is to be held as de fide divinâ-To deny it would be to deny a truth -- THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. SECTION I. UNITY OF THE CHURCH AND PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. INFALLIBILITY OF THE JEWISH HIGH PRIEST: ITS CHARACTER. So intimate is the connection subsisting between the doctrine of Papal Infallibility and the constitution of the Church, that to form a complete view of the latter which shall exclude the former is now logically impossible. This was not so in former times, when controversy had not yet developed the true position of the doctrine in question; and it was once quite possible to fail to perceive the existence of any link whatever between the Primacy and the Infallibility of the Popes. A Catholic who admitted the Primacy, might disregard, or even reject the Infallibility; he might excusably look upon the opinion which made the Pope infallible in the Church as a mere system invented by some private theologians, but devoid of foundation in revelation. Passion and prejudice would for a while draw the minds of many in this direction, and they would be led to take up a partial and false view of the Primacy itself. But passions are quenched by time, and prejudices are dispelled. As might have been anticipated, a sure process of development began; logic and hermeneutic science did their work, the true aspects of the Catholic B doctrine of the Supremacy were discerned, and among these, its essential character of infallibility in teaching. What we have said may serve as a sketch of the course run by the Gallican party, which, by favour of the civil power, for some time exerted much influence in Catholic France. In the seventh section of the first part of this work, the rise of the Gallican party is described, and it is shown that it was from the hands of the ministers of the King that the assembled Prelates received the Four Articles of the famous Declaration of 1682. These Articles were in open opposition to the tradition of the Church of France, no less than to that of the Universal Church; but they were also opposed to all sound logic, admitting as they did a supremacy in the Pope at the same time that they held him liable to error in matters of faith. This inconsistency could not escape the clear sight of Bossuet; in his conscience he must have rejected this fundamental doctrine of Gallicanism, but led by human considerations he consented to become the advocate of a system which in his heart he condemned. Therefore, "in order to make what he owed to conscience," says De Maistre, "agree with what he thought he owed to other considerations, he clung with all his might to the celebrated but vain distinction of the Chair and the Person." The distinction of the Chair and the Person is indeed vain and frivolous; it is hard to understand how the great mind of Bossuet could have embraced such a theory,2 or how he could have hoped to gain for it acceptance by others. He taught that the whole line of Roman Pontiffs must be considered as forming a continuance of the one person of St. Peter, in whom the faith can never wholly fail; it 1 Count de Maistre, The Pope, bk. i., ch. xi., p. 55. Translation of Rev. Æ. Mc. D. Dawson. London, 1850. 2 Defensio Decl. Cleri Gallicani, pt. ii., 1. xv., cap. v., p. 334. Edit. Basileæ. might fail partially, and in fact had so failed by the lapse of individual Popes, but it would speedily rise from its fall. It is probable that these sophistical subtleties were far from commanding any wide assent even among the adherents of Gallicanism. The inconsistency of the position taken up by Bossuet was pointed out in the Assembly of 1682 by the Bishop of Tournay, who with much vigour urged that the indefectibility of the Chair involved logically the infallibility of the Person.1 This was a weighty argument; and in the same Assembly Bossuet met it by answers which were powerless to give satisfaction to his mind, while they reveal the extent of his embarrassment. The mind of Fénélon was more consistent than that of his great rival, and less under the dominion of prejudice; he saw clearly that the position taken up by the Bishop of Tournay remained unassailed, and in his work on the authority of the Pope, he had no difficulty in showing the futility of the attempt at reply made by Bossuet. But we are not now concerned with Bossuet's arguments in support of his case. In the fact that a man of his genius should have felt himself constrained to countenance a distinction so untenable, we have a clear proof that he felt how essential was the connection between the union and indefectibility of the Church of Christ and the existence in it of some infallible centre. In the preceding portion of this work we developed the argument proving that Catholic unity is Roman. unity; we showed that Catholic unity rests on the 3 L. C. "Accipiendi RR. PP. tanquam una persona Petri, in qua nunquam fides penitus deficiat," &c. 4 Fénélon, De Auctoritate Summi Pontificis, cap. vii. (Ouvrages, t. ii., p. 270, seq. Edit. Versailles, 1820). See it also in Fleury, Nouveaux Opuscules (Paris, 1818); Anecdotes sur l'Assemblée de 1682, p. 218, seq.; Gérin, Rech. Hist., &c., ch. vii., p. 295, seq. (Paris, 1869). Op. cit., capp. viii., ix., p. 274, seq. supreme authority of the Pope, who is the centre of the Church, giving it substantial unity and real indefectibility; so that these two essential properties of the Church must be abandoned by all those who repudiate the Papal Supremacy. We now proceed to demonstrate the converse proposition, showing that by a logical and hermeneutical necessity, the admission of the unity and indefectibility instituted by Christ in the Church leads to the admission of Papal Infallibility. This being shown, it will follow that the doctrine of the Infallibility of the Pope is essential to the very idea of the Church. The question is no mere scholastic dispute, nor can they who maintain the affirmative be charged with seeking to impose upon the world their own private theological system as being revealed doctrine. The truth of what we here assert will be clearly seen by the aid of the following considerations. It is admitted by all Catholics that the Pope is the centre of unity in the Church; the station of the Bishops is on the circumference of the circle, the centre is occupied by the Pope alone. Each separate diocese receives substantial unity from its Bishop, the Pope gives substantial unity to the Universal Church. This is the doctrine of antiquity, and it is the plain teaching of St. Cyprian. Now, Catholic unity rests on unity of faith, for the Church rests on faith, and cannot be One unless faith is one. But the faith which is to be the basis of unity cannot be the mere interior belief of Christians; the visible Church must have a visible unity of faith founded on the oneness of the visible, external profession made by believers. Hence we are led to the conclusion that the Pope is the centre of the external profession of the Catholic faith. If then the Pope is fallible in his dogmatic definitions, the profession of faith in the Church rests on a frail foundation; her unity is liable to be broken, and she is devoid of that |