a Catholic; they who doubted it before were in an error which was at least proximate to heresy. They who doubt it now cannot be cleared of formal resistance to the divine authority of the Church. Such is the meaning of the words, If any contradict this our definition, which God forbid, let him be anathema.'

9. In this definition it is explicitly defined that the head of the Church is infallible, and it is assumed as certain that the Church also is infallible.

It is declared that this infallibility extends to all matters of faith and morals, but it does not define where the limits of faith and morals are to be fixed. It is defined that the acts of the head ex cathedra are infallible, but cases may perhaps arise in which doubts may be made as to whether this or that act be ex cathedrâ or no. In these cases of doubt no one can decide but the head of the Church. Cujus est condere, ejus est interpretari. The legislator alone is interpreter of the law. It was for this reason that Pius the Fourth, by a bull after the Council of Trent, first reserved to himself the interpretation of the decrees of the Council; secondly, prohibited all private persons to undertake to fix their meaning; and, thirdly, excommunicated all persons who should appeal from the Council of Trent to a future General Council. If, therefore, any doubt be ever mooted as to whether an act be or be not an act ex cathedrâ, no one need be scared by those who, either to ventilate their learning or to alarm the simple, pretend that there are thirty theories as to what is or is not an act ex cathedrâ. The answer is simple. Ask no one but the author of the act. Half the controversies and nearly all of the pretentious censures of the Vatican Council, if men would take this course, would die of inanition.

10. There are only two other points to be touched upon in this narrative. But they are too important to be passed over in silence.

The one is that in the end of the definition it is declared that the doctrinal declarations of the Pontiff are infallible in and of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church. That is to say, they are infallible by divine assistance, and not by the assent or acceptance of the Church to which they are addressed. Or, more simply, the teacher is not infallible because the taught believe his teaching. They believe his teaching to be true because they believe their teacher to be infallible. The motive for these words is obvious. They were the critical difference between what must be called once more by names which now have lost both meaning and reality, the Ultramontane and the Gallican doctrines. They are taken textually from the Four Articles of 1682.

A moment's reflection will justify the definition.

If the certainty of the teaching depends upon the assent of the taught, what becomes of the teacher?

If the consent of the Universal Church is to be obtained before a

doctrine is certain, how is it to be done? Is it to be the consent of the bishops only, or of the priests, or of theologians, or of the faithful, or of all together? And from what age? If the ecclesia discens is to confirm the ecclesia docens, no member of it ought to be disfranchised. Manhood suffrage is too narrow. Woman suffrage is not enough. All above the age of reason might fairly claim a vote. But as reading and writing have been proposed as qualifications for electoral suffrage, perhaps the Catechism might be required as a qualification. If the consent of the Church is to be obtained, it must be waited for. And how long? Who shall fix the days, weeks, months, or years, and what if there be no unanimity, mathematical or moral, after all? And how long is it to be waited for, and in the meanwhile in what state are the doctrines defined? Are they of faith or not of faith? is anybody bound to believe them, or nobody? are they the means of salvation or not? Can any surer way be taken to render all doctrine doubtful at least, if not odious to reasonable men? Open questions are bad enough, but suspended questions

are worse.

The other point to be noted is the fact that this schema on the Roman Pontiff was originally the tenth and eleventh chapters of the schema on the Church of Christ. It was, as we have seen, taken out of the general schema on the Church, and, with the addition of the chapter on the infallibility, it was made into a schema by itself. But further it was decided that the sohema on the Roman Pontiff should be brought on before the other. It may be asked, Why was this change of order made? In answer we may call to mind that in like manner the first schema on Catholic Faith had been set aside, and out of eighteen chapters four only had been made into a new schema by itself. It was found that the prolixity and vastness of the original schema gave no hope of its being discussed, unless everything else should be made to give way. Therefore such points as had never been hitherto defined, and such truths as at this time are both especially contradicted and vitally necessary to the very foundations of the faith, were selected for immediate treatment. We have already seen this in the last chapter. These topics, therefore, could not, without grave danger, be postponed. The rest might well be deferred. For instance, the fall of man, original sin, grace, the Incarnation, the Holy Trinity, have all been defined, but the religion of nature, revelation, faith, the relation of faith to reason, have never been defined; and they are the truths on which the Gnosticism, illuminism, and intellectual aberrations of the nineteenth century have especially fastened.

It was therefore most wisely decided to do first what was most wanted, and to do it speedily and surely.

11. The same is precisely true of the first schema on the Church of Christ. It was prolix and multifarious. It contained fifteen chapters.

Much of its contents had been already implicitly or even explicitly defined. Its chief points, as, for instance, the infallibility of the Church, have never been denied or even doubted by any Catholic.

But as to the Roman Pontiff, the discussions on the third and fourth chapters, the number of the speakers, the multitude of amendments will show what was the mental anxiety even among the pastors of the Church. Certainly, then, it was wisely determined to define first the truths which had been denied, to declare that which had been contradicted, to settle that which had been in controversy, before treating of those things in which all men were agreed.

Besides, to treat of the whole schema of fifteen or (as it became) sixteen chapters, in the time still remaining to the Council, was impossible. It was foreseen that the summer heats would cut short the work of the Council before August. We have already said that many were ill; many more were only able by an effort to bear the strain of the Council. The rumours of impending war were continually. becoming louder and nearer. It was therefore decided, at the petition of a large number of the bishops, which number might without trouble have been doubled, to bring into immediate discussion the subject by which for centuries the Church had been disquieted. We have seen how the minds of the bishops since the Centenary of S. Peter had been fixed upon it. From the outset of the Council it had been the motive of an open, legitimate, and honourable contention of two opposing sides. It was evident that the subject of the infallibility was always on the horizon. Every discussion was troubled by its shadow; time was wasted; discussions were prolonged beyond need or reason. A general secret uneasiness, such as is sometimes seen to prevail in legislatures where everybody is thinking of the same subject, which some hope for and others fear, and nobody dares. to utter first, but of which everybody betrays a consciousness, kept the two sides in the Council in a state of mutual suspicion and needless antagonism. For the sake of truth, and peace, and charity, it was therefore determined to bring the subject into the light of day, to sift and bolt it to the bran. If those who thought the defining of the infallibility to be inopportune could justify their judgment, then let it be adopted. If the contrary counsel should prevail, then it was to be hoped that it would be accepted. At all events, the only way to weigh, sift, and decide was to discuss openly and deliberately the contending reasons of this great debate.

and

But there was yet another motive of singular force urging the speedy commencement of this discussion. Seven hundred bishops of the Catholic Church assembled when the Council met; 667 had voted in the second Public Session; the number had been somewhat lessened by death and by departures; but more than half the Catholic episcopate was still in Rome. If the subject of the primacy and of the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff was ever to be discussed, it

ought to be discussed in the fullest assembly of the episcopate. In no Council before had so many bishops met together; in no future Council, it might be, would such a multitude ever meet again. Let the discussion then be taken not by surprise, not after the Council had been diminished in numbers, but when it was at its fullest strength. If the subject had been postponed till the numbers were reduced, adverse historians might have said that the bishops did not venture to bring on the debate while the Council was full; that they waited till it had dwindled to a manageable number who could be manipulated or overawed into a servile submission, and that then they defined the infallibility of the Pope. The higher and more manly course was chosen. It was resolved to bring on the trial of debate at once, and, as the event proved, the discussion was not begun a day too soon. It was only by a pressure which fell heavily upon every member of the Council, and with double weight upon the members of the Commission on Faith, who were compelled to meet after every congregation of the Council which multiplied its fresh amendments, that the Constitution on the Roman Pontiff was completed. It was confirmed and promulgated twenty-four hours before the breaking out of the Franco-German.

war.

12. Having now come to the end of this brief story of the Vatican Council, it may not be out of place to add a few words on the consequences which have either followed or have been supposed to follow from it.

Six years are now past since the 18th of July, 1870, and certain effects of the Council are already manifest, and many are imputed to it.

We will take first certain supposed consequences which the Post hoc propter hoc school affirm to be effects of the Vatican Council. For example, we have been told by a cloud of newspaper articles, and lately by a laborious German writer, that the FrancoGerman war was caused by the Vatican Council. If we were not aware that the Goodwin Sands were caused by Tenterden Steeple, that assertion would be at least improbable, if not incredible. But no one who had watched the attitude of France and Prussia for many years had any need of the Vatican Council to explain the causes of that lamentable conflict. It is only a wonder that it did not happen before. To ascribe to Ultramontanes or to Jesuits the origin of that rivalry must be seen to be absurd by any one who reflects that the first effect of such a war must be the withdrawal of the French troops from the Roman State, and that the withdrawal of those troops was the instant cause of the seizure of Rome by the Italian armies. Jesuits and Ultramontanes are usually thought to be far-sighted in matters of this world; but if with their eyes open they did not foresee these consequences they would be unjustly credited with common sense. France and Germany went to war because the

animosities of generations, the memories of wrongs endured and inflicted, the jealousy of rivals, and the covetous desire of territorial annexation common to both had stimulated the war spirit to an uncontrollable intensity. No Vatican Council was needed to drive them together, because no power on earth could have averted their murderous collision. But sometimes these events are paraded as the Nemesis on Papal pride.13 The history of the Pontiffs, then, has been one long Nemesis, for none have ever suffered so often or so much; but their history runs up into a divine event in which the suffering for truth and justice became the law of the Church and of its head for ever.

13. It is not, however, to be denied that since the Vatican Council there has been an almost universal rising against the Catholic Church. It began with the Liberal party in Germany, and with the Liberals of Berne and Geneva, and with the Liberal party in Belgium, in Spain, in France, in Italy, in Brazil, and with some who call themselves Liberals in England. Catholics were told that they were denationalised, that they could be loyal only at the expense of their religion, that their allegiance was divided, and that they depended on a foreign head. All this was said by Liberals, and to the modern Liberal party are due the Falck laws and the fining, imprisoning, deposing, exiling of bishops in Germany and in Switzerland and in South America. To the Liberal Government of Italy is now due the Clerical Abuses Bill, or the Italian translation of the Falck laws. Herr Lasker is reported to have said that in Berlin he was the only Liberal left. The Vatican Council seems to have laid a Circean spell upon the Liberal party. They have put off their former nature, and have changed places with persecutors. The Chiesa libera nello Stato libero needs, as Liberals say, a supplement in the Codice Penale. Modern Liberalism is the Cæsarism of the State. Liberalism seems to believe that all power in heaven and on earth' was given to it-that the State has power to define the limits of its own jurisdiction and also those of the Church. All sin and blasphemy against God is forgiven to men. There is only one unpardonable sin. Any one who speaks a word against the omnipotence of the State is disloyal, and shall never be forgiven. We were told in the Italian Chamber that the law against the abuses of the clergy was provoked by the Vatican Council. In the same breath the author of the bill and the members of the commission tell us that the same laws existed in the Penal Code of Sardinia before the Vatican Council was convened.

Quo teneam vultus mutantem Protea nodo?

13 The same year which saw the overthrow of Cæsarism immediately after the plebiscite witnessed also the Nemesis which overtook the spiritual pride of the Pontiff, now exalted to its highest pinnacle, and showed to him who arrogated to himself a divine nature, that God is a jealous God, who will allow to none other the honour due to Himself.'-Geffken, Church and State, vol. ii. p. 334. Does this learned author know what a 'divine nature' is? or does he believe that the Vatican Council declared Pius the Ninth to be uncreated?