• Thomassin, 1.c. § 4, p. 111: Nempe id novum, id praeter mentem et voluntatem suam esset, imo quod impossibile esset et tamen ita specie tenus esse videretur.'

10 Hilar. c. Auxent. Liber. n. 6.'

11 Basil. Ep. 92, al. 69, c. ii. p. 481.

12 Thomassin, 1.c. p. 113, seq. § 8.

§ 6.

The new sect deserves in justice the name of new Protestantism and new Jansenism. The teachers of false doctrine have ever borrowed weapons from the arsenals of ancient heretics, derived expressions from their writings, and sent them forth as something new ; and in like manner the German Janus party has borrowed its ideas and words chiefly from Protestantism and Jansenism. Protestantism took the pretended corruption of the Church as a pretext for separation; while Jansenism took as its pretext the darkness said to have lasted many hundred years. No wonder, therefore, that the new sect should even outwardly connect itself with the remnant of the old Jansenists. There is in the writings and conduct of the Jansenists and the Döllingerites a harmony which extends even to the smallest details.

The opposition raised against the definition when made, July 18, 1870, is precisely the same as that raised in France in 1713, against the Bull Unigenitus.' Both heresies fought against the definition of the Church as being dangerous to the State, and both appealed against it to the power of the State; both allied themselves with any powerful party which would make common cause with them against the Church; both attacked in particular the Society of the Jesuits, who had served the Church so well; both made use of the same means, odious imputations and suspicions against Rome. Here again are the same appellations, the same defenders of 'pure theology,' the same lamentations over the tyranny of bishops, the persecution of 'orthodox' priests, and the refusal of the longed-for sacraments to 'orthodox' laymen; then come complaints of want of clearness in the definition, and of its suspicious origin. Now, as then, the question of right is separated from the question of fact. The Old

Catholics' would not for the world set themselves against a Council which is in truth general; but they contend that the Vatican Council was not truly general. They cannot perceive the dogma defined to be well founded and true; and therefore they oppose the Council which defined it. Again, they hesitate to acknowledge the Council as in truth ecumenical and lawful; and therefore they hold themselves to be freed from the believing submission to its decrees, which else they must acknowledge as due to the mysteries of faith, to those sublime truths which are far above human reason.3 But this alone is sufficing proof that, whatever they may be, they are not Catholics.

Further, every Catholic has always been bound to believe, that the Church must be, now and ever, in her essence unchangeable, imperishable, and infallible; should she ever cease to possess these attributes, then she never was at any time the true Church.

But the new Protestants have altogether lost the conception of the infallibility of the Church.

Moreover, a Catholic is bound to hold firmly, that a real contradiction between the teaching of the Church and science is not possible, and that there can be merely a seeming contradiction; if, therefore, he feel himself repelled by a definition of the Church, and find it hard for his reason to master, the error is to be sought on his side, and not on that of the Church. So said Dollinger as late as 1863.4 No Catholic can or ever could say, as did a member of the Munich Congress (1871), that he was so deeply impressed with the truth of his own conviction, although rejected by the Pope and bishops, that even were he the only mortal man who adhered to this principle, he would never profess any other. This is, and always has been, the stubborn and unjustifiable pride peculiar to heretics, which leads them to take their own judgment as their sole standard, and makes it certain that they will lose themselves in endless inconsistencies and contradictions.6

1 Abbot Wibald writes (Ep. 147, p. 1250): 'Illi ipsi qui ob ignominiosam gloriam haeretici contendunt fieri, non nova inveniunt, sed vetera replicant, et superfluas verborum novitates, quas Apostolus devitandas

praecipit, quae multorum sunt correctione antiquatae, tamquam propria ratiocinatione inventas in contentionem adducunt.'

2 Cf. these expressions with the Remonstrance du Parlement au Roi du 9 Avril 1753, e.g. 'Que ces voyes d'autorité si éloignées de l'esprit de la religion n'ont jamais été plus multipliées à son préjudice, qu'au sujet de la Bulle Unigenitus. . . . . C'est par la violence, que l'on soumet les fidèles à la Bulle Unigenitus. . . . . Quelle indétermination! Peut-elle se concilier jamais avec l'idée d'un jugement dogmatique, d'un jugement irréformable de l'Eglise universelle ?' (p. 182.) Combien de curés fidèles à leurs devoirs n'ont été enlevés à leurs paroisses par des ordres, que le faux zèle de quelques évêques est parvenu à surprendre à votre Majesté ! . . . . Quel spectacle affligeant pour la religion!' &c. Details on this subject in M. Gerbert, Op. cit. 1. iii. c. vii. n. 13 15, pp. 535-544.

The Faculty of Douay, in the Declaration of 1704, art. vi. § 4 (Du Plessis, t. iii. P. ii. pp. 436, 437), says: N. 3. L'infaillibilité de l'Eglise n'est pas fondée sur l'évidence de ce qu'elle propose, mais sur l'assistance du St. Esprit, et par consequent il ne faut pas rechercher l'évidence de l'objet pour lui soumettre son esprit. N. 4. Si l'infaillibilité de l'Eglise n'était fondée que sur l'évidence du fait, elle n'aurait en cela pas plus d'avantage que le dernier des hommes, qui ne peut aussi se tromper sur ce qui est évident. 10. Reconnaître un fait, parcequ'il est évident, n'est pas se soumettre à l'Eglise, mais à une nécessité naturelle, qui entraine l'esprit du coté de l'évidence.'

Munich, Gelehrtenversammlung, 1863, Verhandlungen, p. 56. Cf. Conc. Later. v. et Pius IX. ap. Denzinger, Enchir. p. 219, n. 621; pp. 444-451, n. 1498, 1508. Const. Vat. Dei Filius, cap. iv.

The words of St. Augustine apply here (c. Crescon. iii. 3), on the false view of heretical baptism taken by the early African bishops: Sicut laudabile est a vera sententia non amoveri, ita culpabile est persistere in falsa.'

6 Cf. Tertull. de Praescr. c. xl. xli.

$7.

Again, the new heresy has another point in common with those gone before it. Logic and consistency have never been characteristics of heresy; on the contrary, it is inseparable from glaring inconsistencies and contradictions; and this feature is to be seen again among the new Protestants, or so-called Old Catholics. On the one hand, they no longer acknowledge the 'infallibilistic clergy' as being Catholic and lawful; on the other, they demand from them for their members ecclesiastical employment, and to be allowed to exercise the functions of parish priests. They reject an episcopate submissive to the fatal July decrees, but still they make appeal to a higher court of the same

episcopate, thereby acknowledging its jurisdiction; they seek to bind the Pope by ancient canons, from which they free themselves. The ancient law of the Church, that no priest may exercise ecclesiastical functions beyond his own diocese, unless by permission of the bishop, they have with sovereign power set aside. The Jansenist Archbishop of Utrecht, without scruple, exercised his episcopal powers in Bavaria as universal bishop. The parish duties discharged by the priests of the new sect should be considered precisely in the same light as though discharged by priests who have no parochial rights, and in places where such had never been granted to them.1

6

The Old Catholics' either are or are not excluded from the Catholic Church; they either do or do not regard the power of the State as forming a part of the Catholic Church. In the former case, as the Austrian Minister of Worship expressed it (Feb. 20, 1872), they must consider as lawfully entitled to perform the pastoral functions of the religious denomination acknowledged by law those priests alone who, by the existing laws and the agreements between Church and State, are known to be the regular pastors of the denomination;' and hence they cannot consider as valid the civil register brought in by the 'Old Catholic' clergy, who had no former rights in the parish; nor can they consider the marriages solemnised before them as binding. In the latter case they must take their stand on the laws existing for dissenters and other sects, unless they should join some recognised Protestant denomination. Moreover, the 'Old Catholics' vary much in their demands; some insist on a Church, as of right belonging to them; others need none, looking upon the whole world as their Church; some desire par. ishes of their own, properly organised; others perceive this to be a fatal course, beset with snares at every step 2 some say the infallibilist bishops and priests still form part of the Church, and are the rightful holders of Church authority;'3 others consider them as wholly cut off from the Catholic Church, and as constituting an heretical Church; some have perceived that the State 'will never, in order to please a few dissenters, deprive of her rights and titles that Church which in the eyes of the whole

world has an unbroken succession, and the possession of an enormous majority of members and parishes, that Church with which the State long ago entered into close alliance; others, on the contrary, have held this to be possible, and have straightway demanded that the Catholic foundations should be handed over to them as the rightful Church. On the one side they declare, 'We accept everything which was received in the Catholic Church up to July 18, 1870;' and on the other, 'We oppose not a single dogma alone, but the whole spirit by which for centuries Rome has been animated.'

Thus are the new Protestants at variance amongst themselves, and exhibit that distinctive mark of heresy, disunion; whilst at the very time of the Vatican definition the unity of the Catholic Church was once again most strikingly shown. In the last century Martin Gerbert wrote: What schism could be more terrible than that imagined by those who believe it possible for the bishops in Council to differ from the faith of the Roman Church? But they will ever agree in the same sentence, though differences of opinion may from time to time arise in discussion: for neither to the Pope nor to the bishops is a sudden inspiration given, but the determination to which they come after deliberation is, by the assistance of the Holy Ghost, firm and inviolable.' The head will never be divided from the members; and thus we see the entire unity of the episcopate with the head of the Universal Church, while those who set themselves against the Vatican Council have fallen under the excommunication pronounced by it, and have ceased to be Catholics.

1 Vide Der Conflict zwischen Kirche und Staat in Bayern, p. 86 seq. 93 seq.

2 Döllinger, Munich Speech, 1871, Report, p. 108.

Döllinger, 1.c. 109.

Döllinger, ibid. 129, 130.