The first session was held December 13th, 1545. The long period of eighteen years elapsed between its opening and its closing session, December 4th, 1563; yet of these years, only a little over four were occupied in the deliberations and acts of the Council at Trent.

Its sessions may be divided into three periods. The first, from its opening till March 11th, 1547, a period of one year and three months; when, upon a report of a malignant fever or plague, generally considered groundless, but upon which the historians differ, the council was adjourned to meet at Bologna, in the Pope's dominions. Only a majority agreed to this adjournment, and they chiefly the Italian bishops, the blinded tools of the Pope. The dissenting minority remained still at Trent. After a few feeble attempts to renew the business of the council at Bologna, the Italian bishops were dismissed by the Pope to their homes, and the council indefinitely suspended.

The second period was about one year, viz., from May 1st, 1551, when the eleventh session was held at Trent, till April 28th, 1552, the date of its second adjournment, on account of a panic produced by the victories of Duke Maurice, of Saxony, over the Emperor Charles V. Fearful that the victorious Saxon prince would extend his conquests to Trent, they hastily adjourned for a period of two years, which delay was destined, from a variety of causes, to be protracted to ten years before they should meet again.

The third period, which was the longest of the three during which the council continued together, commenced January 18th, 1562, when the fathers assembled, after their long recess, and held the seventeenth session, and continued till December 13th, 1563, the day of its closing session and final adjournment.

The number of sessions, properly so called, was twenty-five, although at some of them very little business was done, except to meet and adjourn. These sessions were held for the authoritative enactment and promulgation of the decrees which had been previously debated at the general meetings of the council, called congregations, corresponding to what,

in modern parliamentary phrase, would be termed committee of the whole.

*

"The order of business in the council," as remarks Dr. McClintock, the editor of "Bungener," (p. 43,) "was fixed as follows: First, the subjects for discussion were arranged by committees, composed of bishops and doctors; second, these subjects were then debated in meetings composed of all the members, called technically congregations, in which all decrees were to pass by a majority of votes; third, the resolu tions thus adopted were to be published and confirmed in the sessions, which were to be held openly in the cathedral, with mass and preaching, and in which no discussions were to be allowed."

The first three sessions of the council were of comparatively little importance. At the first, an opening sermon was preached by the Bishop of Bitonto. This sermon is given in full by Le Plat (Vol. I. p. 12-22), and a considerable sketch of it is given in English by Dr. Cramp (p. 33). It affords a singular specimen of silly boasting, empty bombast, and childish absurdity. At the second session it was decided, in partial compliance with the demands of the Emperor for reform in the abuses of the church, that one subject of discipline and one of doctrine should be decided at each session of the council. At the third session, the fathers did little more than to repeat the Nicene creed, and some were heard, as they left the council, complaining to one another that the grand result of the negotiations of twenty years was that they had come together to repeat a creed twelve hundred years old!

The fourth session was held on the 8th of April, 1546, and was one of the most memorable, and perhaps the most important of the whole twenty-five. In it a decree was passed which declared the Apocryphal Books of equal authority with all the books of the Old and New Testament, and anathematized all who should not receive these books as sacred and canonical; which established the old Latin Vulgate as the

*These committees were appointed by the Pope's legates, and the Italians were in the majority.

authentic standard of appeal ;--forbade any private interpretation of Scripture "contrary to that which is held by holy mother church, or contrary to the unanimous interpretation of the fathers;"*-destroyed the liberty of the press, by prohibiting all persons to print books relating to religion, or "even to retain in possession" such books, "unless they have been first examined and approved by the ordinary," under penalty of anathema and pecuniary fine;—and which declared tradition equally a rule of faith with the Sacred Scriptures, to be received "with equal piety and veneration" (" pari pietatis affectu ac reverentiâ").

The decree of which the above is a very brief synopsis is peculiarly worthy of study at the present day, as affording an authentic exhibition of popery as it was at Trent two centuries ago, and as it still is in relation to the subjects which we have italicised in the last paragraph.

When we remember that one professed design of the council was to reclaim the Protestants, and bring them back as erring sons, into the bosom of the church, we cannot but wonder at the presumption which should enact decrees so utterly opposed to their cherished and dearest principles, as the supremacy of the word of God as the only rule of faith, the right of private judgment, and the liberty of the press; and the more astonishing does this infatuation seem, when we remember that all this was done by a little company of men, consisting, at this session, of just fifty-eight persons in all! For, although at the later sessions the number of delegates increased to over two hundred, at this the assembly consisted of only eight archbishops, forty-one bishops, three abbots, and six generals of orders.

Probably an event which had recently taken place-sad and mournful to the reformers, but welcome and joyful to their enemies-encouraged them in this unwonted daring.

The words of the decree, at this point, are, "Contra eum sensum, quem tenuit et tenet sancta mater ecclesia, cujus est judicare de vero sensu et interpretatione Scripturarum sancturam, aut etiam contra unaninem consensum Patrum." If this latter rule were conscientiously observed, it would be very difficult to get any interpretation whatever of sacred Scripture; for on how few subjects do" the fathers" unanimously agree.

1

We allude to the death of Luther, the great apostle of the Reformation, which occurred at Eisleben, his native place, on the 18th of February, 1546, just seven weeks before this fourth session of the council.

The effect of this intelligence upon the council is graphically and eloquently described by Bungener (p. 61). The third session was over, when the fathers had met to repeat the creed, when one day-the 22d of February

The legates appeared
Could it be, because

"The council met to deliberate in good earnest. radiant with smiles. Why so? Nobody could tell. the council was now about to put itself in motion, and because, after having held a session for the Credo, they would not be obliged to hold one for the Pater, as was remarked by some mischievous wits. This was doubted. The legates had not hitherto looked like men who were eager for the council proceeding to business. Could it be that the Emperor had at last consented to declare war against the Protestants? Possibly so; a courier had arrived from Germany that very morning. No. It was because of something else; something better still-Luther was dead!

Yes, the veteran father of the Reformation was dead-if the Reformation had any father but God-any mother but the Word of God. He was dead, but only after having viewed with a smile of pity the grand projects and the small intrigues of men, so infatuated as to think of arresting, by their decrees, the movements of human thought and the very breath of God. And see now, how glad they are, these very men! Even when feeble and dying, the old monk of Wittemberg still terrified them. One might have said, that they could never turn round to look at Germany without their eyes meeting his, and without quailing before that eagle glance which had once embraced all Europe from the top of the donjon towers of the Wartburg. At Trent, at Rome, at Vienna, wherever partisans and champions of the popedom were to be found, never could they meet by two or three, without a voice, at once serious and sarcastic, seeming to pierce the wall, to overawe thieves, and to silence them Now, then, ye oracles of the council, you may proceed at your ease, Shut, shut the Bible! Luther no longer lives to open it. Poor insensate creatures! see you not that once opened, no human power shall shut it? 'My good princes and lords,' said Luther shortly before his death, 'you are truly far too eager to see me die-me who am but a poor man. You fancy, then, that after that, you shall have got the victory!' But no; they did not think so, for they proceeded to close their ranks, and to advance more vigorously than ever against the book which he had used as his own buckler, and that of his adherents."

In the fifth, sixth, and seventh of the remaining sessions

which were held in this first period of the council, decrees were passed upon original sin, justification, and the sacraments, which were declared to be seven in number, viz.: baptism, confirmation, eucharist, penance, extreme unction, orders, and matrimony.

When the decree concerning original sin was under discussion, a fierce debate sprung up upon a subject which has of late occupied a considerable share of public attentionthe Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. A quarrel on this abstruse and useless question had existed in the Romish church for more than four centuries prior to the Council of Trent. The fierce and intemperate disputes between "the Cordeliers and the Jacobins,"" the Dominicans and Franciscans," had long divided the church into rival and contending parties. Even the Popes had declared themselves on opposite sides, but always as divines, never as Popes. The celebrated St. Bernard, in the middle of the twelfth century, had opposed it, and called the idea " sumptuous novelty, the mother of temerity, the sister of superstition, the daughter of fickleness." Johannes Scotus, eighty years later, advocated the doctrine, but only as a possibility," and if admitted, to be held only as "a matter of sentiment." He argued that

a pre

"Christ redeemed all mankind; nevertheless he could not have been a perfect Redeemer, had there not been one being, at least, whom he should save, not only from the consequences of original sin, but from original sin itself. And who could this being have been but his own mother? Admirable reasonings these," says Bungener, "on which a man of science could not admit the existence of a single plant, of an insect, of an atomyet with which people have so often been content in establishing the sublimest mysteries!"

With such a diversity of opinion, the fathers of Trent prudently resolved (in modern parlance) to dodge the question, and to leave it undecided whether the Virgin Mary, like all the rest of Adam's posterity-Christ only excepted-was herself born in original sin. Bungener, writing a few years prior to the recent papal decision, remarks, with singular sagacity and foresight (p. 125), "At the present day matters stand thus. There are no positive decrees; but every