the direct guidance of God might cause anxiety to the State; the definition of the 18th July 1870, far from occasioning such anxiety, dispels it. Had the Pope been declared fallible, then indeed cause would have existed for apprehension of an abuse of the power which, in his office of supreme teacher, he would still have possessed. Since, however, it was defined by the Church that whenever he exercises his office of supreme teacher he is directly assisted by the Holy Ghost, any apprehension of this kind is excluded.

The Church can never break with her past history. She can never define a dogma in opposition to what she has always believed. Otherwise all our Lord's promises to her would be unfulfilled, and she would be lost. The same Holy Spirit,' wrote Bossuet to Leibnitz, who prevents the Church from diminishing the faith, guards her also from adding to it (anything heterogeneous); therefore she must have been preserved as well from useless as from erroneous definitions.'

By the definition of Papal Infallibility the Church has given its deathblow to Gallicanism, and has brought fresh proof of her own wonderful vitality and unity in conflict with the few opponents who have appeared now as on all similar occasions. Civil authority, as ordained by God, has nothing to fear and much to hope from such a Church. True Catholics make no revolutions; they are the victims of revolutions which others excite. They yield a faithful and inviolable obedience to authority, not from fear or favour of men, but because such is the will of God, who has ordained it. If, however, anything is required of them contrary to their creed or their conscience which cannot be lawfully done, especially not by a government pledged to allow liberty of conscience, then, relying upon the words 'We must obey God rather than men,' they offer, and must offer, a passive resistance, but even then nothing more. Popes would rather lose their throne than dispossess a lawful prince; their deeds and words have never been revolutionary, but are always directed to the maintenance of order. The enemies of the Church,' the Pope said in a speech in 1871, are afraid of the priesthood, are afraid of good Catholics, are afraid of the preach

ing of the Word of God, but they have no fear of the sects which are eating away the heart of society, subverting thrones, and destroying social order.' They seek to conceal dangers which are close at hand from other sources, and designate the Church, with its Papacy, orders, and priesthood, as inimical to the State. They impute all manner of pretensions to the Popes, and assert it to be probable that at some future period these pretensions will be 'made dogmatic;' hence they conclude that the dogma of infallibility is dangerous to the State, and that those who believe it cannot be good subjects. But in truth not merely the infallible teaching office of the Pope, but the whole of positive Christianity, is incompatible with that liberal State absolutism which acknowledges no right save its own.

§ 3.

Did the Church lose her identity by the definitions of the Council of Trent or of any earlier Council? Has she not the right to declare that a doctrine not always expressly held to be so is part of the revealed truth? Was this her right only during the first ages of Christianity? Has she lost the right to decide any dispute or question which may arise upon the truths of revelation? Yet she is said now to have lost her identity because, retaining all former articles of faith, she has brought forward another which is new not in substance but only in form, because she has drawn the logical conclusion from longexisting decrees, because she has decided a dispute of long standing, and issued a positive decision about the bearer of that infallibility which has always belonged to her. Why was not this doctrine considered dangerous to the State in old times? It was not found to be so either by the Kings of Spain and Portugal, or by the Emperors of Germany; not by the dukes and electors of Bavaria, nor by the ecclesiastical princes of Germany, although it was maintained before them openly, both verbally and in writing; nay rather they took it for granted, since they besought the Holy See for dogmatic definitions, and styled the Pope interpreter of the decisions of God and in

fallible teacher; they never put a stop to the use of catechisms in which this doctrine was taught.

The united Church of the Palatinate is an instance of a Church which may truly be said to have 'changed,' for in its new Protestant catechism it discards the fundamental doctrine of the Trinity. This has met with no opposition, and though scarcely now entitled to the name of Christian in the old sense of the word, no one has called this Church a 'new Church,' 'which has not, therefore, yet been recognised by the State.' Yet this has been said of the Catholic Church, although the Church which the State recognised as Catholic had the Pope at her head and the bishops in union with him for her pastors. This is the one Catholic Church. Whosoever casts himself from the rock of the Church separates himself from his lawful pastors, and refusing obedience to the Church, is no longer a Catholic. He may call himself Jansenist, or Döllingerite, or what he will; but Catholic he is not, neither old Catholic nor new, for that is a contradiction in terms. Catholic means universal, in time as well as in place. Was the Church recognised as the Catholic Church ever separated from the Pope and the lawful bishops? Was the Jansenist sect, to which the new opponents of the Church have joined themselves, ever recognised as the Catholic Church?

1 Vide a letter of the converted Duke Rudolph Max of Saxony, the 27th May 1628 (Hortus Pastorum Auctore J. Marchontio, Colon. Agr. 1699, p. 193).

§ 4.

No, the Church has not changed; it is the State which has changed, for it now contests and denies to the Church the rights it once recognised as hers; it foments and favours schism and makes new laws to her disadvantage, until by grasping more and more at theological jurisdiction, and by usurping the office of supreme judge in matters of faith, it is pressed onwards to a denial of Christianity.

But the Church is said to have become dangerous to the State because she has now declared theoretically as an article of faith that which in practice has long been acknowledged. But is

she to be denied all further development,1 whilst the State is to follow out to their remotest consequence the principles contained in itself? The Pope, unfettered from without, has always in all ages guarded the rights of the Universal Church from encroachment from the various States. Why should the doctrine be thus feared if the practice has not proved dangerous to the State?

The fact is people argue upon a misconception. They talk of Papal omnipotence and a deified Pope instead of an infallible teacher invested with full powers. From this distorted doctrine they draw inferences even more strange. The misrepresentations have been already exposed. The false suppositions and inferences will be examined in detail in the following essays.

1 Even the Paris theologians had in 1324 declared that it belonged to the Church of Rome to decide what things were to be held as of faith, she being the universal rule of Catholic truth (Du Plessis, t. i. p. i. p. 222): they had petitioned John XXII. in 1333 for a definition on the controversy about the visio beatifica' (ib. p. 318); and in 1388 one of its members attributed to the bishops in matters of faith an auctoritas inferior et subordinata binding only secundum quid; but to the Pope, the summa simpliciter et absoluta (ib. P. ii. pp. 76, 84-86). John of Paris (died A.D. 1304) described the Pope as the 'superior in spiritualibus, per cujus sententiam controversiae terminentur' (de Pot. Reg. et Pap. c. iii.), and declared himself ready to retract, if anything contrary to his doctrine were shown to be determinatum per sacrum canonem aut per Ecclesiam aut per generale Concilium aut per Papam, qui virtute contenet totam Ecclesiam (Du Plessis, 264).

ESSAY III.

THE VATICAN COUNCIL.

CATHOLICS have ever held to be infallible a General Council lawfully convoked-that is, that a Council representing the whole Church, and dealing with decisions on doctrines of faith and morals, cannot err. Every catechism teaches this; it is contained in the thirty-nine articles published by Martin V., treating of the followers of Wickliff and Huss,1 as well as in the creed of Pius IV., which is in universal use. Any one who opposes the decrees of such a Council has cut himself off from the Catholic Church. Moreover, as has been already shown, though no Council had been held, the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope in his office of teacher would still be certain, even according to Gallican teaching, from the fact that the Pope and bishops agree in proposing this dogma to the faithful as a doctrine of faith, thus proving the agreement of the whole teaching Church. For it is the universal Catholic doctrine that the faithful are bound to believe all that is taught and proposed to their belief by the Pope and the bishops.

Let us now see (1) who are the adversaries of the Vatican Council; (2) what they allege against it; (3) what they propose in its stead.

PART I. THE OPPONENTS OF THE COUNCIL HERETICS.

§ 1. Their inconsistency in rejecting the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. § 2. Their grounds and principles throughout heretical, Protestant. § 3. Likewise their proceedings. Comparison with those of the Arians. § 4. Comparison with those of the Donatists. § 5. All heretics reproach the Church with being corrupt. § 6. Connection with Jansenism. § 7. Their want of unity in contrast with the unity of the Church.