xv.] GALLICANISM IN IRELAND. 263 ment with the Pope afforded him the only practicable means. Even more than Louis XIV., Napoleon sought to make himself absolute over Church and State in France, and he thought that if he could make the Pope absolute over the French clergy he could direct the Pope as he pleased. The Pope proved less flexible than Napoleon had anticipated, but in the first stage of the reconciliation his help was absolutely necessary and was given. The terms of a new Episcopate were arranged into which survivors both of the constitutional clergy and the non-jurors were to be admitted. But however desirable in every way to the cause of the Church in France was this reconciliation, it involved a complete abandonment of Gallican principles. For it was by the Pope's authority that the existing bishops were forced to resign and a new distribution of Sees effected. This course of events produced a natural reaction in France in favour of Ultramontanism, all the abominations and impieties of republican fanaticism being imputed, however unjustly, to the opposite system. This reaction found an eloquent representative in the Count Joseph de Maistre, whose writings exercised a prodigious influence in France: so that the dying away of Gallicanism in its birthplace and stronghold seemed to make things easy for its formal condemnation by Pius IX. We in Ireland are interested in Gallicanism because, before the establishment of Maynooth, Irish priests commonly got their education in Continental schools where Gallican principles predominated, and so imported them into this country. At Maynooth itself French text-books were used. In the agitation for Emancipation a prevalent argument against granting it was that Roman Catholics could not be loyal subjects, since they would serve two masters, or rather indeed only one, inasmuch as they must obey the Pope if he forbade them to obey their Sovereign. In reply to this, great pains were taken by the advocates for Emancipation to show that Irish Roman Catholics did not believe in the Pope's power to release subjects from their allegiance, and that the Ultramontane doctrine of the Papal power was not recognized as any part of the doc trine of their Church. The Irish Roman Catholic bishops were examined before a Parliamentary Committee, and gave evidence which was afterwards cited by the American bishop Kenrick, himself an Irishman, at the Vatican Council. As a sample of their evidence, I will give you Archbishop Murray's answer to the question whether the Irish bishops had adopted or rejected what are called the Gallican liberties. He said, 'These liberties have not come under their consideration as a body. The Irish Catholic bishops have therefore not either adopted or rejected them. They have adopted, however, and that on their oaths, the leading doctrines which these liberties contain; that is, the doctrines which reject the deposing power of the popes and their right to interfere with the temporalities of princes. That is distinctly recognized not as one of the Gallican liberties, but as a doctrine which the Gospel teaches.' Bishop Doyle said that if the Pope were to intermeddle with the temporal rights of the King, they would oppose him even by the exercise of their spiritual authority; that is, as he explained it, by preaching the Gospel to the people, and instructing them, in such a case, to oppose the Pope. Besides this repudiation of the temporal power of the Pope, these bishops declared their opinion that the authority of the Pope in spiritual matters was limited by the Canons and by the Councils, and they swore, as they could then with truth, that the doctrine of the Pope's personal infallibility was no part of the Christian faith. Soon after they gave a practical proof of their independence of the Pope; for when a negotiation between the Pope and the English Government resulted in an agreement that, as a condition of Emancipation, the English Government should be given a veto on the nomination to Irish bishoprics, the Irish bishops remonstrated with the Pope in such strong terms that the project had to be abandoned. I have dwelt, at a little length, on the history of Gallicanism because the subject is one on which you do not find much information in your text-books; but we must now consider the truth of the doctrine, that whatever the whole Church at any time agrees in may be relied on as infallibly correct. One xv.] PRACTICAL INUTILITY OF GALLICAN RULE. 265 thing is plain, namely, that if this is the nature of the gift of infallibility Christ has bestowed on His Church, the gift is absolutely useless for the determination of controversies. It is very comfortable to believe with regard to the controversies of former days that the winning side was right, and that whatever has settled down to be the general belief is certainly true: but what guidance does such a persuasion give us as long as the controversy is going on? It is very comfortable for Roman Catholics now to think that the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception must be true because it has ceased to be disputed in their communion. But how could the Dominicans foresee the turn things would take a century after their time, when they knew that the doctrine they opposed was altogether novel, condemned by Aquinas, and unknown to the early Fathers? This theory, then, asserts that Christ has furnished His Church with a lantern which throws no light on the path in front, but only on that which has been already traversed. Something of the same kind may be said about the oft-quoted phrase of Vincentius Lirinensis, that we believe 'Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus traditum est.' It is very pleasant when we can say this; but it is obvious that this rule can give us no help in a controversy; for, clearly, dispute can only arise in the case of a doctrine which is not held 'ab omnibus,' and in such a case both parties are sure to say that it is their opinion which has been held 'semper.' And so when people go to use the rule they generally explain that of course 'held by all' does not mean absolutely and literally all without exception, but leaves out of account heretics and such like; so that 'all' means only all right-thinking persons,' and in this way it is in the power of each side to claim their own view as being held by all, that is to say, all right-thinking persons, for they are the only right-thinking persons. We can see thus that the Gallican method of ascribing infallibility to the Church diffusive does not satisfy any of the a priori supposed proofs of the necessity of a judge of controversies, on the strength of which infallibility has been believed in. Yet unquestionably it is this aspect of the theory of infallibility which has most power in gaining adherents. It is certainly a very alluring doctrine that whatever is held by the majority of the Christian world must certainly be true, and that dissentients, if few in number, may be disregarded without any examination of their opinions. It is plain from Dr. Newman's account of his life that this was the argument which made a convert of him. He compared the numbers which were ranked on the Romish side and on the opposite, and he said, 'What is the English Church that she should set herself in opposition to so much larger a body?' Words of Augustine that he had seen quoted in controversy, 'securus judicat orbis terrarum,' at last so took possession of his imagination, that he was compelled to abandon further resist ance. These words, as used by Augustine, were, I believe, well justified, and are capable of further application. They were employed with reference to the claim of the Donatists of Africa to unchurch the rest of Christendom, because they continued to hold communion with men who, as the Donatists alleged, had been guilty of gross sin. Augustine replied that the whole world was, by reason of distance, incapable of judging of the reality of these alleged offences, but that they could judge safely enough of the blind temerity of those who without provocation separated themselves from the rest of the world. Taken thus in connexion with their context, Augustine's words are only reasonable; nor would I hesitate to extend them to other cases in which small bodies venture to unchurch and anathematize the whole Christian world: Baptists, for example, excluding from the pale of the visible Church all who have been baptized by affusion, not immersion; Walkerites and Plymouth Brethren reducing their In the notes to an Ordination Sermon published in 1864, Dr. Quarry pointed out that in the passage cited, St. Augustine did not lay down a general maxim, nor assert that the orbis terrarum' must always be right in its judgment. The words form part of a sentence in which, after showing that foreign Churches must needs be ill-acquainted with the facts of the African disputes, he concludes, 'securus judicat orbis terrarum' that they are not good who separate themselves from the whole world; where the word securus' appears to have its most literal sense, without anxiety. xv.] DONATISM THE ANTITYPE OF ROMANISM. 267 Church to still narrower limits. If things are alleged to be necessary to salvation, or necessary to the being of a Church, which Christ has revealed so indistinctly that the great bulk of the Christian world has for centuries been unable to find them out, then I do say that the claim is one which condemns itself, and that the Christian world securus judicat' that such pretensions are unfounded. But in this matter the Donatist party, not the orthodox, are the true antitypes of the Church of Rome. That Church, like these African schismatics of old, endeavours to cast out of the Church of Christ all who will not bind themselves in close alliance with her; and the body which she would fain exclude is in the number of its adherents, and the extent of territory which they occupy, far more considerable than that to which Augustine gave the title orbis terrarum.' If there be weight in the maxim which has been made out of Augustine's words, we may rely on our numbers, and securely smile at the pretension to unchurch us. But certainly we repudiate Augustine's words when severed from their context, and converted into a rule that numbers constitute a trustworthy test of truth, and that a body so large as to be able fairly to call itself orbis terrarum' can be guilty of no error. How would such a rule have worked in the days when Athanasius was alone against the world, when the violence of the Arian hurricane carried the Pope Liberius away, when a Council twice as large as the Nicene omitted 'homoousios' from their creed, and, in the words of Jerome, the whole world groaned in surprise to find itself Arian? gemuit orbis terrarum et Arianum se esse miratus est.' Nay, how would such a rule have worked when the first preachers of Christianity went forth to arraign the superstitions of the whole world, attacking beliefs of immemorial antiquity, and supported by Catholic consent?-for it was generally held that under different names all nations agreed in worshipping the same divinities. Even at the present day can the Christian religion bear to have its truth submitted to the test of numbers, and can it permit its claim to be set aside if it can be proved that the number of its adherents (counting all the 'In |