they might thus be interpreted ; and we 
 shall see ere long that they were placed there solely with that 
 view. \Yas this, too, a piece of diplomacy ? We are of opinion 
 that even among diplomatists, it would stand a great chance of 
 being called something very different. The bishop of Grenada, 
 and three other Spaniards, said as much in the face of the legates. 
 
 This right of proposing did not fiiil to create embarrassment. 
 As the resumption of the plan of procedure in 1551 was not, for 
 the moment, to be dreamt of, seeing that that would have been 
 to cut short, in fact, the question as to the continuation, the 
 grand afiair was to find out some subject altogether new, strictly 
 associated with nothing else, and which might figure equally 
 well at the beginning, middle, or end of a council. The legates 
 proposed then to inquire what should be done with resjDcct to 
 books forbidden, or to be forbidden ; a vague question, which 
 could only lead, as happened in fact, to an insignificant decree. 
 "What could the assembly be asked to do ? Not surely itself to 
 draw up a catalogue of the books to be condemned ? That was 
 impracticable ; at the most it could appoint a committee to do 
 so. Not to fix the rules according to which they should be con- 
 demned ; for it was clear that every book that contradicted the 
 decisions of the Church, and especially those of the council itself, 
 was, from that alone, of a nature to be interdicted. Not to de- 
 cree that the pope and bishops should have an eye directed to 
 all works that might be published ; for their attention had long 
 been thus directed, and the Inquisition, moreover, left them 
 nothing to do. Thus what was presented to the council, be- 
 came a subject of conversation rather than of discussion ; and 
 more than one bishojD thought it strange that an assembly so 
 numerous, brought together with so much dilKculty, and opened 
 so tardily, should be asked to spend its time in any such manner. 
 
 The prohibiting of certain books began, like all abuses, with 
 measures at once wise and legitimate. It is evident that a pas- 
 tor does no more than his duty in pointing out to his flock such 
 * Proponcntibiis Sedis apostolicac legatis, ct prcesidentibus. 
 
300 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 writings as appear to him dangerous ; but it is also evident that 
 his right cannot go so far as to interdict them otherv^ase than 
 by an appeal to the conscience of the readers. Such was the 
 interdiction which for a long period was alone in use. Towards 
 the year 500, we see Pope G-elasius publish a first general index 
 of heretical books, or books reputed to be heretical ; but he merely 
 gave a list of them. The faithful were to know that the Church 
 condemned them ; that was all. By little and little we find 
 threats appear, but still nothing very offensive in these ; it was 
 merely observed, that he who reads a heretical book, knowing it 
 to be heretical, commits the sin of one who voluntarily exposes 
 himself to a temptation. Towards the twelfth century, the cus- 
 tom was introduced of anathematizing at one blow the heretic 
 and his works ; the interdiction is then more severe ; still it is 
 only an interdiction. Finally, it becomes more and more severe, 
 and by little and little excommunication is brought in to sanc- 
 tion it. Thus, in excommunicating Luther, Leo X. pronounces 
 the same penal sentence against those who should read his books. 
 At the epoch of the council, it was the ordinary form of that sort 
 of condemnations. 
 
 Paul IV., whose violent proceedings we have relatea, had par- 
 ticularly distinguished himself in this desperate warfare between 
 Roman Catholicism and liberty. A vast index, drawn up under 
 his eye by the Inquisition of the Roman States, has come down 
 to us as a curious monument of the papal despotism, or, if you 
 will, dotage. As little disposed to respect his predecessors as 
 the secular princes, and without disquieting himself about the 
 breach thus made in his own claims to infallibility, Paul con- 
 demns without ceremony works printed in Italy, at Rome itself, 
 under the eyes and with the approbation of the popes ; for ex- 
 ample, the Annotations of Erasmus on the New Testament, ap- 
 proved by Leo X. in 1518. According to Pallavicini, not]iing 
 more simple : " Is it to be supposed that the pope, in signing a 
 brief of that nature, can always examine writings personally, or 
 by very capable persons ? Why should not time make one dis- 
 tinguishf upon a second reading, what had not been perceived at 
 the first ?"^ All well ; but then we would add, why may not 
 time enable him to perceive, on a third reading, the contrary of 
 what he believed he had seen at the second ? With this rea- 
 soning, just as it is in itself, the pope is in the same condition of 
 self-correction and of error, as the first doctor you meet ; there 
 may always be an appeal from the pope who is ill-informed, to 
 the pope who is better informed. It is Gallican, but hardly 
 orthodox reasoning. Be that as it may, Paul IV. did not look 
 
 ' Book XV. ch. xviii. 
 
Chap. III. 15f)2. DELUGE OF ANATHEMAS. IJOl 
 
 SO narrowly into it ; he went straight forward — so mucli the 
 worse for tliose who stood in his way, though popes hke himself 
 Among the condemned authors, his Index signals out, not only 
 heretics properly so called, but all who had raised the smallest 
 doubt on the rights and pretensions of Home. Had he not called 
 heretics, in full consistory, those who had wished to remind liim 
 of the promise he had given in conclave, not to appoint more 
 than four cardinals at once ? There was heresy, according to 
 him, in thinking that the pope could be bound, even by an oath ; 
 in what an abyss of heresy were not those then plunged, in his 
 eyes, who dared to speak of placing any other limits on that pow- 
 er, a power more absolute than that of God himself, for none has 
 ever said that God was not bound by his promises, or could have 
 the thought of violating them ? Further, in that same Index, all 
 the works published, or that might be published by sixty print- 
 ers mentioned by name, and, generally, all books that should 
 issue from the presses of a printer guilty of having once printed 
 a heretical book, were anathematized in the lump. In a w^ord, 
 there was not perhaps a single man in Europe, that could read, 
 who did not find himself caught, in one way or another, in that 
 decree's anathemas ; and the only penalty indicated for all these 
 cases, however different, was excommunication. Were we wrong 
 in speaking of dotage ? 
 
 This decree, accordingly, had been very much criticised even 
 at Rome. Sensible persons thought this deluge of excommuni- 
 cations much less fitted to keep the population of Christendom in 
 awe than to familiarize them with a punishment which is felt 
 to be nothing the moment it ceases to be the most terrible of all. 
 Thus the council w^as led at the very first to occupy itself with 
 the measures of Paul IV. The members were agreed in blaming 
 their severity, but they knew not how to meddle with them. Of 
 all the books condemned by that pope, there was not one which 
 an assembly of bishops could consider as altogether blameless ; 
 and if there was a certain number M'liich they would have pre- 
 ferred not seeing anathematized, there was none, nevertheless, 
 which they could venture to rescue from the curse pronomiced 
 on them. Is it not better, then, said Peter Contarini, bishop 
 of Bafla, is it not better to forbid a thousand works which do 
 not deserve it, than to permit the reading of one that does ? 
 " Ah I" he added, with great simplicity, " are books so rare, then, 
 that we should be so much alarmed about interdicting a few too 
 many I" Pallavicini is inclined to think this opinion sin^^ular. 
 Let us be thankful he says nothing worse, for it is rare to fnid 
 him not admiring the things he relates in proportion as they are 
 strange. But if this opinion be singular, Avhat other term shall 
 
802 ■ HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 we apply to that of the historian himself in admitting that Paul 
 went too far, yet persisting in ascribing to the Church on this 
 point a power without limits and without control ? And if we 
 mention here the light in which he viewed this matter, it is not 
 because he supported it. Of what consequence is that to us ? 
 It is because it has never ceased, and never can cease to be that 
 of the Roman Church. It is not many years since there fell 
 from the pretended chair of St. Peter, those words which so 
 many persons would now fam obliterate from men's memories : 
 " The liberty of the press is a monstrous liberty, which can 
 never be held in sufficient horror." ^ 
 
 In consenting to the revision of the Index, the pope had first 
 taken care that no prejudice should be done to his rights. Con- 
 sidering the prohibitions that emanated from Paul IV. as still in 
 force, he had sent to the bishops of the council permission to 
 read the books which that pope had noted as heretical. This 
 was generally deemed a slur on the council's dignity. People 
 wondered very reasonably at its being assumed that bishops le- 
 gitimately assembled for fixing the Church's faith and discipline, 
 should further require the pope's special permission to read the 
 books they might have to condemn. Under polite and gracious 
 forms it amounted to the most slavish subjection that the Holy 
 See had as yet imposed on any council. 
 
 We have seen the difficulties started under Julius III. about 
 the attendance of the Protestants. As this question could not 
 fail to be resumed, the legates had fancied that they could fmd, 
 in the affair of the Index, the means of depriving it of all that 
 was most embarrassing. They proposed, therefore, that they 
 should be called, not as divines and representatives of the Ref- 
 ormation, but as authors interested in the framing of the cata- 
 logue, and who had a claim to be heard before being condemned. 
 
 Nothing could be more illusory, if indeed we can call that illu- 
 sory which is too clear to deceive anybody. Protestant writings 
 were too openly heretical to make the asking of explanations from 
 their authors anything mote than an idle ceremony. These 
 Protestants, therefore, would not come ; but this being just what 
 was wanted, the application for a safe-conduct, when made anew 
 by the emperor, met on this occasion with no difficulty. Only 
 tM'o bishops desired that this curious condition should be put 
 into it, that the heretics should come, not to dispute, but to be 
 converted. 
 
 Accordingly, never yet had there been so meaningless a de- 
 cree as that read in the eighteenth session, on the 26th of Feb- 
 ruary. Many prelates were ashamed of it ; they even asked 
 
 ^ See ante, p. 104. 
 
Chap. ITT. 1562. THE SAFE-CONDUCT RENDERED OF NO AVAIL. 303 
 
 themselves whether the title of decree could be given to the 
 mere auouncemeiit that a commission had been appointed, and 
 that it would receive with pleasure those who might think that 
 they had explanations to give. Moreover, however insignificant 
 the result of the deliberations, these had been very long, and it 
 was only with much ado that it had been found possible to have 
 the decree ready on the appointed day. All the members wished 
 to speak ; all wished to give token of their presence on that thea- 
 tre which most of them, mere priests at the time of the old ses- 
 sions, had hitherto only hailed from a distance. When they 
 came to the discussion of the text, the legates were obliged to 
 lay it down as a rule, that it should be past before the meeting 
 rose, even although they should devote the whole night to it. 
 It was the best way to have done with it ; but, at the same 
 time, it did not flatter the assembly with much prospect of in- 
 dependence. 
 
 The safe-conduct, too, which to all appearance was to be of 
 use to nobody, cost many days' labour. The Spaniards ex- 
 claimed against the abuse that might be made of it in escaping 
 from the rigours of the Inquisition. An accused person might 
 ask leave to get out of prison for the purpose of justifying him- 
 self before the council. Was he to obtain this leave, then, at 
 the risk of seeing him go, not to Trent, but to Geneva ? They 
 came to an understanding about it at last, thanks to a word fur- 
 tively introduced at the end of the safe-conduct. What an in- 
 fernal mockery ! See, in the first place, in the decree, the most 
 pressing invitations. It is by the bowels of the divine mercy,^ 
 that the council exhorts the heretics to come to Trent, to open 
 their hearts, to throw themselves into the arms of that tender 
 mother who is burning with a desire to pardon them.^ Next, 
 see in the safe-conduct itself, four large pages filled with the 
 most minute securities ; only the heretics of Germany alone are 
 as yet spoken of See, at last, a final paragraph in which these 
 securities are extended to all persons of any other kingdom, na- 
 tion, city, province whatsoever, " where doctrines opposed to those 
 of the Church are professed." What more would you have ? 
 Wait. At the side of these words, " are professed,'' ivith im- 
 punity was slipt in. Thus the Inquisition was saved. Wher- 
 ever a man was not a heretic ivith impunity, the safe-conduct 
 was null. Accordingly, one does not see that this charitable ap- 
 peal snatched a single victim from the pitiless tribmial. 
 
 * Per viscera misericordia? Dei. 
 
 * Ad tarn piam et salutarem matris sua? ndraonitionem excitentur et 
 convertantur : omnibus enim caritatis officiis sancta synodus eos ut ia- 
 vitat, ita complectitur. 
 
304 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 The heart shudders at the thought of the frightful mihtia to 
 which, among the milhons of Christians, the execution of the 
 decrees of Trent was committed . They were not yet written at 
 Trent, when they were engraved with burning pincers, in the 
 heart of Spain, on bodies already devoted to the flames. And 
 Rome applauded ; and the pope repeated that Phihp was, in 
 fact, the most catholic king, the most pious and the most ortho- 
 dox of monarchs, the only one who remained what all ought to 
 have been. 
 
 Meanwhile those same Spaniards, who were so zealous in be- 
 half of an institution so dear to the pope, ceased not to cause 
 much uneasiness on other points. There was not a meeting at 
 which they did not make eflbrts to bring back the famous ques- 
 tion of residence and of divine right. The more ultramontane 
 they were in their dogmas, the more did they embolden them- 
 selves not to be so in their ideas on the dignity of the episcopate, 
 the part assigned to the bishops in the Church, and the nature 
 and extent of the pope's supremacy. A most instructive history 
 might be written of that demi-gallicanism, to which historians 
 have not yet given a name, and which is so liberal and bold on 
 the one side, and so profoundly despotic and persecuting on the 
 other. We shall yet have to notice many of its peculiar traits, 
 nor can it be thought uninteresting to find in the depths of Spain, 
 in the midst of the sixteenth century, so many auxilaries against 
 the pope, and consequently against Roman Catholicism, without 
 their suspecting it, for it is not with impunity that a keystone of 
 the vault can be shaken. 
 
 An attempt, therefore, had to be made to satisfy them, by 
 proposing, among other subjects which we need not detail, a 
 new examination of the methods by which residence might be 
 made more general. Cardinal Simonetta, one of the legates and 
 head of the ultra-papal party, and of what a Frenchman would 
 call " of the extreme right," was averse to this commencement 
 of concession ; the Cardinal of Mantua, premier legate, and head 
 of the moderate ultramontanes, and, if you will, of the left cen- 
 tre, had positively desired it. Notwithstanding their united ef- 
 forts to concentrate the discussion on a peaceable examination 
 of methods, it fell immediately on what they had wished to keep 
 off, and thus the question became as complex and as irritating 
 as ever. 
 
 We shall not return to what we have already said upon it. 
 Eleven sittings were devoted to it. Hot words and the com- 
 mencements of tumults often occurred. From the time of the 
 old debates things had undergone no change ; the same prin- 
 ciples, the same interests, the same passions, all were there. 
 
Chap. III. 1502. DIVISION ON THE DIVINE RIGHT. 806 
 
 Some were as obstinate as ever in afTiriniiig tliat on residence 
 being once declared to be of divine right, it would be universally 
 practised ; others, as obstinate as ever, maintained that matters 
 would be no better, and that, besides, in all things good results 
 do not always prove the truth of the principle. In this they 
 were not wrong. The question was not which of the two sys- 
 tems did most good or most harm, but which of the two was 
 true ? Is it by the authority of the pope, or by that of God, that 
 a bishop is bound to reside in his church ? 
 
 There was nothing then, it would appear, but that on the 
 question having been once sufficiently debated, they should take 
 the votes. Is not the majority of a council necessarily in the 
 right ? But the papal faction ardently desired that there should 
 be no voting ; and even among the partisans of the divine right 
 there were several who dreaded, for the honour of the council, 
 a voting in which it could be seen beforehand that the members 
 would be far from unanimous. The legates themselves were not 
 agreed. Three wished that the voting should proceed ; two 
 were opposed to this.^ Now, they had orders Irom the pope 
 always to act in concert ; but as it was necessary that they 
 should come to the point, the Cardinal of Mantua, as president, 
 decided that the vote should be taken. 
 
 This was done accordingly. Historians differ as to the num- 
 ber of the voters and the repartition of the votes. Let us keep 
 therefore to Massarelli, secretary to the council, cited by Palla- 
 vicini as the only correct authority on this point. According to 
 him there were an hundred and thirty voters ; for declaring the 
 divine right, sixty-six ; against, seventy-one ; papal majority, 
 five. But, always according to Massarelli, among the seventy- 
 one votes counted as opposed to the declaration, there were 
 thirty-seven only who were so absolutely ; of the other thirty- 
 four prelates, some answered, " yes, provided the pope be first 
 consulted," and others, "no, if the pope has not been first con- 
 sulted," which sufficiently shews that they were at bottom for 
 the affirmative, and that it was from respect for the pope that 
 they did not join the ayes. 
 
 There was in reality then a considerable majority in favour 
 of the divine right. The sitting had been long and stormy ; the 
 assembly was dismissed without being asked what it meant 
 should be the result of this voting, and as an escape from this 
 difficulty, the legates interpreted it in the sense of a reference to 
 the pope, although such reference had been positively voted by 
 only thirty-four members, being just a fourth of the council. 
 Accordingly they wished to say nothing about it ; but it came 
 ^. As yet they Avere only five in number. 
 
306 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 out that one of the Cardinal of Mantua's secretaries had set out 
 for Rome, and the Spaniards bitterly complained of it at the 
 following congregation. " Are we a council," said they, " or 
 merely the pope's counsellors ? Better to have frankly said that 
 no council is wanted than to call us together only to make us 
 slaves." And these complaints, repeated from day to day, were 
 all the more disquieting in that they were uttered by those who 
 were most zealous in behalf of discipline and the faith. " His 
 holiness," wrote the ambassador of France at Rome,^ " is much 
 hindered at present on account of the complaints made by these 
 prelates that the afiairs of the said council are sent thither and 
 consulted upon here, saying that this is a violation of its liberty." 
 
 What still more liindered his holiness than the irregularity of 
 the reference, was the reference itself A letter from the Floren- 
 tine ambassador to Duke Cosmo, gives an excellent picture of 
 the position of affairs. According to him, after the evident ma- 
 jority obtained by the principle of divine right, Pius IV. was 
 morally bound to pronounce in that sense ; but, on the other 
 hand, although his convictions or his interests had not been to 
 the contrary, still he ought to have felt repugnant at erecting 
 into an article of faith what bad been so warmly combated by 
 thirty or forty of the most Catholic prelates. But looking at the 
 matter in a merely human point of view, would it not have been 
 a kind of treason towards those men, to whom so much was due, 
 seeing that it was through them that the legates led the council ? 
 Hence, had he refused there would have been an almost univer- 
 sal discontent in Spain, Germany, and France ; had he agreed, 
 an almost universal discontent in Italy, a discontent more respect- 
 ful, perhaps, but in some respects more dangerous. We shall 
 see, accordingly, that he took good care not to pronounce either 
 way. 
 
 At Trent, the excess of the evil had ended at last in procuring 
 a remedy. The violence of the scenes that had occurred pro- 
 duced a general impression that it would not require much of 
 the same sort of thing to bring the council to a close amid the 
 contempt of Roman Catholics and the laughter of Protestants. 
 Some serious men of both parties in the council came to a mutual 
 understanding not to give such scandal to the Church, or such 
 satisfaction to her enemies. By a tacit agreement there was a 
 mutual abstinence from all allusion to those debates, and thus 
 six peaceful sittings could be devoted to the other points that had 
 been proposed. 
 
 These formed an odd medley of all sorts of questions. It was 
 evident that the legates had jumbled together eveiything they 
 ^ Letter to Charles IX., 6th May, 1562. 
 
Chap. ITI. 1562. SALE OF COLLECTIONS FOR HOSPITALS. 807 
 
 had thouglit capable of being examined without touching on tlie 
 article ot the continuation. The council had to consider ordina- 
 tions, parochial cure of souls, dismissals on the ground of incapa- 
 city or immorality, collections lor hospitals, clandestine marriages, 
 kc. ; all matters on which there was, in fact, much to be said 
 and much to be regulated, but which one would not have ex- 
 pected to see all huddled together. 
 
 Here, as elsewhere, among the abuses marked for correction, 
 there were some which at the present day we should think 
 fabulous. Thus, for example, one might purchase from the pope 
 the monopoly of collections for such or such an hospital ; upon 
 wdiich, on payment of a fixed yearly sum to that establishment, 
 the purchaser went to collect by begging wherever he chose, and 
 to what extent he chose. These privileges, ordinarily highly 
 lucrative, passed from hand to hand, like shares in a trading con- 
 cern at the present day ; often the actual working of the specu- 
 lation fell to the second or the third hand, and still all the parties 
 interested had a profit. Accordingly, there was no kind of arti- 
 fice or fraud that the subaltern agents would not call to their 
 aid. Promises of indulgences, prophecies, miracles, everything 
 was good Avhen it was money that was to be got. 
 
 Although there was but one voice at Trent in denouncing this 
 scandal, the council dared not attack it. How could it annul 
 acts, authentically emanating from Rome ? Here, then, as in 
 the aflair of the Index, the consent of the pope had to be obtained, 
 and upon that new complaints arose that the council was rather 
 at Rome than at Trent. It was asked whether, then, it w^as for 
 the purpose of habituating it to obedience that the legates had 
 presented subjects of this sort to begin with ? In fact, as the 
 greater number of the points indicated lay within the domain 
 of the pope's administrative authority, the boldest of the bishops 
 were compelled to feel that they could not touch them without 
 his sanction. 
 
 Meanwhile those few peaceable sittings, signalized by very 
 wise decisions, did not prevent the question of divine right from 
 remaining suspended, as menacingly as ever, over the head of 
 • the pope and of the legates. When we say the legates, we are 
 not quite correct : the Cardinal of Mantua, their president, held 
 the opinion of the Spaniards. But Cardinal iSimonetta, who 
 enjoyed the Pope's secret confidence, corresponded directly with 
 Rome, held the strings of all the intrigues that were on foot, and 
 exercised, in fact, all the rights of the prcsidence. The reference 
 to the pope was his work ; but the pope, ostensibly at least, did 
 not thank him for it. An answer was required, and we have 
 seen how difficult it was to give one. After much thought the 
 
308 HISTORY OF THE COUNCH. OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 pope communicated to the college of cardinals the evasive letter 
 which he had resolved to v^rite to Trent, on which all approved 
 of his pronouncing no decision. He confined himself to protest- 
 ing, on the one hand, that the council was free, and that he had 
 no intention of anywise hampering it — while, at the same time, 
 he powerfully reminded them, on the other, that he was the sole 
 legitimate chief of the assembly, and that it never could feel a 
 high enough regard for him. 
 
 This reply, read to the cardinals on the 9th of May, could not 
 reach Trent before the session which was fixed for the 14th. 
 The legates were impatiently waiting for it, as likely to lighten 
 the weight of responsibility under which they felt themselves tot- 
 tering ; afterwards they ought to have felt thankful that they 
 had not received it in time, for it would have authorized a de- 
 finitive voting, and the divine right would infallibly have carried 
 the day. They were enabled, accordingly, to succeed in having 
 nothing more said about it in that session, but only by consent- 
 ing that no more should the decrees on which they had agreed, 
 be published. In this manner the question had of necessity to 
 lie over. 
 
 The public sitting, therefore, went offin ceremonies. Audience 
 was given to some ambassadors who had recently arrived ; there 
 was, as usual, the mass of the Holy Spirit, a sermon, pomps of all 
 sorts ; but what was read was only a decree a few lines in length, 
 by which the session was prorogued to the 4th of June, and that, 
 it was said, "for just and honourable reasons."^ Honourable 
 for whom ? Not assuredly for the council which had never yet 
 been so openly led by the pope ; or for the pope, who saw him- 
 self morally vanquished ; or for the authority of the Church, for 
 it was a very strange spectacle to see so much contention upon 
 a point which ought to have been settled for ages, and which is 
 not settled to this day. 
 
 Q^uarrels of such fierceness were not long of throwing Pius lY. 
 into the old papal track. Like Paul HI. and Julius HI., he had 
 conceived an aversion for the council. If he did not yet speak 
 openly of dissolving it, he allowed others to speak of this ; his 
 counsellors, who had never approved of the convocation, even af 
 the time when he shewed some eagerness in labouring at it, now 
 saw nothing at Trent but a seditious and rebel assembly. 
 
 Regrets, accordingly, began to be felt at there having been no 
 announcement, from the very first, of the continuation of the old 
 council, as that would probably have led, thanks to the simul- 
 taneous protests of the emperor and the king of France, to the 
 breaking up of the Assembly. And this was all the moie regret- 
 - Justis nonnullis ac honestis causis. 
 
Chap. III. 1502. DISPARITY AMONG THE PRELATES. 309 
 
 ted, inasmuch as had ihey begun with that, tliey might have 
 been sure of having it voted by an imposing majority, whereas, 
 after the contention about tlie divine right, iu which the opposite 
 parties had become so strongly marked, there was reason to ap- 
 prehend a dangerous nearness to an equahty of votes. Never- 
 theless, the pope was resolved to run the risk. " The great 
 distrust often shewn by his holiness for the prelates, and for the 
 greater luimber of the articles that have been proposed hitherto, 
 leads many to presume that his holiness desires to find means for 
 abridging or interrupting the said council, and this conjecture is 
 thought to be strongly supported by a dispatch, sent oil" a week 
 ago, for the continuation to be declared."^ The legates, there- 
 fore, must have had orders to that effect. For the rest, it de- 
 pended neither on them nor the pope that that question should 
 remain any longer undecided. Besides that it would no longer 
 have been easy to find subjects once more of so neutral a descrip- 
 tion as that they should not have seemed to establish a bond be- 
 tween the old sessions and the new, the approaching arrival of 
 the French ambassadors w^as sure to provoke explanations, and it 
 was known that they would themselves begin with asking them. 
 The bishop of Paris, Du Bellai, who had arrived a few days 
 before, spoke and acted already with an audacity little fitted to 
 re-assure the pope as to the dispositions of his country's bishops. 
 One day that Verallo, bishop of Capaccio, contradicted him in a 
 congregation : " How many souls have you to guide?" said Du 
 Bellai. " Five hundred," replied the Italian. " And I," re- 
 sponded the Frenchman, " have five hundred thousand." Nor 
 was this the first time that the Italian prelates had heard them- 
 selves twitted with the petty size of their dioceses. The bishop 
 of Paris glorying in his half million of burgesses, was a small 
 enough lord by the side of certain of the German prelates. What 
 a distance then betwixt the latter and those of Italy ; between 
 Verallo, for instance, and his five hundred souls, and the bishop 
 of Wurzburg, who had for his vassals no fewer than thirteen 
 counts, five barons, and three hundred and fifty knights — almost 
 as many, in fact, altogether as Verallo's whole flock I Those 
 haughty prelates, accordingly, resigned themselves with a bad 
 grace to sitting on the council benches as the equals of these 
 poor mitred priests, thirty or forty of whom had not wherewithal 
 to live when absent from home, and enjoyed a small pension 
 from the pope. Pius IV. had the honesty to complain of the 
 three thousand crowns a month which it cost him to have them 
 at the council ; often, in conversing with the ambassadors, he 
 
 ^ The ambassador of France to Rome (De Lisle). Letter of 15th 
 June, 1562. 
 
310 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 had candidly reminded them of this sacrifice as a proof of his 
 goodwill. Perhaps there was less naivete in it than policy, and 
 that in paying these pensions in open light of day, he hoped to 
 have a little less the air of one who bought votes. 
 
 Fain, too, would he have had it in his power, even though it 
 had cost him double or triple the amount, to buy those of the 
 French bishops, now expected from day to day, and who could 
 not fail so far to augment the anti-papal faction. Not being 
 able to address them, he addressed himself to the king. He of- 
 fered him secretly a hundred thousand crowns as a pure gift, if 
 his prelates M^ould not insist on the votes being taken anew on 
 the divine right ; he then offered him a hundred thousand more, 
 under the form of a loan, on condition that the whole was to be 
 applied to the levying of troops against the Protestants. He de- 
 manded, moreover, that these troops should be placed under the 
 orders of his legrate, that all the edicts in favour of the Protest- 
 ants should be repealed, that the chancellor should be dismissed ; 
 in fine, that they should not lay down arms until after the entire 
 submission of the rebels. This was a good deal to expect for 
 two hundred thousand, and even for three hundred thousand 
 crowns, if Pallavicini gives the right sum, although the corres- 
 pondences speak of two hundred only. 
 
 While these things were doing the French Ambassadors ar- 
 rived. Louis de Saint Gelais, sieur de Lansac, chief ambassa- 
 dor, had for his colleagues Arnaud du Ferrier, president of the 
 Parliament of Paris, and Guy du Faur de Pibrac, of that of Tou- 
 louse. This last, who was charged with the delivery of the 
 speech, acquitted himself like a man of spirit. One would have 
 said, to hear him speak, that past and present embarrassments 
 were alike unknown to him. He seemed to come before an as- 
 sembly that had no antecedents, good or bad, no divisions of any 
 sort, no aspirations but such as arose from a love of religion and 
 the Church. " It is a great e\dl to wish to change everything ; 
 it is a great evil also to wish to preserve everything in spite of 
 time and men. There have been councils that were far from 
 free ; some, indeed, have been completely enslaved, witness that 
 which terminated ten years ago, and at which several of you 
 had the disagreeable task of being present ; but as for you, you 
 who are a council quite new, entirely free, assured of the pro- 
 tection and concurrence of all the princes of Christendom, who 
 would suspect you of not listening in all things to the voice of 
 your conscience, and of receiving besides from heaven the inspi- 
 rations which you will present to us as those of the Holy Ghost ?"^ 
 Such was the substance and the tone of his harangue. It was 
 
 * Quoted by Elias Dapin. 
 
Chap. HI. 15G2. ANSWER TO THE FRENCH AMBASSADORS. 311 
 
 nothing but a long and severe satire on the council, on the pope, 
 oil all that had been done, on all that they Avere in course of 
 doing. 
 
 An answer had to be made ; and, according to custom, had to 
 be given at the next session. Some bishops wished it to be 
 strong and smart. The Spaniards and their ambassadors, who 
 never ceased asking to have the continuation distinctly declared, 
 said that that was the only reply to make ; but, with the ex- 
 ception of that point, they were very nearly thinking all that 
 Pibrac had said. Others remarked, not without reason, that if 
 an attempt were made to refute some of his sarcasms, they would 
 need to be all refuted, a course that would lead them far beyond 
 the limits of good policy and prudence. Pibrac, besides, before 
 delivering a copy of his speech, had very much softened it, and 
 the council was presumed to have heard only what it had re- 
 ceived in writing. The answer therefore, drawn up in the most 
 general terms possible, bore " That the council had never doubted 
 the good dispositions of the king of France ; that it had no reason 
 consequently to take in ill part the observations presented in his 
 name ; in fine, that the council intended in good earnest to be 
 free and to remain free, from whatever quarter attempts to en- 
 slave it might come." This last stroke was not ill imagined, 
 as giving it to be understood that, failing the pope's doing so, 
 there were plenty of others who aimed hardly less at the enslav- 
 ing of the assembly. Those princes who exclaimed most against 
 the influence of the pope were precisely those who had most 
 desire to substitute their own in its place ; it was thought bad 
 that the Holy Ghost should come from Rome, and unheard of 
 efibrts were at the same time made to make him come from 
 Madrid, Paris, Vienna, Augsburg. The council could not have 
 shaken oiY the yoke of one master without falling under that of 
 another. 
 
 In the midst of these distracting influences, the session of the 
 4th of June could only be a repetition of that of the 14th of 
 May. There were neither decrees of faith nor of discipline, but 
 an adjournment until the 16th of July, nay, in order that a third 
 blank session might not be held, it w^as put down in the decree 
 that in the event of this last term being put off, this should be 
 done by a simple resolution past at a congregation. Thirty-six 
 bishops craved that the promise of a decree on residence should 
 be inserted, which would have implied an engagement to vote 
 on the divine right ; but the majority W'ere opposed to any such 
 engagement. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SESSION XXI. COMMUNION IN BOTH KINDS. THE COUNCIL IN- 
 TRACTABLE. MORE PAPAL INTRIGUES. NO RESULTS. 
 
 Question of the communion in both kinds again, with a false turn — 
 Twenty demands made by the emperor's ambassador — All becomes 
 complicated anew — the pope blames the legates — He takes up arms 
 — Imminent ruptures — Digression — "What the pope was in the eyes 
 of the princes — Their motives for maintaining and sparing him — Pius 
 IV. has again the upper hand — Visconti's mission — Is the suppression 
 of the wine in the supjjer ordained in Scripture or only commanded 
 — Neither the one nor the other — Analysis — Of what is the lay per- 
 son deprived — This question eluded — The question of the concession 
 of the cup resumed — The council seems less liberal than the pope — 
 Urgent demands of the ambassadors — Tergiversations of the legates 
 — Twenty-first sessiox — Unexpected debates — Several points left un- 
 decided — General disappointment — '^They do only what they have a 
 mind to" — Neutrality of the king of Spain — Advantage which Pius 
 IV. derives from it — The supper viewed as a sacrifice. 
 
 Then it was that the legates decided at last on allowing the 
 question of the communion under both kinds to come on. Be- 
 sides that the French and the German ambassadors had never 
 ceased to beg that the council would take it up, there remained 
 but one means of escape from the voting which they did not 
 like to promise, and that was to divert attention, and concentrate 
 disputation on a point of sufficient importance to throw every- 
 thing else for the moment into the shade. 
 
 The legates, accordingly, drew up a certain number of articles 
 which embraced the whole subject. Such was the ordinary 
 course, but on this occasion it had the inconvenience of brinjjins: 
 many things into question against the desire of the emperor and 
 the king of France. What these, in fact, had asked was not a 
 dogmatical decision on the nature and validity of the commu- 
 nion without wine, but the purely disciplinary authorization to 
 grant the wine to those populations which should require it. 
 This last point being the only one on which the Church could 
 make any concession, there was no need for taking up the others, 
 at least for the moment. 
 
Oii.u'. IV. 1562. BOLD l»ROroSlTIONS OF THE AMBASSADORS. 313 
 
 And not only was llic question not sudicicntly restricted, but 
 it was mis-stated. The iirst article ran thus : " Is every Chris- 
 tian obliged by divine right to communicate under both kinds?" 
 Here we at once see a wrong turn given to it. Tlie Protestants, 
 as we have seen, did not say that the wine w^as absolutely ne- 
 cessary ; they asked why, and by what right the Church of 
 Rome had taken it from the people, especially after having al- 
 lowed it to them for many centuries ? " Is anything less re- 
 ceived inider one kind than under both ?" it is said in another 
 article. Another mis-statement of the question. There was no 
 need of inquiring wdiether Jesus Christ could have simplified 
 the communion and employed it in bread only, but after he had 
 once thought fit to use both bread and wine, could the faithful 
 be obliged to be content with only one of the tw^o ? 
 
 It is true that to these two questions there was added a third, 
 more in accordance with the demand that had been made. " Do 
 the reasons that have led the Church to deprive the laity of the 
 cup interdict her from ever conceding it to any one ?" These 
 words seemed to hint the possibility of concession ; but as the 
 two preceding points could not fail to be decided in an alto- 
 gether Roman Catholic sense, it was evidcyiit that a disciplinary 
 concession, preceded by two dogmatical condemnations, would 
 not bring back a single Protestant, and could nowise satisfy those 
 princes who were flattering themselves with the idea of bring- 
 ing them back. 
 
 The emperor's ambassadors, accordingly, who had lor some 
 time shewed themselves more tractable, with the view of having 
 the subject taken up, all at once ceased to lay any constraint on 
 their feelings. The day following that on which the questions 
 were put into shape they craved an audience of the legates, and 
 this in order that they might lay before them a fuller and bolder 
 plan of reformation than any that had yet been proposed. They 
 asked : 
 
 That the pope should reform both himself and his court ; 
 
 That all the bishops, without exception, should be compelled 
 to residence ; 
 
 That plurality of offices should be definitively abolished ; 
 
 That all the monastic orders should be reformed, in the spirit 
 of their first institution ; 
 
 That the breviary and the missals should have everything 
 taken out of them that is not to be found in Holy Scripture ; 
 
 That a certain number of the prayers, if not all, should be in 
 the vulgar tongue ; 
 
 That the priests should be allowed to marry, at least in some 
 nations ; 
 
 
 
314 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 That the revenues of benefices without cure of souls, should 
 be applied to the augmentation of small livings ; 
 
 That excommunication should be reserved for a certain num- 
 ber of great sins and great scandals ; 
 
 That ecclesiastical laM^s should not be regarded as equal to 
 the laws of God ; 
 
 And many things besides. In fine, to pour a little balm on 
 so many wounds, the twentieth and last article required that the 
 council should abstain from treating all questions of no use and 
 great delicacy, and that, in particular, of the Divine right. A 
 feeble concession in reality, ibr the council had only to concede 
 two or three of the above points in order to the papal authority 
 being greatly shaken, more so perhaps than it could have been 
 by that vain statement of principles on the essence of Episcopal 
 rights. 
 
 Never yet had circumstances appeared more critical ; the le- 
 gates Avere now at Trent at best but soldiers, thrown into an 
 untenable post which they could no longer think of keeping, but 
 must abandon with the least delay and dishonour possible. To 
 the annoyances they met with on the side of the ambassadors 
 and the assembly, there had been added for some time past that 
 of having unceasingly to justify themselves to the pope. Soured 
 by the defeats he had had, Pius IV. could not understand hovv^ 
 matters should go any otherwise than under his predecessors,' 
 who always held the mastery, and directed not only the votes 
 but even the debates of the assembly. He laid the blame on 
 his legates. Armed with one right more, that of themselves pro- 
 posing all the subjects that were to be treated, why should they 
 have allowed that untoward question of the Divine right to be 
 resurned ? Simonetta threw the blame on the Cardinal of Man- 
 tua. The latter, although a partisan of the Divine right, had 
 done his best to prevent its being discussed, but had not thought 
 it competent for him to interpose authoritatively. To avail 
 themselves at the very opening of the council of the more than 
 doubtful right conferred on the legates by the clause 'projponen- 
 lihus legatis would have provoked an explanation, after which it 
 Avould have been evident that the majority had nowise intended 
 lo confer it upon them. The Cardinal of Mantua offered to 
 resign ; this offer the pope dared not accept, for it would have 
 been a public avowal of his chagrin and his fears, and, besides, 
 who was there to put in his place ? He was a general favorite, 
 and none but he could hope to maintain some measure of unity 
 and of harmony in the council. 
 
 On the reading of the twenty articles the presidents saw at 
 once the imminence of the dancer, and could think of nothins 
 
Chai- IV. 1362. UNIQUE POSITION OF THE POl'EDOM. Jilo 
 
 but the common safety. The ambassadors received for answer 
 that the question of the cup Avould probably suffice for the as- 
 sembly's occupation until the next session ; but this was no more 
 than a month gained at most, and then how were the twenty 
 articles to be got rid of? The legates, therefore, wrote a de- 
 spairing letter to the pope, telling him that they had exhausted 
 all their expedients, and that the only chance of safety lay hi 
 dissolvinsf the council. 
 
 The pope thought of this. In default of votes in the assem- 
 bly he was in course of procuring seven thousand good troops, 
 and spoke of nothing less than placing himself at the head of his 
 European confederation against the Protestants. But it is little 
 likely that he believed in the success of that project, for he knew 
 too well the position of all the secular princes. In fact, there 
 were only the king of Spain and himself that were in a position 
 to unite openly for the extirpation of heresy. All the rest had 
 appearances to preserve ; several of them, even had they been free 
 from all trammels, would not have liked the pope for a chief, 
 and even Philip himself, eager as he was to offer his arm to the 
 clergy of France, was no more disposed than any other to be the 
 soldier of Pius IV. Nations and kings were accustoming them- 
 selves more and more every day to dissociate the popedom from 
 the Church, and the interests of religion from those of Rome ; 
 nations and kings shewed themselves more and more disposed 
 every day to do without the pope. The opposition of the Spanish 
 prelates, men so far removed, at the same time, from all suspi- 
 cion of heresy, so fiercely opposed to the heretics, so profoundly 
 devoted to the Roman articles of faith, contributed more than 
 anything else to open men's eyes and detach their hearts. 
 
 How was the break in the chain repaired ? How at least 
 could interests so various be brought to move again in parallel 
 lines ? This is a problem which we find re-occurring at every 
 step in the history of the Church. Let us study it for a moment, 
 not in a general and abstract way, but in the facts which were, 
 at this epoch, once more about to lead to a solution of it. We 
 could not find a better opportunity. 
 
 First, then, the very w'cakuess of the pope was about to prove, 
 although it w^as in spite of himself, one of the causes of his 
 strength. Suppose him to have been in a condition to put in 
 motion an army, not of seven thousand but of an hundred thou- 
 sand men. He might have dispensed with the services of the 
 princes ; might have proclaimed war on Avhomsoever he pleased ; 
 might have openly declared that he would not have the council ; 
 he mifjht not only have asked, he might have insisted on a gen- 
 eral union for the extirpation of heresy. He would thus have 
 
816 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 ranked with powers of the first order, but he would also have 
 been subject, like them, to all the chances of arms ; like them 
 he would have had to risk all on a single chance. In a word, 
 he might disdain oblique methods and advance straight to his 
 object, but might fall and perish before reaching it. 
 
 More feeble than others, he was patient ; and in politics it is 
 the patient who are the truly able and the really strong. As it 
 was not with seven or eight thousand men that Pius lY. could 
 march against the emperor or the king of France and demand 
 satisfaction, he had of necessity to afiect not to notice their in- 
 sults. In private he might call them heretics, excommunicate 
 them in thought and intention, bitterly complain of the twenty 
 articles, and curse that insolent Count de Lansac, who had said 
 that the Holy Ghost came to Trent in a courier's portmanteau, 
 and who, quite lately, at a grand entertainment before the bish- 
 ops, had dared to cry out that they should soon bring the mat- 
 ter to an end by chasing the idol out of Rome ; but in public 
 and in his diplomatic relations, if Pius had not the lustre of an 
 idol, he had at least its impassibility. It was by devouring af- 
 fronts in silence that he took from the princes all desire to offer 
 him more, or even to persist in those already offered. 
 
 Along with this temporal weakness, whicli thus appears to us 
 at the most critical conjunctures one of the ramparts of the 
 popedom, Home had her moral force, her slow but resistless 
 ascendency over the determinations of the princes. Her moral 
 force, Ave say ; if we do not place it here, either in the first or 
 the second line, it is of set purpose, and history, we think, fully 
 sanctions this. The pope, in reahty, has never been thought 
 the indispensable head of the Roman Catholic unity ; the very 
 clergy, when their own interests, or those of the princes, have 
 placed them momentarily out of harmony with the Holy See, 
 seem not to have quailed at the idea of being left without a 
 supreme head. Have we not had a proof of this without going 
 beyond the council ? Have the bishops, German, French, Span- 
 ish, many of the Italians even, looked like persons who w^re 
 convinced that they could not do without the Holy See ? Philip 
 II. was as much pope in his own dominions as Henry YIII. had 
 ever been in his. The more deeply we study the history of the 
 popes the more shall Ave become convinced that their hierarch- 
 ical authority was, in itself, only one of the smallest elements of 
 their influence even over the nations, for it was by the religious 
 orders far more than by the bishops that the popedom attached 
 the people to itself The indispensable necessity of the Holy 
 See, the absolute illegitimacy of all that does not flow from it, 
 are, like infallibility, quite modern ideas. At the time of the 
 
Chap. IV. 1562. THE POPEDOM USEFUL TO THE PHINCES. 817 
 
 council tlio fuels only were in existence ; we have already had 
 prools, and wc shall have belter proois still in relating the dis- 
 cussions on the sacrament ol' orders, that the right never had 
 been admitted. 
 
 Thus what vv^e have called the moral force of the popes, was 
 the weight which they could throw into the scale when the bal- 
 ance of power in Europe was destroyed, or threatened with be- 
 ing destroyed. The pope, by himself, was of small account, but 
 the pope could do a great deal for his friends. The princes did 
 not like him ; but there was not one of them who did not, with 
 an eye to others, wish to be on good terms with him. The 
 friendship of the court of Home, accordingly, was in some sort 
 always ollercd to the highest bidder. From time to time we sec 
 one of the competitors for it get impatient, lose temper, and not 
 even abstain from threats — witness the sack of Rome in 1527 ; 
 but, anon, the tempest subsides ; the pope, for want of power to 
 take revenge, pardons, and aflairs assume their regular course. 
 
 Finally, Rome was a market which the princes had an interest 
 in leaving open, a temple from which it could not be for their 
 advantage that the sellers could be thrust out. There was a 
 multitude of things which they durst not venture to take them- 
 selves, or to cause to be given to them by their bishops, and 
 which could always be asked from the pope, either for money, 
 or for this or that concession. The court of Rome has been 
 praised for having preferred the loss of England to consenting to 
 the divorce of Henry YIII. Were this true — and we have else- 
 where shewn it was not so — if Rome condemned that divorce, 
 how many others had she permitted or pronounced, though quite 
 as little justified in reason or morality ? Even Innocent III., 
 after having shewn towards Phihp Augustus a rigour not w'ant- 
 ing in nobleness, legitimized, by a solemn brief, children bom of 
 a marriage which he had solemnly declared to be adulterous and 
 null. People speak of the usurpations that Rome has prevented ; 
 how many has she not sanctioned and commanded ? And as for 
 oaths I Who was there to dispense from them, once that there 
 should be no pope ? "VVlien Regulus set out on his return to 
 Carthage, he repulsed with scorn the pontifl' who oflered to loose 
 him from his promise ; but the pontiff of nominal Christendom 
 had accustomed its princes to less scrupulosity. In 1215, Inno- 
 cent III. caused it to be decreed, at the council of Lateran, that 
 " oaths contrary to the interest of the Church and to the precepts 
 of the holy fathers, are not oaths but perjuries." Armed, conse- 
 quently, with the power of annulUng them, shall we find that the 
 popes have confined themselves, at least, to the terms of that de- 
 cree ? No ; the right becomes absolute ; all oaths come within 
 
S18 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 their domain. The most dishonest princes may ask everything-, 
 may liope to obtain everything ; nay, and of tiiis our history has 
 furnished more than one example, it is Rome that takes the lead, 
 that counsels perjury, that oilers absolution for it beforehand. 
 
 But these are perhaps mere individual instances of bad faith 
 or weakness. No ; Whatever the popes may have done, they 
 have ever kept withm what their doctors have openly declared 
 they had the right to do, and what their own laws, on becom- 
 ing' the laws of the Church, had settled in their favour. Listen 
 to Gregory IX. :^ "Of nothing the pope may make something. 
 He may render valid a sentence which is null, because, in 
 the things that he desires, his will takes the place of reason. 
 He can dispense Avith right ; he can make injustice to become 
 justice." Is it not clear, after this, that there are reasons for all 
 sovereigns, though at times they may suffer from it, being inter- 
 ested in retaining in the service of their passions such a man, or, 
 to speak more correctly, such a god as this ? 
 
 It not seldom happened, in fine, that they -felt their need of 
 the pope against the clergy themselves. He alone could efiect- 
 ually check pretensions contrary to the royal authority and to 
 the internal peace of states ; he alone could grant authority to 
 levy certain imposts on the wealth of the Church, that perpetual 
 object of coveting on the part of the princes. It was with him, 
 in this respect, as with those usurers who are cursed in whispers, 
 and often openly despised, but who yet are tolerated, because it 
 is never certain that it may not be found necessary to have re- 
 course to them. 
 
 Even heretics have at times had occasion to apply to the pope, 
 and have not always been repulsed ; it has sufficed that Rome, 
 in its turn, has had occasion for their services. Have we not 
 heard Gregory XVI. preach submission to the yoke of Russia 
 as the duty of the bishops of Poland? This was in 1832. 
 Threatened with having his states occupied by the Austrians on 
 the one hand, and the French on the other, he had secretly ac- 
 cepted the oiler of a Russian army prepared to defend him from 
 both, and the brief to the bishops of Poland, as has been dis- 
 covered since, was the payment fixed by Russia. It was pub- 
 lished, accordingly, and Europe for some days could not believe 
 it, so utterly incredible did it seem that a pope could have treated 
 in such a manner a Roman Catholic and oppressed people. It 
 might have seemed doubtlul, in fact, whether it were from St. 
 Petersburg or Rome that the document came. From the very 
 first lines the emperor is recognised in it as the legitimate sover- 
 eign and the sole soverei^rn of Poland. As for the nation, it is 
 
 ' Decretals, book vii. 
 
ruAH. IV. ijo::. THE pope's prospects ijrigiiteninc. 819 
 
 held to liave ne existence ; and the defenders of nationality are 
 called hfijiix prophets, whose iniscliicvousncss und jjcrfidy oughx, 
 in fine, to be fully exposed. And so it proceeds. The conclu- 
 sion is, that there must be absolute submission ; all resistance is 
 denounced as a crime. Nor is this all. Hitherto the ollicial 
 newspaper of the Eoman States had sensibly inclined towards 
 Poland ; but no sooner was the cause lost, and the brief publish- 
 ed, than the Polish rebels become no better than brigands. One 
 Would fain hope that the heart of the pope bled at this, and con- 
 tinued to bleed to his dying day ; but the more you would excuse 
 him by saying how much it cost him to hold such language, the 
 more shall we be warranted to say that there is nothing that may 
 not be bought at Eorne. If the popedom has sometimes, when its 
 interests seemed to require it, undertaken the cause of subjects 
 against kings, what king can be adduced who, in keeping ou 
 good terms with it, has not found it always ready to come to the 
 aid of his despotism., and to sanction it in the name of heaven ? 
 
 Armed with all the resources of a position so unique in the 
 annals of the world, Pius IV. had reason, accordingly, not to be 
 alarmed beyond measure at the storms which seemed to be 
 brewing at Trent. He knew that divers winds might yet blow, 
 before the tempest should come decidedly to burst at Rome. 
 
 He saw well that the accord among the princes was a facti- 
 tious accord, and would be dissolved in a fcAV days. 
 
 The accord among the bishops he still had more than one 
 remaining means of breaking. Several of them were already 
 trembling all over at their boldness ; thirty of those who had 
 voted for the divine right, hastened to write to him, as if to beg 
 pardon ibr having obeyed the dictates of their conscience ; he 
 could already see that he should have one day cause to congratu- 
 late himself on having had so many adversaries, seeing that there 
 were so many persons who had, from a regard to their own in- 
 terests, to expiate their oficnce by future docility. As for those 
 of the legates who had appeared to believe themselves free to be 
 not entirely his agents, he had only to frown, and all idea of in- 
 dependence on their part was dismissed. After having hesi- 
 tated about giving them two or three new colleagues, more de- 
 voted and sure, he settled it in his mind that he would have at 
 the council a secret agent, whose activity should be directed 
 both to the presidents and to the members, and by whose means 
 he should be kept intbrmed of the smallest incidents that occur- 
 red. Nor had he I'ar to look for such a person. Yisconti, bishop 
 of Vintimilli, was eminently fitted for the post. An old diplo- 
 matist, a man of talent, one who had all along been devoted to 
 the papal c.au.se, he did not even need to have his zeal stiniu- 
 
J}20 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 lated by the prospect of a cardinal's hat, which, however, the 
 pontifl' took care to promise him ; but as he had to do with men 
 less zealous and less disinterested than himself, his confidential 
 powers were almost unlimited. 
 
 Erelong, without having ceased to be, officially, a simple 
 member of the council, he found himself its soul and centre. 
 He contrived to attach, by thanks and promises, all the bishops 
 who had sustained the cause of the pope, or who had merely 
 not shewn themselves too much opposed to it ; three Spanish 
 bishops, who had not invariably made common cause with their 
 fellow countrymen, were the special objects of his attentions. 
 Those who vv'ould have most stoutly resisted injunctions or 
 threats coming directly from Home, were seen to become gradu- 
 ally more and more pliable under the unintennitted watching 
 and attention of Yisconti, who, without advertising his powers, 
 did not conceal them. The most ardent would now think twice 
 before allowing a word to escape them which might ruin them 
 in the good opinion of the pope, and the thought would ever re- 
 cur that, after all, there would ever be more to gain with him 
 than with the kings. Thanks to the question of the communion 
 in both kinds, which seemed to absorb the whole time of the 
 assembly, these changes took place gradually, in the shade, and 
 were only all the more sure. The month of June was spent in 
 part in listening to the opinions of the divines. The debate not 
 having yet commenced among the bishops, Yisconti's insinua- 
 tions were not weakened in their effects by any new excitement. 
 So that able agent was left to the undisturbed admiration of the 
 progress of his operations ; and the legates to call hirai their 
 saviour ; and the pope to overwhelm him with daily eulogiums; 
 and the council to return gradually into the pope's leading 
 strings. And the man who at Rome received Yisconti's corre- 
 spondence, the man from whom Yisconti himself took his orders 
 for this vast work of corruption and intrigues, E,ome placed upon 
 her altars by creating him a saint I He was the pope's nephew ; 
 he was the man that was erelong to be called Saint Charles 
 Borromeo. But God did not permit that when that work was 
 accomplished, Eome should destroy or conceal for ever the 
 shameful materials. Those letters are now before us ;' and in 
 them we have found all the strangest and most scandalous in- 
 formation that has come to our knowledge with respect to the 
 last twenty months and the close of the council. 
 
 Of one mind in declaring, as the council of Constance had 
 
 ' The}' have been published at Auisterdam by a French priest, 
 Aymon, who became a Protestant after a long residence at Rome. 
 
Chap. IV. 15G2. THE COMMUNION UNDER BOTH KINDS. 321 
 
 (lone, that the wine in tlie supper is not necessary to the laity, 
 the divines were far enougli troin beiuf; agreed upon either tlie 
 dogmatical grounds, or the disciplinary grounds, of that suppres- 
 sion. 
 
 And first, as for tlic dogmatical grounds, some maintained that 
 it is ordained in Scripture ; others, that it is only permitted there. 
 As ibr us, we have already said, among other observations, that 
 any one who was a stranger to this dispute, would find it no 
 more permitted there than ordained, and would never suspect 
 that the ordaining of it, nor, except in the case of the impossi- 
 bility of doing otherwise, the permission of it could have been 
 dreamt of. After having read in the institution of the supper 
 the words, " Drink ye all of it," he would never set about 
 searching whether Jesus Christ or his Apostles, in discourses 
 where the subject is not specially in question, have sometimes 
 omitted makinjr mention of the wine ; he would see that when 
 a law has to be executed, and the text of that law is anywhere 
 put down entire, we must not look for it where it is merely re- 
 called and partially quoted. It is true that one of the council's 
 divines, D'Andrada, a Portuguese, in discussing the text itself, 
 contrived to start a distinction in it betwixt the laity and the 
 priests. At the commencement of the act, related by the evan- 
 gelists, he said, the Apostles were not yet more than laymen ; 
 Jesus Christ, accordingly, did not give them the bread. But after 
 he had once said — " Do this in remembrance of me, they be- 
 came priests, seeing that by these words they received the right 
 to celebrate mass. And then they received the wine." An ex- 
 planation this which is not only absurd, but further it is contrary 
 to the usual practice of the Roman Church, seeing that the offi- 
 ciating priest alone participates in the wine, and that another 
 priest receiving the communion from his hands, receives no more 
 than the laity do. 
 
 In the decree, the council got out of the afTair by means of a 
 clever enough shift. " He who said, Except ye cat the Jlesh of 
 the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you^ 
 is the same who said. If any man eat of this bread he shall live 
 for ever. He who said, He that eateth my flesh, and dnnk- 
 eth my blood, divelleth in me and I in him, is the same who 
 said. The bread tliat I ivilL give is ^ny flesh'' All which 
 proves pretty clearly what was not contested, to wit, that both 
 species are not rigorously and materially necessary, hut does no- 
 Avise prove that the Church has had the right to withdraw one 
 of them, and to refuse it even to those who ask it. 
 
 The council therefore confined itself, in this first part of the 
 decree, to establishing that Jesus Christ had not represented the 
 
S22 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 two species as absolutely necessary. It dared not affirm that 
 there existed any doctrinal motive for maintaining the depriva- 
 tion in question. 
 
 As for disciplinary motives, we have indicated one of these 
 already : the enhancement, by a privilege so unique and divine, 
 of the ambitious greatness of the priesthood. This motive was 
 the greatest, the tirst, one may say, the only one ; beyond that, 
 nothing but the most wretched pleas have been urged. In the 
 decree, however, it durst not be mentioned. The Protestants 
 w^ere not the only persons that murmured at the barriers thus 
 audaciously raised between the people and the clergy ; this was 
 already the most tottering of them all, and to have restored it 
 under this form, would have stimulated Europe to give the final 
 blow to its existence. Other grounds had to be sought, there- 
 fore, those especially suggested by the real or imaginary incon- 
 veniences of the opposite practice, in order to give a shadow of 
 necessity to the denial of the cup. Down to Luther's time, peo- 
 ple had at times amused themselves with the caricature of a 
 rude multitude rushing to cups full of wine ; since Luther's 
 time, since there might be seen in Germany, England, Switzer- 
 land, as there may be seen at the present, communions in which 
 thousands of communicants have merely wet their lips at the 
 common cup — it has been found impossible to persist in such 
 old fables of drunkenness and scandal, as certain parish priests, 
 we are told, contrive still to introduce into their pulpit addresses, 
 but which they would rather avoid repeating, except to the igno- 
 rant and simple. It was in the minutest details, therefore, that 
 reasons had to be sought for. With whatever respect the faith- 
 ful may take the cup into their hands, or merely touch it with 
 their lips, how make sure against the horrible impropriety of 
 letting fall a drop of Christ's blood, perhaps even upsetting the 
 cup ? And if that drop should fall on the profane hand of a 
 layman ? if it w^ere to remain attached to one of the hairs of his 
 beard, or the lining of his coat ! All these and many other 
 reasons were urged in full council, and it clearly followed, accord- 
 ing to the speakers, that the Church had done well in taking 
 away the cup ; but what followed still more clearly was, either 
 that the Christians of primitive times were little scrupulous as 
 to acts of sacrilege, seeing that they risked, from mere wanton- 
 ness, committing so many — or that this wine was in their eyes 
 wine, very sacred, no doubt, considering what it figured, but 
 not so as that there would be the smallest harm in spilling and 
 profaning a drop of it involuntarily. Thus, although the coun- 
 cil had decided on making not only canons, but chapters of doc- 
 trine susceptible of every kind of development, here it deemed it 
 
Chap. IV. 1562. NO REASONS IN THE DECREE, AND WHY ? 323 
 
 more piiuleut to enter into no detail, and to declare simply that 
 the Church had been " moved by grave and just motives."^ 
 
 Much had been said, also, in tiiose deliberations, about the 
 danger of leading people to believe that there was a more com- 
 plete communion under both kinds than under one, an idea con- 
 trary to the Church's teaching ; especially since the council of 
 Constance, wdiere it had been decreed that the Saviour was fully 
 and entirely present under each kind. This last opinion, too, 
 formed the subject of a chapter. Nobody contradicted it ; but 
 little as they had dived into its depths, how many objections did 
 the council proceed to start I And how prudent was it to omit 
 all explanation — all argument. " Although our Redeemer, in 
 that last supper, instituted and handed down to his Apostles 
 this sacrament in two kinds, yet it must be confessed that Jesus 
 Christ, whole and entire, and a true sacrament, are taken under 
 either kind only.'"^ Such is the whole. It must he covfcssed. 
 Reasons there are none. And yet w^e are still, let us remember, 
 in a chapter that treats of doctrine, that is to say, one of those in 
 w^hich, when the councils had reasons to produce, it gave them. 
 It felt itself in presence of one of those difficulties wdiich grow- 
 larger under examination, and where the bottom deepens in pro- 
 portion as the eye penetrates into the abyss. Multiplied by this 
 iresh surcharge, all the objections directed against the real pres- 
 ence form so menacing a host that it is not given to all men to 
 contemplate them without trepidation. Let us contemplate a 
 priest engaged in saying mass. You see him put the wafer to 
 his mouth, and you are told, "It is the body of Jesus Christ. 
 He is there whole and entire under the bread," A few moments 
 afterwards the priest drinks, " It is the blood of Jesus Christ," 
 it is added ; " it is his body also, his body whole and entire," — 
 Twice entire ? Yes, The priest then has eaten it tw^ice ? No, 
 He has eaten and drunk nothing more than those of the faithful 
 to whom he has given the host. But it is spiritually, no doubt, 
 that he lias eaten and drunk no more than they ? Spiritually 
 and materially. These tw^o bodies were the same. Those thousand, 
 those two thousand bodies w-hich you have seen him distribute, 
 were also the same, ahvays the same, and always whole and entire 
 — whole and entire under each kind, wdiole and entire under each 
 fraction of the kind, lor this also is the teaching of the Church, 
 although the council liked better not to say it. This new absurdity 
 
 ' Gravibus et juslis causis adducta. 
 
 ' Qaamvis redemptor noster in suprema illacoena, hoc sacramentum 
 in duabu-s speciet)us instituerit et apostolis tradiderit, tamen fatendum 
 esse, etiam sub altera tantum specie totum atqiie integrnni Christum, 
 verumque sacramentum siuni. 
 
'624: HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV, 
 
 has not even the merit of being based, hke the real presence, on 
 the words of the institution, " This is my body, said Christ, which 
 is broken for you." If it be everywhere and always entire, what 
 is made of these last words ? We admit that one can hardly stop 
 there. If the wafer is the body of Christ, it would be a hideous 
 and horrible thing to say that it is broken, reduced to pieces, and 
 then eaten member after member. It is clear that the sole way 
 of escape from this abominable consequence, was to declare it 
 always entire. Thus, let an infidel set himself to pound a con- 
 secrated wafer, and the Saviour will be present as many times 
 as there are particles in that white dust. Without going so far, 
 make as many suppositions as you please : if they be not all false, 
 if the very principle of them be not absurd — they will necessa- 
 rily be all true. A consecrated wafer falls and breaks in two. 
 You had but one body of the Saviour — you gather up two. The 
 Church prescribes your swallowing the whole wafer. When be- 
 tween your teeth you divide it ; only one body was given to you, 
 you swallow two. One has a vase full of consecrated wafers. 
 There are twenty ; twenty bodies of Christ. This vase gets a 
 slight shake ; some of the wafers are broken ; and, behold, the 
 body is there not twenty, but thirty times. Another shake, and 
 it will be there forty times ; another . . . Enough, enough I Your 
 heart bleeds to find, thanks to the doctors of Rome, so sacrile- 
 gious a resemblance between Christ's supper and the tricks of a 
 juggler. " Pastors," says the Roman Catechism, " ought to be 
 very reserved in explaining how the body of Jesus is whole and 
 entire under the smallest part of the kinds." Yes, indeed, let 
 them be very reserved in ex2)laining it ; let them be so above 
 all in thinking of it, for did they set themselves to deduce con- 
 sequences from it, they would quickly find that they could no 
 longer believe it.^ 
 
 Another difficulty which it is not easy to avoid, and about 
 which the divines long disputed, is found in the question whether 
 there be more spiritual benefits to be had under both kinds than 
 under one only. On the one hand, it is very difficult to main- 
 tain that two things of equal value do not comprise, when com- 
 bined, more than each does separately; on the other hand, the 
 priest would give great offence were he to avow that there are 
 spiritual benefits of which he knowingly deprives you, means of 
 salvation which he refuses you, he, the very man who is charged 
 with the concerns of your salvation. To cut the matter short, 
 
 ^ The author elsewliere shrewdly suggests (Book III.) that the doc- 
 trine of our Lord's entire presence in the host or wafer, became neces- 
 sary in order to the justifying of divine adoration being paid to that 
 iTinterinI object. — Tr. 
 
Chap. IV. 15f.2. THE SPANIARDS RESIST ALL CONCESSION. 325 
 
 it was proposed that it slioiild be merely said that lie that com- 
 inuuicates, it matters not how, receives Jesus Christ, the fountain 
 of all spiritual beneiits ; but it remained still undecided whether 
 this fountain be more or less abundant, according as the Supper 
 has been taken under one kind or under both. At that point 
 they stopt ; some bishops begged in vain that the matter might 
 be better explained. It was voted that the communion by bread 
 alone does not deprive the believer " of any grace necessary for 
 salvation." It was acknowledged, then, that he was deprived of 
 something ; consequently the council overstepped not the natural 
 and legitimate rights of the Church, which cannot be supposed 
 to go so far as the refusal to the people of any one whatever of 
 the spiritual favours ofiered by religion, but those even which 
 had been arrogated in a previous chapter, where it had been said 
 that the Church could alter tchat docs not affect the substance 
 of the sacrament} If the withdrawal of the cup deprives us of 
 any spiritual benefit whatever, even though not indispensable, 
 not necessary to salvation — the substance of the sacrament can- 
 not be considered as intact, since its efiects are not strictly the 
 same. 
 
 Satisfied with this unanimity, which was obtained, however, 
 only by leaving all that was most difficult in the shade, the le- 
 gates seemed more and more disposed to give way in the affair 
 of the cup. Doctrine was safe ; discipline, therefore, might shew 
 an accommodating spirit. On this occasion it was from the body 
 of the clergy that opposition was to arise. 
 
 The pope had guessed aright that the bishops would not long 
 remain united ; and the issue proved that he had acted prudently 
 in trusting to their natural antipathies, while blunt opposition 
 would only have had the effect of keeping them agreed. 
 
 No sooner were the first words uttered in favour of conceding 
 the cup, than the Spaniards exclaimed, as if the proposition were 
 not only inopportune, but absurd. They laid hold of all those 
 decrees which had been made for the very purpose of facilitating 
 that concession, by keeping the point of doctrine intact, for the 
 purpose of combating it ; and, viewed in that light, their argu- 
 ments were not amiss. " Is it logical," they said, " that just as 
 we have proclaimed the real presence under each species, we 
 should concede what is demanded by those who do not believe 
 that dogma ? The generality of the faithful will look to the 
 fact not to words. They will not comprehend how an act added 
 to the supper, cannot add anything to it ; they will conclude that 
 hitherto they have had only the half of the sacrament given to 
 them." Next, drawn perforce into considerations which the 
 
 ^ Salv.a illonini substantia. 
 
326 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 papal party durst hardly hint at, " The suppression of the cup," 
 said they, " passes for being a law of the Church, not a law of 
 God. Be it so. You may repeal it then without touching any- 
 thing that is essential. Grant that also. But there are many 
 other things besides, that are not God's laws, and on which, 
 nevertheless, you could not make concessions without trenching 
 deeply on the Church. The cehbacy of the priesthood, the wor- 
 ship of images, the invocation of saints — these, too, are things 
 that have been established, not by Jesus Christ, but by it. After 
 conceding the cup, what ground will there be for refusing to re- 
 form the rest ?" 
 
 None, in fact; but there was both courage and candour in 
 avowing thus openly how this whole dispute was about a small 
 matter. It is true that this small matter was much in the eyes 
 of the Spanish bishops. None believed more than they in the 
 omnipotence of the Church ; and it was chiefly on that account 
 that they believed much less than others in that of the Holy See. 
 They renewed at all the sessions their old demand, to have added 
 to the council's titles that of representative of the universal 
 Church, and the {■axmrn^ projionentibus legatis always drew from 
 them warmer and warmer reclamations. 
 
 Although it was evident that it was from no desire to pay 
 court to the pope, that they thus came in aid of the secret wishes 
 of the papal party, which lent itself only from compulsion to the 
 concession of the cup, it could not fail to put matters on a better 
 footing between them and the Italians. For the first time the 
 assembly was found less liberal than the legates, and a large 
 majority ranged themselves against the concession. In Germany 
 it was said that this result had been foreseen, and that never 
 would the pope have alloAved the proposition to be made had he 
 not been sure of its rejection. 
 
 It was a point, nevertheless, on which it was not enough for 
 him to have a mere numerical majority. The ambassadors of 
 France and the empire, ever united in soliciting the cup, were 
 joined by Baumgartner, the Bavarian ambassador, an eloquent 
 and active man, almost a Lutheran in principle, and altogether 
 a Lutheran in hardihood. From his first audience (27th June), 
 he had demanded the concession, and that not as a favour, or as 
 a thing that might continue to be refused, but as the object of a 
 desire so universally felt, that it were imprudence and madness 
 to disappoint it. The other ambassadors then returned to the 
 charge ; first, those of the emperor, in a memorial on the accusa- 
 tion of heresy which some prelates had not spared them ; next, 
 those of the king of France, in a paper in which the question of 
 the cup was resumed in detail, with great force and perspicuity, 
 
CllAP.IV. 1M2. EMBARRASSMENT OF THE LEGATES. 327 
 
 and not without such bold expressions as were worthy of the dis- 
 courses of Pibrac. " Instead ol' shewing so much zeal for human 
 commandments," said they, " why is tliere not a little more 
 shown for those of God, and a reformation of abuses seriously set 
 about I" Accordinj^ly, " These gentlemen \vould absolutely make 
 themselves Lutherans with the permission of the council," said 
 Doctor Foriero. 
 
 Instead of making the legates determine to propose the con- 
 cession, these urgent calls decided their change of opinion. They 
 saw clearly that, this pohit once obtained, farther demands would 
 follow ; Lansac, a little too frank for treating with Italians, left 
 them no room for doubt on that head. But as they could nei- 
 ther all at once retract their promise, nor openly make the wish 
 of the majority a pretext for doing so, after having made so little 
 account of it on other occasions, they told the ambassadors that 
 the session was too near its close ; that with so few days before 
 them they could not undertake to modify the opinions of the as- 
 sembly, and that, consequently, the surest course was to postpone 
 the question to another session. The ambassadors begged that 
 the sittings might rather be prolonged for some days, but this 
 they could not obtain. Meanwhile, the drafting of the decrees 
 proved so laborious, that the legates had more than once reason 
 to apprehend that they would not be ready by the 1 6th of July, 
 the day that had been fixed. On the evening of the loth, the 
 deliberations were still going on, and the meeting rose even be- 
 fore the members had come to a definite understanding. 
 
 The next day (session XXI, July 16, lo62), in fact, as the 
 members were entering the cathedral, and when mass was about 
 to commence, the bishops were extremely surprised to hear that 
 the legates meant to propose to them that the first chapter should 
 be drawn up anew. It was then discovered that two of the 
 pope's divines, Salmeron and Torres, after having precedently 
 maintained, but without success, that the command to commu- 
 nicate under both kinds, should be held applicable to priests 
 alone, had returned to the charge before cardinals Hosius and 
 Madrucci, the one a legate, the other bishop of Trent ; that by 
 their means they had gained the legates, and that their, opinion 
 was about to pass, saving approbation, into the decree which 
 had been thought to be fixed the preceding: evenino:. " Althouofh 
 this revised draft," says Pallavicini, " was welcomed by a large 
 number, it was rejected by a majority, particularly the bishop 
 of Modena, and the archbishop of Granada. The latter, who 
 was well acquainted with the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, 
 hastily sent for the summa theologice of that author, and there 
 found the passage wliere the holy doctor extends the words of 
 
328 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 Jesus Christ in the supper, even to the laity, because he makes 
 use of them to prove that all the faithful are obliged to receive 
 the eucharist. ' Upon this there arose a great deal of discussion, 
 and the new draft was withdrawn. 
 
 This point, accordingly, has remained undecided ; and in sup- 
 port of what we have said above, that there were many besides, 
 the omission of which may be thought strange, we might simply 
 transcribe what Pallavicini reports of the objections raised by 
 those same divines against all the chapters of the decree. In 
 the first, as we have seen, they had complained that the council 
 had avoided saying whether Jesus Christ, in the supper, meant 
 to address himself to priests alone. They wished, moreover, that 
 before taking, at the sixth chapter of St. John, the six passages 
 adduced for establishing the communion under one kind, they 
 should begin by declaring that it is of the sacramental, and not 
 of the spiritual communion, as many doctors have thought, and 
 as the Protestants teach, that our Lord speaks in that chapter. 
 Farther on, they found the Church's authority too feebly estab- 
 lished by these words of St. Paul, " Let a man so account of us 
 as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of 
 God." Farther still, in the article concerning the non-necessity 
 of the eucharist for children, this, according to them, was not de- 
 monstrated by its being said, that children having received grace 
 by baptism, and not being in a capacity to have lost it, had no 
 need of receiving it anew. It might be replied, they said, that 
 it could not but be profitable to them to have it augmented. 
 And they concluded that all these articles had great need of 
 being revised. What did they obtain of all they wanted ? Why, 
 only a new uncertainty. In reporting the above passage from 
 St. Paul, there had been put down first, "As St. Paul has clearly 
 testified in these words." After their remarks on the insuffi- 
 ciency of that passage, this was thought more than durst be ven- 
 tured on, and the sentence was made to run, " As St. Paul ap- 
 'peai's to have clearly testified."^ It was incontestably Aviser to 
 do so ; and the decree, in short, is less remote from the truth 
 than it would have been by becoming more positive ; but, finally, 
 without our stopping either to approve or to impugn what the 
 two doctors wanted to place there, let us confine ourselves to 
 noting with them what is not decided, and what it might, never- 
 theless, have seemed impossible that a council, treating the sub- 
 ject in all its depth, should have dared not to decide. 
 
 These obscurities and these blanks found meanwhile beyond 
 the council critics who were more disposed than ever to take 
 them up and deduce from them, as militating against the pre- 
 ' Non obscure visiis est innuisse. 
 
Chap. IV 1DC2. PITIFUL RESULTS ARRIVED AT. 329 
 
 tended inspiration of that body, all the iinfavourahlc conseqiicnc s 
 Avhich its timidity and irresolution in dealinj^ with certain poinl.s 
 have seemed to ns to snsrgest. This convocation at Trent had 
 never beli)rc excited so much interest and curiosity in Europe, 
 except perhaps at the time of its first being assembled. There 
 were now nearly two hiuidred bishops present. In E.oman 
 Catholic countries it began to be looked upon as a general coun- 
 cil. Although this was still a fiction, seeing that several coun- 
 tries were not at all, or scarcely at all represented in it, the fic- 
 tion began to be justified by the augmentation of the total num- 
 ber present. The attention of Europe, accordinglv, had increased 
 in proportion ; four^ sessions also had been held merely j"'^ 
 forma, and had thus helped to turn men's regards by anticipa- 
 tion to what was to be done in the fifth. It is a curious circum- 
 stance connected with the council of Trent, that out of twenty- 
 five sessions /aZ(?/tcc?«. had no result. 
 
 After having been looked forward to with such feelings, the 
 decrees of the twenty-first, which had now been held, could not 
 but appear pitiful enough. For to what, in fact, did they 
 amount ? Nine disciplinary decrees,^ some of which we have 
 acknowledged were very wise, but which bore only on details, 
 and nowise responded to the desires w^iich w'e have seen were 
 strongly felt in all parts of Europe ; four doctrinal articles, more 
 important, certainly, yet in which the council had hardly done 
 more than repeat the w^ell-knowai decisions of Constance and 
 Florence. Instead of giving more completeness and clearness 
 to those older deliverances of doctrine now no longer sufficient, 
 since the Reformation, for the guidance of the Romanist doctors 
 in the anti-Protestant controversy, one might have thought it 
 had been the council's object to reproduce them as vaguely as 
 possible. The Protestants said, as is sufficiently demonstrated 
 by the history of the debates, that briefness had been adopted 
 only because the council durst not venture upon great length ; 
 the Roman Catholics who could not admit, or at least could not 
 allow it to be seen that they admitted a similar motive, com- 
 plained, nevertheless, and in some countries quite openly, of being 
 condemned by the council's authority to remain ignorant of so 
 many things. Our preceding observations, in fact, might furnish 
 three or four very simple questions to w-hich a priest, w^hen in- 
 terrogated by one of the faithful to whom he is about to give the 
 communion, cannot, if he would hold to the decree, absolutely 
 reply. Is it by divine right that the priest alone communicates 
 under both lands ? Is it the supper that is spoken of in the sixth 
 
 ^ 18th January, '26th Fehruary, 14tli i\Iay, 4tlx Jiuie, 1562. 
 2 Tliose that liad been pi*epared for the 10th session. 
 
330 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 chapter of St. John ? What are the faithful made to forego by 
 the refusal of the cup ? To all this, if the priest declines giving 
 any reply but such as he is sure is the right one, he must give 
 none at all, for the council has given none. 
 
 Filially, there were in the form of the decree inconsistencies 
 which were not allowed to pass without remark. 
 
 Thus in the second canon an anathema is pronounced on who- 
 soever shall affirm that the Church had no justifiable motives 
 for giving the bread only to the laity. Now the anathema not 
 being usually pronounced except in questions of faith and of 
 divine right, it could not regularly figure in an article where 
 '■justifiable motives" were spoken of, that is to say, where the 
 point of view from which the question was contemplated was 
 that of human right. Had the council begun by declaring, as 
 Salmeron desired, that the depriving the laity of the cup had 
 been ordained by God, then, but then only, could there be room 
 for the anathema. 
 
 The same remark applied to the article where it is said that 
 the supper is not necessary to children. The idea, in our view, 
 is quite correct ; but as the Church had long taught or toler- 
 ated the contrary, it was evidently not a case for the application 
 of the anathema. Nine passages were found in St. Augustine 
 where he has declared in favour of the custom of giving the 
 supper to children ; there are even two in which he compares 
 the necessity of the eucharist with that of baptism, resting, 
 which is more, on a letter of Pope Innocent I. If this do not 
 prove that he viewed the obligation of communicating at every 
 period of life, as obligatory in point of doctrine, it proves at least 
 that he was far from anathematizing those who took that view 
 of it. 
 
 As for disciplinary decrees, nothing could be said of them be- 
 yond the council, that had not been said already within it. 
 Besides their general insufficiency, people remarked the return 
 to the old subterfuge of giving to the bishops, for the sake of 
 maintaining intact the rights of the pope, the title of delegates 
 of the Holy See ; and that while there was accorded to them 
 also, as if by favour, rights which ought never to have been taken 
 from them, there was given to them one manifestly usurped from 
 the civil power, that of imposing subsidies for the keeping up of 
 churches too poor in laud or in other sources of income. " We 
 can well see," wrote Lansac on the 19th of July, "that these 
 folks will hear of nothing prejudicial to the profit and authority 
 of the Court of Rome ; and, what is more, the pope finds him- 
 self so entirely master of this council, having the greater number 
 of voices at his discretion, that many of liis pensionaries, not- 
 
Chap. IV. 1502. INTRIGUES OF TIIK I'OPE. 831 
 
 witlislamling the remonstrances the emperor's ambassadors and 
 we may make about anything, do just as they please with respect 
 to it." 
 
 Of this a very striking proof M'as ere long to be given. 
 
 Altliough a special decree had kept the concession of the cup 
 among the points that were to be examined at the earliest, it was 
 remarked that not a word was said about it in the programme 
 of the following session. 
 
 On the other hand, the king of Spain had written to his bish- 
 ops, according to all appearance at the pope's solicitation, that 
 they should allow the question of residence to drop. He com- 
 mended them for their zeal in the affair of the divine right, but 
 exhorted them at the same time to abstahi from all fresh 
 attempts to get a decree passed in conformity with their views, 
 and, in particular, from all protestation against what should be 
 done. 
 
 Once assured of the neutrality of the king of Spain, Pius IV. 
 began to make open enough efforts to have the Avhole question of 
 residence referred to himself, and not only that, but the question 
 of the cup also. In sending an order to the legates thencefor- 
 ward to give this turn to all their endeavours, he authorized them 
 to give both the ambassadors and the independent bishops the 
 assurance of a speedy and serious reform in the entire organiza- 
 tion of his court ; a compensation a hundred times promised, a 
 hundred times eluded, and the promise of which could seduce 
 only those who were seduced already. 
 
 In the meantime the programme had been accepted. The 
 subject now to be considered was the eucharist, not as a sacra- 
 ment but a sacrifice. In other terms then, it was the question 
 of the mass, with its preliminaries, its accessories, and its conse- 
 quences. The thirteen points proposed for discussion were those 
 that had been prepared under Julius II. shortly before the second 
 dissolution of the council. The council ventured accordingly, 
 after five sessions, on accepting the heritage of sixteen anterior 
 sessions. That which had just taken place served only to pre- 
 pare the way. The communion under both kinds had been spoken 
 of at it, but without in any way recalhng the decree of 1551 on 
 transubstantiation. Even in resuming the consideration of the 
 thirteen articles prepared ten years before, care was still taken 
 to avoid throwing too visible a bridge of connection between the 
 two councils. It was not until the session followinir, about a 
 year after, that the old order was openly resumed, and the con- 
 tinuation frankly decided upon — if one can call frankness what 
 appears only after so long, so persevering, so imperturbable a 
 course of dissimulation. 
 
CHAPTEE V. 
 
 (1562.) 
 
 SESSION XXII. IS THE MASS A SACRIFICE? DECREES ENACTED 
 
 AMID POLITICAL INTRIGUES. 
 
 The mass — Definitions and principles — A first and a wide breacli — 
 Can there be any parity between the mass and Jesus Christ's sac- 
 rifice — In remeyyihrance of vie — Offered once — "What we ask of every 
 sincere Roman Catholic — How people come to believe everything — 
 To admit that the mass is not incontestably in the Bible amounts to 
 the admission that it is not there at all — Serious difficulty — To finish 
 as speedil}'' as possible — Recriminations — The pope's new precautions 
 — " It is thus that the king and the world are deceived" — Splitting 
 of parties — The small matters — Three opinions on the question of the 
 cup — Conditions laid down — Majority against the concession — Pro- 
 ject of referring it to the Pope — Frictions of oil — ^Sundry wise regu- 
 lations — Absolute prohibition of receiving payment for masses — 
 Doctrinal canons — Do this — Long debates — Masses for temporal 
 wants — Masses in honor of the saints — Private masses — A little water 
 in the wine — Worship in Latin — Scriptural objections — Historical 
 objections — True motives — TS\'enty-second Session — Minorities — 
 Submission and silence. 
 
 Our preceding remarks on the supper enable us to dispense 
 with long details in speaking of the practical errors with which 
 the Roman Church has surrounded it in the mass. We shall 
 confine ourselves to some of the chief of these. 
 
 The communion, in our view, is the commemoration of Jesus 
 Christ's sacrifice. 
 
 The mass, according to the Roman Church, is that sacrifice 
 itself renewed, reproduced, by a mysterious act of God's poM'er 
 and the Saviour's goodness, as often as a priest pronounces the 
 sacramental words over the wafer. The consecrated wafer is 
 not only the body of Jesus Christ, it is Jesus Christ upon the 
 cross, Jesus Christ dying for us. 
 
 Among the objections started by this doctrine there are several 
 to which no reply is ordinarily made but as in regard to tran- 
 substantiation, by saying that it is a mysteiy, and that there is 
 nothing impossible to God. Here, then, as in the case of the 
 real presence, let us carefully distinguish that which is contrary 
 to reason from that which is simply above reason. However 
 
Chap. V. 15G2. DOES THE MASS REPRODUCE THE SUITER? 333 
 
 great impro]);Lbilities may bo, let us set them aside aiul look only 
 to tlic impossibilities. 
 
 Now, among the latter kind of difliculties, there is one about 
 which, in so far as we are aware, not inucli has been said hith- 
 erto, although it enters, we apprehend, into the very essence of 
 the subject. 
 
 The mass, you say, is the renewal of Jesus Christ's sacrifice ; 
 it has all the meaning and all the value of that sacrifice. Yon 
 do not, however, go so far as to say that it includes also, for the 
 Saviour, the renewal of the sutferings on Calvary ; to you it 
 would seem absurd and impious to condemn to tortures renewed 
 indefinitely Him who spoke of his death as his return to a state 
 of endless peace and endless happiness. 
 
 "Well, then, this restriction, which you cannot but admit, 
 makes a huge breach at once in the system which you hope by 
 it to render less shocking. In the Scriptures, in the Fathers, in 
 all Christian authors everywhere, the Saviour's sufTerings arc 
 represented to us as one of the essential elements of his sacrifice. 
 The Church has at all times condemned as a heresy the opinion 
 that, owing to his Divine nature preventing it, He did not suficr 
 on the cross ; it was seen that any such idea would shake the 
 whole theory of man's redemption from its foundation. The 
 Roman Catechism, though it habitually overstrains everything, 
 not excepting the truth itself, goes so far as to say that " the 
 particular complexion of Jesus Christ's body, as formed by the 
 Holy Ghost, and consequently more perfect and more delicate 
 than are other men's bodies, rendered him more sensible to all 
 the.se torments ?" The Catechism knows nothing of this, and 
 had much better have said nothing about it ; but, in fine, nothing 
 could better prove the importance attached to Christ's sufferings, 
 viewed in relation to the object which He proposed to himself in 
 suff^ering. 
 
 Assuming this, in what sense then is the mass the reproduction 
 of the sacrifice accomplished on Calvary ? Between a sacrifice 
 in which the victim does not sulier at all, and a sacrifice the 
 value of which arose more or less from the victim's sufierings, 
 can" there be any parity ? Parity in point of results — all well ; 
 God, in his mercy, is certainly free to make the one as efficacious 
 as the other. But from the moment that Christ, on the altar, 
 is no longer a sulFerer, He is no longer, viewed as a victim, the 
 same that he was on the cross. There is wanting, then, in the 
 mass, one of the fundamental parts of the sacrifice w'hich it is 
 held to reproduce. Henceforth, as respects that i)art at least, it 
 is only its image, not its reproduction. 
 
 We have already made an analogous observation. In the 
 
3o4 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 supper — " this is my body tuliich is broken for you," said Christ. 
 Ill the mass it is entire under every fraction of the wafer. " A 
 dispute about words," shall we be told ? A dispute about words, 
 if you Avill ; but are we not engaged in a question about words ? 
 The debate, in the end, runs altogether on the word is. Take 
 away that word, and what becomes of transubstantiation ? Who, 
 looking at the whole of the rest of the New Testament, would 
 ever have thought of seeking to establish it, and would ever have 
 had the idea of it ? Thus we have here another point in which 
 the mass is not the supper. In the one the body is broken, in 
 the other we are taught that it is not broken. 
 
 Do we find identity at least in the rest ? Even should we 
 consent to forj?et all that we have said agrainst transubstantia- 
 tion, w^e cannot avoid reading, in the institution itself of the sup- 
 per, "Do this in remembrance of me" — an expression singu- 
 larly inappropriate if it was not a memorial that was meant, 
 and which the Apostles have nowhere commented upon, in so 
 far as we are aware, in such a manner as to shew that they un- 
 derstood it otherwise. We would further call to mind, that ac- 
 cording to St. Paul, " we are sanctified by the oflering of the 
 body of Jesus Christ once for all."^ Who can figure to himself a 
 doctor in the Church believing in the mass, in the renewal of" 
 Jesus Christ's sacrifice, and saying, without explanation, without 
 restriction, without adding a single word to prevent the error which 
 he risks teaching, that the oblation was offered once. And Avhere 
 do we find this assertion ? Why, at the close of a piece in which 
 sacrifices are expressly treated of, Avherc the Old Testament dis- 
 pensation, with its daily sacrifices, is confronted with the New. 
 " The old law having a shadow of good things to come, can 
 never, with those sacrifices which they offered year by year con- 
 tinually, make the comers thereunto perfect ; for then they 
 would not have ceased to be offered. But Christ, when he 
 Cometh into the world, saith. Sacrifice and oflbring thou wouldst 
 not, but a body hast thou prepared me." And, in fine, by way 
 of conclusion, '' We are sanctified through the offering of the 
 body of Jesus Christ once for all ?" Thus the antithesis is as 
 clear and as formal as jDossible. There we see sacrifices offered 
 year by year, daily, because they could not render those who 
 offered them perfect, and thus it was what had constantly to be 
 recommenced ; here, one only sacrifice, because one that is suffi- 
 cient to sanctify for ever those who shall accept its efficacy. 
 Marie what the Apostle further says, " And every priest standetli 
 daily ministering, and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, 
 which can never take away sins, but this man, after he had 
 
 ' Hel). x. 10. 
 
CUAJ'. V. 1502. CAN THE MASS UE I'OLND IN THE bllJLE ? 335 
 
 oficred one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the riglit hand 
 of God." And at anotlier place, ^ " Nor yet that he should oiler 
 himself often." 
 
 This last expression — Avho could imagine it ? — although the 
 meaning be so clearly determined by so many analogous pas- 
 sages, some liave been bold enough to enlist in support of the 
 mass. It has been said that, in point of fact, Jesus Christ does 
 not hwiself often make an oilering of himsell", but that these 
 words assume that he has given to others the right and the duty 
 of oilering him. 
 
 \Ye are truly weary of recurring so often lo the same argu- 
 mentation ; but how is it possible not to feel constrained to say 
 liere, with greater urgency than ever, to the ignorant, lo the 
 learned, lo gi-eat and small, to every one that is or fancies him- 
 self lo be a Roman Catholic : 
 
 Let us see. With your hand iipon your conscience, answer. 
 ►*!upposing you were alone in the world, and were to find a Bible, 
 were you lo read it over a hiuidred times, nay, a thousand times, 
 were you lo live a hundred years, and that those hundred years 
 were all consecrated to the study of that Bible — would you ever 
 come lo the mass ? And granting even, by some impossibility, 
 that taking the words this is my body in their literal meaning, 
 you were to arrive at the idea of transubstantiation, would you 
 ever advance to that of a daily renew^al of the sacrifice ? 
 
 Nor let it be said that in proposing this test we transfer the 
 question to our own domain, that of individual and free inquiry. 
 AA'c might reply to this objection at once, by saying Ihat the 
 Council of Trent, on this point, made an appeal lo inquiry, since, 
 as w'e shall see ere long, it devoted a long chapter lo an exposi- 
 tion of the Scriptural proofs of the mass. But what wc ask for 
 at present, is neither that the Roman Catholic shall set himself 
 to interpret, according to his own judgment, such or such a 
 passage, nor, still less, that he should construct a system for the 
 purpose of putting it in the place of that of his Church ; it is 
 simply that he shall ask himself whether he, the man himself, 
 would have found in the Bible Avhat his Church teaches him on 
 the subject of the mass, if he believes that others could any more 
 than himself have found it there, and this being first answered, 
 whether he can seriously accord to his Church the right to lay 
 down as the basis of doctrine, and as the centre of worship, what 
 he could not have had even a glimpse of in the very book which 
 all Christians own lo be the first and the purest of the sources 
 of truth. Ah, ye priests of Rome, it is hard, indeed, lo believe 
 that ye never put such questions as these lo yourselves I and still 
 
 ' Heb. ix. 25. 
 
336 HISTORY OF THE COUiNClL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 harder is it for us to comprehend that they do not wring from 
 you some confessions I " What I this right, so dreadful, so ter- 
 rible, to ofler daily on the altar no less a victim than this, this 
 privilege, which if I hold it not really from God, can be no bet- 
 ter than a sacrilegious usurpation, an abominable lie — see, the 
 Scriptures do not mention it expressly once ; see, the Council of 
 Trent, my supreme teacher and master, reduced to the necessity 
 of founding it on the figures of the Old Testament, on a few 
 words in the New, on imperceptible details lost in the midst of 
 those large inspired pages, where there would have been such 
 ample room for speaking of it. In the case of a purely human 
 right, that of succession to a property, for example, should I be 
 quite at my ease were I to possess it in virtue of title and argu- 
 ments of any such kind ? It were idle to tell me that the testa- 
 tor had appointed persons to interpret his washes, and that these 
 adjudge the inheritance to me. If I found no positive mention 
 of my right in his testament ; if that deed, still more, were a 
 writing of some hundred pages, full of details on a multiplicity 
 of things of far less importance — no I I could not but have scru- 
 j)le3, and could not but question, although to my own disadvan- 
 tage, either the intelligence or the impartiality of the tribunal." 
 Simple as this reasoning is, how does it happen that so few 
 priests make it, so few at least that are courageous enough and 
 candid enough to deduce some consequences ? Possibly the very 
 exorbitance of the privilege in question helps to shelter it from 
 the attacks of conscience and of reason. The deeper the abyss, 
 the less difficult it is to shut their eves and to interdict them- 
 selves from sounding its depths. Then, this Saviour descending 
 from heaven at the voice of a man, this God who immolates 
 himself in a sinner's hands for sinners — there is something too 
 great, too extraordinary in it, for the imagination to yield itself 
 to it by halves. Either it is not believed at all, or it is believed 
 with the whole soul. "At Rome," says Luther,^ " I ran like a 
 fool through all the churches. I almost regretted that my father 
 and mother were still in life, so much should I have loved to 
 draw their souls out of purgatory by means of the masses which 
 I said every day I" The immolation of the Saviour in the mass 
 has been sung by many a poet who did not believe in it any 
 more than wc ; it has supplied the theme of many a burst of 
 eloquence to many an orator and many an author, who made no 
 pretence in other respects to being a Roman Catholic or even a 
 Christian, and who Avould have blushed at being thought to be- 
 lieve such or such another dogma a hundred times more satis- 
 factorily proved to reason, but less confounding. How then won- 
 
 ' Letter to John von Sternberg. 
 
Chap. V. 1502. THE MASS A SACRIFICE— FOUR PROOFS. 337 
 
 der that the priest, a man fashioned to believe, and interested in 
 behevinir, should play the fool in regard to a dogma by which even 
 infidels have sometimes allov^-ed themselves to be carried away. 
 
 If any such poetical dream had been hitherto indulged by the 
 members of the council, they must have been most unpleasantly 
 aroused from it by listening to the doctors w^ho had been appointed 
 1o elaborate the question. However convinced these prelates 
 may have been that tradition supplied a sufficient foundation for 
 a dogma, more than one of them, assuredly, had never expected 
 to find the Church so rebellious and the doctors so nonplussed. 
 Not one of their scriptural arguments did not end at last in the 
 admission that the mass is nowhere in the Bible. In all grave 
 and momentous questions, the more a man has recourse to small 
 indirect proofs, the more arc his opponents entitled to say that 
 the great, the direct, the veritable, are wanting. 
 
 Now, the decree on the mass adduces only four proofs. Are 
 these small or great — direct or indirect ? We leave the reader 
 to judge. 
 
 I. Jesus Christ, says St. Paul, is a priest after the order of 
 Melchizedek. Melchizedek (Gen. xiv.) offered bread and wine. 
 Therefore the priesthood of Jesus Christ, and, as a consequence, 
 the Christian priesthood in general, is exercised by means of a 
 sacrifice offered under the elements of bread and wine. 
 
 II. The paschal lamb was a sacrifice. Seeing that it pre- 
 figured the eucharist, the eucharist is a sacrifice also. 
 
 III. God, by the mouth of Malachi, saith, that one day, in every 
 place, a pure offering would be offered. The supper, therefore, 
 which, in point of fact, is celebrated everywhere, is an oblation. 
 
 IV. St. Paul says (1 Cor. x.) that those who have partaken 
 of the table of devils, cannot partake of the Lord's table. Now, 
 the table of devils means, in this passage, the altars of false gods. 
 The Lord's table, therefore, is also an altar, and every altar sup- 
 poses a sacrifice. The eucharist, therefore, is one. 
 
 See now, Roman Catholics, see what your Church, see Avhat 
 three hundred bishops or doctors, what the council of Trent, in 
 fact, has contrived to find in the Bible in support of the mass ; 
 see the sole foundation-stones it succeeded in laying, after the ef- 
 forts of a month, beneath the splendid altars, where, according to 
 that council, the Christ is immolated I Three Old Testament 
 figures and a word — one can hardly call it a passage — a word 
 from the New. These meagre details, which, supposing that the 
 mass was formally taught elsewhere, could at most have been 
 given as references to it — see the council adducing them as suf- 
 ficing for its establishment, and by atUlucing no others, admitting 
 that ihey are the best it could find. To lean on such passages, 
 
 P 
 
3SS HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 Gays Bu Moulin, is like wanning one's self at the moon. Fur- 
 ther, it was found necessar}% in order to make the case of Mel- 
 chizedek have the appearance of meaning something, to alter 
 the narrative as it stands in Genesis, " He brought forth bread 
 and wine," say the Hebrew text and the version of the Seventy, 
 "now" or " and he was the priest of the Most High." Thus 
 the text does not say that it was as a sacrificer, or in view of a 
 sacrifice, that he had that bread and wine brought forth. In the 
 place of the noiv or and, the Vulgate has put /br ; a manifest falsi- 
 fication, admitted to be so by Cajetan. " What has been put in 
 the Yulgate, ' says he, " as the motive of the ofiering, /or he was, 
 is not in the Hebrew as the motive, but as a separate incident."' 
 
 Did they not carrj- their own refutation along with them, we 
 should only, to refute tl^em, have to transcribe the objections 
 brought against them in the council itself. Not one of these cita- 
 tions, in fact, was allowed to pass unchallenged ; not one, which 
 is still more to the purpose, without the admission that it did not 
 suffice for the establishment of the mass, and that without tra- 
 dition, it could not be affirmed to have established it ; not one, in 
 a word, which might not have been followed with the restate- 
 ment of our fundamental objection, and the confession that for a 
 thing of such consequence not to be clearly and formally in the 
 Bible, is tantamount to its not being there at all. 
 
 There was a point, moreover, which went to the very raot of 
 the doctrine, and on which there was no less disagreement than 
 on the choice of passages to be adduced for establishing the mas.«< 
 in general. 
 
 When Jesus Christ instituted the supper, did he ofier himself 
 as a sacrifice, or did he only announce the sacrifice he was about 
 to ofier on the cross ? 
 
 This last alternative, the only admissible one in our opinion, 
 suggests, when contemplated from the Roman Catholic point of 
 view, an insurmountable difficulty. It is the only admissible 
 one, we say. Suppose, in fact, that after having instituted the 
 supper, Jesus Christ had taken up a new idea, had refused to 
 sufier and to die, what value Avould there, then, have attached to 
 the supper ? Why, none. It had no value, therefore, beyond 
 what it behoved to receive I'rom the great act that was soon to 
 follow. 
 
 This being the case, the difficulty is obvious and glaring. If 
 the Saviour, in the supper, only announced his sacrifice, then the 
 supper was not a sacrifice, and the mass, the reproduction of the 
 supper, is no more a sacrifice either. 
 
 ' " Quod in Yuigata editione siibditur ut causa oblationis, erri- ouim : 
 :u HeDi'seo uon habetur, ut causa, sed ut separata clausula." 
 
Chap. v. ijOi!. OBVIOUS AND GLAIUNG DIFFICULTY. 389 
 
 There was nothing: for it then, it appears, but to adopt the 
 former alternative; and yet, there also, there was an insurmount- 
 able embarrassment. If the Saviour oilered himself in the supper 
 itself, if there were on the Thursday a real and tme sacrifice, the 
 redemption, then, was accomplished before the sacrifice of" the 
 cross, which is contrary to all that is taught by Scripture and 
 by the Church. The council would have shuddered at the mere 
 enunciation of this idea, and yet it approached it very nearly in 
 decreeing transubstantiation. 
 
 The only method of escaping from the annoyance of a dis- 
 puted voting, as well as from the inconvenience of exhibiting as 
 proofs what were felt to be no better, at best, than weak pre- 
 sumptions — was to abandon altogether the drawing up of the 
 chapters on doctrine, and notwithstanding all that had previously 
 been said about this strange way of getting rid of an embarrass- 
 ment, more than one prelate inclined to this course. An error 
 had been committed, they said, in habituating heretics to ask 
 reasons instead of simply receiving decrees. What had been 
 gained, in the old council, by drawing up, before passing to the 
 canons, chapters so carefully, so minutely worded ? Facilities 
 had been given for attacks, and the points to be defended had 
 been multiplied. In the case in hand, it might happen that 
 whether from want of time, or from their being unable to find 
 in the Scriptures texts clear enough and precise enough, the ob- 
 jections of the innovators might remain unanswered.^ Are we, 
 it was said, in fine, advocates or judges? Judges, assuredly ; but 
 it would have been wiser surely not to have delayed making this 
 appeal so openly till the very day when the council felt most 
 embarrassed about the judgment it was to pronounce. 
 
 These same prelates gave it to be understood that it was of 
 consequence to bring, not the labours of that session only, but 
 the council itself to as early a close as possible. Others replied, 
 that the grand aflair was not so much to come to a prompt, as to 
 come to a good termination ; that, as for omitting the chapters 
 on doctrine, after spending a month in deliberations with the 
 avowed intention of having such chapters, this Avould be to cover 
 themselves with ridicule and disiirace. Some of the most out- 
 spoken went so far as to say that, apparently, nothing better was 
 wanted than to deprive the council of all consideration, as a pre- 
 text for eluding the observance of the disciplinary decrees which 
 had been voted Avith secret reluctance. Nor was it for the first 
 time that this reproach was addressed to the papal party. Not 
 surely that the Itahan bishops had said, " Let us cry down the 
 council." They held as much as others, and more than others, 
 * The Bisliop of Chiozza. — Pallavicini, 1. xviii. ch. i. 
 
340 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 to the maintenance of its moral authority, as long as it should 
 be absolutely submissive to the pope ; but it was plainly enough 
 seen, that from the moment they had to choose betw^een the two 
 powers, their choice would not be doubtful, and there was no 
 calumny in the thought that they would in that case be little 
 scrupulous as to the means of humbling the assembly. As for 
 us, we are of opinion that all parties might take this reproach 
 to themselves. None admitted the authority and infallibility of 
 the council, except upon the condition of its not running counter 
 to certain ideas ; none was prepared beforehand to submit to it, 
 whatever it might decide, and whatever it miight do ; and we 
 have seen how small a matter at times was required in order to 
 call out protests, and threats of separation, and of war. 
 
 It was evidently in this spirit that the Spanish bishops, not- 
 withstanding the letter from their king, and just as these theo- 
 logical embarrassments were at their worst, again took up the 
 question of residence and the divine right. First they wrote a 
 letter to Philip II., begging to be excused for no longer obeying 
 him on this point. Besides, they would say, it was not an order 
 that the king had sent them. His majesty had called on them 
 to follow it only with submission to their own consciences. The 
 moment seemed to them to have arrived, they added, for finally 
 determining a question which, according to them, could not re- 
 main undetermined, without rendering all the efibrts that had 
 been put forth for the regeneration of the Church, utterly use- 
 less. 
 
 Judging, accordingly, that, for the moment, any attempt to 
 bring them back must be hopeless, the legates directed their 
 views to the side of France, and the cardinal of Ferrara, nuncio 
 at the court of Charles IX., had orders to obtain from him a letter 
 of a like description with that of Philip II. It was to be ad- 
 dressed in the first instance to the French ambassadors, yet was 
 to be so framed, as that it might be shewn to the bishops of their 
 nation as they successively arrived at Trent. In this manner, 
 unless they also took it on themselves to act against the orders 
 of their prince, they would remain separated from the Spaniards ; 
 and if the two nations did not unite on that point, there would 
 be less risk of their doing so on others. 
 
 Notwithstanding these precautions, the pope had continued to 
 avail himself of other means of providing for emergencies. He 
 had been for some months insensibly augmenting his troops ; the 
 pacific insurrection of the Spanish bishops gave more activity to 
 the exertions made at Rome for levying men and horses. Pius 
 IV. had replied to the French ambassador's representations, that 
 England and the Protestants of Germany talked of coming to 
 
Chap. V. i:.G'2. IMIIIJP OFFERS TO DEFEND THE COUNCIL. 841 
 
 the assistance ot'tliose of Fraucc ; ami tliat it fell to iiini, in that 
 case, to provide for the saiety of the council. It was further per- 
 ceived that he was making secret endeavours, like Clement VII. 
 before him, to form a league among the Italian princes, a scheme 
 which the king of Spain, always trembling lor the security of his 
 kingdom of Naples, could not contemplate without great unea- 
 siness. Pliilip, accordingly, hastened to send him word that he 
 would charge himself w^ith the defence of the council, and that 
 England or Germany would find that were they to attempt an 
 invasion of France, they would have him on the field to oppose 
 them. In fine, as a first pledge of his determination to iulfii his 
 promises, he sent a new order to his prelates to allow the ques- 
 tion that so terrified the court of Rome, to drop. 
 
 The pope had lost no time in profiting by a respite which 
 could not last beyond a few days; so it was soon seen, at Trent, 
 that the legates had received an order to wind up matters with 
 the utmost speed, and, if possible, before the arrival of the French. 
 The ambassadors of France complained of this, on the 10th of 
 August, in a memorial addressed to the legates, to which the 
 latter replied, that the council had now been open for seven 
 months, and that it was not either very respectful to ask that it 
 should be kept waiting long, nor very candid to attack its au- 
 thority in case of its not waiting. So far they were quite right. 
 The French prelates were evidently trifling with the council ; 
 whether their presence was desired or not, they could no longer 
 allege that anything had been neglected in the way of inviting 
 their attendance. It was they, therefore, that were in the wrong ; 
 but of this the Romish party were incapable of taking advantage, 
 by themselves maintaining a frank and honest position. \'\hen 
 the ambassadors asked whether their bishops were to be waited 
 for or not, they were refeiTed to the assembly, and then, w^hen 
 they attempted to address the assembly, the legates declared that 
 there ought to be no oificial connexion between the ambassadors 
 and the bishops, and that communications could pass only through 
 them, the legates. Next, being asked to consult the assembly, 
 they consulted only the pope, and the pope, already consulted by 
 the French ambassador at Rome, had said that he would report 
 the matter to the legates. " See what ought never to be for- 
 gotten," wTote Lansac, " the pope sends back the matter to the 
 legates, the legates refer it to the synod ; the synod is not at lib- 
 erty to listen to any proposition, and tlius it is that the king and 
 all men are deceived."' 
 
 Such, then, was the atmosphere in which the decrees on the 
 mass were elaborated. Notwithstanding the efibrts of many of 
 the bishops to concentrate the discussion on the clearest points, 
 
342 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 or such as were reckoned the clearest, there was not a sitting in 
 which the disputants were not led back to the grand dispute 
 about the oblation of the Saviour in the supper. Four opinions 
 were formed. Pallavicini gives with great care and exactness 
 the names of their principal champions, the difierent shades of 
 doctrine discernible amongst them, the fluctuations of the major- 
 ity, and so forth. He never seems to imagine that it should be 
 thought strange to see the council divided into fifteen or twenty 
 groups on so capital a question, and one which, as we have shewn, 
 could neither be set aside nor decided without great peril to the 
 entire structure of the mass. The Jesuit, Salmeron, a partisan 
 of the real oblation, set so many springs in motion in order to 
 have the majority, that the bishops were obliged to complain of 
 his manoeuvres in full assembly. " Let people intrigue,'" said 
 they, " in disciplinary questions ; it is annoying, still the.se are 
 but human questions. In questions of doctrine, such doings are 
 scandalous, they are sacrilegious." Was it for the first time, then, 
 that there was occasion for this remark ? 
 
 " It was ao^reed," savs Pallavicini, '' that nothing should be 
 put into the decree that did not meet with the assent of all ; and 
 that whatever might displease any, should be taken out of it. 
 If vou would have individuals conform to what has been asfreed 
 to by the greater number, then the greater number must conde- 
 scend to individuals, by yielding somewhat in small matters." 
 Ever the same tactics repeated. Where the Church ventures 
 to pronounce her opinion, there the smallest matters are import- 
 ant ; the salvation of mens souls is involved in them. V^ here 
 she is forced to be silent, matters of the greatest moment are 
 ''small tilings'' The seat of authority — a small thing. The 
 superiority of councils to the pope — a small thing. Was the 
 supper a true sacrifice ? — a small thing. A small thing, al- 
 though in the dogmatic theology of Rome, it is the foundation 
 of what is greatest. The grand object, accordingly, was to say 
 nothing that might seem to decide the question, and no one can 
 positively say, according to the decree, whether the oblation of 
 Jesus Christ by himself was a yrojDitiatory oblation, that is to 
 say, a real sacrifice, or a simple oblation, a sort of dedication pre- 
 luding to the sacrifice of the cross. An attempt, however, was 
 also made, by means of circumlocutions more or less skilfully 
 framed, to teach a little more than the simple oblation which 
 would have ruined the real presence ; but the word propitia- 
 tory, which Salmeron demanded, and which alone could remove 
 all ambiguity, was carefully left out. It appears only in the 
 second chapter, where the institution of the mass is no more 
 spoken of, but the mass itself AVe should have felt much in- 
 
{•|i,vp. V. 150'J. QUESTION OF TJIE Cl I' TAKEN LP. 
 
 :m:i 
 
 clined to ask ruitla'r Avliat would have occurred, if Boine village 
 priest, entering' the liall where the council was met without ]jre- 
 vious notice, had put this question — " Fathers, what am I to 
 teach ? — was the oblation of the supper propitiatory ; yes, or no ?" 
 
 While these discussions were in progress, letters were received 
 i'rom the emperor, in which he required nothing less than the 
 dismissal of the questions relative to the mass, with the excep- 
 tion of that of the cup, of which, on the contrary, he called for a 
 prompt and satislactory solution. Farther delay, after so many 
 promises, was impossible. The reply, accordingly, was that the 
 council would set to it immediately, but with tnis not unreason- 
 able addition, that it neither could nor would delay the pubhca- 
 tion of any of the decrees that should be ready. 
 
 Meanwhile the French ambassadors were for ever insisting 
 that the session, fixed for the 17th of September, should be put 
 off for a month at least. They represented that various second- 
 ary questions, which must sooner or later come before them, 
 might be studied in the mean time, and that thus the close of 
 the" council would not be really delayed. But the more they 
 urged, the less wiUingness was there to yield to this demand. 
 It became a subject of alarm that the French might come to 
 think themselves authorized to believe that their presence was 
 necessary in order to give validity to the decisions ; moreover, 
 there arose a report that when hardly arrived, breaking abruptly 
 the compromise on which matters had hitherto proceeded, they 
 were to moot the scorching question of the inferiority of the pope. 
 Although, if such was in fact their intention, there were no vis- 
 ible means of preventing them ; there was a desire to make sure, 
 by the public promulgation, of all that had been decreed Avithout 
 them. 
 
 The council had in the last session reserved to itself power to 
 advance, should it judge right, the day of meeting for that which 
 was to follow. The decrees were ready about the end of August, 
 fifteen or twenty days before the term that had been fixed. The 
 session might accordingly have been held, but it was not to be 
 dreamt of that such an affront should be oflered to those who 
 were desirous, on the contrary, that the day of meeting should be 
 put off. There was time left therefore for the discussion of the 
 affair of the cup, so eagerly called lor by the emperor, and as the 
 French prelates had given intimation that they did not ask to be 
 waited for with respect to that point, there was no longer any 
 kind of motive or pretext left for not taking it up. 
 
 For the first time, then, the matter was directly brought for- 
 ward. Three opinions arose, or rather had been already formed. 
 One, to refuse it absolutely ; another, to grant it, but under cer- 
 
344 IIISTUIIV OF TIJE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 tain conditions to be fixed by the council ; the third, to refer the 
 matter to the pope. Among the partisans of this last opinion, 
 some wanted a pure and simple reference ; others, a reierence 
 •with reasons, bearing that the pope might make the concession 
 asked for. The Spaniards Avere always for an absolute refusal. 
 Philip II. dreaded, not without reason, lest the concession of the 
 cup to his subjects in the Netherlands, should give his other 
 subjects, if not in Spain, at least in Franche-Comte and the 
 Milanese, a hankering lor as much ; he couJd perceive that that 
 step once taken, people were little likely not to attempt farther 
 advances. 
 
 The partisans of the concession, too, strongly insisted on the 
 precautions to be taken to prevent its giving encouragement to 
 other demands. They agreed, in general, on the five following 
 conditions indicated by the legates : 
 
 I. That the principle be voted, but the application left to the 
 pope, he alone being in a position to judge what were the na- 
 tions to which it was fit that the benefit should be granted. 
 
 II. That the pope, in order to his being properly informed, 
 should send legates or commissioners beforehand, to all quarters 
 where this wish had been expressed. 
 
 HI. That the consecrated wine should never leave the 
 churches, not even to be taken to the dying. 
 
 IV. That those to whom the cup shall be conceded, should 
 declare that they do not regard it as necessary to the validity of 
 the sacrament. 
 
 V. That they shall, in respect of all other matters, return fully 
 and sincerely to the unity of the Church. 
 
 Conditions, in a word, which it Avas indispensable to lay down, 
 but the two last of which made the concession go for nothing. 
 It was well known that among those who demanded it, there 
 was none so little a Protestant as to declare himself a Roman 
 Catholic from the moment that it was granted. 
 
 For several days, and in sittings of several hours' duration, 
 each speaker in support of one opinion, was almost invariably 
 followed by one who supported another. In the end, however, 
 it was seen that a majority was against the concession. The 
 emperor's ambassadors, who had hitherto opposed the reference 
 of that question to the pope, now yielded so far as not only to 
 consent to it but even to ask it ; defeated in the council, their 
 object was to have a door at least left open for them at Rome. 
 Strensthened by their concurrence, the legates were no longer 
 afraid to press the reference, and their agents set themselves to 
 work so as to secure a majority on that side. 
 
 As thev thought five or six days would be required before 
 
Chap. V. 15()2. SOME OF THE DISHOPS REMONSTRATE. 345 
 
 they could be sure of sucli a state of the vote, they proposed the 
 reo-ulating of a score of articles, some on a certain number of 
 abuses relative to the mass, others on divers points of discipline 
 and administration. Although these last were favourable in gen- 
 eral to -episcopal authority, they were complained of by many 
 bishops. These asked how long it was meant that the great re- 
 forms were to be put ofl', in order to occupy themselves with such 
 only as, whenever the great ones were accomplished, would come 
 of themselves. One of them, moreover, observed that it w-as be- 
 neath the dignity of the council to take up a point here and a 
 point there, and to vote on a thousand things without being able 
 to say why these were taken up rather than others. " Has not 
 the order of business been all regularly laid down ?" he added. 
 "Is it not with the Head and his court that reformation should 
 commence ? If you would have the planets regain their lustre, 
 begin by telling the sun to regain his." And the bishop of Se- 
 govia compared the council to a physician called in to cure an 
 inveterate disease, and who, instead of having recourse to real 
 remedies, should employ mere slight frictions with oil. 
 
 Those frictions, so slight when compared with the evil to be 
 cured, were not even directed in such a manner as to leave un- 
 touched things that were beyond the competence of the council. 
 Articles viii. and ix. empowered the bishops to interfere with a 
 high hand in the management of hospitals, colleges, lay com- 
 munities, testaments, &c. ; an authority which they did actually 
 enjoy in some countries, but which had been always refused to 
 them in others, and notoriously in France. The superintendence 
 of hospital property by the bishops, had often had good efiects ; 
 but sometimes also it had resulted only in gradually transform- 
 ing it into Church property, into benefices, and, consequently, in 
 diverting it from its proper destination. Besides, it was not a 
 question of convenience, but of justice, and the council could not 
 pretend to regulate alone what at so many points touched upon 
 civil legislation and the rights of sovereigns. These it invaded 
 also by granting the bishops the power to examme notaries and to 
 interdict them, in some cases, from the exercise of their functions. 
 In fine, it was not as bishops, but as delegates of the pope, that 
 they were to exercise several of those new powers, another ex- 
 orbitance which further contributed to provoke the resistance of 
 the sovereign princes. It seemed that the assembly were not 
 fully aware of the bearing and the impropriety of those articles, 
 for they were voted hastily and almost without discussion. They 
 brought occasion for repentance in their train, for they led to the 
 decrees of the council being refused publication in France. 
 
 Attached to these there were various rules bearing on the 
 
 p* 
 
S46 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 moral and intellectual qualities to te required of a priest in order 
 to his elevation to the episcopacy, the conduct to be folio vi^ed by 
 the clergy in civil life, the conditions required in order to the le- 
 gitimate possession of a benefice, &c. Looking at these rules 
 in detail we should hardly have aught but good to say of them ; 
 but the opposition were for ever asking what good end they could 
 serve, what sanctioned them ? and we see, in fact, that the ob- 
 servance of several of them dated no farther back than half a cen- 
 tury, without the Church being able even to take to herself the 
 glory of having enforced them. ''Begin then," the bishop of 
 Orense said, " with a decree ordaining that these laws shall be 
 obligatory for the pope, and then only shall you have done some- 
 thing." 
 
 Neither were there laid down in what bore on abuses relative 
 to the mass, any regulations but what were very good. Priests 
 were enjoined never to attend but with due respect, and in a 
 becoming dress ; never to celebrate it hastily ; to remove from it 
 everything that savoured of superstition, for example, certain cal- 
 culations on the number and the arrangement of the wax lights ; 
 finally, and in the most formal manner, never to take any pay 
 for its celebration. " Before all," says the decree, " as regards 
 avarice, let the bishops absolutely forbid all sorts of conditions 
 and stipulations for any recompense whatsoever, and all that is 
 given for the celebration of new masses, as also those demands for 
 alms, so urgent and so unseemly, that they are exactions rather 
 than calls for charity, and all other things of that sort which 
 are not much removed from simony, or, at least, filthy lucre. "^ 
 How, after this, masses should still be paid for, is what we shall 
 not venture to explain. And it is so well understood in fact that 
 there is no disgrace whatever in making them to be paid for, that 
 the pope himself when he says mass at St. Peter's publicly receives 
 some pieces of money which are intended to represent his stipend. 
 
 Some words now on the canons appended, according to cus- 
 tom, to the doctrinal chapters. 
 
 In the first we find an anathema pronounced on whosoever 
 shall not think that there is in the mass a sacrifice properly and 
 truly so called. We need not recur to this point. 
 
 In the second, anathema to whosoever shall not believe that in 
 saying these words to the Apostles, Do this m re^nembraiice of 
 7)ie, Jesus Christ instituted them priests, alone competent to say 
 
 ' In primis quod ad avaritiam pertinet, ciijusvis generis raercfidum 
 conditionis, pacta, et quicquid pro missis novis celebrandis datur, necnon 
 importunas atque illiberales cleemosynanun exactiones potius quam 
 postulationes, aliaque ejusniodi quffi a simoniaca labe, vel certe a turpi 
 qujestu nou loiige absunt, oninino prohibeant. 
 
TiiAr. V. 150'2. INSTITUTION OF PIIIESTS. 347 
 
 the masp. This liiul, down to thr.t dale, been only an opinion, 
 sufficiently modern, seeing that at the time of the council of 
 Constance it \vas hardly beginning to make head. " Take, eat," 
 said Jesus Christ, " this is my body which is broken for you. 
 Do this in remembrance of me." Such, in their whole amount, 
 are the Saviour's words. Do this cannot be separated from 
 what goes before ; from vhat is indicated as to he done ; and 
 that which is pointed out as to be done is not only the break- 
 ing of the bread it is, also, and above all, seeing the imperative 
 is used, the taking of it and the eating of it. If Do this bo 
 only for the priests. Take, eat, is only for them also ; they only 
 then have a right to communicate. Do we at least find these 
 words in all the Evangelists ? No ; of the three who have 
 given a narrative of the supper, two omit them. How can it 
 be thought that they would have omitted them had they seen 
 in them a matter of so much importance as the institution of the 
 priesthood ] To these Scriptural ditHculties there is conjoined 
 another, still more serious for the Roman Catholics. The priest 
 is not only the minister of the mass, he is that also of all the 
 other sacraments, in particular of penance. Can it be said, con- 
 sequently, that Jesus Christ made priests of men to whom for 
 the moment he gave no more than the right to say the mass ? 
 " They might then," says Du Moulin, " have chanted it while 
 Jesus Christ was as yet upon the cross or in the sepulchre ?" No 
 doubt they might have done so. had they believed what the coun- 
 cil teaches. Only it would have been somewhat difficult, on that 
 first occasion, to believe in the real presence. Can you figure St. 
 Peter or St. John under the persuasion that he had in his hand or 
 in his mouth a body which he had seen taken down from the 
 cross, and which he knew was lying in a tomb ? This canon, ac- 
 cordingly, just before the close of the session, gave rise to a vio- 
 lent altercation. The Archbishop of Grenoble combated it as 
 contrary to the opinion of St. Denys, of St. Maximus, and of St. 
 Chrysostom, who refer the collation of the priesthood to those 
 words pronounced by Jesus Christ after his resurrection. Receive 
 ye tlie Holy Ghost. " The Fathers," says Pallavicini, "wearied 
 with so many speeches, and with the obstinacy of one man, who 
 opposed the views of all the rest, exclaimed with one voice that 
 the council must keep to what had been decided. ' One viaii — 
 All the rest. The historian seems then to affirm that the Arch- 
 bishop stood alone, and yet, after having relat'ed the discussion 
 that Ibllowed, he says. " The party that supported the canon be- 
 came so numerous that al last there were hardly thirty in the op- 
 position." There were more than thirty then at first ; and he 
 might have added that those thirty were among the members who 
 
348 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 had best studied the subject, the most habituated to sober reflection, 
 to calmness in voting, and to frankness in deahng with difficulties. 
 
 In the third canon, anathema to whosoever shall maintain 
 that the mass is no more than a sacrifice of praise and thanks- 
 giving, benefits none but the person who communicates, and 
 ought not to be ofiered for sins, penalties, satisfactions, and other 
 needs. These last words called forth various remarks on the 
 danger of authorizing masses said on all occasions and for all 
 sorts of needs ; but the custom had become so universal that to 
 condemn it would have been to condemn the Church, and more- 
 over, would have damaged one of the chief sources of its influence 
 and of its revenues. To have a mass said for the cure of an 
 invalid, for the return of some one on a journey, for the success 
 of an honourable or hazardous undertaking, is sometimes very 
 aflecting as a manifestation of piety ; but as we are nowhere told 
 that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ had for its object, or for any 
 one of its objects, the obtaining for us of temporal favours, one 
 does not see how the mass, if it be its exact reproduction, could 
 have any object other than that of the sacrifice itself, that is, the 
 pardon of sins and the salvation of souls. Twenty-five prelates 
 were of this opinion. 
 
 In the fourth canon, anathema to whosoever shall say that the 
 sacrifice of the mass is a blasphemy against Jesus Christ's sacri- 
 fice, or that it derogates from it. This is not clear ; but if the 
 meaning be that the immolation on the altar ought not to dimin- 
 ish in the eyes of the faithful, the importance of the immolation 
 on Calvary, what is required is an impossibility. The ofiering 
 has been made o}ice, says St Paul. The offering is made daily, 
 and an hundred thousand times a day, says the Church. How, 
 then, admit that the greatness of the act cannot be impaired by 
 such a reproduction of it ? 
 
 In the fifth, anathema to whosoever shall call the celebration 
 of masses in honour of the saints an imposture. Imposture I No ; 
 that would be saying too little. When the inhabitants of Lystra, 
 supposing Paul to be Mercury (Acts xiv.), would have offered 
 sacrifice to him, he rent his garments, he turned away and was 
 liorrified. " Sirs, why do ye these things ? We also are men 
 of like passions with you I" Suppose him come back to this 
 earth, and that he were to hear men speak of renewing i7i his 
 honour — What I The sacrifice of his Master — that immolation 
 of which he never spoke but with adoration and awe — and say 
 if it would not have been with far greater horror still that he 
 would have exclaimed — " Sirs, why do ye these things?" 
 
 In the three following canons, anathema to whosoever shall 
 condemn either the liturgy of the mass as containing errors, or 
 
Chap. V. 1562. PRIVATE CELEBRATION OF THE MASS. 349 
 
 the ceremonies of the mass as superstitious, or tlie custom ol' 
 having masses in w^hich the priest alone communicates. As for 
 this last point, if the mass be a sacrifice, there is nothing, in 
 fact, to prevent one man alone from ofiering it for others, even 
 though absent ; if it be not, no man could entertain the idea oi" 
 celebrating it otherwise than in a congregation of the faithful, 
 assembled for the purpose of communicating. Accordingly, it is 
 not a weak aro^ument ajrainst the mass that there is nowhere in 
 the history of the early times of the Church, any trace whatever 
 of the supper being celebrated in private by the priest, or in 
 public without those present participating. When Chateau- 
 briand puts into the mouth of one of his personages in The Mai'- 
 tyrs, that he is going to celebrate the holy sacrifice for Eucloxe, 
 he is guilty of one of the most complete anachronisms that occur 
 in that book in Avhich so many might be pointed out. 
 
 As for the liturgy in which it is forbidden, by authority of the 
 council, to see any errors, a Roman Catholic, durst he venture, 
 would find more to reprehend than we. Made up of ancient 
 forms of prayer, it has retained some curious traces of those times 
 when people had hardly begun to enter on the paths which were 
 eventually to lead to the mass. Thus, after the consecration, 
 when the priest presents the victim to God, " Deign," says he to 
 God, " to cast on these things a propitious and serene regard, as 
 thou didst deign to accept the ofiering of Abel." Strange Avords 
 these to use when presenting to God the body of his Son I 
 
 There was no idea, therefore, of this when that invocation 
 was drawn up. When the supper had ceased to be a repast 
 taken in common, it came to be an established usage to carry to 
 the church and to place upon the communion table, a larger or 
 smaller quantity of bread, wine, and sometimes even of fruit. 
 Such was this ofiering, in imitation of Abel's, on which God's 
 blessing was invoked previous to part of it being set aside for 
 distribution at the supper ; the rest went to the poor. Such is 
 the explanation of what is added in the liturg}' — " We suppli- 
 cate thee, God I to command that these tilings may be borne, 
 by thy holy angel, to thy heavenly altar." Such, further, is the 
 explanation of that phrase — " It is by Christ, God I that thou 
 dost create, sanctify, vivify and bless all these good tJn??gs ;" for 
 it would be sufficiently absurd for any one in presenting to God, 
 under the form of bread and wine, the body and the blood of his 
 Son, to set himself simply to bless him for having given us in 
 nature, bread for our hunger and wine for our thirst. As re- 
 spects all those passages, and many others, it is only in conse- 
 quence of seeing them in the canon of the mass that people 
 have come to lose all perception of their unsnitablene?? there. 
 
350 HISTORV OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 and how far they are from expressing what people, hehevmg in 
 the real presence, could not have failed to say at the daily re- 
 newal of the sacrifice of Christ, &c. There is one, however, 
 which would have been quite too contrary to those new ideas, 
 and that has been changed. " Cause this oblation to be reckoned 
 to us, that it be reasonable, acceptable, because it is the figure 
 of the Lord's body and blood, who, on the night of his passion, 
 took bread," &c. Such is the prayer as quoted in St. Am- 
 brose.^ In the canon of the mass let the reader mark the change 
 — " Deign, God, to cause that this oblation be in all things 
 blessed, reckoned, &c., in order that it inay become for us the 
 body and the blood of thy dear Son, who, on the night of his 
 passion, "2 &c. And such is the w^ay in which people set them- 
 selves to write — the mass ! Notwithstanding this, put that lit- 
 urgy into the hands of any one who does not know that it is 
 the mass, and he wdll hardly see it there any more than in the 
 Gospel. 
 
 Finally, in the last canon, anathema to whosoever shall main- 
 tain that the mass ought to be celebrated in the Vulgar tongue, 
 or who shall condemn the practice of putting a little water into 
 the wine before its consecration. What foundation is there for 
 that practice ? It is possible that the wine employed by Chi'ist 
 was, in point of fact, mingled with water ; possibly, too, it was 
 not. What know w^e about it ? What can we know about it ? 
 " St. Cyprian and several councils teach it," says the Eoman 
 Catechism. True, but what knew they about it ? And if Scrip- 
 ture speaks of nothing but wine, why speak of anything else l^ 
 Nevertheless, according to that same catechism, that mixture is 
 so important that its omission must be a mortal sin. Only, 
 " Let the priests be careful to put very little w^ater into the wine, 
 for, according to the divines, that water must change itself into 
 wine," before the whole is changed into blood I Another mir- 
 acle ! But the E-omanist doctors seem not quite to trust to the 
 former. Put very little water, they say. But why ? If the 
 transformation really takes place — little or much, what does it 
 
 ^ De Saci-amentis, iv. 5. — Quod est figura corporis et sanguinis Domini 
 nostri. 
 
 ^ Ut nobis corpus et sanguis fiat dilectissimi filii tui Domini nobtri. 
 
 ^ There seems to be among Roman Catholic divines a necessity for 
 outrunning and torturing Scripture, even when they have no interest 
 in doing so. Know you why the supper is regarded as a repast of 
 union and love? Think you it is because it recalls the love of God to 
 men, our equality before "^Him, <tc. ? Kot at all. According to the Ro- 
 man Catechism it is because the bread is composed of many grains of 
 wheat, and the wine of many single grapes mingled and confounded. 
 Such is tlie union: such is the Church. 
 
OiiAP. V. 1562. THE MASS TO BE SAID IN LATIN. 851 
 
 matter? Ah I it is because too iiiuch wine iiiiused would f^ieally 
 risk not liaviug quite the taste of pure wine, and thus the faitli 
 of the priest would be exposed to too rude a trial. 
 
 As lor the other point, that of the mass in the Vulgar tongue, 
 let us stop for a moment to consider it. 
 
 Shall we begin by quoting the passage in which St. Paul 
 seems to have had a Ibresight of what was afterwards to be done, 
 so emphatically does he declare and repeat that lie that speaks 
 in the church ought to be understood by all? " Except ye utter 
 by the mouth words easy to be understood, how shall it be known 
 what is spoken ? For ye shall speak into the air. For if I pray 
 in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding 
 is unfruitful." 1 And this idea re-occurs two or three times in 
 the same chapter. 
 
 Shall it be said that the Apostle, in this part of his writings, 
 speaks not of tongues mevely foreig)i, but of unknown tongues? 
 The reasons he adduces are too general to have their cogency 
 in the least lessened by this distinction. He desires, such is the 
 plain fact, that he that speaks shall be understood. 
 
 St. Paul adds, it is true, that he that has spoken in an un- 
 known tongue might still profit others by interpreting what he 
 has said. " Now," it will be said in reply, " the Church has 
 never refused to interpret her Latin liturgies ; it is easy to pro- 
 cure translations of them." Now-a-days it is easy; the time 
 was when it was very difficult, and we all know, besides, how 
 many there are who cannot read. Even at this day do we see 
 many, especially in countries entirely Roman Catholic, who un- 
 derstand or care about understanding the Latin offices ? Most 
 frequently, moreover, nothing is heard. The use of a language 
 which is not understood has led to the habit of speaking low, 
 rapidly, and indistinctly; it is only by following in a book the 
 words spoken by the priest, that even one who knows Latin can 
 go along with what is said. 
 
 Although all men should be able to read — and Roman Catholic 
 countries are far from ranking first in this respect — although all 
 men were to compel themselves to have the book constantly in 
 their hand, the objection would remain the same. Why Latin 
 rather than the language of the country? Why go round about 
 when there is nothing to prevent your going straightforward ? 
 You allow the French to follow the mass with a French trans- 
 lation; if they avail themselves of the permission, it is as if they 
 heard it in French. Will it lose its virtue ? You do not say 
 that. What reason have you, then, for not granting to every- 
 body, by speaking in everybody's language, the favour you grant 
 
 ' 1 Cov. x-iv. 
 
352 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 to "whosoever can use, and chooses to use, a translation ? Then, 
 was not this language, which is at this day a strange unknown 
 tongue, to the great majority of the faithful, originally the Vulgar 
 tongue ? Here, therelbre, is a point on which you cannot call 
 in the aid of tradition. Do we lind that during the first centu- 
 ries of the Church, there Avas ever a thought of imposing Latin 
 on the members of the Eastern Churches? Had the Eastern 
 Churches, on the other hand, ever a thought of imposing Greek 
 on anybody ? And yet they had by much the stronger reasons 
 for attempting it. The Apostles wrote and preached in Greek. 
 In Greek the history and the sayings of Jesus Christ found their 
 way into the west. Were Christianity to have a sacred language, 
 it is the Greek ; the Hebrew, if you will have it so ; but the 
 Latin it is not. 
 
 But why should we speak of a sacred language ? Is not the 
 ver}'- universality of Christianity, which is regarded by every one 
 as one of its essential and distinctive characters, an argument 
 against that unity of language wuth which Rome would endow 
 it ? It is only in countries where the institution of caste prevails, 
 among the ancient Egyptians, and among the Hindoos, that we 
 find a language specially employed for worship, and by the priests. 
 When a religion appears with the announcement, that it is to 
 belong not only to all nations, but, further, in each nation, to all 
 the individuals that compose it, when it comprises nothing which 
 ought not to be revealed to all men — it is contradictory to its 
 very essence, to make it ever speak to men in a language that 
 they do not understand. 
 
 As for the rest, it is not by chance that Rome is here found 
 associated with Egypt and India, rather than with the altogether 
 civil organization of Roman Paganism ; no more was it by chance, 
 or from caprice, that the Reformers were so urgent for the aban- 
 donment of the Latin tongue. They were thoroughly sensible 
 that it would not depart alone ; and Rome, without saying so, 
 had the same conviction. The mass in French, in German, in 
 English, is no longer the mass. The form has incorporated itself 
 with the substance, and cannot undergo a change without seri- 
 ously affecting the substance. The miracle of transubstantia- 
 tion is wrought by these words. Hoc est corpus meuin; let the 
 priest say. This is my body, and the charm is half destroyed, 
 even to those who equally understand both. We have seen 
 Roman Catholics, in reading the mass for the first time in their 
 own tongue, experience the utmost disappointment. They saw 
 nothing bad or false in it, but no more did they see aught that 
 seemed adequate in point of grandeur to the mystery that had 
 previously fed their imagination. And it is not only with an 
 
Chap. V. 15G2. REASONS GIVEN FOR THE USE OF LATIN. 853 
 
 eye to doctriiu; that Eonic persists in liaving a language of her 
 own. Like the taking away ot" the eiip, it is a barrier between 
 the clergy and the people — a barrier less impassable, it is true, 
 since a man may learn Latin, but which, besides that it is im- 
 passable for the great mass of mankind, still helps, nevertheless, 
 oven as respects the literate classes, to guard the precincts of the 
 sanctuary. 
 
 Accordingly, in our own times, it is only by reasons of a more 
 or less mystical sort that its maintenance has been sought to be 
 justified. "' Prayers in the Latin tongue," says Chateaubriand,^ 
 •' seem to redouble the religious feelings of the multitude. In the 
 tumult of his thoughts, and of the miseries with which his life 
 is beset, man, as he pronounces words little familiar, or even un- 
 known to him, seems to petition for things that he wants, and 
 yet of which he is ignorant." The vagueness of these prayers 
 constitutes their charm."' The A^agueness of the thoughts, per- 
 haps ; never the vagueness resulting from the words being un- 
 known, unless, indeed, among the charms of prayer, we are to 
 reckon the facility of praying with words, without any eflbrt be- 
 yond keeping one's self, well or ill, in a certain abstracted state 
 more or less resembling sleep. De Maistre, as usual, is still more 
 frank : " As for the people," says he, " if they do not understand 
 the words, so much the better. There is all the more respect 
 and none the less intelligence." All the more respect I Possi- 
 bly so ; but what sort of respect ? That of a statue on its knees. 
 Is that the respect God requires from intelligent beings ? None 
 the less intelligence I "VTe admit that many things are said, 
 among Roman Catholics, in Latin, which would not much enrich 
 the mind ; but w^ould they once begin to speak in such a manner 
 as to be understood, they would soon be compelled to say better 
 things and more of them. " An antique and inysterioiis lan- 
 guage," says Chateaubriand again, " a language Avhicli has lor 
 ages ceased to undergo any change, is suited for the worship of" 
 the eternal incomprehensible Being." " You do not comprehend 
 God," he would seem to say ; " it is natural, then, that you 
 should address him in a language which you do not compre- 
 hend." Is not this, at bottom, the true meaning of all that is 
 said to us on this subject ? Put away all these brilliant pictures, 
 all these poetical veils — and what do you find behind ? A chap- 
 let, a praying machine, and a man himself becoming a praying 
 machine. 
 
 ' Ginie du ChrUtianhme, 4ienie partie. 
 
 ^ The word Ilallehijali, wliieli is Ilohrew, is adopted, as it stands, in 
 the mass, to express, by a foreign AvorJ, joys unknown to this life. — 
 Innocent III., Treatise on the 3[ass, ii. 53. 
 
364 HISTORY OF THE COINCIL OF TRENT. Book IV. 
 
 We have said that the alikii- of the cup had been suspended 
 until the majority should be found disposed to refer its determina- 
 tion to the pope. 
 
 The session drew nigh. Whatever form might be given to 
 the decree for the reference, that decree had against it, in addi- 
 tion to all who wanted the thing regulated in the council, many 
 of those who blamed the concession of the cup, and were afraid 
 that the pope might grant it. The day before the session, the 
 legates thought they might gain some votes by adding that the 
 pope, icith the consent and apprGhation of the council, should 
 do what he thought fit ; but this clause, though agreeable to the 
 pope's adversaries, was warmly opposed by the Roman party, 
 and the legates even felt themselves reproached with it as a sort 
 of treason. In the evening, not knowing how to make up their 
 minds, they sent a request to the ambassadors that they would 
 not insist on the council voting on it next day ; but the emper- 
 or's party would not hear of such a thing. They said they 
 would rather break with the council than consent again to any 
 delay whatever. On the next day (session XXII., Sept. 17, 
 1562), accordingly, they came to a vote ; the decree passed, but 
 thirty-eight prelates voted against it, and the same minority ap- 
 peared in the session.^ 
 
 As for the almost equally large minorities which we have seen 
 announce their opinions in the voting of decrees concerning the 
 faith, they were found, as usual, very much diminished in the 
 session. Of thirty bishops who had persisted in not believing 
 that the Do this involved the ordination of the Apostles, fifteen 
 at most in the public sitting voted against the canon in which 
 that opinion is erected into an article of faith. Shall we charge 
 the others with cowardice and inconsistency ? No ; the incon- 
 sistent, on the contrary, were those who were daring enough not 
 to submit immediately to the infallible voice of the majority. 
 Tliere is no consistency in Roman Cathohcism, but in submis- 
 sion and silence. 
 
 ' I7tli September, 1562, twenty-second session. 
 
BOOK V. 
 
 EIGHT MONTHS OF DISCUSSION AND INTRIGUE WITHOUT 
 
 A SESSION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 (1562.) 
 
 DISCUSSIONS ON ORDERS AND ORDINATION. CONTINUED PROROGA- 
 TIONS. 
 
 All begins anew ; one might suppose he had mistaken the page — Eight 
 successive prorogations — Opening of the debates on the sacrament of 
 orders — Imprudent haste — Are orders a sacrament? — Calvin's opin- 
 ion — In what sense were orders instituted by Jesus Christ ? — Scrip- 
 tural and historical discussion — Roman system — Few advantages 
 and many inconveniences — The seven orders — No scriptural founda- 
 tion — Difficulties that cannot be resolved — The council evades 
 them — ^The mass the basis of the Roman priesthood — Order and the 
 orders — Grace in ordination — Endless uncertainties and obscurities. 
 
 The farther Ave proceed the more does our task become diffi- 
 cult and repulsive. Isothing can be more miserably tiresome 
 than to find one's self on the morrow after each successive sit- 
 ting, placed in view of the same intrigues and the same re- 
 clamations, with the same facts to note, and the same reflections 
 to make. In the more minute histories of Pallavicini and Sarpi, 
 a careless reader might often suppose that he had mistaken the 
 page and was reading over again what he had read already. 
 Notwithstanding our utmost efibrts to avoid the same evil, we 
 feel at times in despair of success. Thus, with respect to the 
 dispute about the divine right of bishops — although we have 
 spoken about it so often, and shall have to speak about it again 
 — we shall, after all, have only indicated its principal phases. 
 As for the reclamations of the prelates, or the ambassadors, on 
 the exorbitant influence of the pope, the insufficiency of the 
 reforms that had been decreed, the giving to the legates the ex- 
 clusive right to make propositions, and the tortuous course of 
 business in general — we have spoken as rarely as possible, and 
 we could not have spoken less of them without renouncing the 
 idea of giving a true picture of the council. 
 
356 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 The twenty-third session had been fixed for the 12th of No- 
 vember, 1562. Prorogued eight times, it took place only on the 
 15th of July in the following year. This of itself may suffice to 
 shew what a chaos of embarrassments and discussions we have 
 to disentangle and elucidate. 
 
 It had been decreed that the two last sacraments should be 
 brought under deliberation — those of sacred orders and marriage ; 
 but the very next day the French ambassadors renewed their 
 protest and their demands. They represented that if the coun- 
 cil proceeded immediately to doctrinal questions, there would be 
 none, or almost none remaining when their prelates should ar- 
 rive ; they insisted that these divines should be waited for until 
 the end of October, and that, until then, matters relating to dis- 
 cipline only should be taken up. That same day the imperial 
 ambassadors presented an analogous demand. Their master, 
 they said, had been struck, as everybody had been, with the 
 little time that had been given to disciplinary matters, though 
 from them alone was there any prospect of the return of order 
 and peace. "He would rather not," the ambassadors added, 
 " that they should enter so deeply into points of doctrine as to 
 vote on things with regard to which Roman Catholics were so 
 little agreed, and which the Church had hitherto left prudently 
 in the shade." 
 
 The legates replied that it was a settled rule, adopted since 
 the commencement of the council, to make the examination of 
 points of doctrine and that of disciplinary matters proceed 
 abreast ; that they could not therefore consent to the kind of 
 suspension that was asked for ; that, nevertheless, they would so 
 arrange matters that one only of the two remaining sacraments 
 should be taken up for study — that of orders. 
 
 They had their own reasons for preferring that one of the two. 
 The deliberations on the sacrament by which men are made 
 priests, would necessarily revive the question about residence, 
 and it was of importance, if they could no longer hope to be able 
 to set it aside, that it should be decided, at least, before the 
 arrival of the reinforcement promised by France to the partisans 
 of the divine right. To provide against possible contingencies 
 the pope sent numerous reinforcements from Italy. Care was 
 taken, at the same time, to have it hinted to the French, and to 
 the Cardinal of Lorraine in particular, that after having delayed 
 so long, they had better give up altogether the idea of coming 
 at all. " Was it befitting their dignity to have anything to do 
 with a council where they could merely show themselves and no 
 more, since the whole was to be brought to a close in a few 
 weeks ? They could hardly act any but a Protestant part in 
 
Chap. I, 1562. ARE ORDERS A TRUE SACRAMENT? 357 
 
 opposiiif^ tlie decrees already niadc, a course which could only 
 have the ultimate cii'eci oi" shaking, with the authority oi" the 
 council, that oi" the whole Church, in France as well as else- 
 where." — Nor were such representations unreasonable. 
 
 Instead of, as had been hitherto done, handing over all the 
 questions collectively to all the divines, the latter were divided 
 into six classes, and to each of these there was assigned a special 
 department. Moreover, among other regulations, it was agreed 
 that no speech should exceed half an hour. It was not the first 
 time that an attempt was now made to restrain the prolixity of 
 the doctors ; but none of the rules intended for that purpose had 
 lasted beyond a few days. In the absence of any precise rules 
 the council was often observed to show its impatience by mur- 
 murs, talking among the members, shuffling of the feet, &c. ; 
 practices all of which are common enough in political assem- 
 blages, but which many will be not a little surprised to fmd pre- 
 vailing at the Council of Trent. 
 
 These arrangements, accordingly, were very wise, but the time 
 for their introduction was ill-chosen. Promises had been made 
 of slow procedure, especially with regard to doctrinal articles, yet 
 steps were now taken for proceeding faster than ever. The 
 court of Rome had ceased, or believed that it had ceased, to have 
 any further grounds for alarm. It allowed itself to run into that 
 state of impatience which the calmest and the ablest cannot but 
 experience when some great task is approaching its close, and to 
 this we must ascribe those imprudences which at any other time 
 it would have avoided. 
 
 II. The point at issue, in the first question, was to determine 
 " whether orders be or be not a true sacrament properly so called, 
 instituted by Jesus Christ, and not a simple ceremony for insti- 
 tutiiiff the ministers of God's word and the sacraments." 
 
 We might remark, first of all, that this question is ill-stated, 
 since it does not admit any mean between these two extreme 
 opinions. It nowise necessarily follows from your attacking or- 
 ders as a sacrament, that you make them a purely human insti- 
 tution, or even that you cease to acknowledge their institution 
 by Jesus Christ. 
 
 As for the reasons that lead us to refuse to them the name of 
 sacrament, we must refer to what we have said elsewhere on the 
 sacraments in general. Orders are one of those on which the 
 question is one of words. If you will have it that sacranicntiwi 
 means oath, then it is clear that orders are a sacrament, for the 
 priest swears that he will consecrate himself to the Church ; but 
 it is clear, also, that they are not so in the same sense as bap- 
 tism and the supper, seeing that the latter are for all, and the 
 
358 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 former for a small number only. " If 1 have not put it (the im- 
 jDOsition of hands) among the sacraments," says Calvin, " it is 
 because it is not ordinary and common to all the faithful."* 
 
 Sacrament or no sacrament, can it be said that orders were 
 instituted by Jesus Christ ? 
 
 If by this people restrict themselves to the idea that Jesus 
 Christ really contemplated establishinsf, in his Church, certain 
 persons who should be specially devoted to religious matters, 
 we conceive that they are in the right. "Go," said he to liis 
 Apostles, "teach all nations," and as he could not think twelve 
 men would suffice for this, he evidently authorized them to give 
 themselves assistants and successors. 
 
 But if it be the Roman priesthood that is contemplated, with 
 the profound separation which it establishes between priests and 
 people, with the privileges it arrogates to itself, the mystical 
 meaning it attaches to ordination, the absolute need that the 
 Church, according to it, has of its ministr}'', then we deny that 
 its institution can be traced to Jesus Christ, or to his Apostles, 
 or to the disciples of the Apostles. 
 
 Not to Jesus Christ, we say. Had it been his intention to 
 create priests in the Roman sense of that word, it must be ad-, 
 mitted that the Apostles very much misunderstood it, and that 
 an author who should set himself to trace in what is recorded of 
 their history, the lineaments of the Christian priesthood, would 
 hardly find it was that of the Roman Church. Chosen by the 
 Master himself, manifestly guided by the Holy Spirit, they have 
 not, nevertheless, the air of men who have any idea that, in the 
 Church, they form a distinct and separate class. If they speak 
 of their quality as Apostles, it is always as of a mission which 
 they have received, not as of an internal character which has 
 been stamped upon them. If necessaiy to the Church, it is as 
 Apostles, sent out, missionaries, preachers of the gospel ; but as 
 for their being jjriests, pontiffs, having anything else to do but 
 to teach certain truths, and being, in fine, required by the faith- 
 ful for any other purposes than edification and instruction — all 
 this is what we shall never discover from either the letter or the 
 spirit of what we read about them. And what they thought of 
 themselves, they were all the more likely to think of those whom 
 they associated with themselves. Read over, from this point of 
 view, Paul's two epistles to Timothy, those few pages in which 
 the Church of Rome has contrived to find so many words in her 
 favour, and where we, on the contrary, find so many ideas that 
 are positively opposed to her. There, as elsewhere, you will find 
 a mission to be accomplished, an immense responsibility before 
 
 ' Christ. Inst., 1. iv. 
 
Chap. 1 lJo2. WHAT rUlESTHO(JD DID LURIST ESTAUI-lbll ! 369 
 
 God and before men ; but, lot us add, nolhin*; more. In that 
 multitude ot" directions, of" all sorts, •which the Ajjostlc pives to 
 his disciple, no mention is made of the administration of the sac- 
 raments. Take away the commission to teach, to direct, to re- 
 prove; what will remain to Timothy, above the mere believers? 
 Kothing, absolutely nothing. This, nevertheless, was a question 
 of fact as well as of doctrine. Allusions, granting that there are 
 such, still do not amount to proofs. Were the principles held by 
 St. Paul on the priesthood, even remotely, those of the Roman 
 Church, it was not a matter in which he, a founder of churches, 
 could, in writing to a founder of churches, fail to express him- 
 self with precision. In his other epistles, the same omission. 
 To whom are they addressed ? To the faiiJifid of Corinth, of 
 Thessalonica, of Rome. In several of them he makes no men- 
 tion of names, or of any chiefs whatever ; in others, if he gives 
 some names which might be supposed to be those of the pastors 
 of the Church, or who, in fact, were so — these names, as in the 
 case of the epistle to the Romans, are mingled with those of 
 persons who manifestly w'ere not at the head of the flock, for 
 sometimes they are women, sometimes whole families. If all 
 this do not prove, as some sects have maintained, that there was 
 nowhere a distinct and regular pastorate — as little can we see 
 that any one can maintain, after having seriously weighed these 
 facts, either that the pastorate was a priesthood, or that it acted 
 in any fashion the part which has been assumed by the Roman 
 priesthood. 
 
 AYill it be said that this opinion weakens the authority of the 
 evangelical ministr}' ? We proceed to see if this be true ; but 
 were it true, that would not be an argument. There never has 
 been a usurpation or abuse of which it might not also be said 
 that those that attacked it assaulted the powder that profited by it. 
 We have not to decide whether a mysterious and indelible con- 
 secration be or be not necessar}' to the authority of the Gospel 
 minister ; we have only to see in the writings of the Apostles 
 whether such was the view they took of their functions, and we 
 go on to shew that there is nothing of the kind there. Mean- 
 while, is the fact alleged true ? Does that mysterious and su- 
 pernatural character tend to give to the laity more respect ibr 
 the priests, to the priests more respect for themselves ? No. 
 Merit being equal, Ave have never seen the priest more respected 
 than the Protestant pastor ; and as for self-respect, that is to say, 
 dignity of manners and language, it appears to us incontestable 
 that the Prostestant clergy are generally superior. 
 
 Now, if the idea that Rome has formed of the priesthood, ii" 
 the supernatural and divine power which she has recognised in 
 
360 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 it, lead not, in point of fact, to any beneficial result which might 
 not be obtained without it, how much has it not had, and does 
 it not continue to have that is bad I Think but of that pride, 
 and of all those individual and collective pretensions that have 
 so troubled the world, and drawn upon Christianity so many at- 
 tacks, so many sarcasms, so many bitter enemies, and say, where 
 was the first source of all these, if not in the mendacious doc- 
 trine of a barrier raised by the hand of God himself betwixt 
 pastors and people ? What we have already said of the power 
 of performing, in the celebration of mass, a greater and more 
 extraordinary miracle than any of those by which Jesus Christ 
 himself manifested his glory, we might repeat here with respect 
 to all the powers that Rome assumes for her priests. All that 
 she has thought to give them of the striking and supernatural, 
 is easily effaced by people getting accustomed to it ; all that she 
 has, at the same time, created in the way of pretensions, tyranny 
 and audacity, has been but too well kept from being effaced by 
 pride and interest. 
 
 It is not only as respects the essence of Orders that Rome 
 seems to us to have departed from the true apostolical traditions. 
 What shall we say of the complications successively introduced 
 into the organization of a ministry which appears to have been 
 in the days of the Apostles a thing so simple, so profoundly clear 
 and one ? The Roman Church admits seven degrees in the sa- 
 crament of orders, and, by an odd caprice, which her doctors difier 
 in their efforts to explain, the episcopate is not one of them. 
 These orders are divided into two classes. Four are of the minor 
 class, those of porter, exorcist, reader, and acolyte. Three are 
 of the major class, the sub-deaconship, the deaconship, and the 
 priesthood properly so called. We cannot blame in an absolute 
 manner the establishment of certain degrees to be passed before 
 reaching the priesthood ; but this number, seven, indicates at 
 once pretensions to mystery and symmetry more worthy of an- 
 cient Egypt than of the renewed world, and of Pythagoras than 
 of Jesus Christ. 
 
 While we admit that the Church may not have erred in estab- 
 lishing lower grades, we do not mean to say that their institution 
 has a scriptural foundation, or is sanctioned by the example of 
 the Apostles. We do not even think that one can appeal in their 
 support to the institution of the deaconship, as related in the book 
 of the Acts, and the council seems to us to have had recourse to 
 a play upon the words when, speaking of the seven orders, it says, 
 " Scripture makes positive mention not only of priests, but also 
 of deacons." Now, in point of fact, what do we read ? Desiring 
 to devote themselves entirely to the care of souls, the Apostles 
 
Chap. I. 1562. THE SE\ EN DEGREES OF OllDEUS. 3Cl 
 
 request that the)' may be relieved from certain secular concerns. 
 Seven men are to have tlie.se connnittod to them ; and as their 
 functions Avill meanwhile tend also to the spiritual benefit of the 
 Church, they arc to have the imposition of hands. They arc to 
 receive the Holy Ghost, and, should occasion require, take the 
 place of the Apostles. Amid all these details not a word occurs 
 that leads to the idea of this new office being instituted as an in- 
 termediate step to the ministry. It was a ministry apart, and 
 inferior if you will, as respects the habitual nature ot" its func- 
 tions, but not one that implied inferiority of character. Ste- 
 phen, one of the elected seven, is exhibited to us immediately 
 afterwards discharging all the functions of a pastor and an Apos- 
 tle. Twice St. PauP enumerates various charges exercised in 
 the Church, and adds nothing that might lead us to suppose that 
 they were so many successive degrees. The functions are en- 
 tirely parallel ; they present diflbrent branches of duty among 
 wdiich each might make his choice according to his peculiar tal- 
 ents, his convictions of duty, and the inward call addressed to him 
 by God. That the deaconship was at a very early period re- 
 garded as a step to the ministry is very probable. The institution 
 does not exclude this view of the matter ; but we think it evident 
 that it does not point it out to us, and cannot consequently serve 
 as a legitimate basis to the seven degrees of the Roman Church. 
 Extreme unction has led us to state beforehand one of the most 
 serious difficulties attending this subject. ^ It is for the Roman 
 Church to ask itself how six inferior orders, considered necessary 
 for a man's reaching the seventh, can be reconciled with the 
 idea of this last being a sacrament, and a sacrament instituted 
 by Jesus Christ. The only method of escape from embarrass- 
 ment would have been to make the six inferior orders a mere 
 preparation for the priesthood ; but at the time when this diffi- 
 culty first challenged attention, the six preparatory orders had 
 long been considered as conferring collectively a notable portion 
 of the ecclesiastical character. Henceforth the difficulty sub- 
 sists in all its magnitude : we have here a sacrament, which is 
 stated to have been instituted bv Jesus Christ, and which wo 
 find to be conferred in part by formalities which Jesus Christ 
 did not institute, nor his Apostles either. 
 
 ' 1 Cor. xii. Eph. iv. 
 
 ' "Wo might have noticed one at the time of the seventh session, at 
 the date of the decree on the sacraments in general. That of Orders 
 is put in the number of those which cannot be reiterated. In point of 
 discipline nothing could be better; but in tliat case the Churcli must 
 renounce teaching tliat the laying on of hands, as mentioned in the 
 New Testament, was the Roman ordination, for St. Paul received it 
 twice. (Acts ix. and xiii.) 
 
 a 
 
obS HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TREIST. Book V, 
 
 Did he at least insinuate them ? Fain would the council 
 have been able to say so. One divine made an attempt to prove 
 it. Although Jesus Christ, said he, did not positively institute 
 the series of seven orders, he suggested it by going through the 
 series himself. When he drove the sellers out of the temple, 
 was he not a porter ? In curing those possessed by devils, an 
 exorcist ? In reading and explaining the Scriptures, a reader ? 
 In concerning himself about preparations for the supper, a dea- 
 con ? In celebrating it, a priest ? This far-fetched argument 
 AA^ould be less ridiculous did it not leave unexplained why the 
 Apostles speak of the deaconship as quite a new institution, sug- 
 gested to them as required by new exigencies, and not connected 
 in their minds with any injunction, any saying addressed to them 
 by their master. 
 
 Another rock against which the discussion constantly struck, 
 was the making the seven orders seven sacraments, coimected 
 together by their concurring to the same end, yet distinct as they 
 each and all confer something sacramental. Some of the divines 
 did not shrink from admitting this idea. In their view there was 
 something mysterious and divine in it ; one sole sacrament and 
 seve7t sacraments seemed to them happily to recall the idea of 
 one God in three persons. 
 
 After long and solemn discussions,^ the council durst not pro- 
 nounce in favour either of the daring mysticism of the one party, 
 or the timid puerilities of the other. Repeating what it had 
 done so often before, it left vague all that it did not feel itself 
 in a condition to determine. 
 
 Thus, in the first chapter, it confined itself to stating the exist- 
 ence of a visible priesthood established by God in the Church ; 
 but the proof of it which it adduces is valid for those only who 
 admit without contestation all the anterior decrees on the sup- 
 per and the mass. " In all religions, the idea of a sacrifice to 
 be offered, and that of a priesthood instituted for the purpose of 
 ofTering it, have been by the will of God intimately associated 
 together. Since then there is in tlie Church a sacrifice, the 
 mass, there is necessarily a priesthood." This line of argument 
 is far from wise, since it exposes the Roman priesthood to all 
 the objections that may be brought against the real presence, the 
 mass, &c. On the other hand, is it at least true to say, that the 
 two things have always existed together and advanced abreast ? 
 No. The Roman priesthood appears to us to have been fully 
 constituted long beibre the mass was the mass. The uniform 
 
 * The first congregation general, held 23d September, reckoned, be- 
 sides the legates, three patriarchs, eighteen archbisliops, a liundred and 
 forty-six bishops, five generals of orders, and eighty-four divines. 
 
Chap.1. 1J02. rillST THE J'RIEST, THEN A SACKII-ICE. 368 
 
 conjunction of priesthood and sacrifice in other rclif^ions is of 
 small importance ; here, it is not the priesthood that has been 
 instituted for the sacriiicc, it is the sacrilicc that has been grad- 
 ually introduced in order to complete and legitimize the priest- 
 hood. In the sixth, in the eighth century, at the time when 
 there began to be priests in the full strictness of the word, while 
 the transition was hardly more than in the bud, the people 
 might have said, like Isaac to Abraham, " Behold a priest and 
 an altar, but where is the victim ?" And it was necessary, no 
 doubt, that one should be found. 
 
 The line of argument in the second article is neither more 
 solid nor more prudent. " The priestly ministry being a Divine 
 thing it was natural that there should be several orders of min- 
 isters." Nothing more natural, in fact, if the inferior orders are 
 only a preparation for the priesthood, but if they form a part of 
 it then the argument is all the other way ; the more the priest- 
 hood is divine, the more repugnant is its being split into parts. 
 That, therefore, was the place at which the council behoved to 
 have said whether the inferior orders are sacraments or parts of 
 a sacrament, or a mere preparatory course to the priesthood, 
 but, as in the first article, it said nothing. Thus, in the first, 
 it speaks of order ; in the second, of orders ; in the third it re- 
 turns to the word order. But in what manner the orders are 
 the order, and the order is the orders, it does not say. 
 
 Another very serious question, serious, if not in itself, at least 
 as respects the exactness of the system, is also evaded in the 
 third article. It is there said that the order is truly and prop- 
 erly one of the Church's sacraments ; and the reason adduced is 
 because grace is conferred by ordination. In support of this, the 
 words of yt. Paul to Timothy are adduced : " Wherefore I put 
 thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God which is 
 in thee, by the putting on of my hands." But the Church itself 
 has never taught that all that confers grace is in virtue of that 
 alone a sacrament ; we see cases, besides, of the Apostles giving 
 the imposition of hands to persons whom they had no idea of 
 making pastors. Moreover, there had been great disputes on the 
 question how we are to know Avhat kind of grace is conferred in 
 ordination. On the one hand, it was very difficult to specify 
 any which the priest might not already have received or might 
 not yet receive, as simply one of the faithful, in one or anotlier 
 of the other sacraments ; on the other, no sooner did people set 
 themselves to speak of graces exclusively appropriated to the 
 functions of his ministry, tiian the objection was raised that if 
 the priest docs not draw any fruit for himself from ordination it 
 no longer answers the idea of a sacrament. Many would fain 
 
364 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 have inserted that it confers both these kinds of grace at once, 
 inward graces for the priest's individual sanctification, and out- 
 ward graces for the sanctification of tlie faithful under his min- 
 istry ; but still this distinction had many opponents, and it was 
 thought best to say nothing. 
 
 Nothinsf has been more attacked in the Reformation than the 
 uncertainty which, we are told, it leaves on the character and 
 authority of pastors. Had we to refute this objection we might 
 observe that that is assumed as a fact which Protestants deny, 
 and which must first of all be proved, namely, the necessity of 
 a priesthood precisely such as that of Rome. The Protestant 
 pastor would, in fact, be very much embarrassed if asked to pro- 
 duce his authority for remitting sins, or renewing daily on the 
 altar, with a few words, the sacrifice ofiered by Jesus Christ on 
 Calvary ; but if he confine himself to the functions positively pre- 
 scribed for him in the New Testament, particularly in the two 
 Epistles to Timoth}^ the true code of instructions in this matter, 
 he does not perceive that anything is wanting to him for the 
 exercise of all of them, and we see that his authority is, in fact, 
 far less contested and far less attacked than is that of the priests 
 where these are not omnipotent. But the details into which 
 we have gone authorize our giving quite a difierent reply. You 
 affirm, we should say, that the non-Roman pastor cannot explain 
 in what the ordination which he has received consists. Can 
 the priest do so really any better ? Does not this flimsy coating 
 of logic and assurance conceal some uncertainty, some serious 
 difficulty ? Two hundred doctors, twenty sittings, speeches and 
 discussions without end, and then, at the close, a decree which 
 promises proofs and gives mere assertions, three canons which 
 are silent on three matters that are absolutely necessary to be 
 known in order to the right understanding of what they say — 
 such is the answer which this history would furnish for us. 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 (15G2.) 
 DISCUSSIONS OF THE DIVINE RIGHT OF THE EPISCOrACY AGAIN. 
 
 The hierarchy — Is Episcopacy to be found in the New Testament — In 
 what sense' it is legitimate — Contradictions of the Roman system — 
 IIow these were removed at Trent — The old question of the divine 
 right changes its aspect — It becomes simplified on the one hand, and 
 complicated on the other — New efforts to leave the pope out in the 
 discussion of it. 
 
 We how come to another article in which there was more 
 need than ever to evade difficulties. It is that concerning the 
 hierarchy. 
 
 It is a point which we can concede that the sacerdotal hierar- 
 chy, like the succession of orders, is not in itself a bad thing and 
 to be condemned. If we disengage it, in our own mind, from 
 the odiousness too often charged against it, Ave come to the simple 
 idea of a pastor chosen from among some others to superintend 
 them, direct them, and, should the occasion require, censure 
 them. Such a pastor will naturally hold always the first rank. 
 As respects ordinary functions he w^ill remain on an equality 
 with his colleagues ; as for the extraordinary, consecrations, in- 
 stallations, dedications, they will be devolved upon him, be it of 
 right, but of right purely ecclesiastical and human, or simply in 
 consequence of the position he occupies. At Geneva, for exam- 
 ple, ahhough the pastors are all equal, it is their yearly presi- 
 dent who is charged with the conferring of the ministerial char- 
 acter by the imposition of hands. 
 
 Such is the sole reasonable and historically true origin that 
 can be assigned to the episcopate. All the attempts that have 
 been made for the discovery in the writings of the Apostles of 
 some traces of inequality among the Frcshytcri (tioin wliich 
 ivcsbyter and ^^/-iV.s/) and the Episcopi break down entirely, 
 alike before ideas and words, before the general tenor and the 
 details. Even were these attempts a little less fruitless it would 
 be a powerful argument at once against the Roman system that 
 so laborious a search must be made for its germs, without find- 
 ing in the whole New Testament a single formal mention of a 
 true inequality between bishops and presbyters. But not even 
 
366 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT, Book V. 
 
 the germs are to be found there ; wherever men may fancy they 
 have found them we could shew close at hand something that 
 destroys them. The words priest and bisliop, elder and over- 
 seer, we ought to say, for such is the true meaning, are perpetu- 
 ally used there the one for the other. AYere this the case but 
 once or twice we might already conclude from it that this ques- 
 tion was not for the Apostles a question of importance, and, still 
 less, a question of divine right. Can any one figure to himself 
 a Roman Catholic so ignorant or so careless about the right use 
 of terms as to call his parish priest bishop, and his bishop parish 
 priest ? But it is not once or twice, it is everywhere that the 
 Apostles fall into this confusion of terms. " I left thee in Crete," 
 says St. Paul to Titus, " that thou shouldest set in order the 
 things that are wanting and ordain elders in every city as I had 
 appointed thee : If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, 
 having faithful children. . . . For a bishop must be blameless, 
 as the steward of God." Thus we have elder at the commence- 
 ment and bishop at the end, with a for connecting them. In 
 the book of the Acts (chap, xx.) Paul sends for the elders of the 
 Church of Ephesus and tells them among other things that the 
 Holy Ghost had made them bishops, to feed the Church of God. 
 Elsewhere it is St. Peter himself who addresses the elders, and 
 employs for the designation of their functions the Greek verb 
 episkopein, to oversee, which ought to be applied only to bishops. 
 At another place (1 Tim. iii.), in a passage on the duties of the 
 ministers of the Church, St. Paul speaks first of bishops and 
 next of deacons, and betwixt those two classes speaks of none. 
 " Likivise must the deacons," says he, " be grave," &c. Else- 
 where he names the episcopi without naming the presbyteri, or 
 the presbyteri without naming the episcojn, and all that he says 
 of the one he says of the other. They had to receive the same 
 ordination, to fulfil the same conditions ; there is nothing, in 
 a word, to indicate any superiority or inferiority whatever. If 
 these two words were not in his view synonymous, if he believed 
 the one to be superior to the other, and that by Divine right, the 
 manner in which he confounds the two, would indicate not only 
 negligence but the most complete want of commen sense. 
 
 Thus, however ancient may be the tradition in virtue of which 
 bishops are chiefs of the Church, whatever reasons of discipline, 
 unity, and order, may be urged in its favour, it remains evident 
 that the superiority of the bishops over the presbyters or priests 
 is a matter of ecclesiastical arrangement, and is human and 
 mutable. 
 
 This being laid down as incontrovertible, the episcopate not 
 being in Scripture, had the Church any right to establish it ? 
 
Chap. II. i:)6-2. THE ROMAN EPISCOPATE NOT AN ORDER. 307 
 
 The question is double, and we must, first of all, clearly sepa- 
 rate its two i'aces. 
 
 As soon as a church has more than one pastor it is natural 
 and necessary that one should preside over the rest. It is natu- 
 ral too, we have said, though less necessary, that certain func- 
 tions should be reserved to him. In fine, should the Church 
 see fit that this precedency should be for life, that he who exer- 
 cises it should govern with sovereign power, that he should nomi- 
 nate to all charges, and should have a right to all the honours, 
 this is neither necessary, nor, according to us, natural and proper, 
 but still it is not contrary to the essence of the pastorate. It 
 produces an inequality of jurisdictions, not of powers, or if you 
 will, the administrative powers are unequal, but the spiritual 
 powers remain the same. 
 
 Religious society, then, hke civil society, can give to the ad- 
 ministrative authority of its first magistrates as great a superior- 
 ity as it may think proper ; but as respects spiritual authority, if 
 the equality of pastors is taught in the Scriptures we do not see 
 what right the Church has to disturb it. The very idea of sac- 
 rament which the Church of Rome has attached to ordination is 
 an additional argument against the spiritual supremacy of the 
 bishops. A sacrament may have effects more or less marked 
 according to the more or less excellence of the dispositions of 
 those who receive it, but, in point of principle, it is inadmissible 
 that the same sacrament should confer on some more, on others 
 less. 
 
 It is in order to escape this objection that the Church of Rome 
 has viewed the series of orders as closed at the seventh, and that 
 the Council of Trent confirmed that view. The episcopate is not 
 reputed as order, but as an office in the order. This bishop is 
 no more a priest than is a mere parish priest ; he is a priest 
 charged with superior functions. 
 
 Shall we accept this distinction ? The Church must neces- 
 sarily herself accept the consequences of it ; and we can prove 
 that she does not accept them. If the bishop has only a superi- 
 ority of office, and not of real powers, if he be no more priest 
 than a priest, then a spiritual act cannot be null from the sole 
 circumstance of his having had no part in it. But, ask the 
 Church of Rome what she thinks, for example, of an ordination 
 performed by a simple priest. She would pronounce it null. 
 Of confirmation administered by him, null also ; null, mark 
 well, not only in the administrative point of view, but further, 
 and especially in the sacramental. The child confirmed by a 
 priest is not confirmed ; the layman ordained by a priest remains 
 to all intents and purposes a layman still. There are then reallv 
 
3G8 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 in the bishop spiritual powers which the priest has not, and he 
 cannot even delegate those powers to a priest. It must be him- 
 self that confirms and himself that ordains, in such wise that if 
 all the bishops of the Church, including the pope, were once to 
 disappear, there would be no longer the means of having new 
 priests, and the priesthood would be at an end. Here, then, we 
 have spiritual inequality in all its rigour. A hundred thousand 
 priests all laying hands on a man, could not make him a priest. 
 The bishop can here do nothing ; the pope himself, according to 
 most canonists, cannot give a priest, without having first made 
 him a bishop, the right to confer orders. There is then func- 
 tionally in the bishop something more than in the priest. This 
 something cannot be delegated ; accordingly, it is not simply and 
 solely an affair of jurisdiction. "VThy is it natural that a priest 
 should not be able to delegate his functions to a deacon ? Be- 
 cause the priest has received seven orders, and the deacon only 
 six. It is contradictory, then, tliat the episcopate should not be 
 an eighth order, and that there should be functions for which 
 the men of the seventh, the priests, are radically and absolutely 
 unfit. 
 
 All this was said in the council, with many delicate reserva- 
 tions, it is true, and still more with many protestations on the 
 part of divines, that they by no means sought to unsettle an or- 
 ganization that had been sanctioned by ages. All they w^anted, 
 they said, was to have the question well stated and elucidated ; 
 but they elucidated it a great deal too much, and having done 
 so, had the air of stopping only from motives of complaisance 
 and respect. Many of the speeches made on this occasion seem, 
 to the extent of three-lburths, to have been written by learned 
 men who ^vere opposed to the Roman episcopate. Scriptural 
 difficulties, historical difficulties, difficulties arising from the 
 theory of the orders, all is there ; then, all at once, the speaker 
 wheels right about and concludes — as one could hardly avoid 
 concluding in the presence of two hundred bishops. 
 
 This discussion led to a curious result, that of changing the 
 face of the old question of the divine right. The reader will re- 
 member how it began. It was in 15-16, at the time of the first 
 discussion on residence. ISTothing was contemplated in the first 
 instance beyond the determination of the nature of a bishop's ob- 
 ligation to residence. Was it an obligation of divine right, that 
 is to say, emanating immediately from God, or an obligation 
 of papal right, that is to say, emanating from the pope, universal 
 and only bishop, of whom all the rest, in this system, are only 
 the delegates and the vicars ? We have seen how the court of 
 Rome held to this last opinion, and how, in despair of having it 
 
CilAP. II. 1502. THi: POPEDOM— COMPLICATION. 369 
 
 proclaimed by the council, it had always contrived so to manage 
 that nothing should be decided on the subject. 
 
 In presence of the perilous difficulties which came to be started 
 on the very nature and the essence of the episcopal authority, the 
 question widened out and became complicated. It was not only 
 in its bearings on residence and the pope that people felt them- 
 selves obliged to discuss it. " Is it by divine right, or only by 
 ecclesiastical and pajial right, that the bishop is superior to the 
 priest?" Such was the problem which was to be agitated, only 
 to be finally left without solution, the last year of the council. 
 
 Had it been possible in this case to attack and to resolve but 
 the half, that, to wit, which concerns the inferiority of the priests, 
 the council might easily have come to an agreement. The 
 bishops of all countries, and of all parties, asked nothing better 
 than to have to return to their dioceses with this additional 
 buckler against the pretensions of their clergy. Not, however, 
 that even then, the question would have been absolutely without 
 thorns. If this superiority of bishops over priests be of divine 
 right, that is to say, willed, ordained, and instituted by God 
 himself — the silence of the Scripture becomes an argument of 
 such force, that it is almost impossible to get over it. 
 
 Nevertheless, we have no doubt that many would have been 
 bold enough to do so ; but the Roman party felt, that on the divine 
 right being once declared with regard to the inferior clcTgy, it 
 would become impossible not to declare it also with regard to the 
 pope. If the bishops possess anything whatever that does not 
 come from him, but directly from God, it can hardly any longer 
 be said, correctly, that they exist only by him. It was with this 
 feeling, then, that the Roman party again set themselves to have 
 the question set aside under this form, as they had so often before 
 set it aside under the other. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 (1562.) 
 
 DISCUSSION OF THE SUPREMACY OF THE POPE. DANGEROUS 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 The popedom — Thou art Peter — St. Peter in the New Testament — ^His- 
 tory — Writings — Is tradition more favourable — How the Fathers ex- 
 plained Thou art Peter — Whatever Peter may have been, is the pope 
 his successor — Chronological difficulties — What is required in order 
 to the testimony of the Fathers being conclusive — Irenaeus — The apos- 
 tolical co7istitutioiis — The Roman element — Internal difficulties — 
 How to link the chain — Independence of the Apostles and of all the 
 pastors established by them — The patriarchs — The right of conquest 
 no right — Contrast between the embarrassment of the Church's doc- 
 tors, and the hardihood of the popes — Gregory XVI. in 1832 — Some 
 facts — ^Nice — Carthage — Gregory I. 
 
 Already it had only been by dint of skilful management and 
 address that the council had succeeded in keeping the pope out 
 of sight in the first debates on the sacrament of orders. The 
 more, in fact, the members were at one in recognising him as, in 
 point of presidency and jurisdiction, supreme head of the Church, 
 the more were they puzzled, in the theoretical and sacramental 
 point of view, where to find a place and a rank for him. All the 
 reasons they had had for not making an eighth order of the Epis- 
 copate, might be urged for not making a ninth of the pope ; but, 
 on the other hajid, the superiority of the pope's spiritual powers 
 was so evident, at least in fact, that it would have been mani- 
 festly absurd to make him again no more than a priest, equal to 
 others in point of character, and superior merely as respects his 
 office. It was seen, although it was not avowed, that though 
 the administrative supremacy of the pope might dispense with 
 the testimony of the Scripture, his spiritual supremacy could not 
 but require to be precisely and formally indicated there, if not in 
 words, at least in facts, the sole unexceptionable commentary on 
 words. With the utmost possible willingness to leave him in 
 possession of all his rights, it was very difficult, little as people 
 set themselves to reason and search for proofs, not to feel that a 
 power of that importance must become doubtful, and more than 
 
riiAP. III. 1502. ST. I'ETER IN THE NEW TESTA.MENT. 871 
 
 doubtful, from the moment that it was found that there is not a 
 vestige of it in the New Testament. 
 
 Not a vestige, we say. "What then do we make of the famous 
 passage, " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my 
 Church ?" 
 
 What do we make of it ? Why, what we have over made, 
 and ever will make of all isolated passages which the Scripture 
 and scriptural facts have left in their isolation. 
 
 First of all, and this is very serious — it is only in one of the 
 Gospels, St. Matthew, that we read these words. "VYe by no 
 means, hence, conclude that they must be considered as apoci^- 
 phal ; but had they had originally the force and meaning at- 
 tached to them afterwards, who shall explain to us the omission 
 of them in the three other historians of Christ ? One thing alone 
 could make this omission, of which we think too little notice has 
 been taken, a little less extraordinary ; and that is, that these 
 three historians should have omitted the whole conversation in 
 which St. Matthew has introduced these words. But no ! turn 
 to St. Mark, the abridger of St. Matthew, who has copied from 
 him almost word for word, all that immediately precedes, and 
 all that follows. He omits only three or four lines, and those the 
 very lines in question. Turn to St. Luke, habitually so minute 
 in details, and you find him relate all the rest, yet he equally 
 omits them. Turn to St. John, who wrote after the other three, 
 and must have been a witness of the consequences that those 
 words behoved to have had, if they really had such consequences, 
 and him too we find not deeming them of such importance as 
 that they might not be omitted. Thus, let the Roman Catholic, 
 who after having seen it so often repeated in his church, could 
 not feel surprised were he to find it appear in twenty differertt 
 places in the New Testament, know, that he will find it there 
 only in one, although the mere course of the narratives called 
 for its being there at least in four. Let this, then, or any other 
 Roman Catholic, imagine himself engaged in writing a life of 
 Christ, and let him tell us if he would have forgotten these 
 words, and if he could understand how three out of four could 
 have agreed in forgetting them, and that, too, in relating the 
 very conversation that led to them. 
 
 In the second place, if there be a point where the authority 
 of tradition ought to go for nothing, in so far as not found to be 
 clearly based on Scripture, it is this. Here, in fact, we have 
 not to do with an idea, of which, as of some others, it may be 
 said, that Jesus Christ has been content to leave it to his Church, 
 as it were, in the germ, committing the care of its development 
 to human intelligence, aided bv the Holv Ghost. But we liave 
 
372 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 to do with a fact ; and a fact which might, and ought, if the 
 Apostles had admitted it, to have distinctly developed itself from 
 the veiy earliest days of the Church, and of which we are en- 
 titled to desire to have traces immediately after the Saviour's 
 death. 
 
 " All the Apostles," says Pallavicini, " were not the less sub- 
 ject to St. Peter — although such were their virtue and wisdom, 
 that hardly was there ever an occasion for his exercising this 
 jurisdiction." Hardly ever, i.s saying too much ; 7iot at all, is 
 what ought to be said, inasmuch as we see, in the whole history 
 of the Apostles, but one of their number that was ever reproved 
 by another, and the Apostle thus reproved is no other than St. 
 Peter. " I withstood him to the face,"' says St. Paul, " because 
 he was to be blamed." But let us leave these details ; the ques- 
 tion does not lie there. That Peter, supposing him to have been 
 head of the Church, should not, in fact, have had any occasion 
 to reprove, to punish, and to depose the Apostles, is very proba- 
 ble ; but it is evident that he must have had occasion every day 
 to intervene in the direction of their labours, in the establishment 
 of churches, pastors, and bishops, since so much is said to us 
 about bishops — in all those things in fine, in which the pope 
 maintains that he has a call from God to intervene. 
 
 Assuming this, take the book of the Acts, and ask yourselves, 
 but seriously, and as in God's presence, if that piece of writing 
 leaves you with the impression that Peter was the head of the 
 Church, that he considered himself as such, that his colleagues 
 recognised him as such. 
 
 In the first five or six chapters, it is true, we see him in the 
 first rank. On the day of Pentecost, it is he that makes a dis- 
 course to the people. Shortly after, immediately on the efiecting 
 of a miraculous cure, it is he, too, that addresses the crowd. It 
 is he, in fine, that pleads the cause of the infant church at the 
 bar of the magistracy. 
 
 Well, then, in these very chapters, we may challenge any one 
 to point to a phrase, or so much as a word, from which it can 
 be inferred that Peter exercised any supremacy whatever, or that 
 he did anything in virtue of some special office, peculiar to him- 
 self Such as we see him in the Gospels, even before his Master 
 addressed to him the words which have been so much abused, 
 such do we see him also here ; prompt to put himself forward, 
 prompt to speak, except that he had sometimes shown little ma- 
 turity in his ideas, whereas now, directed by the Holy Ghost, he 
 speaks as his Master would have spoken. Next, amid these de- 
 tails which, strictly speaking, might be reconciled Avith the fact 
 of !i certain superiority, we behold others which cannot be so 
 
Chap. III. 1502. ST. PETER AMONG HIS COLLEAGUES. '-^'6 
 
 reconciled Avitli it, and others still that arc positively contrai-y 
 to it. 
 
 First, then, all that Peter docs the other Apostles do, and that 
 without the slightest indication of direction or command on his 
 part. After having reported his iirst address, the historian says 
 that the faithful " continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrhie," 
 and every time he recurs to the union of the new brethren, it is 
 the Apostles in a body whom he represents as the heads of the 
 Church. In the cure wrought on the lame man, Peter, though 
 accompanied by John, seems to have acted alone, but it had 
 been said shortly before that many wonders and signs were done 
 by the Apostles.^ \Yas a successor to Judas to be elected ? It 
 is Peter that makes the proposal, but he does nothing more. He 
 ordains in no way whatever ; he says nothing that seems to come 
 from a man in a position to ordain. Nevertheless, he was not, 
 at that moment, alone with his old colleagues, to whom one 
 might imagine that he might possibly, from a kindly feeling, 
 avoid making a display of his authority ; above a hundred dis- 
 ciples were present. On the proposal being acceded to, is it he, 
 do we find, that is to name the person to be appointed ? Not at 
 all. He says nothing about him ; nobody mentions him. It is 
 the assembled believers that present two candidates, and it is 
 the lot that decides. Does Peter proceed at least to consecrate 
 his new colleague ? Of this the historian says nothing. " Mat- 
 thias teas numbered with the eleven Apostles." Are deacons to 
 be elected — a matter of great importance, for it was a new in- 
 stitution that was to be created — here Peter is not even named. 
 " Then the tivelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them 
 and said — the saying pleased the whole multitude — they chose 
 Stephen, Philip — whom they set before the Apostles — icho laid 
 their hands on them." Finally, when Peter, agreeably to divine 
 intimation, took it upon him to baptize a pagan without having 
 referred the matter to the Church, it was not only his colleagues, 
 but " the believers,"' the mere believers, " contended with him;" 
 
 * " Peter," says Bossuet on the Unity (of the Church), " appears the 
 fii'st in all thingd ; the first to make a confession of the faith — tlie first 
 that confirmed the faith by a miracle." llere the error is obvious. 
 The cure of the lame man in the Acts, occurs in the 3d chapter, and 
 it is in the second that mention is made of the miracles wrought by 
 the Apostles. The same remark applies to Bossuet's other assertion, 
 that l^eter was the first to confess the faith. He was, in point of fact, 
 the first to say, in reply to a question from the Saviour, " Thou art the 
 Christ, the Son of God;" but this does not imply that he was the first 
 to believe in the divinity of liis Master, if, indeed, it can be said that 
 any of them believed in it previous to Christ's resurrection, and the 
 sending of the Holy Ghost. 
 
374 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 and not only does he justify himself ^vith the air of a man who 
 thinks it quite natural that he should be asked to account for 
 what he had done, but his discourse contains no allusion to any 
 superiority of any kind. We could very well conceive that Peter, 
 even on the weightiest occasions, may have adopted a very differ- 
 ent tone from that which the popes were afterwards to assume ; 
 but not to utter a single word that could bear that meaning, 
 never to make a single appeal, or the slightest allusion, to a pri- 
 macy with which he must have believed himself to be invested 
 by a formal act of his Master's will ; this would amount to im- 
 probability, carried to a higher degree than had ever been 
 reached in any history. 
 
 "Had St. Peter," says De Maistre, " a distinct knowledge of 
 the extent of his prerogative ? I cannot tell." Such, let us re- 
 mark, is the pass to which one of the most ardent defenders of 
 the Holy See is reduced. The man who scatters his yes and 
 his no where everj^body before him had hesitated. " I cannot 
 tell," says he 1 It is perhaps the only confession of ignorance 
 that his book contains. What a confession then I And what 
 must not have been the cogency of the conviction that wrung it 
 from him I Thus you hear him say, we dare not affirm that the 
 very man to whom it w-as said, " Thou art Peter, and upon this 
 rock I will build my Church," saw, inspired though he was by 
 the Holy Spirit, in these words what his pretended successors 
 would fain see in them. 
 
 To historical improbability, let us now join that resulting from 
 the silence of the Apostles, comprising that of St. Peter himself, 
 in their writings. St. Paul says (Epistle to the Galatians) that 
 he went up to Jerusalem " to see Peter," " to confer Avith Peter," 
 a phrase marked by a strange simplicity, if it WQxe really in 
 order to receive orders from the Church's chief — it is Paul who, 
 in the same epistle, when speaking of another Journey to Jeru- 
 salem, names Peter after James ; it is Paul also, always in the 
 same epistle, who dares to write, " when Peter was come to 
 Antioch, I withstood him to the face." And how did he with- 
 stand him ? As an inferior who takes the liberty to make some 
 remarks ? We have already quoted his w-ords : he withstood him 
 to the face, "because Peter was to be blamed." And, a little 
 farther on, "When I saw that they (the Jews and Peter) walked 
 not uprightly, according to the truth of the Gospel, / said unto 
 Peter before them all,'' kc. Mark that this took ^AdLce fourteen 
 years after the journey to Jerusalem, that is to say, at an epoch 
 when Christians and Christian Churches were beginning to be 
 seen everywhere, and when St. Peter's primacy, were it even in 
 spite of himself, ought to have had a thousand occasions of being 
 
fii.vr. III. IJC.J. APOSTLES SAV NOTlllNU OF PETER'S PRIMACY. 375 
 
 overtly exercised ; mark, also, that the epistle from which this 
 is taken was itself written a lonf^ time after the Btay at Antioch, 
 and, which is still more signilicant, was written from Rome ; 
 Irom Rome where St. Peter, if ever he was there at all, must 
 necessarily have been then ; firom Rome, in fine, the Church's 
 centre, and the see of the Church's head. If then 8t. Paul be- 
 heved in the primacy of his colleag-ue, this epistle was not only 
 an act of rebellion against him, but a piece of actual perfidy to- 
 wards the Galatians, seeing that it left them entirely beyond the 
 pale of that Roman unity, beyond which, we are told, there is 
 no salvation, and prevented them from so much as suspecting 
 either the necessity or the existence of any supreme head of the 
 Church other than Jesus Christ. 
 
 And why speak we of the Galatians ? Not only the Gala- 
 tians, but the Corinthians, the Ephesians, the Thessalonians, the 
 Romans themselves, the faithful of all countries, in fine, have 
 been left by the authors of the epistles in ignorance on this point. 
 A¥hen there were so many dificrent Churches, threatened with 
 so many dangers, united by so many spiritual ties, but otherwise 
 so isolated, of so little account in the eyes of the world, so lost 
 in the immensity of the empire, is it possible that there could 
 be men, and men, too, inspired by God, that could have written 
 fifteen epistles without telling them, v/ithout reminding them, 
 at least, if they knew it, that God had given them a common 
 head I For it is a poor subterfuge to say, as is sometimes said, 
 " The thing was so universally known that it was needless to 
 mention it." The more you suppose it to have been universally 
 known and admitted — impossible though it be to maintain this 
 in the face of the words and the conduct of St. Paul — the more 
 will it be absurd to conceive that St. Paul, or St. John, or St. 
 James, or St. Peter himself, should never have made the slight- 
 est allusion to it. 
 
 Assuming this, it is clear that we need little disquiet our- 
 selves about what tradition may teach contrary to facts so potent 
 and so indisputable. Should St. Peter's primacy be found posi- 
 tively mentioned by authors of the second or of the first century, 
 still, with the epistles in our hand, we may pronounce those 
 authors mistaken. 
 
 But it so happens that more than four centuries had elapsed 
 before the words '• Thoic art Fctcr^ began to be generally in- 
 terpreted in the present Roman sense. Down till then, notwith- 
 standing the visible advances made by the idea that was finally 
 to carry all before it, the most widely difiused opinion Avas pre- 
 cisely that which has been adopted by the Protestants for the 
 explanation of these M'ords. " On this stone," savs Chrv'sos- 
 
376 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V 
 
 J 
 
 y 
 
 \o\Vi} " that is to say, on tJic faith of this confession, I will build 
 my Church. This confession is that which the Apostle made in 
 reply to that question of the Master, ' And what say ye that I 
 am ?' — ' Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,' was 
 St. Peter's answer." "Then," says St. Ambrose,^ "the Lord re- 
 plies to him : On this stone I will build my Church, that is to 
 say, on this confession of the universal faith I build the faithful 
 that they may have life." " What," says St. Augustine,-^ " is 
 the meaning of this saying of Jesus Christ ? It is this : I will 
 J build my Church on this faith, on what has just been said, to 
 
 ^ wit, Thou art the Christ, the So?i of the living God.'' And 
 
 elsewhere,"^ " On this rock which thou hast confessed, I will 
 
 y build my Church ; for the rock was Christ." " It was Christ," 
 
 -^ savs St. Jerome also.-^ Christ or his vicar, we shall be told. 
 Yes, it is thus indeed that the matter is arranged at the present 
 day, but it will ever remain not the less true that these two 
 Fathers do not say so, and that at the moment when, if ever, they 
 might have been expected to express themselves distinctly. What- 
 ever leaning they, in common with the age in which they lived, 
 might have had for Roman centralization, they were still far 
 from regarding it as founded on a command emanating from 
 God ; the idea of a certain preference accorded to St. Peter, did 
 not yet carry along with it in their minds that of a real, per- 
 manent, transmissible supremacy. Hence those contradictions, 
 those incoherences, which behoved to disappear on the system 
 being once regularly established, but which sufficiently prove 
 how far that still was from being the case. Origen, for example, 
 after having said somewhere that the rock is St. Peter, says not 
 the less at another place, ^ " The rock, that is, every disciple of 
 Christ. Is it not for all the Apostles, for each of them that he 
 has said, ' Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my 
 Church ?'" Here then we have only in a more practical form 
 the explanation given by Jerome and Augustine. The rock, 
 that is, the confession of faith made by Peter, and every believer 
 w^ho shall make the same confession with him, may apply to 
 himself the saying of which he had, as it were, the hrst fruits on 
 this occasion. 
 
 Thus, whatever meaning may be given to these words, it still 
 remains to be proved that it was Rome, that it was the pope, 
 
 * Fifty-fifth Homily on Matthew xiii. 
 - On the 2d chapter to the Ephesians. 
 
 ^ On the 1st Epistle of St. John. * On the Gospel of St. John. 
 
 * Commentaiy on St. Matthew. Sec also C}-^! on the Trinity, 1. iv. 
 Hihary on the Trinity, 1. ii. and iv. Basil of Seleucia's Homily on St. 
 Matthew, ttf. ' '• Commentarv on St. Matthew. 
 
Chap. III. ir)02. CHRONOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES. :{77 
 
 that Avas excln.?ively called to reap the Ijeuclit oi' them. "VYere 
 it denioiistrated that JSt. Tctcr was the head ot'the Church, still 
 the Roman question, jDioperly so called, would not thereby have 
 been the more advanced, or made the clearer. 
 
 First of all, how shall we dispose of chronological difficulties ? 
 We do not insist that the quarter of a century assigned by tradi- 
 tion to the episcopate of St. Peter shall be proved to us to a day, 
 to a year, to about two years ; but, indeed, make the calculation 
 in what manner you please, it is not two, or four, or ten years 
 that are wanting ; one knows not Avhere to find a single year 
 that could have seen that Apostle at the head of the faithful in 
 Rome. Tradition places his death, as well as that of St Paul, 
 in the year 66. Now, the book of the Acts shews him to have 
 been at Jerusalem, at Ca3sarea, at Antioch, until the year 51 or 
 52. Thus, already we have but fourteen or fifteen years left 
 over. AYere these fourteen or fifteen years passed in Rome ? 
 In the year 57 or 58 St. Paul writes the epistle to the Romans, 
 ihe longest of his epistles, and not a remembrance, not an allu- 
 sion, not a word is there for the alleged founder and head of the 
 Church to which he writes. Nay more, he who at the close of ^^ 
 his letters salutes ordinarily no more than five or six persons, 
 and often not so many, on this occasion salutes twenty-seven. 
 And Peter is not among them. In the year 62 or 63, he writes 
 from Rome to the churches of Philippi, Ephesus, and Colosse ; 
 he gives them a multiplicity of details about what he has seen 
 and heard, yet not a word about Peter. In 66, the very year 
 of his death, again he whites from Rome to Timothy. He tells 
 him his position, his isolation, his suflbrings. " All men for- 
 sook me," says he, " except Onesiphorus." "Where, then, was 
 Peter ? 
 
 Before these arguments of facts, of figures, what can tradition 
 avail, even supposing it to be as clear and constant as we have 
 seen that it is vague and variable ? Is it not a problem to ex- 
 plain how there could have arisen, unless from a total forgetful- 
 ness of the New Testament, the idea of Peter's episcopacy at 
 Rome ? Is it not also a problem, and a very sad problem withal, 
 to conceive how there should be men who know these details as 
 well as we, and w^ho not the less persist in placing at the foun- 
 dation of Roman Catholic unity, this old and eternal lie which 
 they are sensible falls to dust hi their hands ? 
 
 And now, that we may not altogether pass over a point which 
 the preceding remarks, nevertheless, would authorize our setting 
 aside, is tradition, as we have expressed it, at least clear and 
 constant ? 
 
 We might take one by one all the passages in the Fathers 
 
 ^ 
 
378 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 which are adduced in favour of the popedom, and we might 
 shew that there is not one of them positive enough to be of any- 
 serious avail in a question where the matter at issue is to prove 
 at once the law and the fact. Let a single passage be pointed 
 out to us, not where something is vaguely said about the privi- 
 leges of St. Peter, of the rights of the bishop of Rome, but where 
 it is positively said — 
 
 That St. Peter was the supreme head of the Church ; 
 
 That the other Apostles were subject to him ; 
 
 That all his rights have passed to his successors ; 
 
 That the pope is thus the sole legitimate source of all the 
 spiritual powers exercised in the Church ; 
 
 And then, then only will the subject be worth discussing. 
 Are we asking too much ? The antiquity of this fact, now held 
 as incontrovertible in all the pages of all the Roman books that 
 have been written for the last thousand years, so impossible is it 
 from the moment of its being admitted, not to speak of it at 
 ev^ery turn — the antiquity of this fact some would fain we should 
 consider as proved by a ifew lines of a Father who, in works fill- 
 ing ten volumes, shall have two or three times said something 
 approaching it I But we have only to open those Fathers to find 
 passages in which it is utterly inconceivable that they should 
 not have spoken of the pope, had they believed in him ; and for 
 one w^ord from which people hazard the inference that they be- 
 lieved in him, we should find a hundred which we might defy a 
 Roman Catholic to be able to v/rite at the present day without 
 ceasing to be regarded as a Roman Catholic. 
 
 So much for the Fathers of the third and the fourth centuries ; 
 what then may we expect to find in those of the second and the 
 first ? In the second, we have Irenaius. He admits, no doubt, 
 a journey made by Peter to Rome, a journey which might in 
 fact have taken place, although it is far from likely, in the course 
 of one of those years in which we cannot precisely determine 
 where that Apostle was ; he makes him concur with St. Paul 
 in the founding of the Church of that city ; but it is neither he 
 nor St. Paul, it is Linus, the second bishop of Rome, according 
 to present tradition, whom he names as having been the first. 
 It is to Linus also that the Ajwstolic co7istitutions^ give this 
 title, and what is still more convincing, they represent him as 
 having been installed by St. Paul. In the first century we find 
 Clemens Romanus, the third or the fourth of the popes.^ In 
 
 » Book vii. 46. 
 
 ' The Apostolic Constitutions were long attributed to him. It is now 
 admitted that they belong to the 4th centur}-, with posterior intercala- 
 tions, which renders the omission of St. Pe'tei-'s pontificate still more 
 striking. 
 
Chap. 111. l^OJ. DIFFICULTIES IN THE ROMAN POINT OF VIEW. 379 
 
 Jiis epi.slle to the Coriutliian.s he speaks of St. Peter as having 
 died 111 llio west, but he does not say that it was at Rome ; an 
 omission ahogether inexphcable, had it been the general opinion 
 that he died there. But does he not speak of him at least as 
 having been bi.shop of Rome ? No. As supreme head of the 
 Church ? No. Does he, the bishop of Rome, represent himself 
 as his successor ? No. He puts at the head of his letter, " The 
 Church of God which is at Rome to the Church of God which 
 is at Corinth." Like St. Paul, he confounds bishaj) and 2)/Tsb'f/- 
 ter ; he puts the episcojd in the first rank and the deacons in 
 the second. A strange pope indeed I Nevertheless, this is the 
 very epistle which, as we have said, was very nearly inserted 
 afterwards in the New Testament. What would the popes have 
 made of it ? Alas I they would have done the same with it as 
 they have done with those of St. Paul and St. Peter. Not the less 
 would they have been popes ; not the less haughtily would they 
 have trumpeted the primacy, the popedom of St. Peter, and all 
 the consequences they have drawn from it. Once engaged in a 
 false course, of what moment is a little more or a little less ? 
 
 It was not this, then, to return to our council, that proved the 
 worst cause of embarrassment to the doctors of Trent. Never 
 departing from the Roman Catholic point of view, they found no 
 difficulty in keeping themselves easy with respect to the Prot- 
 estant objections, even though, like many of those we have 
 stated, they had all the eloquence of figures. Other difficulties, 
 all the more untoward, in that there was nothing Protestant about 
 them, risked intruding themselves into the discussion. 
 
 See, then, the pope, head of the Church, exclusive source of 
 all spiritual powers, &c. If such he be at the present day, he 
 must necessarily have been so, in point of lawful title at least, 
 since immediately after the death of Jesus Christ. Looking 
 back to that period, what are we to make of the other Apostles ? 
 
 Let us accept, as fully as you please, the pre-eminence of 
 Peter ; still you cannot get rid of two facts which obstinately 
 refuse to bend to the Roman system — one, that the colleagues of 
 Peter received from Jesus Christ, like him and at the same time 
 with him, their authority and their commission ; the other, that 
 they acted constantly, in the sequel, as persons entirely free to 
 transmit that authority and commission from tliemselves to 
 whomsoever they might deem fit. Paul laid his hands on 
 Timothy ; Timothy laid his hands on a number of pastors, of 
 bishops, to adopt the language of Rome ; and in all the instruc- 
 tions given by Paul on that subject there docs not appear to 
 have been any question about establishing, or maintaining, any 
 bond wliatever between those pastors and a supreme head. 
 
380 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 Now, in whatever manner the relevancy of these two facts 
 may be sought to be lessened, they have a mighty bearing on the 
 point at issue. If there could exist, it matters not when, a sin- 
 gle generation of legitimate pastors independent of St. Peter, the 
 E-oman chain is broken. Although it should be successfully 
 proved that in the next following generation, Peter, or his suc- 
 cessor, had become the centre, still we should be authorized to 
 see in him only a head in fact, not in right, and to view the 
 popedom only as an institution more or less useful in regard 
 to miity, not as an institution necessary for the transmission of 
 powers. Mark what Luther said at an epoch when he still pro- 
 claimed, as loudly as any, the necessity of there being a supreme 
 head of the Church — " The bishop of Rome is above all by his 
 dignity. To him we must address ourselves in all cases of diffi- 
 culty. Yet I admit that I knoio not lioio I coidd defend 
 against the Greeks the supremacy that 1 concede to him."^ 
 
 But Luther, perhaps, without being aware of it, was already 
 detached from that unity which he still preached, and this may 
 have magnified to his eyes the objections to it. Let us turn, 
 then, from the man of the sixteenth to the man of the third cen- 
 tury, Origen — " If you believe that God has built his Chr.-.ch on 
 . Peter, and on Peter alone, what will you make of John, the son 
 
 ^ of thunder, and of each of the other ten Apostles ? AYas it not 
 for the Apostles, for each of them, that it was said, ' The gates 
 of hell shall not prevail against it ;' and again — ' Upon this 
 rock I will build my Church ?' "- It is curious that the iloman 
 Church forces us to go to the Fathers to confront her out of them 
 more surely, with objections which we should find quite as well 
 in the Apostles themselves. Origen's idea is no other than that 
 of St. Paul, when writing to the Ephesians — " Ye are built tipmi 
 the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets." There is no- 
 thing even in the Apocalypse, where we do not approve in gen- 
 ral of dogmas being looked for, that does not here come to our 
 support. AYhat are we to conclude respecting those " twelve 
 foundations, and in them the names of the twelve Apostles of 
 the Lamb ?" How can we imagine that this could have been 
 written, even in the allegory, by one who believed in that high 
 primacy of" one of the twelve ? 
 
 We have said accordingly : let there have been but a single 
 generation of bishops, legitimate, though independent of St. Pe- 
 ter, and the chain is broken. But have we but one generation 
 to appeal to ? Who will shew us in the second, or in the third 
 , century, a single trace of the intervention of the pope in the or- 
 
 ^ dination of bishops ? What astonishment, what profound stupe- 
 * Letter to Dungersheim, 1519. - Commentary on St. Matthe^v. 
 
Chap. III. 1562. CO-EXISTENCE OF PATRIARCHS AND THE POPE. 381 
 
 faction, would have seized the believers of Jerusalem, Ephesus, 
 and Antioch, had any one bethought himself of telling them at 
 that epoch that their bishops were usurpers and intruders, seeing 
 that they had not derived their powers from Rome I Four or 
 five centuries later, in the west, in Italy itself, amid all those 
 waves which were impelled by the same wind towards Rome, 
 Churches still were found that, like islands, opposed that im- 
 mense current. It is only in the tenth century that we find 
 that of Milan submit definitively to the papal supremacy. Less 
 than one hundred years before that, Roboald, bishop of Aloa, 
 when consulted on the subject of the archbishop, replied that Jte 
 ivoidd rather Imve his nose sjjlit tip to Ids eycs^ than advise 
 him to submit. 
 
 The Roman Church has even been obliged to make some con- 
 cessions in this respect, and little as the consequences have been 
 pressed, they would lead far enough. It gives the title of patri- 
 archs, with certain special honours, to the bishops who occupy, 
 or are understood to occujiy, the seats of St. Peter's colleagues. 
 We must refer the reader to Hurter^ for the long tentative etibrts 
 by which Romanists have come at length to explain, for better 
 or worse, by evading what seemed too stubborn to bend to their 
 purposes, the co-existence of patriachs and the pope, of a supreme 
 head and of primitively independent heads, and whose position 
 cannot, in point of right, have undergone any change. In the 
 actual state of things, as the patriarchs are all either beyond the 
 paie of the Roman Church, or mere archbishops appointed by 
 the pope, this system presents no serious inconveniences to the 
 central authority ; all that it costs is the putting upon the altar, 
 when the pope officiates pontifically, a lofty tiara surrounded by 
 five mitres, as emblematical of the popedom amid the patri- 
 archates. But if, without keeping ourselves to things as they 
 are, we were to ask ourselves what they might be, to what re- 
 sults might we not come ? That each of the Apostles had been 
 established in a town ; that that town had been governed ever 
 since by an uninterrupted succession of bishops, successors of the 
 first — so that we should have eleven patriarchs, eleven bishops 
 warranted to beheve themselves as independent of the bishop of 
 Rome as the eleven Apostles were of Peter ; eleven bishops, con- 
 sequently, entitled to ordain other bishops, to establish bishop- 
 ricks, to exercise, in fine, each in his own sphere, the plentitude 
 
 ^ Quod prius sustineret nasum suum scindi usque ad oculos. Ughelli, 
 Italia sacra. 
 
 ^ Institutions of the Cliurch, ch. v. The veiy name of pope, long 
 given to a certain number of bishops, became official only under Leo I., 
 and exclusive under Gregory VII. towards the year 1080. 
 
382 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT Book V. 
 
 of the present papal power. Here, then, ■we have the pope no 
 more than primus inter j^cl^'cs, and if other dioceses should at 
 all comprise, as might also have happened, a country of some 
 extent — one France, another Spain, another Germany, and so 
 on — Avhat would there have remained for the diocese of St. 
 Peter ? 
 
 All this is not the case, but all this is possible, and when we 
 come to speak of right, possibiUty suffices. If the bishop of 
 Rome could once have risked being, and remaining, merely the 
 bishop of Rome or of Italy, his quality of universal bishop is a 
 bare fact which does not prove the right. The Church, let us 
 assume, may have had the power, if she had the will, to concede 
 to him a certain universal jurisdiction ; but in point of divine 
 right, he is only a bishop, or at the most only a patriarch like 
 another. 
 
 We see the patriarchal see of Constantinople, erected so long 
 after the other three, ^ obtain almost immediately the pre-emi- 
 nence, and this, says the Roman Catechism, because Constan- 
 tinople became the seat of the empire. That of Jerusalem, on 
 the contrary, which might have preferred so many claims to be 
 considered as the first, was reputed the fourth. AYhy ? Because 
 Jerusalem was, politically, the least considerable of the four cities. 
 Thus Rome herself makes the admission ; it was for reasons pure- 
 ly human that the second capital of the empire saw her bishop 
 become the second of the Christian world. The same motives, 
 therefore, might have sufficed for raising to the first rank that of 
 the first capital, and the conquest of the Roman empire by the 
 popes no better proved their right to possess it than the forma- 
 tion itself of that empire proved the right of the ancient Romans 
 to be the masters of the world. A conquest made in what man- 
 ner you please, is but a fact. The question of right remains the 
 same after as before. It is 'for the same reason that we leave 
 untouched, and that wdthout any injustice, the services which 
 the popedom may have rendered to Christianity and to Europe. 
 Even were there no shade to mar the picture that is presented 
 to us, the theological and the moral question is not thereby ad- 
 vanced. Every despotism has necessarily some happy results ; 
 peace, order, progress in the arts and literature, have not, within 
 certain hmits, a surer basis to rest upon. Never was France 
 more peaceable internally than under the reign of the man who 
 had said — " The state, that is myself" Shall this be held a 
 proof that he had the logical right to say so? " The Church, 
 that is myself," said the popedom. The benefits it has con- 
 ferred, Avere they incontestable, would not, therefore, prove that 
 * Alexandria, Antioch, and JeruGalem. 
 
Chap. III. 150;!. I'UINCIPLES BROUGHT OUT IN THE DISCUSSION. 383 
 
 it was ill the right, and it is only by a sophism that the discus- 
 sion can in our days be transferred to that ground.^ 
 
 Such was, in fact, the conclusion at which, in the discussions 
 of the council, all those divines or prelates arrived who sought 
 for reasons rather than words, and were bold enough to utter 
 them Avhen found. We could wish that the leading speeches 
 delivered on this occasion were in the hands of every honest and 
 reflective Roman Catholic ; we could hand them over to him 
 with the utmost confidence, without altering a word, and add- 
 ing nothing but an invitation to deduce the consequences that 
 flow from them. Not that they do not further involve more 
 than one principle which Ave should have to contest, seeing that 
 it was in the interests of the bishops, not of religious liberty, that 
 the speakers talked of abasing the pope ; but, putting all things 
 together, we should not let these much disquiet us. The pope 
 once given up, what would become of the rest ? and notwith- 
 standing all their protestations to the contrary, those certainly 
 did give him up, who, at Trent, made the speeches of which our 
 objections are almost an analysis and an abstract. 
 
 With regard to the harsh truths which came out in the course 
 of this debate, it would be curious to confront them with the as- 
 sertions of the popes, when, sioeaking without control, they trace 
 the bold picture of their rights. We should not go in search of 
 the raving tirades of a Gregory YIL, a Boniface YllL, a Paul IV., 
 or a Sixtus V. ; the most moderate bulls would suffice for our 
 purjDose. " Let all remember," it is said in the Encyclical Let- 
 ter of 1832, "that it is to the Roman pontifi^ that there has 
 been given by Jesus Christ the full power of feeding, directing, 
 and governing the Church, as has been declared by the Fathers 
 of the council of Florence." The Fathers of Florence ! Why, 
 then, not those of Trent, whom you are so fond of quoting, and 
 
 ^ De Maistre indirectl}' admits this. " The French," says he, " have 
 had, thanks to Charlemagne, the honoiu' of constituting, humanly speak- 
 ing, the Catholic Church in the world, by raising its head to a rank — 
 without which he would have been no better than a patriarch of Con- 
 stantinople, the pitiable sport of Christian sultans." Is not this saying 
 clearly enough, that if the popes had not become kings of Rome, the 
 sovereigns would not have seen in them anything more tlian patriarchs? 
 Is not this tantamount to saying a little less clearly, that previous to 
 that, they were nothing else? Let us agree with him al.=o in what he 
 says of Charlemagne, for we are aware there are some who will abso- 
 lutely have it that Rome was given to the popes by Constantine, the 
 first of the Christian emperors. Although Ariosto sets down this do- 
 nation as among the number of falsehoods which Astolphe found in the 
 moon, witli tlie prayers of the wicked, lovers' sighs, <tc. — so many his- 
 torical lies are brought into credit again that we must not be too san- 
 guine in thinking that we have done with them in this case. 
 
S84 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 who, in fact, are quoted some lines farther on, upon the question 
 of the infallibility of the Church ? Wh3^ because at Florence, 
 under the pope's dictation, the matter had passed without dis- 
 cussion ; whereas, at Trent, where discussion was ventured upon, 
 the popedom was quite happy at the members being so compla- 
 cent as to say nothing about it at all. Yes, Roman Catholics, 
 not a word I The very man who is pointed out to you as at 
 the summit of the hierarchy, the Council of Trent, in the course 
 of a long decree on the hierarchy, has not found the opportunity 
 of naming. You might read that decree from beginning to end 
 without ever suspecting that there was a pope in the world. 
 Of the eight canons that follow, you might read seven without 
 any more suspicion on the subject ; then, quite at the end, you 
 would find one condemning the opinion that bishops named by 
 the pope are not legitimate bishops ; but even there it is not said 
 that they are the only legitimate bishops. 
 
 How are we to reconcile this excessive moderation with the 
 warmth of indignation which seized the assembly one day be- 
 cause a Spanish bishop, Avosmediano, had advanced that the 
 intervention ol" the pope in the institution of bishops is not abso- 
 lutely necessary ? " Some prelates," says Pallavicini,^ " with 
 an imprudent or affected zeal, exclaimed, ' Turn him out I' Oth- 
 ers went so far as to exclaim. Anathema I Like insults resounded 
 on all sides ; others again tried to prevent his being heard by 
 shuffling with their feet or hissing." Had he had less reason on 
 his side, would there have been such a noise ? He would have 
 done better indeed, to say the truth, not to have stated that the 
 Archbishop of Saltzburg named and instituted his four suffra- 
 gans, for one could reply that it was in virtue of a concession on 
 the part of the pope ; but what answer could be made to all he 
 urged before he had referred to that ? He had said that the 
 Chrysostoms, the Augustines, the Ambroses, had not been insti- 
 tuted by the pope ; he had said that the canons of Nice, in 
 regulating what related to the institution of bishops, make no 
 mention of the pope. If this was true, why make a tumult ? 
 If false, why not decree the contrary ? 
 
 But Avosmediano was not alone. Guerrero, Archbishop of 
 Grenada, declared that all bishops, including the pope, are 
 equal and brethren, and that the sole veritable inequality exist- 
 ing among them is an inequality of jurisdiction, an ecclesiastical 
 and human inequality. In support of this view he quoted 
 a large enough number of the writings of the first ages of tho 
 Church, where not only do popes give to mere bishops the name 
 of brethren^ which might, strictly speaking, be from pohteness 
 
 * Book xix. ch. v. 
 
Chap. 111. IjCQ. ARClIIllSIIOP OF GRENADA'S TAUNTS. S85 
 
 only, but wlicre bishops thcmselve.s atldrcr^sed the bishop of 
 Rome as tlieir brother and colleague. He shewed that even at 
 the epoch when the pope began to be generally recognised as 
 head of the Church, the bishops still spoke to him only as an ad- 
 ministrative and hierarchical head, not at all as a man from 
 whom they could have believed that they held their authority ; 
 witness Augustine, who in his epistles treats Popes Innocent I. 
 and Boniface I.^ as colleagues ; witness Jerome also, writing to 
 Evagrius, that whatever be the place where a man is a bishop, 
 whether at Rome or at Eugubium, at Constantinople or at 
 Rhegium, each bishop has the same merit and tlie same priest- 
 hood, and all are successors of the Apostles. The archbishop 
 made those especially the objects of his raillery who had said 
 that no doubt the Apostles had been made bishops by Jesus 
 Christ, but that Peter alone had had the right bestowed on him 
 of making others ; he asked them if they had never then read 
 the book of the Acts. He made very merry also with those who 
 alleged that the Apostles, before setting themselves to the work 
 of the ministry, had had themselves ordained bishops by their 
 colleague ; which, nevertheless, is the only explanation whereby 
 to escape from the alternative of having either twelve popes or 
 none. He adverted, in fine, to the famous letter of Pope Greg- 
 ory I., to John, bishop of Constantinople, who allected the title 
 of universal bishop, "Have you come to this," wrote that pope 
 to him, " that, despising your brethren, you desire to be called 
 the only bishop I" " Let your holiness acknowledge," he went 
 on to say, " how you puii' yourself up with pride when you af- 
 fect being called by a name which no one ever pretended to who 
 was truly holy. No doubt, as your fraternity knows, the pon- 
 tifls of this apostolical see which I fill, have received as a mark 
 of honour, from the venerable council of Chalcedon, the title of 
 universal bishops. And yet not one of them wished to be called 
 by that name ; none of them took to himself that rash qualifica- 
 tion, for fear lest, should he arrogate to himself in the episcopal 
 
 ^ Hoc etiam fratrl et consacerdoti nostro Bonifacio, vel aliis earum 
 partium epi.scopis, pro confirmando isto canone, innotescat. (Council 
 of Cai'thage, 419.) This passage has often been adduced in favour of 
 the popedom ; it only bears more powerfully against it. Are \\c lold 
 that the Carthaginian Fathers here recognise the primacy of the popef 
 True, but in this they call him brother and colleague, •which absolutely 
 excludes the idea of a primacy such as Eomanists would have had it to 
 be since. They ask from him the confirmation of their canons, it is 
 added. By no means, but of one of their canons, the forty-seventh, 
 where the" question relates to the apocry]>hal books. (See above, 
 b. ii.) In fine, is it addressed to him alone? Xo. It is not even to 
 him and some other bis^hops, but to him or to some others. 
 
 R 
 
386 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V, 
 
 dignity the glory of being unique, he might seem to refuse it 
 to all his brethren.'" 1 There is no end to the conclusions to be 
 drawn from this curious piece. Conclusions from the words : it 
 is a pope who uses the expression your holiness in addressing a 
 bishop ; it is a pope who says to him, " despising thy brethren^' 
 a proof of the equality of bishops, including that of Rome, for it 
 is clear that if any one insults you, and you complain to him 
 that he has despised his brethrc7i, you do not look on yourself 
 as essentially superior to him. Conclusions from the facts : 
 when was it that the title in question was given to the popes ? 
 At the council of Chalcedon, in the middle of the fifth century. 
 How was it given to them ? as a matter of right ? No ; as a 
 mark of honour. Did they accept it ? No one, down to Greg- 
 ory L, that is, doM'n to the close of the sixth century, would con- 
 sent to take it. And why ? Because it was a rash qualifica- 
 tion. Accordingly, it was not only in its literal signification, but 
 even as an honorific formula that it was rejected by Gregory 1. 
 If he blames Bishop John, it is not for having taken it away 
 from him. Bishop of E.ome though he was, but for reasons drawn 
 from the nature itself of that title. Thus, whatever the preten- 
 sions of the See of Rome were even at that early epoch, it is 
 evident that the man that could have traced those lines, con- 
 sidered himself as neither universal bishop, nor as the source of 
 the authority of the bishops. 
 
 ^ Ad hoc perductus es ut, despectis fratribus, episeopus appetas solus 
 vocari. A'estra autem Banctitas agnoscat quantum apud se tumeat, 
 qure illo nomine vocari appetit, quo vocari nullus prsesumpsit qui ve- 
 raeiter sanctus fuit. Isumquid non, sicut vestra fraternitas novit, per 
 venerandum Chaleedonense concilium hujus apostolicse sedis antistites 
 universales, oblato honore, vocati sunt. Sed tamen nullus unquam tali 
 vocabulo appellari voluit, nullus sibi hoc teraerarium nomen arripuit, 
 ne si sibi in pontificatiis gradu gloriam singularitatis arriperet, hanc 
 omnibus fratribus denegasse yideretur. 
 
CHAPTER lY. 
 
 (1562.) 
 
 THE POPE EVERYTHING OR NOTHING. ULTRAMONTANISM AND 
 
 GALLICANISM. 
 
 The pope is necessarily all, or nothing — Pangs of the Roman party — 
 The vote is taken but the discussion continues — It comes upon the 
 ground of the authority of the council — The perilous position of things 
 becomes more and more evident — All the objections reach farther 
 than is thought desirable by those even who make them — The cause 
 is committed to Lainez — His speech — The Church is essentially sub- 
 ject — It was to Peter alone that it was said, "Feed my sheep"' — Ab- 
 solute ultramontanism — A Roman Catholic has logically no reply to 
 make — Irritation increases — Complaints of the bishop of Paris — The 
 French of that time, and those of the present day. 
 
 Such then were the memorials of the past which those who 
 desired to have the superiority of bishops to priests declared to 
 be of divine right, were not afraid to evoke in the midst of the 
 council. We have said already, that this opinion in itself was 
 not displeasing to the ultramontanists. They dreaded it only in 
 view of the consequences that flowed from it, and the arguments 
 to which recourse was had might suffice to shew them its full 
 bearing. Farther doubt was impossible ; to arm the episcopate 
 with the divine right as respected mere priests, would be to arm 
 them with it as respected the pope. 
 
 There was kept, therefore, perpetually suspended, like a sword 
 above the assembly, this alarming consequence, which the Span- 
 iards themselves, no more than the Gallicans, proposed to de- 
 duce in all its rigour, but at which they, like the others, would 
 have shuddered had they better understood the results to which 
 it might lead. Logically there is no middle point ; the pope is 
 everything,^ or nothing ; the keystone of the arch, or a stone 
 which has no more importance of itself than any other ; the sole 
 universal bishop, or a mere bishop accidentally elevated to the 
 presidence of the episcopal body, and whom the Church might 
 either replace by another, or reduce to the common level with- 
 out even replacing him. However great the danger might be, 
 the legates and their adherents, who saw it best, had not even 
 ' ""Without the pope there is no Christianity." — De M.mstre. 
 
388 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 the resource left them of converting it into an argument ; for it 
 was necessary that they should provide for the case of there being 
 a majority, notwithstanding all they might sa}'-, in favour of the 
 divine right of bishops, and they had to guard against depriving 
 themselves beforehand of the means of attenuating the bearing 
 of that vote to the utmost extent possible. Had they exclaimed 
 with an excess of zeal and alarm that it would be tantamount to 
 voting the ruin of the hierarchy and the Church, what, in the 
 event of that being voted, could they have replied to the heretics 
 who might take advantage of it as involving such a result ? It 
 was only in secret, therefore, and with many precautions, that 
 they represented to the waverers the frightful mischief they 
 would do were they to join the Spaniards. Next, as they did 
 not venture as yet to reckon on a respectable majority, they tried 
 to prevent the voting from taking place. " The Confession of 
 Augsburg," it was said, " was silent on the point ; what good 
 purpose did it serve to defend what was not attacked ?" It was 
 replied, that though the Confession of Augsburg did not not treat 
 the matter dogmatically, it decided it sufficienfly in point of fact, 
 seeing that it did not acknowledge either the pope or the bishops 
 of the pope ; that there was in this, therefore, very really in the 
 eyes of Roman Catholics, an error which the council could not 
 avoid condemning. Thus the subterfuge proving of no avail, 
 they had to submit to the questions being voted upon. 
 
 The vote did therefore take place, in order to give precision 
 to the question, on the adjunction of the M'ords dc jure divino in 
 the decree, where it is said that bishops are superior to priests. 
 Fiftv-four voices were aiven for and a hundred and twentv-seven 
 against. Is it true, as Sarpi affirms, that a certain number of 
 the bishops who were partisans of the divine right, not daring 
 to vote according to their conscience, and not wishing to vote 
 against it, staid away ? Pallavicini says no ; but a letter from 
 Visconti to Cardinal Borromeo positively attests it, and Payva,^ 
 makes the number of prelates at this time attending the council 
 amount to two hundred and thirty. There were about fifty, 
 then, who did not vote at all. Certain it is that the legates 
 durst not avail themselves of this vote as a ground for stopping 
 discussion. We see it recommence the day following, and the 
 more the dispute waxed in fierceness the more was it forgotten 
 that the heretics would take advantage of all the admissions 
 made on both sides. 
 
 Hence it was that, in one of the last sittings, the Polonese 
 Zeschowid, Bishop of Segna, was not afraid to transfer the ques- 
 tion to the ever perilous ground of the constitution and authority 
 
 * Defense dn Coneile de Trente, 1. 1. 
 
Chap. IV. 1502. SPEECH OF THE BISHOP OP SEOiNA. S89 
 
 of the council. " 11' llie authority of the bishops," said he, "does 
 not proceed from God, what can that of an assemblage of bishops 
 amount to ? An assembly, however numerous, can derive its 
 authority only from the same source from which the members 
 themselves derive theirs. If each of us be nothing but what 
 the jDope makes us, the council is nothing but what he makes 
 it, and our authority sinks to the level of a body of doctors pro- 
 nouncing, but not infallibly, on the questions submitted to them. 
 This assuredly is not the idea of the council, that the nations 
 and kings that have been urgently calling for it had formed to 
 themselves. As for myself," said he, " had 1 not had the con- 
 viction that we should be here with the sanction of God and of 
 the Holy Ghost, never should I have come to Trent. Since there 
 possibly may come to be, what I never suspected, uncertainties 
 with respect to the nature of our authority as council, from the 
 first, what Christendom, what we ourselves, ought to believe 
 and to teach upon this point ? In secular law proceedings, from 
 the moment that there is the slightest doubt with respect to the 
 competence of the tribunal, does it not begin by examining that 
 question itself, and by declaring in virtue of what sanction, its 
 judgment will be pronounced ?" 
 
 The Bishop of Segna very well knew why this had not been 
 done, and what where the hindrances opposed to its ever bein"- 
 done. As for his argimients, we heartily agree with them, but 
 with this remark with regard to them as well as those of all the 
 prelates of the opposition, that they went a great deal farther 
 than he had the appearance of believing, " If each bishop," 
 said he, " derives authority only from the pope, then no more will 
 an assembly of bishops derive theirs from any other source." 
 What, .then, would have been his reply, if, pursuing the same 
 line of argument, but giving it a ditierent application, it had 
 been said to him, " Each bishop is fallible ; an assembly of 
 bishops, therefore, cannot be infalhble ?" 
 
 This speech efiectually opened all eyes to the perils of the 
 situation. Many of the leading partisans of the divine right 
 began to be seriously alarmed at the consequences that might 
 result from a dispute which nobody knew how to bring to a 
 close. 
 
 The ullramontanists were confounded. AVhat was now to be 
 done ? To rai.se the cry of heresy I But those same Spaniards 
 had shewn themselves, in all questions relating to doctrine, the 
 stiffest defenders of Romanism. They had repeatedly held firm 
 when the pope himself luul been disposed to yield ; they were, 
 moreover, the representatives of the only prince who had as yet 
 made no concession to heretics. Should they proceed to vote ? 
 
890 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 But a vote had been already taken, and the discussion had con- 
 tinued notwithstanding. The majority durst not avail itself of 
 the vote they had obtained ; they felt that to vote Avas not to 
 reply, especially on a question in a great measure historical, and 
 on which every one might exercise his own judgment. They 
 proceeded, therefore, to attempt a reply once for all, and that 
 through Lainez as their organ, the general of the Jesuits, to- 
 wards whom the eyes of all Italy had long been turned. Ever 
 since the colloquy of Poissy, where he had won the esteem and 
 admiration of the Roman party by his audacity, he had been 
 rapidly rising in reputation ; the court of Rome and the nltra- 
 montanists of all countries had magnified him in proportion to 
 the services expected from him and his order. To your task, 
 then, eldest born of Loyola ! Behold the scaffolding that re- 
 quires being propped I Behold Spain, most Catholic Spain, set- 
 tino- herself to unsettle its foundations, though never unsettled 
 before. It is time, and more than time, that help were at hand. 
 
 On the 20th of October, 1562, Lainez addressed the council. 
 His friends had contrived to secure an entire sitting for him. 
 Great was the expectation on both sides. 
 
 Shall we take his speech, then, as reported in Sarpi or in Pal- 
 lavicini ? They both state that they had transcribed it from an 
 authentic copy, and yet these two speeches have almost nothing 
 in common except their doctrine. That given by Sarpi is the 
 better reasoned of the two ; that in Pallavicini is the more subtle, 
 more Jesuitical, using that expression not offensively, but merely 
 as expressive of the feeling we experience from it. The historian, 
 accordingly, considers it as "magnificent," though he admits that 
 that of Sarpi has fine passages in it, and that he himself long 
 believed it authentic. For the rest he gives no Avarranty for 
 his own being more so. All tilings well considered, that of Sarpi 
 seems to us to do more honour to Lainez than the long tissue of 
 quibbles of which the historian makes him the author. More- 
 over, the doctrines laid down in both are the same, and our 
 observations will bear as much as possible on what forms the 
 essence of both. 
 
 Thus, according to Sarpi, he first laid down the principle that 
 all comparison between the Church and civil societies was neces- 
 sarily inexact. Civil societies have in themselves, said he, the 
 source of all the powers by means of which they constitute and 
 maintain themselves ; the Church, on the contrary, has neither 
 made nor constituted itself : it was Jesus Christ, its sovereign 
 monarch, who began by laying down laws, and then set himself 
 to construct the body which those laws were to govern. From 
 this we see that the Church came into being posterior to the 
 
Chap. IV. 1502. DISCOURSE PRONOUNCED BY LAINEZ. 391 
 
 laws, ill virtue ol" wliicli she i.s what she is ; essentially subjoct, 
 • cousequciitly, she has not in herself", and by herself, any kind ol" 
 liberty, jurisdiction, or power. Is she not con.stantly represented 
 in Scripture under the image of a field that has been sown, a 
 net thrown into the sea, a building ? But a field is not sown by 
 itself; a net does not go of its own accord into the sea ; a build- 
 ing has not, and cannot have any influence on its own construc- 
 tion. Now, the first and only foundation on which the Church 
 has been built, in so far as it is a divine building, but destined 
 to perpetuate itself on the earth, is 8t. Peter. To him were 
 given the keys of the kingdom of heaven ; to him alone it was 
 said, " Feed my sheep," and no one will affirm that the sheep 
 have anything to do with the direction of the flock of which 
 each is only a unit. AYhen Jesus Christ was upon this earth, it 
 is evident that none of the believers had the smallest power or 
 the smallest jurisdiction. The pope being his successor, nothing 
 is changed, nothing can be changed, in this primitive order : it 
 is in the pope, therefore, that we have to look for the plenitude 
 of power and jurisdiction. Moreover, it was to St. Peter alone 
 that Jesus Christ said that he had prayed for him '' that his 
 faith might not fail" — there is not, and there cannot be, anything 
 infallible except in the pope. 
 
 Assuming this, still following Lainez, it was to St! Peter that 
 the charge reverted of conferring the quality of bishops on his 
 colleagues. Did he do so ? The opinion is very probable ; if 
 not, the simplest thing is to say that Jesus Christ did for once 
 what behoved to have been done by his vicar. The bishops, 
 consequently, are the successors of the Apostles only in the sense 
 of their being in their place, but just as a bishop does not pre- 
 tend to derive his authority from his predecessor, so the Apostles 
 were no more than the predecessors of the bishops, and having 
 nothing properly inherent in themselves, had nothing which 
 they could leave to them. Will it be said that, according to this, 
 the pope would have it in his power to abolish the episcopate ? 
 No. It is of divine right that there are bishops in the Church ; 
 but this hinders not that each bishop, viewed individually, may 
 exist only by papal right. The pope cannot destroy at once all 
 the bishoprics, since it is God's will that they should exist ; but 
 he may pronounce, in a sovereign manner, on the existence, or 
 the non-existence, of each bishopric in particular. Though St. 
 Paul has said that " the Church is the pillar and foundation of 
 the truth," this does not mean that she is so by herself; the 
 Apostle thus expressed himself only because he contemplated the 
 Church in conjunction with her head, from whom she cannot in 
 fact be separated, and who, in virtue of that intimate union, 
 
i;i)2 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Booh V. 
 
 renders her infallible by the ssole fact of his being and remaiihng 
 at her head. 
 
 It will be seen that Lainez did not stop half way. Then, 
 as now, there was nothing complete and logical, but nltra- 
 inuntane lloman Catholicism — the Roman Catholicism of the 
 Jesuits.^ 
 
 Happily the terms logical and complete, no more now than 
 then, are synonymes for reasonable and true. Shall we attempt 
 to refute the above strange line of argument in detail ? The 
 falseness of the principle from which it starts throws sufficient 
 light on the absurdity of the consequences deduced from it. Lai- 
 nez begins with saying that the constituent laws of the Church 
 existed before her, and the conclusion he draws from this is, that, 
 born in dependence, in that dependence she has necessarily re- 
 mained. J^o doubt, indeed, if it has been so ordered that she 
 should be subject to the pope, she ought to be so, and to be so 
 always. But has it been really so ordered ? That is the ques- 
 tion. The more you insist on attributing to God the institution 
 not only of a head, but of a head such as the pope conceives 
 himself to be, such as he says that he is when bold enough to 
 do so — the more force should you give to the silence of Scripture 
 on the alleged consequences of certain words addressed to St. 
 Peter, But in proportion as the line of argument pursued by 
 Lainez would have shewn little tact in dealing with Protest- 
 ants — free to attack the principle directly, and to go up at once 
 to the primitive equality of pastors — it was embarrassing to men 
 who had to uphold Avith one hand what they were pulling doM n 
 with the other. 
 
 As to the question of the counciFs authority, he had only to 
 follow out his deductions, and the conclusion was prepared to his 
 hand. What others had omitted as a serious objection, namely, 
 that according to his system an assembly of bishops would be no- 
 thing but by the pope, he adopted as a consequence quite as plain, 
 and quite as legitimate, as any other. Among the reasons he 
 adduced there are some precious ones to be noted, bearing against 
 those who imagine that they escape all objections by giving up 
 to us the infallibility of the pope, and throwing themselves on 
 that of councils. " Each bishop is fallible," said Lainez ; " an 
 assembly of bishops therefore is fallible also ; and if you admit 
 Ihcir decisions as infallible, you admit, by that of itself, that this 
 infallibility comes from elsewhere — that is to say from the pope, 
 lor he alone is called to confirm its decrees. Did the authority 
 
 ^ " I venture not to cast the smallest doubt on tlie infallibility of a 
 council-general ; all I say is, that it holds this liigh privilege of its head, 
 to Avhoni the promises were made." — De Maistee. 
 
CiiAi'. IV. l.'xij. IJIi: (iALLlCANS INCE.N.SEJ) AT LALNEZ. 'JO.'J 
 
 of councils proceed from the bishops who compose them, how 
 could we give the name of councils-general to those which were 
 never reckoned more than a very small part of the episcopal 
 body? Under Paul 111.," he added, " have we not seen the 
 most important questions decided by fewer than fifty bishops .' 
 If their decrees have become laws of the Church, it is not, evi- 
 dently, because lifty bishops liave been found of the same opin- 
 ions, but because the pope, approving oi" their opinions, has given 
 them the force of law. In every council, however numerous, if 
 the pope be present, it is the pope alone w^io pronounces, witness 
 the Ibrmula Approbante concilio or Pr<xsente concilio, employed 
 in this case, according to which it is clear that the pope begins 
 by pronouncing, and that the part of the bishops is reduced to a 
 simple declaration of adhesion, a declaration which they could not 
 refuse, either individually, or as a body." 
 
 He was right. This is no more than we have never ceased to 
 say and demonstrate from the first page of this history. When 
 a council and a pope meet, one of the two must necessarily be 
 everything, the other nothing ; eveiy intermediate solution is 
 illusory in point of theory, and in practice impossible. Ultra- 
 montanism involves the annihilation of councils ; Gallicanism 
 the annihilation of the pope. But as Gallicanism, in the end, 
 cannot do without the pope, w^iile ultramontanism does very 
 well without councils — all explanation of difficulties among Ro- 
 man Catholics is inevitably to the advantage of the ultramou- 
 tanists. 
 
 No speech as yet had been more praised or more criticised. 
 The ultramontanists extolled it to the skies ; the others saw 
 nothing in it but audacity, senselessness, and impudence. At 
 Rome, the only feeling was that of alarm ; the speaker was well- 
 nigh censured for having spoken out so harshly the whole bear- 
 ings of the papal system. The legates even besought him \\o\ 
 to publish his speech ; and that time might be given for the sub- 
 sidence of the angry feelings it had excited, the sittings wore 
 suspended. 
 
 But those angry feelings did not subside. The bishop of 
 Paris and the French ambassadors distinguished themselves by 
 the bitterness of their complaints. " The Church, then," said ii 
 bishop, " is no longer the spouse of Jesus Christ, but a slave 
 prostituted to the caprice of a man I This monstrous system, 
 invented scarcely fifty years ago, we must hear supported in full 
 council I And by whom ? By an isolated and unknown doctor? 
 No ; by a man openly protected by the pope, openly cried up at 
 Rome as the champion of the Church. The other religious or- 
 ders, it would appear, have not done enough of mischief, so that 
 
394 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 a new one was required, already more famous for its encroach- 
 ments within than for its successes without the Church. If there 
 ever were councils in which the pope alone pronounced, it was 
 an abuse and a usurpation. In the decree of the council of Je- 
 rusalem, transcribed at length in the book of the Acts, the pre- 
 amble runs — ' The apostles, and elders, and brethren.' Not 
 only is St. Peter not mentioned, but the decree is drawn up in 
 conformity with the advice of St. James, who spoke the last.^ 
 As for the rest, we ought to be very glad that the chief of the 
 Jesuits has so clearly unmasked the principles of his order. One 
 may now see whether the University of Paris was wrong in 
 condemning their society as dangerous to the faith, and likely to 
 disturb the peace of the church.'' 
 
 All was not equally correct in these recriminations ; but Pal- 
 lavicini is still less so in the assertions he opposes to them. " It 
 was not fifty years ago," said he, " but two centuries ago, that 
 the doctrine of Lainez was maintained, and by a Frenchman, 
 too, Noel Herve." Two centuries ! That brings us a great wav, 
 indeed, in the settlement of a question bearing on a matter 
 which ought to have dated, not from two but from sixteen cen- 
 turies before I It is true that one might further quote Albert, 
 Bonaventura, Durand, and others, more ancient than Herve, 
 who, " without openly professing it," adds the historian, " speak 
 of it in a very favourable manner." Though they had spoken 
 of it still more favourably, it would only be carrjdng the date 
 two or three centuries fartiier back ; what shall we make of the 
 nine or ten remaining centuries ? Betwixt the opinion of Lainez 
 and that of the Apostles, said the bishop, there is an abyss of 
 sixteen centuries. No, says Pallavicini, this is a calumny. The 
 abyss is one of only a thousand years. Singular candour I Then, 
 says he also, is it not a calumny, " furious and extravagant," to 
 make this bishop speak thus ? As if he had said anything that 
 was not then in the mouths of all Galileans I But let us mark, 
 at least, how matters then stood with almost the whole higher 
 clergy of France, and that in the middle of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, in the face of the conquests made by the Reformation, 
 when all things seemed to urge them to press closely round their 
 Church's head. AYhat a change has taken place since then ! 
 And how surprised would be the bishops of that period, and those, 
 
 ^ "St. James spoke in his turn from the elevation of his patriarchal 
 see," says de Maistre, " only to confirm what the chief of the Apostles 
 had decided.^' So to arrange the narrative of the Acts, is not only to 
 alter it but to parodj' it. One might as well represent St. Peter with 
 the tiara on his heacf, and surrounded with cardinals, as he is seen in 
 some paintings of the fifteenth century. 
 
Chap. IV. 15G2. A PLUNGE INTO FALSE PRINCIPLES. 396 
 
 too, of the seventeenth century, -with Bossuet at their head, to 
 see their successors now on their knees hefore the pope and the 
 Jesuits I Is tliis any just matter oi" astonishment ? The human 
 mind has no hking lor false positions. The consequences of Gal- 
 hcanism have been felt ; it has been clearly seen, that in presence 
 of an essentially reasoning age, a choice must be made between 
 Rome and liberty. But liberty is Protestantism, if not in its 
 theological doctrines, at least in its principles, and the same 
 principles quickly lead to the same doctrines. There was a 
 recoil ; there was a shudder. But Rome opened her arms, and 
 men have thrown themselves into her embrace. There has been 
 a plunge made into false principles ; but with the consolation 
 at least of its having been made according to the strict rules ol" 
 logic. 
 
CHAPTER Y. 
 
 (1562.) 
 
 ATIRIVAL OF CARDINAL LORRAINE. NEW POLITICAL COMPLI- 
 CATIONS. 
 
 The Cardinal of Lorraine — Precautions taken — Urgency of the Span- 
 iards — Rumours and factions — New draft of the decree on residence 
 — A return to what had been prepared in 1551 — Point of issue — 
 Arrival of the Cardinal of Lorraine — ^His speech — ^What were at bot- 
 tom his projects — New causes of distrust — ^The pope's illness — The 
 Cardinals — Historical remarks — No foundation for their rights — The 
 Cardinal of Lorraine describes the calamities of France — Du Terrier's 
 conclusions — Ours — In what sense the Church has a horror for blood 
 — New fluctuations on the Cardinal's part — A bad Frenchman, a bad 
 Spaniard — Fabian delays — The pope sends three formulas on the in- 
 stitution of bishops — They say too little, or too much — Agreement 
 on any point impossible — Battle of Dreux — Pius lY. considers the 
 success gained contemptible — Demands of the court of France — The 
 pope pretends to dread a revolt — Offers of money — Nothing is ready 
 — The cardinal's journey to the emperor — Ferdinand's complaints 
 against the council and the pope — The court of France sends to in- 
 quire what have become of the promised reforms. 
 
 The unflinching spirit of the bishop of Paris still farther in- 
 creased the alarm, already so violent, felt by the Italians at the 
 approaching arrival of his colleagues. The Cardinal of Lorraine 
 was announced as likely to reach Trent early in November. It 
 was known he had vaunted that he would have limits set to the 
 power, and still more to the gains of the court of Rome ; his ar- 
 rival, accordingly, says Pallavicini innocently, was contemplated 
 with great horror. The legates had been for some time occu- 
 pied in noting certain abuses beyond Italy, particularly in France, 
 and more or less cherished by the French episcopate. These 
 they kept in reserve, ready to be proposed for reformation as soon 
 as the new comers should shew themselves too urgent on other 
 points ; and the Cardinal of Lorraine, who had accumulated 
 benefices to the amount of three hundred thousand crowns, was 
 more interested than any one else in not provoking reprisals. 
 Nothing was neglected, whether in the way of insensibly aug- 
 menting the number of the Italians, or. still more, of keeping 
 
Chap. V. 150-'. URGEMJV OF THE SPAMARDS. G'J7 
 
 them imited and docile, for one or other of them every day 
 seemed to acquire a taslc lor those dreaded ideas of divine right 
 and episcopal independence. Finally, as a resource against the 
 worst that might happen, the legates had asked from the pope 
 new plenipotentiary powers lor transferring the council to an- 
 other place, or dissolving it altogether. 
 
 The commission charged with clahorating the decrees had 
 long been exclusively occupied with the canon on the institution 
 of bishops. On the 20th of October, after the speech of Laincz, 
 that commission had been augmented by an addition of four 
 members. " It is not to be believed," says Pallavicini,^ " with 
 Avhat diligence and what attention those who were charged with 
 drawing up that canon, laboured to invent and compare an in- 
 finity of forms, turns of expression, and terms. It was of im- 
 portance to find some that would plainly declare what was the 
 faith upon this article, without, at the same time, furnishing to 
 ardent minds occasion to make interpretations either contrary to 
 the faith, or little in conformity with its teaching ?" Ever the 
 faitJi and tlie tcacliing of the faith. Where was this teach- 
 ing, then, since it was upon the very essentials of the question 
 that it was found impossible to come to a common understand- 
 ing*, and that, after infinite new efibrts, it was resolved in the end 
 that nothing should be said ? The Roman historian speaks al- 
 ways as if the council had perfectly known W'hat it had to say, 
 and had been ill at ease only about the forms. " In the end," 
 he goes on to say, " one was found which the legates proposed to 
 the Spaniards on the evening of the 28th, so that there might be 
 nothing to prev^ent its being put to the vote in the congregation 
 which was to meet on the following day. The Spaniards still 
 rejected it. Then, indignant at those prelates whom nothing 
 could soften, the legates resolved to make the council vote oi^ 
 the draft as proposed, and to declare it final should the majority 
 accept it. Tlic cool 7iight air, lioiccver, having moderated 
 their ardour, they again met with some prelates wdio enjoyed 
 their confidence, and tried to find new means of conciliation." 
 
 Upon this the Spaniards craved an audience. They had 
 come, they said, to see if it was to be finally decided that a 
 canon, embodying their views, should be proposed. After such 
 long discussions, and amid the excitement they had produced 
 throughout Europe, the council could no longer abstain from 
 pronouncing a decision. They declared, in fine, that, should 
 their request be rejected, they would attend no more congrega- 
 tions. 
 
 Upon this the whole city was in commotion. Two-score 
 
 ' Book xviii. eli. 16. 
 
398 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 Italian bishops repaired to the legates, in a body, to ask, on the 
 contrary, that the question of the divine right should be left out. 
 and that the council should keep to voting on what had been 
 proposed. The agitation ^vent on increasing. Everybody vras 
 obliged to take a side, and the Spanish faction, recruited with 
 several Italian prelates, openly formed a band apart from the 
 rest. Division spread even among the legates. The Cardinal 
 of Mantua, as we have seen, had at no time been much opposed 
 to the Spanish doctrine ; he often allowed it to be seen that his 
 charge alone prevented him from making common cause with 
 them. Cardinal Seripandi, too, was not very far from holding 
 their views ; but it was Cardinal Simonetta, an ultra-Honlan, 
 that led the majority. Cardinal Hosius had never had much 
 influence, and Cardinal Altemps had gone away. 
 
 It was necessary, however, that they should again set to work. 
 This was hazarded on the 3d of November ; and, thanks to the 
 feeling generally entertained of the mischief done by these in- 
 terminable disputes, the prelates all proved a little more calm. 
 The Spaniards had, moreover, received from their king a new 
 letter, exhorting them to do nothing to the prejudice of the Holy 
 See ; a vague letter, and manifestly solicited by the pope, but to 
 which they could not altogether dispense with paying some' at- 
 tention. In fine, as the question of the divine right was, after 
 all, a less serious one in the old subject of residence than in that 
 of the institution of bishops, since this last touched upon the 
 institution and the very existence of the pope, it was decided 
 that they should fall back upon the other, and stop first at it. 
 
 The legates, accordingly, presented the draft of a decree, in 
 which, setting theory aside, they established a complete jurispru- 
 dence of rewards and punishments, for the purpose of engaging to 
 residence, and, if necessary, compelling to it. Of all possible so- 
 lutions, this was the least honourable to the Episcopate. Money 
 played the chief part in it ; and it was on the side of money, 
 also, that the afiair was doomed to come to nothing. The de- 
 cree, among other clauses, bore that resident bishops should not 
 be forced to pay to sovereigns tithes, or subsidies, or any tax 
 whatever ; and the ambassadors began to protest. 
 
 The bishops, on their side, could hardly appreciate a favour 
 of this nature. They were too well aware that the afiair was 
 not within the competence of a council, and that there would 
 always be found occasions when the pope could not refuse to 
 sovereigns permission to tax the clergy. The decree, accord- 
 inorlv, could not even be submitted to dehberation, under that 
 form at least, and it was afterwards reduced to a simple ex- 
 planation of Avhat had been decreed in 1547. Meanwhile, not- 
 
Chap. V. 1562. GREAT INFLUENCE OF ANTIQUITY IN ROMANISM. 3'J9 
 
 withstaiuliiig the greater willingness to come to a better agree- 
 ment with each other, none could confine himself to the less 
 dangerous ground to which it had been hoped that the discussion 
 miglit be brought. The institution of bishops was found, as 
 betbre, the hrst and only subject of debate. 
 
 The bishop of Segovia having declared, that to the best of his 
 recollection, the question had been decided in 1551, and that in 
 the sense of the divine right, it was necessary to have recourse 
 to the minutes of that period ; but as the bishop insisted, con- 
 sidering that he could trust better to his memory than to all that 
 might be adduced by those who had not been present vuider 
 Julius III., this incident occupied some days. It was proved 
 that the draft of the decree, to which the bishop wanted to ap- 
 peal as his authority, had not then been either voted by the as- 
 sembly, or so much as examined in congregation-general ; but, 
 on the other hand, the Spaniard was not mistaken — the divine 
 right was there. However, as the divines of the old council 
 likewise had ever been at far more pains to be obscure than to 
 avoid all equivocation, several phrases gave rise to warm dis- 
 putes. Although the words, divine right, were found there, 
 still it might be maintained that, strictly speaking, the thing 
 itself was not. At the same time, this discussion presented a 
 striking enough example of the efiects of the Roman system of 
 authority. Although this old draft of a decree was the work of 
 a commission, and dated but a dozen years back, it was already 
 spoken of and examined with a sort of respect. The partisans 
 of the divine right recalled it as an argument of great weight ; 
 nor would their adversaries have ventured to say that it gave 
 them no uneasiness. Do not we here find Homan Catholicism, 
 as it were, caught in the act ? The history of her doctrines may 
 be said to be all comprised, in this constant tendency to consider 
 more or less as legitimate and true, all that is not new, and to 
 make years, in some sort, the first element of truth. Far less 
 importance would have been given to that same draft, to which 
 so much weight was attached because it was ten years old, had 
 it been only four or five ; but had it been a hundred, or two 
 hundred years old, and not contrary to the views of the majority, 
 that majority would have seized on it as a precious and unas- 
 sailable tradition. See with what assurance the Roman con- 
 troversialists give the first rank, among their proofs, to antiquity. 
 In popular polemics, it often happens that they do not even at- 
 tempt to give any other. We hear every day repeated, regard- 
 ing Protestantism and the Protestants, what the pagans used of 
 old to say in this respect of Christianity. Yet, what was the 
 answer of the Fathers '? " That it was not by the lapse of time 
 
400 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRExNT. Book V. 
 
 that the authority of religion is to be measured."' " The pa- 
 gans vaunt their antiquity, as if truth hath need of being ancient. 
 It is a diabohcal custom to make antiquity an argument in 
 favour of Hes."^ 
 
 So this matter was once more left without issue. It had been 
 hoped that it might be concluded before the arrival of the French ; 
 but when it was seen that this was not to be dreamt of, the le- 
 gates Avere the first to propose that they should be w^aited for. 
 It was at least a mode of gaining time. The Cardinal of Lor- 
 raine travelled slowly, attended by a retinue like that of a prince. 
 On the 9th of November, when word came that he had entered 
 Italy, it was decided that the meeting should be suspended until 
 he was in Trent ; and, at all events, that no session should be 
 held until the 26th. He arrived on the 13th, and was received 
 with great honours. The legates went to meet him, accom- 
 panied by a crowd of prelates, and conducted him in procession 
 to his hotel. Several French bishops accompanied him, and 
 several followed soon after. 
 
 Next day the legates received him at an audience as bearer of 
 a letter from Charles IX. He gave them an agreeable surprise, 
 by the moderation and mildness of his language ; but it could 
 not be doubted that politeness and prudence had much to do 
 with this. He protested that he came with good intentions ; he 
 declared that he had no wish to propose anything to the assem- 
 bly, without the previous assent of the legates and of the pope. 
 As for the grand debate of the day, he said that in his opinion 
 people should not shew too much eagerness in diving into theo- 
 retical questions ; that although he was inclined to hold the di- 
 vine right, he did not see the necessity of teaching it by a decree. 
 He added — as had never ceased to be repeated, ever since the 
 opening of the council, by all that were not in the fetters of the 
 Roman party — that a good and solid disciplinary reformation 
 was the sole means either of bringing back the Protestants, or of 
 confirming the Catholics. On this latter point he spoke truly ; 
 as lor the Protestants, he had viewed them too closely not to 
 know that the finest reforms could no longer induce them to shut 
 their eyes to questions of doctrine. He complained, in fine, that 
 the king had not yet been able to get more than twenty-five 
 thousand crowns of all that had been offered to him. He re- 
 monstrated, that if people persisted in exacting, as conditions of 
 gift and loan, declarations contrary to the liberties of the king- 
 dom, it was tantamount to saying that they would give nothing. 
 
 * Cyprian, against the Gentiles, b. ii. 
 
 ^ Hie est mos diabolicus, iit per antiquitatis tradueom eommendatur 
 fallacia. (Augustine. Questions on th*^ Old and New Testament.) 
 
Chap. V. 1J02. INSTIIUCTIONS OF THE CAIIDINAL OF LORRAINE lOl 
 
 On this last article it was replied, that the pope had too much 
 love ibr France, and lor the king oi" France, to have added to 
 his henelits any conditions which his conscience did not imperi- 
 ously dictate. This amounted to saying, frankly enough, that the 
 pope could not in conscience enter into any sort of terms with 
 the Galileans. The legates were frank enough, also, on some 
 other point.s. They said the time was gone when one might 
 hope to bring back the heretics by means of some disciplinary 
 concessions, some reforms of abuses ; that the Catholics, there- 
 fore, and they alone, were to be looked to. As for internal ame- 
 liorations, they dared not boast of the little that had hitherto 
 been done ; they too well knew that the cardinal was one of 
 those M'ho thought that they had done nothing. They confined 
 themselves, as during the past, to protesting the good intentions 
 of the pope, who, they said, had already begun the reformation 
 of his court, although to the detriment of his finances. 
 
 In a word, the cardinal's language little accorded with what 
 people believed they knew of his intentions and those of his fel- 
 low-countrymen. What, m point of fact, were his projects ? 
 "We shall reach the close of this history without knowing more 
 than we learn here. Man is never more impenetrable than under 
 the garb of frankness ; the Italians were children in presence of 
 this great actor who ascended their stage, to leave them, never- 
 theless, in the end, if not the honour, at least the profits of the 
 piece. As for the instructions he had received — but with au- 
 thority to exhibit them only so far as he might deem fitting, the 
 chief points, according to Pallavicini, were as follows : 
 
 In discipline, they included the reform of the clergy, and the 
 correction of all the abuses that it was possible to reach : — that 
 the cardinal should not be too eager to attack such as had their 
 seat principally at Rome ; that he should aj)proach these by lit- 
 tle and little, always putting in the foreground the king's inten- 
 tion to apply himself vigorously to the extirpation of all those of 
 his own kingdom. 
 
 In doctrine and in M'orship, they included the concession of 
 the cup, not only to the Reformed, but to all the king's subjects ; 
 the mass and prayers in French, except in monasteries and non- 
 parochial churches ; the psalms to be chanted in French, but 
 after being revised and approved by the bishops. Next, but to 
 be proposed to the council only as circumstances might require, 
 the marriage of the priests, and the abandonment of ecclesiasti- 
 cal property. 
 
 Such then M'as the secret baggage of the Cardinal of Lorraine. 
 Many French prelates openly talked over it, and this he did 
 nothing to prevent. Certain enough information, moroever, had 
 
402 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 been got, that he had come to a secret understanding with the 
 king of Spain, with the emperor, and even with the king of 
 Bohemia, son of the emperor, and almost a Lutheran. In fine, 
 notwithstanding all his reiterated disavowals of having political 
 objects in view, no one would allow that so powerful and able a 
 prelate could come to Trent as a mere French archbishop, with 
 the simple object of adding one more to the council, and quietly 
 concurring towards the passing of the decrees. 
 
 Two events, one of small the other of sufficient importance, 
 soon complicated the state of affairs, after being apparently sim- 
 plified by the cardinal's arrival. 
 
 On the 19th of November the Archbishop of Otranto gave a 
 grand dinner, and not only were Italians only invited, but he 
 had been so imprudent as to have it intimated to them to be 
 careful not to absent themselves, as their attendance was of 
 consequence to the Holy See. What passed at this entertain- 
 ment may have been of no great consequence, for real conspira- 
 cies never court attention in such a way ; but not the less did 
 it lead to the belief in a general combination of the Italians 
 against the Spaniards and the French. 
 
 The other circumstance was as follows. The pope had fallen 
 into a serious illness. Hardly had he recovered when he heard 
 that the French ambassadors had intrigued at Trent, and even 
 at Rome, to secure that the next pope should be elected by the 
 council and not by the cardinals. Now, of all the prerogatives 
 of the court of Rome, if there be none greater in its eyes than 
 that of electing the Church's chief, no more is there any of which 
 the foundations are more doubtful, more fragile, more manifestly 
 human. Even were it not proved that the faithful of all the 
 churches, at Rome as elsewhere, long had a part, and a great 
 part too, in the election of their bishops, it would ever remain 
 to be explained why the clergy themselves have not the power 
 of electing their head. Shall we be told that the extent of the 
 Church, and the impossibility of assembling her pastors, have 
 led by the sheer force of circumstances, to the creation of a per- 
 manent and more compact electoral body ? Surely Rome then 
 ought to have begun by recognising in the cardinals the quality 
 of delegates of the Church, which she has never done, Avhich 
 she even could not do, since it is the pope that names and has 
 the sole right of naming them. On the other hand, the more 
 you tend to exalt into popes all bishops that have sat at Rome, 
 the more you Avill have of them who have neither been elected 
 by the cardinals nor been cardinals themselves ; whence we 
 must conclude, if not that the cardinals are useless, at least that 
 their concurrence is by no means absolutely necessary in the 
 
Chap. V. 150-2. ORIGIN OF THE CARUINALATE. 403 
 
 election of llie Church's head. It i.s evident, thereibre, that if 
 a council-general wishes to name a pope, it has the power of 
 doing so, and that if it seem good to it not even to take him 
 Irom the college of Cardinals, it may do that too. Sucli was 
 the reasoning at Trent of the French ambassadors and their ad- 
 herents. 
 
 And it was not for the first time that the sacred college heard 
 the questions ])ut, " Who are you ? Where do you come from ?" 
 Long before the council of Constance had settled the question 
 by making a pope, more than one bold hand had dared to draw 
 aside the purple veil which was always becoming thicker and 
 thicker between the Church and her head. The cardinals had 
 not risen to such a pitch of greatness and pride without some 
 having dared from time to time, were it from nothing but jeal- 
 ousy, to inquire into the foundations of their grandeur. More- 
 over, there was no need for these researches to go very deep. 
 All the world could know, that the title of cardinal had Ions 
 been a mere epithet commonly used in many dioceses to distin- 
 guish parish priests from simple clergymen, the incardinati, or 
 men attached by hinges to the Church, from those who served 
 it occasionally only, and without any fixed tie ; that the cardi- 
 nals at Rome, consequently, had begun by being merely the 
 curates of the Bishop of Rome ; that if, at that period, they con- 
 curred in the election of the pope, it was as parish priests, and 
 along with the rest of the clergy. At that time when a cardi- 
 nal became bishop, he dropt his title of cardinal ; he could no more 
 have had the idea of keeping it than a parish priest on becom- 
 ing a bishop would at the present day retain that of parish 
 priest. In a diploma of the year 943, the parochial churches 
 are called cardinal churches. In 997, seven priests of Aix-la- 
 chapelle received from Gregory V. the title of cardinals. In the 
 eleventh century the title began to be considered one of honour, 
 several Italian bishops assumed it of themselves, and yet were 
 not on that account charged with usurpation. We see it borne 
 by the prebendaries of Compostella, Orleans, London, and several 
 other cities. At Ravenna it was still in use at the time of the 
 council of Trent, seeing that it was abolished by Pius V. in 1598. 
 In fine, it is proved that in 1196, the cardinals that were not 
 bishops had not as yet obtained the precedency of bishops.' 
 
 Thus it would not even be consistent with the truth to say 
 
 ' See, for more details, Ilurter's Institutions of the Churcli. In 1187 
 a bull by Pope Clement III. in favour of the prior and canons of the 
 Churcli of St. Andrews, is signed by Pope Clement, two bishops, and 
 seven cardinals, shewing that the bishops had the precedence. See 
 Lyon's History of St. Andrews — Tr. 
 
404 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V, 
 
 that the cardinal curates of the Bishop of Rome had risen in im- 
 portance at the same time and in the same proportion with him. 
 The Bishop of Rome was pope, fully pope, long before the car- 
 dinals were cardinals in the sense attached in later times to that 
 title. But their rise, though slower, did not the less follow the 
 same course. We see them gradually separating themselves 
 from the rest of the clergy. They continued to be reckoned as 
 attached each to a parish in Home, but they no longer were so. 
 Beyond Rome they had honours paid to them at first only when 
 they arrived as the pope's envoys and representatives ; ere long 
 we shall find that it was in virtue of their mere title that they 
 took the precedence of bishops, of kings' ministers, and some- 
 times of kings themselves. Notwithstanding, it was only in 
 1059 that Nicholas III. made them sole electors of the sovereign 
 pontiff; the clergy and the people retaining their right of ratify- 
 ing the election. A hundred and twenty years allerwards, in 
 1179, Alexander III. abolished this last restriction, and the elec- 
 tion of the popes is now entirely in the hands of the cardinals. 
 
 Thus it was not four hundred years since the cardinalate had 
 been definitively constituted ; it was not a hundred and fifty since 
 the Council of Constance had energetically recalled the Church's 
 ancient right to elect its sovereign. And this last council had 
 been at least led to it by circumstances ; but if the Council of 
 Trent, in full peace, had taken it into its head to do as much, it 
 would have proved the ruin of the cardinals, and in many re- 
 spects of the popedom itself. Hence the mental throes of the 
 pope ; hence a new source of mutual distrust and animosity be- 
 tween the prelates of the tAVo parties. 
 
 The Cardinal of Lorraine proved impenetrable, at least he 
 believed himself to be so, for one of the doctors in his suite, of 
 the name of Hugon — secretly sold to the pope, kept the legates 
 informed of his minutest actions, which, to say the truth, rarely 
 betrayed all that was passing in his thoughts.^ The day on 
 which the king's letter was read at the general meeting he found 
 another opportunity of making a long speech, without shocking, 
 but also without satisfying anybody. He dwelt particularly on 
 the calamities of the kingdom, of which he gave but too truthful 
 a picture. Eveiywhere mortal feuds, outrage, pillage, and mur- 
 der prevailed ; everywhere, among Roman Catholics as well as 
 Protestants, the royal authority was contemned. " To whom," 
 he added, " must we attribute these evils ? To heresy, no doubt, 
 
 ^ The Spaniards also had a spy observing them in the person of one 
 of tlieir coimtrynien, Sebastiani, bishop of Patti, in Sicily. All these 
 details are taken from Yisconti'e Letters. 
 
Chap. V. 1502. SPEECH OF 1)1 FKRRIKR, 4()D 
 
 but not to heresy alone. For myself, I am ready, if necessary, 
 to say with Jonah, as already adduced by the legates of the 
 Holy See at the first opening of the council, ' Cast me forth 
 into the sea, for I know that for my sake this great tempest is 
 upon you !' " Alluding, probably, to the three hundred thou- 
 sand crowns of benefices ; but he proposed nothing, concluded 
 )iothing. 
 
 The conclusion was yet to come, and the task of drawing it 
 had been committed to the second ambassador, Du Ferrier. The 
 legates had started difliculties to his being permitted to speak. 
 The cardinal had almost had to demand it, so as to make himself 
 responsible for all that he was to say, if not for his words at least 
 for the general bearing of his ideas. But ideas and words were 
 alike warm and pointed. " The king might have appeased all 
 the disorders that afflict France in three days had he so desired, 
 by convoking a national council, or by making, by his own 
 authority, the concessions called for. As the eldest son of the 
 Church, he has preferred not obtaining them for himself except 
 through the Church ; but should they be refused, he should cer- 
 tainly feel compelled to provide himself a remedy for hffe king- 
 dom. After all, what was the amount of his demand ? N othinir 
 that IS not to be found in the Scriptures, the Fathers, and in the 
 canons of the first councils ; nothing but what long subsisted in 
 the bosom of the Church, without preventing it from expanding 
 itself before God and men. When Josias wished to appease the 
 troubles of the Jews, and to recall them to the religion of their 
 fathers, he found only one means, but that was the best of all ; 
 he had only to cause the book of the law, after its long conceal- 
 ment by the malice of men, to be read and observed.^ And if 
 you ask why France is suffering from this surfeit of disorders 
 and evils, the only answer that can be made to you is that of 
 Jehu to Joram — ' What peace so long as' — You know what, 
 added Du Ferrier, interrupting him as he spoke ;- and if refor- 
 mation does not come from you, in vain should all the princes 
 come to the aid of France. As for all who shall perish, even 
 although it be by their own iniquities that they have brought 
 ruin on themselves, you, and you alone, will be held responsible 
 for their blood." 
 
 Some of these shafts were more severe than just. At the 
 
 ^ Pallavicini, ordinarily so prolix, has avoided reproducing tliese de- 
 tails. " Du Ferrier," says he, " explained his meaning by an ingenious 
 application of several examples from the Sacred Books." — Book xix. 
 eh. iv. 
 
 ^ "So long as the whoredoms of thy mother and her witchci'afts are 
 so manv." — J Kiii-r-^ i\-. 22. 
 
406 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TREiNT. Book V. 
 
 point to which things had come, the council could do nothing 
 towards appeasing the wars of religion short of declaring itself 
 Protestant. Nevertheless, taking a higher view, this very in- 
 justice was just. The council could do nothing ; but it was the 
 organ and representative of that Church which had for ages had 
 it in its power to do all, and yet had made use of its power only 
 to disfigure Christianity, and to bury under the commandments 
 of men those laws which alone were capable of bridling the pas- 
 sions of kings and peoples. An aged and infirm mother must 
 plead in vain her present inability to repress the disorders of her 
 son ; if she was the original cause of those disorders, there can 
 be no injustice in holding her responsible for them. Yes, Du 
 Ferrier was in the right. For all the blood that had flowed in 
 France, all that was yet to flow there, the Church was responsible, 
 and doubly responsible ; responsible as the mother of all those 
 errors and of all those abuses which had provoked the Reforma- 
 tion ; responsible also as having given but too much sanction, 
 by her acts of violence, for those terrible reprisals exercised by 
 the Reformation in some of the places where it had the upper 
 hand. ' And why speak we here of the acts of vengeance done 
 by the Reformation ? The Reformation had never ceased by its 
 chief organs to preach order, the support of government, and 
 peace. No Synod, no Church that we know of, had ever decreed 
 revenge for the massacre of the Albigenses, or any other old and 
 bloody grievance ; but it Avas the Roman Church, properly and 
 duly represented by its chiefs, its doctors, and its pious butchers, 
 that had decreed the destruction and taken upon itself the whole 
 responsibility of the extermination of those same Albigenses. 
 What audacity in Roman Catholic historians when they com- 
 placently register the crimes committed in the name of the Re- 
 formation during those epochs of desolation and of blood. Not 
 an act of violence to which we could not, with history in our 
 hand, oppose a thousand ; not a Roman Catholic corpse which 
 we could not cover with a heap of the corpses of Albigenses, 
 Waldenses, French and German Protestants, victims of the In- 
 quisition in Italy, in Spain, in Belgium, everywhere, in short, 
 where that frightful tribunal succeeded in establishing itself. 
 Ah I wo, doubtless, wo to those who know not how to forgive, 
 and to prove the superiority of their faith by the superiority of 
 their feelings and of their patience I But wo also, wo above all 
 to the Church that had so long given, and that was still so long 
 to continue to give — not only during epochs of tumult and violent 
 excitement, but coldly and systematically — the example of all 
 atrocities. 
 
 One knows, for the rest, by what an abominable subterfuge 
 
Chap. V. 1502. VICTIMS OF THE INQUISITION. 407 
 
 the Church souglit to reconcile its bloody persecutions with its 
 pretended horror for blood. The Inquisition did not condemn to 
 death ; it Avas lield to ignore -what the secular power did with 
 the unhappy victims whom it handed over to it. It was even 
 the custom, at first, to insert at the end of the sentence a formula 
 in which the magistrate was besought to spare the culi^rit's life ; 
 an atrocious farce which people had sufficient sense of shame at 
 last to suppress, but always continuing to abstain from asking 
 tor any punishment whatever. Accordingly, when the con- 
 demned person came to the place appointed lor his punishment, 
 it was only by accident that there happened to be there a stake 
 and fagots and executioners to kindle them. The Church 
 washed her hands of all this. Had she not decided in 1179,' 
 that, without ceasing to reprove the shedding of blood, she 
 could accept the oflers of succour made by the civil powers ? it 
 being well understood that a prince who should take it into 
 his head, after the Inquisition had been once established in his 
 territory, to refuse this kind of succcrur, might find himself in 
 no enviable position ; the king of Spain himself would have pe- 
 rilled his crown. The number of victims that perished under 
 the Spanish Inquisition in the time of the second Inquisitor- 
 General, Thomas of Torquemada, has been estimated at ten thou- 
 sand, that is, about two per day during seventeen years. And 
 this is not a round number, put down at random from data more 
 or less inexact ; Llorente- has given all the details of the calcu- 
 lation from which he deduces this result. To these ten thousand 
 persons burnt alive we must add about seven thousand burnt in 
 effigy, that is to say, who would have perished like the rest had 
 the Inquisition had them in its power. Torquemada has not 
 been canonized, but his predecessor, Peter Arbues, was made a 
 saint, and that, mark well, not hi the fifteenth century, at the 
 height of the fanatical enthusiasm of which he was the minister, 
 but almost two hundred years after his death. It was in 1664, 
 in the time of Pascal, of Arnault, that Rome placed upon her 
 altars the ferocious organizer of her bloody tribunal. 
 
 On the 26th November, the day on which it was expected 
 that the session would have been held, matters were as little ripe 
 for it as on the day of the cardinal's aiTival. 
 
 All eyes continued to be directed to him. Perplexed and flat- 
 tered by turns at the part that people persisted in giving him, 
 he was forced to feed alternately the hopes and the lears of all. 
 He one day held a meeting in his hotel, at which the French 
 
 ' Council of Lateran, canon xxvii. 
 
 ^ History of the Inquisition, chap. viii. 
 
408 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRExXT. Book V. 
 
 bishops voted unanimously for the divine right ; another day he 
 renewed at the general meeting his proposals that that point 
 should be left undecided. On the 1st of December, at the close 
 of the tumult, occasioned as we have seen by the boldness of the 
 bishop against whom the Italians declared anathema, he seemed 
 desirous of giving a decided opinion ; but his speech, which began 
 with a keen attack on those who had thus attempted to restrain 
 the freedom of voting, ended again in vagueness and ambiguity. 
 There was nothing positive in it but his proposing to replace the 
 words divine right by the simple statement that bishops are in- 
 stituted by Jesus Christ. However, the legates having imme- 
 diately referred the matter to Rome, he ventured one step farther, 
 and complained openly enough of that manner of proceeding. 
 The Italians, on their side, were daily more and more out of 
 temper. Behold, said they, we are fallen out of the Spanish into 
 the French disease. The French laughed at the jest, and repaid 
 it with interest ; but the Spaniards, who could not laugh, were 
 mortally offended. 
 
 With all this agitation there was mingled that of political 
 news, the interest attached to which was prodigiously increased 
 by the presence of a member of the house of Guise. On the 7th 
 of November, intelligence was brought of the death of the king 
 of Navarre, and all knew that that event might call the Cardinal 
 of Lorraine to the head of affairs in France. He himself allow- 
 ed it to be well enough seen that he regretted not being on the 
 spot, so as more surely to take up the inheritance of his rival. 
 
 In Germany, Maximilian, son of the emperor, and already 
 king of Bohemia, had been elected king of the Romans and heir 
 to the imperial dignity. On the occasion of his coronation (Nov. 
 30), the emperor had had conferences v/ith the Protestant princes, 
 in which he made one attempt more to prevail on them to ac- 
 cept the council, and these eitbrts had only served, as they had 
 always done, to provoke demands wdiich they well knew would 
 never be granted, that in particular of having all that had been 
 done at Trent declared null and void. Yet, whether from policy 
 or from secret sympathy, the emperor had testified no displeas- 
 ure. He even offered to go in person to Trent and to present 
 their demands, on this sole condition, that they should soften 
 down a little whatever was too much calculated to wound the 
 feelings of the council and of the pope. 
 
 While the canon on the institution of bishops was on its way 
 to Rome along with the amendment proposed by the cardinal, 
 the council once more fell back on the question of residence. 
 The cardinal, against the advice of several French prelates, per- 
 sisted in saying that it was not necessary to mix it up Avith that 
 
Chap. V. 1362. SUBJECT OF RESIDENCE RESUMED. 409 
 
 of the divine right of bishops. As for residence, in itself, he 
 seemed to be moderately desirous to see it become obligatory, 
 according to the plan proposed by the legates, by means of fixed 
 rules and a proportionate penalty : but, himself a court prelate, 
 he had no wish to condemn himself to vegetate at his diocese 
 of Rheims ; he had the air of one who was little convinced of 
 the good results to be expected from a law on this matter. He 
 thought that, on the subject of residence, everybody was more or 
 less crazed, and that this remedy could as little as any other prove 
 a cure for all evils. 
 
 Notwithstanding this half-abandonment of the* main difficul- 
 ties of the question, he was disappointed by finding that none, or 
 almost none, sided with him ; he further knew that this began 
 to be a subject of remark, people asking if this was the omnipo- 
 tent influence that he had flattered himself he w^as about to ex- 
 ercise. The French disease had quickly been replaced by the 
 Spa)iish ; that is to say, the Spanish prelates had again put 
 themselves at the head of the opposition, a post at which it is 
 easy to draw attention to one's self and to appear important. 
 To them, and not to the French party, those Italians who had 
 broken with the papal party now attached themselves. Even 
 the French w'ere at times sufficiently disposed to murmur against 
 their chief They were angry at his demi-defection on the divine 
 right, and said they saw Avell " that it is not easy for a cardinal 
 to make a good Frenchman." 
 
 About the same time, in fine, the legates having presented 
 the draft of a decree on various abuses relative to the sacrament 
 of Orders, the Spaniards complained that they saw hardly any of 
 the things in it which they had all along insisted should be taken' 
 up and examined ; and forthwith joining the German prelates, 
 they resumed with fresh vigour the subject of residence in the 
 view of the divine right. Might we not w^ell say that one might 
 suppose that he had opened at a wrong page, and that he w'as 
 reading over again what he had more than once read already ? 
 And yet we could wish the reader to remember that we abridge 
 to the best of our ability, and that we often compress into a few 
 lines whole pages of Sarpi and Pallavicini. The council had 
 never yet spoken more or done less. 
 
 In the congregation of 1 Gth December, one of the legates had 
 thought it his duty to complain of the extreme prolixity of the 
 speeches. It was remarked, in fact, that several prelates, habi- 
 tually mute till now, had taken a fancy for speaking. Every 
 one having had time, and more than time, to study the question 
 thoroughly, there were few who did not deliver their opinions 
 at great length, even although it was but to repeat what twenty 
 
 S 
 
410 HISTORY OF THE COUiNClL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 others had said ah*eady. Newly arrived members, little informed 
 of all that had been said and done, daily appeared on the scene, 
 and unintentionally renewed discussions about matters of detail 
 which people had every reason to suppose had been finally closed. 
 In short, the council was like a ship beaten upon by such oppos- 
 ing winds, as to do little more than revolve on its om'u axis, and 
 find itself at night in the same place as in the morning. For the 
 rest, the legates had no cause to complain. Lassitude was their 
 surest auxiliary. Already it had many a time saved the pope's 
 affairs ; it alone could save them still. 
 
 The pope, however, was impatient in good earnest. Although 
 informed from "day to day, and hour to hour, of all that was 
 spoken at the council, he could form no correct idea of the posi- 
 tion of the legates. Accustomed to reign himself, it appeared to 
 him that were he in their place, nothing would be easier than to 
 haA'^e the masterv. His courtiers shared in the same mistake, 
 and even the common people began to fret. It was like the 
 Romans of old murmuring at the delays of Fabius. To all the 
 other cares of the legates, accordingly, there was added that of 
 having unceasingly to apologize for themselves to the pope and 
 their colleagues at Rome. They begged that at least formal 
 orders might be sent them ; but, to say the truth, the pope ibund 
 himself as much embarrassed as his ministers. 
 
 He had been thrown into the greatest uneasiness, in particular, 
 by having to give an opinion on the formula proposed by the 
 Cardinal of Lorraine. After much hesitation, on the strength of 
 the consent of that prelate, he ventured to pronounce against the 
 doctrine of the divine right, or at least against the insertion of 
 those words in the decree. Availing himself, therefore, of the 
 idea that bishops are instituted hj Jesus Christ, an idea sufl^i- 
 ciently vague to admit of a li<^e that it might be turned in a 
 manner favourable to the ultramontane view,^ he fixed upon 
 three drafts of a formula, elaborated in a commission of cardi- 
 nals. One, and the vaguest of these formulas, bore simply an 
 anathema against Avhoever should say, that the bishops are not 
 ill any manner instituted by Jesus Christ ; another, a little 
 clearer, but which quite departed from the question, anathema- 
 tized whosoever should believe that the einscopal rank has not 
 been instituted by Jesus Christ ; the third, in fine, anathema- 
 tized whoever should teach that the bishops chosen by the pojoe, 
 and on whom he relieves himself of p)ciyt of his solicitude, are 
 ■not chosen by the Holy Ghost for the guidance of that j^ortion 
 
 ' By saying, with Laiucz, that the hisJiops, the episcopal body, exists 
 by divine riglit, l>ut tl)at each bishop individually exists only by papal 
 right. 
 
Chap. V. 1603. I'OK.MULA.'S I'KUi'OsED li\: THE I'Ol'i:. 411 
 
 of the Church whicJi is confided to them. This last, the best 
 according to the ItahaiLS, was naturally thought the worst by 
 the others, for it was cciuivalent to the positive negation of the 
 divine right. Nothing would have been easier than to deduce 
 from it, eventually, the universality of the Roman episcopate, in 
 its most absolute meaning, to wit, that the pope is the sole bishop 
 by divine institution, and that all the rest exist only through 
 him. One might even have contrived, in case of need, to make 
 a new prerogative spring from it. If the bishops chosen by the 
 pope, are chosen by the Holy Ghost, this is, as it were, a new 
 branch of infallibility accorded to the successor of tSt. Peter. 
 How to reconcile this fact with that other fact, that there are 
 bad bishops, is what we do not very clearly see ; but it matters 
 not. Is ultramontanism ever embarrassed about the difficulty 
 of reconcihng papal infallibility with the existence of bad popes ? 
 About a whole month, marked by several incidents, in regard 
 to which we shall ere long have to say a word or two, had pass- 
 ed in waiting for a reply from the pope. The Christmas festivi- 
 ties, designedly celebrated with extraordinary pomp, had diverted 
 the attention of the prelates for a time ; but the first week of the 
 year 1 563 found them impatient, soured, and disheartened. 
 
 The courier arrived at last. It was now the 15th of January. 
 The council resumed its labours next day ; and the third formula, 
 as the most fully developed and the clearest, became the princi- 
 pal text of discussion. The efforts of the French and Spaniards 
 were mainly directed against that part of the phrase in which 
 the bishops are said to be chosen by the pope, in order to be 
 charged by him with a part of his solicitude. The Latin ex- 
 pression, inixirtcm solicUudinis, was to be Ibund in respectable 
 Latin authors ; but it was remarked that it is one thing to em- 
 ploy certain words cursorily, and another to insert them in the 
 rigorous statement of a system. Besides, said the opposite party, 
 the best proof that we ought not to employ that expression is, 
 that we are not yet come to an agreement about its n)eaning ; 
 and that, consequently, after we are dead and gone, there will be 
 still less agreement about it. The Italians, in fact, would have 
 it that i)i ixirtcm soUcitud'uiis did not necessarily involve the 
 idea of the pope's universal episcopate ; to which the rest replied, 
 that if such were not the bearing of the words, this ought to be 
 stated ; and that in the decree itself a warranty ought to be 
 given to those who dreaded its being interpreted in that sense. 
 Many offered to declare themselves satisfied, if the other party 
 would consent to have it run thus — that bishops hnvc hecn estab- 
 lished by Jesus Christ, for the purpose of being charged by the 
 pope with a pHzrt of his solicitude ; but this middle course gave 
 
412 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 little satisfaction. And as the question of residence re-appeared 
 at every turn, the two parties passing perpetually from one to 
 the other, according as they could see their way to the gaining 
 of a little ground — the end of January arrived without their 
 having come to an understanding on any one point. 
 
 The first news of the battle of Dreux (17th December) had 
 been received and celebrated in the council, as that of a great 
 triumph ; but more detailed reports had modified this first im- 
 pression, and while the enthusiasm of the Roman Catholic popu- 
 lations continued to be maintained by means of pompous thanks- 
 givings, still there was food for bitter reflections. Granting that 
 the Protestant army had been completely beaten, still it was 
 seen at once to be no small matter for the E.eformation to have 
 an army, and an army, too, capable of confronting the combined 
 forces of the king of France and Phillip II. ; but although beaten, 
 it was known to have lost fewer men than that of the Roman 
 Catholics ; that it was neither discouraged nor broken ; and, when 
 an army does not consider itself defeated, it is not really so. The 
 only positive result of the battle of Dreux, accordingly, had been 
 to raise, both in a political and military point of view, the party 
 of the Reformation to the level of that of the king ; after the two 
 armies had fought on equal terms, these two great parties might 
 treat as one power would with another. 
 
 The pope had judged more soundly on the subject than any 
 one else. The ambassador, De Lisle, in his letters to the queen, 
 complains of not having succeeded in getting him to consider 
 this much vaunted triumph as a real victory. " His holiness," 
 says he,i " persevering firmly and with words full of disdain and 
 discontent, will not allow me to speak of your victory, and says 
 that it has been none." But patience I Only nine years later, 
 Rome was to resound with cries of joy for another victory, ap- 
 parently a more complete, and a still finer one in its eyes — that 
 of St. Batholomew's eve. 
 
 In the early part of January, the French ambassadors had 
 presented to the council a project of reformation, with which the 
 cardinal had afiected not to meddle, and which, having ema- 
 nated from the government, had not in fact met the approbation 
 of all the French bishops. The rights of the pope, without be- 
 ing attacked in theory, were touched in it at more than one point, 
 particularly in money matters. The seventeenth and eighteenth 
 articles established the right to communicate in both kinds, and 
 to celebrate worship in the vulgar tongue. The worship of im- 
 ages, the collation of benefices, dispensations of every description, 
 
 ' Letter of 8th March, 1563. 
 
Chap. V. ]5C3. ALARMING ARTICLES FROM FRANCE. 413 
 
 ■\vcre also made the object of dispositions, more or less contrary 
 to the ideas and to the interests of the court of Eome. The 
 victory of Dreiix began to bear fruits that were not all equally 
 pleasant. The more it was vaunted, the more was the French 
 government placed in a position to require concessions from the 
 council, and to make concessions itself to the Protestants. 
 
 The legates were so alarmed at the eflect that this memoir 
 might have on the old pope's health, for he had been lor some 
 months in a sickly and dying state, that they lost no time in 
 sending one of his confidential friends, the bishop of Viterbo, to 
 soften the rudeness of the blow. But the impression it produced 
 was terrible notwithstanding. The pope exclaimed that France 
 was in revolt. The bishop succeeded in calming him, but not 
 without difficulty, by urging that there were thirty-lour articles, 
 and that the French never surely could have the idea of obtain- 
 ing them all — that one might easily grant some, modify others, 
 and reject a good many. In fine, and this was the most con- 
 solatory circumstance, the Cardinal of Lorraine had secretly 
 commissioned the bishop to make an ofier of his services to the 
 pope, if not for the purpose of conjuring the storm, at least to 
 turn it in another direction, and to moderate its violence. The 
 cardinal, at bottom, was neither ultramontane nor Galilean ; his 
 religion was simply that of an ambitious man, that is to say, he 
 was ready to change it any day. 
 
 The pope, accordingly, began to take up this alTair, about 
 which, nevertheless, he was supposed to know nothing, seeing it 
 had been transmitted, not to him by the ambassador residing at 
 Rome, but to the council by the ambassador residing at Trent. 
 The Cardinal of Ferrara, as legate in France, had orders to reply 
 to the king, " That there were in fact good things in those ar- 
 ticles, and that the pope asked nothing better than to see them 
 examined ; that he could not suppose that any one, least of all 
 the most Christian king, could intend to deprive the Holy ^ee of 
 any portion whatever of the powers which it holds from Jesus 
 Christ ; that if such or such church-dues were burthenscme to 
 the kingdom, one might proceed to lighten them amicably ; that, 
 besides, there were things in the memorial which were little fit 
 to be treated of in a council." One of the reasons, the pope add- 
 ed, on account of which these articles did not all equally please 
 him, was, that some were not less contrary to the king's author- 
 ity than to that of the pope. Slightly dependent on the Holy See, 
 the bishops would find facilities for being still less dependent on 
 the king. Finally, all these observations were to be supported by 
 the Cardinal of Ferrara, with a new advance of forty thousand 
 crowns on the hundred thousand previously ofTered as a gift. 
 
414 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 These money presents, openly made by one prince to another, 
 offered and accepted without the smallest shame, however inade- 
 quate the sum might be to the greatness and opulence of" the two 
 parties, form one of the curious traits that mark the political 
 history of that age. It seemed generally admitted that a full 
 purse was as good an argument as any other, and that one had 
 no more reason to blush at receiving a good round sum than at 
 admitting the conclusiveness of a good sound argument. But if 
 merely curious in political affairs, in religious it was certainly 
 something more. 
 
 Nothing being ready for the session, it was found necessary 
 to m'oroofuo it aorain. Although it was but the commencement 
 of February, the legates proposed to put it on till Easter. This 
 suggestion was strongly opposed ; all the more as the legates 
 talked of taking up the article of marriage, and it was thought 
 strange that new matters for discussion should be sought lor, 
 when they could not make an end of the old. Many wanted 
 the vote to be taken on all the points that had been sufficiently 
 examined ; but the Italians, though sure of victory, dreaded ob- 
 taining it in this way. The Cardinal of Lorraine, while he con- 
 sented to delay, had the air of one who lent himself to that course 
 only from complaisance ; but he had his own reasons for not be- 
 ing displeased at it. He projected making a journey to the em- 
 peror, and the affairs of France were still in too entangled a state 
 to admit of his seeing clearly what it was best to do in the inter- 
 est of his party. 
 
 This journey, which had been long talked of, was a subject of 
 much uneasiness. It was thought certain that he had in viev/, 
 besides the political affairs of France and Germany, a closer 
 union between the French and Germans in the affairs of the 
 council ; the emperor, and still more his son, were too much dis- 
 affected to admit of the cardinal returning from them without 
 bringing projects with him of a more or less hostile nature. Ru- 
 mours were afloat respecting certain questions which the emperor 
 had submitted to the examination of his own divines, and which 
 were not the most encouraging, among others : — 
 
 If the pope had good grounds for his desiring that the legates 
 alone should have the right to propose, and if the clause pro- 
 ponentibus legatis ought not to be expunged as contrary to the 
 authority and the liberty of the council ; 
 
 If the pope could transfer it to another place, or dissolve it, 
 M'ithout the concurrence of the secular princes ; 
 
 If means might not be found for making the bishops [it the 
 council independent, as well on the side of the pope as on that 
 of their respective civil rulers ; 
 
CJIAI-. V. 15C3 CARDINAL OF LORRAINE VISITS THE EMPEROR, 415 
 
 If tlic-re was no possibility of protecting the nninnrity from the 
 violence or intrigues of the nnijority ; 
 
 If, in the event of the pope Inippening to die, the next election 
 would belong to the council ; 
 
 And other points, among -which public rumour placed tiomc 
 that were still more menacine:. 
 
 The cardinal left Trent about the middle of February, after 
 having made the legates promise that the question of marriage 
 should not be agitated in his absence. Here there was new 
 matter of uneasiness. He had, it would appear, views on this 
 point which might not be those of the majority. He remained 
 five days at Inspruck. Every eQbrt was made to penetrate the 
 secret of his conferences with the emperor ; but all that could 
 be known was, that he remained every day at least two hours 
 with him and his son. On the cardinal's return no one was a 
 whit wiser. He merely reported to the legates that the em- 
 peror had broken out, when he was with him, into bitter com- 
 plaints that not one of his demands had been so much as pro- 
 posed for dehberation ; that he had been very hot on the subject, 
 insisting that the assembly had done nothing yet of any import- 
 ance, that the pope was deceived either by the council sitting 
 at Trent, or by Idsoion council sitting at Rome, (Sec, ho,} The 
 cardinal added that he had done his best to soften the emperor ; 
 but, says the historian, " he said all this in the tone of a man 
 who not only relates the sentiments of another, but desires also 
 to add weight to his own by giving them the support of a supe- 
 rior authority.'' On the following da}'s he spoke almost openly 
 of the emperor as an ally, a friend ; he went so far as to say, 
 that if things were to continue in the same state, some great 
 scandal would be the result. This scandal was evidently that the 
 princes would decree, of their own authority, what they should 
 have failed to obtain from the council or from the pope. Thus 
 agitation and mutual distrust went on increasing. 
 
 In fine, while the cardinal of Ferrara was in France commu- 
 nicating the ambiguous answer made by the pope to the thirty- 
 four articles which had thrown Rome into a fright, the French 
 ambassadors, having communicated to the council, by a letter 
 from the king, the official news of the battle of Dreux, took that 
 occasion to ask what had been done with those articles, and what 
 it was proposed to do with them. Then, with a malicious show 
 of candour and simplicity, " If any are surprised," said Du Fer- 
 rier, " that we have stuck to these points rather than to others, 
 and that we have omitted so many things of importance, we 
 would reply that we have been desirous to begin with lighter 
 
 ^ Pallavicini, Book xx. ch. v. 
 
416 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 matters, with the view of clearing the way, and thus faciHtating 
 our reaching the most important. Think not," he added, " that 
 Christians are now what they were fifty or a hundred years ago. 
 If there are many still who want nothing better than to remain 
 Catholics, those very persons are already too much awakened to 
 abstain from judging, according to Scripture, whatever you shall 
 have presented to them as what they have to believe and to do." 
 Why, then, did such persons, and he himself as the first of them, 
 put off any longer declaring themselves Protestants ? Had not 
 the council decreed enough of things contrary to Scripture, to 
 warrant their ceasing to wait for more ? 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 (1563.) 
 DISCUSSIONS ON MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, AND CELIBACY. 
 
 Marriage — Is it a sacrament — Scriptural and other objections — In giv- 
 ing it this title, has it been really rendered more sacred — The Church's 
 despotism — Objections of jurisconsults — Indissolubility of marriage 
 — Except it be for adultery — Divorce — It maybe made a law, but not 
 a dogma — Weakness of the arguments in favour of the decree — Other 
 difficulties — Civil elements of marriage — Quibbles — If marriage be a 
 sacrament, the civil power has nothing to do with it — The march of 
 ideas — Side by side with so much strictness, unheard of dissoluteness 
 of morals — Abuse of dispensations — Sophisms of the ultramontanists. 
 Can a Roman Catholic treat them with contempt? — The celibate — 
 Can we examine whether it be, in itself, more holy than marriage — 
 Monks and the monastic life — Suicide — Convents in poetry — Con- 
 vents in reality — Forced vows — Scruples of jurisconsults — Celibate 
 of priests — Right and abuses — The celibate and the Reformation — 
 The Jewish law — The Christian law — St. Peter — Ideal and realities 
 — What the clergy are where it prevails — Why the celibacy of the 
 priests is persisted in. 
 
 The debates on the doctrine of marriage, after being delayed 
 for some days by a dispute about precedence among the divines, 
 were opened in the course of February. Eight articles, not 
 necessary to enumerate, had been presented by the legates. Let 
 us confine ourselves to the three points on which tlie discussion 
 was chiefly to run ; marriage in itself ; marriage as a tie ; and 
 celibacy. 
 
 Is marriage a sacrament ? It is easy to affirm this, but not 
 so easy to prove it. This the divines sufficiently admitted, if 
 not in set terms, at least by the length and the embarrassment 
 shewn in their speeches. 
 
 Let us first recall, to refresh our memories, what we have al- 
 ready said or suggested elsewhere. That it seems little agree- 
 able to the very notion of a sacrament to give that name to what 
 is found in all religions ; that in order to find ancient Christian 
 authors who make a sacrament of marriage, we must go back to 
 times when the word sacrament was applied to all religious acts 
 
418 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 whatever ;^ that Scripture, in fine, nowhere speaks of it as it 
 would be natural for it to speak of an act pertaining to the new 
 law, and fellow, so to speak, of the supper and of baptism. If 
 this last, although in use previous to Christian times, has become 
 a sacrament, it is because Jesus Christ positively appropriated it, 
 and made it as it were the seal by which his disciples were to be 
 marked, when he said, " Go, therefore, and teach all nations, bap- 
 tizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
 Ghost." We find nothing of this sort respecting marriage. The 
 jN"ew Testament speaks of it only in a moral point of view. It 
 takes it up as a fact ; it purifies and elevates it ; but nowhere do 
 we see there either institution of the fact, or modification in its 
 essence. Thus, religion sanctifies, but does not create it ; the 
 Church proclaims it, and blesses it ; but it would exist without 
 her, and has really existed, at some epochs, among pagans, as 
 much respected and as sacred in men's eyes as ever it was among 
 Christians. 2 But, give what definition you please to the term 
 sacrament in general, never would it logically apply to an act 
 where the part taken by religion and the Church is a mere in- 
 tervention which, strictly speaking, might be dispensed with. 
 Every act, every transaction on which you would call for God's 
 blessing and the Church's prayers, would, by parity of reason, 
 be a sacrament. 
 
 AVhat, besides, would j^ou make of a sacrament, the true and 
 immediate object of which has nothing religious about it, and 
 does not even in any respect touch upon religion ? Though the 
 marriage state, when blessed by godliness, becomes an abundant 
 source of sanctification and salvation, this, after all, is only an 
 occasional result. The conjugal miion may have none of those 
 blessed effects, yet not the less would it continue to subsist. 
 Marriage is not, therefore, of itself a religious act ; it exists in- 
 dependently of religions ; it is, therefore, essentially difierent 
 from the supper and baptism, and all those other sacraments, if 
 people will insist on there being others, since these, if you ab- 
 stract from them their religious meaning, signify nothing, and 
 are absolutely nothing. 
 
 Let us take up for a moment, one of the most favourite ideas 
 of the Roman Church, that of the superiority of celibacy to the 
 
 ^ " Marriage is, according to St. PauVs expression, a great sacrament 
 in Christ and in the Church." — Encyclical Letter of 1832. 
 
 " A great mystery,'" says the Greek text. We have already had an 
 example of this same plaj' lapon words, (Book ii.) Cardinal Cajetan 
 admits the falsification. '"^Non habes ex hoc loco, prudens lector, a 
 Paulo, eonjugium esse saeramentum. Non enim dixit esse sacramentum, 
 sed mj-sterium." 
 
 ^ For example, nt Eome in the early times of the republic. 
 
y 
 
 Chap. VI. i:,t;;<. MAUHIAGE NOT A SACRAMENT. *110 
 
 married state, and forthwith a new ohjcction occurs. All the 
 other sacraments have, or are reputed to have, for their object, 
 the exercise of a salutary influence on the soul, and the increase 
 of its spirituality ; but here the case must be quite otheiwise. If 
 the unmarried be a holier state than the married, and marringe 
 nevertheless a sacrament — we have a sacrament immediately 
 resulting in the transference of the soul into an inferior condition, 
 in its being bereft of part of its spirituality, and, in fine, in its 
 having certain sources of salvation closed against it. The Roman 
 Church admits marriage only as a necessary evil ; can it be 
 thought logical, then, to view that as a sacrament which creates 
 an evil? And if it be replied that it is natural for religion to 
 lay hold of this evil for the purpose of lessening it, and drawing 
 forth all tlie good that can be in it, this only takes us back to the 
 objection stated above, " That there can be no sacrament where 
 religion docs no more than bless what Avould exist beyond its 
 sphere and without it." 
 
 For the rest, it were much to be desired that the Eoman 
 Church had never taught anything more dangerous. In placing 
 marriage in the number of the sacraments, a good object may 
 have been aimed at, that of enhancing its sacrcdness and invio- 
 lability. ATe might only inquire, then, if this has been the con- 
 sequence, and if the conjugal tie be really held more sacred in 
 Italy than in England, in France than in the United States, at 
 Rome than at Geneva, and we might fearlessly look for the an- 
 swer that every enlightened traveller, and every candid Roman 
 Catholic would be sure to give. 
 
 But if the good results are doubtful, it is not so with the bad. 
 On becoming a sacrament, marriage passed into the domain of 
 the Church ■} the Church alone had from that tim.e forth the 
 right to lay down its conditions. This right has proved an ex- 
 haustless source of influence over individuals, families, kings, and 
 nations. Civil society thus became bound to the Church by 
 fibres that rooted themseh^s profoundly in all the interests and 
 afibctions of mankind. And what a strain has been put upon 
 those fibres I AThat delight has been felt in multiplying difficul- 
 ties and impediments of all sorts ! At tire commencement of the 
 thirteenth century, the bar to marriage constituted by relation- 
 ship, was extended to the seventh degree ; there were no ties of 
 relationship, even down to adulterous ones, that did not consti- 
 tute a sort of kin in which the interdiction of marriage extended 
 to the fourth degree. In the midst of this maze of impediments 
 there was hardly a marriage which the Church might not pos- 
 
 ' "Marriasre, fonninc; a part of holv things, is consequontlv subject 
 to ilie Church.''— T!ie Pouo's Encvelionl 1 ctfcr uf 18G2. 
 
420 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 sibly prevent, were slie in the least desirous to apply her rules 
 rigorously ; and in that case the only resource was to petition 
 and to pay. Often, too, impediments coming to be discovered 
 after the marriage was over, there had to be fresh petitions and 
 fresh outlay, if people wished to be married according to the 
 rules. Spouses united for twenty years might still feel not quite 
 sure that their marriage was valid, and their children legitimate ; 
 the latter, even after the death of their parents, might some fine 
 day hear of their being declared bastards. 
 
 From the times of the Council of Trent, it has not been quite 
 dius. Universal complaints had constrained Innocent III. to re- 
 duce to four the normal number of the degrees ; use had, more- 
 over, given the force of law to divers mitigations in detail, and 
 what remained too oppressive in the law was left to be alleviated 
 by dispensations. Notwithstanding this there prevailed a gen- 
 eral feeling of uneasiness. Civil society strongly tending towards 
 its own emancipation, its attention was incessantly directed to 
 the most delicate of the points of contact between the spiritual 
 and the temporal. The Reformation had called upon the Church 
 of Rome to say by what rights she alleged that she alone was 
 competent to lay down laws on the subject of marriage, and the 
 Church of Rome, beyond the argument of authority, which people 
 would no longer admit, had not much to reply. Many Roman 
 Catholic jurisconsults had, on this point, come to entertain ideas 
 nearly approaching those of the Protestants. In France, in par- 
 ticular, people began to see that marriage was an essentially civil 
 act, which religion consecrated, but did not create. It was per- 
 fectly understood that the Church retained the power of determ- 
 ining in what cases the priest was to grant or refuse that conse- 
 cration ; but it began generally to be understood that, as respects 
 society, it is an accessor}^ In fine, the civil power began to be- 
 lieve that it too had the right to fix within its own sphere the 
 conditions beyond which the Church could not proceed to cele- 
 brate a marriage. Such was the commencement of that system, 
 which, after remaining long in abeyance, was to become, as it is 
 at this day, that of France and many other states. 
 
 These discussions on the essence of marriage, necessarily led 
 to the next question of those above indicated, namely, that of 
 marriage viewed as a tie. 
 
 This tie the Roman Church had pronounced indissoluble. 
 Viewing the matter in its social and moral aspects, weighty rea- 
 sons may be alleged in favour of this system ; but the question 
 was, how do we know that the Church had a right to establish 
 it ? Now, with the Scriptures before us, this cannot be main- 
 tained, least of all if Ave are to hold that marriage is a sacra- 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
/ 
 
 CiiAr. VI. 15()3. IS MARRIAGE INDISSOLUULE! llil 
 
 meiit. For a sacrament — this tlie Church has always main- 
 tained — is hcyond lier power She may regulate the use oi" it, 
 she may modify its accessories, but its essence she camiot modify. 
 If marriage be a sacrament, and Jesus Christ nevertheless did 
 not regard it as indissoluble, its very quality of sacrament de- 
 prives all parties whatsoever of any power of changing it. As- 
 suming this, wdiat do we fhid said of it by Jesus Christ? " It 
 hath been said by them of old time. Let him give her a writing 
 of divorcement ; but I say nnto you, that whosoever shall put 
 away his wife, save for the cause of fornication, causcth her to 
 commit adultery ; and w^hosoever shall marry her that is di- 
 vorced, committeth adultery."^ Whosoever shall marry that 
 woman. It w^as permitted then to marry a repudiated woman. 
 Does Jesus Christ forbid it? By no means. He confines him- 
 self to saying, that if the repudiation has not had a valid motive, 
 the new marriage shall not be legitimate. It would be so then 
 if the repudiation has been so. Will any one maintain that had 
 he wished to teach its indissolubility, he would not have done so 
 at this place ? Or that what our Lord said was from a desire 
 to defer to the ideas and the usages of the Jews ? We cannot 
 conceive that the Son of God could carry compliance so far as 
 to grant, even provisionally, what would have been contrary 
 to God's will, and to the essence of the sacraments under the 
 new law. 
 
 Here we have nothing to do with the question, whether cer- 
 tain states have done well or ill in sanctioning divorce in other 
 cases besides that of adultery. It is enough to have demon- 
 stated that the absolute prohibition of divorce, cannot with any 
 shew of reason be invested with the authority of a law of God. 
 It is hardly worth while to refute the charges which have on 
 this score been levelled at the Reformation. Some authors will 
 have it that this impossibility of dissolving marriage cannot be 
 taken off without opening the door to the most scandalous disor- 
 ders. Happily here, as in the sacramental question, we have 
 only to appeal to facts. Where are those disorders to be found ? 
 Shall we be told of many cases where the prospect of divorce has 
 loosened ties which, but for that would not have been loosened ? 
 It is of course understood that we do not speak of that brutish 
 divorce which history shews as in use among some nations, but 
 of divorce legal and solemn, such, in a word, as we find in all 
 the Protestant countries that have admitted it. There, encom- 
 passed with all the civil restrictions which morality and social 
 order demand, it never occurs wdthout formalities and delays 
 such as are tantamount to its being declared beforehand impos- 
 ^ Gospel r.ccording to St. Matthew, eh. v. 
 
422 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 sible, if it shall be found in the least that the motives that have 
 led to its being asked are insufficient or of a temporary character. 
 Hardly will there be found a case to be adduced, at distant in- 
 tervals, in Avhich, upon the Avliole, more good has not been done 
 than evil ; and how many cases, on the contrary, do we see oc- 
 cur, in Avhich the indissolubility of the marriage produces more 
 evil than good ? Next, we repeat, this is not the question. Al- 
 though the permission of divorce had only untoward results, the 
 Church has no right to interdict it as long as it remains uninter- 
 dicted by Scripture. All very well to dissuade people frcm it ; 
 to do all that is humanly possible to prevent, in each several 
 case, the spouses from coming to that deplorable extremity is a 
 positive duty ; nothing better than that the civil law should be 
 asked to be severe in repressing it, to require minute examina- 
 tion of the circumstances, and to interpose salutary delays ; but 
 when the laAV of God does not expressly say no, the Church can- 
 not say no. 
 
 We find these ideas re-occurring in the opinions delivered by 
 almost all the divines who elaborated the questions relating to 
 marriage at Trent. The argument which might have been 
 drawn, and which is Vvith such confidence drawn to this day, 
 from the words of Jesus Christ, " AVhat God hath joined togeth- 
 er, let no man put asunder,'"^ was found to be defeated by an- 
 ticipation in the passage where he admits divorce on the ground 
 of adultery ; a rule could not be promulgated as absolute after 
 he himself had admitted one such serious exception. On the 
 other hand, it was felt that a law of this importance could not 
 be made to rest solidly on the Church's sole authority. Infinite 
 pains therefore were taken to find for it some scriptural founda- 
 tions, but here as on so many other points, there was no resource 
 but to travesty into doctrinal declarations certain words of Scrip- 
 ture which are evidently nothing of the kind. Thus in the de- 
 cree itself the indissolubility of marriage is made to rest first of 
 all, on these words of Adam, " This is now bone of my bone, 
 and flesh of my flesh ;" next, on these words of St. Paul, "A 
 man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave 
 unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh ;"' lastly, on 
 these words, " AYhat God hath joined together, let no man put 
 asunder." But not a word does the council say as to the excep- 
 tion pointed out in the case of adultery ; more than that, in the 
 seventh canon, an anathema is launched against whosoever shall 
 maintain that the Church is mistaken in teaching the indissolu- 
 bility, even in case of adultery. Let us repeat what we have 
 already said : this point is one on which we could most willingly 
 ' Gospel nccorciincr to St. Mnvk. ch. \. 
 
Ch.vp. VI. 15G;t. INSUPEUADI.E DIFFICULTIES. 423 
 
 forgive Roaiiau Catholicism for being in coiitratlictioii with the 
 Bible ; but not the less is the contradiction there, patent, flagrant. 
 There might be some plea for making indissolubility a law, but 
 to teach it as a dogma is a lie. 
 
 To this first dilTiculty there were added others, lighter of them- 
 selves, but for which, when complicated by the idea of marriage 
 being a sacrament, no solution Avas possible. Among the condi- 
 tions attached to marriage some are purely human ; the consent 
 of parents and tutors, the minimum of age allowed in the spouses, 
 &e. Now, supposing one of these conditions awanting, what is 
 the marriage ? 
 
 Would you pronounce it null ? But it is contrary to the es- 
 sence of a sacrament to suppose that it can be annihilated, by 
 the mere omission of a civil formality. In vain would you, like 
 many of the Trent divines, call in the scholastic logic to your 
 aid. " Every sacrament," they would say, " must have a sacra- 
 mentary material. Just as there can be no baptism where there 
 is nobody to be baptized, so there can be no marriage where there 
 is nobody to marry. If, consequently, the spouses have not the 
 requisite conditions, there are no materials for marriage. The 
 act, therefore, is null, just as would be the baptism of a dead 
 child or of a stone." Miserable subtleties, to which, moreover, 
 there was needed but one word of reply, to wit, that the civil 
 conditions of marriage are not everywhere the same, and that it 
 involves a contradiction, and is absurd, to say that the same sa- 
 cramental words might create an indissoluble tie, or have abso- 
 lutely no meaning or efiect, according as the same priest may 
 have pronounced them on the same persons to the right or the 
 left of a brook, if that brook happens to be the boundary between 
 two states differing in their civil laws relative to marriage. 
 
 There is but one way of escaping from this absurdity, and that 
 is by insisting that the civil power has absolutely nothing to do 
 with marriage. As long as the Church shall have failed of 
 reaching the point of regulating, in a sovereign manner, all its 
 conditions, alike in the civil and in the ecclesiastical order, the 
 sacramentality of that act can only be for her a source of embar- 
 rassments and rebuffs. The council of Florence, accordingly, 
 had taught that the consent of the contracting parties is the only 
 indispensable condition. This is good logic. When you baptize 
 a child, it is in vain that his father mav not have consented, the 
 child is baptized. In like manner, if marriage be a sacrament, 
 in vain may the parents have said no : from the moment that 
 the formula has been pronounced, there has been a marriage. 
 One might, always in consistency with sound logic, have gone 
 even farther than this. The child vou baptize has neither sought 
 
424 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 nor accepted baptism. If marriage "be a sacrament, if the form- 
 ula of marriage has the virtue, hke that of baptism, of operating 
 a certain infalhble effect — one does not see how the priest might 
 not marry of his own authority, as many people as he may think 
 fit, without asking the consent of parties, without even informing 
 them of the fact. 
 
 Here, then, as in so many other things, what contributed most 
 to the force of the Church when she was omnipotent, contrib- 
 utes now only to her humiliation. What really is the civil 
 marriage, as it is called, recognised now by most states, but the 
 standing negation of the idea, so dear to her ambition, that she 
 alone can make lawful marriages ? That idea, nevertheless, she 
 has not abandoned ; she cannot, indeed, abandon it, seeing she 
 has made it a point of faith. She is reduced, therefore, to the 
 necessity of submitting to the affiront in silence ; she dissembles 
 it by appearing to ignore it. Civil marriage, in her eyes, has 
 no existence ; if she ever spoke of it, it could only be as nothing 
 short of an impious usurpation. Excellent as her theory of 
 marriage might be, looking to an epoch of omnipotence, it was, 
 at bottom, the fruit of temerity rather than of skill ; her advisers 
 ought to have provided for the case of her ceasing to have the 
 mastery of Christendom, and to have secured at least some out- 
 let for the retracing of her steps. But no. Who could have 
 ventured to foresee or to predict the final close of that omnipo- 
 tence which had been so fondly dreamt of, and towards which 
 new advances were made every day ? AYas not the very transfor- 
 mation of marriage into a sacrament one of the things apparently 
 most likely to lead to it, and to secure its permanency ? Look- 
 ing at that continued encroachment made by Roman Cathol- 
 icism for a thousand years, one would say that it was an army 
 which advances, which is ever advancing in proportion as the tide 
 retires, without reflecting that those waves which are fleeing be- 
 fore it, may yet return faster than they have fled. Wherever 
 the Church could plant her foot, there she planted it, and behold 
 the tide approaches ; behold the foot v/hich cannot withdraw 
 itself, seeing that a single step backwards must insure an utter 
 defeat ; behold the Church encompassed with the billows of 
 secularity. She well knows how to drive them before her, does 
 she say ? Vain hope, indeed I The tide of ideas is not one that 
 ebbs and flo^vs. Once that it has begun to rise, it rises, ever 
 rises. God alone could arrest it : and, further, he could arrest 
 it only by arresting and crushing the human mind. Sad mir- 
 acle, which God will never perfomi, but for which Rome has 
 ever been found but too surely preparing all minds that have 
 not revolted at the blind submission she preaches. 
 
CiiAi'. M. lJti3. MATRIMONIAL DISPENSATIONS. 425 
 
 Side by side with those tyrannical restrictions there were 
 placed the most unheard oi" relaxations. 01" all the oLstruetions 
 to marriage, there was hardly one the removal of" which might 
 not he purchased with money ; the very indissolubility of mar- 
 riajje, admitted as a doctrine, was often reduced to no more than 
 a mere Avord, if Ave look at the infniite number of causes of nul- 
 lity, one or other of Avhich it Avas always easy for princes and 
 other great folks to find suited to their purpose when they had 
 a mind to change their avIa'cs. DiA'orce, in fact, did exist, but 
 under its Avorst ibrm, that of a retro-active judgment, annulling 
 the union that had previously existed, and denying that there 
 had been a marriage. By means of ready money and submis- 
 sion all was obtained when Avantcd. Provided the question of 
 right Avas yielded, the court of Home was not in the least of- 
 fended at becoming, practically, the humble serving-maid of the 
 secular princes. The Reformation has, in these matters, led to 
 infmitely fewer disorders than Rome covertly legitimized. 
 
 The subject of matrimonial dispensations accordingly became, 
 at Trent, a perpetual theme of complaint and lamentation for 
 the Spanish, German, and French bishops. Only it was painful 
 to see personal interest so often peeping out in the reproaches 
 they cast on others. Many of them Avere manifestly less dis- 
 tressed at dispensations being so multiplied in luimber, than at 
 the law according to Avhicli the pope alone Avas authorized to 
 grant them and receive the price. Be that as it may, at some 
 meetings of the council, one might ha\'e fancied himself at that 
 of a Reformed Synod, so little did the divines and prelates re- 
 strain themselves in denouncing those abuses. The most violent 
 charges ever launched against the Reformation, as relaxing the 
 conjugal bond, Avere noAV hazarded by bishops, and Avithout any 
 calumny against the head of their Church. Some proposed that 
 the number of obstacles should be reduced to the loAvcst possible 
 amount, but that these should at the same time be declared 
 absolute, so as not to be removable CA'en by the pope himself 
 This Avas tantamount to a decree pronouncing the council to be 
 supreme ; it Avas what the ultramontanists, as was to be ex- 
 pected, would not listen to or endure to be spoken of. Many of 
 them CA^en, in the course of the discussion, made bold to assert 
 in set terms the omnipotence and absolute irresponsibility of the 
 pope, being Avhat had never before been maintained at Trent. 
 The Portuguese Cornelio, one of those Avho commanded most 
 attention of all the doctors of the Roman camp, laboured to 
 proA^e that there Avas nothing in the Avorld that the pope could 
 not grant a dispensation for, excepting only belief on points of 
 faith ; of all else, of the commandments of God, as Avell as of 
 
426 HISTORY OF THE COUN'CIL OF TRENT. Rook V. 
 
 those of the Church, of the canons of councils as well as of the 
 decrees of the Holy See, he was supreme arbiter. And, on this 
 occasion, the party were not afraid to resuscitate even those 
 wretched arguments, based on single words and syllables, which 
 one would think must have been buried for two centuries. 
 " Abolish dispensations I has not St. Paul said that the Church's 
 ministers are the dlsjyensers of God's mysteries?" Such was 
 the serious argument which a Dominican, of the name of Val- 
 entino, had the honour to propound. Fortunately, there hap- 
 pened to be present a Frenchman called John of Yerdun, whose 
 keen satire made him pay dear for this honour. In general, 
 when any of the members ventured to make themselves ridic- 
 ulous in presence of the learned doctors of France, it was not 
 done with impunity. But, alas I what availed them all their 
 wit? Even while making game of the ultramontanists, were 
 they not bound by the same chains ? And if they jested at the 
 Romish arguments, if they stood out to the last against certain 
 exclusively Roman pretensions — how many arguments were 
 there not a whit more valid, yet of which they durst not make 
 a jest ? How many points vvere there quite as far from being 
 well established, and yet of v.diich they durst not expose the fra- 
 gility without renouncing their profession as Roman Catholics ? 
 All these discussions resulted only in obscure decrees, present- 
 ing a crude medley of discipline and doctrine, in which each 
 party remained free to find more or less the opinion which itself 
 had endeavoured to introduce into it. Of this we shall ere long 
 give some examples. 
 
 The council kept its promise to the Cardinal of Lorraine, and 
 accordingly it w'as not till after his return, in the congregation 
 of the 4th of March, that the great question of the celibate was 
 broached. 
 
 First of all, the principle "was laid down that celibacy, in 
 itself, is holier than marriage. On this first point the meeting 
 was unammous. 
 
 Is this a question, we have a.sked ourselves, which can fairly be 
 put under the form of a comparison between the relative merit 
 of the two states in life ? We think not. Marriage is the nor- 
 mal state of man ; celibacy is not so, seeing that it would end 
 at last in the destruction of the human race, a result manifestly 
 opposed to the designs of God. Hence a first objection. Can it 
 be admitted that Avith a Creator supremely wise and powerful, 
 there is in the creation anything whatever in which what is ab- 
 normal, is essentially more pure than the normal ? The barren 
 fig-tree, then, savs nu ancient controversialist, was purer than 
 
Chap. VI. 15(;3. IS CELIBACY CONDUCIVE TO HOLINESS? I'iT 
 
 had it been loaded with fruits. In the second place, the apol- 
 ogi.sts of celibacy have never said, nor could say, that it saves 
 infallibly and of itself; no more have they ever said, in so far 
 as we know, that people cannot be saved in the married state. 
 You cannot, then, establish a direct comparison between them in 
 point of intrinsic merit ; neither the one nor the other saves ; 
 neither the one nor the other consigns to perdition, " Which 
 contributes most to salvation ?" Such is the only question that 
 can reasonably be started. The matter in hand is not to know 
 which of the two states is the most lioly, but which is best litted 
 to make people holy. 
 
 • Now, in these terms, any general and systematic answer is 
 impossible. Such an one will lind salvation in celibacy without 
 any marring of his comfort and happiness ; another will find 
 notbing in it but ennui, disgust, temptations, evil thoughts of 
 every kind. " When I had pronounced my vows," said Luther,^ 
 " mv father, who had strongly opposed my doing so, exclaimed, 
 May it please heaven this may not prove a cunning trick of 
 Satan I" In marriage, the same diversity of effects. One will 
 grow better and better in it, thanks to the salutary pressure of 
 his new duties ; another will see in it only a yoke, and those 
 same duties Avill have proved but the occasions of new faults. 
 Therefore, we repeat, the question is one of facts, not of princi- 
 ples. Such an one may have been lost in celibacy, who might 
 have been saved in marriage. It is as impossible to say, a priori, 
 which of the states is the better of the two in respect of its effects, 
 as to prove by serious reasons the intrinsic superiority of the one 
 over the other. 
 
 Celibacy, in the Roman Church, is imposed on two categories 
 of persons, monks and inins forming the one, and priests the 
 other. 
 
 As for the former of these, if we once admit their existence, it 
 is clear that celibacy is the necessary and indispensable element 
 of their condition. We cannot therefore attack the celibacy of 
 the monk ; it is the monks, it is the monastic life itself, which 
 we are called to attack in the name of Christianity and of rea- 
 son. 
 
 In the name, we say, of Christianity ; and if v/e had to do so 
 here in detail, we should not stop at the idea — weighty as it is, 
 however, that monasticism is not to be found in Scripture, and 
 that it is not easy to understand how a thing destined to play so 
 important a part in the Church, should not have had so much 
 as a sin<Tle line assiirned to it in the New Testament ; no, we 
 should go straight to the root of the matter, and would ask, " Is 
 
 ' Letter lo Link. lo2L 
 
428 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 it in fleeing from temptations, or in combating them, that man 
 is best brought fully out, and answers best to the views contem- 
 plated by his Creator ?" In denouncing the crime of suicide the 
 idea that most naturally occurs is that a man has no right to 
 quit the post assigned to him by God. AYhat, then, does that 
 man do who buries himself in a monastery ? And if although 
 this mode of committing suicide may have less guilt attached to 
 it, because it may originate in Christian motives, and have some 
 happy results, still is it not essentially the same act ? 
 
 Suicide, it is, in fact, and that of the saddest kind, since it not 
 only results in death to the world and the trials of the world, 
 but often, too, in the death of the victim's mind, the death of his 
 heart, the death of piety itself "VMiat, indeed, can there be in 
 common with true piety, in that gross religiosity in which Chris- 
 tianity becomes a craft, worship a duty, and the sentient and 
 immortal soul a praying machine ? Have not even the wisest 
 religious orders pushed the last abuse to the most incredible ex- 
 cess ? At Cluny, besides religious offices of a frightful length, 
 conducted in common and individual prayers without end, 07ie 
 hundred and thirty-eight psalms had to be recited every day. 
 How is it possible that such worship could fail speedily to be- 
 come mechanical ? Accordingly, when the Reformers set them- 
 selves to attack the monks, they found nothing to say that had 
 not already been said a thousand times over. Their ignorance, 
 their sloth, their gluttony, had already been for ages the laughter 
 of the witty, and the despair of the godly. ^ Is it much otherwise 
 at the present day ? Revolutions have passed over the face of 
 Christendom, and their bloody rake has rid it of many abomina- 
 tions ; but go to Italy and to Spain, and you will have no difficulty 
 in finding, in all its turpitude, the old type of the monks de- 
 scribed by Rabelais and Erasmus. 
 
 Let us beware, then, of trusting to the poetic reveries of so 
 many sentimental folks by whom convents and monasteries are 
 never seen except through the clouds of the imagination, or the 
 mists of party spirit. Hurter, too, becomes eloquent in his pic- 
 tures of the monastic life.- But when he descends to historj^ he 
 finds himself compelled to go into details which are equivalent 
 to a confession that he had been hitherto speaking only as a poet. 
 Even writers that have been no friends to the Roman Church, 
 have for the most part allowed themselves to be too much seduced 
 
 ^ "Did they alone perish it were an evil, yet one -which could be en- 
 dured. But, circulating tlirougliout Christendom as the veins do in a 
 human body, their deprivation" brings with it the ruin of the world." 
 Memorial addressed to Paid III., 1538. 
 
 2 Institutions of the Church, ch. vii. 
 
Chap. VI. 1503. RESULTS OF CONVENTUAL LIFE. 429 
 
 into the belief tliat monaslerie.s and convents gradually degener- 
 ated, and that it required the corrupting influence of ages before 
 they could be brought into the condition in which the Reforma- 
 tion found them. Looking to what they were as early as the 
 thirteenth century, when alrno.st under the eye of their founders, 
 and when controlled by so severe and powerful a pope as Inno- 
 cent III., we must ask ourselves where, then, we arc to place 
 those days which are so often appealed to, and so eulogized, and 
 the golden age of monasticism llits from us almost as much as 
 that of Saturn. 
 
 Conventual establishments, then, according to many, arc places 
 where man is wholly devoted to God ; they are celestial inlirma- 
 ries lor the reception of all the ailments of man's mind and heart. 
 That it has often been of use to have some such refuge to offer to 
 loeary cmd lieavy laden soids, to use the words of Scripture, may 
 be admitted ; notwithstanding, on this very ground, where the 
 Church of Rome appears so strong, we might still venture to ask 
 if a soul so regenerated as to pant sincerely, not from sloth, but 
 from piety, for the repose of the cloister, would not be sufficient- 
 ly regenerated to rear for itself, without the intervention of ma- 
 terial Avails — possibly indeed with more difficulty, but with more 
 true progress also — a barrier between it and the seductions of the 
 world. We might ask, on the other hand, if the possibility of 
 ending their lives in a house having the reputation of sanctity, 
 and viewed as the gate to heaven, w^ere not for many an encour- 
 agement to lead ill lives, spending whole years in utter forgetful- 
 ness of God, but with the prospect of returning to Him for a few 
 days, and dying in the cell, or only, as was long the fashion, in 
 the dress of a monk. But, let this never be forgotten, those who 
 have become monks and nuns after having known the world, 
 those for whom the cloister has been a seriously felt desideratum, 
 have ever formed but a very small minority. It has been in 
 youth, often in very childhood, that they have thrown themselves, 
 and are to this day throwing themselves, into monasteries and 
 convents. The monastic state Avas one in Avhich there was 
 hardly any thing to dp, for the few monasteries to which we 
 are indebted for useful labours can never be put in the balance 
 against the ten thousand conventual houses which have only had 
 to consume their revenues."^ "What has there not been said of 
 
 ' In the space of a century and a half (106G-1216) five liundred and 
 fifty monastic establishments were founded in Englatul. The year 1200 
 beheld the rise of twent3'-three abbeys of the same order. ( Clteaux.) At 
 the close of the thirteenth century Florence had more tlian a liundred 
 monasteries and convents. See on this subject a curious bull of Inno- 
 cent X., (October, 1652.) Protestants never said more or spoke better 
 against the multiplication of monks and their houses. 
 
430 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V, 
 
 the services rendered by the monks in preserving the manuscripts 
 of ancient times I People forget that what they have preserved 
 in manuscripts — and in what a state too I — is not the hundredth 
 part of what they have suffered to perish. 
 
 Should it be said that the men, at least, entered with their 
 full consent into the cloister ; as for the women, how many were 
 there whose vocation was not the result either of constraint or ot 
 moral influences equivalent to restraint ? The heart shudders 
 to think with what impious coolness a father, a mother, would 
 condemn a daughter from her birth to the eternal icy widowhood 
 of the cloister. Every daughter to whom her parents saw no 
 prospect of their being able to give a portion suitable to the rank 
 of the family, it was considered as a matter of course should 
 have no vocation but the convent. '• Instead of having one 
 dauo-hter destined to the cloister, behold I shall now have two 1" 
 said a great lord, one day, under Louis XIII., after havnig lost a 
 large sum at cards. The Chinese, we are told, kill those chil- 
 dren whom they dread being unable to support. Are they much 
 more cruel than such parents ? Although the authors of the last 
 century have somewhat damaged the cause of the nuns by the 
 bombast of their infidel pleadings, how can we but groan to 
 think of those millions of existences which have fleeted away, 
 valueless, incomplete, suffering, under the vaults of the cloister I 
 and yet we should not commiserate and lament so much if those 
 poor women had at least found there a God in spirit and in 
 truth ; we should not even dream of regretting, on their account, 
 their never having known the endearing ties of spouses and 
 mothers, if it were at least ties truly celestial that were given to 
 them instead. But, as we have said already, piety is nowhere 
 more gross, more childish, more miserably carnal, than in con- 
 vents ; nowhere is the worship of God more scandalously effaced 
 by that of the Virgin, of the saints, of images ; nowhere will you 
 find more deeply rooted, more miserably pushed to its remotest 
 consequences, the idea that salvation is acquired, is purchased, 
 is paid for by dint of external practices and vain repetitions. 
 And the Roman Catholic historian, in speaking of convents, has 
 not even the resource of being able to point to some that have 
 rendered services to the world. People imagine they have said 
 all in citing the Sisters of Charity ; but they forget that it is not 
 two centuries since they began to exist, and that Roman Catho- 
 licism remained a thousand years all-powerful, loaded with riches, 
 without doing what she now vaunts having done. AA here were 
 there, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, the greater 
 number of the answers that the Romanism of our day thinks it- 
 self entitled to give to those who criticise it ? 
 
Chat. VI. 1563. OBLIGATION Ol .MONASTIC VOWS. 4S1 
 
 Nor \vcre llio assaults then made on rnouacliitjm conlined to 
 the principles or to the reahties ofthc system. 
 
 There were, hirther, questions of rehgious and of common law 
 on Avhicli the Church had rough adversaries to deal with, some 
 among the princes, others among the ranks of her ordinary 
 members. People asked themselves if she had any right to in- 
 sist that the vows should be perpetual, irrevocable ; if, in the 
 case where a monk, or nun, wished them broken, she had law- 
 fully the power of constraining such an one to remain faithful to 
 them, the power at least of any constraint beyond that of cen- 
 sures. Here there v/as, in fact, a singular anomaly ; controver- 
 sialists, it strikes us, do not generally press it enough. The Ro- 
 man Church glories in the credit she assumes of having abolish- 
 ed ancient slavery, and yet she has estabhshed a new slavery, 
 still more absolute, since redemption is impossible. The monk 
 and the nun were monk and nun for ever, neither could any 
 more quit the monastic life than a prisoner his prison or a con- 
 demned criminal the hulks. 'No doubt there was a personal en- 
 gagement to this effect, but every vow is, in its own nature, an 
 afiiiir between man and God. It is God who receives a monk's 
 vows ; the Church does no more in reality than regulate the 
 form. But the greater or less solemnity neither augments nor 
 diminishes the worth of the promise before God, so that one does 
 not see how the Church could be more entitled to exact by Ibrce 
 the fulfilment of a solemn vow than that of an engagement made 
 in the recesses of a man's heart. Starting from this idea, sev- 
 eral jurisconsults, even before the Reformation, asked themselves 
 how an engagement of the conscience can be regarded as com- 
 promised in the domain of public jurisprudence ; more accustom- 
 ed than the divines to positive reasons, they sought for a logical 
 transition, but could fnid none. Next, being the party best ac- 
 quainted in general with the Bible, at least as a collection of 
 laws, and finding absolutely nothing there to support the pre- 
 tended rights of the Church in so serious an afiiiir, oftentimes 
 they ventured to doubt whether she could have any legitimate 
 right to establish, of her own authority, laws that pressed so hard 
 on the most essential and the most inalienable rights of man. 
 
 Since the Reformation the discussion had borne principally on 
 the celibacy of the priests. There the question of right was less 
 complicated. A Church may, strictly speaking, fix by her own 
 authority the conditions on which a man is to become her min- 
 ister. If a master has the right of choosing to have bachelors 
 only in his service, one cannot refuse to a society that of imposing 
 celibacy on the men whom she pays. The evil lies in this, that 
 Rome has made it a matter of divine right. The priest's liberty 
 
J 
 
 432 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. BookV. 
 
 is alienated for ever. It is vain for him to quit the Church's 
 ministry and to renounce every kind of function and stipend ; he 
 is bound, eternally bound ; the Church will never recognize a 
 marriage contracted by such an one.^ 
 
 Thus we see the abuse immediately follow the right. We ac- 
 knowledge that temporary celibacy may be required ; it is another 
 matter knowing how far it were well to exact it. As for per- 
 petual celibacy we should say, as in the case of monastic vows, 
 that we cannot comprehend how a human authority can impose 
 it on those Avho do not feel it to be binding in conscience, and 
 Avho should renounce the functions in view of which they had 
 submitted to it. 
 
 Much noise has been made about the influence which their 
 being tired of celibacy may have had on the priests who em- 
 braced the Reformation, and in particular on Luther and Calvin. 
 As for the latter, it is the most gratuitous calumny that was ever 
 forged ; and as respects Luther, it is far easier to declaim against 
 what have been called his carnal tastes, than to prove that they 
 had any influence in the first movements of his revolt against 
 the papal yoke. Was it a matter of such difficulty then to pro- 
 cure for himself, while remaining a priest, those gross enjoyments 
 which some are bold enough to reproach him with having sought 
 in marrying ? Theodore Beza in his youth had been under no 
 necessity of making himself a Protestant in order to his indul- 
 gence of those irregularities for which he is so absurdly reproached 
 to this day, as if those disorders had not been committed by a 
 Uoman Catholic and a priest ; as if history did not stand by 
 ready to say how many priests and monks did as he did, and 
 worse than he did. 
 
 And wherefore, besides, wherefore should we be so anxious 
 to establish the point that the question of celibacy had abso- 
 lutely no influence on the progress of the Reformation among 
 the priests ? Of all the yokes of bondage imposed by Rome on 
 her ministers, none weighs more sadly on their existence, and 
 on all the portions and details of their existence. Here is a law 
 which pursues them everywhere, which condemns them never 
 to taste joys which their Church herself pronounces legitimate 
 and pure everywhere but with them ; and can it be any just 
 matter of surprise that that law should contribute more than 
 
 ^ This reasoning surely rests on a false foundation. The Church is 
 not an absolute mistress. It is her duty not to make arbitrary rules, 
 but to obey those of her Divine Master, who, as will appear from what 
 follows, not only does not choose to be served in the pastoral othce 
 by the unmarried only, but seems to give a preference to the mar- 
 ried.— Tr. 
 
Chap. VI. 1563. CELIBACY— DOCTRINE OF ST. PAUL. 'i->'i 
 
 another to suggest their inquiring into the right, in virtue ul' 
 Avhich it has been imposed on them ? 
 
 The autliority from which it emanates is that of the Church, 
 but of the Church alone, standing apart from all divine precept, 
 Irom all analogy even with divhie lessons and facts. Under 
 the Old Testament law the priests were married ; the high-prie.st 
 himself — he of Avliom the most scrupulous purity was required 
 in his person, in his habits, in his most insignilicant actions — 
 the high priest was married. That law is abolished ; the New 
 Testament has superseded it. To make Jesus Christ come down 
 daily irpon the altar is more, it may be alleged, than to enter 
 once a year into the most holy place. Be it so. But if celibacy 
 be one of the consequences of this superiority of the Christian as 
 compared with the Jewish priesthood, how are we to account 
 for the silence of Scripture on this new condition that Avas to be 
 exacted ? For, in fine, if it be a question of purity, it is inad- 
 missible that it should not have been resolved by Jesus Christ, 
 by the Apostles at least, and that the supper should have been 
 so long administered by hands radically unworthy of the honour. 
 How much grandiloquence has been wasted, especially in our 
 own days, on. this pretended profanation of the holy mysteries, 
 should they happen to be committed to married men I Yet St. 
 Paul speaks of this profanation, and that too without horror, 
 without censure, without the slightest trace of disapproval. '' A 
 pastor," says he, " must be the husband of one wife, one that 
 ruleth well his oAvn house, having his children in subjection with 
 all gravity."^ And at another place, " I left thee in Crete," he 
 Avrites to Titus, " that thou shouldest set in order the things that 
 are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, if any be blameless, 
 the husband of one wife, having faithful children," kc. Had 
 Chateaubriand read this when he dared to write that Protestant 
 ministers " repudiate tlie Creator for the sake of espousing the 
 creature ?" Were these lines to fall under the eye of a heathen 
 it would not be easy to convince him that the latter of those 
 two authors was a disciple of the former. In another passage, 
 it is true, St. Paul seems to counsel celibacy ; but to whom does 
 he there address himself?- To pastors? No ; what he says is 
 said to everybody. Does he venture to establish a law ? Not at 
 all, for he elsewhere^ ranks among the disciples of Satan those 
 who should venture to preach it. What then is the drift of the 
 Apostle's counsels ? He speaks of persecutions that had to be 
 endured and precautions that were to be taken. In such a case 
 
 ' 1 Tim. iii. "" } S^'^'' ^■"• 
 
 ^ 1 Tim. i v., "doctrines of devils, taught by seducing spirits . . . for- 
 
 biddi:;ri to viarrr/." 
 
434 HISTOKY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book Y. 
 
 it is clear that celibacy is attended with advantages ; the fewer 
 the ties to be broken, the more prepared is a man for sufiering. 
 Such is the amount of what St. Paul says ; nothing more. The 
 precept is one entirely of circumstances ; even v/ere it more gen- 
 eral, the fact that the author had spoken elsewhere of a bishop's 
 being married as a thing perfectly natural, and about which 
 there could not be two opmions, were enough to dissipate any 
 idea that the contrary counsel could in the smallest degree ap- 
 pear, in his eyes, a question of purity. And why do we speak 
 only of St. Paul ? He whom the Church of Rome has made 
 the prince of the Apostles, the vicar of Jesus Christ, the channel 
 of conveyance to this earth of all the spiritual powers, and of all 
 the graces that descend upon it — St. Peter was married 1 He 
 was so when the Saviour addressed the words, which, according 
 to Rome, made him sovereign pontiff; he was so when he be- 
 came, according to Rome, the bishop of the world's capital, for 
 it was certainly less than twenty-five years before his death that 
 St. Paul, in writing to the Corinthians,^ speaks of his colleague's 
 wife. The Church of Rome has no great liking for this detail. 
 She who has made male or female saints of all the persons 
 named or alluded to in the New Testament, and even of some 
 who are not named or alluded to there, for example, the father 
 and the mother of Mary, has taken special care not to grant this 
 honour to the wife of St. Peter, although St. Paul represents her 
 as accompanying the Apostle in his painful and perilous journeys. 
 So successful has Rome been in saying nothing about her, that 
 a gi'eat many Romanists never heard her mentioned all their 
 lives, and that they hardly believe their eyes, Avhen what St. 
 Paul says is ^hewn to them. " My dear friend," wrote Luther,- 
 " let us not affect a higher flight than Abraham, than David, 
 than Isaiah, than St. Peter, than so many holy martyrs and holy 
 bishops who have not been ashamed to acknowledge that they 
 were men created by God, and, according to his word, have not 
 remained alone." 
 
 See then reduced to its poetic value — if poetry can be where 
 truth is not — this fundamental argument in favour of the law of 
 celibacy. What yet remains to be said ? That it is fitting and 
 proper ? But facts are at hand to prove that in this argument, 
 as well as the other, there is more poetry than reason. Nothing 
 more beautiful than what has been said, in prose, in verse, under 
 all possible forms, especially under that of insults to the Protest- 
 ant Churches, on this intimate and mvsterious union between the 
 priest and the Church, on this celestial marriage by whose duties 
 he is entirely absorbed, the joys of which so fill up his soul as to 
 
 ' 1 Cor. \^. 6. ^ Letter to Reitsenbacb. 1625. 
 
Chap. VI. laGJ. ARE THE ROMANISTS MORE DEVOTED ? 435 
 
 leave no room for those of domestic life. That this ideal picture 
 may possibly have been sometimes realized we deny not, nor do 
 we deny that it may be so still ; we confine ourselves to looking 
 at facts as they are, and ask ourselves if Romanist priests gen- 
 erally bestow more time and pains on their churches than Prot- 
 estant pastors do on theirs. On their churches, we say ; on the 
 Church is another question. There are by much too many, 
 on the contrary, who see nothing but the Church ; who never 
 dream of anything but the Church, who live and breathe only 
 for the Church ; but this devotedness is too much alloyed with 
 human ideas and human interests to admit of our allowing it, in 
 Christian consistency, to be taken into account. Is the Roman 
 clergy, then, on the whole more devoted to its flocks than are 
 Protestant pastors ? Are those men who have no families to 
 tend, sensibly more ardent in tending the poor ? Are those men 
 who have less need of money, generally reputed to love it less ? 
 Do those men who have no children of their own to occupy their 
 time, find more time to devote to the children of other people ? 
 — is the instruction of the peasantry, for example, better attended 
 to under them than under the Protestants ? Do those men who 
 are not distracted, it is said, by the cares of this life, appear, tak- 
 ing their life as a whole, to be more absorbed by thoughts of 
 heaven? Are they more serious, more spiritual — not at set 
 hours, or set tasks, with a mass to say and a breviary to read, 
 but with a living spirituality mingling with everything, and 
 based on an incessant contemplation of divine things ? 
 
 We make no reply. All churches, we know, have their own 
 sores ; pride, bitterness of spirit, too readily insinuate themselves 
 into parallels of this kind. And yet, without entering into any 
 details, all that we have said elsewhere of the incontestable supe- 
 riority of the Protestant clergy, viewing the matter in the general 
 light of excellence in the functions of their office, w^e might repeat 
 here. We would address ourselves, in the second place, to all 
 who have seen Protestant churches, not as they are represented 
 in Romanist writings, but with their own eyes ; and we would 
 challenge them to say, whether they have not usually found the 
 pastor having an eye upon all the wants and distresses of his 
 flock, and at the head of all charitable or pious undertakings. 
 We would ask, in particular, if it has often been discovered that 
 the duties they have to discharge as fathers and spouses, really 
 clog their duties as pastors ; if the co-operation of a helpmate of 
 the other sex be not, on the contrary, useful and desirable amid 
 a host of cares in which the pastoral dignity would risk being 
 compromised. We would appeal, in fine, to those who have Hved 
 
436 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 at one time in a Protestant, at another time in a Roman Catholic 
 comitry, and would ask them where they have found the clergy 
 lying under the popular charge of being ignorant, lazy, avari- 
 cious, and negligent of their duties. We may admit that there 
 have been certain amehorations in our days ; still it remains to 
 be seen whether this great pastoral zeal has not had its source, 
 more or less, in the eager and feverish revival which we behold 
 everywhere struggling for the mastery. Even were it momen- 
 tarily pure from all human alloy, still we have here a general 
 question to deal with ; the pastoral zeal of the E-oman clergy, at 
 such or such a period, caimot be of itself an argument in favour 
 of their celibacy. Were they, then, a married clergy of whom, 
 as they existed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, even the 
 most Roman Catholic historians are compelled to say so much 
 evil ? Are they a married clergy who are found to this day in 
 so many Roman Catholic countries, so lazy, so worldly, so dead ? 
 " What strikes one first in the Italian clergy," wrote Lamennais, 
 while still dreaming of nought but the revii^al of Roman Cathol- 
 icism, " is something sluggish, apathetic, cold, indifierent, in one 
 word, it is the absence of life, and in this respect Rome itself 
 forms no exception. Everything goes on as it best can by a 
 sort of old habit and half- worn-out mechanism. Nothing more 
 rare than true zeal, an ardent love of good, self-devotion, self- 
 sacrifice. They live by their profession, and that is all." No ; 
 it is not for the good of the Churches that the celibacy of the 
 clergy has been, and is still thought desirable. The churches, 
 the pastoral life, the parish, have never been matters of more 
 than second or third-rate interest to Rome. We find proofs of 
 this in all the revelations which her encroachments forced from 
 the lips of members of the council. The grand affair, everything 
 in short with her, was the Church, centralization, unity. The 
 clergy are, in her view, an army. The same motives which lead 
 every conqueror to desire such soldiers only as know none but 
 their own leaders, and have no other tie, have led Rome to en- 
 join celibacy. If ideas of purity, devotedness, and moral fitness 
 prepared the law, it was not long before these proved mere pre- 
 texts. Soldiers Rome behoved to have, and it was only at this 
 price that she could have them. Not that it is to be said that 
 at the veiy origin of the afiair, it was explicitly declared, " We 
 want soldiers, men entirely devoted to us ; we ordain that they 
 shall be unmarried." No ; but the spirit of such a declaration 
 was there ; in following out their mischievous propensities, cor- 
 porations, hke individuals, have no need of openly explaining, at 
 the very first, their ultimate design. By a gradual process, that 
 
Chap. VI. 15G3. HORROR FOR MARRIAGE IN A PRIEST. 437 
 
 which had been given out at first as a human lavv^, came to be 
 imposed as a divine law. The vow oi" celibacy became ot" all 
 vows the most sacred. According to Innocent 111., it adheres 
 so proibundly to the very bones of the monks, that the pope him- 
 self cannot absolve them from its obligations.^ Among the secu- 
 lar clergy there have been examples, at wide intervals, of priests 
 marrying with the pope's consent ; rare practical alleviations, 
 which did not prevent the theory from ever becoming more and 
 more severe and absolute. One would have said that the guilt 
 attached to the violation of this law oi" celibacy, was great in pro- 
 portion to its utter want of any foundation in reason, or in the 
 Gospel. Even at this day, when a priest leaves the Church, his 
 former colleagues generally express more pity than hatred. But 
 if he proceeds to become a married man, oh, then, no invectives 
 are thought strong enough, no malediction can be found propor- 
 tioned to his crime. That which Jesus Christ permitted in the 
 man whom Romanists pronounce the first of the popes, that which 
 St. Paul formally authorized among bishops, that which the 
 Church long left free to all her ministers, has now become trans- 
 formed into not only an act of disobedience, but a crime, a 
 frightful profanation. The celibacy of a priest has entered into 
 the very essence of his priesthood ; some doctors have gone so 
 far as to teach that whoever has once lived in marriage, however 
 long he may have been a widower, is for ever disqualified for 
 ofiering the sacrifice of the mass. Celestine III. was very nearly 
 giving this tenet the force of a dogma. In fine, to return fo the 
 council, among those very men who had been heard preaching 
 up the pope's absolute power of dispensing with all laws, civil, 
 ecclesiastical, and divine, there were som.e who refused him the 
 right of allowing a priest to marry. And they did not inider- 
 stand that this right was to be taken from him by the council ; 
 they went much beyond this ; according to them it was a right 
 which the popes never possessed, or could have possessed, any 
 
 ^ IS'umerous details will bo found in Ilxu'tor, (cli. vii.,) on the progress 
 of the question in the Middle Ages. Resistance to it was far more pro- 
 longed, and more obstinate than is generally believed. The Danish 
 clergy, who were the last to submit, were powerfully supported by the 
 peasantry, who said " they had to look to the safety of their wives and 
 daughters." A proof this of the disorders which they saw following 
 the celibacy of the clergy in other countries. It will be observed that 
 we leave this side of the question entirely out of view. Of all the ar- 
 guments against foi'bidding the priests to marry, the picture of their 
 own morals has been long the most powerfuh The improvement now 
 seen in that respect, cannot blind us to the recollection of what they 
 were during whole centuries, and what in some countries they still 
 are. 
 
43S HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 more than that of annihilating what exists, or of creating what 
 does not exist. Such was the importance attached to the main- 
 tenance of the law of celibacy ! So much need was there felt 
 for having piled around this palladium of the Roman Church all 
 those ramparts which people were not allowed to raise round laws 
 that had emanated directly from God. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 (1563.) 
 
 POLITICS AND INTRIGUE AGAIN. THE POPE, THE EMPEROR, AND 
 
 THE KING. 
 
 Political pre-occupations — Death of the Dxike of Guise — Cardinal of 
 Mantua's letter to Paul IV. — Letter from the emperor — The council 
 has remained obnoxious to all the blows then levelled at it — The 
 pope's reply — Constantine and Theodosius — "What has been made of 
 them, and what they were — Philip 11. and his prelates — Tumults at 
 Trent — Two new legates — Morone at Inspruek — Negotiations — Peace 
 in France — The pope's ill humour — At Ti'ent weariness and disgust. 
 
 The question of celibacy, moreover, like all the rest, had come 
 before the council, not in its simple state, but associated with a 
 train of political interests and prejudices. People were curious 
 to know whether in the event of the pope being admitted to have 
 lhe power of allowing a priest to marry, the French would ask 
 his sanction for the marriage of the Cardinal de Bourbon, Avho 
 might be called in right of birth to the throne. But the French 
 themselves did not yet know how they should act, and were wait- 
 ing for instructions from their court. The Cardinal of Lorraine, 
 whom the queen-mother had almost left to follow in this matter 
 vv'hatever course he might deem best, was more undecided than 
 anybodv. On the one hand, in the event of the Cardinal de 
 Bourbon leaving the Church, he would become the premier pre- 
 late of the kingdom, and in the possible contingency of a breach 
 with the pope, he might consider himself patriarch of France ; 
 on the other hand, in the case of Bourbon remaining a priest, 
 the Bourbon family might become extinct, and the house of Lor- 
 raine ascend the throne. 
 
 It was in the midst of these uncertainties that he heard (9th 
 May) of the death of his brother, the Duke of Guise, who had 
 been assassinated at Orleans. That event, though viewed at first 
 in Italy as the worst of calamities, was ere long to prove almost 
 as fortunate for the pope as for the French Protestants. De- 
 prived of its main stay, the court, it is true, found itself com- 
 pelled to make peace with these last ; but, on the other hand, it 
 felt, at the same time, that it had need of being on better terms 
 
440 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 Avith the pope, and must now look abroad for those means of re- 
 sisting the Reformation, which it despaired of finding any longer 
 at home. It was not even thought necessary to send orders to 
 the bishops to moderate their zeal. They did so instinctively ; 
 from the very first days that followed the news, the Roman party 
 could see that they had not intractable foes to deal with. And 
 when so many difficulties that once appeared insoluble were seen 
 to disentangle themselves as if by enchantment, " Poltrot's ball," 
 it was said some months afterwards, " has rebounded as far as 
 Trent. It has cut the knot by which the chariot of the council 
 had been indefinitely stopped." 
 
 Possibly, too, there was, although on a difl^erent account, some 
 softening down of their terms on the part of the pope and his 
 party. He had received, much about the same time, two letters 
 which could not fail to have so far influenced him. 
 
 The one was from the Cardinal of Mantua, the premier legate. 
 We have seen that he was a straightforward and pious man. 
 Many a time he had testified his repugnance to being made the 
 blind minister of the interests and the wishes of Rome ; many a 
 time had he groaned to see that unless he chose to become her 
 declared opponent, he was condemned to contribute more than 
 any one else to the success of her intrigues. The pope, in fact, 
 after having repeatedly expressed his profound discontent, had 
 come to give him his entire confidence. It had been perceived, 
 at last, what advantages might be derived from his popularity in 
 the council, and from the favour with which he was regarded by 
 the secular princes. Sick, worn out with anxiety and watching, 
 he received an order to go and meet the emperor. But what 
 was he to do at Inspruck ? He was not even clearly told what, 
 but the Cardinal of Lorraine had gone thither ; and this was 
 enougii to induce the pope to send some one too, however painful 
 the part he might have to perform. 
 
 Hard, indeed, was the service exacted by the court of Rome ; 
 a man's self-esteem v/as often exposed in it to as hard rubs as 
 his conscience. The cardinal began to weary of constant obedi- 
 ence. First, he dictated to his secretary a respectful letter in 
 which he shewed the uselessness of the journey ; next taking up 
 the pen himself, he summoned courage to speak out his mind. 
 He was weary, he said, of perpetually repeating to ambassadors 
 and bishops promises which he had begun to see would not be 
 kept. He blushed both for himself and the Holy See, when he 
 thought of these interminable tergiversations ; he trembled for 
 the future prospects of the Church, while thus obstinately refus- 
 ing all the reforms which Europe, led on by her kings, loudly 
 demanded. He added that he was sensible that his end was 
 
Chap. VII. 1503. THE EMPEROR'S -LETTER TO THE POPE. 441 
 
 dniwiut^ near, called God to witness to the purity of his inten- 
 tions, and ielt remorse at havino^, against the voice of" his con- 
 science, taken part in so many elibrts to perpetuate abuses. Six 
 days elapsed ^ and the writer was no more. 
 
 Such was the tirst of the two letters ; the second was from the 
 emperor. As strong and much more frank and explicit than any 
 that the pope had previously received from the sovereigns, it was 
 not unlike the Cardinal of Mantua's postscript in its essence. 
 The emperor told him, in substance, that he had come to In- 
 spruck in order to have a nearer view of the council's proceed- 
 ings, and that he had not as yet perceived anything but intrigues, 
 doubtfully good intentions, and too manifestly bad ones ; that 
 matters could not remain on this footing ; that the council was 
 about to fall to pieces of itself, to the intense satisfaction of here- 
 tics and the everlasting confusion of the Church ; that he would 
 not, however, suppose the pope to be capable of any such selfish 
 purpose as that of allowing an assembly, on wdiich so many 
 hopes had been built, to pass away in smoke, but that were 
 such really the pope's intention, matters could not go on worse 
 than they did. Three things, the emperor added, had especially 
 struck him, and not him only, but all his prelates, all his sub- 
 jects, in short, all Europe. The one was, that the decrees all 
 came ready made from Rome ; next, that the legates alone had 
 the right to propose matters to the council ; lastly, that the pre- 
 lates from Italy formed a party, and took post openly as the 
 champions and the advocates of the court of Rome. Now, it 
 lay with the pope, and with the pope alone, to rid the council of 
 these three plagues. Certain rumours of translation and disso- 
 lution had reached the emperor's ears ; but he would not insult 
 the pope by suspecting that he had given any ground for them. 
 His Holiness, doubtless, understood better than any one else, that 
 after having convened the council at the instance and with the 
 assent of all the secular princes, he could not dissolve it without 
 their approbation. 
 
 This last point was not quite clear. The pope had never ac- 
 knowledged, in point of right, that he required the assent of the 
 secular princes in convoking the council ; and as all Roman 
 Catholics were agreed that there could be no council-general 
 without his concurrence, they, by that alone, acknowledged that 
 he had the power to dissolve it. But if Ferdinand on this point 
 went too far, it is not the less instructive to see what was thought 
 of the council, shortly before its close, by a pacific prince, a man 
 full of good intentions, a sincere subject of the Holy See, and 
 sincerely desirous that the Church should recover her claims to 
 
 ^ 2d ISIarch. 
 
442 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 the esteem and the confidence of the nations. Pallavicini, ac- 
 cordingly, struggles hard to weaken the purport of this letter. 
 He insists on the compliments, the excuses, the expressions of 
 respect and submission with which the emperor had mingled his 
 remonstrances. Sarpi, according to him, saw only the dark side, 
 the rude strokes, and these he tried rashly to embeUish. " The 
 emperor's letter," says he, " contained not a single grain of that 
 aloes which springs up only in Sarpi's garden ; though I ought 
 to call it rather colocynth than aloes, seeing the bitterness of 
 the one has a heahng virtue, whereas the other is poisonous."^ 
 Notwithstanding this, Sarpi's analysis, down to the very strokes 
 of politeness, hardly contains anything which is not to be found 
 in his tart rival. He has only forgot to mention that it was 
 secret. This was an additional piece of poHteness, but a proof 
 at the same time of the severity of the contents. Thus, accord- 
 ing to the emperor, the assembled prelates had not yet performed 
 anything that the world expected from them. They had lost 
 consideration in the eyes of all right-minded and godly people ; 
 there was nothing good to be expected from them as long as 
 they should remain as they were. Well, then, did his letter put 
 an end to all that he referred to as ruining the council's author- 
 ity beyond its own circle ? Certainly not ; on the very day of its 
 closing, in December, he might have repeated, word for word, 
 all that he had said at the beginning of March ; his letter might 
 only have been richer in facts, reproaches, and objections. Such 
 as the council had appeared to him at the earlier period, the same 
 it ought to have appeared at the last, and in the same colours 
 would he have painted it, had he not been induced to refrain. 
 As for the dogmatical authority of the council and its infallibili- 
 ty, the letter says not a word. The emperor speaks of the coun- 
 cil as of an assembly altogether human, occupied with human 
 affairs, actuated by human passions. He does not even ask how 
 one could make the nations believe that it was under the guid- 
 ance of the Holy Ghost ; he has not the air of a man who sup- 
 poses that any one could entertain the idea of seriously present- 
 ing: its decrees as having emanated from God. Once more, we 
 do not mean to say that his was the language of a Roman Catho- 
 lic ; we simply remark the tone in which a good Roman Catho- 
 lic still could make bold to express himself, in the first months of 
 1563, in speaking of an assembly whose most insignificant de- 
 cisions have been magnified into oracles. 
 
 Pius IV. caused a memorial to be drawn up in which he in- 
 sisted strongly on what did not depend upon him, but said little 
 about what he was personally responsible for. He declared that 
 
 ' Book XX. ch. riii. 
 
Chap. VII. 1503. A MEMORIAL PRAWN UP. 44:} 
 
 he had never put force upon the council ; but this was not what 
 the emperor had said. It Avas well known that there had been 
 no open violence ; what was complained of was the occult and 
 continuous action, in presence of which it was no exaggeration 
 to say that the council was at Rome, not at Trent. The pope, 
 moreover, affirmed that he had never forbidden the council to 
 vote without his previous advice. Officially, this was true ; in 
 reality every one knew that it was false. AYhen he had sent ofi" 
 his advice, he added, he had never alleged that the council was 
 bound to follow it. This, too, was true in one sense, but not 
 true in another, since the pope well knew that all that came 
 from Rome was sacred in the eyes of the majority. The great 
 evil, according to him, was, that few people formed to them- 
 selves a correct idea of the council's rights, duties, and proper 
 place. Had all the princes imitated the piety and followed the 
 example of a Constantino and a Theodosius, all things would 
 have gone on regularly of themselves. 
 
 The pope would no doubt have been very angry had he 
 been taken at his word, and had his crowned adversaries been 
 strong enough m history, or bold enough in logic, to think of 
 placing themselves, in their relations with the Church, in the 
 same position with the emperors he had named. Those two 
 great names, or rather those two great words — Constantino and 
 Theodosius — are still in great favour among certain defenders of 
 Roman Catholicism, some of whom are ignorant enough to ap- 
 peal to them in good faith, others because they think they may 
 saiely enough reckon upon the ignorance of their readers. The 
 Church has never been less independent of the civil power than 
 under the first Christian emperors ; the profound sense of obliga- 
 tion w^ith which she accepted the imperial favours sufficiently 
 .shows that she had no idea of claiming any of these as a right. 
 When ancient ecclesiastical writers speak of the calling together 
 of a council, is it the pope, or the emperor, v»hom they represent 
 as having ordained its convocation ? Have they ever said, for ex- 
 ample, " the council of Nice under Melchiades," or " the council 
 of Constantinople under Liberius," in the same manner as " the 
 Lateran council under Innocent HI.," or "the Council of Trent 
 under Pius IV.," came afterwards to be spoken of? " It was 
 from a spirit of concession," one author tells us,^ "or, at least, 
 of toleration, that Constantino and his successors convened the 
 first councils-general. Accordingly, it is very bad reasoning to 
 say, the emperors convened the first councils ; the right of con- 
 vening councils, therefore, belonged to them." This, we admit, 
 would be bad reasoning ; but, let us add, it is not we who say it. 
 
 * Promut?nnlt. 
 
444 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 Our sole conclusion is the following : If councils-general, reputed 
 legitimate, could have been convoked by an emperor, then it is not 
 indispensable to the legitimacy of a council that it be convoked 
 by a pope. " But that arose from concession — toleration^ Ay, 
 and such is the view that must absolutely be maintained, else 
 the whole system must be abandoned. But where have we the 
 proof ? The fathers at Constantinople write to Theodosius that 
 in calling them together himself, he put an honour on the 
 Church.^ That, you say, was a mere compliment. Agreed ; 
 but you will not go so far as to insult an oecumenical and infalli- 
 ble council, as to think that it could have turned into a compli- 
 ment what it considered to be at bottom an act of sacrilege. 
 Next, what was the object for which that very letter was writ- 
 ten ? Shall we say that it was from toleration, too, that the 
 council asked from the emperor, and that in the most formal 
 terms, the confirmation of its decrees ? " Giving to God the 
 thanks that are due to him, of necessity, also we refer to your 
 piety those things that have been done in the holy council."^ 
 Such were the expressions of the Constantinopolitan Fathers 
 in the year 381. In a word, it is not because we are at all 
 taken with a state of things in which councils were in the hands 
 of the emperors ; but this is widely different from their being 
 in the hands of the popes, and their being nothing without 
 them. 
 
 With this exception the reasoning of Pius IV. Avas correct. It 
 is clear that if all the sovereigns had maintained the respectful 
 immobility which it was alleged Constantine and Theodosius of 
 old were observed to maintain, the council would long ere this 
 have come to a close. It would have been shaken oft' in a few 
 months, after having launched some anathemas against heretics, 
 and having effected a few reforms in matters of detail, unless, 
 indeed, a still shorter course had been adopted, that of not con- 
 voking it at all. 
 
 The Cardinal of Mantua was dead, and so his letter misrht be 
 tossed aside. That from the emperor suggested some serious re- 
 flections ; but they ended only in redoubling the precautions 
 taken against all that was not delivered over to the pope and 
 his partisans to be dealt with as they pleased. The reply of 
 Pius IV. was not even sent oft'. " It was thought," says Palla- 
 vicini, " that this matter, so abundant and so crude, required 
 
 ^ Littevis, quibus nos convocasti, ecclesiam lionore prosecutus es. 
 
 ^ Agentes autein Deo debitas gratias, necessario quoque ea qua? acta 
 sunt ia sancto concilio ad tuam referimus pietatem. Rogamus igitur 
 tuam clementiam nt per litteras quoque tuse pietatis ratum habeatur 
 concilii decretum. 
 
Chap. VII. 15G3. ANSWER TO THE EMPEROR. 445 
 
 beiiifrpradnally mollified and prepared for def^lulitioii, Ly tlie vital 
 warinth of suitable words, so as to make it easier of digestion." 
 •The pope, accordingly, wrote only a very short brief, in which 
 he thanked the emperor lor his dcvotedness to the Holy See, for 
 his zeal for the good of Christendom, his advices on the subject 
 of reforms, and, finally, for his caution in hstening to false re- 
 ports. He added that Cardinal Morone was about to set off for 
 Germany, and would present to him, in greater detail, the ob- 
 servations he had to make on his letter. 
 
 The pope, at the same time, paid the utmost attention to ce- 
 menting a closer union between himself and the king of Spain. 
 The arrival of an ambassador extraordinary was about to give 
 him the occasion of making greater advances towards that, with- 
 out too much condescension. Don Lewis d'Avila was received, 
 therefore, with the highest honours ; Pius gave him apartments 
 in his own palace, and loaded him with courtesies. His in- 
 structions, which were a curious medley of submission and bold- 
 ness, of ultra-Romanism on some points, and ultra-GaUicanism 
 on others, faithfully represented that frank, yet false position, 
 Avhich we have seen invariably held by the Spanish prelates at 
 Trent. Philip II., while formally protesting, on the one hand, 
 against the concession of the cup, loudly protested, on the other, 
 against that old subject of scandal, the 2^roponentibiis legatis, 
 with which, said he, the council never could be free. He re- 
 gretted that the continuation had not been openly avowed at the 
 very first session after the council had resumed its sittings ; but 
 the' more faith he had in the authority of the council, the longer 
 was he of seeing the assembled prelates apply their hands to all 
 that had to be reformed in the Church. The king, in fine, 
 craved the pope's sanction for his levying, during five years, the 
 subsidy that had been granted to him on the property of his 
 clergy ; he required, also, a dispensation for the marriage of his 
 sister with his son, a ticklish case which the council had spoken 
 of putting among those for which a dispensation could never be 
 granted. On this latter point the pope said that he would have 
 the matter submitted to examination, and that he would refuse 
 nothing that he had the power to grant ; as to the former, that 
 he was quite disposed to grant the subsidy, but could not in con- 
 science do it, as long as the Spanish prelates should remain at 
 Trent and be subjected to so many expenses there. Let the 
 king, then, but help toAvards the winding up of the council, and 
 the subsidy would be granted immediately. 
 
 But what could Philip H. do ? Notwithstanding his advices 
 and his orders, the Spanish prelates continued to display the most 
 independence of any. In the question of the authority of tho 
 
446 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Uock V. 
 
 Holy See, they astonished the Gallicans themselves ; they Avere 
 nearly jumping at once into consequences from which the latter 
 recoiled. " Let the pope give us back our own, since ^\e leave 
 him more than his own I" said the Archbishop of Grenada, one 
 day. Angry feelings had gradually spread even into the nume- 
 rous throng of footmen and other domestics with M'hich so many 
 ambassadors and prelates had crammed the city. Bloody brawls 
 disgraced the streets. Italy, Spai?i, became two war-cries which 
 in a few minutes would bring hundreds of combatants together. 
 On the 12th of March a general fray took place; some were 
 killed and many wounded. At last the excess of these disorders 
 led to serious eHbrts for their suppression : but the congregation- 
 meetings were for several days interrupted, and never had the 
 council less the appearance of a council. 
 
 We have seen why it was that the pope, even though very 
 ill-pleased with the Cardinal of Mantua, had retained him in the 
 presidency. That prelate's death left him at liberty to select a 
 more devoted representative, and such he found in Cardinal 
 Morone, to whom was added another legate Cardinal Navigero. 
 Hardly had they left their homes for Trent when news arrived 
 of the death of Seripandi, who discharged the office of interim- 
 premier legate, and survived his colleague only a few days. 
 Thus, there remained at Trent, only Simonetta and Hosius. It 
 was resolved that business should be suspended until the arrival 
 of the two new legates, and the keenness of controversy was a 
 little moderated in consequence. Two deaths happening so near 
 to each other, had produced a profound sensation ; the present 
 looked dark, and the future darker still. Two thoroughly ultra- 
 montane legates could bring with them only new elements of dis- 
 trust, and, in that respect, the ultramontanists themselves looked 
 for their arrival w4th apprehension. 
 
 They travelled slowly. The pope, it was positively said, had 
 enjoined them to reach Trent so near the time of the Easter 
 holidays that no one could expect the sittings to be resumed im- 
 mediately. The president, in fact, arrived only on holy Satur- 
 day. A magnificent reception was given him. At the first con- 
 gregation, held on the 13th of April, the members learnt from 
 his own mouth what had previously been a flying rumour, name- 
 ly, that he was about to set out immediately for Inspruck. This 
 news had something in it to displease almost everybody, Span- 
 iards as well as French, as indicative of an alliance between 
 the pope and the emperor ; the Italians, as a weakness, for they 
 thought it little becoming in the president of a council to put 
 himself about for the sake of visiting a temporal prince ; the im- 
 patient, as causing delay ; tlie religious, in fine, as proving that 
 
Chap. VII. 1563. EMBASSY INTO GER.MANY. 447 
 
 the council was to continue to be, before all tliincr?^, and in all 
 things, a mere political aliair. 
 
 As for the (Jardinal of Lorraine, who had eagerly made interest 
 for the title of legate, and for this end had made advances little 
 in consistency with his Gallicauism, he had gone to hide his ill 
 humour at Venice, but not without exhaling it, in the company 
 of his friends, in terms little fitted to make the pope regret his 
 not having named him. Morone, on the contrary, greatly de- 
 sired to see him before setting out for Germany ; but as the 
 crafty Lorrainer had no wish to come under any engagement, by 
 no means could he be induced to return in time. He arrived on 
 the 20th of April, and Morone had set off on the 16th. 
 
 This embassage into Germany had been officially announced 
 as a mere matter of courtesy and good understanding betv/ixt the 
 pope and the emperor ; at bottom, it was an afiiiir of the greatest 
 delicacy and gravity that had occurred for a long while. First 
 of all, as the pope began to see no hope of safety but in a co?(/^ 
 cVetat which should put the council absolutely in his power, it 
 was necessary that Ferdinand should be brought to consent to 
 the eventuality of a translation to Bologna. In the second place, 
 as he had spoken of coming to Trent, and the po2:)e dreaded this 
 extremely, it was necessary that he should be induced to renounce 
 this purpose, and to engage him at the same time to come to 
 Bologna, in case of the assembly transporting itself thither ; the 
 pope would repair there also, and would solemnly place the im- 
 perial crown with his own hands upon his head — a ceremony 
 by which Pius IV. would have been happy to verify, at least in 
 point of form, the right of distributing crowns claimed by the 
 Holy See. Moreover, once at Bologna, the pope would natural- 
 ly find himself at the head of the council, but this, people were 
 assured, only to bring it to an auspicious termination by himself 
 proposing many of the reforms that were demanded. In fine, 
 the emperor had to be induced to desist from pressing a large 
 part of the demands which he had presented or approved. With 
 this view, Morone had orders to promise him that, on the council 
 being brought to a close, he would obtain directly from the pope, 
 all that should be judged necessary for the good of his States, 
 and, in particular, the concession of the cup. It is not explained 
 how the pope could permit himself to be carried away by the 
 hope of such a change in tlie ideas and plans of the emperor. 
 
 Meanwhile he thought he was bound to pronounce an ener- 
 getic protest against the treaty of peace that had been concluded 
 between Charles IX. and the French Protestants. Contrarv to 
 one of the most ancient privileges of the kingdom, in virtue of 
 Avhich no bi.shop could be tried in the first instance except in 
 
448 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V. 
 
 the country itself, and by twelve of the bishops of the country, 
 ten of them were summoned to appear personally at Home as 
 heretics and favourers of heresy. So much despatch and secrecy 
 had been employed that the French ambassador had had no time 
 to protest ; he confined himself to remonstrating that this irreg- 
 ular summons would not be received, and that even w^ere the 
 bishops willing to obey, the parliament and the court would op- 
 pose their doing so. In fact the summons fell to the ground, and 
 while it was published at Rome the parliament of Paris regis- 
 tered the edict of pacification, bearing among other things that 
 were little suited to please the pope, " that the kingdom had suf- 
 fered enough ; that the king was determined to make peace, and 
 to grant liberty of conscience, under certain restrictions, in the 
 hope that with time, by means of a holy and free council, w^he- 
 ther general or national, all disunion w^ould at last disappear." 
 This was a prospect for the future hardly warranted by the past ; 
 but we have here a fact confirmatory of what we have super- 
 abundantly demonstrated, to wdt, that the Council of Trent, 
 down to the close of its sittings, was almost nowhere considered 
 as free, or as really general, or as having answ^ered to the object 
 that people had in view in calling for it. 
 
 And it was not in the very midst of the assembly that least 
 doubt was expressed, if not upon its legitimacy, at least upon 
 the authority and permanent force of its acts. At the epoch at 
 which we have now arrived all the correspondence by letters, 
 all the written accounts, bear the impress of weariness and dis- 
 gust. We see men who have ceased to have any confidence 
 either in themselves or in their work. Some we see blindly 
 throwing themselves into the inconsistencies of Gallican liberal- 
 ism ; others pressing more and more eagerly round the pope ; 
 but as for people believmg apparently in the council, in its divine 
 commission, in the future subsistence of its acts, we see none, or 
 next to none. Europe is there, all around, as if at the side of 
 the bed of a dying person who still breathes, but who is spoken 
 of as if already dead. Ambassadors, and even princes, protest 
 no longer. Formerly the king of France w'ould have thought 
 himself obliged at least to say why he did not accept the council ; 
 in March, 1563, he does not so much as mention it. A free 
 and holy council, says he, will succeed at last in consolidating 
 peace. He speaks like one quite unaware that there is any- 
 where an assembly calling itself a council. It is true that that 
 assembly had little answered hitherto to the ideal that he had 
 traced of it in speaking of consolidating peace. The gulf be- 
 tween the Reformation and Rome was deeper than ever, A 
 thousand matters of dispute that had lain buried hitherto in the 
 
Chap. VII. 1503. TJIK TWO FACES OF CARDINAL LUKUAlNt: 44'J 
 
 dust of tlie scliools had been brouglit out into open siglit oi' 
 Christendom. " 0, city of Trent 1 O, inho.s])il;ible city I" ex- 
 claimed tlic Bisliop of Budoa, " with good reason Milt thou be 
 put to the ban by the nations as a hotbed of troubles'." And 
 upon this thesis he had constructed a whole burlesque parody 
 of Isaiah's threatenings against Jerusalem. A poor joke and a 
 foolish bishop ; but, after all, he merely gave a farcical interpre- 
 tation to what was said by some and thought by almost all. 
 
 Meanwhile nothing, or next to nothing, was done. Cardinal 
 Navigero did not arrive until the 30th of April, the bearer, he 
 said, of an order from the pope to labour seriously at the work 
 of reforms ; but he had orders, also, to do nothing before the 
 premier legate's return. The latter had been Ibllowed to In- 
 spruck by an envoy of the Cardinal of Lorraine, charged with 
 instructions to urge the emperor to keep to his resolution. Ac- 
 cordingly he met with no success, and the imperial doctors con- 
 tinued peaceably to work at the far from Homan articles that 
 had been submitted to them. • 
 
 In fine, wdiile the Cardinal of Lorraine w^as intriguing against 
 the pope at Inspruck he sent one of his secretaries to the pope 
 himself with the assurance of his most profound devotion. Cari- 
 catures were circulated accordingly, in which he was represented 
 with two faces, one looking arrogantly to the north, the other 
 looking humbly and submissively to the south. The pope, offi- 
 cially, saw^ only the latter ; the former, without appearing to see 
 it, he saw better still. AYas the cardinal, then, the only man 
 that had two faces ? If any one had attempted to give a por- 
 trait of the pope, how many would he have needed to give him ? 
 Had the council itself never more than one face ? And, in short, 
 would no one rather have said of it that it was like one of those 
 theatrical scenes in which the personages see each other, hear 
 each other, almost touch each other, without apparently seeing 
 or hearing each other ? Happily the piece has not disappeared 
 with the actors ; and that piece has become something too seri- 
 ous for us not to be entitled to scrutinize the worth at which it 
 was estimated in the eyes of the spectators at that time, and in 
 the eyes of the actors themselves. 
 
BOOK VI. 
 
 THE COUNCIL HURRIED TO A CLOSE. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 DISPUTES ON PAPAL AUTHORITY. LAINEZ BEARDS THE COUXCIL. 
 LORRAINE GOES OVEFc TO THE POPE. 
 
 Glance at the position of parties — The assembly — The Roman Catholics 
 — ^The Protestants — the Pope — Rome — The emperor begins to fail — 
 The Cardinal of Lorraine goes over to the iiltramontanists — What is 
 a heretic in the eyes of the Church — Consistency ^vith her requires 
 persecution — The question of divine right resumed — The cardinal 
 makes a second step — The council is led away into the field of the 
 pope's authority — The opinion of Lainez on dispensations and the 
 right to dispense — Almost everybody shocked by his ideas and the 
 tone in which he announced them — He excuses himself — The cardinal 
 stops the protests — Dispute betwixt the ambassadors of France and 
 Spain — ^State of the question — A bias and its sequel — Violent acts of 
 the French ambassador — Compromise — Other disputes of the same 
 kind. 
 
 As we draw towards the conclusion it will not be uninterest- 
 ing to explain in a few words the position of the parties chiefly 
 interested. To describe in detail all that was in agitation in 
 Trent, and around Trent, at this time, would be to describe 
 chaos. 
 
 Among the members of the assembly, as we have already 
 said, there prevailed weariness and discouragement, to which we 
 may add an almost general neglect of dogmatical questions. A 
 stranger never would have imagined that any of these yet re- 
 mained on the orders of the day ; he would have supposed him- 
 self rather in a diet than in a council. 
 
 Among the generality of Roman Catholics, we have already 
 said also, there were disappointment, distrust, unanimity in feel- 
 ing, and almost unanimity in saying that this was not what had 
 been expected. 
 
 Among the Protestants you might see that the council was 
 forgotten and despised. They were no longer spoken to about 
 
Chap. 1. 1003. SENTIMENTS OF VARIOUS PARTIES. 451 
 
 submillinf^ to the council. Matters had come to that point that 
 it would not only have been unreasonable, as it had ever been, 
 but ridiculous, to give them lor oracles of the Holy Ghost the; 
 decisions of an assembly where so many pa.ssions and intrigues 
 were fermenting. 
 
 The secular princes, who had always, and before all things, 
 seen in a council the rc-establishmcnt of unity, an illusion which 
 vanished IVom the time that the first sessions were held, the 
 
 SI ' 
 
 princes, we say, now concerned themselves about the council as 
 people concern themselves about alliiirs that they have once 
 taken up, but on which they have ceased to fnid any hopes. 
 Besides, with excellent views and excellent intentions relative to 
 abuses in general, each held to the preservation of those from 
 which he himself in particular derived some advantage, and, as 
 Pius IV. very well said, each wanted to reibrm everj'body but 
 himself 
 
 The pope, in line, while loudly complaining of the selfishness 
 of the princes, knew assuredly better than any one else, that 
 there lay the anchor of his ow^i salvation. Had they all been 
 agreed on all points, resistance would have been hopeless. But 
 what was asked for by some was not asked for by others, or the 
 very contrary was asked for. If this was not a reason for abso- 
 lutely refusing, it was alwaj's one for putting the matter ofi" in- 
 definitely, or lor referring it to the judgment of the pope. Hence 
 some of the most delicate points had successively escaped being 
 iudged by the council. Not that there was not more than one 
 on which all sovereigns were agreed ; all, for example, were for 
 the divine right in the episcopate. But as they had no common 
 understanding as to the importance to be attached to the ques- 
 tion, as to the necessity for having it settled, and the form to be 
 adopted for the effect, ample room was aflbrded for taking ad- 
 vantage of these divergencies and avoiding a decision either way. 
 The pope, moreover, although he had more to hope from time 
 than from any other auxiliary, was more impatient, more fa- 
 tigued, more exhausted, than the council. Seventeen years of 
 strugo-liiior had led the court of Rome to unmask, one after an- 
 other, all its batteries, to let the world see all its fears, and even 
 all the details and all the various shades of those fears. It reck- 
 oned up with terror all that it had lost by the council, if not in 
 positive rights, at least in moral authority ; it durst not believe 
 in the stability of the decisions that had been taken according to 
 its views ; it knew too well, and care enough was taken to tell 
 it, that its intrigues had been manifest to everybody, and none 
 had been deceived but those who wished to be so. Had it been 
 told that the dav wovdd come when the collection of the canons 
 
452 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 of the council would be the citadel of the Church of Rome and 
 of the popedom, it would have thought the prediction an idle 
 dream ; the best thing, according to all appearances at that 
 time, that it could expect was that, the council once over, not a 
 word should ever be said about it, either good or bad. 
 
 The essential matter, accordingly, was to bring it to a close. 
 Morone had come back from Germany after long and useless con- 
 ferences, and with nothing but vague and far from encouraging 
 answers to communicate to the pope. The emperor had said 
 that the transference of the council was not to be thought of 
 without the consent of the kings of Spain and France ; that the 
 good intentions of the pope, which, for his part, he had no wish 
 to doubt, would not prevent unpleasant suppositions as to the ob- 
 ject of the translation ; that all the bishops, according to him, 
 ought to enjoy the right of proposing measures, and that either 
 the 'proponentibus must be expunged, or a declaration made to 
 the effect that there had been no intention of asserting an ex- 
 clusive privilege ; that, in fine, he could not renounce his de- 
 mand for the examination of all that had been presented, both 
 in his name and in that of the king of France. 
 
 But when he saw that same prince begin to give way on all 
 points, one after another, except that of the translation, and to 
 shut his eyes on all the expedients that were employed for bring- 
 ing, right or wrong, the council to an end, it was not to be be- 
 lieved that that unbending reply had been really his last Avord 
 to the papal envoy. The report was circulated that Morone had 
 been more fortunate than had been thought at his return, or 
 than he himself had seemed to believe. It was not supposed, 
 nevertheless, that he had converted Ferdinand to the views of 
 the pope ; but it might have been supposed that by shewing him 
 how very enormous the obstacles were, he had indirectly put 
 him in the predicament of having to choose between a rupture 
 with Home and a speedy termination of the council, alternatives 
 between which a Roman Catholic prince could hardly hesitate, 
 especially in Germany at the centre of the Reformation. We 
 cannot know up to what point these suppositions were well 
 founded ; but they were justified by the event. True, we shall 
 still see the emperor's representatives throwing obstacles occa- 
 sionally in the way of the assembly's course ; but whether they 
 were in the secret of his policy or not, their opposition will be 
 observed to have always stopt at the point beyond which it 
 Avould have been a declaration of war, and we shall see the 
 emperor express neither open gratitude for their efforts, nor 
 formal regrets for their want of success. We shall also see the 
 Cardinal of Lorraine, whether in accordance with him, or at his 
 
Chap. I. 1363. DE BIRAGUE AND THE FRENCH REFORMED. loS 
 
 own instance, enter definitively into the same course of deference 
 .towards the pope, and oi" concihation towards all. 
 
 This was perceived, on the 7th of June, on occasion of a 
 speech made by the President de Birague, sent by the court of 
 France, to justify before the council the peace that had been 
 granted to the Protestants. That peace, in a Roman Catholic 
 point of view, had much need of justification. If you arc asked 
 what a heretic is, and try to define this, assumhig as a basis the 
 Roman anathemas, you will make him to be a creature in per- 
 petual and voluntary revolt against all that is most sacred, a 
 species of monster, who is less to be dealt with in the way of 
 covenant than the worst of brigands,^ seeing that a robber may 
 go to heaven on a single movement of repentance, whereas a 
 heretic, unless he abjures heresy, is irrevocably excluded from it. 
 That being so, it cannot but be a crime, and an enormous crime, 
 to leave them in peace ; by so much the stronger reason was it 
 criminal to have authorized them to celebrate their worship, and 
 to remain constituted in churches. The Roman Church has the 
 misfortune of finding, that she cannot be tolerant, even by halves 
 and provisionally, without setting herself in contradiction with 
 the laws that have emanated from her, and which owe their 
 rigour not to passing necessities, but to principles which she has 
 proclaimed, and still proclaims to be necessary, immutable, and 
 eternal. With Protestantism, consistency requires toleration. 
 
 De Birague had represented peace as a political necessity, a 
 truce to last only till something better could be had. But from 
 what quarter was that better to be expected ? From the coun- 
 cil, he had said. An old compliment which re-appeared in all 
 the harangues, and which Imd long ceased to be really one, since 
 there never failed to be added, or hinted, that if the council was 
 to do any good it must be by its beginning to be something very 
 difierent from what it had hitherto been. The speaker had con- 
 cluded, as was always done, by disparaging all the counciFs 
 doings hitherto as inadequate to their object. A great internal 
 reformation alone could, in his view, open the way to a return 
 of unity. 
 
 The Cardinal of Lorraine having risen to speak on the reply 
 to be made to this communication, it was remarked that setting 
 aside all that bore upon reforms, he confined himself to enlarging 
 upon the political motives that had been stated by the ambassa- 
 dor. This he did with great vigour and eloquence. The pains 
 he took to argue from the ground of necessity alone, without giv- 
 
 ' Those heroic Yaudois (Waldenses) who have .suffered so much, and 
 forgiven bo much, Tvere called by Gregory XYL, in 1832, "the scum 
 and opprobrium of the human race." 
 
454 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 ing the slightest place to considerations of justice, toleration, com- 
 passion, anything, in a word, that could be regarded as favour- 
 able to the Protestants, was accepted as a pledge given to the 
 Roman party, as a first step in a course where all was about to 
 be smooth. 
 
 Ere long he took a second. The never-ending question of the 
 divine right, repelled under so many forms, had never remained 
 a single day without re-appearing, sometimes feebly, as if by 
 way of memorandum, sometimes Avith fresh vivacity. It then 
 became anew, for some days, the only important question. Each 
 party reproduced its reasons, and after a crisis of longer or shorter 
 length, and more or less stormy, each found itself just where it 
 had been before. The intermediate distance had not been nar- 
 rowed by a single hair-breadth. 
 
 The Cardinal of Lorraine had said on his arrival, that he was 
 for the divine right, but that he did not insist that mention 
 should be made of it in a positive decree. Afterwards, without 
 openly contradicting himself, he had made common cause with 
 the partisans of that opinion; it was too much bound up with 
 all his other views to admit of his abandoning it, even had 
 he wished to do so. On coming out from a conference with the 
 Cardinal of Ferrara, he himself had made it known that that 
 prelate had eagerly urged him to consent to a decree in which 
 that question should be eluded, but that he had refused and 
 would ever refuse. Great, therefore, was the surprise, alike of 
 his friends and his enemies, when on the 11th of June, at a 
 semi-official conference between the legates and a score of bish- 
 ops, he declared that his opinion remained unchanged, but that, 
 in order to have done with the matter, he had ceased to insist on 
 its insertion in the decree. He interposed this condition only, 
 that no more should the decree contain anything contrary to that 
 opinion, even, he added, to the idea of the superiority of a coun- 
 cil over the pope. 
 
 Thereupon, notwithstanding the joy that must have been felt 
 by the Roman party on receiving such an overture, great was 
 the quarrel that ensued on that scorching question about the 
 authority of the pope. The Archbishop of Otranto so far lost 
 his temper as to tax with heresy the opinion which he knew to 
 be that of the cardinal ; no one but Lainez had as yet expressed 
 with such frankness his faith in the absolute and full superiority, 
 of the pope. The cardinal replied, but with great moderation, 
 and with the evident intention of wounding nobody. The con- 
 tention, skilfully diverted, then ran chiefly on the dispensations. 
 As always — for there was not a question in which the parties 
 did not revolve in a circle — some wished that there should be . 
 
Chap I. 13G3. SPEECH OF LAINEZ. 455 
 
 cases ill Avliicli no dispeiisaliou should be accorded, otlicrs that 
 the pope should remain sole judge. Tired of the contention, the 
 parties paused ; but there had been enough of bitterness betwixt 
 the Cardinal of Lorraine and the legate Morone, who had a few 
 days beibre accused him of attacking, in general congregation, 
 things that he had in private seemed to approve. The cardinal 
 could perceive, accordingly, that he had much to be forgiven, 
 and set himself more and more to obtain forgiveness. A fine 
 opportunity was now about to present itself 
 
 On the ICtli of June, Lainez announced that lie would reply 
 to all that had been said or insinuated against the pope's author- 
 ity. Starting, accordingly, from the princijDles announced in 
 his previous speech, he reviewed the various applications of the 
 papal power, and endeavoured to shew that there is none of them 
 that is not of divine right. According to him, to say that a dis- 
 pensation from the pope does not discharge from an obligation 
 towards God, is to teach men to put the decisions of their con- 
 science above those of the Church, and to throw themselves, in 
 fact, on the Protestant principle. " Embracing in its univer- 
 sality all times and all men, the divine law is irrevocable ; but; 
 as for ecclesiastical discipline, whose precepts have for their only 
 object the facilitating to men the observance of the laws of God,^ 
 it may midergo modifications, and it is for this end that the 
 Chm-ch has a head who can dispense from the observance of her 
 laws. That authority has been committed by Jesus Christ to the 
 pope ; none therefore can dispute his possession of it without set- 
 ting himself in opposition to the will of the founder of the Church., 
 A law which should forbid the pope to exercise the right of dis- 
 pensmg would, by the very fact of its having had men for its 
 authors, be revocable of its own nature ; and althotigh the j)oioe 
 should engage by a solemn oath never to use that power, his 
 promise would cease to be obligatory from the moment that 
 charity should counsel the violation of it.""- 
 
 Thus the only right tliat Lainez refused the pope, was that of 
 interdicting himself even by an oath, from using the right of dis- 
 pensing. Here, then, we have omnipotence pushed to the last 
 conceivable extreme, that in which it has not even the power 
 of binding itself Li vain would a pope swear to the observance 
 of a law ; in spite of his own very will, he remains free to vio- 
 late that law. 
 
 As for the council, ah\ays according to Lainez, the pope being 
 
 ^ Alay we not say that thei'e is the fundamental principle of Jesuit- 
 ism? Its doirnms, its morality, its policy, all that it has done of evil 
 or of good, all is there. 
 
 - rallavicini, Book xxi. chap. vi. 
 
456 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 incontestably superior to each of the mejnbers, one does not see 
 how he should not be superior to the assembly itself. To him 
 alone belongs the power of reforming, if they have need of it, 
 each of the churches of which the bishops compose the coun- 
 cil ; it cannot, therefore, be mamtained that those bishops, as- 
 sembled together, have that of reforming the entire body of the 
 Church. 
 
 Never yet had the bishops heard so frank a declaration, that 
 they were nothing, and could do nothing. The very Italians, 
 habituated as they were to a sense of their own nullity, but who 
 could not be altogether insensible of the pleasure of being some- 
 thing as members of a council, thought these hard words. They 
 said nothing, however ; but the Spaniards could not repress their 
 impatience, and still less could the French. What shocked them 
 most, was the tone in which Lainez spoke. He alone arrogated 
 to himself the right to speak from the centre of the hall, seated 
 on a chair that had been brought for him. There he sat, like a 
 professor in his chair, nay, almost like a magistrate on the bench 
 of justice. The greatest personages did not obtain from him a 
 direct refutation, and his haughty looks formed a fit accompani- 
 ment to the cold inflexibility of his language. 
 
 On that day, however, he felt that he had gone a little too far. 
 Having learnt that the French prelates had met at the Cardinal 
 of Lorraine's to deliberate about the course to be taken after such 
 a manifesto, he sent them the offer of an apolog}^ saying that he 
 had not had the least wish to offend any one. That small meet- 
 ing prepared itself to the best of its power ; all present, not ex- 
 cepting Hugo the spy, who w^as prompted either by anxiety to 
 conceal his connexion v/ith the pope, or by conviction, spoke 
 only of attacking Lainez. One recalled one passage, another 
 another, and all mutually exhorted each other to omit nothing, 
 to forgive nothing. Thus everything promised some vigorous 
 attacks on the following day. The cardinal seemed to approve. 
 Then scruples gradually suggested themselves. " What will be 
 the result of this contention ? The majority will not on that 
 account be the less ultramontane, and ready to vote, on being 
 pushed to it, in the direction desired by the Jesuit. What we 
 have most to wish, is that there should be no voting at all." 
 These scruples insensibly took the form of advices ; and the ad- 
 vices of the cardinal were equivalent to orders. The prelates 
 gave up the idea of refuting Lainez ; from that moment the 
 legates and the pope saw that the cardinal was entirely theirs. 
 
 Before proceeding farther, let us say some words on a quarrel 
 foreign to the proper business of the council, but which had long 
 
Chap. I. 1503. QDARRliL (JONCEUNINO PRECEDENCE. 457 
 
 contributed to complicate all diliiculties, and to envenom all de- 
 bates. 
 
 In all the public ceremonies of Europe, the pope or his repre- 
 sentatives had the right of figuring in the first rank, and the 
 emperor or his representatives in the second. The third, after 
 having long ])ertained to the king of France, had been latterly 
 disputed by the king of Spain. Under Charles V., who was at 
 once emperor antl king of Spain, there had been no room lor 
 contention on the subject ; but after having enjoyed the right of 
 precedence for forty years, the Spaniards were less than ever 
 disposed to yield it. 
 
 Count Claud Gluignones di Luna, ambassador to Philip II., 
 had arrived about the end of March, and near two months had 
 been spent in trying to discover how an audience might be 
 granted him, without giving him such a place as would not 
 oflend cither him or the French ambassadors. It was settled, 
 accordingly, that for this time he should have a seat by itself, 
 in the middle of the hall ; but it was understood that this should 
 form no precedent for or against either party. 
 
 Thus the question remained entire. The legates referred it 
 to the pope, and, while waiting fur his decision, the two rival 
 ambassadors avoided coming -into each other's presence. The 
 pope had submitted the atiair to a commission of cardinals. 
 Their unanimous opinion was that in such matters, the rule of 
 antiquity is the only one possible ; precedency, accordingly, be- 
 longed to the French. But, for the moment, the publication of 
 a decision unfavourable to the only prince that appeared friendly 
 to both the council and the pope, was not to be dreamt of. After 
 several months of deliberation, an expedient was supposed to have 
 been hit upon at last, but it was thought prudent not to say a 
 word about it, until the moment of its being put into execution. 
 On the 29th of June, St. Peter's day, after all present had taken 
 their places in church, and high mass w^as about to commence, 
 an arm-chair appeared, brought in by footmen, and set down in 
 the line of the prelates, between the last cardinal and the first 
 patriarch. At the same instant the Spanish ambassador arrived 
 and placed himself in it. Thereupon great was the buzz of 
 voices. The mass commenced, but nobody attended to it. The 
 French murmured aloud ; they sent to inquire in what manner 
 the oliering of incense was meant to be arranged, for, thought 
 they, then it must be decided whether to conuuencc with France 
 or Spain. The legates replied that there w^ould be two censers ; on 
 which the French declared that it w^as not equality they wanted, 
 but precedence. It being found impossible to make them give 
 way, the count was besought to agree at least to the incense being 
 
 U 
 
458 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 presented to nobody. He first refused, and then consented, and 
 the mass was finished amid the greatest agitation. 
 
 What particularly aggravated this affair, was that the legates 
 declared that they acted only upon an express order from the 
 pope. Pius IV., therefore, found himself directly implicated in 
 the quarrel ; but while he had at least the approbation of the 
 Spaniards, the legates were chagrined to see that they had dis- 
 contented everybody — the Spaniards, by not having fully car- 
 ried through the pope's decision in their favour, the French, by 
 having kept it a secret, and attempted to execute it by surprise. 
 The Cardinal of Lorraine was particularly shocked at such con- 
 duct, he to whom the promise. Jiad so often been made, that 
 nothing would be kept concealed from him. He complained of 
 it with much warmth ; and when the legates complained that 
 they could not refuse to execute the pope's order, on the follow- 
 ing Sunday, should the Spanish ambassador require them to do 
 so, he declared that he himself would go up into the pulpit, and 
 call on the prelates to leave the church, so as not to be witnesses 
 or accomplices of such a scandal. The legates, in great alarm, 
 prevailed with the count not to require anything for some time, 
 and once more the whole affair was remitted to the pope. 
 
 There had been perpetual conferences at the houses of the am- 
 bassadors. The Spanish seemed ready at times to give way, and 
 again would demand the strict execution of the pope's decision, 
 that is to say, the maintenance of the place that had been given 
 him on the 29th of June, and the sim.ultaneous presentation of 
 incense. As for the French ambassadors, they had made up 
 their minds to protest and go away. Their protest, they said, 
 would not be against the legates, the king of Spain, or his repre- 
 sentative, or against the Holy See, but personally and directly 
 against the pope, the author, according to them, of all the mis- 
 chief. That poor pope, whom they had persisted in speaking of 
 with a certain respect, as long as they had found themselves con- 
 tending with hmi only on the great interests of the Church, was 
 treated as a monster from the moment that he had dared not to 
 be strictly just in a question of etiquette. Many of the French 
 spoke of nothing less than refusing him his very title of pope. 
 They had in their possession, they said, proofs that he had pur- 
 chased votes at the conclave ; that thus, in terms of the ancient 
 canons, his election was null, and null also, must consequently 
 be any council convened by him.^ Du Ferrier drew up a long 
 jprotest ; without going so far, he confined himself to represent- 
 
 ^ Wlien Clement XL, in 1709, declared himself against Lewis XIV., 
 the French ambassador, the Marechal de Tesse, left Rome declaring that 
 that city was no longer the seat of the Church. 
 
Chap. 1. 1303. THE FUl'E THREATENED BY THE FRENCH. 159 
 
 ing the pope's luiviii^^ had lor his sole object embroiliiifr France 
 with 8pain. " He, tiie common Fatlier of Christians, wished to 
 disinherit his eldest son, the king of France ; making Scripture 
 to lie, instead of bread he gives him a stone, and for a fish, a ser- 
 pent. A man who casts oiV his son is no longer a father ; the 
 French can no longer recognise him as such." 
 
 Had not this protest risked calling forth others, the legates 
 need not have felt much uneasiness at so foolishly passionate a 
 document. It was too manifestly absurd for Roman Cathohcs 
 to think themselves authorized to call for the dethronement of 
 a pope, because he had wronged them in an aflair altogether 
 human, and in which he had unwillingly interfered. But as the 
 smallest attack, even although unjust, might lead to a terrible 
 concussion, the legates made desperate efforts to prevent its get- 
 ting abroad. The emperor's ambassadors communicated on the 
 subject with the Spanish ambassador, and the Cardinal of Lor- 
 raine with those of France. The rioour of his first threats was 
 succeeded by too much calmness, not to make it suspected that 
 there had been an affectation of more indignation than he really 
 felt ; and it was surmised that he had caught at an opportunity 
 of making a parade, in quite an accessory affair, of an independ- 
 ence which he was no longer prepared to exercise on essential 
 questions. Notwithstanding these suspicions, which his conduct 
 was ere long to change into certainty, he shewed enough of tes- 
 tiness on the subject of French honour, to admit of the king of 
 France's ambassadors listening to what he had to say. They 
 consented, accordingly, to allow the count the arm-cliair that 
 had been brought in for him on the 29th of June, and the count, 
 on his side, no longer pressed the subject of the incense. It was 
 decided that this arrangement should be regarded as provisional, 
 but should be maintained until the ambassadors should have re- 
 ceived new orders from their masters. These orders, it was 
 tacitly understood, were not to arrive before the close of the 
 council.^ 
 
 We have omitted various contentions of the same kind, that 
 had successively arisen between the ambassadors of Portugal and 
 Hungary, of Bavaria and of Venice, &c. Without making so 
 much noise, they had contributed not a little to keep up the pre- 
 vailing dissatisfaction and irritation. 
 
 ' It is known that the question Avas not definillvoly settled in favour 
 of France until the time of Lewis XIV., just a hundred years after. 
 
CHAPTEE, 11. 
 
 SESSION XXIII, DIVINE RIGHT OF BISHOPS, AND THE PAPAL 
 POWrER, BOTH LEFT UNDEFINI 
 ORDERS AND ON REFORMATION 
 
 PO\\rER, BOTH LEFT UNDEFINED, AND WHY ? DECREES ON 
 
 Why such an indisposition to vote on the question of the divine right 
 — It is definitively withdrawn — Consequences of the vague state in 
 ■which it has been left — Disagreement among the doctors — Silence of 
 the council on all that relates to the popedom — Is it true that this 
 silence was quite voluntary? — Historical sketch of the discussions — 
 Almost as many questions omitted as decided — An attempt made to 
 draw up a table of the functions of the seven orders — It fails — The 
 council admits, ia spite of itself, the legitimacy of the suppressions 
 made by the Reformation — Thelogical difficulties — The Roman sys- 
 tem is logical and clear only at the surface — The Spaniards desist — 
 The legates are delighted — Twexty-third session — Decree of Refor- 
 mation in eighteen chapters — Residence — Conditions and formalities 
 of ordination — Conditions as to age — The seminaries — Historical re- 
 view — The seminaries one of the fruits of the Reformation — Marriage 
 — Ambiguous decree. 
 
 T\"hen this storm had blown over, the council resumed its 
 labours, but with the conviction that they would never come to 
 an understanding on the question of the divine right ; and that 
 unless it were left out altogether, everything would be brought 
 to a halt and that indefinitively. For the Roman party, as we 
 have already said, it was not a question as to the majority ; there 
 was no doubt that a general voting would give them the victory. 
 What made them pause, therefore, was the dread of too strong a 
 minority, and of protests too warmly urged to admit of their dar- 
 ing to regard the vote as finally settled ; and then what was to 
 be done ? " Nine-tenths of the Fathers," says the Jesuit Biner, 
 " were agreed in acknowledging the pope's superiority to the 
 council, and yet, on the reclamations of certain Frenchmen, it 
 was not declared." Nine-tenths, that is saying a great deal ; 
 the anti-Romanists, at that epoch, formed at least the fourth 
 part of the assembly. Be that as it may, we cannot admit with 
 the author whom we have quoted, that the council was to be 
 commended for this. "Were it the case of a political assembly, 
 we should willingly admit that it would have been prudence, 
 
Chap. II. 15G3. QUESTION UF DIVINE RIUIIT WITHDRAWN. 401 
 
 reserve, and a wise respect for iLe minority ; but in that of a 
 council, it furnishes, it would appear, far more matter for blame 
 than praise. You admit that human considerations prevented 
 the votinfj: of what nine-tenths of the assembly, according to you, 
 considered to be a truth I tSo the Holy Ghost quailed belbre 
 "certain Frenchmen 1" The council's enemies never said any- 
 thing stronger against its pretensions and its tribulations. 
 
 It was not, however, without difiiculty that the leaders of the 
 majority prevailed on their followers to be quiet. Heated by 
 contention, and sure of carrying the day, many Italians wished 
 for the vote ; but the legates, by express orders from the pope, 
 compelled them to abandon their purpose. It was the Cardinal 
 of Lorraine who took in hand and proposed the omission. As 
 nothing more, then, than a motion on a point of order had to be 
 put, a mere majority sufficed. The vote was taken, and the 
 question was dehnitivcly withdrawn. 
 
 Here, then, we have this fundamental article of the Roman 
 hierarchy shoved away for ever among the uncertain points of 
 the system. With the decrees of Trent in his hand, the bishop 
 you may consult will answer you without hesitation, without 
 possibility of error, according to him, on a multitude of subjects 
 which revelation docs not teach, and which man is quite incom- 
 petent to see or to know ; but ask him if he is by divine right 
 superior to priests, and whether it is from God or from the pope 
 that he holds his power ? he will hold his peace. If he speaks, 
 he can but give you his private opinion. Did it appear to you 
 to be good, and had you nothing to reply, you might always ob- 
 ject that it is his opinion, that he cannot warrant its correct- 
 ness, that his Church, in fine, makes herself infallible, and con- 
 venes councils only to leave in uncertainty a subject even of that 
 importance. The certainty which Rome maintains that she 
 alone is in a condition to give, the bishop has not, and without 
 a new council never will have, on what every man called to any 
 ministry whatever, has most need to know, the nature, namely, 
 and the source of his authority. Will he maintain that it suffices 
 lor him, in practice, to speak and to act in the name of the 
 Church ? He is neither elected nor instituted by her ; he does 
 not receive from her any commission. Then, the question is not 
 one of practice, but one of right. From whom does he receive 
 his commission to speak in the name of the Church ? That is 
 the question. Will he reply that he receives it Irom the pope ? 
 That again is true ; but true actually, true in fact, and M'hat he 
 must be able to say is, that it is true in point of right, true ab- 
 solutely, and it is here that the want of haraiony commences. 
 At Fribourg, " every bishop who has not been instituted, or re- 
 
462 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 cognised by the pope, is an intruder, a false pastor."^ At some 
 leagues from Fribourg, " legitimate bishops are those who are in- 
 stituted according to the rules of the Church, and who are in 
 communion with the pope. According to the present discipline 
 of the Church, which has been in force for several centuries, it is 
 our Holy Father, the pope, who institutes bishops."^ Between 
 these two teachings, though indentical in their present results, 
 the distance is great, it is immense. In the one the pope is the 
 source ; in the other he is only the channel, and even the present 
 channel only ; the Church might delegate to others, did she 
 think fit, the power to institute bishops. It is, accordingly, as 
 if in one and the same state, two political catechisms were to 
 teach, the one, that authority emanates from the prince, the other, 
 that it emanates from the people. It were in vain that the prac- 
 tical results were momentarily the same — who would assert that 
 the two authors were agreed ? Who would think the difference 
 of their ■vdews unimportant ? This, however, is what has to be 
 done in order to save the unity of the Roman Church. But 
 even although common sense were not to exclaim that this ques- 
 tion is on the contrary at the basis of all, let it be remembered 
 how the council devoted more time to it, and threw itself with 
 more ardour into it than any other, falling back upon it, in spite 
 of itself, at every turn — and then, after all this, let people say, if 
 they can, that it was thrown aside because it was thought of no 
 moment. 
 
 But it was not only on the popedom viewed in its relations 
 with the episcopate, but on the popedom itself, its essence, its 
 origin, its place in the hierarchy and in the Church, that our 
 council maintained the most complete silence. We have already 
 remarked this ; but we would also call attention to the contra- 
 riety to facts, to be found in the answer that Romanists have 
 had to make to the arguments deduced from this strange omis- 
 sion. " If the council," it is said, " has taught nothing on this 
 point, it is because the supremacy of the pope had appeared to 
 it to be sufficiently established by the ^^niversal assent of the 
 Church." Nothing is less true. For first, the council nowise 
 restricted itself to speaking only of things that required to be 
 fixed. We have seen it teach many things in which, for a long 
 while, there had been no want of certainty among Roman Cath- 
 olics. There was not, therefore, any reason on that ground for 
 its not having spoken of the pope. In the second place, Ave have 
 seen that the assembly always preferred attaching itself to those 
 points that were attacked by the Protestants. Now, what had 
 they attacked more keenly than the pope ? On what, then, 
 
 ^ Fribourg Catechism. * Catechism of St. Claude. 
 
CuAP. Jl. 1503. WHY THE QUESTION WAS NOT DrXlDED. 463 
 
 would it liavc been more natural to confound tliem and anath- 
 ematize tlioni ? In line, let us proceed to facts. In order to 
 maintain that if the council omitted this point, it wan because 
 it saw no need of speaking about it, one must be able to say that 
 the council had decided from the first that it should be set aside, 
 and that there had been no attempt to give it any place in the 
 decree. Far from that ; from the first presentation of the articles 
 on the sacrament of orders, that is to say, eight months before 
 the session in which we have seen that they were published, it 
 was proposed that one should be drawn up on the pope. 'No 
 formula was as yet officially proposed, but none of the speakers 
 seemed to think that they could dispense with looking for one ; 
 to speak of the pope on the occasion of the sacrament of orders, 
 seemed as natural in their eyes as to speak of the mass when 
 the eucharist was under discussion. - After five weeks' debating, 
 during which the question of the popedom was not for a single 
 day separated from that of the priesthood in general, the Car- 
 dinal of Lorraine proposed two canons, one of which declared 
 the bishops to be instituted by divine right, Avhile the other 
 anathematized the opinion " that St. Peter had not been estab- 
 hshed Prince of the Apostles, supreme vicar of Jesus Christ ; 
 that a sovereign pontiff is not necessary ; that the legitimate 
 successors of St. Peter have not constantly held the primacy of 
 the Church," Attacked by some as giving too much to the 
 pope, by others as not giving him enough, that article served as 
 the topic of discussion for a month. It was communicated by 
 the legates to the pope ; the pope added to it what he considered 
 to be M^anting, and sent it back to the legates. In the new draft 
 of it, there was anathema to whosoever should say, " that the 
 legitimate successors of St. Peter have not constantly been the 
 fathers, the pastors, the teachers of all Christians, and that there 
 has not been given them by Jesus Christ, in the person of St. 
 Peter, full power to rule and govern the universal Church." 
 And on this new ground the discussion was continued for three 
 months. Thus it remains an unquestionable fact that neither 
 bishops nor legates, neither the pope nor any one, had the inten- 
 tion originally of not speaking ot" the pope ; that thus, as we 
 have asserted, the sole cause of the silence observed in the coun- 
 cil's decrees on that head, was the impossibility of coming to a 
 common understanding upon it. The best proof, in fine, that 
 they did not consider themselves to be agreed by the sole fact of 
 their being so, in the gross, on the primacy of the pope, is, that 
 it was never once proposed that they should get rid of the diffi- 
 culty by adopting an article in which they should acknowledge, 
 in two words, that primacy. The least scrupulous felt that i\ 
 
464 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 would be ridiculous to merge under one term the profoundly di- 
 verse opinions which had come to light in interpreting it. Is 
 there any better agreement upon it at the present day ? It 
 would appear so. But not the less is it an historical fact that 
 the Council of Trent did not dare, or was not able, after several 
 months of efibrt, to teach anything on the subject of the pope.^ 
 
 The grand obstacle was now taken out of the way. In put- 
 ting their hands, in order to have done with it, to the omission 
 of a point of such importance, each party had, in some sort, 
 taken an engagement to abandon in like manner every question 
 on which inability to come to an agreement was dreaded. "We 
 shall have to notice that thenceforward, to the close of the coun- 
 cil, almost as many questions were omitted as there were ques- 
 tions decided. 
 
 The first thing done was to take from the draft of the decree 
 on residence everything that could shock either the partisans or 
 the adversaries of the divine right. Residence was found not to 
 have been ordained either by the pope or by God ; the council 
 confined itself to prescribing it as natural and necessary. This 
 was in many respects the best thing that could be done, for there 
 is no better way of recommending a duty than by frankly re- 
 ferring it without any cavilling, to the sacred law of duty ; but 
 there was wherewithal to make them a little confounded at the 
 thought, that they had for years been quarrelling about resi- 
 dence, only to say at last what might have been said the first 
 day they began, had they but contrived to keep to plain common 
 sense. 
 
 After having decreed the seven orders, it would have been 
 natural to point out the different functions attached to them. 
 The attempt was made ; but the enumeration, elaborated at 
 great length, was found so unlike the actual state of things, that 
 
 ^ "What a contrast betwixt this silence and the boldness of the popes 
 when they have to dogmatize on the misty origin of their pretended 
 rights ! Hear Alexander A"II. writing to the University of Louvain : 
 "That excellent precept, so often inculcated by the Saviours voice, to 
 keep the Church's commandments, and to listen to the voice of the 
 pastor whom he has established his vicar." And yet this is what Car- 
 dinal Pacca quoted, fifteen 3'ears ago, as an oracle. If there be no small 
 audacity in even so much as asserting that Jesus Christ ever intended 
 to create for himself a vicar, what term shall we apply to the incon- 
 ceivable impudence with which a pope dares to affirm that the order 
 to obey him was put into set form, was inculcated, and that so often, by 
 the very voice of the Saviour! With these lines in one hand, and the 
 Scriptures in another, there is enough to disgust with the popedom 
 whosoever detests fraud, and has also the courage to exercise his powers 
 of reflection. 
 
CiiAi'. If. 15G3. ORDERS— PROTESTANTS JUSTIFIED. 4G5 
 
 it was soon seen to be absolutely impossible to embody it in a 
 law. For several centuries, in fact, the three major orders (sub- 
 diaconate, diaconate, and priesthood) were the only ones the ex- 
 istence of which was not purely nominal. The impo.ssibility of" 
 finding for all churches a porter and an acolyte in orders, had 
 led to their being replaced by laymen, often by children. Even 
 in churches provided with that kind of ministers, it was not they, 
 but beadles, sacristans, singing boys, as is generally the case to 
 this day, that watched the doors, took care of the churcli mate- 
 rials, served at the altars, &cc.^ To decree that these should re- 
 ceive orders corresponding to their functions, would have been 
 to incorporate them with the clergy, a course which would have 
 had great inconveniences ; to decree that the titulars should con- 
 descend to discharge such humble functions, would have been to 
 lower the sacerdotal dignity, for it would have been hopeless to 
 attempt leading people to regard as honourable and sacred what 
 they never could recollect having seen done by any but domes- 
 tics. On the other hand, to do nothing towards preventing these 
 four orders from falling definitively into desuetude, would have 
 been to admit that the Protestants had been in the right when 
 they abolished them as useless. A middle course, therefore, was 
 adopted, Setting aside all details as to the functions of these 
 orders, it was decreed, in principle, that they should be exercised 
 only by persons regularly ordained. The application of this rule 
 was then restricted to cathedral, collegiate, and parochial 
 churches, i/i so fa?' as can conveiiiently be done? It was 
 added, in fine, that in default of ordained and mimarried men, 
 any man of good morals, provided he was not a bigamist, might 
 exercise these functions. The council, accordingly, did no more, 
 upon the whole, than consecrate what usage had everywhere 
 established. This was Avise ; but to recognise so openly the 
 possibility of dispensing with ordained porters, readers, exorcists, 
 and acolytes, was but a pitiful way of attaining the object indi- 
 cated in the preamble of the decree : " Lest these functions 
 should be traduced by heretics as tending to idleness."-^ More- 
 over, after such large concessions, what becomes of the canon in 
 which the admission of the seven orders is ranked among points 
 of faith ? How can one pronounce an anathema to whosoever 
 shall not acknowledge seven, while admittinof that there are four 
 that the Church can dispense with, and with which it actually 
 does dispense ? 
 
 ^ The functions of reader and exorcist, considerably curtailed, were 
 discharged by the priests. 
 
 ^ Quantum fieri commode poterit, 
 
 ^ Ne ab htereticis, tamquam otiosa, traducantur. 
 
466 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 This admission is not less serious as tending to confirm all that 
 we have said on the theological difficulties of the sacrament of 
 orders. If the seven orders are so many parts of one same sac- 
 rament, and if, nevertheless, there are several whose functions 
 can be performed by laymen, where shall we set the limit to 
 this ? At what point shall the intermixture of laymen begin 
 decidedly to be a sacrilege ? What notion shall we form of a 
 sacrament, one sole and perfect sacrament, in which some parts 
 are of an indispensable and absolute necessity, while certain 
 others are useless ? Viewed in the light of discipline and good 
 order, the Church has reason incontestably to desire that certain 
 charges shall fall exclusively to her ministers ; what w^e wish to 
 say is, that if necessity suffices for authorizing a layman to dis- 
 charge the functions of four orders, one does not see any more 
 why the same reason should not authorize him to discharge the 
 functions of five, six, or seven, and why, for example, in a desert 
 island, some shipwrecked seamen might not choose one among 
 themselves to dispense to them the supper. Here, then, we are 
 brought back, by another road, to the objection that had already 
 presented itself to us in the question of baptism. If a layman 
 can baptise, we said, it cannot be logically maintained, even 
 although the apostolic history should not prove the contrary, that 
 he is radically unfit to administer every other sacrament. If a 
 layman, we now say, may discharge certain parts of the sacra- 
 ment of orders, which is one sacrament, on what ground shall he 
 be declared radically and absolutely unfit for the functions con- 
 ferred by the rest of the sacrament ? a ncAV proof in support of 
 what we have so often had occasion to repeat, that the clear- 
 ness of the Romish theories is found oftenest at the surface, and 
 that there is no need of going very deep in order to find embar- 
 rassments and obscurities. 
 
 By dint of omissions, hopes began to be indulged that the 
 session might take place on the day fixed, to wit, the 15th of 
 July, 1563. The Cardinal of Lorraine had got his part acted 
 out, and it was no fault of his if the council was not ready sev- 
 eral days sooner. Unfortunately the Spaniards had not yet all 
 given in, and did not speak of doing so. In the congregation of 
 the 9th, the Archbishop of Grenada took it upon himself once 
 more to say that it was shameful to have so long amused the 
 fathers on the subject of the divine right, only to leave it at last 
 unresolved. He declared that neither he nor his friends would 
 ever change their opinion ; that it was, in their eyes, not only 
 an error, but a heresy, to think otherwise. He well kncAv, how- 
 ever, that that heresy was the opinion of the court of Rome and 
 
CiiAi-. II. 15C3. THE SPANIARDS STILL IIOLl* OUT. 467 
 
 of the majority of the council. How did he contrive to reconcile 
 all this with conscicnlious views as a Roman Catholic and an 
 archbishop ? And when he spoke of never changing his opinion, 
 what then did he mean to do, if the council, in accordance with 
 the pope, had decided the question in a sense the reverse of 
 his own ? On the day before the session, he again waited on 
 the Count di Luna, to exhort and to protest, in the name of Spain, 
 against the omission of the decree which he and his colleagues 
 were resolved to call for up to the last moment. Strange, indeed, 
 would have been the spectacle of an ambassador protesting in 
 favour of a dogma ; already it was odd enough to see bishops 
 asking him to take such a step, and we might join this fact to 
 all those that have appeared to us to show how little common 
 understanding there was, at that epoch, on the nature and ihe 
 extent of the authority of a council. The count refused to com- 
 ply ; he even tried, but in vain, to divert his countrymen from 
 their projected protest. The legates ignored this conference ; 
 they thought themselves at the end of their labours. "At the 
 moment they were closing the dispatches which they were send- 
 ing off to Rome to announce the joyful news, they received a 
 message from the Spanish ambassador. It was to inform them 
 that he had made great efforts, but in vain, in order to induce 
 his countrymen to give way ; he thought that, consequently, the 
 session could not be held without the risk of giving oflence to the 
 whole of Spain. "1 The legates persisted. They called a last gen- 
 eral congregation. Italians, French, Germans, and others, with 
 the exception of six, adopted unanimously the decrees as they 
 had been arranged ; the Spaniards were immovable. They 
 voted in silence, but were to protest in full session. Anxi- 
 ety was now at its highest pitch ; the legates deliberated ; they 
 durst neither hold the session nor put it off. AThat was to be 
 done ? The ambassador was to be implored to make another 
 effort with the rebel prelates. He saw them, accordingly, once 
 more ; besought, urged, conjured them, and, at last, wrested 
 from them, in the evening, the promise not to protest next day. 
 Let us now hear Pallavicini. The delight felt at this news by 
 the legates seems to have become his own ; his style rises into 
 poetry. " The legates," he says, " had laid themselves down that 
 they might taste that rest which has long to be waited for, even 
 on a bed of down, when the mind is tormented by an excruciating 
 sting, at the moment they received this joyful ncAVs. To them 
 it was hke the intoxicating liquor with which Homer inebriates 
 his heroes. They did taste a few moments' sleep until Aurora 
 called them to a session, the fruit of so many fatigues a-nd per- 
 
 ' Pnll.ivioini, Hoolv x\i. oh. 11. 
 
468 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TEENT. Book VI. 
 
 spirations, the object of such hvely and such various hopes. 
 Very ignorant or very mahcious must be the man vv^ho should 
 accuse nature, as an unjust stepmother, for having given this 
 pleasure at the cost of so much fatigue and suffering ! Just as 
 the bee distils the sweetness of its honey from the bitterness of the 
 thyme, so by present toils we prepare matter for future joys." 
 Here, truly, is a grandiloquent way of telling us that the legates 
 had been in great trepidation, and it is the first time, to our 
 knowledge, that people ever thought of proclaiming a victory 
 when they had only escaped from having a battle. 
 
 After ten months of delays, accordingly, this famous twenty- 
 third session took place July 15, 1563, The Spaniards kept 
 their word. They did not protest, and the greater number even 
 voted without making any observations. Three or four, that 
 they might not seem to abandon their old opinions, declared that 
 they voted in the hope that the council would, ere long, develop 
 what required development. They well knew that that would 
 not be done. 
 
 The reformation decree contained eighteen chapters. 
 
 "VYe have spoken of the first, that on residence. Full of good 
 things, but of exhortations rather than of orders, it could not 
 have, and actually has not had, any more effect than that of the 
 sixth session. Amonsf the letjitimate motives for non-residence, 
 there had been put the " service of the Church ;" to which the 
 Cardinal of Lorraine, who never forgot himself, had caused to be 
 added '" the service of the State." Obligation to residence, how- 
 ever, on the part of the cardinals, not without much opposition 
 on the part of the ultra-Romanists, was inserted in the decree. 
 
 The subsequent chapters regulated the disciplinary conditions 
 and formalities of ordination, whether for bishops or for priests. 
 The twelfth fixed that no one should be made sub-deacon under 
 twenty-two years of age, deacon before twenty-three, and priest 
 before twenty-four. The sixth, that no benefice could be obtain- 
 ed by any one under fourteen years. As they were frequently 
 given to perfect children, this rule shewed some progress ; but 
 it is clear that at the same time it sanctioned a serious abuse. 
 A boy of fourteen is no more capable of being an abbot than one 
 of tv/elve or of six. It had been put into the first draft that 
 bishops appointed by princes should, after being instituted by the 
 pope, be examined by the metropolitan ; but this security had 
 been rejected by the Italians as contrary to the pope's independ- 
 ence, and by foreign prelates as calculated to give offence to the 
 secular princes. Those chapters, in short, comprise some excel- 
 lent regulations, to which nothing has been found wanting but 
 1,]i(?ir being bettor executed. 
 
Chap. U. 1503. INSTITUTION OF SEMINARIES. 469 
 
 In the fifteenth, it was said tliat no priest, secular or regular, 
 should confess in any diocese without the sanction of the bishop ; 
 an important law which the bishops had vainly solicited in the 
 early times of the conncil. 
 
 The sixteenth bore that no priest should be ordained without 
 being attached to a church. Many of the prelates had asked 
 that it should be the same with bishops, but the Roman party 
 had insisted on preserving for the pope the right to confer the 
 episcopate as an honorary title. 
 
 The seventeenth treated of the minor orders. Of these we 
 have already spoken. In the eighteenth, in fine, the institution 
 of seminaries is handled. Let us pause for a moment at it. 
 
 Had the Council of Trent produced nothing but this decree, we 
 are told it would have earned perpetual claims to the Church's 
 gratitude. Possibly so. The idea was beautiful, it was great ; 
 we shall not stop to recall how many inconveniences, neverthe- 
 less, are found to be combined in them with incontestable ad- 
 vantages. We shall only ask why it was that such a decree 
 should still have remained to be made. With all her power, 
 and all her wealth, the Roman Church had never yet seriously 
 set herself to secure for her ministers an education worthy of 
 their calling. All had dwindled down, on this point, to some 
 vague injunctions, a few ancient canons, fixing the minimum of 
 learning, or rather the maximum of ignorance, which the candi- 
 dates might bring with them, and even those rules were con- 
 stantly violated. The slight mental cultivation enjoyed by so 
 many priests at this day, particularly in countries altogether 
 Roman Catholic and not in contact with better educated na- 
 tions, sufficiently shews what they must have been before the 
 institution of seminaries, and at an epoch when to be able to read 
 was sufficient to place a man above nine-tenths of the population. 
 At all epochs there have been learned men ; but how many ? 
 Beyond the universities and the higher charges, that is to say, 
 thoughout nearly the entire body of the inferior clergy, hardly 
 can we discover here and there a man that participated in the 
 feeble enlightenment of his age. The Reformation, on the con- 
 trary, had no sooner enjoyed some moments of peace, than it 
 made the utmost endeavours to secure for itself educated and 
 capable pastors. If it had not established seminaries — having 
 always thought these, not without reason, much too like monas- 
 teries — it had everywhere founded schools, which, in a few years, 
 rivalled the ancient universities. The Roman Church had been 
 struck Avith this. She felt herself carried along, like the Avorld 
 around her, towards an epoch in Avhicli ignoramuses would be 
 left on the back-ground. AYithout waiting for the orders or the 
 
470 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 aid of a council, several bishops had already made efforts to pro- 
 cure priests a little less below their calling. Seminaries, in fact, 
 already existed ; the council had only to generalize their estab- 
 lishment. The bishops were authorized to raise from Church 
 revenues of every kind the sums required in order to cover the 
 expense. It was ordained at the same time that every theo- 
 logical canon should be bound to discharge in those schools the 
 teaching functions already attached to that title, or to find, at 
 his own expense, a capable substitute. The whole decree is 
 very well conceived ; we have thought it therefore of conse- 
 quence to show how much the Reformation had contributed to 
 render it necessary, and to prepare matters for its being carried 
 into execution. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 SESSION XXIV. CARDINAL LORRAIXK VISITS ROME. DECREES ON 
 MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, AND THE REFORM OE THE CLERGY. 
 
 Forty articles presented to tlie ambassadors — Why so many cardinals 
 Italians, and always an Italian pope — The princes think of taking 
 their guarantees against the bishops — Pius IV. urges matters to a 
 close — Intervention of the Cardinal of Lorraine — His journey to Rome 
 — Draft of decree on the princes — Exorbitant pretensions — Du Fer- 
 rier's protest — The council more than ever a chaos — An explanation 
 of the proponentibus consented to — A congregation in confusion — 
 TwENxy-FOURTii SESSION held, in greater confusion still — Pallavicini's 
 success — Objections to twelve anathemas of the decree on marriage 
 — Contradictions, incoherencies, shifts, and quibbles — Why was the 
 indissolubleness of marriage not formally taught — Disciplinary arti- 
 ticles — Clandestine marriages, dispensations, &c. — Reformatory arti- 
 cles — Elections, provincial and diocesan councils — Visits, preaching, 
 censures, draft of a catechism, penances, salaries, competitions, ecclesi- 
 astical procedure — Why, after so many decrees, did people still com- 
 plain of the insufficiency of the council? 
 
 Still, its utility was not so very evident as to prevent the pub- 
 lic from exclaiming against the barren results of a session pre- 
 pared for at such length, and so laboriously. The dispute about 
 the divine right had, during the whole of that time, kept all the 
 divines, all the universities, all Europe, on the stretch of expec- 
 tation. It had been seen, with redoubled interest, to reach by 
 slow degrees the domain of the popedom itself; friends and 
 enemies were alike kept in a state of inexpressible suspense. 
 Accordingly, even after the decree had been for some days before 
 everybody's eyes, people still continued to ask themselves if the 
 council could have dared to say nothing on such a subject. 
 
 At Trent, as it was much to be dreaded that the discussion 
 might recommence, the decree on marriage, already elaborated, 
 was resumed without delay. It had been thrown aside, in the 
 last instance, not only because the other absorbed all the councifs 
 attention and time, but also on accouni of the difficulties found 
 in it. No subject had, in fact, occurred as yet, in which doctrine 
 and discipline were more mingled, and we have already seen how 
 many inconveniences arose from this medley. No sooner was it 
 resumed than the same difficulties occurred, augmented by all 
 the arguments for or against each opinion which a long delay 
 had allowed the parties to prepare. The most delicate question, 
 
4^72 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 we have said, was that of the vahdity of maniages contracted 
 Avithout the intervention of the civil power. The council durst 
 not pronounce them good ; and yet, in spite of all the distinctions 
 imagined in order to explain how a sacrament can be null with- 
 out any of its religious elements being wanting, logic continually 
 returned to the charge. People said, in spite of themselves, that 
 if marriage be a sacrament, the omission of civil formalities can 
 no more make it be considered as null, than it could prevent 
 transubstantiation from taking place wherever a legitimate priest 
 shall pronounce the sacramental words of consecration over the 
 wafer. One might have gone even farther than this, for if the 
 Church cannot make the consecrated wafer to become bread 
 again, one does not see how the sacrament of marriage, after 
 being once performed, can in any case be reduced to nothing. 
 What caused alarm, not without reason, was the consequences ; 
 it was the reclamation of the princes, for they had never ceased 
 to protest against clandestine marriages, and the French ambas- 
 sadors, in particular, had formally demanded that they should 
 be declared null. Priests might indeed be forbidden to celebrate 
 such marriages, but the case had to be provided for of priests 
 paying no attention to this, and how, after that, could the coun- 
 cil dispense with determining what was to become of the sacra- 
 ment so administered ? 
 
 After fifteen days of contention, there was no means of coming 
 to an agreement, or of appearing to be agreed, but by drawing 
 up a decree in which each party would find more or less of his 
 views, saving that the practical interpretation was to be left to 
 the bishops and to the pope. They began, therefore, with sim- 
 plifying the question by deciding that it should be spoken of only 
 in the disciplinary articles, where they hoped they might avoid 
 pronomicing, in precise terms, either a yes or a no on the validity 
 of clandestine marriages. After getting rid of this first difhculty, 
 the following shift was adopted : — " Although it be certain that 
 secret marriages have been true and valid marriages, in so far as 
 the Church has not annulled them — although the council an- 
 athematizes those who do not hold them to be such, together with 
 those also who maintain that fathers and mothers may annul 
 marriages that have taken place without their consent, the 
 Church, nevertheless, has always forbidden and detested them." 
 Then come diverse regulations prescribing the j)ublic formalities 
 to be observed before the celebration of a marriage, but not a 
 word is said about the intervention of the civil power. 
 
 Here but one point is very clear : it is that fathers and mothers 
 must not believe that they have power to annul, by simply re- 
 fusing their consent, a marriage celebrated in secret, and without 
 
Chap. III. 1503. FORTY ARTICLES SENT TO THE AMBASSADORS. 4<3 
 
 their participalioii. The aiiiiiilhiig could come only from the 
 Church, AYas the Church, thou, to annul all marriages that 
 lathers and mothers might refuse to ratify ? "VYere it to engage 
 to do this, it would leave one door for the admission of an idea 
 which it had expelled by another ; fathers and mothers could 
 not but believe, in fact, that it is they who annul, or, at least, 
 who have the right to exact the annulling. Hence this studied 
 obscurity. Are such marriages valid ? Yes, as lo7ig as the 
 CJiurcJi, has not aiimdlcd iJicm. Then the Church can aninil 
 them? No doubt. Does it annul them thenceforward? No 
 answer. The council only makes a step that prevents its ad- 
 vancing farther. 
 
 One point more, consequently, on which the council durst not 
 express its thoughts, and recoiled before the rigorous application 
 of its principles. This ambiguity displeased many of the bishops. 
 Fifty-six M'cre for franldy keeping to the theological legality of 
 marriage, without disquieting themselves about the civil legality. 
 This opinion being at once more logical and more favourable to 
 the sacerdotal authority, had great charms for the Roman party ; 
 the legates had much to do to prevent its passing openly into the 
 decree, a result that would have produced the most dangerous 
 protests. Such was the way in which a place was tacitly contrived 
 lor the civil legislation ; but that place the articles, viewed as a 
 whole, tended to make as small and as inconvenient as possible. 
 "\Ye shall notice, farther on, those which contributed to prevent 
 the reception of the council in France and elsewhere. Other 
 facts which Ave cannot leave behind now require our attention. 
 
 Immediately after the session of loth July, the legates had 
 sent to the ambassadors forty disciplinary articles, with a request 
 to have their opinion upon them before submitting them to dis- 
 cussion. These articles, although put together in such a way as 
 to do no prejudice to the pope, and even, as we shall see, to 
 favour his authority, were generally good ; had the close of the 
 council not been so near, they might have been accepted with 
 joy, as an approximation to reforms of a more important kind, 
 and really such as Europe desired them to be. But the Roman 
 party talked of bringhig matters to an end in one session, or at 
 most in two ; those articles, accordingly, risked being the last, 
 and there was but a small number that answered directly to the 
 desires of the secular princes and their subjects. 
 
 This was remarked by all the ambassadors. On the 3 1st of 
 July, those of the emperor presented a memorial, in M'hich they 
 shewed how far people still were from that reformation in the 
 head and the members, so often solicited, so often promised for 
 a century. They called attention to a dozen of points hitherto 
 
414: HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book. VI. 
 
 omitted or rejected, and without which, they held all that had 
 been done, or might yet be done, would end in nothing. They 
 placed in the first line a severe revision of the laws and customs 
 relative to cardinals and conclaves. The French ambassadors, 
 whose answer did not appear till three days after, insisted no less 
 strongly on this last article. They required, among other things, 
 that the number of cardinals should be restricted to twenty-four ; 
 that the pope should not elevate to this dignity either his own 
 brothers or nephews, or the nephews or brothers of a living car- 
 dinal ; that they should all have an equal and fixed revenue ; in 
 fine, that there should never be at one time more than eight of 
 the same nation. At all times, in fact, there have been mur- 
 murs against the exorbitant privilege accorded, on this last point, 
 to Italy. "Why should so many of the cardinals be Italians ? 
 Q,uite recently, on the death of Gregoiy XVI., there were fifty, 
 while all the rest of the Homari Catholic world reckoned only ten, 
 not one of whom took part in the election of the present pope. 
 Besides, why always have an Italian for pope ? There is little 
 consistency, surely, between the universality which the Roman 
 Church arrogates to herself and this absolute preponderance in- 
 definitely accorded to one nation. 
 
 The Spanish ambassador, who replied only on the 7tli of 
 August, began by declaring himself content wdth the forty arti- 
 cles, but afterwards insisted still more strongly than the rest on 
 the insufficiency and the nullity of a reform that should stop at 
 that point. He required, also, that among the prelates of each 
 nation a committee should be named for proposing the reforms 
 which they severally might want. He declared, in fine, as had 
 been done already by the French and German ambassadors, that 
 his present remarks were not to be considered as his last words 
 on the subject, but that before pronouncmg definitively, he waited 
 for instructions from his court. 
 
 Several things, in fact, were contemplated in which the secular 
 princes behoved to look well to their interests before committing 
 themselves. If the bishops laboured to re-conquer from the popes 
 those ancient rights out of which they had been cozened, the 
 princes, on their hand, had need to see to it that these conquests 
 did not turn to the detriment of the royal authority. Those pre- 
 tensions which they might lend their aid to destroy in the heart 
 of Italy, they could never wish to find starting up in the heart 
 of their own states. Accordingly, the ambassadors of Charles 
 IX. had added to their demands in behalf of the bishops, that 
 they should be interdicted from meddling in any way with secu- 
 lar affairs. The rest, without going openly so far, had also said 
 enough to let it be seen that neither Ferdinand nor Philip would 
 
Chap. 111. 15C3. THE POPE ANXIOUS TO CLOSE THE COUNCIL. 'iT'j 
 
 forget to take their own precautions. It does not appear that 
 there resulled Ironi this any perceptible coohiess between the 
 ambassadors and their prelates ; but one may be allowed to think 
 that lor the latter it was a new motive to be more accommodat- 
 ing to the pope, and not to protest too strongly against the ap- 
 proaching close of the council. 
 
 Pius IV. eagerly pressed towards that object. Repeatedly, 
 during these late times, when danger seemed to him to be aug- 
 menting, the suspension or dissolution of the assembly had been 
 in question between his legates and himself After the auspi- 
 cious termination of the debates upon orders, the legates had 
 almost advised this course ; seeing, thought they, people could 
 not flatter themselves with the prospect of not being driven to 
 it, they ought not to wait until a new crisis should come, when 
 they might have no resource but an ignominious retreat. The 
 pope had thought otherwise. He had ordered them not to dream 
 of any suspension, unless the necessity was present and absolute ; 
 but he had at the same time sent them word to have done with 
 the council as speedily as possible and at any cost. In conse- 
 quence of this, they first of all retrenched from their forty arti- 
 cles six of those wdiicli, after hearing the remarks of the ambas- 
 sadors, they thought might lead to long debates or contested 
 decisions. The remainder were submitted to deliberation only 
 on the 21st of August, and all that raised, or seemed likely to 
 raise difficulties, the legates hastened to retrench. Thus the 
 forty articles were reduced to twenty-one. 
 
 While these things were doing, (27th August,) the imperial 
 ambassadors received from their master a memoir on those very 
 articles. He warmly complained that they comprised nothing 
 good, nothing in accordance with the wishes of the princes that 
 was not accompanied with clauses contrary to their rights. It 
 would appear, said he, that the design has been to make this 
 reformation insupportable to them, so that they could not but 
 reject it, and that the disgrace of its failure might fall on them, 
 while the court of Rome would persevere in its disorders with- 
 out disturbance. 
 
 The French ambassadors received (11th September) letters 
 from their king. Knowing as little as the emperor, that the 
 greater part of what might displease the princes had already 
 been retrenched, he enjoined his ministers to declare that he 
 would never subscribe to it.^ But what he ordered them spc 
 
 ^ "I am very far from (obtaining) what I expected from the council, 
 if the Fathers proceed to the judging of these articles, wliich -will make 
 the claws of kings be pared, while theh own are allowed to grow, a 
 thing I sliall not endure." 
 
476 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 cially to oppose, -svas the draft always announced and always 
 kept in reserve since the time of Paul IV., of a special decree of 
 reformation applicable to the princes.^ He protested beforehand 
 against all invasion of the rights of the civil authority, enjoining 
 his ambassadors, his prelates, and, in particular, the Cardinal 
 of Lorraine, to leave Trent the very day that that decree should 
 be proposed by the legates. 
 
 The legates seemed to have no wish to do so ; but there had 
 arisen among the Italians a powerful and bold party, with which 
 all were forced to reckon. More pojoish than either the pope or 
 his ministers, this party had resolved to oppose all internal re- 
 form as long as the decree on the princes remained undrawn up 
 and unvoted. Neither the entreaties of the legates, nor those 
 of the pope, nothing, in short, could keep them quiet. They 
 would not be quiet, they said, unless they were openly com- 
 manded to be so ; and how think of putting such an affront 
 on most devoted servants? They were about a hundred in 
 number. 
 
 On this side, then, as well as others, the pope saw no way of 
 safety but through the intervention of the Cardinal of Lorraine. 
 But although this prelate had for two months gone with the 
 Roman party, he was still far from being its master. He had 
 no choice, therefore, but to burn his vessels ; at that cost he was 
 sure of being listened to. The pope invited him to come to 
 E-ome ; this was a decisive step. He first hesitated, then pro- 
 mised. The session having been notified for the 15th of ISep- 
 tember, the legates thought for a moment of holding it v^hh. the 
 articles on marriage, being the only ones ready, or in the way 
 to be ready ; but the ambassadors opposed this, dreading, not 
 without reason, that the reform decrees, if omitted once, would 
 be so a second time, and perhaps altogether. Not wishing, 
 therefore, to delay the cardinal's departure, the legates asked for 
 an adjournment until his return, or until the 11th of November. 
 To this the majority consented, and the cardinal set out on his 
 journey. 
 
 He was received at Home as few princes had ever been. 
 The pope lodged him in his own palace, and, a thing quite un- 
 exampled, paid him a public visit. Are we to believe, as it 
 was reported, that Pius IV. promised to point him out as his 
 successor, and to neglect nothing that could secure his election ? 
 
 ^ "Seeing that each falls npon iis. Ilis Holiness is of opinion that 
 for the love of God you should allow or cause the council still to con- 
 tinue liarping on the reformation of the princes. You will also act in 
 such a manner tliat we shall not seem to liave any liand in it." — Let- 
 ter from Cardinal Borromco to the Legates, June 1563. 
 
Chap. 111. 1503. DRAFT OF DECREE ON THE PRINCES. 411 
 
 Be that as it may, \vc shall sec there was reason to believe that 
 they were quite of one niiiul. 
 
 A few days after his leaving Trent, the legates had to yield 
 to the ultraniontanists, and to propose the decree on the princes. 
 In substance it was as follows : — 
 
 It began by establishing the principle that a clergyman can- 
 not be tried on any occasion or in any cause whatever, even 
 criminal, by laymen, without the previous consent of his bishop. 
 
 The incompetence of lay courts was next extended to every 
 kind of causes, not spiritual only, but touching more or less 
 closely upon spiritual things, upon clergymen, upon the Church's 
 property and privileges. 
 
 Consequently, to every layman who shall have constituted 
 himself, or allowed himself to be constituted judge of a clergy- 
 man, or in an ecclesiastical clause — excommunication. 
 
 To every clergyman who shall have accepted from the civil 
 power a commission to try a clergyman — suspension as a priest, 
 deprivation of his benefices, incapacity for possessing other ben- 
 efices. 
 
 Should a prince have made an edict or ordinance concerning 
 the clergy, the affairs, or the possessions of the Church, the 
 edict shall be null, and the prince excommunicated. 
 
 He also shall be excommunicated who shall attempt to inter- 
 pose the smallest obstacle to the publication and circulation of 
 ecclesiastical sentences, especially those that emanate from the 
 pope. 
 
 He also shall be excommunicated who shall make bold to 
 levy at his own instance, any kind of impost or subsidy on the 
 goods of ecclesiastics, even on those that belong to them not as 
 Church property, but patrimonially or by purchase. 
 
 Thus it was not only religious independence, but the right of 
 being a state within a state which was sought to be secured. 
 Was there any hope of success ? Should a vote have come to 
 be taken could there be any hope entertained that it would be 
 accepted by the princes ? In order to this one must have be- 
 lieved himself to be in the twelfth century, for such pretensions 
 were hardly more admissible in the sixteenth century than they 
 would appear to be in our own days. This very principle, that 
 a clergyman can be tried only by clergymen, has been made a 
 sort of axiom by the Church ; and it was, in fact, as an axiom 
 that it had been a long time admitted without a proof being 
 asked or sought for. But when people began to take it into 
 their heads, in this as in other matters, to desire to have reasons, 
 what was there found that could serve as a basis to this doc- 
 trine ? First of all, under the Old Testament, wc find nothing 
 
478 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 of the sort. The Hebrew priests were amenable to the tribu- 
 nals of the country. Beyond their rehgious functions they fully 
 owned the authority of the kings, and we do not find that the 
 prophets, those inflexible guardians of the rights of religion, ever 
 made any reclamations on this head. After the prophets came 
 the apostles. They, lilve their master, preached submission to 
 the civil authorities. St. Paul submitted, without a murmur, 
 to being tried by a Nero. He could do no otherwise, it has been 
 said. What could Nero have understood about a reclamation 
 based on ecclesiastical law ? Nothing, in fact ; but St. Paul 
 wrote about the same time to people capable of understanding 
 it, and prepared, moreover, to receive as emanating from God 
 whatever he might have said to them on the subject. Does he 
 make any reservation ? Does he not, at least, lay in some few 
 words the foundations of what was afterwards to be the law? 
 Not at all. After him, under the pagan emperors, whole cen- 
 turies elapse without the clergy having the idea of withdrawing 
 themselves, in temporal matters, from under the jurisdiction of 
 the civil judges. That that independence which was afterwards 
 acquired in the course of the decomposition of the empire had 
 some good results is incontestable, but, as we have already said 
 in speaking of another question, human possession cannot estab- 
 lish a divine right. 
 
 The protest by the French was not long of appearing. Du 
 Ferrier was entrusted with it. It is a piece of cutting sarcasm, 
 which we would willingly produce from beginning to end, not 
 that we approve of it without reserve, for it is here and there 
 very unbecoming and very unjust, but as a specimen of what a 
 man of talent, an ambassador of the king of France, might still 
 think and say of the council, in full council, and in the face of 
 the pope and of Europe. " The Jews," said he, " were very 
 well ofi^ indeed in having had only twenty-seven years to weep 
 while waiting for their dehverance I As for us, we have been 
 waiting a hundred and forty years for ours, and now, instead of 
 getting it, people talk of tightening the yoke. Where do we 
 see, in the earlier times of the Church, this independence of the 
 clergy ? Did Constantine, Thcodosius, Justinian, and so many 
 other princes, never make laws then for any but laymen ? Have 
 Ave not, on the contrary, a host of decrees past by them of the 
 same sort as those that people noAV pretend to anathematize ? 
 Have you done so much, then, for the reformation of the Church, 
 that you are authorized, and have time, to set about reforming 
 the civil powers ? Let us see ; what progress have you made ?" 
 And forthwith this bold ambassador began to run over all the 
 decrees already made, shewing, as it was not difficult to do, that 
 
CiiAi'. 111. ljr.3. I'HOTESTS OF THE AMBASisADORS. 419 
 
 not Oil a siiif^lc question had they jrone to the roots ol' the evil. 
 Then passin<2^ nncler review the last decrees that had been pro- 
 posed, " Is this, " said he, " is this the healing balm of which 
 Isaiah speaks, and which is to close the wounds of Christendom ? 
 Is it not rather the dressing of Ezckiel w^hich makes the Mound 
 to be seen and opens it when closed?" Thus spoke Du Ferrier, 
 and his animated diction, set oiY with quotations, was at once 
 biting and violent.^ 
 
 The form spoilt the substance. The French prelates were 
 obliged to disavow a discourse which w^as nothing but a long 
 sarcasm. The Cardinal of Lorraine, then at Rome, apologized 
 for it to the pope. 
 
 Nevertheless, sarcasm apart, there always remained a fact — 
 the king's protest. To it, although wdth more reservations, the 
 emperor added his. The Spanish ambassador, in presenting that 
 from his master, had seized the opportunity of asking once more 
 that the clause 2^ro])07ie?iiibtis, with which he said the decrees 
 would never have the consideration due to those ol" a council 
 assembled freely and in accordance with the ancient canons, 
 should be expunged or explained. Other states, and Venice in 
 particular, also solicited, some of them by simple prayers, others 
 by protests, according as they ventured to express their thoughts 
 more or less openly, the softening down or the omission of the 
 decree on the princes. As for the Church's enemies, they might 
 well desire that the decree should pass ; nothing could be better 
 fitted to snap asunder the last ties that bound together the sov- 
 ereigns of Christendom and Rome. 
 
 The ultra-Romanists persisted. The discussion W'as about to 
 open. It then came to be known that the ambassadors were 
 concerting a common protest, and the prelates felt that they 
 were not in a condition to face such a manifestation. The coun- 
 cil consented, therefore, to confine itself, for the next session, to 
 the decrees on marriage, together with such of the disciplinar}' 
 decrees as the members were almost quite agreed upon. Mean- 
 while there would be prepared the materials for purgatory, in- 
 dulgences, the worship of saints and of images, in a word, all 
 that remained for examination before the circle of doctrinal in- 
 struction could be complete. 
 
 Commissions were actually named for elaborating these vari- 
 ous subjects ; but the assembly had ver}' little time to devote to 
 them. The month of October and the early days of November 
 were spent in discussions, either on the points already ripe lor 
 voting, although not yet voted, or upon the propoiientiliis . 
 The pope was daily called to intervene, either openly, when ob- 
 
 ' Pallavicini, Book xxiii. ch. i. 
 
480 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 stacles occurred wliich he only could remove, or secretly, when 
 the legates asked from him counsels or orders. Of these they 
 had more need than ever. One cannot imagine the state of 
 confusion, of chaos, the assembly then presented. As the mem- 
 bers had become a little drilled into parliamentary usages the 
 sittings were less tumultuous than formerly ; but this calm and 
 this order served only to facilitate the bringing out of all the 
 diversities of opinion that prevailed. The legates seldom suc- 
 ceeded in concentrating the discussion on one point. Discipline, 
 dogma, clandestine marriages, the lyroiJonentihiis, disputes about 
 precedence, bishops' grievances, princes' grievances, each and 
 all were perpetually returning, on all occasions, in everything, 
 everywhere. With the discussions which we have related, or 
 to which we have alluded, there were mingled many more of 
 which we have said nothing.^ One's head becomes dizzy, says 
 Pallavicini, in perusing the inextricable history of those last 
 times of the council. Nowhere can you perceive a guiding 
 thread, or fixed marks, or probable end ; it would be impossible 
 for you to say if the council is to extricate itself in a year or in 
 a month, within a few days or never. 
 
 Unlikel^" as it was that the council would close soon, judging 
 only by the state of the debates and the multiplicity of business 
 before it, that event was, in reality, highly probable, if we look 
 to the resolution that had been taken, as we have seen, to aban- 
 don whatever should be too long, or, still more, if we look to the 
 extreme lassitude of parties in general and of all the prelates in 
 particular. The way was further prepared for it by consenting, 
 by the advice of the pope, to an explanation of the -proponentihus 
 in a liberal sense. Of what now was there any risk ? Every- 
 body was so eager to come to ajp. end and to go away that there 
 was little fear of any party making serious use of that right of 
 proposing which had been hitherto confiscated to the advantage 
 of the pope's representatives. There was added, therefore, to 
 the decrees, a declaration, bearing that there had been no inten- 
 tion of making any change, by this word, in the ordinary prac- 
 tice of councils-general ; but as several doctors had rigidly main- 
 tained that in these councils the right of proposing did not belong 
 to the legates, that declaration was too vague for the Spaniards 
 to be satisfied with it. They accordingly rejected it, but with- 
 out being able to obtain any clearer expression of opinion on 
 the subject ; and, in fine, on the solicitations of the Cardinal of 
 Lorraine, who arrived from Rome, they decided on accepting it. 
 
 ^ Contention between the emperoi* and the pope about the election 
 of his son as king of the Romans: affair of the patriarch of A^enice, 
 Erimani, who was accused of heresy, etc. 
 
Ohvp. III. J563. SUCCESS, ALWAYS SUCCESS. 481 
 
 Nothinp: farther being opposed to the holding of the session 
 fixed for tJie lltli of November, a general congregation met on 
 the 10th for tlie definitive settlement of the decrees. That last 
 sitting threatened the loss of all. Those members Avho were 
 most disposed to yield seemed to hold themselves bound once 
 more to express their whole opinion. All seemed ready to begin 
 anew ; and if the legates had not been aware how eager they all 
 were to agree and to have done with it, never would they have 
 hazarded holding the session on the following day. 
 
 That session (the twenty-fourth, November 11, 1563), for tlie 
 rest, was about to present almost the same spectacle. " "VYliilc 
 in the others," says Pallavicini, " one was astonished if, by 
 chance, some prelates, very few in number, did not give their 
 pure and simple adhesion to all the propositions agreed on in 
 congregation-general ; in this, on the contrary, there were very 
 few ivlio had not something to reinchend'' " The most nota- 
 ble acquiesced," adds the historian, even although he reports 
 long observations made by the Cardinal of Lorraine and Cardi- 
 nal Madrucci. In short, the decrees could not be fixed in the 
 course of the sitting. The president stated that modifications 
 would be made as much in conformity as possible with the wish 
 of the greater number ; these changes were to be equally valid 
 as if they had been voted in public session. The hour was far 
 advanced ; they had been sitting ever since morning ; the close 
 was voted unanimously. Upon this a new burst of triumph 
 from Pallavicini. " On seeing this success the council thought 
 it could perceive the port towards which it felt itself borne on- 
 wards by a propitious gale, but not without the dread of some 
 furious hurricane yet coming on and driving it again to a dis- 
 tance." As for the pope, " One cannot express the delight with 
 .which he was transported on hearing this happy news. He 
 sent to say that it had overwhelmed both him and his court 
 with infinite joy, and remarked that he viewed tJds success as 
 the earnest of an approaching conclusion." Success, always 
 success, as if four months of convulsions and of chaos Avcre not, 
 on the contrary, the very rudest defeat to which the makers of 
 infallible laws could be subjected. 
 
 Let us now cast a glance over the general mass of those that 
 had been promulgated. 
 
 The doctrinal decree which we have examined elsewhere, is 
 accompanied with twelve canons, with anathema to whosoever 
 shall teach — 
 
 That marriage is not one of the seven sacraments instituted by 
 Jesus Christ ; that no divine law forbids polygamy ; that the 
 
 X 
 
482 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 Church has not the right to diminish or to extend the number 
 of matrimonial impediments estabhshed by the law of Moses ; 
 that the Church has erred in those she has established ; that 
 marriage may be dissolved on account of heresy, the defects or 
 the voluntary absence of one of the spouses ; that marriage cele- 
 brated, but not consummated, is not dissolved by one of the 
 spouses entering a religions order ; that the Church has erred in 
 teaching that the tie is not dissolved by adultei-y ; that she has 
 erred in authorizing, in certam cases, the separation of the 
 spouses without dissolving the marriage ; that clergymen and 
 the religious (monks and nuns) may marry if they do not find 
 themselves capable of persevering with honour in celibacy ; that 
 the state of marriage is preferable to virginity, and that celibacy, 
 on the contrary, is not superior to marriage ; that the prohibi- 
 tion of weddings at certain seasons is a tyrannical superstition ; 
 that matrimonial causes are no concern of the ecclesiastical 
 judges. 
 
 All these points might furnish matter for many observations. 
 Several have been made already. Let us add a few more with- 
 out dwelling long on the subject. 
 
 St. Paul, who has said so much about marriage and so much 
 })ressed its holiness, nowhere says that it was instituted by Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 Nothing better than to forbid polygamy as contrary to the 
 spirit of Christianity. To affirm that it has been forbidden by 
 a divine law, is to go beyond the truth. 
 
 A law proceeding from God, the law of Moses, has laid down 
 certain impediments. Jesus Christ, in introducing modifications 
 on other points relative to marriage, has said nothing of that, 
 neither have his Apostles done so. The Church cannot therefore 
 impose, as articles of faith, the modifications she has made in it. 
 
 The divine law speaks of marriage, but does not speak of 
 monastic vows. On what shall we rest the recognition of such 
 a superiority m the latter of these engagements that the other 
 may be broken by it ? 
 
 What foundation is there, in fine, for teaching as an article of 
 faith, and sanctioning with an anathema, the prohibition of wed- 
 dino;s at certain times ? After such a canon, there is no reason 
 for all the Church's laws not being also points of faith. To 
 place the latter among the canons, and to relegate that on clan- 
 destine marriages among the disciplinary articles, mtimately as- 
 sociated though it be with doctrine, is a subversion of order, such 
 as we shall find rarely exemplified even in the most ill-assorted 
 civil laws. 
 
 Without recurring to the grand question of the indissolubility 
 
 ■N 
 
Chap. III. 1JC3 DISCIPLINARY REGULATIONS. 183 
 
 of marriage, still let ii.s notice in what manner tliia dof^mia is 
 taught here, " Anathema," it is said in the seventh canon, " to 
 whosoever shall maintain that the Church errs in teaching that 
 marriage cannot be dissolved on account of the adultery of one 
 of the spouses." Why this roundabout statement ? If the 
 Church has not erred in teaching that adultery does not autho- 
 rize divorce, wdiy not have simply announced the thing, with 
 anathema to whosoever shall deny it ? This is what was done 
 at hrst ; but the Venetian ambassador having remonstrated that 
 his republic had subjects belonging to the Greek Church, where 
 this opinion is not held, the statement was purposely softened 
 down. Hence this simple declaration that the Latin Church has 
 not erred in teaching it. This was more prudent ; but then 
 what signifies the anathema ? How anathematize an opinion, 
 Avhile you at the same time avoid declaring it to be false ? A 
 principle in discipline may be bad in the West and good in the 
 East ; but a matter of faith is necessarily everywhere true or 
 everywhere false. Ever the same confusion between discipline 
 and dogma, between the fallible and the infallible ; ever the 
 same influence of the things of the earth on that which is to be 
 taught in the name of heaven. If the council abstained from 
 declaring absolutely the indissolubility of marriage, it was not 
 because Jesus Christ had taught the contrary, it was because 
 the Venetians possessed the islands of Cyprus and Candia, and 
 it did not suit them, for the moment, to disquiet the Greek mer- 
 chants that resided there. 
 
 Let us pass on to the disciplinary articles. 
 
 We have spoken of the first — that of clandestine marriages and 
 public formalities. 
 
 The three next bore upon the impediments to marriage. 
 Some useful alleviations were applied to the boundless despotism 
 that the Church had arrogated to herself in those matters. 
 
 The fifth ordained that matrimonial dispensations should be 
 granted rarely and gratuitously. — We need not say how this last 
 clause is observed. 
 
 The sixth, and the two following, treat of rape and concu- 
 binage. — The substance was good, but the civil authority very 
 ill treated. The magistrates were reduced to the humble office 
 of mere police agents, under the supreme direction of the 
 bishops. 
 
 The ninth excommunicated eveiy prince or lord who should 
 have constrained one of his subjects to marry against his will. 
 
 The tenth, in fine, limited to Advent and to Lent the seasons 
 during which no marriage could be celebrated. 
 
 The first of the articles, said to be of reformation, contains 
 
484 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 excellent counsels on the choosing of the bishops, parish priests, 
 and all the other functionaries of the Church. The minority 
 had succeeded, not without difficulty, in having these rules de- 
 clared applicable to the election of the cardinals ; it had even 
 been added that the pope should choose them as much as possi- 
 ble from among all Roman Catholic nations. "VYe have seen 
 what has been the result. 
 
 II. The provincial councils shall meet every three years. — 
 This has never been observed. The popes have never seen to 
 its being observed. The isolation of the bishops was more fa- 
 vourable to the See of Rome than that union of which those 
 colloquies might be the source. The diocesan councils, accord- 
 ing to the same article, ought to meet every year ; a rule which 
 has been no better observed, the bishops having the same reason 
 as the popes for not liking to have deliberative assemblies under 
 them. 
 
 III. Every year, or at least every two years, the bishop shall 
 make a general visitation of his diocese. The rules to be ob- 
 served in these visitations. 
 
 IV. Additions to the decree of 1546 on preaching. — The coun- 
 cil repeats that preaching is the ininci'pal duty of the bishops. ^ 
 
 V. A bishop accused of a serious crime shall be judged by 
 the pope. — This has not been admitted in France. The Galil- 
 ean practice, founded on the ancient general practice, attributes 
 to provincial councils the trial of bishops. 
 
 YL The bishops shall have power to absolve in secret from 
 all censure incurred for secret crimes, excepting homicide, 
 
 VII. The bishop shall see to it, that previous to the admin- 
 istration of the sacraments, their meaning and virtue shall be 
 explained to the people. The explanation shall be in co^nform- 
 ity with a catechism drawn up by the council, and translated into 
 all languages. — That catechism was not made at Trent, and, as 
 matters stood, it was well known that it would not be made 
 there. It is the Koinan Catechism, or the Catcchiwi of Trent, 
 that which we have repeatedly quoted. We have seen that the 
 council is made to say there a great deal that it had not said, 
 and sometimes the contrary of what it had said, 
 
 VIII. Public sinners shall be subjected to public penances, 
 always susceptible of being converted by the bishops into secret 
 penances. — The exception has continued to be made the rule. 
 There are no obligatory public penances. 
 
 IX. The bishop, as delegate of the pope, shall inspect the 
 churches in his neighbourhood which shall not be found to be 
 of any diocese. 
 
 ' See Book 11. 
 
Chap. III. 15G3. DISCIPLINARY RECrLATIONS. 485 
 
 X. Ill aflhiis connected -with morals, the bishop's sentence 
 shall take oilcct immediately, even in the case of an appeal to 
 the pope. 
 
 XI. New applications of the right of inspection in bishops, 
 always in their quality of delegates of the Holy See. 
 
 XII. That none shall be raised to any dignity to which the 
 charge of souls is attached, bell^re the age of five-and-twenty. 
 That archdeacons, canons, as well as the priests of important'? 
 parishes, shall, as far as possible, be doctors or licentiates in 
 theology. 
 
 XIII. Divers measures to be taken for providing that parish 
 priests shall everywhere have a fitting salar}\ — 111 observed. "VYe 
 have seen that the inferior clergy continued to have no share in 
 the wealth of the Church. 
 
 XIV. The council reproves and interdicts the custom of pay- 
 ing any simi whatever for the acquisitions of titles and taking 
 of possession. — Although this article struck at the payment of 
 annats,^ the popes have never liked it to be understood in this 
 sense. 
 
 XY. Divers measures concerning canons and their revenues. 
 
 XVI. Duties of chapters during vacancies in the episcopal see. 
 
 XVII. That no one possess more than one benefice requiring 
 residence. — Often violated or eluded, as we have seen, until pub- 
 lic opinion, more powerful than the decree, made things better. 
 
 XVIII. Parish livings to be bestowed according to compara- 
 tive merit. A jury, named by the bishop, shall subject the can- 
 didates to a public examination. — Well meant, but attended with 
 great practical inconveniences. The most capable of shining at 
 an examination will often prove the least capable of behig a good 
 parish priest. The rule has remained on the paper. 
 
 XIX. Against divers abuses in the collation of benefices. 
 
 XX. Ecclesiastical procedure. Forms, guarantees, appeals, 
 &c. The pope shall not have it in his power to evoke a cause 
 to himself, unless for very serious reasons, and by a rescript 
 signed by his own hand. 
 
 XXI. '\Ye have said enough of this. It is the tardy explana- 
 tion of the 2Jropo?ieniibus. It would have been more natural to 
 have made a separate decree of it, or at least to have placed it 
 at the head, than to have made it the twenty-first article of a 
 decree that treats of something quite different. 
 
 On the whole, however, we cannot but think that people were 
 wrong in continuing to accuse the council of having made insig- 
 nificant regulations only. But one thing Avas wanting ; a sanc- 
 
 ^ Sum that has to be paid to tlie pope upon entering on a benefice. 
 It was ordinarilv a year's revenue. 
 
486 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 tion that could be reckoned on ; and this is probably what was 
 especially meant when they were said to be feeble and null. 
 Moreover, as there was nothing in these reforms that might not 
 have been equally well decreed by the pope, they were thought 
 to be beneath the dignity of a council : what was wanted from 
 it was principles, not details ; a constitution, in fine, not simple 
 laws. We have seen the efforts made by the Court of Rome 
 constantly tending, on the contrary, to confine it to the condition 
 of a legislative assembly, deliberating by favour of the prince. 
 But if we willingly acknowledge all that was good and import- 
 ant in the decisions that Rome allowed it to take — the number 
 and the gravity of the points which it regulated sufficiently shew, 
 on the other side, whether or not the Church of Rome had been 
 wronged in being represented as inundated with abuses, and de- 
 livered over to the most complete arbitrary power. ^ 
 
 And so the twenty-fourth and next to the last session was 
 celebrated. 
 
 ^ After the admissions of Roman Catliolic historians this remark seems 
 superfluous ; but we must not be in too much haste in supposing a fact 
 acquired in history. In the present struggle between Roman Catholi- 
 cism and the Reformation, have we not witnessed the reappearance of 
 ideas and assertions which one might have believed to be buried three 
 centuries ago? That frightful corruption, against which there had for 
 so long a time been nothing but one universal cry, has been denied. 
 Those immense disorders, so energetically denounced, at Trent, by all 
 the independent and pious bishops to be found there, have been made 
 out to be slight abuses in detail, wickedly exaggerated by the Protest- 
 ants. In presence of such tactics no argument is superfluous. With 
 people who would deny the existence of the sun, were it to suit their 
 object in the smallest degree to do so, we must put ourselves in a con- 
 dition to prove that the sun exists. 
 
CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 PAPAL ARROGANCE. PURGATORY AND VIRGIN-WORSHIP. 
 
 The Queen of Navarre is summoned to Rome — Protest of tlio Queen of 
 France — The pope seconds the views of PliiHp II. on that kini^dom 
 — It is decided that the close of the council shall take place before 
 the close of the year — The discussions hastened by the bad state of 
 the pope's health — Question of purgatory — Scriptui-al discussion — 
 Involuntary admission in the Protestant sense — Could purgatory fj^il 
 to be expressly mentioned iu Scripture? — The worship of the Virgin 
 — Mar}- in the Gospels — In the Acts — In the Epistles — In the Apoca- 
 lypse — Historical review — ^The A^irgin in the writings of the Fathers 
 — Great eulogies but no trace of worship — Epiphunius, Cyi'il, Proclus. 
 
 The next to the last, we say ; but those who felt most eager 
 to come to an end durst not hope that that end was so near. 
 Besides the abundance of matters that had still to be treated, a 
 thousand difficulties might emerge ; and there was enough of 
 these already. 
 
 Immediately after their protest against the decree on the 
 princes, the ambassadors of Charles IX. had retired to Venice. 
 They had been accused of having exceeded their commission ; 
 but they could soon shew a new letter in which the king gave 
 them his full and entire approval, enjoining them not to return 
 to Trent until they had received a promise that the obnoxious 
 decree should be abandoned. 
 
 Although the pope had not approved of its being presented, 
 he believed liimself possessed of a still wider extent of rights 
 than had been mentioned in that famous piece. On the 22d of 
 October, by a proclamation solemnly posted at the gates of St. 
 Peter's, he summoned the Q.ueen of Navarre to appear before 
 him as a heretic and supporter of heretics, under penalty of be- 
 ing declared to have escheated her dignities, estates, domains ; 
 having her marriage declared null, her children bastards, kc. 
 The Cardinal of Lorraine had vainly tried to make the pope 
 comprehend that this summons, particularly in the terms cm- 
 ployed, was only a dangerous anachronism. He detested the 
 queen ; but felt also that the pope was about to compel Charles 
 IX. to undertake her defense, and that this was not quite the 
 way to put licr down. Under this f )rm, in fact, her cause M'as 
 
488 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 that of all crowned heads ; heretic or not, the question was 
 whether E-ome meant to return to her ancient omnipotence over 
 states and sovereigns. 
 
 This question was stated to the pope with a vigour which he 
 nowise expected. The French ambassador at Home, D'Oisel, 
 had orders to say to him, " that at the first rumour of this 
 strange news the king could not believe it ; that after the read- 
 ing of the proclamation, he still hesitated before he could figure 
 to himself such a forgetfulness of the royal majesty, of the liber- 
 ties of the kingdom, of the universal reprobation now bestowed 
 on this kind of procedure. And although the right of the pope 
 had been as much acknowledged as it was little, why put it 
 forth against the Queen of Navarre rather than against so many 
 other princes in the same case ? Could it be because she had 
 no means of defence, and that hopes were entertained of tempt- 
 ing the king by offering him an opportunity of usurping the 
 estates of his kinswoman ? The king would take care not to 
 sanction, by accepting the proffered advantage, a right which 
 next day might be turned against himself "When, then, would 
 the popes come at last to see that if Jesus Christ said, My king- 
 dom is not of this tvorld, it cannot pertain to his vicar either to 
 take away or to bestow states ?" 
 
 Pius IV. was in no condition to resist ; he promised that the 
 matter should go no farther. It had generally been thought 
 monstrous, even in Italy, that he should have ventured to speak 
 of decla,ring the illegitimacy of the children of a prince who had 
 died in fishing for the Church. Notwithstanding this, as the 
 summons had never been officially withdrawn, the enemies oi 
 Henry IV. did not fail to make use of it as an arm against him. 
 It was said, that " as his mother had not obeyed, the threat was 
 accomplished. He had ceased to be the son of Anthony of Bour- 
 bon ; the throne of France did not belong to him." Thus were 
 there prepared long before, and always at Rome, the storms that 
 were to convulse the kingdom. 
 
 The future agent of those convulsions, Philip II., although the 
 council often gave occasion to his having contentions with the 
 pope, was, in reality, daily becoming more and more united with 
 him. This was because the council, between them, was no more 
 their greatest affair. In sending directions to his legates to have 
 it closed as soon as possible, Pius IV. had added confidentially, 
 that they need not pay too much attention to the reclamations 
 of the Spaniards, as he was sure of their king. Here we see 
 the court of Rome already offering to the bigoted ambition of 
 Spain the bribe of having France to control, and perhaps to 
 conquer. 
 
Chap. IV. 15G3. ALL PARTIES EAGER FOR RAl'ID DESPATCH. 489 
 
 It formed part of the kiiifr's policy, accordingly, that his union 
 with the pope should remain concealed under the noisy reclama- 
 tions of his ambassadors and his bishops. The latter having 
 asked for his orders with respect to the closing of the council, he 
 had given them only vague directions, and their opposition had 
 already somewhat slackened. It revived when the Cardinal of 
 Lorraine, taking the lead in stating what was the wish of the 
 majority, proposed to finish before Christmas, that is to say, 
 in less than six weeks. " He and his French colleagues," he 
 said, " ought to be on their way hack to France before the 
 end of December. It would be painful for him to leave the 
 council while still sitting ; it would be amioying to the council 
 to close without any French bishops being present at the signing 
 of the decrees." The emperor's ambassadors also began to say 
 that the sooner they came to a close the better. Those of France 
 were still at Venice, and although their personal feelings went 
 quite the other way, they left the cardinal to act as he pleased. 
 Finally, the Spaniards gave way. It was decided that the next 
 session should be the last ; some of them even proposed, in order 
 to make more sure of this, that purgatory, indulgences, and the 
 worship of saints should be omitted. The majority felt that 
 such an omission would be very strange. They refused, but as 
 we have seen them do before, they promised to abandon all the 
 points on which the members should not be immediately agreed, 
 or on which disagreement might be apprehended. Yet the man 
 who should have ventured to say that the close would take place, 
 not at Christmas, but at three weelts before Christmas, would 
 have been treated as a dotard. 
 
 The pope's ill health admirably served the purposes of his 
 ministers. In his private letters he often spoke ol" it ; urging 
 them to spare him the affliction of dying before the close of the 
 council, with the prospect of the election of his successor by the 
 assembly, or preceded at least by the most perilous contentions 
 between it and the cardinals. The Roman party did not need his 
 entreaties in order to make them enter fully into his fears, and 
 prevent at any cost their being realized. The French and the 
 Spaniards wanted nothing better, for the moment, than to escape 
 the agitation of so serious a question. The emperor and his 
 prelates, though quite enough disposed to regard the council, in 
 point of theory, as charged with the election of the head of the 
 Church, preferred also, for the moment, not having to explain 
 their views upon it. All were agreed, in short, that it should 
 be left, in the event contemplated, to the college of cardinals ; 
 but as no party felt sufficiently sure of the others, there was 
 hardly a bishop to whom the death of the pope would not have 
 
490 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 now appeared either a calamity, or a subject of serious perplexity, 
 and who would not have been readv to sanction all that could 
 be done to prevent their being overtaken by it. 
 
 Nine prelates, to whom care was taken not to add any divine 
 by profession, were charged with the dogmatical questions. The 
 only condition imposed on them was, that they should proceed 
 with despatch. In a few days the decree was ready for being 
 voted. 
 
 Although we, too, are anxious to conclude our labours, we 
 cannot dispense with pointing out the course to be pursued in 
 the discussion of the subjects that were now to be treated. 
 
 First of all, let us be careful to distinguish between theory and 
 practice. Not that the Church of Rome does not here appear 
 to us quite as responsible for abuses in practice, as for errors in 
 theory ; but it is prudent that, before proceeding farther, we 
 should shut the outlet which we see daily taken advantage of in 
 questions of this nature. The grossest superstitions are tolerated, 
 encouraged, provoked ; and when we have the misfortune to 
 press these excesses, we are denounced as wanting in good faith. 
 " The Council of Trent," is the instant reply, " has taught 
 nothing of the kind. You maintain that the people adore the 
 saints, and give all the attributes of the Deity to the Virgin 
 Mary. Shew us a single article in which this adoration is or- 
 dained ? You say that the worship of images and of relics is m 
 many places a veritable idolatry. But the council teaches ex- 
 pressly that they are to be honoured only with a reference to 
 those whose lives and persons they recall." This is Bossuet's 
 favourite argumentation in all his pleadings in these matters. 
 
 Let us, for the nonce, accept this distinction. Should we be 
 rigorously bound to it ? No. In judging of a m^an who would 
 maintain that we must keep to his writings and his theories ? 
 "Writings and theories, in this respect, are to be adduced only if 
 the man's conduct be conformed to them. From the moment 
 they are found opposed, we are allowed to keep to facts. On 
 these the final judgment must rest; in these the true spirit is to 
 be found. 
 
 Be that as it may, let us confine ourselves, in the first place, 
 to the council's declarations. Let us see what it teaches, and 
 how much of that Scripture, history, and reason permit us to 
 accept. 
 
 Purgatory, in itself, at a first glance, has nothing that shocks 
 us. " Nothing that is unclean shall enter heaven," says an Apos- 
 tle. For souls therefore that are unclean, the Roman Church 
 concludes, there is a place of purification and expiation. 
 
liiAP. IV. lj(;;t. NO MENTION or I'l'RGATORY IN SCRII'TURL*. 491 
 
 Take care. For one passage from which you may try to iiilcr 
 that such a place exists, you will lind twenty where the purillca- 
 tion of the soul is represented to us as the immediate and direct 
 result of grace manifested in Jesus Christ and accepted hy laith. 
 
 For one passage from which you might helieve you were 
 authorized to intercalate the idea of purgator}^ you will find 
 twenty in which the passage from this life to another, from earth 
 to heaven or to hell, is so close, so straight and direct, that iievei- 
 fw^ill you, with any shew of reason, succeed in interposing any- 
 thing between them. 
 
 For the proof, were anything necessary, we should go to 
 Roman Catholic preachers themselves. Is it not a very curious 
 and withal a very significant lact, that when they follow the 
 Scripture, in order to speak of the last judgment, they are led 
 involuntarily to say nothing about purgatory? What, ibr ex- 
 ample, says Massillon about it, in his sermon on the i'ew^ness of 
 the elect? What say Bossuet, Flechier, Bordaloue, about if. 
 when the)'^ take up the subject in that sense, and keep to the 
 promises, threatenings, and figures of the holy books ? Is it not 
 always, just as in Protestant sermons, the good on the right 
 hand, and the wicked on the left, the good seed and the tares, 
 the wheat and the chaff', the sheep and the goats, the elect and 
 the reprobate, to the one happiness, to the other misery ? But 
 mark what is still more significant. The Homan Catechism, in 
 its chapter on the last judgment, one of the most complete and 
 biblical in the wdiole book, says nothing about purgatory, does 
 not even mention it. Elsewhere, no doubt, it speaks of it, and 
 at great length too ; but is not this careful development of the 
 chief texts in the Bible in wdiich the last judgment is spoken of, 
 without a single word that leads to the mention of purgatory, 
 tantamount to an admission beforehand of the little foundation 
 that there exists for what is said about it afterwards ? 
 
 In fine, for one passage where it might be maintained that, 
 strictly speaking, the writer was not logically bound to mention 
 purgatoiy, you will find a host where it cannot be admitted that 
 he would have said nothing had he believed in it, or had any 
 idea of it. 
 
 And this is no longer a question in theology or history; it is 
 a matter of common sense and common honesty. Here is a doc- 
 trine of fact, purely of fact ; a question, if ever there was such, 
 to be decided by an ay or a no. If there be a purgatory the 
 sacred writers must have spoken of it, less often, if you will, but 
 quite as plainly as of a heaven for the good, and a hell for the 
 bad. But mark, not a word have they said about it, not a word 
 ' at least that does not primarily mean something else, and which 
 
492 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 must not be strained hard in order to bring that meaning out of 
 it. Could this be because it was a subject in which few were 
 interested ? Purgatory, on the contrary, must be a serious affair 
 for all ; if there be such a place, where is the man who can flat- 
 ter himself that he will not go there ? Yet this point, so inter- 
 esting, so positive, so indispensable to be known, Jesus Christ 
 and the sacred penmen must have passed hundreds of times on 
 the right, on the left, above, below, without touching it, without 
 allowing to drop from their mouths or pens that ay, or that no, 
 which would have shed light on one whole portion of eternity I 
 Ah I doubtless, there is many another ay and many another no, 
 about which we fain would know somewhat, but which God has 
 kept to himself, but then what right have men to impose theirs 
 on us ? The Church of Rome herself has never held herself 
 authorized to teach new doctrines. Her infallibility, according 
 to her own admission, is confined to the infallible determination 
 of what has been taught. What value then can be attached to 
 her testimony in favour of a doctrine of fact, when once we dis- 
 cover that that fact is nowhere to be found in the Scriptures, 
 and when common sense proclaims that if it exist at all, it must 
 have appeared there at almost every page ? 
 
 The same principles apply to the worship of the Virgin. Here 
 again we have a positive question, a fact which, if it ever entered 
 into the designs of God at all, must have manifested itself more 
 or less distinctly from the earliest days of Christianity. The 
 greater the importance attached to it by the Roman Church, the 
 more cogent will the argument be. The larger the space that 
 the Virgin shall occupy in her faith, in her worship, the greater 
 right shall we have to ask why she occupies no place in Scrip- 
 ture, none in the history of the first ages of the Church. 
 
 None in Scripture, we say. In the four Gospels, first of all, 
 there is not a word to indicate that Jesus Christ accorded to his 
 mother any share whatever in his work, neither during nor after 
 his ministry on earth, neither in this world nor in the other, 
 neither as acting of herself, nor as an intercessor with her son or 
 with God. 
 
 " Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee : 
 blessed art thou among women." " Behold the handmaid of 
 the Lord ; be it unto me according to thy word I" And some 
 days after, when she began to comprehend the future grandeur 
 of her son, " All generations," she said, " shall call me blessed." 
 
 Yea, blessed indeed was she whom God had chosen to be the 
 mother of the Saviour I Protestants have never said otherwise. 
 But, from that to a worship, to any invocation whatever, the 
 
Chap. IV. 15r.3. WOUSIIIl' Ol" Till: VIRGIN NOT IN SCRIPTIRE. 493 
 
 distance is great, it is infinite. This very word blessed, so evi- 
 dently applicable to any one who has been the object of a great 
 favour, linds its commentary elsewhere, and from the mouth too 
 of the Saviour himself "Blessed," exclaimed a woman, "is 
 the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked." 
 What was his reply ? " Yea, rather blessed arc they that hear 
 the word of God and keep it." Here we see at once that the 
 simple grace of being a believer is put above that of having 
 given birth to the Messiah. 
 
 Is this unique privilege represented to us at least in sucn a 
 manner as to lead to the belief, that she could avail herself of 
 it as an intercessor in behalf of men ? Why, on one occasion, 
 she makes a request to her son. A request, this is saying too 
 much ; she does not even go so far as that. Jesus had so com- 
 pletely separated himself from her in all that bore " on his 
 Father's business,"^ that she has no wish to seem to intermeddle 
 with it. " They have no wine," she said. " Woman," replied 
 Jesus, " what have I to do wdth thee ?" He then performs the 
 miracle ; but he had made it a point to shew that it was not 
 because she had asked him. On another occasion, when told 
 that his mother and his brethren wanted to speak with him — 
 "Who is my mother?" said he, "who are my brethren?" 
 Then, stretching forth his hand towards his disciples, he added, 
 " Behold my mother and my brethren ! For whosoever shall 
 do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my 
 brother, and sister, and mother." One does not see how he 
 could better have expressed the idea, that in so far as he was 
 the sent of God, to him the ties of blood were nothing. Had 
 these words never been recorded, and were we permitted to put 
 them into his mouth, we could not in truth have found any 
 more clearly, more positively, expressive of our view of the 
 subject. 
 
 So much for the four Gospels, In the book of Acts there is 
 nothing, absolutely nothing, that allows us to suppose that any 
 power was owned in Mary, or any homage rendered to her. 
 No mention is made even of the respect which the disciples 
 could not have failed to entertain for the mother of their mas- 
 ter. " All continued with one accord in prayer and supplication 
 with the women, and Mary the motlicr of Jesus, and wdtli his 
 brethren." Such is all that appears. After that, and it occurs 
 in the first chapter, her name is no more introduced. 
 
 In the Epistles, finally, even in those which must have been 
 written a longer or shorter time after her death, mark this, in 
 
 ^ " How is it that ye sought me ? wist ye not that I must be about 
 my Father's business?" Luke ii. 49. 
 
494 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 those even of that beloved disciple to whom Jesus when expiring 
 said, "Behold thy mother!" nothing is said about her; she is 
 not even mentioned. Words fail you when you would fully ex- 
 press how inconceivable, how unheard of it would be, that she 
 whose worship was to fill so important a part, should not have 
 had even a page, not a sentence, not a line, not a word, not 
 even the shadow of an allusion, among so many letters, ad- 
 dressed to so many churches, full of so many lessons and instruc- 
 tions on all sorts of subjects. In the Apocalypse, the same omis- 
 sion ; and this silence, whatever opinion one may profess with 
 respect to the doctrinal authority of that book, is still more sig- 
 nificant, in certain respects, than that of the Epistles. Posterior 
 by five and twenty or thirty years to all the rest of the New 
 Testament, the Apocalypse might have been subjected, and was 
 in fact subjected to the influence of more than one new idea. 
 If this idea were then in favour, had it even begun to be so, 
 how is it that there is not here the slightest trace of it ? And 
 yet there was no doctrine, no usage, more of a nature to find a 
 place in the Apocalypse. She whom Roman mysticism was 
 afterwards to make the gate of heaven, the queen of angels, the 
 star of the morning, &c.,^ — how shall we account for there not 
 being the smallest place for her in that magnificent representa- 
 tion of the celestial magnificences ?2 
 
 Assuming this, although it could be proved that the worship 
 of the Virgin dated from the commencement of the second, or 
 even from the end of the first century, already it must be ad- 
 mitted as hopeless to attempt assigning to it an apostolic and 
 divine origin. 
 
 But no. Down to the middle of the fifth century, not a trace 
 do we find of the acts of homage rendered, or to be rendered to 
 
 ^ Janua coeli, Regina angelorum, Stella matutina, &c. — See the lit- 
 anies. 
 
 ■■* "Would the reader know how one of the historians of the Virgin 
 tries to escape from the overwhehning significancy of this silence? 
 Tlio following passage occurs in the Month of 3Iary, a work approved 
 and recommended hy several bishops: — "For the celebration of tlie 
 noblest of creatures Scripture has but a fcM' words, tradition but a few 
 memorials, whether the evangelists and doctors wished to respect the 
 thick veil with which the humble Virgm was enveloped, or that the 
 human idiom cannot attain to s%ich altitudes." Thus, the human idiom 
 sufhced for speaking of God, and of the Son of God ; but was inade- 
 quate to the task of speaking of the Virgin. Be it so. But, then, why 
 do you say so much of lier? If the sacred writers had so much respect 
 for "the thick veil with which she was enveloped," why remove it? 
 On a subject on which "Scripture has but a few words, and tradition 
 but a few memorials," why these long histories, long romances rather, 
 which you put into the hands of the people? 
 
Chap. IV. 1503. WORSIIII' OF THE VIRGIN NOT IN THE FATHER.S. 495 
 
 the mother of the Saviour. Wo t'ulniil that lliero were early 
 testimonies of respect and admiration, amplillcations more or less 
 strong on her glory and her sanctity ; but all these testimonies, 
 all these amplillcations, so much quoted at the present day, are 
 ])recisely the strongest points we should have to adduce against 
 the worship which some make bold to authorize by them. 
 
 Of all those declarations which Romanists go to collect among 
 the Fathers, and which they take great care to isolate from all 
 that might throw a shade over them,^ how is it that we do not 
 lind one in which we find a practical conclusion ? How hap- 
 ])ens it that none of those writers have added to those benedic- 
 tions and those eulogiums, either that the Church oflered worship 
 to the Virgin, or that it was her duty to ofler it to her ? Where- 
 fore, again, do the liturgies, the catechisms, the histories, the 
 sermons of the times, make no mention of any ceremony, any 
 practice in honour of her, of any recourse had to her on any oc- 
 casion, or under any form whatever ? Wherefore does Epipha- 
 nius, towards the close of the fourth century, attack the honours 
 which some Arab women had paid to the Virgin ? These, it is 
 replied, were idolatrous honours. Not more idolatrous, as we 
 could shew, than those enjoined or tolerated at the present day. 
 But it is not even possible, with that writing before our eyes,^ 
 to say that Epiphanius meant to blame excess only. In that 
 case, the best mode of attacking what these women did, would 
 have been to shew what the Church did, Avhat the Church au- 
 thorized. But there is nothing of the sort. He condemns with- 
 out restriction ; he does not speak of any worship, of any com- 
 mencement of worship; with the terras he employs, and the 
 disdain which he expresses, we are not even permitted to suppose 
 that those women had followed the impulsion of any known 
 doctor, or that there was any party at that time ready to declare 
 itself in their favour. Thirty years afterwards, when the dis- 
 putes that preceded and followed the council of Ephesus were at 
 the highest, when Ncstorius was deposed for not having wished 
 to give Mary the title of Mother of God, when Cyril and Pro- 
 
 ^ Tertullian (De Carne Christi vii.) comparing Mary to the sisters of 
 Lazarus, thinks that she was inferior in devotcdness and in faith. Ori- 
 gen, (on St. Luke, Homily xvii.,) Basil, (Epistle 317,) and others, still 
 afldrm that she was scandalized, shaken, by the death of lier sou. Oth- 
 ers, in fine, and Chrysostom, in particular, are not afraid to interpret 
 as a reprimand, the words, " What have I to do with thee?" There had 
 been in her, they said, a feeling of pride. She wanted to make a pa- 
 rade of the supernatural power of her son. This is not our view; but 
 it is clear that those who thought thus, and who wrote thus, had no 
 belief in Marj-'s impeccability. 
 
 2 ILrrsirs, 70. 
 
496 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 clus, his antagonists, using and abusing the victory which the 
 council had given them, were celebrating the mysterious gran- 
 deurs which seemed to them to be involved in that title, well 
 then, in these very sermons in which Mary is magnified as much, 
 and more perhaps than ever was her Son, there is nothing, ab- 
 solutely nothing, to indicate an established worship, or a worship 
 to be established. 
 
 We need not go farther. The idea made its way ; the wor- 
 ship was yet to come. What is certain and incontestable is, 
 that at that epoch it had not yet come. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 SAINT WORSHIP. HOW SAINTS ARE MADE AT ROME. 
 
 The worship of the saints — Silence of Scripture— Wliat all prayer ad- 
 dressed to a dead person pre-supposes — Pagan objection — Luther 
 and the saints — What would be lost, in general, by not praying to 
 them — The worship of the saints forbidden by implication in many 
 passages of Scripture — There is but one sole Mediator — Abuse of the 
 worship of the saints — Has it ever remained and can it remain with- 
 in the limits traced by the council — The common people invoke them 
 as present everywhere and as possessing power of themselves — 
 Pi-oofs — Does the Church combat the tendencies of the common peo- 
 ple — What would be thought by a pagan entering Rome again after 
 eighteen hundred years' absence — Juliana of Liege and the cut in the 
 moon — A mandement of the Archbishop of Lyons — Falsehoods and 
 sophisms — ^The Virgin queen of the universe — Proofs — Citations— 
 The mob of saints — How they are fabricated at Rome — Relics and 
 worship of relics. 
 
 What shall we now say of the worship of the saints in gen- 
 eral ? Here we must pass over the same ground, and arrive 
 very nearly at the same conclusions. 
 
 First, then, there is the same silence on the part of the sacred 
 writers ; the same absence of every trace that it could have ap- 
 peared to them that the dead, saints or not, behoved to serve as 
 intermediates, by any title whatever, between the living and 
 God. Some imperceptible allusions never could counterbalance 
 so complete an absence of all teaching, all invitation, all orders 
 on the subject of the invocation of saints. We do not speak of 
 lessons to the contrary ; that would carry us into too M'ide a 
 field. When the preacher says that the dead " have no part 
 more for ever in anything done under the sun,"' that " they 
 know not anything," where is the exception in favour of the 
 saints ? 
 
 Has all that is implied in a prayer addressed to a dead person 
 been in fact well considered? That the saints have, at the 
 present moment, access to the presence of God we willingly 
 admit, albeit that at first what was said by Jesus Christ of one 
 sole universal judgment at the end of the world, has generally 
 
 ' Eccles. ix. 6. 
 
498 HISTORY OF THE COU.N'CIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 been understood in its literal meaning. ^ The saints pray at 
 present — ^be it so ; but do they hear you who pray to them, and 
 who ask them to pray for you ? Think well ; what you attrib- 
 ute to them is nothing less than the greatest, the most incom- 
 prehensible, the most essentially divine of all God's attributes, — 
 that of being everywhere, of seeing everything, of hearing every- 
 thing. What I a man who but yesterday was like myself, who 
 like me both saw and heard within a very narrow and impas- 
 sable range, who could no more than myself seize at one and 
 the same time more than one object, one idea, one word,^ — be- 
 hold him now, like God, seizing at once millions and hundreds 
 of milUons of objects, ideas, words I The man who no -more 
 than myself could read what passes in the heart of a single fel- 
 low-creature, behold him reading what passes in all men's hearts 
 at once ! behold him in Europe, in America, in the lowest mmes 
 and on the mountain tops, by day, by night, everywhere and 
 always I behold him instantaneously and simultaneously taking 
 in all the words, all the sighs, every slightest emotion of the 
 soul into which the idea of his intercession has entered I For, 
 in fine, if he is to hear me whenever I shall address myself to 
 him, he must be always at hand, always with me, always with 
 everybody ; you cannot suppose that there are places where, or 
 moments when, he will not hear you. Thus no middle ; either 
 the saints have not the faculty of hearing you at all, or they 
 have it in the same degree as God. God no doubt may have 
 wished that it should be so ;• but the greater the privilege the 
 more must we insist on seeing it established on declarations 
 authentically proceeding from Him who alone can bestow it. 
 " They see Him who sees all," says Gregory VHI., " of what then 
 could they be ignorant ?"3 Idle antithesis, which would amount 
 to saying that one cannot see God without becoming his equal. 
 " If I see a man mounted on the top of a steeple," says Du 
 Moulin, " do I on that account see all that he sees ?" 
 
 You figure to yourself the peace of a soul that feels itself sur- 
 
 ^ This opinion, so manifestly contrary to all idea of invocation and 
 worship, is formally taught hy several of the fathers. See Irenseus, 
 Against Heresies, v. 25; Justin, Dialogue with Typhoix; Lactantius, 
 Institutions, c. vii. Note, moreover, that in remitting to the last judg- 
 ment the entrance of the saints into heaven, neither these authors nor 
 any other add that the Virgin gets there before them. 
 
 2 No man is great in the presence of his valet, it is said. Are there 
 many saints whom those who lived on familiar terms with them could 
 seriously invoke? On hearing of the canonization of St. Fi'ancis de 
 Sales, "Ah," said an old bishoj), who had known him well, "that is 
 fine, but the fellow cheated furiously at piquet." — Memoircs de Talle- 
 ma)it. 
 
 ^ Quid est quod nesciant qui scicntem omnia sciant? 
 
Chap. V. 1503. THE INVOCATION OF THE SAFNTS. 490 
 
 rounded by ro many friends, that cannot breathe a sigh without 
 these divine messengers disputing in some sort the honour of 
 bearing it to God. This is very nearly what the pagans said 
 when asked to renounce tliose countless deities who also encom- 
 passed them irom the cradle to the tomb, and besieged them with 
 their constant protection. No doubt, looking to the outward side 
 of things, the Christianity of the Apostles was singularly cold 
 and bare compared with those poetic creeds, consecrated by so 
 many exquisite works of art and by ages of antiquity, under 
 which not a city, not a village, not a house, not a tree, but had 
 its tutelary deity — not a man, in fine, that could not, in every 
 circumstance of life, invoke a god expressly placed at his service 
 in that very exigency, so that the slightest volition on his jDart 
 might have a divine volition at its command. And yet, in reality, 
 which was best, those petty gods of every moment — supposing 
 that there existed such — or one sole perfect God, great enough 
 and good enough alone to do as much and more than they all ? 
 Which too, since we are compelled to touch this chord, is the 
 grander, the more beautiful, the more really poetic also, the in- 
 vocation of all those subaltern deities, or a direct and intimate 
 communication with Him who has all power, and who fills all 
 space ? Thus the same answer that was made to the pagans we 
 may make to the partisans of the invocation of the saints. Duke 
 George of Saxony, one of the greatest enemies of the E.eforma- 
 tion, as he sat, in 1537, at the bedside of a dying son, exhorted 
 him to leave the saints to themselves and to think only of Christ. 
 The dying man's wife, a Lutheran at heart, gave a look of sur- 
 prise. The duke noticed it. " For the dying," said he, "this 
 is the best instruction to give." It is in fact, and we love to 
 acknowledge it, what all truly pious priests say to the dying. 
 When the danger is thought at a distance, you find for yourselves 
 insignificant protectors ; when it presses, if you have not forgot- 
 ten Him Avho alone and of Himself can save you, to Him, to Him 
 alone you feel urged to cry. But if this doctrine be the best for 
 the dying, why should it not be so for all, and on all occasions? 
 " In popish times," said Luther, ^ " people made pilgrimages to 
 the saints ; they would go to Rome, to Jerusalem, for the expia- 
 tion of their sins. And now we still make pilgrimages, but it is 
 into the regions of faith. We go not to Jerusalem, but straight 
 to God. This is the true visiting of the promised land. \\ hat 
 are the saints in comparison with Christ ? Nothing more than 
 the small dew-drops of the night on the head of the spouse and 
 on the locks of his hair I" Luther was a poet ; he had known 
 enough of you, ye saints of both sexes ; he had worn his knees 
 
 ' Table Talk. 
 
500 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 before their images ; and it was only on going, as he would say, 
 "straight to God" that he beheld opening before his steps, hke 
 anew and unknown world, the regions of true peace, the springs 
 of life in Christ. This that we have told, moreover, applies to 
 more people than one would think. There are Ucman Catholics, 
 and many too, and the most pious, who do not believe in the 
 intercession of the saints ; many, at least, who do not beheve 
 in it for themselves, and who never have recourse to it. Well, 
 then, when these would go to God, is anything wanting to them ? 
 Have they a longer journey to make in order to perceive the sun 
 than others who look only at the stars ? And after their eyes 
 have once been turned towards Him whom the Bible calls the 
 " Sun of Righteousness," is there perceptibly less peace, less 
 faith, less confidence in them than in others ? 
 
 Shall we be told, then, that the direct way is not prescribed, 
 that the invocation of saints is not enjoined as indispensable to 
 salvation, that the Council of Trent, in fine, only recommends it 
 as good and useful ? No doubt, when the sun is set it is useful, 
 it is good to have the stars ; but as long as it is above the 
 horizon, what need have we of them ? Let us speak without a 
 figure. It is, in the end, as a resource to the weak that the in- 
 vocation of the saints is recommended. We have just spoken, in 
 fact, only of certain choice souls who, without condemning it, do 
 without it, and are none the worse. Would the others lose 
 much ? That is the question. That a man who has been in the 
 habit of addressing God only through the saints, should expe- 
 rience at first no little embarrassment in addressing him alone, 
 and directly, is possible enough ; but is any embarrassment, any 
 stupefaction felt by those who have been in the habit, on the 
 contrary, of praying only to God ? Are there things of which 
 they dare not speak to him ? If there be, they are things felt 
 by them to be bad or unworthy of him, and, in that case, it were 
 a pitiful service to render them, to give them beings to pray to, to 
 whom they shall have less dread of opening their hearts. Next, 
 what business have we to inquire whether this be the more or 
 less easy, the more or less dangerous way ? The grand point, 
 and to this we must ever return, is that God has not pointed it 
 out to us. Here we have not to do with a mystery which he 
 might have meant to leave in the shade. The question of prayer 
 is the very one on which the sacred books have gone most into 
 practical details ; and if they could have spoken of it two or 
 three hundred times, under every form, and on all sorts of occa- 
 sions, without enjoining or advising what the council declares to 
 be useful and good — by what right should any one add aught to 
 the command ever^-where repeated, to address ourselves to God, 
 
Chap. V. 15fi3. IMPLIED PROHIBITION IN SCRIPTURE. 601 
 
 to seek the intercession of Christ ? Shall \vc be told that there 
 is no Ibrmal prohibition against seeking that oi' others ? What I 
 if Jesus Christ be formally pointed out to us as our intercessor 
 and our advocate, if he be represented to us as always ready to 
 discharge that divine office for us — does not this imply that we 
 are prohibited from having recourse to any less holy and less 
 powerful than he ? Far be it from us, however, to admit that 
 the prohibition is merely implied. " There is one God," says St. 
 Paul, " and one Mediator between God and man, to wit, Chri.st 
 Jesus. "^ Yes, say Roman controversialists, one sole mediator 
 of redemi:>tio)i ; but that docs not exclude mediators o/* i;z?ercc5- 
 sion. Where has this distinction been found ? Not assuredly in 
 the Bible, where intercession and mediation are constantly con- 
 founded. What is the subject in hand, in fact, at the ver}^ place 
 from which the passage we have quoted has been taken ? Why, 
 prayer in general, and all sorts of prayers. " I desire, therefore," 
 says the Apostle, " that first of all, prayers, requests, supplica- 
 tions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, for 
 . . . " &c. How maintain, after this, that the mediation of 
 which he speaks two or three lines farther on can be understood 
 of redemption only ? Besides, with the doctrine of indulgences, 
 redemption itself passes in part into the hands of the saints. 
 This, Bellarmine admits.^- Thus, even were the above distinc- 
 tion as well founded as it is groundless, the Church of Rome 
 cannot take advantage of it. 
 
 " Let no man," says he elsewhere,^ " beguile you of your re- 
 ward, in a voluntary humility, and w^orshipping of angels." 
 According to Bossuet, this refers only to angels viewed, accord- 
 ing to the neo-platonician theor}'', as subaltern creators of the 
 universe. That opinion may have given occasion for the prohi- 
 bition, but the Apostle speaks in general terms. There must be 
 no worship of angels, u)uler iiretext of humility. Now, the 
 Roman Church does not go so far as to teach that God is inac- 
 cessible to men ; it is from humility, then, that people pray to 
 saints and angels, and thus enter fully into what the Apostle has 
 interdicted. 
 
 Shall we once more cite the Apocalypse ? This we might do. 
 How happens it that the saints, who are represented to us as 
 surrounding the throne of God have nowise the air of having 
 prayers to listen to? Let a Roman Catholic suppose himself 
 writing that book, and let him say if he could omit such a de- 
 tail ? A single passage has been adduced. "Then," it says, 
 " the four living creatures, and the four-and-twenty elders, fell 
 down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and 
 * 1 Tim. ii. 5. ' De Indulgentiis, i. 24. '' Coloss. ii. 18. 
 
502 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI, 
 
 golden vials full of odours, u-hich are the j^fciyers of saints.'' 
 Such is what has been ventured upon as a set-off to the over- 
 whelming silence of the Gospels, the Epistles, and the rest of the 
 Apocalypse ; such is what people fancy they may oppose to the 
 direct teaching which, in that crowd of passages where it could 
 not fail to have been, sliines only by its absence. Were we not 
 afraid of appearing to accept the challenge to discuss the question 
 on this field, we should find in those very lines, wherewithal to 
 refute what has been attempted to be deduced from them. First 
 of all, throughout the whole chapter, we find the subject in hand 
 to be songs of praise. Can the 2?rayers of saints, mentioned in 
 this passage, mean anything else ? No, for they are presented 
 under the form of odours or 'perfmnes in golden vials, which is 
 never said, and which cannot anywise be said, of any prayers 
 Avhatever, coming from whomsoever you will, and comprehend- 
 ing all sorts of demands. Next, who present those prayers ? 
 The four living creatures and the four-and-ticenty elders. Do 
 you admit that there are in heaA^en four living creatures and four- 
 and-twenty elders serving intermediately between the saints and 
 God ? It is a figure, will you say ? Be it so. Under this figure, 
 nevertheless, there is formally announced this fact — the existence 
 of an intermediate, it matters not who, between God and the 
 saints. No\\% what do you make of this detail ? If the figures 
 that follow have a dogmatic value, how refuse it to this ? In 
 fine, what is represented to us as thus coming to God, are the 
 inayers of the saints. Their prayers /w us ? That is not said ; 
 and, moreover, in that which is cited of them a little farther on, 
 the living are not in question at all. We see elsewhere the 
 saints praying for the Church, for the salvation and the peace 
 of men in general ; but not a trace do we find of individual pe- 
 titions, of prayers which they bear the appearance of having 
 heard for the purpose of transmitting them. Such is the utmost, 
 we repeat, that Romanists have been able to adduce in favour 
 of the invocation of the saints. 
 
 Now, if the invocation of saints is neither enjoined nor sanc- 
 tioned by Scripture, all the more may Ave say this of the abuses 
 to which it has given rise. Thus far, in fact, according to our 
 engagement, we have combated only what the council teaches; 
 but we did not interdict ourselves from following out what the 
 Church has done or allowed to be done. Of all the points above 
 noted, there is hardly one on which there has not been as wide 
 a departure from the decisions of Trent as those decisions them- 
 selves are a departure from both the letter and the spirit of the 
 Holy Scriptures. 
 
Chat. V. 13(i3. AUUSE OF THE WOUSlIir OT SAINTS. 603 
 
 In vain might you prop up a system with good proofs, it is 
 always a serious defect not to be capable of being apphed with- 
 out being altered. We shall ask, then, in the first place, if the 
 worship of saints is generally such as it is found neccssar}' to rep- 
 resent it in order to elude our objections ? 
 
 " You accord to them," we have said, " the most divine of all 
 attributes, that of being everywhere present." This it has been 
 found impossible to deny ; but, says Bossuet, " Never has it been 
 thought by any Roman Catholic, that the saints could know of 
 themselves our wants, or even the desires by which we pray to 
 them." Never has any Roman Catholic, we admit, taught that 
 the saints could of themselves possess this astounding power ; but 
 how many are there, who, in praying to them, make this distinc- 
 tion ? How many arc there who, on their knees before the image 
 of a saint, say to themselves, have ever said to themselves, " He 
 hears me not. If my prayer reaches him, it is through the in- 
 termediate agency of angels, or by a revelation from God, or by 
 a vision of God I" For such are, in fact, the three means sug- 
 gested by Bossuet. But of these the council says nothing ; no 
 more does the catechism. The imiversal presence of the saints 
 is admitted by implication as a fact in every invitation to pray 
 to them, in every prayer addressed to them ; there is not one 
 Romanist in a hundred, perhaps not one in a thousand, who, 
 unless under the influence of scruples inspired in him from with- 
 out, docs not absolutely omit this reservation without which, ac- 
 cording to Bossuet's admission, the worship of the saints becomes 
 an insult to God. 
 
 Moreover, between the invocation of the saints as intercessors 
 only, and the invocation of those same saints as having power to 
 grant answers, as omnipotent, in short, as gods — if there be, as 
 is maintained, an abyss in point of theory, there is not, in fact, 
 more than a step. And as for that step, how many pious Roman 
 Catholics are there in a condition to keep from taking it, and 
 who, in fact, refrain from taking it ? "VYe have had occasion to 
 make researches on this subject in a country where the worship 
 of the saints and of the Virgin, although much difl'used, still is 
 much less so than in Italy or in Spain ; and not only have we 
 found no one who, in the spontaneous movements of his heart, 
 has not always suflercd himself to run at once into the invocation 
 of them as omnipotent beings, but the very prayers in which 
 they are called intercessors, do not in general prevent their view- 
 ing them as something very diflL^ront. We have seen it proved 
 that even in repeating to satiety, " Holy Virgin, pray for us,'^ 
 the idea of intercession is absorbed in that of a direct, absolute 
 protection, to be obtained from the mother of Christ. At the 
 
504 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 very moment when the Hps shall be opened to say Pray for us, 
 the inward feeling is just the same as that which might be trans- 
 lated instantly after by the words, " The holy Virgin bless you — 
 the holy Virgin comluct you — if it phase the holy Virgin" — 
 and a hundred other forms of language in which the Virgin is 
 openly substituted for God. 
 
 But, says Bossuet again, ^ in whatever terms the prayers ad- 
 dressed to the saints be conceived, the Church's intention, and 
 that of the faithful, reduces them always into this form, " Pray 
 for us." The Church's intention, that may be ; the intention 
 of the faithful, that we deny ; and what avails the Church's ab- 
 stract intention, when the faithful are almost inevitably led to 
 intend quite otherwise. When a beggar, to whom you have 
 given alms, and who thanks you, as is usual in so many coun- 
 tries, not by a " God repay you',' but by " May theVirgin re- 
 pay you,'' of what consequence is it that the Council of Trent, 
 which he has never heard of all his life, has reduced his prayer 
 beforehand to an intercessory request ? The Virgin, or God — 
 in his mind it is all one. He gives to the creature without any 
 reserve what is due to the Creator only ; and if this, as has been 
 always said, constitutes idolatry, his prayer to the Virgin is evi- 
 dently an act of idolatry. In this sense, we repeat, are there 
 many prayers to saints of which we may not say as much ? 
 
 Our best auxiliary here is one of the most zealous champions 
 of Roman Catholicism, the man who has most contributed, in 
 our days, to make it what it is, Chateaubriand. Withoiit caring 
 about what councils have forbidden or permitted, he does not 
 discuss, he paints, and his pictures have hardly a feature in them 
 that does not confirm our criticisms. " The sprightliest and the 
 bravest race were consecrated to Genevieve, the daughter of sim- 
 plicity and peace." " Those shepherdesses transformed by their 
 virtues into beneficent deities." " There is nothing, even to the 
 feeble advantage of difference of sex and of visible form, that our 
 deities do not share with those of Greece." " The deity of a 
 saint begins with his felicity in the regions of eternal light." " It 
 was proper that the female saintof the woods should ivork mir- 
 acles." " Those martyrs who deserved to rise to the rank of the 
 celestial powers." " For the man of faith, nature is a perpetual 
 marvel. Does he sufier ? He yrays to his little image, and is 
 comforted. He prostrates himself ; he prays to the saint to re- 
 store to him a son, to save a wife." *' Never was there a people 
 so surrounded with friendly deities as the Christian people." 
 " Those men who have merited to be adored." Here we see 
 Roman Catholicism, such as it is ; here is what it cannot fail 
 
 * Exposition iv. 
 
Chap. V. 1563. AN ANCIENT ROMAN IN MODERN ROME. 505 
 
 more and more to become, as long as its heads shall believe that 
 they liave only to sheJler themselves behind the impotent and 
 deceptive declarations of a council. 
 
 Do we see, in fact, that the Roman Church tries at least to 
 struggle against that irresistible bent of the nations to adore that 
 which, we are told, she gives them only to revere ? Does she 
 insist much with her members on that distinction which she so 
 loudly proclaims, when she has to prepare a reply to adversaries ? 
 We know not ; fain would we believe, even though Ave have 
 strong reasons to doubt it, that there are no Roman Catholics to 
 whom the subject has not been clearly explained, once at least. 
 But precept is one thing, example another ; to teach seldom and 
 coldly a subtle distinction is one thing ; very difierent is the re- 
 sistless contagion of practices repeated every day. There are 
 countries in which you may pass tM^enty years without seeing 
 anything that does not lead right to the error of which the ad- 
 mission is forbidden. Were an ancient Roman to re-appear in 
 the midst of Rome, what would he find changed there but the 
 names of the gods, and the forms of the sacrifices ? Could he 
 doubt that the saints that give their names to the temples, that 
 have their altars, their festivals, are not the deities of the coun- 
 try? That Pantheon which he had left consecrated to all the 
 gods, he finds again consecrated to all the samts ; those columns, 
 those pedestals on which he had seen Jupiter, Romulus, Trajan, 
 or some other deified emperor, he now sees supporting Peter or 
 Paul, John or Mary.^ Would you tell him, then, how that tem- 
 ple of St. Peter is not a temple of St. Peter ? Your explanation 
 he will not find it easy to comprehend, however little this pagan 
 may have remarked the foot of the saint to have been AAorn 
 away by the perpetual kissing of the iaithful ; well, too, will it 
 be, if he fails to recognise in the statue that of an ancient Jupi- 
 ter I When he shall see the Virgin on the altar, and a whole 
 people on their knees before her ; when he shall hear her called 
 — for he must needs understand Latin, and in this respect at 
 least will have the advantage, which many Christians have not, 
 of understanding what is said arliong them — when he shall hear 
 her called by all those magnificent names that have been lavished 
 upon her by the Church of Rome, how could he comprehend 
 your maintaining, after all this, that you do not make her a 
 goddess ? How could he comprehend, most of all, that she is 
 
 ' The very title Divus, ordinarily replaced in official documents by 
 that of Beatus, has not, however, been expelled from them. "We meet' 
 with it once or twice in the Acts of Trent. "Would it have passed into 
 the language, had not the idea which it involves first passed into men's 
 minds? 
 
 Y 
 
506 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 not a goddess in the view of the people ? He will hear them 
 chanting Ora ino nobis ; but he, too, in his day, often addressed 
 himself to the inferior deities, to ask their intercession with the 
 princes of heaven, and those deities of the second or third order, 
 did not thereby cease to be considered as deities. When the 
 jiioiis ^Eneas invokes his mother Venus, he very well knows that 
 of herself she can do nothing, that she must go and petition 
 Jupiter ; is she the less, in his eyes and those of his people, a 
 high deity? Does she cease on that account to have temples 
 raised to her, to have sacrifices offered to her, to be treated ha- 
 bitually on the same footing with Jupiter ? Direct adoration is 
 nowise incompatible, in fact, with the idea of intercession ; were 
 this generally as well understood as it is little, the adoration 
 would remain. And how many prayers to saints, besides, whether 
 in the most widely diffused collections, or in the worship itself, 
 where intercession is not mentioned I How many others in 
 Avhich it occurs only at the close, in two words, and as it were 
 out of sight, at the end of long and fervent invocations I That 
 famous 8uh tuum, which you hear repeated morning and even- 
 ing in all the Schools of Roman Catholicity, what is there in it 
 more or less than a prayer to (a) god ? " \Ye take refuge under 
 thy guardianship. Holy Mother of God. Despise not our suppli- 
 cations, but from all perils ever deliver us, glorious and blessed 
 Virgin."^ In such an atmosphere — we have seen it proved — 
 there is not one — even to the Lord's Prayer, that the perverted 
 instinct of the faithful has not quietly transformed into a prayer 
 to the Virgin. That prayer, according to the Catechism, may be 
 recited before any image of the saint, provided the reciter have 
 the sentiment that the saint repeats it to God. How many 
 Romanists have any such sentiment ? AA hen Juliana of Liege 
 saw the famous cut made in the moon, and concluded from it 
 that God was distressed at having no festival, while all the 
 saints had theirs — it was, setting aside the oddity of the form it 
 took, a very great truth ; but has the festival AA^hich people lost 
 no time in establishing, the F etc- D leu, of which Liege lately 
 celebrated the six hundredth anniversary^ remained at least a 
 true festival to God ? Not at all. There are countries, and those 
 ^he most Roman Catholic, where it has nothing more than the 
 name. In Italy, in Spain, in Provence, the Fete-JDieu is only a 
 new festival to the Virgin. 
 
 Thus Avhenever the worship of the saints has been developed 
 freely and without control, God's worship has been more and 
 
 ' Sub tuiim prresidium confugimus, sancta Dei genetrix. Nostras 
 deprecationes ne despicias, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, 
 Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. 
 
Chap. V. 15(53. CARDINAL DE DONALD'S MARIOLATRY. 607 
 
 more eflaccd. " You might steal God from them without their 
 noticing it," said some one in describing Italian Catholicism. 
 Nothing more true. You have only to remove the name of God 
 from some Latin prayers, where it still remains, and all would 
 go on as if there were no void in religious worship, and without 
 the bulk of the people suspecting any change. Were a new 
 council to declare that God no longer exists, and that there is no 
 other deity but the Virgin, it would only give the form of law to 
 what already exists in lact, in the great majority of certain popu- 
 lations. 
 
 We have no thought that any such sacrilegious decree will 
 ever be passed, but it must be admitted that with this exception, 
 it would be impossible to accord more to the Virgin than has 
 been accorded to her in our days, and that too in the centre of 
 Europe, in France, in the face of indignant Protestantism and 
 sneermg infidelity. Instead of restraining the nations while in 
 this dangerous downward course, the Church of Rome has done 
 her best to urge them into it. Here, as in so many other things, 
 all that she could not have destroyed without shutting against 
 her certain sources of influence, she has thought it more simple, 
 and, above all, more advantageous boldly to lay hold of for her 
 own purposes, and has put herself at the head of all those natu- 
 ral impulses which she could not arrest. It will not be her 
 fault if iu this respect France shall ere long see nothing to blame 
 in the superstitions of the remotest hamlets of Calabria. We 
 wish we could quote at full length the famous mandemcnt by 
 which a cardinal ^ has inaugurated this new era. At full length, 
 we say, without omitting the few lines in which the author pro- 
 tests against all assimilation of the Virgin to God. What then 
 is the amount of those lines, and how far do they undo our ob- 
 jections ? We have not said that the Church of Rome teaches the 
 deity of the Virgin ; we have said that it stimulates people to 
 believe in it, or, at the very least, not to pray, or to discharge 
 any duty, or to live or to die, in fine, but as if they believed in 
 it, and, in these terms, what could we cite that could better con- 
 firm our assertions ? Wherein do a few details, wherein does a 
 distinction so very refined in point of theory, so impossible in 
 practice, anywise restrain the outburst of those tendencies which 
 as a whole are so lauded ? From the very opening lines behold 
 the worship of the Virgin carried back, according to the author, 
 to the first days of Christianity. '' The Saviour,"' says he, '' gave 
 to religion, from the cradle, a companion whose gentleness was 
 to temper his severity. This faithful companion was devotion 
 to the holy Virgin." From the cradle I Did not your hand be- 
 ' Archbishop of Lyons, November, 1842. 
 
508 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 come withered when it had so impudently given the he to the 
 silence of Scripture ! The author recurs to it ; he is dehghted 
 with it ; he seems to dread that the expression may still be 
 wanting in preciseness, and thsit from the cradle may be thought 
 to mean only fro}?i the first ages. " Religion and devotion to 
 the Virgin," we are told, " came down together from the holy 
 mountain, to advance together to the conquest of souls. Thence- 
 forward tvherever the standard of salvation has been unfurled, 
 the ensigns of Mary have been seen displayed." What ! the en- 
 signs of Mary were displayed in those Churches to which the 
 Apostles addressed so many and such long epistles, without say- 
 ing a word about them ? Cardinal de Bonald, you say this — 
 believe it you do not. 
 
 And how have they advanced together, the religion of Christ 
 and devotion to the Virgin, to the conquest of the world ? 
 " United by the bond of a common origin, and of one same 
 vocation, these tiuo sisters joined hands." Here at once we 
 have equality, if not between God and the Virgin, at least be- 
 tween the two worships ; and the equality of the two worships 
 implies, let people say what they will, in the view of the im- 
 mense majority of the faithful, equality between the two beings 
 to whom worship is addressed. Equality I Do they even keep 
 to that ? The maiidement does not even contain a phrase 
 which does not come to this, " See how much more agreeable, 
 more easy, more poetical, and more cheering is the worship of 
 the Virgin than any other I" The author admits that in our 
 "holy books, the Spirit of God throivs a luirdly transiJarent 
 veil over the celestial life of the Saviour's mother." This is an 
 ingenious way of telling us that she is very little mentioned 
 there at all. But when the author, some lines farther on, lays 
 hold of the narrative of the marriage at Cana, and concludes 
 from it that one may and ought to pray to the Virgin for the 
 supply of our bodily as well as of our spiritual Avants, shall we 
 say that this too is ingenious ? To quote this incident without 
 quoting the words, which give it a totally different meaning,^ is 
 a piece of ingenuity such as we are not in the habit of calling 
 by that name. And how many details, besides, on what we 
 may ask of the Virgin to have alleviated 1 But as for spiritual 
 wants they are hardly spoken of at all, while as for the tem- 
 poral, Mary is announced from one end to another, as particularly 
 ready to supply them ! The more of those wants you shall have, 
 the more easy will it be for you to be pious ; the more you shall 
 be afraid of trials and of death, the more, to judge by the fer- 
 vour of your prayers to Mary, will you be able to believe your- 
 ' Woman, what have I to do with thee ? 
 
CiiAr. V. l-,(;3. THE VIRUIN MADE E(^UAL WITH GOD. 609 
 
 self a finished Clirislian. Tlie worship of the Virgin, in this 
 point of view, is the hospital of the nnbeiieving.^ 
 
 But let us leave this new source of danger, which would lead 
 us back into the general discussion of the question. All that we 
 have said we might support by quotations ; all the results to 
 which we point are admitted by the mandcnient, but with songs 
 of triumph. "True Catholics," says he, "pray no longer, in 
 some sort, to Jesus, except through Mary. For them there are 
 no festivals without her ; one might say that apart from her 
 there is no more hope for them. Her name is found incessant- 
 ly on their lips, and her image in all their hearts. The Church, 
 far from opposing, applauds these bursts of filial piety. From 
 his tempest-tossed bark Peter turns his looks constantly to the 
 star of the sea. It seems that God lias given over his onnipo- 
 tcnce to his mother '' Yes, this is just what we never cease to 
 repeat, it seems, to look at the Roman Catholic world, there is 
 now no other deity but the Virgin. Is it only externally so ? 
 So it is alleged. "Were there reason in this allegation, it would 
 be a singular way of honouring that God, " strong and jealous," 
 who will have " no other gods before him."^ But mark again 
 the archbishop's words, as he becomes, without suspecting it, 
 the interpreter of the true sentiments of the people, " Could 
 we," he says, "fail to direct our eyes toAvards that celebrated 
 sanctuary, whence a tender mother watches lovingly over her 
 family, where sits a 'powerful queen, ivliose hand has raised a 
 dyke to restrain the impetuosity of the biUou's ?" See, in spite 
 of all fine distinctions, what it comes to at last. It is no longer 
 God, as formerly in the Bible, that says to the waves, " Thus 
 far shalt thou come and no farther," it is the Virgin. 
 
 Shall we now adduce some of the countless passages in which 
 the popes have made themselves, with still more frankness and 
 recklessness, the interpreters of the same sentiments? W'hat 
 shall we say, in particular, of those expressions that occur so 
 often in their decrees, in which the saints are represented as 
 punishing, avenging, fulminating ? We shall not go back to 
 John XXII., excommunicating Lewis of Bavaria, and saying, 
 " May the wrath of God and his Apostles Peter and Panl 
 kindle upon him, in this world and the next I" "VVe shall not 
 go to Leo X. excommunicating Luther ; that piece, admirably 
 composed in other respects, in which the pontiff" conjures all the 
 saints to rise against the heresiarch, is known to have been 
 
 ' We know that Scripture often calls unbelieving, not those who be- 
 lieve in nothing, but those who believe without having the strength to 
 be Christians. 
 
 - First Commandment. 
 
510 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 modelled after that in wliich Cicero, iii his famous De Sig?iis, 
 invokes the wrath of the gods on the profaners of their altars. 
 All the bulls that relate to the Council of Trent are closed with 
 these words, " "Whosoever shall have contravened this let him 
 know that he Avill incur the indignation of God, and of his 
 Apostles Pete?- ami Paul.'''' Now, there are but two senses in 
 which you can understand this formula, which is to this day in 
 use ; either Peter and Paul, in their indignation at the guilty 
 person, will punish him at their own instance, and, in that case, 
 you make them gods-; or, powerless of themselves, they shall 
 call upon God to punish them. A fine part truly to assign 
 them. On one sole occasion in the Gospels do the Apostles think 
 of speaking against the guilty. " Ye know not," says the 
 Master severely, " what spirit ye are of." And, behold, we are 
 to look upon them in heaven, making themselves accusers, and 
 counsellino: revenge I But no ; it is not thus that the matter is 
 understood. One would blush at the thought of St. Paul, or St. 
 Peter, or Mary, above all, approaching the throne of God for the 
 purpose of pointing out victims to be smitten by his wrath. In 
 spite of themselves Romanists keep to the first alternative ; com- 
 pelled to choose betwixt making the saints informers and ac- 
 cusers, or gods, they cannot hesitate. Not that they plainly say 
 to themselves, " these are gods, they have the power to punish ;" 
 but it is as gods that they are dreaded, it is as gods that people 
 are tau2:ht to dread them. 
 
 So much for the formulas in which the divinity of the saints 
 is tacitly assumed, and which, as they excite no suspicion, only 
 serve the better to make it believed without people being aware 
 of it. But if we would now have more direct declarations, the 
 papal bulls will supply them abundantly. In these, for the 
 most part, there are no restrictions ; no prudent protests, which, 
 as in the case of Cardinal de Bonald's mandement, if they do 
 not ser'ously guard against any error, permit, at least, the author 
 to plead afterwards that it was not his fault. Take, for exam- 
 ple, a piece which we have already often cited, the encyclical 
 letter of 1832. God is there invoked, but only at the close in a 
 few frigid lines, as one would speak, in a letter, of some great 
 useless personage — too great, however, to be entirely set aside. 
 But, at the commencement, " This letter is addressed to you on 
 that auspicious day on which we solemnize the assumption of 
 the Virgin into heaven,^ in order that she, Avhom, in the mid.st 
 
 ^ It is known that the Roman divines are not agreed as to what is to 
 be understood by this. Some will have it that the A^irgin, like Jesus 
 Christ, had a true ascension; others that she was resuscitated and as- 
 eeiuled to heaven, but not corporeally, forty days after her death. In 
 
Chap. V. 1:.G:{. THE VIR(;1N AND TIILI SAINT.S. SH 
 
 of tlic {xrcatost calamities, ^vu have recognised as patroness and 
 libcratrix, may be no less favourable at the moment in wliicli 
 we write, and that with her heavenly breath she may inspire," 
 &c.' Give this letter to a man who knows nothing of Chris- 
 tianity : he will have read three-fourths of it before having a 
 doubt that the A^irgin was not the deity of Christians, and tlie 
 pope her high priest. A year afterwards the pope, in referring 
 10 that piece, says that he wrote it " with assistance from above, 
 and i^articidarlij under the auspices of the Virgin."- In line, 
 that same year, in a brief to the Bishop of Rcnnes, we find, 
 " After having implored the protection of the most holy virgin, 
 mother, sovereign, guide, and mistress of all men."^ After that, 
 maintain if you can that you do not teach the people the divini- 
 ty of the Virgin. Had the Council of Trent ordained its being 
 taught, could you have said more ? In 1849, the Eoman bish- 
 ops assembled at Imola, wrote to Pius IX., felicitating him on 
 the re-establishment of his authority ; and the pope, in his reply, 
 commends them for having taken care, above all, to acknow- 
 ledge that that event had been due to the protection of the 
 Virgin. One may, without being a Protestant, see something a 
 little odd in this idea, for it is almost tantamount to admitting, 
 that God might likely enough, but for the Virgin, have left the 
 pope at Gaeta, and the republic at Rome ; but of what conse- 
 quence is one absurdity more or less? the essential matter is 
 the consolidation of a worship from which they look for every- 
 thing. 
 
 "We have spoken hitherto only of the Virgin and the principal 
 saints. Juvenal laughed in his sleeve at the mob of the Roman 
 gods ; is the mob of saints much more respectable in the eyes of 
 a religion, we do not say enhghtened, but only not quite blind ? 
 You ridicule the idea of Roman emperors becoming gods by a 
 decree of the senate ; can Rome warrant the sanctity of any one 
 
 both cases it lias been agreed that the Avord assumption should be used, 
 indicating that she was taken up into heaven, not that of ascension, 
 which would indicate that she had gone up thither of herself.^ The 
 common people, of course, see no difference here, and the ascension of 
 Mary on the loth of August is a far grander festival than the ascension 
 of Christ. Note, that the assumption has not yet been raised to be an 
 article of faith: the Church advises people to'believe it, but does not 
 command them to do so. To institute a festival in commemoration of 
 an event which Rome dares not affirm to have ever taken place, is 
 still more whimsical than it would be frankly to decree its reality. 
 
 * Ut quam patronam ac sospitem persensimus — ipsa et scribentibus 
 adstet propitia— mentemque nostrani cadesti afHatu suo in ea inducat 
 consilia. 
 
 - Brief to the Archbisliop of Toulouse. 
 
 ^ Qua" omiuum mater est, domina, dux ot magistra. 
 
512 HISTORY UF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book V], 
 
 of the personages, with whom she has peopled heaven ? The 
 pope, even m the opinion of those who think him otherwise in- 
 fallible, is not so with regard to facts. He, like anybody else, 
 may be seduced by outward shows of sanctity. We do not ex- 
 pect to have objected to us the miracles of which the pope insists 
 on having proofs before proceeding to canonize. AYe are well 
 aware that the process is alway very long, and still more very 
 dear ; but as we know of no case in which, with patience and 
 ^^'ith money, the petitioners for canonization have not succeeded 
 in their object, we have hardly, we confess, any more confidence 
 in the impartiality -of the tribunal than in its infallibility. Be- 
 sides, there are many saints whose canonization has not even 
 been surrounded with this vain guarantee.^ The pope, in fine, 
 it is further admitted, may be led into error in the matter of 
 the miracles, as well as in his estimate of the virtues of the 
 person to be canonized. Accordingly, this personage who is 
 offered to you as a protector in heaven, alas I may possibly be 
 in the deepest pit of hell. The Church of E.ome once made 
 more than one saint of whom she does not boast, and whom she 
 would be very well pleased to expunge from her catalogue. If 
 she wa« mistaken with respect to these, who shall warrant her 
 not being so as respects others also ? Martyrdom itself is not a 
 proof of sanctity. " Though I give my body to be burned," 
 saith St. Paul, " and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." 
 A man may thus go to the stake for the glory of God, and yet 
 be no true saint. 
 
 It is, nevertheless, on the credit of their martyrdom alone, that 
 a host of saints are held forth, in the Roman Church, to the 
 veneration of the nations. Of that number there are many of 
 whom absolutely nothing beyond this circumstance is known, 
 which does not, however, prevent the fabricating, or the permis- 
 sion to fabricate, admirable histories of them ; nay, there are 
 some whose martyrdom is as little certainly known as anything 
 else. One feels petrified with surprise and indignation on learn- 
 ing the manner in which a good number of those demigods are 
 created at Rome, whose mortal remains are displayed on the 
 altars of Roman Catholic Christendom. It is in the catacombs, 
 in ancient Christian cemeteries, wherever, in short, there is a 
 chance of finding any bones of the first centuries, that a provi- 
 sion of new saints is made from time to time. Formerly, no 
 tombs were ransacked but such as bore certain inscriptions and 
 emblems, but it is long since no such scrupulosity has been 
 
 * We know that the right of canonization, now reserved to the pope, 
 once belonged to the bishops. 
 
Chap. V. 1563. ABSURDITY OF RELIC-WORSHII'. 513 
 
 shewn. ^ The bones, accordingly, arc taken up and committed to 
 certain persons whose olHce it is to clean them ; next the car- 
 dinal-vicar or the sacristan-bishop- of the pontifical chapel, puts 
 them into a box which he seals. What are called testimonial 
 letters are then drawn up, bearing that these bones are certainly 
 relics, and that they may be exposed, in any church whatever, to 
 the veneration of the faithful. If the body be entire, the signa- 
 ture of the cardinal is attached to them ; if there be only frag- 
 ments, that of the bishop. If the name of the defunct be un- 
 known, which often happens, one is given to him. And thus on 
 the old horizon of Rome there have lately arisen St. Pruden- 
 tissimus, St. Felicissimus, and many others. 
 
 "What can we add to these details ? To worship kno\vn saints 
 is, no doubt, a deplorable error, but at least one can understand 
 it ; to worship saints of whom we know not the life, the death, or 
 so much as the name, beings of whom we possess nothing but 
 bones, which possibly belonged to persons who were neither saints 
 nor martyrs, nor even Christians, is not this the lie 2)lus zdtra of 
 impudence among those who place them on the altar, and of 
 imbecility on the part of those who pray to them ? 
 
 For the rest, there are not many ancient relics having an au- 
 thenticity so clearly proved as not to make it at least imprudent 
 to make them objects of worship. To the uncertainties add the 
 improbabilities \^ to the improbabilities the evident impossibili- 
 ties ;^ to the impossibilities the frauds, still innumerable, to judge 
 by those that have been discovered ;^ and see if the worship of 
 relics, even supposing it to remain within the limits traced by 
 the council, that is to say, without any alloy of superstition or 
 adoration, be not one of those things that have done most to dis- 
 figure Christianity. 
 
 ' See a curious dissertation of Father Mabillon, intituled, Lettre 
 d^Eusebe Romain a T/ieophile Frangais, sur la cidte dcs sai7its i)icounus, 
 1697. 
 
 ^ The cardinal-vicar is the vicar of the pope, in so far as tlie pope is 
 bishop of Rome. He discharges the functions of bishop in the city. 
 
 ^ What likelihood is there that so many objects, originally of no value, 
 should nevertheless have been preserved ? 
 
 * Saints with several heads, several bodies, bits of the true cross, "as 
 many as would load a large boat," says Calvin, <fec. 
 
 * At Geneva, for example, the famous skull of St. Peter is found to 
 be a piece of pumice-stone. And the blood of St. Januarius ? It is said 
 that the clergy of Naples are now beginning to be sufficiently embar- 
 rassed by it, having no mind either to admit the farce or to continue it. 
 
CHAPTER YI. 
 
 lAIAGE WORSHIP AND INDULGENCES. 
 
 "Worship of images — The Second Commandment — Fraud — Discussion — 
 If the images are nothing in themselves, "W'hy are some more vene- 
 rated than others — Is the worship of images really different from 
 what it was among the pagans — The worship of the Virgin, worship 
 of beauty — Questions to her worshippers — Indulgences — Historical 
 review — The council tries to purify the practice, but leaves all the 
 obscurities of the theory untouched — Discussion — Several xoherefores 
 — Ridiculous facilities — Although salvation were to be bought, the 
 greatest of the saints would not have wherewithal to pay for it — It 
 is a matter, therefore, in which none except Jesus Christ can lend aid 
 to any one. 
 
 One word more on this worship and that of images. Let us 
 observe first : 
 
 1. That there is nothing said of it in history or in the first 
 times of the Church, although it might have been very easy for 
 the faithful of Judea to have images, and, still more, relics of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 2. That if the old law, altogether material in so many re- 
 spects, absolutely banished it, the greater reason have we to con- 
 sider it as incompatible with the lofty spirituality of the new."^ 
 
 Here, accordingly, the Church has been obliged to have re- 
 course to a fraud which would be hardly credible were it less 
 easily verified. Of the ten commandments of God there is not 
 one more positive, more clear, more detailed, than the second. 
 " Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any like- 
 ness of anything that is in heaven at)ove, or that is in the earth 
 beneath, or that is in the water under the earth ; thou shalt not 
 
 ' One is confounded to see how little certain persons disquiet them- 
 selves about setting themselves in opposition not only to the spirit but 
 to the very words of the most formal scriptural declarations. " But 
 the hour cometh, and now is," saith Jesus Christ (John iv.), " when tlie 
 ti'ue worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth : for the 
 Father seeketh such to worship him." " At the present da}-," says 
 Audin i^Vie de Calvin), "one must see that prayer requires external ex- 
 citations, tliat the ignorant soul, in order to fly to God, requires mate- 
 rial signs, and that worship in truth is a mere abstraction." 
 
CriAP. VI. 1JG3. TWO COMMANDMENTS UNITED IN THE VULGATE. 015 
 
 bow down thyself to them, nor serve them." Certainly this is 
 embarrassing. Before such a law there is no way of saying, as 
 with respect to the M^orship of the saints, " We do not adore 
 them, we only pay them certain marks of homage." No, the. ^ 
 commandment has anticipated all this. " Thou shalt not bow ^"^ 
 down before images ;" it matters not with what feelings. " Thoii 
 shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them," neither 
 in the way of veneration, consequently, nor of adoration. Ob- 
 serve, in fact, that this prohibition cannot be made to mean only 
 forbidding an approach to images with such feelings as we ought 
 to have towards God alone. " Thou shalt have no other gods 
 before me," is said in the preceding commandment. Here, then, 
 we have the formal interdiction of all adoration not having God 
 for its object. It is clear, therefore, that what follows bears not 
 upon the feeling but upon the act itself. "VYhatever notions you 
 may have with respect to the image, whatever efibrts you may 
 make to avoid adoring it, from the moment that you bow down 
 before it, from the moment you give it any worship whatever, 
 the commandment is violated. The Jews never undeistccd it 
 otherwise. 
 
 In the Vuloatc, however, and when the commandments have 
 to be quoted at length, Romanists unite the second with the first, 
 an arrangement which the Jews have never admitted., and whicli 
 was admitted in the Church only on the credit of St. Augustine, 
 without ever having been positively decreed. In analyzing the 
 Decalogue, 1 Chateaubriand follows the Hebrew text. Bossuet, 
 warmly pressed by one of the ablest controversialists of his time,'-^ 
 replied that he was ready " to accommodate himself, if wished, 
 to the arrangement ibllowed by his adversaries ;" and he con- 
 tinues to support the opinion of which we have shewn the im- 
 probability, to wit. that this commandment, as the mere comple- 
 ment of the first, forbids, not the honouring, but only the ador- 
 iiiir of images. 
 
 Although the prohibition were capable of being thus Tnter- 
 preted, which we formally deny, it would still remain to be seen 
 if this distinction bo observed, and if it can be observed. All 
 the dangers which, w:a lijiA^cjiotJcedJn the worship of saints you 
 find also hele. ""We axlore_Go4%efore~4he image," said Inno- 
 cent III., ''and not the image before God." Wc ! Here, no 
 doubt, we have another instance of what we have seen called 
 elsewhere as the intention of tlie Church, that invisible correc- 
 tion of all practical errors, of all individual idolatries. As if in 
 God's sight there was anything but individuals I As if, with idol- 
 atrous thoughts and sentiments, one could not be an idolater, be- 
 
 ' G6nio dn Christianisme. ' Xoquier. 
 
516 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 cause the Church has not categorically prescribed his being so ! 
 It was in vain for the council to teach that if the Church honours 
 images, it is not that she believes that they have any divinity, 
 any virtue,^ but because the honour redounds to those whom 
 they represent. Although to prostrate one's self before creatures 
 would of itself be going infinitely too far, in the very temples 
 of God, before his face, as the commandment says — are there 
 many people who know at least that they must keep to that, 
 and who really address to the saints all the honours paid to their 
 images ? Are there in Italy, in Spain, wherever the worship of 
 saints has been fully developed, and where nobody cares about 
 Protestant objections, are there, we say, many to whom it is a 
 matter of indifference whether it be to such or such a madonna, 
 to such or such an image of the same saint that they address 
 themselves? "Will you find at Marseilles many mariners who 
 would embark after having prayed, not to their ancient patroness, 
 Our Lady cle la Garde but to Our Lady of some other place ? 
 Yet they very well know that there are not several Virgin Marys. 
 If their homage be paid only to her, why this preference openly 
 given to one above another of her statues ? How does it happen 
 that so many statues have their special attributes, and that it is so 
 common to ask something from a saint m one locality which would 
 not be asked at all, or with much less confidence in another ? 
 On this point there is no way by which the Church of Rome can 
 escape complicity. Though she may never have said, ex 'pro- 
 fesso, that certain images had more virtue than others, no more 
 has she ever had anything but encouragements for those special 
 devotions whereby this idea is rooted in the popular belief. How 
 shall a madonna, which you treat as if she were a queen, and 
 which you suffer people to consider as the palladium of a city or 
 a country, not appear a very different object in their eyes from 
 that which stands neglected at the neighbouring street-crossing ? 
 How hlinll a statue to which you attribute the working of mira- 
 cles Be no more than another which has not the reputation of 
 working any ? It is not to the statue, say you, that you attrib- 
 ute them ; it is not even to the saint whom it represents ; it is 
 to God acting in compliance with the prayer of the saint. Ay, 
 such, no doubt, is the theory ; the theory as modified and mod- 
 ernized at least, for your Romanists of pure blood have nothing 
 to do with it, far from it ; but is the practice, once more we 
 ask, is the practice often in accordance with it ? Are there many 
 who make this long circuit within which you admit that there 
 would be idolatry? All might make it, but the objection would 
 still subsist. From the moment that one image shall pass for 
 ^ ?\'ou quod credatur inesse aliqua in lis diviuitas, vel virtus. 
 
Chap. VI. lj(i:{. WORSIIIl* OF UEAUTY. 517 
 
 being more habitually tliau another, Ave do not say the cause, 
 for it is maintained that this is not believed, but merely tlie oc- 
 casion of certain lavours, is it not clear that some part at least 
 of the conlidence felt in the original, will be bestowed on the 
 image ? " The man must be blind," says Bossuet,^ " who does 
 not perceive the difierence between those who put their trust in 
 idols and those who would make images assist them in raisinjj 
 their minds to heaven." But no more did the pagans ever ad- 
 mit that they worshipped statues. In Greece, at Rome, you 
 w^ould not have found one who, on being asked to give a theo- 
 retical exposition of his worship, would not make the gods the 
 ultimate recipients of the honours paid to their statues. All 
 that Roman Catholic doctors tell us to this effect, is, word for 
 word, what was said in the third and fourth centuries, by the 
 apologists of expiring paganism. The first author of the lines 
 we have just quoted was not Bossuet — it was Julian the 
 
 Apostate. ._„— ^— 
 
 Shall we now speak of what the images ordinarily are, and 
 of the new perils with which art has surrounded the worship of 
 them ? What might we not have to say of those of the Virgin 
 in particular ? The council certainly did not decide that her 
 w^orship ought to be that of beauty ;- but Chateaubriand has 
 said it,-^ and, as elsewhere, lias in this said only what is actually 
 the fact. Let painters be allowed to represent her according to 
 their own ideas ; but upon altars, if people will have her there, 
 she ought at least to remain Avhat she was here below. Instead 
 of the simple Hebrew type, why that Greek cast of features and 
 those renewed traits of Venus ? Why that roseate tint, instead 
 of the copper-colour paleness of the w^omen of Nazareth ? Why 
 that virgin blooming with perpetual youth and beauty, although 
 she had seen her son live till his thirty-third year, and may have 
 outlived him, perhaps, many years ? When a statue is erected 
 to a great man, nobody dreams, if he has died advanced in life 
 of representing him young ; at least it would only be in the case 
 of wishing to recall some trait of his youth. Shall it be said 
 that, in representing Maiy as at the age of twenty, she is taken 
 at the time when she was the mother of Christ ? All well, if 
 the only object were to recall that great event ; but from the 
 moment that she is to be prayed to, is it not an anachronism to 
 present her to us as she was w^hen nobody in the world dreamt 
 
 ^ Exposition v. 
 
 ^ On the contrary, Procaci venustate imagines noii pingantur nee or- 
 nenhcr, says the decree. 
 
 ^ "Enchanting dogma •whicli softens down tlie terror of a God, by 
 interposing beauty between our nothingness and the divine niajest}-." 
 
518 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 as yet of praying to her, and when she herself suspected less 
 than any one the post that was to be assigned to her ? If ever 
 she filled that post — which we persist in denying — it is clear it 
 must have been at a much later period, after the death of her 
 son, after her own death. Why, then, we repeat, why pray to 
 her as a young and beautifuf ^voman, if it was only ill her old 
 ; age or after her death that she began to be in a position to be 
 
 L prayed to ? In heaven, it is true, souls are neither young nor 
 old ; but if this be the reason for your Virgin being always young, 
 l-emember that this privilege is common to her with all the souls 
 that have been released from the body's miseries. You gene- 
 rally represent the male saints as very old ;^ but as for the female, 
 nothing too fresh, too charming for them. Provided you can but 
 lay hold of jDeople, it matters little to you whether it be by the 
 heart or the eyes, the pure or the impure." Come, now, tell us 
 candidly, would you have been as much devoted to the Yirgin,-had 
 you never seen her represented but as a woman of sixty,. dressed 
 as she ought to be, in a small town of Judea, the wife or the 
 widow of a carpenter ? Would you in that case have given her 
 all those poetical surnames which you shower upon her in her 
 litanies ^ "Wtraldall tliose poets^'iio sing her praTses, and many 
 of whom, with that exception, are no more Roman Catholics 
 than we are — well for them, indeed, if they he not at heart per- 
 fect infidels — would they ever think of singing her praises ? Ah I 
 Home, Home, here we see thee truly all things to all me7i ! It 
 remains to be seen whether after the manner of St. Paul or as 
 *' the great 'prostitut^' of the prophets. 
 
 To come at last to indulgences, it is impossible for us to fol- 
 low the same course, by attacking first the principle, then the 
 form and the abuse. Here the abuse is inherent in the principle. 
 There is no indulgence that is not necessarily, and in itself, an 
 abuse. 
 
 To say that there is nothing about it in Scripture would be as 
 if we should try to prove that it was day at noon, and night at 
 midnight. This the Church of Rome knows as well as we.^ 
 
 ^ Except Saiut John. Althougli he survived all the other Apostles, 
 a "whimsical usage has condemned liim to remain under the figure of a 
 youth. 
 
 ^ Liguori, Sanchez, the Compendiwn and many other books, 'woxdd 
 supply us with revelations, were they required, of what is concealed 
 under the worship of the saints. 
 
 ^ "Would the reader know what Father Biner has ventured to say ? 
 The salutary dogma of indulgences, of purgatory, of the worship and 
 the invocation of saints, images, and relics, were discussed by folloiclity 
 the Word of God to the letter. Assuredly few more impudent lines have 
 been written from the beginning of the world. 
 
Chap. VI. 15(33. INDULGENCES— HISTORICAL REVIEW. 519 
 
 Or rather, yes ; there is something about it in Scripture, and 
 a great deal too. From beginning to end the New Testament 
 is just a long indulgence, sealed at every page with the blood 
 of Jesus Christ ; but that indulgence is unique and it is perfect ; 
 it belongs by faith to whosoever desires and asks for it, and, for 
 an evangelical Christian, there is no stranger enigma than an in- 
 dulgence of two da}^s, of three days, of a hundred days, as says 
 the Roman Church. 
 
 Indulgences, in their origin, were merely an accommodation of 
 the ancient discipline to the less severe morals of the times that 
 followed. The penances imposed by the Church were, in primi- 
 tives times, measured by days, months, sometimes years. Hence 
 the custom of granting to the faithful, on some occasions, means 
 of abridging their duration. A three days' indulgence, for ex- 
 ample, signified that all the faithful, subject at the time to certain 
 penances, might, on fulfilling certain fixed conditions, prayers, 
 alms, &c., abridge them by three days. 
 
 This arrangement was too much in accordance, on the one 
 hand, with the public relaxation of morals, and on the other, with 
 the encroaching propensities of the Church, not to be carried ere 
 long some steps farther. From the idea of a mere mitigation of 
 temporal pains inflicted by the Church, it gradually passed into 
 that of the abbreviation of men's sufferings in the life to come. 
 This doctrine, and that of purgatory, after having mutually ac- 
 credited each other, formed at last only one and the same sys- 
 tem : a three days' indulgence then signified and have continued 
 to signify, in the language of the Church, three days retrenched 
 from those appointed to be spent in purgatory. As for the scan- 
 dalous excesses which afterwards made the sale of induljrences 
 so notorious, it would be superfluous to speak here in detail. It 
 forms one of those points on which the Romanist historians re- 
 sign themselves best to being agreed with us. 
 
 The council abolished what had been most flagrant in the 
 human or, if you will, commercial abuse of indulgences ; they 
 continue to be paid for, but at least they are not made a market 
 of The form, accordingly, is a little better ; the substance has 
 not changed and could not change ; it has, on the contrary, re- 
 ceived a strikingly significant sanction. At Trent the doctrine 
 of indulgences took its place definitively among the Roman 
 dogmas.^ 
 
 Yet the council did not condescend to any explanation of the 
 nature and the object of indulgences. AYe have seen, at the 
 
 ' See how ingeniously all this is arranged and attenuated by Bossuet, 
 {Exposition viii.) " Such," says he in concluding, " is the holy and in- 
 nocent doctrine of the Church." 
 
520 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VL 
 
 commencement of this history, on the occasion of the attempts 
 made by Adrian YI. to give a satisfactory theory on the subject, 
 that it is quite as difficult to explain the matter to Roman 
 Catholics as to prove it to Protestants. On the one hand, we 
 said, if the dispositions of the heart go for nothing in the effect 
 which the indulgence is to produce, paradise is put up to the 
 highest bidder ; if they do go for something, they necessarily go 
 for a great deal, and then it becomes impossible to say precisely 
 what is given to you when you obtain an indulgence. The de- 
 cree refers us to what the Church teaches. Where are we to 
 find that ? Surely it was for the council to say. Usage has 
 led, although the decree says nothing about it, to indulgences 
 being considered as applicable to the dead ; one may gain them 
 for the dead as well as for himself Ever the same scandalous 
 partiality of which we have spoken already in treating of the mass. 
 If you have left relations and friends who are concerned about 
 your being delivered from purgatory, delivered you will be ; if 
 you happen to have none, then though you might have been all 
 but a saint, you must stay out your time. 
 
 Next, let us see. Either the pope has the power of bringing 
 souls out of purgatory, or he has not. If he has not, the question 
 is decided. If he has,^ what cruelty then for him to leave there 
 whole millions of souls whom he might by a word bring out of 
 it I Without going so far, why this strange inequality in the 
 distribution of a treasure which is deemed inexhaustible ? Why 
 will a 'pater and an ave in my parish church avail for only five 
 or six days' indulgence, when they avail for forty days in another 
 church, before another Madonna or another cross ? Why is the 
 performance of the same works paid, in such or such a congre- 
 gation, with a plenary indulgence, and, in this or that other, 
 with a mere indulgence for a time ? Why — ^but we should never 
 end with the contradictions with which this matter is beset. Yet 
 let us give one, just one more. If plenary indulgence be not 
 merely a lure, how comes it that masses continue to be said for 
 the souls of those who received it when dying ? AVhy that sol- 
 emn dc profundis repeated at Rome during the whole reign of 
 a pope, on the anniversary of the death of his predecessor ? This 
 is what Luther said in his theses, and the objection is not the less 
 embarrassing for being old. The only means of getting out of 
 the difficulty would be to accept the consequences of the system. 
 You have only to regard as well and duly entered into heaven 
 all who left this world with that infallible passport, and to refuse, 
 therefore, to say a mass for them. And why is this not done ? 
 
 * Let us not forget that it was Alexander VI. who first officially ar- 
 rogated to himself this power. 
 
Chap. VI. 1503. CHEAPNESS OF 1NDI'L(JENCES. &'il 
 
 We have no need lo explain. Between a mere act of inconsist- 
 ency added to so many otliers, and the dryin*^ up of the very he.st 
 source of her revenues, could Home ever hesitate ? 
 
 But if there be ground to ask, on the one hand, why the pope 
 and the bishops have not, at least, the charity to grant every- 
 where, and to all, as many indulgences as they have a right to 
 dispense — no less reason have we to be astonished at the low 
 price they put upon them, and the incredible facilities oflered to 
 such as want to acquire them. See, for example, the statutes 
 of the brotherhood, (co/?frcric,) well known under the name of 
 the 9nost lioly and immaculate heart of Mary. By a brief of 
 1838, plenary indulgence is accorded to those who shall worthily 
 confess on the day of their reception into the brotherhood ; which 
 is as much as saying to people, " Come in among us, and all 
 your previous sins will be wiped out." Plenary indulgence, 
 moreover, to such as shall confess themselves, and comnmnicate 
 at certain epochs of the year, and these are ten in number. 
 Farther, indulgence of five hundred days to whosoever shall de- 
 voutly be present at the mass of Saturday, and shall pray lor the 
 conversion of sinners.^ Though w^e should believe in indulgences, 
 it strikes us that we could not but feel some scruples at seeing 
 them lavished away in this manner. For a mass that shall have 
 cost you half an hour, to be exempted from purgatory for near a 
 year and a half I For one confession, to be exempted from it for 
 altogether, although you may have deserved a thousand years 
 of it I If not stopt by shame, these bold traffickers in salvation 
 ouo-ht, at least, one Avould think, to dread lest their wares should 
 sufier depreciation in consequence of being given away for so 
 little. True, they do not cost them anything, and there is no limit 
 to the purchases. Nobody well knowing to how many years of 
 purgatory he may be condemned, can reasonably stop in addmg 
 to the amount of indulgences with which he is to appear at the 
 bar of judgment. By placing himself on the most favourable 
 conditions, and taking care to let no occasion be lost, a man of 
 sixty might without difficulty have amassed them for above a 
 million of years, over and above the plenary ones, each one of 
 which ought to suffice, and with which one does not well see 
 what the rest can signify. In St. Dominick's time an indulgence 
 of one hundred years cost 15,000 disciplinary lashes, and Domi- 
 nick once gave himself 150,000 of these in the course of a single 
 
 ^ Tlie intention is laudable ; but -uhat is the prayer -which the asso- 
 ciated sluill have, besides, to repeat daily /or the convention of sinners? 
 The Ave Maria. Is it not to belie botli letter and spirit to invite people 
 to repeat certain ^vords with an eye to an end which those words do not 
 even mention? 
 
522 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 Leut.^ The road to heaven, it will be seen, has been marvel- 
 lously widened since that time. Lainez said, the object of church 
 discipline is to facilitate man's fulfilling of God's law. 
 
 It is commonly taught, in fine, that the indulgence has for 
 its basis the merits of Jesus Christ and of the saints, applied by 
 the Church to persons whose own merits would not suffice for 
 their salvation. 
 
 Now, as for those of Jesus Christ, we have already observed 
 that the Church has nothinoj to do with administerino- them in 
 fixed doses, since every one may, by faith, find there fully his 
 justification and his salvation. The Church herself would not 
 dare to proclaim them insufficient. 
 
 As for those of the saints, the custom of applying them to 
 others is not only an abuse, but it amounts to the subversion of 
 the Christian economy. 
 
 There is not, in fact, in the whole Bible, any truth more 
 clearly or more frequently taught than that of man's inability to 
 win heaven. Common sense, besides, sufficiently teaches it. A 
 workman, however earnestly he may set himself to his task, 
 could never earn in one day the right to take rest for thirty 
 years. Between eternity and the sixty or eighty years of this life, 
 the disproportion is a hundred times, a thousand times greater. 
 Fill up these sixty or eighty years with as many virtues as you 
 will, not the less evident is it, that they never could make up 
 the purchase-money of an eternal and infinite happiness. As- 
 suming this, in vain for you to have had a little more of the vir- 
 tues, a little more zeal than another : liow could you contrive to 
 let him have the benefit of them ? You have not paid for the 
 thousandth part of your own acquisition — what could another 
 borrow from you that is not owing to your creditor, as payment 
 to account of the whole sum due ? Two men have each an enor- 
 mous sum to pay : one produces fifty crowns, the other five-and- 
 twenty, and the debts of both are discharged. Would you say, 
 therefore, that the first has paid more than was necessary, and 
 that his overplus of five-and-twenty crowns will cover the debt 
 of a third debtor ? Although we should teach, in opposition to 
 Scripture, that salvation is to be purchased by works, still it 
 would have to be admitted that the very greatest of saints has 
 never paid more than an imperceptible proportion of the price 
 of it. And if one may say, strictly speaking, that God might 
 have saved him for less, this nowise proves that he has done too 
 much, paid too much, and that the surplusage of his efforts may 
 be passed to another. Do Ave find this to be said by those saints, 
 those martyrs, in the Apocalypse, who are represented as pray- 
 ' Hiirter, Institutions de VEglise, vii. 
 
Chap. VI. 1503. SUPEREROGATION. •'j^" 
 
 iiig Ibr llie Cliurch before the throne of God ? What liuniiHty, 
 on the contrary, in their subhmest songs of triumph. What fer- 
 vour in their acknowledgments that they have been saved by 
 the blood of him whom they call the Lamb. Mow little do they 
 seem to say that their merits could save, or help to save, any 
 creatures whatever I Yet such is the doctrine that Roman 
 Catholics make bold to preach. " What aflecting things,"' says 
 Chateaubriand, " in this doctrine. My virtue, poor paltry mor- 
 tal as I am, becomes the common property of all Christians ; and 
 in like manner, as 1 have been tainted with Adam's sin, my 
 righteousness has been put to the account of others." It would 
 be difficult to imagine anything more radically antichristian. 
 Let us listen rather to Lmocent IlL, the wisest and the most 
 evangelical of the popes, every time that he does not speak as a 
 pope. " JN'obody is justified in the sight of God," said he, " by 
 the merit of his Avorks, but by the gift of grace. Before the 
 purity of the Creator, all the purity of the creature is impurity." 
 Did Luther say anything else ? And having said that, did he 
 not say everything ? 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SESSION XXV. ALL DIFFICULTIES ENDED, THE COUNCIL BREAKS 
 
 UP AND THE POPE TRIUMPHS. 
 
 Eeformatory decree on the subject of the religious orders — Encroach- 
 ments on the civil authority — Decree of general reformation — Wise 
 measures — Digression on the acceptance of the council in France — The 
 dogmatic decrees are thought little worthy of a council — The pope 
 dangerously ill — More and more haste made — Threatening difficulties 
 — ^These are smoothed down — The pope's confirmation to be asked for 
 — All the old decrees to be read in public — The decree on the princes 
 to have everything removed from it that can shock them — Twenty- 
 fifth and last session — Unlooked-for article in favour of the pope's 
 authority — Prorogation until next day — ^The decree on indulgences 
 past — Resumption of the session — Fasts, festivals, the Index, the Cat- 
 echism, questions of precedency, <fec. — Reading of the old decrees — 
 One further difficulty eluded — ^Final voting — The pope's confirmation 
 asked for — Resistances — View taken of the confirmation b}' those even 
 who advise it — It is given — The pope reserves to himself the interpre- 
 tation of the decrees — Rome can as little trust the decrees of Trent 
 as she can trust the Bible — Conclusion. 
 
 And now let us return, no more to digress from them, to the 
 last deliberations of the council. 
 
 Two decrees of reformation accompanied the dogmatical de- 
 crees that we have been analyzing. 
 
 In the first, relative to the religious orders, we perceive in 
 many an article a collision with the civil power. In the fifth, 
 for example, magistrates and princes are enjoined, under pain of 
 excommunication, to aid bishops in confining within the cloister, 
 nuns who should attempt to be free. Now, governments the 
 most disposed, by being Roman Catholic, to act in this spirit, 
 have never admitted that the Church had the right to require it 
 at their hands. 
 
 The council fixed sixteen years as the minimum age required 
 for the validity of vows. This was a compromise between the 
 custom that prevailed of pronouncing them much earlier, and the 
 term of eighteen, twenty, and even thirty years, generally asked 
 by the princes ; but this regulation, so inadequate in itself, has 
 never been seriously observed. Girls destined to the cloister, 
 continued to enter as children, and their liberty was, in point of 
 fact, engaged long before they took the vows. Another enjoined, 
 it is true, that before admitting them to the solemn profession, 
 
Chap. VII. 1563. DECREE OF GENERAL REFOR.MATION. 525 
 
 the bishop sliould ascertain that they came to it with their full 
 consent ; but what was there to fear fioin those wills so fashioned 
 and compressed? The council had no need to excommunicate 
 whosoever should force a girl to embrace the religious life ; the 
 field remahied, and will ever remain, open to indirect compulsion, 
 to skilful circumventions. It was said, in fine, that the renunci- 
 ations and donations of the novices in favour of their convents, 
 should not be valid till after their vows. A very wise regula- 
 tion, but no more had that any eflect, but to redouble the eager- 
 ness of the monasteries to retain those whose patrimony they 
 coveted. In a state of things which was faulty at the base, all 
 corrections in detail do as much harm as good, and only serve, m 
 short, to legalize abuses. Several prelates made some very j ndi- 
 cious remarks on this subject, but the council was too much 
 pressed for time to pause to consider them. 
 
 Still more did the decree of general reformation give signs of 
 the precipitation with which it had been prepared. Of the 
 twenty articles of Avhich it was composed, few were not either 
 too vague to have serious results, or too much mixed up with civil 
 matters not to raise invincible opposition on the part of the princes. 
 
 Among the articles which were too vague, but to which it 
 would hardly have been possible to give more precision, without 
 making a profound breach on the constitution of the Church, 
 we would adduce that which forbids bishops to enrich their re- 
 lations and friends with church property, recommending to them 
 at the same time, the greatest simplicity in their dress, furniture, 
 table, and general habits ; that in which all hereditary, or ap- 
 pearance of hereditary succession to benefices, is proscribed ; that, 
 in fine, which prescribes that dispensations should be granted, 
 only after mature consideration and knowledge of the case ; and, 
 moreover, without any retribution. Many a time does this last 
 clause occur, yet we cannot but repeat that it has never been 
 observed, and at Rome less than anywhere else. 
 
 As for the articles in which the council encroached on the 
 civil authority, there were some of all sorts. 
 
 In the third, side by side with some wise advices on the danger 
 and impropriety of lavishing excommunications, the bishop is al- 
 lowed to retain the power of excommunicating, in certain cases, 
 for civil and criminal affairs. 
 
 In the eighth, he is authorized to change, when it shall appear 
 necessary to him, the destination of hospital property. 
 
 In the ninth, he is made sole judge of the legitimacy of pa- 
 tronages, that is to say, of the virtues on the ground of which 
 the feudal lords should as patrons appoint to certain cures and 
 benefices. 
 
526 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 In the tenth, the pope's legates and nuncios are assumed to 
 have in all countries a jurisdiction independent of that of the 
 sovereigns and bishops. 
 
 In the nineteenth, in fine, duelling is proscribed,^ but to can- 
 onical penalties is added that of the confiscation of goods, a 
 penalty purely civil, and totally beyond the competence of the 
 assembly. 
 
 All these articles are of the number of those which prevented 
 the council, after its close, from being accepted without restric- 
 tion in any state in Europe. ^ In France, as we have said 
 already, it has never been oihcially received, either with or 
 without restrictions, notwithstanding the reiterated solicitations 
 of the bishops, addressed to Charles IX., Henry III., Henry IV., 
 and Lewis XIII. Those of our day insist that the soncitations 
 of their predecessors were equivalent to the regular reception of 
 the council of the whole body of the French clergy. They rea- 
 sonably may do so ; but those very solicitations, and still more 
 the terms in which they are conceived, prove at the same time, 
 with the clearest evidence, that the clergy who made them did 
 not consider the council as received in France, inasmuch as it 
 had not been received by the French government. " The Coun- 
 cil of Trent has been received by all kings, and there remains 
 only this kingdom that ... In such sort that for your kingdom 
 there remains a mark and reproach put upon it by other king- 
 doms for the crime of schism. "-^ " Other kingdoms have received 
 it, and this kingdom which, above all others, has the title of Most 
 Christian, has yet to receive it.""* " The whole earth has re- 
 ceived this council. Shall we make ourselves the enemies of 
 Judah and Benjamin? Shall we, like the infidels, hinder the 
 rebuilding of the temple ?"^ The States-general, in 1614, were 
 addressed in the same language. Fifty years after the council, 
 
 ' This detestable custom, says the decree, introduced by the devil, 
 its author. Detcstahilis usus, fabricante diabolo introductus. As detest- 
 able and diabolical as you please; but it is curious to see- the council 
 attribute to the devil a custom, Avhich every one knows was introduced, 
 or certainly at least adopted, in the Middle Age, by the Church herself. 
 "What is duelling but a degenerate continuance of the famous Judgment 
 of God? 
 
 * See Histoire de la reception du Concile de Trente, by the Abbe Mignot, 
 1756. 
 
 ^ The Archbishop of Bourges to Henr}'- III., in the name of the Gen- 
 eral Assembly of the Clergy, 1582. 
 
 * The Bisliop of Mons to Henry IV., in the name of the Assembl}- of 
 1596. 
 
 * The Archbishop of Yienne, in the name of the Assembly of 1605. — 
 See the work last cited, and the Notes sur le Concile de Trent, by Rapi- 
 cod, 1706. 
 
Chat. VII. 1503. THE COUNCIL NOT ACCEPTED IN FRANCE. '>27 
 
 therefore, the king not having received it, the bishops did not 
 consider it as received. This question, lor the rest, is a much 
 more serious one among Roman Cathohcs, than when viewed in 
 relation to the attacks made against them. We would here 
 merely point to it in passing, and remark how much the French 
 clergy, on this, as on so many other things, have changed their 
 opinions since the sixteenth century. 
 
 All these decrees, witli the exception of that on indulgences, 
 which they did not well know how to arrange, and which they 
 spoke of omitting, were drawn up and voted with extraordinary 
 rapidity. Hardly was there here and there a detail, a word upon 
 which there was not immediate unanimity ; but this very unani- 
 mity called forth, on the part of some prelates, an objection which 
 was destined not to disappear with the opposition given by those 
 who then formally stated it. These prelates openly said that 
 these last doctrinal articles appeared to them superficial, insuffi- 
 cient, little worthy of a council. One has seen, and we could 
 have demonstrated the thing still more clearly, how much ground 
 there was for this reproach. All difficulties are evaded. Of all 
 the questions which a Roman Catholic might ask himself on 
 these points, all so interesting to him, and so closely connected 
 with what is most usual in his faith and in his worship, there is 
 hardly one of w^hich he finds the solution there. Hardly will he 
 find what is most elementary in a child's catechism. After so 
 many anathemas ondisciplinaiy, and even on civil matters, there 
 is none on the worship of saints, none on that of images, none on 
 inirgatory. 
 
 This arose from the desire to come to a close having daily 
 gained ground, so as to ferment " marvellously" in all men's 
 hearts.^ The emperor's ambassadors, in particular, were con- 
 stantly pressing the legates. If matters were not hastened, they 
 said, their master would recall them ; it w^as not until after the 
 close that it w^as known that the emperor had not really had any 
 such intention. The Portuguese ambassador held nearly the 
 same language. Those of Venice and other states joined their 
 urgent calls, and the Count di Luna, even while expressing his 
 desire to wait for a letter from the king of Spain, did not seem 
 indisposed to their proceeding notwithstanding. The legates 
 wrote in consequence, that " harvest time had arrived/' when of 
 a sudden, on the 27th of I^ovember, in the evening, the count 
 came to them, and expressed quite diilerent sentiments. As for 
 him, he said, he had more reasons than any one to return to his 
 country at the soonest possible, death having there decimated his 
 ' Pallavicini, 1. xxiv. All the details that follow are from him. 
 
528 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 family, and thrown his affairs into disorder ; but the interest of 
 the council and of the Church had more weight with him than 
 any other consideration. Would it not be very sad that a work 
 pursued during eighteen years should not have an honourable 
 end ? If it were not really possible to do all that the wants of 
 Christendom might have exacted, ought not the council at least 
 to proceed with dignity to the little that it was still about to do ? 
 " Wherefore expose themselves, in their eagerness to pluck the 
 apple some days too soon, to the risk of having only harsh fruit, 
 that never can have the sweet and healthy fragrance that perfect 
 ripeness alone can give ?" 
 
 In spite of these representations the legates persisted ; they 
 even openly announced their intention not to wait for the day 
 that had been fixed (9th December) for the celebration of the 
 last session. On the 29th of November the count called around 
 him all the prelates of his nation, and, to his great surprise, found 
 only two or three who were resolved to join him in opposing the 
 council's being brought to a close. On the day following he held 
 another meeting, but with no better success. Hardly had they 
 left the house when a courier arrived from Rome ; the pope had 
 had a relapse ; he may by that time have died. In vain did the 
 count protest anew that his master did not dream of troubling 
 the next election, by holding that it belonged to the council : the 
 majority could never feel at their ease till the assembly should be 
 dissolved. 
 
 Everything concurred towards the hastening of the close ; but 
 it might bring back all the old difficulties attending the opening. 
 On the 2d of December, although the legates had decided to 
 hold the session on the morrow, there was a host of things on 
 which the members had not come to any common understand- 
 ing. 
 
 First of all, the pope was not presumed to have any cogniz- 
 ance of the decrees that were to be made, or of those of the other 
 sessions. Under what form was the official communication to 
 be made ? Was the- council to make a formal request for the 
 pope's approbation ? That would be to own the council's inferi- 
 ority ; to which the Spaniards and the French would never con- 
 sent. Were they to send the decrees to him as definitively pass- 
 ed ? That would be to teach the superiority of the council. 
 The Roman party had at first the idea of taking the course of 
 separating without having regulated that point. The decrees 
 were to be sent to Rome ; the confirmation was to be given 
 without any farther explanation. But all other difficulties 
 were so evidently in the course of being smoothed away that it 
 was thought one might venture to remove this too. The confer- 
 
CjiAP. VII 1503. SMOOTHING OF DIFFICULTIES. C29 
 
 ences were calm and l)ri('f. The most roLelliou.s were piveii to 
 understand tliat tlie \m\rdl conllrmation did not necessarily imply 
 the superiority of the po})c ; that it was merely the act by which, 
 as head ol" the executive power in the Church, he made himself 
 responsible for the execution of her decrees. As they wanted 
 nothing better than to be persuaded, they were persuaded, and 
 in the end there was but one prelate, the Archbishop of Gren- 
 ada, who persisted in not asking for the pope's confirmation. 
 
 At the same time there vanished, as if by enchantment, the 
 difficulty which had very nearly prevented the council iVom be- 
 ing resumed. It will be remembered with what warmth the 
 French and the Germans had repelled the idea that the assembly 
 of 1562 was the sequel of those of 1545 and 1551. ^Ye have 
 seen that a decision on this point had been avoided, and the 
 event proved how much wisdom there had been in leaving it to 
 be decided by time and the force of circumstances. Time had 
 brought everybody to desire a speedy conclusion ; now that pre- 
 supposes one whole, which the decrees of those last two years 
 evidently were not. To vote for the close was therefore of ne- 
 cessity to vote the acceptance of all the anterior decrees. It was 
 proposed, accordingly, in that sitting of the 2d of December, that 
 there should be read at the last session all that had been publish- 
 ed under Paul III., and under Julius III., and not a voice wa.s 
 raised against this solemn declaration of the unity of the three 
 councils. 
 
 In fine, by way of acknowledgment for so much ready com- 
 pliance, the Roman party consented to remove from the decree 
 on the princes, all the special proscriptions, as well as all tlie 
 anathemas with which it had been proposed that they should bo 
 supported. The council was only to renew, in general terms, the 
 ancient canons relative to the Church's immunities, and the prin- 
 ces were to be respectfully craved to observe them, and to cause 
 them to be observed. 
 
 On Friday, 3d December, 1563, (Session XXV.,) after the or- 
 dinary ceremonies and a triumphal sermon preached by Jerome 
 llaggazoni, a Venetian, and Bishop of Nazianzum, the Council pro- 
 ceeded to the reading of the decrees which had not been definitive- 
 ly agreed upon until pretty far on in the night. The legates took 
 the freedom to add an article, no mention of which had been made 
 in the preparatory meetings, and which, at any other time, would 
 not have passed without raising a storm. It bore, that " what- 
 ever expressions and whatever clauses might have been put into 
 the decrees, the council meant that it should not be, and that it 
 could not be interpreted, in any case, to the prejudice of the au- 
 
 Z 
 
530 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TREiNT. Book VI. 
 
 thority of the Holy See."^ This was the old salva semper more 
 positive and more general than ever. The authority of the 
 Holy See not having been defined, either de jure or de facto, 
 the pope remained, as he had ever been, sole judge of his own 
 rights, and widest latitude was left to him, as was abundantly 
 seen from the sequel, in the interpretation and application of the 
 decrees. Although this article, in fine, did not plainly contain 
 the doctrine of the pope's superiority, it was clear that ultra- 
 montanism would have no difficulty in giving it that meaning. 
 The authority of the Holy See is represented in it as in such sort 
 beyond the sphere of every kind of discussion, that no council 
 could ever entertain the thought of circumscribing it by any 
 limits. 
 
 As four or five hours at least were required for reading the 
 old decrees, it had been decided that the session should last two 
 days. 
 
 Next day, then, very early, the members held a general con- 
 gregation for deciding on the decree upon indulgences. The 
 ultra-Romanists had made fresh efforts to have it thrown aside, 
 but this was opposed by a pretty large majority. Singular des- 
 tiny of the question that had once on a time made so much noise, 
 and that had turned men's minds most warmly towards reforma- 
 tion and a council." It was at the close of eighteen years, an 
 hour or two before it met for the last time, that the assembly, 
 with great difficulty, found a few moments to devote to what had, 
 in 1517, evoked the first thunderbolts that were launched at the 
 head of Luther I 
 
 This accomplished, the session was resumed. The decree 
 just finished was read, then a second on fasting, the distinction 
 of meats, and the observance of festivals. ^ On those points the 
 council confined itself to recommending, in a general way, the 
 observance of the laws of the Church. As it was known that 
 the bishops were but little agreed on the question, whether laws 
 of this kind are of divine or of ecclesiastical right,^ and up to 
 
 ' Omnia et singula, sub quibuseunquc clausulis et verbis . . . ita de- 
 creta fuisse, ut in his salva semper auctoritas Sedis Apostolicoe et sit et 
 esse intelligatur. 
 
 2 " That pastors should do their utmost to make people obey these 
 commandments, especially those that concern the mortification of the 
 flesh, such as the distinction of meats, fasts," <fec. — The Council. 
 
 "Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink. "Wherefore 
 if 3'e be dead Avith Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as 
 though living in the world, are ye subject to (such) ordinances?" — St. 
 Paul. 
 
 ^ St. Paul, nevertheless, has said (Colossians ii.) that these laws are 
 the " commandments and doctrines of men ;" but St. Paul had no voice 
 in the council if they in the least dreaded any opposition on his part. 
 
Chap. VII. 1563. READING OF THE OLD DECREES. 631 
 
 what }X)int they are either, it had been so contrived that the 
 council had not to pronounce cither way. 
 
 Three other articles followed. One, that the definitive com- 
 position of the Index and the Catechism,' previously decreed, 
 should be remitted to the pope. A second, to declare that ques- 
 tions of precedence, whatever solution might have been given 
 to them at Trent, were to be considered as precisely where they 
 were before the council had met. The third, recoinnionding to 
 the princes and bishops the prompt and rigorous observance of 
 the decrees. 
 
 In fine, they proceeded to read those that had been passed 
 under Paul III. and under Julius III., but with the studious 
 omission of anything that could intimate whether this was meant 
 as a confirmation of them, or only as a declaration, by recalling 
 them, of the identity of the council. It was of great consequence 
 that this point should remain undecided. To declare that they 
 were thus confirmed was to give a triumph to those who had 
 previously attacked them as not being definitive decrees ; to de- 
 clare that they were recalled, but without confirming them, in- 
 asmuch as they had all their authority already, would have been 
 to put many persons in the dilemma of either having to admit 
 that they had done wrong in protesting before or of renewing 
 their protests. Hence the precaution taken to speak only of a 
 reading.2 Ever, down to the last moment, compromises, sub- 
 terfuges, questions eluded, principles dissembled under forms, be- 
 cause there was either want of the courage or want of the will 
 to agitate what lay essentially at the bottom of them. 
 
 There remained the final voting, that on the petition to the 
 pope for confirmation. Although it might have been hoped, in 
 the last preparatory assembly, that there would be but a single 
 opposing voice, great was the anguish of anxiety ; the ground 
 they stood upon was felt to be so radically false that it was not 
 easy for one to stumble without making many others do the 
 same. It was perceived that it would require no great eflbrt for 
 people to ask themselves what sort of infallibility that could be 
 that went in search of a confirmation of its decrees from another 
 infallibility. We have said already how the matter stood ; either 
 the council's decisions had been hitherto null, although the as- 
 sembly had all along spoken and acted as if they thought them 
 valid, or they had their force, their full force already, for there 
 are no degrees in infallibility. What in that case would the 
 papal confirmation signify ? 
 
 * The Index appeared in March, 1564, and the Catechism in Septem- 
 ber, 1566. 
 
 - Vult sancta synodiis lit ilia nunc recitentnr et legantur. 
 
532 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 These objections, which they were fortunate enough to con- 
 trive that no one should bring forward, were about to become 
 more sahent than ever by the manner in which the papal sanc- 
 tion was bestowed. 
 
 Pius IV. felt disposed to grant it immediately ; but however 
 inadequate the reforms that had been ordered might be, there 
 was enouffh in them to frighten his court, and nothing had more 
 shocked it, in particular, than to see the cardinals expressly com- 
 prised in some of the most severe decrees. Accordingly, long 
 before the last session the parties chiefly interested had taken 
 their measures. "When the legates arrived at Rome with the 
 petition for confirmation, the pope was already circumvented, 
 troubled, dismayed. As for personal sacrifices, he had resigned 
 himself to them all the more readily, as he remained after the 
 dissolution of the assembly sole master of his own conduct, so as 
 either to carr}' the reforms into effect or to say no more about 
 them ; but he made eftbrts in vain to close his ears to those de- 
 clamations and those lamentations that now came upon him 
 from all quarters. To the vexation of making so many discon- 
 tented there were added his own scruples, those at least which 
 artful advisers had contrived to suggest to him with respect to 
 his duties and his position as pope. Was he free in point of 
 conscience to abandon any portion whatever of what his prede- 
 cessors had considered as the rights of the Holy See ? Very great 
 doctors had said — No ; and as there was not a single abuse, how- 
 ever crying, that might not have been shewn to be connected 
 more or less remotely with the papal prerogatives, there was not 
 a kitchen scullion belonging to the pope, as De Lansac the am- 
 bassador would say, that was not ready to throw himself on the 
 rights of Peter, were it even in opposing the pope himself Is 
 it much otherwise at the present day ? Ask Pius IX. He is 
 better acquainted than any one with that inextricable maze of 
 interests, usages, abuses, prerogatives, real or factitious wants, 
 with which the pontifical throne has ever been beset. From the 
 pope down to the lowest sacristan, everybody at Rome feels as 
 if he were in one of those ancient houses which are wanting 
 neither in beauty without nor in comfort within, but of which 
 not a bit of wall can be taken down and repaired without your 
 being led to rebuild the whole from top to bottom. 
 
 These difficulties were removed. Let us see how. 
 
 First, we find that the Cardinal da Mula, in a commission of 
 inquiry on the subject, voted for the confirmation, but with the 
 following remarks : 
 
 That people had much reason to congratulate themselves on 
 seeing they had come to the end of so many fatigues, disquie- 
 
l.'HAi'. Vll. JoC.J. .SHALL rill': I'ol'E COMIR.M 'llli: DECKELS' '•'■■'■I 
 
 tudcs, and expenses ; juul to avoid the risk of falling into tlicni 
 :i<iuin, only perliaps to extricate themselves in a iiir worse condi- 
 tion the next time ; 
 
 . That to refuse confirmation might lead some to dispense Milh 
 it, and to obey the council, as having no need of it ; others to 
 consider all the decrees as null ; and then to have recourse to 
 national councils ; 
 
 That by taking a middle course, as Avas recommende<l by 
 many, that is to say, by selecting the decrees on the faith i<Dr 
 immediate approval, and reserving the rest to be doterrnined 
 upon afterwards, the ditliculty would not be eilectually removed, 
 and all sorts of dansiers M'ould be amassed for the future ; 
 
 Tliat if, according to other -counsels, they were to be approved 
 in the lump, but with certain modifications in detail, this wc-uld 
 be to expose the pontifical authorit}^ to the most delicate contes- 
 tations ; 
 
 That, accordingly, there was iio room to hesitate between s(;me 
 disagreeable things, the bearing of which it would be easy to at- 
 tenuate, and the storms of all kinds which so unlooked for a re- 
 fusal M-ould infallibly draw down upon the Holy See. 
 
 Da Mula was followed by Hugh Buoncompagno, bishop of 
 Bestice, not a cardinal till afterwards, but already one of the 
 pope's oracles, who summed up the state of matters with even 
 more frankness. 
 
 First, he asked why the decrees of Trent, oven when con- 
 firmed by the j)opc, should have more authority than so many 
 others, of which the pope has remained supreme arbiter. The 
 validity of laws, according to him, and not only their practical 
 validity, but their meaning, necessarily depends on the man w ho 
 governs. There is nothing to prevent opposing use to la^vs, the 
 necessity of the moment to the general necessities contemplated 
 in the decree. Will it be said that the adversaries of the Holy 
 .See will have, in this new code, an arsenal always open ? But 
 nothing more easy than to shut it against them. "When the 
 rule of iSt. Francis, full of ambiguities, threatened to raise a war 
 among its interpreters, what did JN^icIiolas HI. do ? He forbade 
 ■the interpretation of it by any one but liimself or his delegates. 
 This might be wisely done as re?p(^ts tlio decrees of Trent. 
 Confirm them ; but ordain at the .-^ame tune that no one shall 
 have the right, or ought even to entertain the thought of inter- 
 preting them. 
 
 This idea pleased Pius IV. Yet it was a thing quite unheard 
 of even in the annals of jiapal despotism. To forbid writing 
 glosses on ancient and more or less obscure laws, is still done ; 
 but to publish simultaneously with the code, a piohibition against 
 
534 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 studying its meaning, is the last possible step that can be taken 
 in the subjugation of the conscience and of thought. 
 
 That very step, which we should deem to be fabulous, were 
 there not the solemn bull there^ to attest it, was actually taken. 
 '• In virtue of the apostolic authority, we prohibit all, whether 
 ecclesiastics, of any rank whatsoever, or laymen, whatever be the 
 authority with which they are invested, the former under pain 
 of interdiction, the latter under pain of excommunication ; we 
 prohibit all, in a word, whosoever they may be, to make upon 
 these decrees of the council any commentaries, glosses, an?iota- 
 iio?is, scholia, or iiitoyretations whatsoever. ^'"^ 
 
 After this, reproach Roman Catholicism, forsooth, for having 
 deprived you of the right to interpret the Bible I That which 
 it has itself put in the place of the Bible, its decrees, its council 
 by predilection, what it had spent eighteen years in elaborating, 
 calculating, weighing — even that it does not yet believe itself 
 sufficiently sure of, to admit of its being abandoned to the con- 
 science and the reason of the faithful. It publishes this code, 
 but with a prohibition which, if strictly observed, would be 
 equivalent to an interdict against reading it ; for it is clear that 
 you cannot open it any more than the Bible, without the risk of 
 interpreting some one or other passage difierently from the pope, 
 and consequently, being excommunicated. Truly Housseau was 
 an excellent Roman Catholic, when he said, " The man who 
 thinks is a depraved animal." 
 
 See, then, ye children and apologists of Rome, the yoke 
 under which you are placed. True, many hardly suspect it, in 
 those countries, at least, in which the Roman Church hai? not 
 the government in her hands. She leaves those in tranquillity 
 who, without having broken with her, would break wdth her 
 evidently on the first attempt she might make to enslave them. 
 She takes care not to lay upon those v.4io only half belong to 
 her, anything in the way of believing or doing beyond what the 
 faith and devotedness of each will bear. As for those whom she 
 believes to be entirely hers, who eulogize and who defend her, 
 
 1 26th January, 1,56-1. 
 
 " ". . . Ullus commentarius, glossas, aunotationcs, scholia, uUumve 
 omnino interpretationis genus super ipsius concilii decretis quocunque 
 modo edere." The pope then evokes to himself all the difficulties that 
 may emerge. A permanent commission, known under the name of the 
 Coyigregation of ihe Council, vras instituted to this efiect. It still sub- 
 Bists ; ]M. d' Andrea, formerly nuncio in Switzerland, is a member of it. 
 Its decisions have been several times collected and published. Some 
 of them are very curious, whether as an amplification of the Tridentine 
 dogmas, or as an abatement of the decrees that are unfavourable to the 
 pope. 
 
CuAi-. VII. lj(ii. MANV (ATIIOLILS IIAVK NOT KNTIKi; lAriH 5H5 
 
 on them she hivishes all sorts of cncoiiragemcuts, facilities, and 
 flatteries. 8ay a Avord, write a sentence which has the appear- 
 ance of an apology, and although that sentence, that word, should 
 bear only upon something quite unessential, such as the beauty 
 of a cathedral, or the majesty of a high mass, or the jjoctry of 
 steeple bells, forthwith you arc pronounced a man of fail li, whose 
 numbers, if Ave are to believe certain books, arc daily on the in- 
 crease. Alas I it must be admitted, their numbers are increasing ; 
 fortunately avc can have a near view of them, and after having 
 had such a view, we are soon reassured. Ask these alleged men 
 of faith if they believe in the authority of the Church ; put the 
 case before them of their being called upon, not to speak, but to 
 submit and to obey, and you will find how little they diflcr from 
 those who tell you that they do not believe in that authority. 
 Ask them what they think of the pope's infallibility ? Some 
 will, without hesitation, deny it, and you will shew them that 
 it is nevertheless a dogma, not only at E-ome and among Jesuit 
 professors, but with almost the universal body of Roman Catho- 
 lic bishops of all countries ; you will tell them that if the Coun- 
 cil of Trent did not A'-enture to teach it in set terms, it formally 
 assumed it by submitting its decrees to Pius IV. ^ Others Avill 
 maintain that they admit it ; and, as in the case of the Church's 
 authority, you Avill only have to enter into some details, in order 
 to prove that they do not admit it. Will they try to make a 
 distinction betAveen infallibility in doctrine and infallibility in 
 discipline ? Still you can prove to them not only, as we have 
 done,2 that this distinction has never been admitted at Rome, 
 but that there is a host of decrees presenting such a medley of 
 
 ^ Xor let us forget the form under which the approbation vras granted. 
 The more the pains that had been talcen, till then, to evade the quc-- 
 tion of the respective authority of councils and of popes, Avitli the more 
 assurance did Pius IV. decide it in his own favour. "After mature de- 
 liberation," says he in his bull, "having seen that all the decrees are 
 Catholic, useful and salutary to the Christian people, we confirm them, 
 ordaining that they shall be received and observed." Thus the decrees 
 that he confirms he recognises as not oi\\y useful,' q,\\^ salutary, but Ca- 
 tholic ; he has tried them, then, tried them as sovereign judge, in point 
 of faith as well as in point of discipline. He pronounces, but it is after 
 mature deliberation. lie accords. We are entitled, therefore, to sup- 
 pose the case of his liaving possibly refused, and to ask ourselves what, 
 in that event, would have become of the authority of the council. If 
 there be no difficiilty here for those who frankly admit the omnipotence 
 of the pope, and liis superiority over councils, there is enough certainly 
 to perplex those who deny it. Everywhere, and under all forms, you 
 come Tipon this grand problem which would be enough to subvert the 
 Church of Ixome altogether, but for the immense interest that all her 
 members have iu letthig it sleep. 
 
 ' See Book I. 
 
536 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book VI. 
 
 discipline and dogma, that we defy you to eflect any such sifting 
 of the one class from the other. And why speak we of popes 
 and papal bulls I The council itself, that infallible summary of 
 Roman doctrine, you have a hundred means of proving to those 
 people, is, at bottom, just as little an object of their belief. And 
 here you may boldly extend your sifting of men's creeds beyond 
 the circle of persons decidedly superior in point of education and 
 talent. To all whom you could induce to reason and to account 
 a little to themselves for vvhat they believe, you might shew, 
 even hi the council, things which they do not believe, which 
 they never will believe ; j'ou might thus wrest from them the 
 admission, direct or indirect, it matters not, that they are not 
 Roman Catholics ; and these professed believers might, m their 
 turn, reckon with their fingers, how many of the condemnations 
 and anathemas, denounced by these same decrees of Trent, and 
 under which they have long believed you to be overwhelmed, 
 they themselves have hitherto been, still are, and all their lives 
 must be obnoxious to. 
 
 Roman Catholicism, Ave are told, is one and invariable. This 
 we have denied. The quarrels that agitated the council, the 
 intrigues to which it was necessary to have recourse, in order to 
 have so many important questions put out of the way or decided, 
 the proofs we have had of the novelty and of the human origin 
 of so many articles of faith, all this might still authorize us in 
 coming to a close, to deny, as we have done so often in the 
 course of this history, both that unity and that invariability. 
 But here let us admit, that both Roman Catholicism is one, and 
 that Roman Catholicism is invariable. Viewing the subject in 
 the light we have already indicated, its adversaries will only be 
 all the stronirer as such. If Roman Catholicism be one, there 
 is but one way of being a Roman Catholic — it is to have an 
 equal faith in all that it teaches ; it is to be ready to eay yea, 
 and amen, not only to the four or five chief doctrines that char- 
 acterize, in the gross, the Romish creed, but to all the secondary 
 doctrines that Rome has deduced from these, and to all tlic de- 
 velopments that she has given to them. Thanks to infallibiiity, 
 all is of a piece ; it is a gigantic arch from which you cannot re- 
 move a stone, not even the smallest, without bringing the whole 
 to the ground. Reduced to regular shape in virtue of the same 
 authority, all the Church's doctrines have an equal right to your 
 absolute submission. You cannot doubt one, without thereby 
 doubting the authority which enjoins your believing it ; you can- 
 not reject one, without at the same time subverting the whole 
 edifice of infallibility ; for if the Church could err on a single 
 point, however minute, there is no reason to believe that she may 
 
CuAr. VH. 15G4. CONCLUSION. r>?,1 
 
 not liavc crrod on others. Deny that minute point, .intl you are 
 no longer a Roman Cathohc, seeing you thereby abandon, in fact, 
 the principle, witiiout whicli your Chureli is nothing more than 
 any one ot" the fractions of the lielonnation. 
 
 It would, then, could we but compel people to be consistent, 
 it would at the present day bo an easy thing to shake and sub- 
 vert Roman Catholicism. Among all the objections scattered 
 throughout this volume, if there be one, a single one that is well 
 founded, it is in reality as if they all were so. Let the Triden- 
 tine Fathers have been mistaken once or a Inuulred times, it 
 matters little which, in either case they were fallible. Let a 
 Roman Catholic admit that we are right on one point, or a hun- 
 dred points, it matters little whicli, he has admitted his disbelief 
 in the infallibility of his Clmrch. He has examined, he has 
 made his choice — he is a Protestant, for he has admitted the 
 fundamental point of Protestantism. If he stops there, if he 
 continues to believe himself, or to call himself a child of the 
 Church of Rome, it is because he dares not, or knows not, or 
 does not wish to follow out consequences to their legitimate end. 
 
 But if we reckon up all who, from timidity, dare not, or who 
 iVom ignorance know not, or who from indillcrence desire not 
 to do this, alas I shall we not find they form nearly the whole ? 
 Let us not therefore indulge any illusion as to the results of our 
 efforts. Twenty yeai^ ago the ruin of Roman Catholicism was 
 spoken of as quite a simple thing, inevitable, close at hand ; 
 people M'ould readily have fixed the very year. No doubt it will 
 fall. AVe should consider that we insulted both the Bible and 
 reason were we to find ourselves thinking for a moment that 
 victory will not remain with them. It will fall — but when ? 
 If it has little faith in the Go.spel, seeing it tramples "it under 
 foot in so many things,^ little fiiith even in many of its own doc- 
 trines, as we have superabundantly proved, it has faith in itself, 
 in its unity, true or false, in its powerful organization, in its em- 
 pire over the masses, and all this goes a very great way. No 
 doubt we have often enough shewn how those men, whom it as- 
 sembled together three centuries ago, for the purpose of fixing 
 and giving consistency to its faith, despaired of their work. And 
 yet, had we related in detail the close of their last assembly, \\c 
 should have had to represent them as united, in high spirits, 
 grasping each other by the hand, embracing each other with 
 tears of surprise and joy. From the midst of those groping 
 eflbrts, those quarrels, those critical conjunctures of every kind, 
 there came forth at last somethiiifj which, riijht or wroii"-, mi^^ht 
 
 * "I would give my two hands to be able to bcliovo in .To?ns Christ, 
 as firml}' as the pope does not believe in liim." — Luther, Tabic Talk: 
 
 7* 
 
538 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. Book. VI. 
 
 be presented to the world as unity. No more was wanted. The 
 man whom they had dreaded most, the old head of the opposition, 
 the Cardinal of Lorraine, himself droAV up and chanted the ac- 
 clamations with which the sitting was closed. From the top of 
 her new plastered citadel, Rome again ventured to look her foes 
 in the face, and the last words of the council were, " Anathema I 
 anathema I" 
 
 But, thanks be to God, that citadel which was raised at Trent, 
 is formidable to him only who looks at it from a distance and 
 from below ; it is from at hand, and from above, that we have 
 tried to see it ourselves, and to show it to others. Hard by the 
 mountain of Trent there towers the triple mountain of Scripture, 
 history, and reason. Thither we have sought to conduct our 
 readers. We ascended — the other grew less ; and we had not 
 reached the top, when our eye plunged right among the ram- 
 parts with which Rome has covered hers. Our readers will re- 
 member all that we then perceived of incoherence in the plan, 
 of vice in the details, of fragility in the foundations of the loftiest 
 towers. It was not without effort and vexation, they may be 
 assured, that we viewed so often and so pertinaciously the earth 
 rather than the heavens ; it cost us not a little to have to bend 
 to the rugged exigencies of polemics, those doctrines of peace, of 
 love, of life, which God has called us to publish, in a very dif- 
 ferent strain, from the pulpit. But, we can call him to witness, 
 never has the hatred of error been converted under our pen, 
 never, above all, in our heart, into hatred of those who profess 
 it ; and if we have succeeded in inspiring others with our senti- 
 ments, as we hope we have succeeded in justifying our ideas, it 
 will not be Avith the cry of the Tridentine Fathers, "Anathema! 
 anathema I" but with the prayer, that God Avill enlighten, touch, 
 pardon, and bless, that our readers will shut this book. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Absolution, is it absolute or condition- 
 al ? pp. 25r),256 ; its deplorable results, 
 257 ; admissions with respect to it niiide 
 by Bossuct, Innocent III., and in tiiu Ibr- 
 muhi of Indulgences in 1517, 2-38. 
 
 Abuses which would now be thought fab- 
 ulous, 307. 
 
 Adrian VI., his character, 4, 5 ; the exter- 
 mination of the Lutherans his last re- 
 sort, 6 ; Pallavicini's opinion of him, G ; 
 opposed to calling a Council, and why, 
 7 ; his death, 7. 
 
 Albert of Brandenburg, Archbishop of May- 
 ence, sends his procurators to Trent, 33. 
 
 Alexander VI., his character a blot on the 
 popedom to this day, 35 ; how treated 
 by the Popes in otficial acts, 30. 
 
 Ambrose, St., on the Scriptures, 79, 9G. 
 
 Anathema, how understood by the Greeks, 
 and how by St. Paul, 106, 107 ; hesita- 
 tion of the Council with respect to such 
 a sanction being appended to its decrees, 
 107 ; decrees of reformation not to bear 
 anathema, 108 ; no anathemas on the 
 worship of saints, none on that of im- 
 ages, none on purgatory, 527. 
 
 Apocryphal books, opinions of the an- 
 cients, 81. 
 
 Arbues, Peter, the ferocious organizer of 
 the Inquisition, canonized in the seven- 
 teenth century, 407. 
 
 .\rian, Pope Liberius, one for four years, 
 38. 
 
 .\rianism condemned by the Council of 
 Nice, 23. 
 
 Aihanasian Creed read at the opening of 
 the Council, 56 ; furnishes no arms 
 against Protestants, but is j-ather a 
 weapon in their hands, 50. 
 
 Alhanasius condemned by the Council of 
 Tyre. 23 ; his precise language on the 
 sufficiency of the Scriptures, bO. 
 
 Augsburg, Diets at, 13, 190; Confession 
 of, 13 ; taken by Maurice of Sa.xonv, 
 268. 
 
 Augustine the least Roman Catholic of the 
 Fathers, 45 ; his opinion of Councils, 
 46 ; on the Scriptures, 79 ; his language 
 absolute, 79, 96 ; recommends the study 
 of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures as a 
 correction of the Latin, 88. 
 
 Austria sends no bishops to Vicenza, 17. 
 
 Authority, the question of its source lett 
 undecided at Trent, and still undecided 
 by the Roman Catholics, 50 ; in the Ro- 
 man Catholic sense of the word proved 
 to be an illusion, 63-69 ; its alleged ne- 
 cessity disproved, 69-76; striking illus- 
 tration of the Roman system of author- 
 ity. 404; contentions about the Pope's 
 anihority, 460 
 
 Baptism held to efface original sin, 119; 
 uribaptized infants, how dispo.sed of, 
 1"20; ba])tism administered in the prim- 
 itive Church only on Easter-day and 
 Whitsunday, 121 ; inference from this 
 fact, 121. 
 
 Baronius makes tradition the foundation 
 of the Scriptures, 82. 
 
 Basil, St., his appeal to Scripture alone, 79. 
 
 Bavarian ambassador at the Council join.«i 
 in demanding the concession of the cup, 
 326, 327. 
 
 Beauty, worship of, 517. 
 
 Bellannine writes the preface to SixMis 
 Quintus's edition of the Vulgate, and o.t]- 
 mits inaccuracies, 92. 
 
 Beza at the colloquy of Poissy, his strong 
 position, 291. 
 
 Bible, by it only can the Council of Trent 
 be subverted altogether, 62 ; the Bible to 
 be interp-eted only by the Church, and 
 yet tlrst given us to interpret, 64 ; the 
 Bible addressed to every body, 70 ; with 
 authority the Bible eclip.sed, with libertv 
 never, 74 ; authority of the Bible anil 
 that of Rome deplorably identified, 70 ; 
 Homage to the Bible. 78 : the Bible, how 
 reconunended by the Fathers, 79 ; Latin 
 Bibles made to contradict themselves, 
 88 ; old and new views of the Latin as 
 compared with Hebrew and Greek ver- 
 sions, 88 ; the Bible at the disposition 
 of all, 94 ; recommended by the Fathers, 
 95-98 ; the decree of Trent on the read- 
 ing of the Bible more discreet than the 
 Roman Churcli has been since, 99 ; 
 enmity of the popedom to the Bible, 
 99-104 ; Bible anathemas. 107 ; appeals 
 froni tradition to the Bible anathema- 
 tized, 108 ; Bible language not to be em- 
 ployed for pleasantry, sorcery, or Hattcrv, 
 108, 109. 
 
 Bishops, preaching their principal duty. 
 117, 484; institution of, dilliculty in 
 elaborating the canon, and connnotion 
 caused by the attempt, 397 ; a bishop 
 accused of a serious crime shall be 
 judged by the Pope, 484. See Episco- 
 pate. 
 
 Bishops' Courts, their origin, 240; their 
 encroachmeius, 241. 
 
 Bologna, Council transferred from Trent 
 to Bologna, 184 ; only thirty-four bishops 
 meet there, 188. 
 
 Brandenburgh, Elector of, his envoys ap- 
 ponr at the Council, 243 ; their spokes- 
 man displeases everybody, 243. 
 
 Budoa, the Bishop of, exclaims against 
 TriMit, and parodies the threatenings of 
 Isaiah against Jerusalem in denouncing 
 it. 449. 
 
540 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Canon of Scripture, discussion upon it, 
 83 ; uncertainty felt by Romanists re- 
 garding it, 84. 
 
 Canons appended to the doctrinal chapters 
 on the Mass, remarks on them, 346-349. 
 
 Carafla, Peter, succeeds Marcellus II. as 
 Paul IV., 274— See Paul IV. 
 
 Cardinalate, historical notices, 403 ; a se- 
 vere revision of laws and customs re- 
 lating to cardinals demanded, 474. 
 
 Catechism and decrees difTer, 225; com- 
 position of catechism referred to the 
 Pope, 53 I.- 
 Catherine de JMedicis demands from Pius 
 IV., in 1561, nearly all that the reformed 
 require, 289. 
 
 Celibacy not man's normal state, 427 ; 
 imposed on two sets of persons, 427 ; 
 celibacy a suicide of the saddest kind, 
 428 ; Hurler's eloquence on celibacy 
 neutralized by his details, 428 ; cruelty 
 of the cloister, 430 ; piet^* nowhere more 
 miserably carnal, 430 ; celibacy of the 
 priests, how can it be imposed by a hu- 
 man authority ? 431 ; the saddest of all the 
 yokes imposed by Rome, 432 ; doctrine 
 of St. Paul, 433 ; experience of Roman- 
 ist and Protestant countries, 435 ; hor- 
 ror for marriage in a priest, 437. 
 
 Charles V. blames the Nuremberg reform- 
 atory decree, 8 ; his insolent treatment 
 of Clement VII., and wavering policy 
 as respected the calling of a Council, 
 9-14 ; compels regulations on preceden- 
 cy, 27 ; supersedes the Pope in judging 
 the Archbishop of Cologne, 30 ; coquets 
 Avith the Protestants, 34 ; refuses an 
 offer of 12,000 men from the Pope, 42 ; 
 becomes absolute master of Germany, 
 189 ; his agents insult the Pope at Bo- 
 logna, 193 ; still looks to the Council for 
 unity, and publishes the Interim, 197 ; 
 negotiates with the Pope, 200 ; his dis- 
 content, 201 ; abolishes the /7i?em«, 269 ; 
 is pronounced a heretic by Paul IV., 
 276 ; makes a truce with France, 276 ; 
 abdicates, 277 ; his doubtful character 
 as a Roman Catholic, 277. 
 Chateaubriand on absolution, 254 ; on 
 prayers in Latin, 353 ; on prayers to 
 saints and images, 504. 
 Christendom, how represented at Trent, 
 21 ; people of Roman Catholic Chris- 
 tendom for 1200 years without any 
 voice in the election of their chief pas- 
 tors, 23. 
 Chrysostom, no proof of true faith but by 
 
 holy Scripture, 80, 96. 
 Church, what is it in the eye of God? 75. 
 Clement VII., his character, 7 ; his en- 
 mity to Charles V., humiliations, and 
 dissimulation, 8-12 ; diverts the emper- 
 or from the idea of a Council, 12 ; re- 
 commends the execution of the imperial 
 edict, 14 ; unites himself with France, 
 falls sick, and has his last days embit- 
 tered by the defection of England, 15 ; 
 his apprcrs'al of Henry the Eighth's di- 
 vorce proved by Burnet, 15. 
 Clement Vlll. publishes a corrected edi- 
 tion of the Vulgate, 92. 
 Clergy, corruption of, 44; contrast be- 
 
 tween the Roman Catholic and the Pro- 
 testant in the reception they meet with 
 from their flocks, 252. 
 Close of the Council voted unanimously, 
 
 461. 
 Combination of the Cardinal of Lorraine 
 Avith the King of Spain, the Emperor, 
 and the King of Bohemia, against the 
 Pope, 404. 
 
 Commendams, their history, 173. 
 
 Coninmnion under both kinds, testimony 
 of the Scriptures, of the Fathers, and 
 of ancient Popes, 216; historical pro- 
 gress, the Church's incompetency to 
 alter, 218 ; motives for refusing the cup 
 to the laity, 219 ; its concession made a 
 primary condition of their return by the 
 Protestants, 219 ; question resumed, but 
 mis-stated, 312, 321 ; conditions pro- 
 posed by its partisans, 344 ; referred to 
 the Pope, 354. 
 
 Conclaves, internal history of, 205 ; sel- 
 dom so divided as at the death of Paul 
 III., 200; a severe reform in regard to 
 conclaves demanded, 474. 
 
 Conference proposed between the Roman- 
 ist and Protestant doctors, 272. 
 
 Confessional, silence of the Apostles, 245 ; 
 its uses exaggerated, 252. 
 
 Confirmation of the Council's decrees by 
 the Pope causes the utmost anxiety, 
 532 ; Pius IV. disposed to grant it im- 
 mediately, 532 ; parties in Rome op- 
 posed to the confirmation, 532 ; Cardi- 
 nal de Mula and others recommend it, 
 533. 
 
 Congregations and Sessions, how distin- 
 guished, 43 ; Council divided into three 
 congregations, and why, 52, 114. 
 
 Constance, Council of, 2 ; its scandalous 
 debaucheries no longer permitted or pos- 
 sible, 49. 
 
 Convocations of the Council, first under 
 Paul III. in 1545, 20 ; second under Ju- 
 lius III. in 1551, 209 ; third under Pius 
 IV. in 1562, 268. 
 
 Cordeliers and Jacobins, quarrel between 
 them about original sin in the Virgin 
 Mary bursts out afresh, 123. 
 
 Costume regulated, 33. 
 
 Council, France and Spain demand from 
 Pius I V^. a new Council, not the resump- 
 tion of the old, 286. 
 
 Council, it distrusts its own authority and 
 the permanent force of its acts, 448. 
 
 Council's decrees, all men prohibited from 
 making any commentaries, glosses, an- 
 notations, scholia, or interpretations 
 upon them, 534. 
 
 Deaconship, the, 360. 
 
 Degradations, ecclesiastical, some small 
 concessions made, 242. 
 
 Delegates of the Holy Sec, this title given 
 to bishops for the sake of maintaining 
 intact the rights of the Pope, 330. 
 
 Delegation, infallibility by, 33. 
 
 Demi-gallicanism of the Spaniards, its in- 
 structive history, 309. 
 
 Dcsi)atchcs, double, open and secret, sent 
 from Trent to Rome, 27. 
 
 Disciplinary and doctrinal decrees inter- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 r.ii 
 
 mingled — untoward results of lliis lucd- 
 loy, 55. 
 
 Disciplinary rcfiulations, 481. 
 
 Di.si"ii)lin<', nlbrination of, called for by St. 
 liernard, 5 ; such u rcloriiiation would 
 have led men into the domain of the 
 fuith, 5 ; Adrian VI. ailenipt.s it, but in 
 vain, 7 ; reconiinended to the Council by 
 I'anl III., 54 ; no anathemas on discip- 
 linary decrees, 5'27. 
 
 Dispensations allowed for voting by pro- 
 curation, 32. 
 
 Dispensations, matrimonial, a constant 
 theme of complaint amonj; the S))anish, 
 German, and French bisliops, 421. 
 
 Divine right — See Residence. 
 
 Divines by profession, thcir intervention 
 in the Council of Trent, 84 ; unanimotis 
 in recoiinising the inferiority of the ajio- 
 cryphai books, 84 ; divines at the Coun- 
 cil mucH complained of, and their vio- 
 lence restrained, 244. 
 
 Di v isions among the French Romanists on 
 the accession of Charles IX., 2b2. 
 
 Divisions in the Council cause alarm, 52 ; 
 how to be kept out of sight, 52 ; tho coji- 
 gres^atiojis to meet with shut doors, yet 
 all known that passed, 52 ; national di- 
 visions, 58 ; division between the bish- 
 ops and the divines on the subject of the 
 canon of Scripture, 83 ; on the approba- 
 tion to be given to the Vulgate, 90 ; on 
 the interpretation of Scripture, 93 ; on 
 the title of the Council, 109; between 
 the bishops and the monks on religious 
 teaching, 115; among the divines on 
 original sin, 119; in the Council on 
 "What was to be decreed on original sin, 
 122: between the Cordeliers and Jaco- 
 bins on the immaculate conception, 
 123. 
 
 Dogmas, Roman, their usual course, 12G. 
 
 Dreux, battle of, celebrated in the Council, 
 but its importance overrated, 412. 
 
 Education of the ministry neglected by 
 theChurchof Rome, 4G9 ; establishment 
 of seminaries, 409. 
 
 Encroachments of the bishops' courts, 241 . 
 
 Ephesus, Council of, its decrees framed as 
 resting on Scripture alone, 80. 
 
 Episcopal jurisdiction, complaints against 
 Rome, 202 ; decrees made more severe, 
 yet still inellicient, 203. 
 
 Episcopate, its historical origin, 365 ; equa- 
 lity of the preshijtcri and cpiscopi in the 
 writings of the Apostles, 306 ; the Ro- 
 man episcopate not an order, 367 ; the 
 popedom complicates the question, 309 ; 
 great agitation on the subject of resi- 
 dence, and far from honourable issue, 
 39!^ ; reference on the divine right to 
 what had passed twelve years back, 399 ; 
 three fonnulas on the institution of the 
 episcopate, 411 ; question of the divine 
 right perpetually recurs, 400-406. See 
 llesidc7ice. 
 
 Eucharist, subject taken up amid fierce 
 agitation, 216 ; decree upon it, 243. See 
 Mass. 
 
 Faith, men of, their numbers said to be 
 
 daily inrrrasing; Ihry difFcr little from 
 those who do not believe, 535. 
 
 False citation by a Pope, 98. 
 
 Fariuse, Cardinal, snccrcds Clement VII. 
 as I'aul HI., 15— See Paul III. 
 
 Fasting, decree ujion, 530. 
 
 Ferdinand 11. rcijuires the dismissal of nil 
 questions relative to the ina.ss, except 
 that of the cup, 343 ; questions said to 
 be submitted by him to his own divines, 
 414 ; he begins to give way, 454. 
 
 Festivals, observance of, 530. 
 
 Florence, to regain the domination of it, a 
 leading motive with Clement Vll., 9. 
 
 France returns to the idea of a national 
 Council, 288 ; accused of heresy on ac- 
 count of the Colloquy of Poissy, 293 ; 
 French ambassadors j)ronounce a long 
 and severe satire on the Council, 310; 
 bold demand for the concession of the 
 cup, 326, 343; the French prelates trillc 
 with the Council, 343 ; alarming articb s 
 from France make a terrible impresj^ioii 
 on the Pope, 415 ; France thrown on the 
 Pope for means of resisting the Reform- 
 ation, on the dcathof the Duke of Guise, 
 439, 440 ; sarcastic protest by France 
 against proposed decree on the secular 
 princes, 478 ; French ambassadors retire 
 to Venice, 489 ; spirited protest against 
 the papal denunciation of the Queen ol 
 Navarre, 468 ; influence of that measure 
 on the position of Ilenry IV., 488 ; the 
 Council of Trent never otiicially received 
 in France, 526. 
 
 Gallican practice with regard to bishops 
 accused of serious crimes, opposed to 
 the decree of Trent, 464. 
 
 Gallicanism, inconsistencies of, 300, 301. 
 
 Galileans attacked by Lainez at the Coun- 
 cil, 390 ; they are proved logically wrong, 
 392 ; are incensed, 393. 
 
 Geneva proposed for the meeting of the 
 Council, 15 ; threatened by Pius IV.; its 
 providential preservation in the midst 
 of powerful enemies, 283 ; incorruptibil- 
 ity of the Genevese, 284. 
 
 German bishops absent themselves from 
 the Council, 112; a special summons 
 addressed to them displeases Charles V., 
 112. 
 
 Gospel more altered by Rome than by all 
 the sects with which the Reformation 
 has been reproached, 73. 
 
 Grava7iiina ccntujii of Germany, 11. 
 
 Gregory XIV. presses the jiublication of a 
 corrected edition of the Vulgate, 92. 
 
 Grace, propositions on, 135-141. 
 
 Henry IT. of France favours Paul III., 
 and promises his natural daughter Diana 
 to the latter's grandson, 190 ; keeps no 
 measures with Julius 111., 212 ; prohib- 
 its the remittance of money to Rome, 
 215 ; is courted by Julius 111., 267; with 
 whom he makes a treaty, 208. 
 
 Heresies, their extirpation recommended 
 to the Council by I'aul III., 53. 
 
 Heretics, their extermination the last re- 
 sort of Adrian VI., 7. 
 
 Hermann, archbishop of Cologne, excom- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 municated by Paul III., but acknowl- 
 edged by Charles Y., 112; he resigns, 
 112. 
 
 Images, worship of, 514-517. 
 
 Immaculate conception of the Virgin, dis- 
 putes respecting it, 122-126. 
 
 Index of prohibited books, historical re- 
 view, 299-302 ; advantage taken of the 
 subject to call Protestants to the Coun- 
 cil as authors, but to no purpose, 303 ; 
 drawing up of an index referred to the 
 Pope, 531. 
 
 Indulgences, historical review, 518-522 ; 
 decree upon, and singular destiny of the 
 question, 530. 
 
 Infallibdity not held so rigorously in the 
 sixteenth century as now, 29 ; openly 
 arrogated by the Popes, 37-39 ; taught 
 in the Roman Catechism, 33 ; practical- 
 ly disowned in Rome itself, 40 ; not be- 
 lieved in really by those who are called 
 men of faith, 535 ; infallibility all of a 
 piece — one point shaken, the whole falls, 
 537. 
 
 Infallibility of Councils proclaimed in the 
 opening sermon of first Session, 47, 48 ; 
 pretended approbation of the Church the 
 last seal of infallibility, 60. 
 
 Infallibility of tlie Council, compromised 
 by petition for confirmation, 531, 533. 
 
 Infallibility, papal, in discipline and doc- 
 trine, 35—10. 
 
 Infants dying without baptism, questions 
 relating to them, 120 ; fact relating to 
 tlie primitive administration of baptism, 
 admitted by the Catechismus Romanus, 
 120. 
 
 Inquisition established by Charles V. at 
 Naples and in the Netherlands, 213 ; 
 clung to by Paul IV., 280 ; its abomina- 
 ble hypocrisy, 407 ; its ferocious organ- 
 izer canonized in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, 407. 
 
 Intention, necessity of fact, and necessity 
 of intention, in the sacraments, 156 ; 
 what avails the Church's intention in 
 addressing the saints ? 509-514. 
 
 Interim, its origin, provisions, and result, 
 197; left to destroy itself, 197; abol- 
 ished, 269. 
 
 Interpretation of Scripture — to whom does 
 it belong ? 92 ; here the divines more rea- 
 .sonable than the bishops, 92 ; Fenelon's 
 opinion absurd, 93 ; Scripture declared 
 useless by a Norman divine, 94 ; the 
 decree virtually says the same thing, 94 ; 
 opinions of Clement of Rome, Polycarp, 
 Ambrose, Origen, Isodorc of Pelusiuni, 
 .Terome, Augustine, Chrysostom, St. 
 Bernard, Gregory the Great, Council of 
 Ai.v-la-Chapelle in 816, Ulphilas, and 
 Bede, 95-99. 
 
 Invocation of saints, 497. 
 
 Isodorus of Pelusium thought the Bible in- 
 tended for all, 96. 
 
 Italians accused of being above all things 
 Italians in the Council, 58 ; their oath 
 to the Pope, 59 ; a general combination 
 of the Italians against the Spaniards and 
 the French, dreaded, 409. 
 
 Italic version of the Scriptures, 87. 
 
 Italy, results of the confessional on the 
 morals of the co-untry, 252 ; its modern 
 paganism, 505. 
 
 Jansenius reproved for asserting that the 
 Holy See sometimes condemns a doc- 
 trine solely for peace's sake, 38 ; con- 
 demned by the infallible Innocent X., at 
 the instance of the fallible Pallavicini, 
 40. 
 
 Jubilee for the success of the Church and 
 of the emperor proclaimed by Paul III., 
 129. 
 
 Julius III. (del Monte) elected pope, 207 ; 
 his change of character, position, and 
 policy, 207-209; convokes the new Coun- 
 cil as a continuation of the old, 209 ; 
 difference between Charles V. and him 
 in their views of the Council, 209 ; quar- 
 rels with Henry II. of France, 21 1 ; creates 
 fourteen cardinals at once, 267 ; makes 
 a treaty with Henry II., and'orders the 
 suspension of the Council, 269 ; names 
 a commission for internal reforms, 270 ; 
 is consoled for his disappointments by 
 the submission of England under Mary, 
 272 ; dies, and is succeeded by Marcellus 
 II., 272. 
 
 Lainez attacks the French court at the 
 Colloquy of Poissy, 292 ; his defence of 
 ultramontanism in the Council, 390-393; 
 he defends the Pope's authority, 455, 456 ; 
 his haughty pretensions, 456. 
 
 League, its origin in France, 293. 
 
 Legates, Hercules de Gonzaga and Cardi- 
 nal de Puv appointed for the council by 
 Pius IV., 288. 
 
 Leo X. engages to hold a Council, 4 ; Lu- 
 ther's idea of his position as Pope, and 
 his impotency as a reformer, 5. 
 
 Liberius Pope, for four years an Arian, 
 and anathematized by St. Ililarj-, 38. 
 
 Liberty and authority contrasted, t2 ; false 
 pretensions to liberty in the Roman 
 Church, 105. 
 
 Lorraine, Cardinal of, attempts to refute 
 Beza at Poissy, 291 ; his arrival at Trent 
 contemplated with horror, 396; becomes 
 to Trent with the retinue of a prince, 
 and surprises by his mildness, 400 ; his 
 perplexity at the part people assigned 
 him, 407 ; his journey to the emperor 
 viewed with alarm, 414 ; returns and 
 maintains impenetrable secrecy, 415 ; 
 disappointed of being made legate, retires 
 in disgust to Venice, 447 ; his duplicity 
 towards Pius IV., 449 ; adopts a concili- 
 atory course towards all, 454 ; his in- 
 tervention sought for by the Pope, 476 ; 
 takes a leading part at the close, 538. 
 
 Luther and St. Bernard compared, 5 ; his 
 constancy, 16 ; his ideal of a Council, 
 27 ; joy of the Council at the news of his 
 death, 61 ; Luther and transubstantia- 
 tion, 222. 
 
 Madrucci, Cardinal, bishop of Trent, 
 does the honours of the place, 21. 
 
 Marcellus II. (Marcellus Ccrvini) elected 
 Pope ; his character, views, addiction to 
 astrology, and death, 273. 
 
INDKX. 
 
 543 
 
 Marriage, debates on the doctrine of, open- 
 ed, 417 ; is it a sacrament? 418; endless 
 impcdiinenls to it, 41'J ; is it indissolu- 
 ble .' 420 ; proves Home to be no longer 
 omnipoieut,4'24 ; restrictions and relax- 
 ations side by side, 425, 4'2(i ; discussion 
 resumed, 447 ; studied obscurity as to 
 clandestine marriages, 472 ; doctrinal 
 decree with its twelve canons and ana- 
 thema examined, 481 ; disciplinary arti- 
 cles. 483. 
 
 Mariolatry, 492, 507. 
 
 Mass— the mass and the supper, 233 ; ex- 
 tremes of pomp and paltriness in the 
 celebration of the mass, 235 ; adoration 
 of the host — honour and adoration not 
 to be confounded, 237 ; the worshipped 
 wafer becomes a god, 238. 
 
 Mass, the, does it reproduce the supper? 
 332 ; can it be found in the Bible ? 335 ; 
 analysis of the four alleged proofs of it, 
 337-339 ; glaring difliculty and proposed 
 evasion, 339 ; atmosphere in which the 
 decrees were elaborated, 341 ; four opin- 
 ions formed, 342 ; regulations and ana- 
 themas relative to the mass, 346, 354. 
 See Transubstantiation. 
 
 Meats, distinction of, singular discrepan- 
 cy between the Council and St. Paul, 
 530. 
 
 Melancthon hazards concessions, 13. 
 
 Monte, Cardinal del, is appointed legate to 
 the Council, 20 ; his name suggests the 
 application of an ancient apologue, 22 ; 
 celebrates the opening mass, 43 ; play 
 upon his name in the opening sermon, 
 48 ; is elected Pope on the death of Paul 
 III., 207. See Julius III. 
 
 Morone, Cardinal, appointed legate in the 
 place of the cardinal of Mantua, 446 ; 
 gives offence by proceeding to Inspruck, 
 446 ; returns with only vague answers 
 for the Pope, 452. 
 
 Musso Cornelio, bishop of Bitonto, preach- 
 es the opening sermon at the first con- 
 vocation, 43 ; his absurdity and impiety, 
 46, 47 ; yet only the candid expression of 
 thesystem,47 ; his conceits and oddities, 
 48. 
 
 Naclantus, Bishop of Chioggia, treats as 
 impious tradition being put on an equal- 
 ity with Scripture, 109 ; he refuses to 
 say ;j/aceHo the decree on the Scriptures, 
 109. 
 
 Naples, the viceroy proposes that its bish- 
 ops should send four to represent them 
 in the Council, 32 ; this not allowed by 
 the Pope, 32. 
 
 Navarre, Queen of, summoned to appear 
 at Rome as a heretic, 487. 
 
 Nice, Council of, only three Latin bishops 
 there, 23 ; its decrees framed as resting 
 on Scripture alone, 80. 
 
 Nuncios instead of legates sent into Ger- 
 many on the occasion of the Interim, 
 200 ;' their ill reception, 201. 
 
 Nuremberg, Diet of, 6, 7. 
 
 Oath taken by the Italian members of the 
 Council, 58 ; made a ground of nullity 
 by many authors, 59. 
 
 Observance of tlie decrees enjoined on 
 princes and l)ishops, 530. 
 
 Uticumenical Councils, 22-24. 
 
 < )rders a true sacrament or jiot ? 357 ; their 
 degrees, 301 : difliculties, 362; consist- 
 ency found impossible in framing the 
 decree, 461-400 ; theological difllcullies, 
 466. 
 
 Origen, his opinion of the reading of the 
 Bible, 461. 
 
 Original sin, questions upon, 118 ; nothing 
 to be directly taught on it, but only heret- 
 ical ideas condemned, 121 ; five decrees, 
 quarrel about the immaculate concejition 
 revived, P22 ; historical retrospect, 123- 
 126. 
 
 Paganism of Romanism and of Rome, 
 504-518. ' 
 
 Paul III. (Farne.sc), his character, 15, 10 ; 
 summons the Archbishop of Cologne, 30 ; 
 his nepotism, 35 ; scandalizes all men — 
 could they believe in his infallibility ? 40, 
 41 ; sends legates to open the Council, 
 43 ; recommends three points to the 
 Council, 53 ; tact shewn by him in the 
 number of Italians sent to the Council, 
 57 ; ordains the publication of the Coun- 
 cil's decrees in spite of their publication 
 at Trent, 111 ; his disquiet about the 
 Council, 181 ; affects to mediate between 
 the prelates at Bologna and those at 
 Trent, 188 ; allies himself with France ; 
 190 ; offers to proclaim Charles V. King 
 of England, 192 ; his death and charac- 
 ter, 204. 
 
 Paul IV. (Caraffa) succeeds Marcellus II., 
 274 ; his character, 274 ; appoints a com- 
 mission of 150 members against simony, 
 275 ; embroils himself with Charles V., 
 and curses the Spaniards as schismatics 
 and heretics, 270-278 ; seeks to make 
 the Council a bugbear to overawe the 
 princes, 278 ; disposes of kingdoms, and 
 claims the appointment of the emperor, 
 279 ; is overmatched by France and 
 Spain, and chagrined at the state of En- 
 gland, Germany, France, and Italy, 280 ; ■ 
 clings to the In<iuisition, and dies, 280 ; 
 his statue insulted, 281. 
 
 Penance, alleged scriptural proofs, 245 ; 
 misrepresentations, 247 ; in what sense 
 is it a sacrament ? 249 ; diversities of 
 opinion upon it, 251. See Confessional. 
 
 Philip II. unites with the Pope in acceler- 
 ating the close of the Council, 488. 
 
 Pius IV. (John de Medicis) succeeds Paul 
 IV. in 1559, his character, position, and 
 policy, 261, 282; threatened with a na- 
 tional council in France, 2S2 ; urges the 
 seizure of Geneva, 283 ; announces the 
 re-assembling of the Council, but meets 
 with more objections than ever, 2S5 ; 
 decides on opening the Council, 297 ; 
 thrown into the old track by its dissen- 
 sions, 308 ; his use of money as a means 
 of inrtuence, 310; charges his legates 
 with mismanagement, 314 ; augments 
 his troops, and tries to league all Italy 
 against Spain, 340 ; urges his legates to 
 hasten the close of the ('ouncil,341 ; im- 
 p.Ttienl at their slowm^ss, 413 ; rebuked 
 
544 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 by a dying cardinal, 440; severely rated 
 by the emperor, 441-443 ; seeks a meet- 
 ing with him at Bologna, 447 ; protests 
 against the peace between Charles IX. 
 and the French reformed, 447 ; impli- 
 cated in the quarrel between the French 
 and Spanish ambassadors, 458 ; sum- 
 mons the Queen of Navarre to Rome as 
 a heretic, 467 ; dreads the election of his 
 successor by the Council, 489 ; circum- 
 vented and dismayed when the Council's 
 decrees come for confirmation, 533. 
 
 Placentia, Duke of, murdered in his own 
 palace, 189. 
 
 Placentia occupied by the imperial troops, 
 189. 
 
 Plurality of benefices not to be eluded, 171. 
 
 Plurality of Popes has happened twenty- 
 four times, 39. 
 
 Poissy, colloquy of, 290-295. 
 
 Pole, Cardinal, appointed legate to the 
 Council, 19. 
 
 Pope, contentions about his authority, 455- 
 464 ; difficulties arising from the relative 
 position of the Pope and Council in the 
 publication of the decrees, 528. 
 
 Popedom, its unique position, 315 ; its po- 
 litical uses, 316 ; not a vestige of the 
 popedom in the New Testament, 370 ; 
 St. Peter among the Apostles, 371-374 ; 
 chronological difficulties, tradition, 377 ; 
 difficulties in the Roman point of view, 
 379 ; co-existence of patriarchs and the 
 Pope, 383 ; principles brought out, 3S3 ; 
 Tridentine decree says nothing of the 
 Pope, 384 ; Archbishop of Grenada ap- 
 peals to the Fathers against the superi- 
 ority claimed for the Pope, 385 ; the Pope 
 everj'thing or nothing, 387 ; the legates 
 would fain evade the question, 388 ; the 
 ultramontanists confounded, Lainez re- 
 plies, 389-393 ; the Galileans incensed, 
 394 ; a plunge into false principles, 395. 
 
 Port-Royalists spoke of the Bible as the 
 ancient fathers and Luther spoke of it, 
 103. 
 
 Preaching the principal duty of bishops, 
 117. 
 
 Precedency, quarrel about, 457 ; questions 
 to remain as they stood before the Coun- 
 cil met, 532. 
 
 Prelates, disparity among them, 309. 
 
 Prierio, one of Leo the Tenth's divines, 
 makes Scrijjture derive its force and 
 autlTority from the Roman Church and 
 Pontiff, 82. 
 Priesthood, is the Roman, in Scripture? 
 358, 359 ; first the priesthood, then a sac- 
 rifice, 363. 
 Promptsault, the Abbe, defends the authen- 
 ticating of the Vulgate, 90. 
 Proponentibus dispute, its origin, 298 ; 
 
 progress, 479 ; close, 485. 
 Prote.stant ambassadors, disquieting inti- 
 macy between them and those of the 
 emperor, 267. 
 Protestant doctors arrive at Trent, and 
 
 business stops, 208. 
 Protestantism, the mobility with which it 
 is charged, accepted by St. Augustine, 
 40. 
 Protestant pastors and Romanist priests. 
 
 their respective acceptability and influ- 
 ence among their flocks, 252. 
 
 Protestants, convocation of the Council 
 intimated to them, 27 ; did they engage 
 to submit to the Council ? 50 ; Charles 
 V. would have them send deputies to the 
 Council, 213; the question of their com- 
 ing resumed, 220 ; their demands, 265, 
 206; their contempt for the Council. 
 452. 
 
 Publication of the decrees ordered by the 
 Pope, as if his concurrence w-ere abso- 
 lutely indispensable, 111. 
 
 Purgatory, commission for elaborating the 
 decree, 479 ; purgatory strangely omit- 
 ted in Scripture, 491 ; no anathema on 
 it, 527. 
 
 Ragg AZONi, Bishop of Nazianzum, preach- 
 es the triumphal sermon at the close of 
 the Session, 529. 
 
 Reformation decree of the twenty-fourth 
 Session shows some progress, 469 ; 
 forty disciplinary articles sent by the 
 legates to the ambassadors, 474 ; the 
 forty articles reduced to twenty-one, 
 475 ; reformatory articles, 463 ; reform 
 of the religious orders, 524. 
 
 Reformation, the, contrasted with Rome 
 in regard to the education of the Church's 
 pastors, 469. 
 
 Residence of bishops, 133 ; to be made 
 more general, 304 ; the question, is resi- 
 dence of divine right ? hotly debated, 
 
 305 ; voting on this question in reality in 
 favor of the divine right, but this evaded, 
 
 306 ; the Pope pronounces neither way, 
 300; question still undecided, 307; ques- 
 tion resumed by the Spanish prelates 
 against the wish of Philip II., .340; 
 Philip II. sends a new order to his pre- 
 lates to allow this, to Rome, terrifying 
 question to drop, 341 ; great agitation 
 about residence, draft of decree, 398 ; 
 subject resumed, 409 ; question of divine 
 right finally withdrawn, and a funda- 
 mental article of the Roman system left 
 for ever unsettled, 463 ; different views 
 taught upon it at this day, 463 ; the 
 omission of so important a point totally 
 indefensible, 463 ; the Spaniards still 
 hold out, 467 ; they are conjured not to 
 protest, and agree not to do so, 468; 
 Pallavlclni rises into poetry on the occa- 
 sion, 467 ; decree on residence ineflcr- 
 tive, 468 ; immense disappointment at 
 the nullity of the decree, 471. 
 
 Rousseau's infidelity mitigated by his edu- 
 cation as a Protestant, 74, 
 
 Sacred language, Christianity has none, 
 353. 
 
 Safe-conduct asked for the Protestants in 
 the name of the Council and the Pope, 
 214 ; one granted them under another 
 name, b>it not binding the Pope, 220 ; 
 safe-conduct read with the omission of 
 the Pope's name, 260 ; new safe-con- 
 duct rendered illusory by the furtive in- 
 troduction of a nullifying clause, 302. 
 
 Saints, Avorship of, 497-513. 
 
 Salmeron, the .Tesuit, his intrigues conu 
 
INUliX. 
 
 515 
 
 ))liuiiLil of hy Ihc i)rclalcs in Ihc Doumil, 
 
 Salva semper cIjiusc always re-occiirs. 
 178 ; imiilo more positive lliaii ever, S.'Jd. 
 
 Saxony, EliiiUir ol', Kentenii'd to death, 
 but his lil"v" spared, 1^'J; Ehn-tor .Maurice 
 (leelares against the cin])eror, and takes 
 Au^isburi;, 208. 
 
 .Sax«)ny, envoys from, their language at 
 Trent, 200. 
 
 iSeripture conjoined witli tradition as the 
 rule of faith, 78 ; contrary oi)inions of 
 Tertullian, St. Basil, St. Ambrose, St. 
 Augustine, St. (Jiirysostom, St. Atiia- 
 nasius, and of the Councils of Nice, 
 Ejihesus, and C;halccdon, 70-81; Scrip- 
 ture not to be employed in pleasantry, 
 sorcery, llaltery to the great, &c., 108, 
 109. 
 
 Secular powers, decree for their reforma- 
 tion, 477 ; exorbitant powers claimed 
 for the clergy, 477 ; sarcastic protest 
 from France, 478 ; decree withdrawn, 
 47'J ; encroachments on the tjcculur 
 jtowers, 525, 520. 
 
 Seminaries for the education of the clergy, 
 their eslabli-shment, 40'J. 
 
 Session I. Opening of the Council, and 
 indiciion of next .Session, 43. 
 
 Session II. Manner of living and other 
 matters to be observed during the Coun- 
 cil, 49. 
 
 Session III. Creed recited, 57. 
 
 Session IV. Canonical Scriptures, edition 
 and use of the Sacred Books, 77-113. 
 
 Session V. Original Sin, Reformation, 
 111-127. 
 
 Session VI. Reformation, Residence of 
 ])ishoj)s, .lustification, 132-149. 
 
 Session VII. The Sacraments in general, 
 Baptism, Confirmation, Reformation, 
 Covernment of Cathedral Churches, 
 &c., 150-180. 
 
 Session VIII. The Translation of the 
 Council, 181. 
 
 Session IX. At Bologna, 
 the Session, 187. 
 
 Session X. Prorogation of the Session, 188; 
 the Session prorogued during the good 
 pleasure of the Sacred Council, 189. 
 
 Session XI. Resumption of the Council, 
 210. 
 
 Session XII. Prorogation of the Session, 
 214. 
 
 Session XIII. Sacrament of the Eucharist, 
 Reformation, 01>ligations of Bishops, 
 Clerks, &c., Safe-conduct to Protest- 
 ants, 210-243. 
 
 Session XIV. Sacraments of Penance and 
 Extreme Unt-tion, Reformation, Oflice 
 of Bishops, Clerks, Ac, 244-204. 
 
 Session XV. Proroguing the Session, Safe- 
 conduct to Protestants, 200. 
 
 Session XVI. Suspinsion of the Council, 
 209. 
 
 Session XVII. Decree for Celebrating the 
 I'ouncil, 290. 
 
 Session XVIll. The Choice of Books ; for 
 inviting all men on the public faith of 
 the CouncU, 302. 
 
 Session XIX. Prorogation " for just and 
 honorable reasons," 311 
 
 Prorogation of 
 
 Session XX. Prorogation of the Session, 
 311. 
 
 Session XXI. rommimion un'lcr both 
 kintis, Reforinatioii, 327; pitiful renulis 
 of the Session, 329. 
 
 Session XXII. The Sacrifice of the Maws, 
 Reformation, Reference to the Pope, 
 332-354. 
 
 Session XXlll. Prorogueil rijiht tiints. 
 Sacrament of Orders, Reformation, 35.'j- 
 400. 
 
 Session XXIV. Sacrament of Matrimony, 
 Reformation of Marriage, Reformation. 
 4GG-lfcO. 
 
 Session XXV. Purgatory, Invocation of 
 Saints, Relics, &c., Reformation, Regu- 
 lars and Nuns, &.C., Continuation of the 
 Session, Indulgences, Choice of Fooil, 
 Index of Books, Catechism, Breviary, 
 Missal, &c., Close of the Council, Acr 
 clamations and final Anathema, 490- 
 538. 
 
 Sessions and congregations, how <Iistin 
 guished, 43. 
 
 Simony, Paul IV. appoints a connnission 
 upon it, 274. 
 
 S])ain, results of the confessional on the 
 morals of the couTitry, 254. 
 
 State subjected to the t;hurch systematic- 
 ally, 243 ; decree for reforming the sec- 
 ular powers, 477. 
 
 Tertullian, his appeal to Scripture 
 alone, 79. 
 
 Tol(-ration by halves, and provisional, im- 
 jiossiblc with Rome, cxcejjt at the c.\ 
 l)ense of consistency, 453. 
 
 Tradition conjoined with the Bible as Die 
 source of authority, 78 ; is tradition fa- 
 vorable to itself? 79 ; made little ac- 
 count of by the early Fathers, 80 ; its 
 position never regulated, 81 ; tradition 
 in its present sense then unknown, 81 ; 
 the discussion long, and many oiiinions, 
 82 ; first made e(]ual, then put above 
 Scripture, 82, 83 ; tradition itself on the 
 Protestant side, 97. 
 
 Translation of the Council from Trent to 
 Bologna desired by the Pope, and how 
 cflTected, 181-180. 
 
 TransubstantiatiQn, definitively voted as 
 true under Innocent III., 28; the foun- 
 dation of Roman doctrine on the Eu- 
 charist, 210; voted .at Trent wiiiiout a 
 debate, 221 ; an attempt to explain sets 
 the Donr.inicans and Franciscans by the 
 ears, 221; did Luther admit it? 222; 
 physical objections, 223 ; things above 
 reason, and contrary to rea.son, distin- 
 guished, 223 ; transul)stantiation con- 
 trary to Scripture, 224 ; not held by the 
 Fathers, 229 ; Rome anathrmati/.es her 
 own historians, 231 ; a priest's belief in 
 transubstantiation, 235. 
 
 Trent again -selected for the Council aOer 
 ten years' interval, and why, 287. 
 
 Ultuamontani.sm of the Bishop of Bi- 
 tonto's oi>ening .sermon, 48; ultrumon- 
 lanism of the Popes. 292. 
 
 Ultramontanisis concede the conditional 
 (alMbiliiv of Councils, 24: confoiinded 
 
546 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 by a Spanish and a Polish bishop, 389 ; 
 reassured by the reasoning of Lainez, 
 390. 
 
 Unction, extreme, its origin, 259 ; its in- 
 consistencies, 261 ; it is often danger- 
 ous, 261. 
 
 Unity, Roman unity of the present day 
 dates from tlie Reformation, 44; has it 
 entered into God's purpose that there 
 should be unity in the Church 1 75 ; 
 unity of the popedom a human inven- 
 tion, and quite illusory, 75 ; Roman 
 Catholic unity denied, 536. 
 
 Variations, Protestant, a weak answer 
 
 to attacks against the popedom, and its 
 doctrines, 73. 
 
 Virgin, worship of, not in Scripture, 493 ; 
 nor in the Fathers, 495 — See Mariolatry. 
 
 Voltaire, his infidelity affected by his hav- 
 ing been brought up a Romanist, 74. 
 
 Vulgar tongue, discussion of its disuse in 
 the mass, &c., 353. 
 
 Vulgate, its history down to the time of 
 the Council, 67 ; urgency of the decree 
 respecting it, 90 ; results, 91 ; subse- 
 quent history of the Vulgate, 91, 92. 
 
 WURTEMBERG, Duke Of, 
 
 deputies at Trent, 265. 
 
 conduct of hia 
 
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