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M. Gambetta, the other day, made a funeral oration over the Gallican liberties. He told the Assembly that the National Church of France existed no longer-that the Vatican Council had denationalised it. These gentlemen, who receive the name of the Redeemer of the world with roars of laughter, are of such delicate theological perception as to be offended by the Vatican Council. If things are to be called by their Christian names, this is hypocrisy. There can indeed be little doubt that the Vatican Council has so drawn together the array of the Catholic Church as to make the anti-christian revolutions of the Continent feel the pressure of the great moral power which sustains the order of the world. Hence come not tears, but ravings.

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14. Another supposed consequence of the Vatican Council was the 'Old Catholic schism.' And here in justice it must be said that the opposition of governments and political parties was not spontaneous or without instigation. We have seen with what perseverance the fears of statesmen and cabinets were worked upon, and we know how ubiquitous and how subtle has been the activity of the international Revolution. But another cause was open and palpable. The 'Old Catholic' schism in Germany appealed to the civil power, and the civil power promptly recognised and copiously paid its ministers. It seemed to bring the promise of a German National Church, representing the mind of the nation and without dependence, as Dr. Friedbergh has it, on the man outside of Germany.' But the Old Catholic' schism was not the consequence of the Vatican Council any more than was Arianism the consequence of the Council of Nicæa. The definitions of the Council were indeed the occasion of the separation of a small number of professors and others from the unity of the Church, whose antecedents had for years visibly prepared for this final separation. The strange medley which met at Augsburg and Bonn and Cologne, of Rationalists and Protestants, and Orientals and Jansenists and Anglicans, was not the consequence of the Vatican Council. Every sect there represented had been for generations or for centuries in separation and in antagonism to the Catholic Church. The Vatican Council may have awakened a sharper consciousness of the cause of their separation, and a handful of such Catholics as composed Janus and Quirinus invoked their help to give the appearance of numbers. Even Pomponio Leto had too much wit to be there.

Before and during and after the Council formidable prophecies of separations to come, sometimes in tones of anxiety, sometimes in tones of menace, were heard. And those who were most firm in urging onward the definition of the infallibility were not unconscious of the danger. They remembered that after the Council of Nicæa eighty bishops separated from the unity of the faith, and carried multitudes with them. Nevertheless the fathers of the Nicene Council did not forsake or compromise the truth, nor think it inopportune to

declare it. S. Athanasius was reproached for dividing the Christian world for an iota. But that iota has, under God, saved the faith of the ever-blessed Trinity. The faith of the Christian world rests at this day upon the definition of Nicæa.

So again, after the Council of Ephesus, thirty bishops followed the Nestorian heresy. The fathers of that Council foresaw the danger, but they knew that no danger was to be compared with the danger of betraying the truth. They defined the doctrine of faith as to the unity of the Person in two natures, and on that definition the doctrine of the incarnation has rested immutably to this day.

After the Council of Chalcedon the Monophysites separated themselves from Catholic unity.

Will any reasonable man say that the Arian, Nestorian, and Monophysite heresies were the consequence of the Councils of Nicæa, Ephesus, and Chalcedon?

But lastly, at the Council of Trent, the motives of human prudence and the pleadings of natural charity must have been very powerful on the side of endeavouring to win and to conciliate. Whole nations were on the brink of separation. But an Ecumenical Council is not like a human legislature. It cannot suppress, or soften, or vary, or withhold the truth on calculations of expediency, or with a view to consequences. Necessity is laid upon it. As it has received, so it must declare. Deviation from the truth would be apostasy; silence when truth is denied is betrayal. This is what, it seems, Honorius did, and what some would have had Pius the We have no jurisdiction Ninth do. Truth is not ours, it is of God. against it or over it. Our sole office to truth is to guard it and to declare it. That which ye have heard in the ear, preach ye on the house tops.' For this cause the Council of Trent defined every doctrine which had been unhappily denied or distorted in controversy from the year 1517. It ranged its decrees along the whole line of the Lutheran aberration. Was the Lutheran separation the consequence of the Council of Trent?

15. After the close of the Council of Trent, the separations which were foreseen became complete. Whole kingdoms fell from the unity of the faith. But from that hour the Council of Trent has renewed and governed the Catholic Church. It may be said with truth that as the Council of Nicea has guarded the faith of the Holy Trinity to this hour, so the Council of Trent has guarded both the doctrines assailed in the sixteenth century, and the discipline of the Church in its manifold contacts with the world. The Church has been reproached as Tridentine. No greater honour could be paid to The Church is Tridentine in the sense in the Council of Trent. which it is Nicene, and in which it will henceforward bear the stamp of the Vatican Council. Every Ecumenical Council leaves its impress upon it, and all these impressions are clear and harmonious.

The Church is not like a codex rescriptus in which the later writings obliterate or confuse the former, but like the exquisite operations of art in which the manifold lines and colours and tints are laid on in succession, each filling up what the other begins, and combining all into one perfect whole. But it is certain that after the Councils of Nicea and of Trent the Arian and the Lutheran separations made many to fear lest evil had been done, and to doubt the prudence of the Council. They who had been brought up before the new definitions probably died in the belief that they could have gone on safely without them. And they who measured all things only by their own needs thought them to be unnecessary, and gave at most a cold submission to what had been decreed; so it might be now. But we must not measure all things by ourselves, nor must we make our own times so much the centre of all things as to think what is needless to us cannot be needed by others now and hereafter. Ecumenical Councils look not at individuals only, but at the whole Church, and not at what may be needed by any one so much as what the truth demands. Men who speak in this way forget, or do not believe, that the Church is a witness and teacher. They look, too, only at the moment. But when the generation of to-day is past, and they who may have opposed or reluctantly acquiesced in what was not familiar to their youth are passed away, when the definitions of the Vatican shall have pervaded the living world-wide faith of the Church like the definitions of Nicæa and of Trent, then it will be seen what was needed in the nineteenth century, and what the Vatican Council has accomplished. Then in due time it will be perceived that never was any council so numerous, nor were ever the dissentient voices relatively so few; that never was any council so truly œcumenical both in its representation and in its acceptance; that never were the separations after it fewer, feebler, or more transient; and that never did the Church come out from a great conflict more confirmed in its solidity, or more tranquil in its internal peace. Those who love to declaim that the Council of the Vatican has divided the Church will no doubt go to the grave with the same illusions on their brain and the same assertions in their mouth. But they will have no succession. Facts win at last. The prophecies of separations which were to follow have come to nought, and the prophets are silent in the presence of visible unity. The Church is unresting, unhasting.' It hears calmly the counsels of its adversaries and the compassion of those who wish it no good; but it holds its peace. Time works for it. If science can say 'Hominum commenta delet dies, naturæ judicia confirmat,' the Church can say, 'Cælum et terra transibunt, verba autem mea non præteribunt.'

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When the passions of men are laid by the silent lapse of time which stills all conflicts, noble and ignoble, history will reject as a

14 S. Matt. xxiv. 35.

fable, and censure as an indignity, the suspicion that the Council of the Vatican was convoked by Pius the Ninth chiefly if not altogether to define the infallibility of the Pope, and that they who promoted that definition were impelled by any motive but fidelity to truth. But, whatsoever may be their lot, they will count it to be one of the greatest benedictions of their life that they were called to help in the least measure to vindicate the divine authority of the head of the Church from the petulant controversies which had in these last centuries clouded with the doubts of men the steadfast light of divine faith. The definition of the infallibility of the head of the Church has put beyond controversy that the Church speaks for ever by a divine voice, not intermittently by General Councils, but always by the voice of its head. It has met the unbelief of the nineteenth century by the declaration that the prophecy of Isaias and the promise of God to the Divine Head of the Church are for ever fulfilled in his vicar upon earth. 'My Spirit which is upon Thee, and my word which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed or of thy seed's seed from henceforth and for ever.' 15

15 Isaias lix, 21.

HENRY EDWARD, Cardinal Archbishop.

GREATER OR LESSER BRITAIN.

ABOUT the end of the year 1869 much anxiety was felt, not only in political circles but throughout the country, on account of the supposed desire of several members of the Liberal Government to detach the colonies from the Empire.' The denials which were made and the discussions in Parliament which ensued are matters of history. They did not very much change the impression which previously existed, except to remove apprehension of immediate hostile action against the colonies.

Mr. Disraeli, in the address which he delivered to the Conservative Association at the Crystal Palace on the 24th of June, 1872, commented on the action which the Liberals had taken towards disintegrating the Empire. He said:

If you look to the history of this country since the advent of Liberalism forty years ago, you will find that there has been no effort so continuous, so subtle, supported with so much energy and carried on with so much ability and acumen, as the attempts of Liberalism to effect the disintegration of the Empire.

He then commented upon the ability with which the effort was sustained. Self-government, he considered, was granted to the colonies as a means to the end. He continued:

Not that I for one object to self-government. I cannot conceive how our distant colonies can have their affairs administered except by self-government. But self-government, when it was conceded, ought, in my opinion, to have been conceded as part of a great policy of Imperial consolidation. It ought to have been accompanied by an Imperial tariff, by securities to the people of England for the enjoyment of the unappropriated lands which belonged to the Sovereign as their trustee, and by a Military Code, which should have precisely defined the

'If there is any lesson which we should draw from the loss of the United States, it is the misfortune of parting from those colonies in ill-will and irritation. We parted with those great colonies because we attempted to coerce them; and if we now part with our present colonies it will be because we expel them from our dominion. The circumstances are different, but the result will be the same, and that result must be the bitter alienation and undying enmity of these great countries. For my own part I see with dismay the course which is now being taken, a part at once cheeseparing in point of economy, and spendthrift in point of national character. I will be no party to it, and I beg to enter my humble and earnest protest against a course which I conceive to be ruinous to the honour and fatal to the best interests of the Empire.'-Lord Carnarvon in the House of Lords, February, 1870.

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