ex cathedra: theological science will hereafter have to examine and decide the matter: in the mean time every Roman Catholic is bound to submit to and obey it. Such is the low or moderate doctrine concerning the Syllabus. Thus its dogmatic authority is probable: its title to universal obedience is absolute, while among its assertions is that the Church has the right to employ force, and that the Popes have not exceeded their powers or invaded the rights of princes.

Now, when I turn to the seductive pages of Dr. Newman, I find myself to be breathing another air, and discussing, it would seem, some other Syllabus. If the Pope were the author of it, he would accept it. But he is not, and no one knows who is. Therefore it has no dogmatic force. It is an index to a set of dogmatic Bulls and Allocutions, but it is no more dogmatic itself than any other index or table of contents. Its value lies in its references, and from them alone can we learn its meaning.

6

If we had Dr. Newman for Pope, we should be tolerably safe, so merciful and genial would be his rule. But when Dr. Newman, not being Pope, contradicts and nullifies what the Pope declares, whatever { we may wish, we can not renounce the use of our eyes. Fessler, who writes, as Dr. Newman truly says, to curb exaggerations,' and who is approved by the Pope, declares that every subject of the Pope, and thus that Dr. Newman, is bound to obey the Syllabus, because it is from the Pope and of the Pope. Before the Council of the Vatican, every Catholic was bound to submit to and obey the Syllabus; the Council of the Vatican has made no difference in that obligation of conscience.' He questions its title, indeed, to be held as ex cathedra, and this is his main contention against Von Schulte; but he nowhere denies its infallibility, and he distinctly includes it in the range of Christian obedience.

Next, Dr. Newman lays it down that the words of the Syllabus are of no force in themselves, except as far as they correspond with the terms of the briefs to which references are given, and which he admits to be binding. But here Dr. Newman is in flat contradiction to

the official letter of Cardinal Antonelli, who states that the Syllabu has been framed, and is sent to the Bishops, by command of the Pope inasmuch as it is likely that they have by no means all seen the prior instruments, and in order that they may know from the Syllabus itself what it is that has been condemned. Thus then it will be seen that the Syllabus has been authoritatively substituted for the original doc uments as a guide to the Bishops. And if, as Dr. Newman says, and as I think in some cases is the fact, the propositions of the Syllabus widen the propositions of those documents, it is the wider and not the narrower form that binds, unless Dr. Newman is more in the confi dence of Rome than the Secretary of the Vatican Council, and than the regular minister of the Pope.

Again, I am reminded by the Dublin Review, a favored organ of Roman opinions, that utterances ex cathedra' are not the only form in which Infallibility can speak; and that the Syllabus, whether ex cathedra or not, since it has been uttered by the Pope, and accepted by the Church diffused, that is to say, by the Bishops diffused, is undoubtedly infallible. This would seem to be the opinion of Bishop Ullathorne. But what is conclusive as to practical effect upon the whole case is this that while not one among the Roman apologists admits that the Syllabus is or may be erroneous, the obligation to obey it is asserted on all hands, and is founded on the language of an infallible Vatican Decree. I have been content to argue the case of the Syllabus upon the supposition that, in relation to England at least, its declarations were purely abstract. The readers, however, of Macmillan's Magazine for February may perceive that even now we are not without a sample of its fruits in a matrimonial case, of which particulars were long ago given in the Times newspaper, and which may possibly again become the object of public notice.

It is therefore absolutely superfluous to follow Dr. Newman through his references to the Briefs and Allocutions marginally noted. The Syllabus is part of that series of acts to which the dogmatizations of 1854 and 1870 also belong; and it bridges over the interval between them. It generalizes, and advisedly enlarges, a number of particular condemnations; and, addressing them to all the Bishops, brings the whole

1 Dublin Review, Jan. 1875, pp. 177, 210.
2 Bishop Ullathorne, Expost. Unraveled, p. 66.

of the Latin obedience within its net. The fish, when it is inclosed and beached, may struggle for a while; but it dies, while the fishernan lives, carries it to market, and quietly puts the price into his till. The result then is:

1. I abide by my account of the contents of the Syllabus.

2. I have understated, not overstated, its authority.

3. It may be ex cathedra; it seems to have the infallibility of dogma: it unquestionably demands, and is entitled (in the code of Vaticanism) to demand, obedience.

III. THE VATICAN COUNCIL AND THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. Breach with History, No. 1.

Like the chieftains of the heroic time, Archbishop Manning takes his place with promptitude, and operates in front of the force he leads. Upon the first appearance of my tract, he instantly gave utterance to the following propositions; nor has he since receded from them: 1. That the Infallibility of the Pope was a doctrine of Divine Faith before the Council of the Vatican was held.

2. That the Vatican Decrees have in no jot or tittle changed either the obligations or the conditions of civil allegiance.

3. That the civil allegiance of Roman Catholics is as undivided as that of other Christians, and neither more nor less limited.

4. That the claim of the Roman Church against obedience to the civil power in certain cases is the same as that made by other religious communions in England.

These four propositions may be treated as two. The first is so allied with the second, and the third with the fourth, that the two members of each pair respectively must stand or fall together. I can make no objection to the manner in which they raise the question. I shall leave it to others, whom it may more concern, to treat that portion of his work in which, passing by matters that more nearly touched his argument, he has entered at large on the controversy between Rome and the German Empire; nor shall I now discuss his compendium of Italian history, which in no manner touches the question whether the dominion of the Pope ought again to be imposed by foreign arms upon

a portion of the Italian people. But of the four propositions I will say that I accept them all, subject to the very simple condition that the word 'not' be inserted in the three which are affirmative, and its equivalent struck out from the one which is negative.

Or, to state the case in my own words:

My task will be to make good the two following assertions, which were the principal subjects of my former argument:

1. That upon the authority, for many generations, of those who preceded Archbishop Manning and his coadjutors in their present official position, as well as upon other authority, Papal Infallibility was not 'a doctrine of Divine Faith before the Council of the Vatican was held.'

And that, therefore, the Vatican Decrees have changed the obligations and conditions of civil allegiance.

2. That the claịm of the Papal Church against obedience to the civil power in certain cases not only goes beyond, but is essentially different from that made by other religious communions or by their members in England.

And that, therefore, the civil allegiance of those who admit the claim, and carry it to its logical consequences, is not for the purposes of the State the same with that of other Christians, but is differently limited.

In his able and lengthened work, Archbishop Manning has found space for a dissertation on the great German quarrel, but has not included, in his proof of the belief in Papal Infallibility before 1870, any reference to the history of the Church over which he presides, or the sister Church in Ireland. This very grave deficiency I shall endeavor to make good, by enlarging and completing the statement briefly given in my tract. That statement was that the English and Irish penal laws against Roman Catholics were repealed on the faith of assurances which have not been fulfilled.

Had all antagonists been content to reply with the simple ingenuousness of Dr. Newman, it might have been unnecessary to resume this portion of the subject. I make no complaint of the Archbishop; for such a reply would have destroyed his case. Dr. Newman, struggling hard with the difficulties of his task, finds that the statement of Dr. Doyle requires (p. 12) 'some pious interpretation; that in 1826 the

clergy both of England and Ireland were trained in Gallican opinions (p. 13), and had modes of thinking 'foreign altogether to the minds of the entourage of the Holy See;' that the British ministers ought to have applied to Rome (p. 14) to learn the civil duties of British subjects; and that 'no pledge from Catholics was of any value to which Rome was not a party.'

This declaration involves all, and more than all, that I had ventured reluctantly to impute. Statesmen of the future, recollect the words, and recollect from whom they came: from the man who by his genius, piety, and learning towers above all the eminences of the Anglo-Papal communion; who, so declares a Romish organ, 'has been the mind and tongue to shape and express the English Catholic position in the many controversies which have arisen' since 1845, and who has been roused from his repose on this occasion only by the most fervid appeals to him as the man that could best teach his co-religionists how and what to think. The lesson received is this. Although pledges were given, although their validity was firmly and even passionately2 asserted, although the subject-matter was one of civil allegiance, no pledge from Catholics was of any value to which Rome was not a party' (p. 14).

In all seriousness I ask whether there is not involved in these words of Dr. Newman an ominous approximation to my allegation that the seceder to the Roman Church 'places his loyalty and civil duty at the mercy of another?

But as Archbishop Manning has asserted that the Decrees of the Vatican have in no jot or tittle' altered civil allegiance, and that 'before the Council was held the infallibility of the Pope was a doctrine of Divine Faith," and as he is the official head of the AngloRoman body, I must test his assertions by one of those appeals to history which he has sometimes said are treason to the Church; as indeed they are in his sense of the Church, and in his sense of treason. It is only justice to the Archbishop to add that he does not stand.

2

The Month, December, 1874, p. 461.

Bishop Doyle, Essay on the Claims, p. 38.

3 Letter to the London Times, November 7, 1874.

Letter to the New York Herald, November 10, 1874. Letter to Macmillan's Magazine, October 22.

5 Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost.