hypothesis, and he asks, “Are we at a Council or not? If we are, the rules of Councils must be observed, or else a great assembly of Bishops is reduced simply to playing the part of a theatrical exhibition."

Dupanloup goes on to remark on the storms and incalculable evils which the definition of papal infallibility would bring on the Church and the Papacy. He concludes with these words: "If ever moral unanimity was requisite for a dogmatic decision, it is so at a Council like the Vatican, where there are 276 Italian Bishops, of whom 143 belong to the States of the Church; 43 Cardinals, of whom 23 are not Bishops or have no Sees; 120 Archbishops or Bishops in partibus, and 51 Abbots or Generals of Orders-while the Bishops present from all Catholic countries of Europe, exclusive of Italy, only number 265, so that the Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and diocesan Bishops of the whole world are outnumbered by the diocesan Bishops of Italy alone. At a Council so composed a mere majority can never decide; and the less so when the personal intervention of the Pope makes itself felt, when the freedom of the Bishops is so seriously hampered, and in so many ways, when the question of infallibility has been so

1 He should have said "the Italian prelates."

unscrupulously and violently brought forward for discussion by a mere sovereign act-a sort of coup d'étatwhen consciences are tormented and a number of writings are issued which have created a great sensation and give evidence of the anxiety of the faithful, and when lastly the Bishops themselves let a cry escape from their tortured hearts which the whole press reechoes. Under such circumstances it is impossible to settle the matter by a mere coup of the majority; and if it is done all kinds of mischief must be feared. Nor is it I alone who say so; there are 100 Bishops who say, "An intolerable burden would be laid on our consciences. We should fear that the cecumenical character of the Council would be called in question, and abundant materials supplied to the enemies of religion for assailing the Holy See and the Council, and that it would be without authority in the eyes of the Christian world, as having been no true and no free Council. And in these troubled times no greater evil can well be conceived."

FIFTY-SECOND LETTER.

Rome, June 3, 1870.-Valerga attacked the "Gallicans," drawing a parallel between the Pope and Christ, and between the Fallibilists and Monothelites. As in Christ the human will co-existed with the divine, so in the Pope may personal infallibility co-exist with moral sinfulness, and to conclude from the former against the latter to draw an argument from scandals in papal history against the privilegium inerrantiæ-is analogous to the error of the Monothelites, who denied the possibility of a human will subject to sin co-existing with the divine will in the same person. Never has the well-known spirit of the Roman Curia shown itself so openly and with such technical adroitness as in this carefully elaborated and minute accusation against the Opposition. As Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati expressed it, it was "exemplum sophismatum artis ad instar congestorum," and great expectations might be

formed of its salutary effect on the French. Purcell answered shortly and pointedly that the charge applied equally to the Council of Trent and the sixth, seventh, and eighth Ecumenical Councils, and that he and his colleagues were content to endure the patriarch's anathema in such good company. Even Bellarmine quotes a whole cloud of witnesses against infallibilism, and neither he nor later writers had refuted them. It is matter of thankfulness to God that he has never suffered this opinion to gain dogmatic authority. Purcell then cited clenching proofs of the public erroneous teaching of Popes, and among them the history of the ordinations and reordinations of Formosus and Sergius. The standpoint which he took as a republican was interesting. He said that the Church was the freest society in the world, and was loved as such by its American sons, for the Americans abhorred every doctrine opposed to civil and spiritual freedom. As kings existed for the good of the peoples, so Popes for the good of the Church, and not vice versa. Perhaps he was thinking of the words of the absolutist Louis XIV., "La nation ne fait pas corps en France, elle réside tout entière dans la personne du roi." For "nation" put put "Église," and the words describe precisely the papal system, as it is now

intended to be made exclusively dominant by means of the Council.

The most important speech in this sitting, and one of the most remarkable theologically since the opening of the Council, was that of Conolly, Archbishop of Halifax. Formerly an unhesitating adherent of personal infallibility he had come here without having specially studied the question, and under the full belief that the Allgemeine Zeitung had calumniated the Roman See in representing this dogma as the real object of the Council. But when he found what was expected of him here, he instituted a searching examination, and thoroughly sifted, as he said, what the classical Roman theologians cite for their favourite doctrine. He now frankly submitted to the Council the result of his studies,-that the whole of Christian antiquity explains the stock passages of Scripture alleged for papal infallibility in a different sense from the Schema, and bears witness against the theory that the Pope alone, without the Bishops or even in opposition to them (etiam omnibus invitis et contradicentibus), is infallible. But what our Lord has not spoken, even though it was certain metaphysically or physically, can never become the basis of an article of faith, for faith