formula proposed to him into the document, which was read before the Council and was confirmed by his ambassador. He himself at home in Constantinople declared the three concessions which he had made to the Pope illusory. The assembled bishops, however, did not find themselves in a position to give an opinion on this formula.

Fourthly, the decree of the Florentine Synod is here produced mutilated; just the main sentence (whose promulgation in consequence of long negotiations between the Greeks and the Italians was brought about, and upon which the greatest stress was laid, because what precedes should only be understood by means of the limitation therein contained) is left out-the sentence, namely, "juxta eum modum, quo et in gestis et in sacris canonibus œcumenicorum conciliorum continetur." The Pope and the Cardinals demanded resolutely, that for the sake of a more exact definition of how the Primacy of the Pope should be understood there should be added, "juxta dicta Sanctorum." This the Greeks rejected with equal resolution. They knew well that among these "testimonies of the Saints " were to be found a considerable number of very wide-reaching or falsified paragraphs. Although the Latin Archbishop Andreas, one of the speakers, had appealed already in the seventh sitting to the above-named testimony of S. Cyril, which, since Thomas Aquinas and Pope Urban IV. first had been deceived by it, had produced in the West a powerful and enduring effect, nevertheless now it was rejected by the Greeks. The Emperor remarked further, because one of the Fathers, in a letter to the Pope, had expressed himself in a complimentary style, that was no ground for deducing therefrom rights and privileges forthwith. The Latins gave way at last; the "dicta Sanctorum" disappeared from the sketch; and in its place the transactions of the Ecumenical Councils and the Sacred Canons were set as measure and bound of the Papal Primacy. Therewith every idea of Papal infallibility was excluded: as in the old Councils and in the pre-Isidorian canons common to both Churches not only nothing is found which points to such a claim, but the whole ancient legislation of the Church, as well as the procedure and the history of the seven Ecumenical Councils (these were meant), quite evidently supposed a condition in which the highest authority in doctrine belongs only to the Church collective, but not to a single one of the five Patriarchs (such was the Pope in the eyes of the Greeks). Further than this, the Archbishop Bessarion, in the name of the entire body of Greeks, just before declares that the Pope is inferior to the Council (therefore also not infallible). (Sess. IX. Concil. Labbei, xiii. 150.) It is therefore a mutilation which is equal to a falsification, when from the decree of the Florentine Synod exactly the main sentence is cut out, upon which sentence they for whom the decree was made laid the highest stress. The sentence was in the eyes of the Greeks so essential, that they declared they would depart without concluding the business if it were not introduced. Also they insisted upon this, and carried it through, that all rights and privileges of the remaining prelates should be maintained in the decree; moreover the Pope himself had previously declared that the right of taking part independently in the settling VOL. XIV.-NO. XXVIII. [New Series.] 2 M

of the common Church doctrine, the not being under the necessity of merely submitting to the claims of an infallible Pope, belonged to the Patriarchs.

There may be still another ground for the mutilation of the Florentine decree committed by the conceiver of the address. Does he give the Latin text in its original form answering to the Greek, as Flavius Blondus, secretary of the Pope Eugenius IV., and the other theologians have done; "quemadmodum et in actis conciliorum et in sacris canonibus continetur"? Or does he use the falsification (first introduced by Abraham Bartholomaus) where, in place of et, etiam is introduced? Through this etiam the sense of the decree is entirely changed, and the object of the conclusion annulled. It has, however, although it is an obvious falsification, found its way into the Council-compilations and dogmatic compendiums; and it is high time to get rid of this stumbling-stone for the Orientals and to replace the genuine text-namely, that answering to the Greek text. Then, however, would the decree be no more fit for use for the objects of the Infallibilists, as the Archbishop of Paris, D. Marca, 200 years ago has shown. (Concord. Sacerd. et Imperii.) He rightly remarks" Verba Græca in sincero sensu accepta modum exercitio potestatis Pontificiæ imponunt ei similem quem Ecclesia Gallicana tuetur. At e contextûs Latini depravatâ lectione eruitur, plenam esse potestatem Papæ idque probari actis conciliorum et canonibus."

The address declares itself with special indignation ("acerbissimi catholicæ doctrinæ impugnatores . . . blaterare non erubescunt") against those who do not hold the Florentine Council for œcumenical. Let the facts speak. The Synod was, as is well known, summoned to overthrow the Council at Basle, when this had begun to decree reforms annoying to the Roman Curia. On the 9th of April, 1438, it was opened at Ferrara ; and they had to wait six months before anything at all took place, so small was the number of bishops who came. Out of the whole of Northern Europe, then still fully Catholic, from Germany, from Scandinavia, Poland, Bohemia, France, Castille, Portugal, &c., no one came; one can say that nine-tenths of the then Catholic world took absolutely no share in the Synod, because, as opposed to the Basle assembly, it was held to be illegitimate, and each one knew that for the most urgent concern-the reform of the Church-nothing would be done there. Then at last with much toil Eugenius brought together a troop of Italian bishops, about fifty; whereto then came further some bishops sent by the Duke of Burgundy, some Provençals, and one or two Spaniards-in all there were sixty-two Bishops who signed. The Greek prelates, with their Emperor, had been drawn thither by the promise of money, ships, and soldiers, being in the extremest danger of ruin; the Pope, moreover, had promised to bear the cost of their maintenance in Ferrara and in Florence, as also of their return journey. When they showed themselves unsubmissive, he withdrew the subsidies, so that they fell into the bitterest want; and at last, forced by the Emperor and pressed by hunger, they signed things, nearly all of which afterwards they recalled. The judgment of a Greek contemporary, Amprutius, which the Roman scholar Leo Allatius (de Perp. Consens., 3,

1, 4) produces, was then the prevalent judgment among the Greeks: “Will, indeed," says he, "any one in earnest declare this Synod to be Ecumenical, which bought articles of faith with money, which could only carry through its edicts simoniacally, only by the prospect of financial and military aid?" In France, before the Revolution, the Florentine Synod was discarded as ungenuine : so Cardinal Guise declared in the Tridentine Council, without experiencing any contradiction. The Portuguese theologian Payva de Andrada says thereon, "Florentinam (Synodum) sola Gallia pro œcumenicâ nunquam habuit, quippe quam neque adire dum agitaretur, neque admittere jam perfectam atque absolutam voluerit." (Defens. Fid. Trident., p. 431, ed. Colon., 158.)

The remaining text of the address busies itself with the proving that the promulgation of the new article of faith just now is suitable to our times; yes, and urgently needful, because some persons who give themselves out as Catholics have recently questioned this idea of Papal infallibility. What the address partly says here, partly as known (in Rome) takes for granted, is mainly the following. For its own sake simply, it holds, it would not be quite absolutely needful to increase the number of the articles of faith by a new dogma, but the state of things has become so fashioned that this now is unavoidable. For many years the Jesuits, supported by like-thinking partisans, have entered on an agitation in favour of the dogma that is to be, in Italy, France, Germany, and England. A special religious society has been founded by the Jesuits and openly announced, with the object of praying and working for the attainment of the new dogma; their chief organ the Civiltà has named it beforehand as the main business of the Council to give to the longing world the present of the missing article of faith. Their publications have stated far and wide, and in untiring repetition, the same theme.

During this agitation it should have been the duty of all who think otherwise to remain in reverential silence, to let the Jesuits and their hangers-on quietly do what they like, to subject the arguments promulgated by them in numerous pamphlets to no analysis. Unfortunately this has not happened; some persons have had the unheard-of impertinence to break the sacred silence, and to announce a different opinion. This scandal can only be removed by an increase in the articles of faith, and a change in the Catechisms and in all the religious books.

DR. J. J. Döllinger.

The "Civiltà" replies as follows. replies as follows. We have to thank the "" Vatican for its admirable translation, which we here reproduce.

The petition presented by the Bishops to the Vatican Council, for the definition of the inerrability of the Pope when speaking ex cathedrâ, has given great displeasure to the Gallicans of the present day. It was therefore most natural that it should call forth all the strength of Dr. Döllinger, who has made himself the centre and prime mover of that party in Germany. Nor can we wonder that, laying aside the veil of the anonymous

and leaving the hidden ways of his previous tactics, he has now come forward in his own name with a virulent article in the anti-Catholic Augsburg Gazette-an article on which it is difficult to say which is worst, the substance or the manner. But this need not be a subject of grief, since open enmity is less hurtful than hidden snares.

I.

Dr. Döllinger's article contains two parts: in the first he attacks the possibility of defining Papal inerrancy; in the second, he attacks the arguments which the bishops have employed in their petition.

As to the first, his arguments may be summed up in these three: First, by such a definition the Church would oblige Catholics to believe that which up to the present time she has herself neither believed nor taught ; second, by such a definition a radical revolution respecting the foundation of the faith would be effected in the Church; third, by such a definition the Pope would bear testimony to himself, which would be an absurdity. Let us briefly examine all three.

II.

And, to begin with the first argument, how does Dr. Döllinger show that up to the present time the Church has neither believed nor taught Papal infallibility? "She has not believed it," he says, "because even those who have hitherto held the infallibility of the Pope to be true have not been able to believe it, this word being taken in a Christian sense." The argument is very clear. A non posse ad non esse datur illatio. "If the faithful were not able to believe the Pope's infallibility, they did not believe it, and the Church did not teach it them." It remains then to be proved why the faithful were not able to believe it. Nothing is easier. "Between believing (fide divinâ)," adds Döllinger, "and accepting intellectually any opinion held to be probable, there is an immense difference. The Catholic is able, and is bound, to believe only that which is prescribed to him by the Church as divinely-revealed truth, belonging to the essence of saving doctrine, and superior to every doubt; only that, upon the confession of which Church-membership depends, that of which the contrary is absolutely not tolerated by the Church and is rejected by her as open heresy. In truth, therefore, no man, from the beginning of the Church up to the present day, has believed in the infallibility of the Pope, that is, believed it in the way in which he believes in God, in Christ, in the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; but many have only suspected, have believed it to be probable, and, at the most, to be humanly certain (fide humanâ) that this prerogative belongs to the Pope."

III.

Here Dr. Döllinger is mistaken, both in the principle he sets up and in the application he makes of it. In the first place, he is mistaken as to the principle, inasmuch as he confounds faith simply divine with divine Catholic faith; and hence, from not finding the latter, in its strict and full sense, in the belief in Papal infallibility, he infers that the former also is not to be found therein. The conclusion is larger than the premiss. Every

student of theology knows, that when a truth is not only revealed by God, but is also defined as such by the Church and its contrary rejected as heresy, it is said to be a truth of divine Catholic faith, because no one who denies it can belong to the Church. But the truths contained in the

Deposit of revelation are not all defined in this way by the Church. There are many of them on which the Church has not yet pronounced a definitive judgment, and which are nevertheless revealed by God. When a Catholic then, by his study of Scripture or of Tradition, recognizes these truths as such, in what way does he give assent to them? Is it with human faith? Certainly not; because he does not find them in the words of men, but in the word of God. He believes them therefore fide divinâ : that is to say, on the authority of God who reveals them; and, nevertheless, he cannot stigmatize as a heretic any one who denies them, because the Church, as we have said, has not yet pronounced concerning them her solemn judgment. From this state of truths of faith purely divine, they pass on to the other state of truths of Catholic faith in virtue of the living magisterium of the Church; and herein also consists that progress which, in these same dogmata, is recognized by S. Vincent of Lerins. There are gradations in this passage because the living magisterium of the Church is twofold. The one is special; when the Church, at the end of a controversy respecting any dogma, pronounces a solemn sentence of definition or condemnation: the other is ordinary, and is exercised every day in the teaching of her doctors and pastors. In virtue of this second magisterium, a truth may be set forth also as being of Catholic faith; or, while remaining of faith simply divine, may go on contiuually approaching nearer and nearer to the further state, until it almost reaches it. Then this will be called a Catholic truth, and proxima fidei (catholicæ understood): without it being yet possible to call the contrary opinion a heresy. This was the case with the dogma of the exemption of Mary from original sin; and the same is now taking place in respect to the Papal infallibility.

For this latter indeed, there is much more to be said. For the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, before it was defined, had against it for a long time the opinion of a very illustrious school, upon which the Church positively refused to allow any stigma to be cast: while the Papal infallibility has no adversary, except the by no means illustrious army of the Gallicans; and is so well supported by the Church, that the error contrary to it has never been allowed to circulate with impunity; as witness the condemnations of the Gallican propositions by Innocent XI. Alexander VIII., and Pius VI., and the horror which those propositions have always excited in the minds of true Catholics. Nay, very grave theologians do not hesitate to call this opinion expressly a heresy, which can only be excused on account of invincible ignorance. In this respect let it suffice to cite the authority of the celebrated Melchior Canus. "I will ask," he says, "if it be heretical to affirm that, the Church of Rome also may possibly fall away like the others, and the Apostolic See fall short of the faith of Christ? And I will answer this question briefly. We do not wish to anticipate here the sentence of the Church; but if an error of this kind be proposed before a General Council, the mark of heresy will