his creation. After mass in the Sistine Chapel, he went into the Pauline Chapel to unvest. The Cardinal Vicar in the name of the Sacred College made the usual address of congratulation, ending with the words that they wished to the Holy Father health and many years to see the peace and triumph of the Church.' The Pope answered in substance as follows:

I accept your good wishes from my heart, but I remit their verification to the hand of God. We are in a moment of great crisis. If we look only to the aspect of human events, there is no hope; but we have a higher confidence. Men are intoxicated with dreams of unity and progress, but neither is possible without justice. Unity and progress based on pride and egotism are illusions. God has laid on me the duty to declare the truths on which Christian society is based, and to condemn the errors which undermine its foundation. And I have not been silent. In the encyclical of 1864, and in that which is called the Syllabus, I declared to the world the dangers which threaten society, and I condemned the falsehoods which assail its life. That act I now confirm in your presence, and I set it again before you as the rule of your teaching. To you, venerable brethren, as bishops of the Church, I now appeal to assist me in this conflict with error. On you I rely for support. I am aged and alone, praying on the mountain; and you, the bishops of the Church, are come to hold up my arms. The Church must suffer, but it will conquer. 'Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, entreat, rebuke, with all patience and doctrine. For there shall be a time' —and that time is come-' when they will not endure sound doctrine.' The world will contradict you, and turn from you; but be firm and faithful. For I am even now ready to be sacrificed, and the time of my dissolution is at hand.' 'I have,' I trust, fought a good fight,' and 'have kept the faith,' and there is laid up for you, and I hope for me also, a crown of justice which the Lord, the just Judge, will render to me at that day."2

5. If we look upon the Centenary only as a demonstration of moral power and of the superiority of the moral over the material order of the world, it has a deep significance. Pius the Ninth was at that moment in the crisis to which the Italian revolution of so many years had been advancing. All protection of the Catholic powers of the world, of whom France had been till then the mandatary, had been withdrawn. He knew that the revolution would come to Rome again with more formidable power than in 1848. Verrà fin qui,' as he said in his farewell to the general of the French army. In the face of all menace, and with the certainty of the coming revolution, Pius the Ninth had the year before convened the Catholic episcopate to meet in Rome in 1867. No event, excepting the Council of the Vatican, has in our age manifested so visibly to the intellect and so palpably even to the sense of men the unity, universality, unanimity, and authority of the only Church which alone can endure S. Augustine's two tests, cathedra Petri and diffusa per orbem-union with the See of Peter, and expansion throughout the world. The Centenary was a confession of faith, without an accent of controversy. Even those who were not of the unity of the Church recognised it as such. Who2 Centenary of S. Peter and the General Council, pp. 6, 7. Longmans.

soever believed in Christianity and desired the spread of our Lord's kingdom upon earth could not fail to see in that great gathering the wide foundations laid by the apostolic mission. Even they who reject certain Catholic doctrines hold the Creed of the Apostles, which has been guarded by the Catholic Church. Even they who rest their faith on Scriptures alone, still more they who rest it upon fathers and councils, know that the custody of all these is in the Church which assembled on that day round the centre of its unity. The worldwide Church is the great witness upon whose broad testimony all Christians must ultimately rest. Take the Catholic and Roman Church out of the world, and where is Christendom? These reasons moved even those who were not in the unity of the Church to a respectful silence. But if such was the undeniable action of the Centenary upon just and considerate men outside its unity, what was it upon those who were within? This we shall best show by quoting the words of Pius the Ninth in the allocution of the 26th of June, and the answer of the bishops in the audience of the 1st of July.

6. Pius the Ninth addressed the 500 bishops who had gathered round him from all parts of the world in these words:

If the general good of the faithful be considered, what, venerable brethren, can be more timely and wholesome for Catholic nations, in order to increase their obedience towards us and the Apostolic See, than that they should see how highly the sanctity and the rights of Catholic unity are prized by their pastors, and should behold them, for that cause, traversing great distances by sea and land, deterred by no difficulties from hastening to the Roman See, that they may pay reverence in the person of our humility to the successor of Peter and the vicar of Christ on earth? For by this authority of example, far better than by subtile doctrine, they will perceive what reverence, obedience, and submission they ought to bear towards us, to whom, in the person of Peter, Christ our Lord said, 'Feed my lambs-feed my sheep,' and in those words entrusted and committed to us the supreme care and power over the Universal Church.

For what else did Christ our Lord intend us to understand when He set Peter as head to defend the stability of his brethren, saying, 'I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not'? He intended, as S. Leo implies, that the Lord took a special care of Peter, and prayed expressly for Peter's faith, as if the state of the others would be more certain if the mind of their chief were unconquered. In Peter, therefore, the fortitude of all was guarded and the help of divine grace was so ordained that the stability which was given by Christ to Peter, by Peter should be bestowed on the rest of the apostles.' Nay, venerable brethren, we have never doubted but that out of the very tomb where the ashes of blessed Peter rest for the perpetual veneration of the world, a secret power and healing virtue goes forth to inspire the pastors of the Lord's flock,' &c.

To this the bishops unanimously answered :

We take part more fervently in the present celebration, as contemplating, in the solemnity which this day brings round again, the unshaken firmness of the Rock whereon our Lord and Saviour built his Church, solid and perpetual. For we perceive it to be an effect of the power of God, that the chair of Peter, the organ of truth, the centre of unity, the foundation and bulwark of the Church's freedom, should have stood firm and unmoved for now eighteen hundred years complete,

amid so many adverse circumstances and such constant efforts of its enemies; that while kingdoms and empires rose and fell in turn, it should so have stood, as a secure beacon to direct men's course through the tempestuous sea of life, and show, by its light, the safe anchorage and harbour of salvation.

Five years ago we rendered our due testimony to the sublime office you bear, and gave public expression to our prayers for you, for your civil princedom, and the cause of right and of religion. We then professed, both in words and writing, that nothing was more true or dearer to us than to believe and teach those things which you believe and teach, than to reject those errors which you reject. All those things which we then declared we now renew and confirm. Never has your voice been silent. You have accounted it to belong to your supreme office to proclaim eternal verities, to smite the errors of the time which threaten to overthrow the natural and supernatural order of things and the very foundations of ecclesiastical and civil power. So that at length all may know what it is that every Catholic should hold, retain, and profess. Believing that Peter has spoken by the mouth of Pius, therefore whatsoever you have spoken, confirmed, and pronounced for the safe custody of the deposit, we likewise speak, confirm, and pronounce; and with one voice and one mind we reject everything which, as being opposed to divine faith, the salvation of souls, and the good of human society, you have judged fit to reprove and reject. For that is firmly and deeply established in our consciousness, which the fathers at Florence defined in their Decree on Union, that the Roman Pontiff 'is the vicar of Christ, head of the whole Church, and father and teacher of all Christians; and that to him in the person of blessed Peter has been committed by our Lord Jesus Christ full power to feed, to rule, and to govern the Universal Church.' 3

The full meaning of this declaration of the bishops will not be understood unless we bear in mind that they were speaking of the doctrinal acts of Pius the Ninth during his pontificate, of which the definition of the Immaculate Conception, the encyclical, and the syllabus were the most prominent and the most recent. We see, then, half the episcopate of the Church proclaiming that from the moment that the voice of Pius the Ninth reached them, all the declarations and condemnations of the successor of Peter were to them, not necessarily in all things matters of faith because the greater part of the syllabus is in matters not revealed, but the rule of their teaching. With what consistency or sincerity could this be said of any teacher for whose declarations and condemnations there was no special guidance and guarantee? Without doubt these words did not explicitly declare the Roman Pontiff to be infallible, but half the episcopate of the Church would be not unreasonably accused of great temerity in their language if they had not believed the head of the Church to be in some special way guarded from error in his teaching.

7. The address from which this passage is taken was prepared as follows. Nothing can more clearly show how consciously present to the mind of the bishops at that time was the infallibility of their head. A general meeting of bishops was convened at the Altieri Palace, to draw up an address in reply to the allocution of the Holy Father.

3 Petri Privilegium, part i. pp. 28-33. Longmans.

Bishops of every nation were present, and it was found impossible to frame any document in so numerous an assembly. It was therefore decided to entrust the drawing up of the address to a commission of seven-namely, the Cardinal De Angelis, Archbishop of Fermo, the Archbishops of Sorrento, Saragossa, Kalocsa, Thessalonica (now Cardinal Franchi), Westminster, and the Bishop of Orleans. At the first meeting of the commission it was agreed to entrust the preparing of the first draft of the address to Mgr. Haynald, the Archbishop of Kalocsa. At the next meeting of the commission the draft was examined. In outline it was nearly as it was adopted at last; but in one point, bearing intimately on the history of the Council, it underwent an important revision. As it originally stood, the word infallible was, in more places than one, ascribed to the office and authority of the Pontiff. To this word, as expressing a doctrine of Catholic truth, no member of the commission objected. But it was said that the word infallible had as yet been used only in provincial councils, or pastoral letters, or theological schools, but that it had not been inserted in the formal acts of any general council of the Church, and that, inasmuch as the 500 bishops then in Rome were not assembled in council, it might be advisable not to seem to assume the action or office of a Council. These considerations were assented to by all. It was then proposed to insert the words of the Council of Florence, which was the last authoritative decree on the primacy of the Roman Pontiff. To this no objection as to the subject-matter was made; but it was urged that the draft address already contained expressions stronger than the decree of the Council of Florence, which only implicitly contains the infallibility of the head of the Church as the teacher of all Christians, for the address explicitly declares that 'Peter has spoken by the mouth of Pius.' To this it was answered that though beyond all doubt these words explicitly declare the voice of the Pontiff to be infallible as Peter was, yet this acclamation of the fathers of Chalcedon and that of the third Council of Constantinople were always, and not unreasonably, set aside as of little weight in controversy, as little more than rhetorical amplifications of the authority of Leo and of Agatho. They were not doctrinal formulas, much less definitions, but only acclamations; and acclamations define nothing, and can form neither objects of faith nor terminations of controversy. It was therefore by the vote of almost all the seven members of the commission, if not indeed by the united vote of all, decided that the words of the decree of the Florentine Council should be inserted. These facts are here noted in detail because their importance will be seen hereafter. They prove that at the Centenary in 1867 the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, with its full prerogatives and endowments, was vividly before the minds of the bishops. The Centenary in itself, with all its solemnities, admonitions, and associations, threw out into visible and palpable relief the twofold office of the successor of Peter in doctrine

and jurisdiction, or, in other words, his primacy and the divine assistance by which it is perpetually sustained in the custody of revealed truth. The facts prove also the circumspection with which the members of the commission avoided everything which could have the semblance of anticipating the action of the Vatican Council, or of engaging the bishops by any expressions in any declaration beyond the previous and authoritative teaching of the Church. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the impression made by the Centenary upon the minds of the bishops determined many to promote by all means in their power the closing of a controversy which had for centuries periodically disturbed the Church.

8. It may not be out of place to give here an outline of the question of the infallibility-its origin, its climax, and its determination. But in writing the story of the Vatican Council it will be more fitting simply to trace the history of the question than to treat it theologically. A history is a narrative, not an argument, and the qualities required in a narrative are truth and accuracy, not a polemical defence of the truths narrated. This belongs to the province of dogmatic theology.1

Like other contested doctrines of Christianity, the infallibility of the head of the Church has had three periods: the first was a period of simple belief, the second a period of analysis and controversy, the third a period of gradual determination and final definition. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is a fair example. It has visibly passed through these three stages. It was implicitly contained in the universal belief of the Church, both East and West, that the Blessed Virgin was a person without sin, and sanctified by a pre-eminent and exceptional sanctification. This was the first period of unanalysed belief. The second period began in the Pelagian controversy, when S. Augustin, in affirming the universality of original sin, expressly excepted the mother of our Lord. This exemption from original sin was analytically accounted for in two ways-either that she was liberated from it and born without it, or that she was always free from it in the first moment of her existence. The former is the doctrine of the Immaculate Nativity, the latter of the Immaculate Conception. The third period dates from the eleventh century, during which the doctrine of the Immaculate Nativity was seen to be less and less adequate to explain the absolute sinlessness of the mother of our Redeemer, and the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was seen to be more and more in conformity with the analogy of faith. These same three periods are traceable in the doctrine of the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff. Down to the Council of Constance in the fifteenth century, the stability of the faith of Peter, and the immutability of the Roman Church or of the see of Peter, were the universal belief of the Church. This belief was not speculative only. It was exhibited in the public The theological argument may be found in the first and second parts of Petri Privilegium. Longmans.

1