a really free Council. Theologians and canonists declare that without complete freedom, the decisions of the Council are not binding, and the assembly is only a pseudo-synod.”*

This was written in Germany during the summer of last year. The English translation was published by a Protestant bookseller in London in the month of November. I bought the Italian translation in the same month in Florence, on my way to the opening of the Council. French and Spanish bishops told me, on arriving, that they had translations in their own language. And in Spain and Italy copies were sent to the bishops through the channels of those Governments.

We have here the latest example of passionless science.

Of the literary merits of the book, I will only say first, that for its accuracy a fair account has been taken in a pamphlet entitled "A few Specimens of Scientific History from Janus;" and for profoundness that it is simply shallow, compared with Jewell's "Defence of the Apology," Barrow "On the Pope's Supremacy," Crackenthorp's Crackenthorp's "Vigilius Dormitans," Bramhall's "Schism Guarded," Thorndike's "Epilogue," Brown's "Fasciculus Rerum," &c., to say nothing of the Magdeburg Centuriators, or even Mosheim's or Gieseler's Histories.

The old Protestant and especially the Anglican anticatholic writers are solid, learned, and ponderous, compared with Janus. They have also the force of visible sincerity. Used against the Church from without, their arguments are consistent and

* Ibid. p. 425.

weighty; used by professing Catholics within the unity of the Church, they are powerless in controand heretical in their effects and conse

versy,

quences.

I speak thus plainly, Reverend and dear Brethren, because you are charged with the cure of souls; and in this country, where reading, speaking, writing has no rule or limit, those committed to your charge will be in daily temptation. They cannot close their eyes; and if they could, they cannot close their ears. What they refuse to read they cannot fail to hear. It is the trial permitted for the purity and confirmation of their faith. By your vigilant care they will be what the Catholics of England, in the judgment often expressed to me in other countries, already are-and I would we were so in the degree in which others believethat is, firm, fearless, intelligent in faith, and not ashamed to confess it before men. Nevertheless the trial is severe for many. And, as I have said before, the Council will be "in ruinam et in resurrectionem multorem." Some who think themselves to stand will fall; and some, of whom we perhaps have no hope, will rise to fill their place. Therefore we must be faithful and fearless for the truth.

The book "Janus" warns us of two duties. The one, to watch against this Gnostic inflation of scientific conceit which is the animus of heresy; the other, to warn all Catholics that to deny the Ecumenicity or the freedom of the Council which the Vicar of Christ has already confirmed in all its acts hitherto complete, or the obligation imposed upon the faithful by those acts, is implicitly to

deny the Infallibility of the Church: and that to doubt, or to propagate doubts, of its Ecumenicity and freedom, or of the obligations of its acts, is at least the first step to that denial.

CHAPTER V.

CONCLUSION.-TRADITION OF ENGLAND.-GREATER UNITY OF FAITH RESULTING FROM THE DEFINITION.

IN an Ecumenical Council, Bishops are witnesses of the Faith of their respective Churches. Not indeed as if they were representatives or delegates of their flocks; a theory strangely advanced by some writers who counted up the population of what they were pleased to call the greater cities, in order to give weight to the testimony of their Bishops as against that of others. In this they simply betrayed the fact that they were resting upon the natural order, and arguing, not on principles of faith, but of the political world.

Bishops are witnesses, primarily and chiefly, not of the subjective faith of their flocks, which may vary or be obscured, but of the objective faith of the Church committed to their trust, when by consecration they became witnesses, doctors, and judges. They were by consecration admitted to the Ecclesia docens, and the Divine Tradition of the Faith was entrusted to their custody. But this is one and the same in the humblest Vicar Apostolic, and in the Bishop of the most populous and imperial city in Christendom.

In the course of the discussions, testimony was given to the unbroken tradition of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility in Italy, Spain, Ireland, and many other countries. It will not therefore be without its use and interest, if I add briefly a few evidences of the unbroken tradition of England as to the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff. It would be out of place in this Pastoral to do more than offer to you a few passages; but I would wish to stir up some one who has time for such research, to collect and publish a complete catena of evidence from the writers before and since the Reformation; which will show that the Gallicanism, or worse than Gallicanism, of Cisalpine Clubs and Political Emancipationists was no more than the momentary aberration of a few minds under the stress of penal laws. They are abnormal instances in the noble fidelity of the Catholics of England.

As to the Bishops and Doctors of the English Church before the Reformation, I may first remind you of the words of St. Anselm, St. Thomas of Canterbury, and Bradwardine, three primates of England, given in the Pastoral of last year. To these may be added St. Elred of Rivaulx,* John of Salisbury, Robert Pullen, Thomas of Evesham, Robert Grostete,|| Roger Bacon,¶ Scotus,**

* Bibl. Max. Patrum, tom. xxiii. pp. 57, 58. Ed. Lugd. 1677. + Polycrates, lib. vi. c. 24, p. 61. Ed. Giles.

In Sentent. b. viii. c. iii.

§ In Vita Sti. Egwini, sect. vi.

Epp. 72 and 127.

T Opus. c. xiv.

** In Sent. iv. dist. vi. 9, 8