as 'The Oracle.' My words, however, shall not be ambiguous. The two letters given above contain four assertions. First, that the Decrees of the Vatican Council have changed nothing in respect to the civil obedience of Catholics. Secondly, that their civil obedience is neither more nor less divided than that of other men. Thirdly, that the relations of the Spiritual and Civil Powers have been fixed from time immemorial, and are therefore after the Vatican Council what they were before. Fourthly, that the contest now waging abroad began in a malevolent and mischievous intrigue to instigate the Civil Powers to oppress and persecute the Catholic Church. The two first propositions shall be treated in the first chapter, the third in the second chapter, and the last in the third. I will therefore endeavour to prove the following propositions, which cover all the assertions I have made: 1. That the Vatican Decrees have in no jot or tittle changed either the obligations or the conditions of Civil Allegiance. 2. That the relations of the Catholic Church to the Civil Powers of the world have been immutably fixed from the beginning, inas much as they arise out of the Divine Constitution of the Church, and out of the Civil Society of the natural order. 3. That any collisions now existing have been brought on by changes, not on the part of the Catholic Church, much less of the Vatican Council, but on the part of the Civil Powers, and that by reason of a systematic conspiracy againt the Holy See. 4. That by these changes and collisions the Civil Powers of Europe are destroying their own stability. 5. That the motive of the Vatican Council in defining the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff was not any temporal policy, nor was it for any temporal end; but that it defined that truth in the face of all temporal dangers, in order to guard the Divine deposit of Christianity, and to vindicate the divine certainty of faith. CHAPTER I. MEANING AND EFFECT OF THE VATICAN DECREES. I. IN setting out to prove my first propositionnamely, 'that the Vatican Decrees have in no jot or tittle changed either the obligations or the conditions of Civil Allegiance'-I find myself undertaking to prove a negative. The onus of proving that the Vatican Decrees have made a change in our civil allegiance rests upon those who affirm it. Till they offer proof we might remain silent. It would be enough for us to answer that the Vatican Council in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church has simply affirmed the revealed doctrine of the Spiritual Primacy, and of the Infallibility of the Visible Head of the Christian Church; that the relations of this Primacy to the Civil Powers are in no way treated; and that the civil obedience of subjects is left precisely as and where it was before the Vatican Council was convened. (1) However, I will first examine what proofs have been offered to show that the Vatican Council has made the alleged change; and I will then give positive evidence to show what the Vatican Council has done. From these things it will be seen that it has neither changed, nor added to, nor taken away anything from the doctrine and discipline of the Church, but has only defined what has been believed and practised from the beginning. The arguments to prove a change are two. First. Mr. Gladstone has argued from the third chapter of the Constitution on the Roman Pontiff, that his powers have received a great extension. Mr. Gladstone, so far as I am aware, is the first and only person who has ever ventured on this statement. His argument is as follows: He dwells with no little amplification upon the 'introduction of the remarkable phrase,'' ad disciplinam et regimen Ecclesiæ,' into the third chapter; that is, non solum in rebus quæ ad fidem et mores pertinent, sed etiam in iis quæ ad disciplinam et regimen Ecclesiæ per totum orbem diffusæ pertinent.' He says, 'Absolute obedience, it is boldly declared, is due to the Pope, at the peril of salvation, not only in faith and in morals, but in all things which concern the discipline and government of the Church' (p. 41). Submission in faith and morals is abject' enough, but in discipline and government' too is intolerable. Why did the astute contrivers of this tangled scheme,' &c. . . . (p. 39). This he 'The work is now truly complete' (p. 40). calls the new version of the principles of the Papal Church.' When I read this, I asked, 'Is it possible that Mr. Gladstone should think this to be anything new? What does he conceive the Primacy of Rome to mean? With what eyes has he read history? Can he have read the tradition of the Catholic Church?' As one of the astute contrivers,' I will answer that these words were introduced because the Pontiffs and Councils of the Church have always so used them. They may be 'remarkable' and 'new' to Mr. Gladstone, but they are old as the Catholic Church. I give the first proofs which come to hand. Nicholas I., in the year 863, in a Council at Rome, enacted: Si quis dogmata, mandata, interdicta, sanctiones vel decreta pro Catholica fide, pro ecclesiastica disciplina, pro correctione fidelium, pro emendatione sceleratorum, vel interdictione imminentium vel futurorum malorum, a Sedis Apostolicæ Præside salubriter promulgata contempserit: Anathema sit."1 This was an iron gripe' not less formidable' than the third chapter of the Vatican Constitution. It may be said, perhaps, that this was only a Pontiff in his own cause; or only a Roman Council. But this Canon was recognised in the Eighth General Council held at Constantinople in 869.2 Innocent III. may be no authority with Mr. Gladstone; but he says, what every Pontiff before him and after him has said, 'Nos qui sumus ad regimen Universalis Ecclesiæ, superna dispositione vocati.' 3 1 1 Labbe, Concil. tom. x. p. 238, ed. Ven. 1730. 2 Ibid. tom. x. p. 633. See Petri Privilegium, 2nd part, p. 81. 3 Corpus Juris Canon. Decret. Greg. lib. ii. cap. xiii. Novit. |