perfect oneness which Christ established in her after the pattern of the Holy Trinity. A Pontiff subject to fall into error and heresy cannot be the divinely appointed centre of Catholic unity. It is impossible to admit the doctrine of Papal Supremacy as it is admitted by all Catholics, and at the same time reject the doctrine of Papal Infallibility. The logical bond between these dogmas is close, and the two cannot be severed. There is more real consistency in the systems of Protestant writers who reject the Supremacy of the Pope altogether, than in those of the old Gallicans and of the Catholics who following the modern liberal positive School, aim at reconciling the admission of the Supremacy with the denial of the doctrinal Infallibility. Another proof of what is here said may be derived from the duty of each among the Faithful to submit to the Pope and to the Bishop of his own diocese. The duty of all Christians to submit themselves to the authority of the Pope is an immediate result of the sovereignty divinely conferred upon him in the Church. Protestantism, it is true, wrested this sovereign power from the Pope, and conferred it upon the Church-or rather, upon the people at large, the members of the Church. The world owes to Protestantism the first introduction of the idea of the supremacy of the people, which was applied in the first instance to ecclesiastical affairs; after the lapse of two centuries it was transferred to civil society, and is now producing its natural fruits in all the countries of Christendom. But this sovereignty of the people was introduced into the Church by the Reformers, in defiance of the teachings of antiquity and the institution of Christ. The divinely appointed form of government in the Church is a monarchy, admitting no admixture of democratic influence. The sovereignty resides in the Roman Pontiff, the Successor of St. Peter; while at the same time a share of the sovereign power is exercised by each Bishop in his own diocese. But each one of the Bishops holds his power in subjection to the control of the superior sovereign who has his See at Rome, and who owes subjection to no earthly power, but to Christ alone. Hence we see the force of the maxim which gives brief expression to the persuasion and practice of all antiquity-Prima sedes a nemine judicatur. In this, and in no other sense, it has been said by some theologians that the monarchy of the Pope in the Church is tempered by something of aristocracy. How implicit a submission the people are bound to render to their Bishops we gather from the expressions of the holy Martyr St. Ignatius, the disciple of the Apostles, and the successor of St. Peter in the See of Antioch. Thus, he says that all the Faithful are bound to concur perfectly with the mind of their Bishop;' that they ought to be one and the same mind with him ; that they should agree with him in order to possess the type and doctrine of incorruption ;9 that they should follow their Bishop as Christ followed His Father.10 St. Ignatius assigns a reason for this duty of submission; for the Bishops express the mind of Christ, as Christ expresses the mind of His Father,11 so that he who refuses submission to the Bishop, refuses • See Bellarmine, De Summo Pontifice, 1. i., capp. v., viii., ix. (Op., t. i., pp. 458, 466, 469. Edit. Rom., 1832). 7 "Decet vos concurrere Episcopi sententia" (7vwun). Ad Ephes., cap. iv., p. 273. Edit. Jacobson. 8 "In idipsum unus intellectus" (ris voũs). Ad Magnesi ... anos, cap. vii., p. 317. "Unanimi Episcopo et præsidentibus in typum et doctrinam incorruptionis" (1. c., cap. vi.). 10 "Omnes Episcopum sequimini ut Jesus Christus Patrem (Ad Smyrnæos, cap. viii., p. 431). 11 ̓Ιησοῦς γὰρ Χριστὸς . . Πατρὸς ἡ γνώμη, ὡς καὶ οἱ ἐπίσκοποι οἱ κατὰ τὰ πέρατα ορισθέντες ἐν ̓Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ γνώμῃ εἰσίν (Ad Eph., cap. iii., pp. 270-272). The teaching of all submission to Christ Himself. antiquity agrees with the doctrine which we have here adduced from St. Ignatius. By the fundamental constitution of the Church the Faithful are not only bound to render obedience to their Bishop in matters of ecclesiastical discipline, but also to accept and believe the doctrine which they receive from his mouth no otherwise than if it came from the mouth of Christ Himself. It does not follow from this that infallibility belongs to each individual Bishop; far from it. Each Bishop is subject to, and dependent on, the supreme central sovereign power of the Pope. Should any Bishop set himself up against the Papal authority, should he refuse to accept the Papal definitions of doctrine, he would no longer be a legitimate Bishop, but would become a rebel; far from representing Christ, he would be waging war against Christ, and tearing His mystical Body. He would justly lose the authority that he had previously enjoyed, for he would have withdrawn himself from subjection to that sovereign power which is the centre of faith and of all unity in the Church, and would have. endeavoured to set up in his own person another chair and another sovereign power in opposition to that one which has the sanction of Christ Himself. The test of the orthodoxy of a doctrine taught by a Bishop is to be found in his adhesion to the Roman Pontiff and in conformity with him. This is the one condition, necessary and sufficient, to enable him to be called the mind of Christ; to allow it to be said that he hands down the type and doctrine of incorruption; on this condition, and on this condition only, the Faithful are bound to be in perfect accordance with their Bishop. Or we may put the same argument in a slightly different form. The people of each diocese submit to the dogmatical teaching of their Bishop because they acknowledge it to be the infallible teaching of the Church of Christ; but they need a test to assure them that they are not deceived, and their one sufficient unequivocal test is found in the adherence of their Bishop to the magisterium of the Roman Pontiff. The doctrinal teaching of the Roman Pontiff must evidently therefore be infallible, for the reliability of the teaching. of each Bishop is, in the economy of the Church, no more than a rill derived from the stream of the Papal magisterium, a reverberation from the voice of the Pope; at the same time that the Papal Infallibility is not, any more than the infallibility of the living Church. itself, reduced to the unity of a single teacher. If we conceive the Pope destitute of this divine privilege, his claim to sovereignty is lost, the constitution of the Church is changed, and of a monarchy it becomes an episcopal aristocracy. The Bishops, and not the Pope, would possess the supreme authority; the Pope's Supremacy would be lost, and the Bishop of Rome reduced to an equality of rank with other Bishops. He would be liable to account for his own doctrine to the Episcopate, to receive their definitions of faith, and to make their teaching the pattern of his own. The absurdity of these results is visible to all who understand the nature of the government established by Christ for the guidance of His Church. Again, Catholics of every School agree in considering the Roman Pontiff as the foundation-stone of the Church; and here we must understand by the Church not merely an organised society of men, but a society making open profession of a particular faith. Hence it follows that the Roman Pontiff, or rather the faith publicly professed by the Roman Pontiff, is the foundation-stone of the faith publicly professed in and by the Church. But the faith of the Church, which is indefectible, cannot rest on a defectible basis-thebuilding must follow the nature of the foundation. It the Roman Pontiff, the foundation-stone of the faith of the Church, fall into error or heresy, either the Church must fail, or it must be displaced from its original foundation. But those with whom we are arguing admit that the Church cannot fail, nor the faith taught in and by the Church, and that to be built on the rock of Peter is among the essential unchanging characters of the Church. If it be possible for the Pope to err when teaching the Church, to adulterate the pure faith of Christ with falsehood, there must be a right in the Church to resist, to reject his definitions, to decline submission to the laws which he enacts. And this power could not be exercised by the whole body of the Faithful, for Christ never intrusted to the people any share of authority in the government of the Church, nor gave them any power to teach; their duty is to listen and submit. Nor can it be said that the power to judge the Papal definitions resides in the general assembly of Bishops, for on this theory, until a universal meeting of the whole Catholic Episcopate was held, the faith of the Church would be resting on the insecure foundation of error or heresy; and the Bishops in Synod assembled, who possess and exercise the power of discussing, and, if need be, condemning and rejecting the doctrine proposed by the Pope, would themselves form the foundation-stone on which the faith would rest. And, since the assembling of the Bishops is no ordinary occurrence in the Church, but an extraordinary measure reserved for extraordinary occasions, it follows that the Church in its normal state would have no firm foundation whatever; it would have merely a false appearance of being based on the Supremacy of the Successor of St. Peter. We are forced, therefore, to the conclusion that the admission of the character of foundation as belonging to the Roman Pontiff logically involves the admission of his infallibility, and that they who recog |