majority of bishops a power of binding the minority; or that He has given, e.g., supreme power to a majority of the patriarchs; or, in fact, what you do consider the divinely appointed method of episcopal corporate action.

Nay, there is a still further question which requires an answer. Every one knows who are the members of the House of Commons; every one knew who were members of the StatesGeneral: but who are the Catholic bishops? Of all the corporate ecclesiastical societies which exist at any given moment, what mark of identification has been given by God, that men may know which is the Catholic Church?

The first teachers and governors of the Church, however, were not the bishops but the Apostles. In regard to these, very much less remains to be decided. God appointed them individually, and made known such appointment to the others. Moreover, as regards their office of teaching the Church, each was separately infallible. Still, as regards their power of government, a question has to be asked concerning them, similar to that asked concerning the bishops who succeeded them. Did God infallibly secure the mutual agreement of the Apostles in all their disciplinary decrees? or did He give to a majority power to bind the minority? or did He give to the Apostolate some different constitution altogether?

And here you see what theologians mean, when they speak about the "centre" or "principle" of unity in the Church. Having established that the Church possesses corporate unity essentially and indefectibly, they proceed to inquire what is the centre or principle of that unity: this is the exact point which we are now considering.

To fix our ideas then more definitely, let us for a moment assume that hypothesis, which will most readily occur to an Englishman; let us suppose that God vested the supreme rule of His Church in the majority of those appointed by Him as her rulers. Let us express in detail the Church's constitution on such an hypothesis. However strange the theory we are going to draw out, every particular in it would be quite consistent with our conclusions of January, so far as those conclusions are based on data of the early centuries.

"On every matter of discipline a majority of the Apostles "bound the minority; and each Apostle, being infallibly "secured against mortal sin, was infallibly secured against "refusing due obedience and originating schism. So long as "they lived, the Catholic Church was that corporate society "which they governed by majorities during the years when "S. John survived the other Apostles, he governed that Church "with absolute authority: when he died, that was the Catholic

:

"Church, which had been governed by him up to the moment "of his death. From that moment the bishops of that society, "deciding by a majority of their number, are infallible in "teaching and supreme in governing. One of them, indeed, "has the prerogative, when any urgency exists, of collecting "the bishops into a representative assembly, or of taking "their separate votes; and God, by His Providence, ever "secures that, when the Church is threatened with doctrinal "disaster, due action shall be invariably taken.* On every "such occasion the majority of votes decides the point at "issue in matters of discipline it demands universal obe"dience; in matters of doctrine it is infallible; in matters of "dogma strictly so called, i. e., in defining this or that "portion of the Deposit, its decisions bind under pain of heresy. If any bishop-of Rome or any other-refuses ac"ceptance of a dogmatic definition, he ceases ipso facto to "be a Catholic; and the majority can either appoint another "bishop in his place, or suppress the particular See altogether. "This has been the constitution appointed by God for the "Church since the Apostles died; the majority of bishops, and not any particular bishop, having been ordained by Him to "be the principle of unity.'

We need not say that no human being ever held this strange farrago. But its methodical exhibition will, we hope, vividly set forth, what are those questions which remain to be decided from the history of early Christianity, after our conclusions of last January have obtained. acceptance. There are, of course, other imaginable nonCatholic views; as, e. g., that the majority of patriarchs, or some other patriarch than that of Rome, is the principle of unity. But all these are (if possible) even more void of substance and of colourable foundation than the theory drawn out above. We will throughout, therefore, treat this theory as the anti-Catholic alternative; and we may name it "the episcopal theory."

Among Roman Catholics, as is well known, there are two different schools,-the Ultramontane and the Gallican; and our next step, therefore, should be to state systematically the Gallican theory. But we must profess ourselves unable to do so. Gallican theologians, it seems to us, are very far more given to attacking Ultramontane doctrine, than to expressing and vindicating their own; and we are honestly unable to

* Some such supposition as this must be necessarily inserted, in order to guard against Dr. Pusey's strange conception, of a supreme authority which goes to sleep for centuries.

*No one will deny, we suppose, that the Pope often does excommunicate heretics without waiting for the concurrence of other bishops. Take, e. g., the Pope's last definition of faith: "Si qui secùs ac a nobis definitum est præsumpserint corde sentire, ii noverint se naufragium circa fidem passos esse, et ab unitate Ecclesia defecisse."

+ All Gallicans deny the Pope's infallibility in definitions of faith; and

It would be easy to multiply similar instances of self-contradiction, into which consistent Gallicans must inevitably fall. But there is no need for doing so because we are not here writing against Gallicanism; and because we have said enough to justify us in assuming the Ultramontane doctrine, as alone genuinely representing Roman Catholicism. In fact, without any injury to our argument, we might have ignored Gallicanism altogether. We conclusively refute Dr. Pusey, if we show that even against Ultramontanism his objections are worthless.

Yet we must not fail, in passing, to vindicate Gallicanism against Dr. Pusey's withering advocacy; an advocacy which must be more unwelcome to Gallicans than even to ourselves. Dr. Pusey writes constantly under an impression, that Gallican tenets stand at least halfway between his own and Ultramontanism. But in truth it is hardly too much to say under present circumstances, that their practical difference from the latter is imperceptible and evanescent, while they are separated from Dr. Pusey by a gulf impassable and unfathomable. Gallicans profess no doubt, in theory, that the Pope is subject to an Ecumenical Council; but while no such Council is sitting, they hold, as strongly as any Ultramontane, the unreserved obedience due from each bishop to the Pope. When, in the instance already mentioned, Pius VII. deposed so many French bishops, whoever resisted this exercise of authority was regarded, not as a Gallican, but as a schismatic. And as to the matter of ecclesiastical teaching, the contrast between Gallicans and Dr. Pusey is still more striking and violent. It is Dr. Pusey's position, that for the last eleven centuries the Church has exercised no power of infallibly condemning newly arisen error.* But according to Gallicans, the exercise of this power has been most active and unintermittent: having been displayed indeed on the largest scale only two years ago; viz., so soon as the "Quantâ curâ," with its appended Syllabus, had been tacitly accepted by the Catholic Episcopate.

Having drawn out then, a few pages back, what we called the "episcopal" theory, we are now to draw out the Papal : we are to explain, from the Ultramontane standpoint, what is that principle of organic unity which binds the Church to

in the text would be by no means equally conclusive against any supposition (which for ourselves, of course, we utterly repudiate) that the Pope is not infallible in pronouncing minor censures without tacit assent of the Episcopate.

*See, for instance, Eirenicon, p. 84. "I see not what this question as to the present ability of the Church to meet fresh errors which may emerge, has to do with the question as to the infallible certainty of the truths which the whole Church in common has received."