time been infallible, a Council was necessary for the issuing of a definition; since we are now on matters of history, and the real difficulty would be to know where to dip into the prior history of France without finding matter in utter contradiction to the Archbishop's allegation. An Anglo-Roman writer has told us that in the year 1612 [query 1614?] the assembly of the Gallican Church declared that the power of the Popes related to spiritual matters and eternal life, not to civil concerns and temporal possessions.* In the year 1591, at Mantes and Chartres, the prelates of France in their assembly refused the order of the Pope to quit the king, and on the 21st of September repudiated his Bulls, as being null in substance and in form. It has always been understood that the French Church played a great part in the Council of Constance is this also to be read backwards, or effaced from the records? Or, to go a little further back, the Council of Paris in 1393 withdrew its obedience altogether from Benedict XIII., without transferring it to his rival at Rome: restored it upon conditions in 1403; again withdrew it, because the conditions. had not been fulfilled, in 1406: and so remained until the Council of Constance and the election of Martin V.‡ And what are we to say to Fleury? who writes:

Le concile de Constance établit la maxime de tout temps enseignée en France, que tout Pape est soumis au jugement de tout concile universel en ce qui concerne la foi." §

* Cited in Slater's Letters, p. 23, from Hook's 'Principia,' iii. 577. † Continuator of Fleury, 'Hist. Eccl.,' xxxvi. 337 (Book 169, ch. 84). Du Chastenet, 'Nouvelle Histoire du Concile de Constance' (preface); and 'Preuves,' pp. 79, 84, seq., 95, 479 (Paris, 1718).

§ Fleury, Nouv. Opusc.,' p. 44, cited in Demaistre, 'Du Pape,' p. 82. See also Fleury, 'Hist. Eccl.' (Book 102, ch. 188).

One of the four articles of 1682 simply reaffirms the decree of Constance and as Archbishop Manning has been the first, so he will probably be the last person to assert, that Gallicanism took its rise in 1682.

This is not the place to show how largely, if less distinctly, the spirit of what are called the Gallican liberties entered into the ideas and institutions of England, Germany, and even Spain. Neither will I dwell on the manner in which the decrees of Constance ruled for a time not only the minds of a school or party, but the policy of the Western Church at large, were confirmed and repeatedly renewed by the succeeding Council of Basle, and proved their efficacy and sway by the remarkable submission of Eugenius IV. to that Council. But I will cite the single sentence in which Mr. Hallam, writing, alas, nearly sixty years back, has summed up the case of the decrees of Constance.

"These decrees are the great pillars of that moderate theory with respect to the Papal authority, which distinguished the Gallican Church, and is embraced, I presume, by almost all laymen, and the major part of ecclesiastics, on this side the Alps."

* 'Hist. of the Middle Ages,' chap. vii. part 2.

V. THE VATICAN COUNCIL AND OBEDIENCE TO THE POPE.

ARCHBISHOP MANNING has boldly grappled with my proposition that the Third Chapter of the Vatican Decrees had forged new chains for the Christian people, in regard to obedience, by giving its authority to what was previously a claim of the Popes only, and so making it a claim of the Church. He is astonished at the statement: and he offers* what he thinks a sufficient confutation of it, in six citations.

The four last begin with Innocent III., and end with the -Council of Trent. Two, from Innocent III. and Sixtus IV., simply claim the regimen, or government of the Church, which no one denies them. The Council of Florence speaks of plena potestas, and the Council of Trent of suprema potestas, as belonging to the Pope. Neither of these assertions touches the point. Full power, power, and supreme power, in the government of a body, may still be limited by law. No other power can be above them. But it does not follow that they can command from all persons an unconditional obedience, unless themselves empowered by law so to do. We are familiar, under the British monarchy, both with the term supreme, and with its limitation.

The Archbishop, however, quotes a Canon or Chapter of a Roman Council in 863, which anathematises all who despise the Pope's orders with much breadth and amplitude of phrase. If taken without the context, it fully covers the ground taken by the Vatican Council. It anathematises.

*Archbishop Manning, pp. 12, 13.

F

all who contemn the decrees of the Roman See in faith, discipline, or correction of manners, or for the remedy or prevention of mischief. Considering that the four previous Canons of this Council, and the whole proceedings, relate entirely to the case of the Divorce of Lothair, it might, perhaps, be argued that the whole constitute only a privilegium, or law for the individual case, and that the anathema of the Fifth Canon must be limited to those who set at nought the Pope's proceedings in that case. But the point is of small consequence to my argument.

But then the Roman Council is local; and adds no very potent reinforcement to the sole authority of the Pope. The question then remains how to secure for this local and Papal injunction the sanction of the Universal Church, in the Roman sense of the word. Archbishop Manning, perfectly sensible of what is required of him, writes that "this Canon was recognised in the Eighth General Council, held at Constantinople in 869." He is then more than contented with this array of proofs; and, confining himself, as I am bound to say he does, in all personal matters throughout his work, to the mildest language consistent with the full expression of his ideas, he observes that I am manifestly out of my depth.*

66

I know not the exact theological value of the term recognised"; but I conceive it to mean virtual adoption. Such an adoption of such a claim by a General Council, appeared to me a fact of the utmost significance. I referred to many of the historians of the Church: but I found no notice of it in those whom I consulted, including Baronius. From these unproductive references I went onwards to the original documents.

* Archbishop Manning, Vatican Decrees,' pp. 12, 13.

The Eighth General Council, so-called, comprised only those Bishops of the East who adhered to, and were supported by, the See of Rome and the Patriarch Ignatius, in the great conflict of the ninth century. It would not, therefore, have been surprising if its canons had given some at least equivocal sanction to the high Papal claims. But, on the contrary, they may be read with the greatest interest as showing, at the time immediately bordering on the publication of the false Decretals, how little way those claims had made in the general body of the Church. The system which they describe is the Patriarchal, not the Papal system: the fivefold distribution of the Christian Church under the five great Sees of the Elder and the New Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. Of these the Pope of Rome is the first, but as primus inter pares (Canons XVII., XXI., Lat.).* The causes of clergy on appeal are to be finally decided by the Patriarch in each Patriarchate (Canon XXVI., Lat.) :† and it is declared that any General Council has authority to deal, but should deal respectfully, with controversies of or touching the Roman Church itself (Canon XXI. Lat., XIII. Gr.)‡ This is one of the Councils which solemnly anathematises Pope Honorius as a heretic.

The reference made by Archbishop Manning is, as he has had the goodness to inform me, to the Second Canon.§ The material words are these:

"Regarding the most blessed Pope Nicholas as an organ of the Holy Spirit, and likewise his most holy successor Adrian, we accordingly

Labbe (ed. Paris, 1671), vol. x. pp. 1136, 1140.

† Ibid. 1143.

Ibid. 1140, 1375.

§ Ibid. p. 1127 Lat., p. 1367 Gr.; where the reader should be on his guard against the Latin version, and look to the Greek original.