of the Church. He gives a form of Confirmation which never existed in one-half of the Church, and first came into use in the other after the tenth century. So again with Penance. What is given as the essential form of the sacrament was unknown in the Western Church for eleven hundred years, and never known in the Greek. And when the touching the sacred vessels, and the words accompanying the rite, are given as the form and matter of Ordination, it follows that the Latin Church for a thousand years had neither priests nor bishops— nay, like the Greek Church, which never adopted this usage, possesses to this hour neither priests nor bishops, and consequently no sacraments except Baptism, and perhaps Marriage.1 It is noteworthy that this decree with which Papal Infallibility or the whole hierarchy and the sacraments of the Church stand or fall-is cited, refuted, and appealed to by all dogmatic writers, but that the adherents of Papal Infallibility have never meddled with it. Neither Bellarmine, nor Charlas, nor Aguirre, nor Orsi, 1 Cf. Denzinger, Enchirid. Symbol. et Definit. (Wirceb. 1854), pp. 200 seq. But Denzinger, in order to conceal the purely dogmatic character of this famous decree, has omitted the first part, on the Trinity and Incarnation, which is given in Raynaldus's Annals, 1439. [The same conspicuously untenable explanation was adopted in the Dublin Review for January 1866.-TR.] nor the other apologists of the Roman Court, troubled themselves with it. After the Papal claim to infallibility had taken a more definite shape at Rome, Sixtus v. himself brought it again into jeopardy by his edition of the Bible. The Council of Trent had pronounced St. Jerome's version authentic for the Western Church, but there was no authentic edition of the Latin Bible sanctioned by the Church. Sixtus v. undertook to provide one, which appeared, garnished with the stereotyped forms of anathema and penal enactments. His Bull declared that this edition, corrected by his own hand, must be received and used by everybody as the only true and genuine one, under pain of excommunication, every change, even of a single word, being forbidden under anathema. But it soon appeared that it was full of blunders, some two thousand of them introduced by the Pope himself. It was said the Bible of Sixtus v. must be publicly prohibited. But Bellarmine advised that the peril Sixtus had brought the Church into should be hushed up as far as possible; all the copies were to be called in, and the corrected Bible printed anew, under the name of Sixtus v., with a statement in the Preface that the errors had crept in through the fault of the compositors and the carelessness of others. Bellarmine himself was commissioned to give circulation to these lies, to which the new Pope gave his name, by composing the Preface. In his Autobiography this Jesuit and Cardinal congratulates himself on having thus requited Sixtus with good for evil; for the Pope had put his great work on Controversies on the Index, because he had not maintained the direct, but only the indirect, dominion of the Pope over the whole world. And now followed a fresh mishap. The Autobiography, which was kept in the archives of the Roman Jesuits, got known in Rome through several transcripts. On this Cardinal Azzolini urged that, as Bellarmine had insulted three Popes and exhibited two as liars, viz., Gregory XIV. and Clement VIII, his work should be suppressed and burnt, and the strictest secrecy inculcated about it.1 § IV. The Verdict of History. Some explanation is imperatively needed of the strange phenomenon, that an opinion according to which Christ 1 For, thought Azzolini, what shall we say, if our adversaries infer 'Papa potest falli in exponendâ Ecclesiæ S. Scripturâ "-the Pope can err in expounding Scripture-nay, hath erred, "non solum in exponendo sed in eâ multa perperam mutando," not only in expounding it, but in making many wrong changes in the text? Voto nella causa della Beatif. del Card. Bellarm. (Ferrara, 1761), p. 40. has made the Pope of the day the one vehicle of His inspirations, the pillar and exclusive organ of Divine truth, without whom the Church is like a body without a soul, deprived of the power of vision, and unable to determine any point of faith-that such an opinion, which is for the future to be a sort of dogmatic Atlas carrying the whole edifice of faith and morals on its shoulders, should have first been certainly ascertained in the year of grace 1869, but is from henceforth to be placed as a primary article of faith at the head of every catechism. For thirteen centuries an incomprehensible silence on this fundamental article reigned throughout the whole Church and her literature. None of the ancient confessions of faith, no catechism, none of the patristic writings composed for the instruction of the people, contain a syllable about the Pope, still less any hint that all certainty of faith and doctrine depends on him. For the first thousand years of Church history not a question of doctrine was finally decided by the Pope. The Roman bishops took no part in the commotions which the numerous Gnostic sects, the Montanists and Chiliasts, produced in the early Church, nor can a single dogmatic decree issued by one of them be found during the first four centuries, nor a trace of the existence of any. Even the controversy about Christ kindled by Paul of Samosata, which occupied the whole Eastern Church for a long time, and necessitated the assembling of several Councils, was terminated without the Pope taking any part in it. So again in the chain of controversies and discussions connected with the names of Theodotus, Artemon, Noetus, Sabellius, Beryllus, and Lucian of Antioch, which troubled the whole Church, and extended over nearly 150 years, there is no proof that the Roman bishops acted beyond the limits of their own local Church, or accomplished any dogmatic result. The only exception is the dogmatic treatise of the Roman bishop Dionysius, following a Synod held at Rome in 262, denouncing and rejecting Sabellianism and the opposite method of expression of Dionysius of Alexandria. This document, if any authority had been ascribed to it, was well fitted in itself to cut short, or rather strangle at its birth, the long Arian disturbance; but it was not known out of Alexandria, and exercised no influence whatever on the later course of the controversy. It is only known from the fragments quoted afterwards by Athanasius. In three controversies during this early period the Roman Church took an active part, the question about Easter, about heretical baptism, and about the peni E |