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already put forward by several of St. Agatho's predecessors ?1 Were not the words which our Lord addressed to St. Peter explained by St. Cyril of Alexandria in a sense which establishes in the clearest way his authority as supreme teacher of the universal Church ?2 Are not similar expositions to be found in the works of other Greek Fathers who wrote subsequently, and whose interpretation is plainly derived from the ancient tradition of their Church? And has not the interpretation which is now sanctioned by the Council been for several centuries accepted generally throughout the Church, which, according to Catholic faith, can never err ?*

Besides, in order to overturn the Scriptural proof of the Infallibility of the Popes, Dr. Döllinger should deal not only with the text of St. Luke, but also with the two other texts quoted by the Council, especially the text of St. Matthew,5 for many writers derive their most cogent proof from the

1 "Specialis a Domino Petri cura suscipitur et pro fide Petri proprie supplicatur, tamquam aliorum status certior sit futurus, si mens principis victa non fuerit. In Petro ergo omnium fortitudo munitur et divinae gratiae ita ordinatur auxilium, ut firmitas, quae per Christum Petro tribuitur, per Petrum apostolis conferatur." S. LEO MAGNUS. SERM. 4, cap. 3.

"Veritas mentiri non potuit nec fides Petri in aeternum quassari poterit vel nutare; nam pro solo Petro se Dominus rogasse testatur et ab eo voluit caeteros confirmari." PELAGIUS II. Ep. 3, ad. Episc. Ist.

2 After quoting (In Lucam. xxii. 31) the words addressed by our Lord to St. Peter, St. Cyril adds the following explanation :-Τουτέστι γενοῦ στήριγμα και διδάσκαλος τῶν διὰ πίστεως προσίοντων ἐμοί (“ That is to say, be the confirmer and teacher of all who come to Me by faith.")

3 JOHANN. VI. CONSTANT. PATR., Ep. ad Constant; THEOD. STUD., Lib. 2, ep. 12; THEOPHYLACT in Luc. c. 22; SOPHRON ap. Steph. Dor. in Conc. 649.

It is plain, from the decrees of the Popes, that they have always understood this text as referring not merely to St. Peter, but also to his successors. It is sufficient to mention Gelasius I., (Jaffé, n. 384, p. 54), Gregory I. (Lib. vi. 37, iv. 32), Vitalian (Migne, tom 87, col. 1002), John VIII. (Ep. 76 ad Petr. Com.), Leo X. (Eb. ad Mich. Caerul, cap. vii.), Gregory VII. (Lib. iii. Ep. 18; Lib viii., Ep. 1; Lib. ii. Ep. 31). Innocent III. (Lib. ii. Ep. 209) writes to the Patriarch of Byzantium-" Ex hoc manifeste insinuans quod successores ipsius (Petri) a fide Catholica, nullo unquam tempore deviarent sed revocarent magis alios et confirmarent etiam haesitantes; per hoc sic ei confirmandi alios potestatem indulgens, ut aliis necessitatem imponeret obsequendi."

5 This text of St. Matthew is quoted in the Decree of the Vatican Council. It was cited in the same sense by Pope Hormisdas in the Profession of Faith which he obliged the Eastern Bishops to sign in the year 517.

[The Archbishop of Westminster, in his Pastoral Letter on the Ecumenical Council (London, 1869), gives the following translation of this document, by signing which, in obedience to the Pope's command, 2, 500 Bishops submitted to the Holy See, and thus brought the Acacian schism to a close.

"The Rule of Faith:-The first act of salvation is to keep rightly the rule of faith, and in no way to deviate from the decrees of the Fathers. And inasmuch as the words of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be passed over, who said, 'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.' These words are confirmed by their effects: for in the Apostolic See religion has been always preserved without spot."-LABBE, Concil. tom. v. p. 583. Ed. Ven. 1728.]

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comparison of these various passages.1 In fact, the Fathers, Councils, Bishops, and theologians in treating these texts have usually considered them in their relation to one another. Caspar de Fosso, a theologian of the order of St. Francis of Paula, and Archbishop of Reggio, said, in the address which he delivered at the opening of the seventeenth session of the Council of Trent :-"This Holy and Apostolic Church, the Mother of all the Churches of Christ, has never strayed from the path of apostolic tradition, never yielded to the seductions of heretical teachers, but has always, through the mercy of God, preserved the Christian faith, preached in the beginning by her founders, the Princes of the Apostles, pure and inviolate, in fulfilment of the promise made by our Lord, Behold, Peter, Satan hath desired to have you, that he might sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not. This Church alone has preserved the faith pure and undefiled; to her alone, as St. Cyprian writes, no error has found admittance.2 Jerusalem has fallen, the Church blessed by the labours of the Apostle James; and Asia, and Achaia where John and Andrew laboured. Other churches, too, have fallen, over which disciples and apostles once presided. The Church of Rome alone, pre-eminent as the See of the Prince of the Apostles, has never been overcome by error, strengthened as she has been by the promise of Christ, that the gates of hell should never prevail against her. And if the gates of hell, which, as the Fathers teach, are heresies and 1 Etudes Religieuses. Paris, 1868, n. 1, p. 616. Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, n. 10, p. 177.

S. CYPRIAN. Ep. 55, ad Cornel.

* “ Οὐδεμία πύλη ᾅδου κατισχύσει τῆς πέτρας ἢ ἐκκλησίας ἣν ἐπ aury Xpurròs oikodopel."-ORIGEN (In Matt. t. xii. n. 12.) "Petri sedes ipsa est petra, quam non vincunt inferorum portae."-S. AUGUST. (c. part. Donati).

It should be observed that this interpretation of the clause and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." is by no means necessary for the argument in support of the Pope's Infallibility, which theologians usually derive from the text of St. Matthew. For whether we understand our Lord to have promised that the " gates of hell," should never prevail against His Church, thus built upon the Rock of Peter, or that they should never prevail against the Rock on which His Church was built, the text affords a decisive proof of the Catholic doctrine. The former interpretation is adopted by Dr. Murray in his exhaustive analysis of this text (Tractatus de Ecclesia Christi. Disp. vi. nn. 130-2; and Theological Essays, vol. iii., pp. 294-6 Dublin, 1852). Father Perrone remarks that this interpretation, like the other, furnishes a deci sive proof of the Catholic doctrine, but he rejects it as totally at variance with the traditional exposition of the text.

Maldonatus, however, states that it is adopted by the Fathers, with scarcely an exception. Indeed, Origen, whose words, quoted by Dr. Hergenrother, point to the other exposition, of which he is usually regarded as one of the few supporters, holds as the more probable opinion, that the promise refers to the Church as well as to the Rock. Τίνος δὲ αὐτῆς; ἆρα γὰρ τῆς πέτρας, εφ' ἣν Χριστὸς, οἰκοδομει τὴν ἐκκλησίαν; ἢ τῆς εκκλησίας; αμφίβολος γὰρ ἡ φράσις. ἢ ὡς ἑνὸς καὶ τοῦ αὐτοῦ τῆς πέτρας, καὶ τῆς ἐκκλησίας; τοῦτο δὲ οἶμαι åλŋlès Tvyxáveiv. (Non praevalebunt adversus eam,' quam autem eam? An

false doctrines, can never prevail against her, how can these venture to proclaim with unblushing audacity that centuries ago she fell from the purity of the faith? Let no man say he claims God as a father, who does not regard the Church as his mother."

How few theologians would be free from embarrassment if called upon to defend the interpretation of the words of St. James (St. James, v. 14) which is ratified by the Council of Trent in its decree regarding Extreme Unction, by adducing passages from the writings of the Fathers as weighty and as numerous as those which can be cited in support of the interpretation ratified by the Vatican Council in its definition of the Infallibility of the Popes? Dr. Döllinger himself would find the task a difficult one, and after addressing himself to it, he would probably feel inclined to modify his view regarding the necessity of an unanimous consensus of the Fathers.

Finally, it would be necessary for Dr. Döllinger to refute the theological reasoning by which the supreme and infallible authority of the Pope, in matters of doctrine, is deduced from the existence of the Primatial office which, according to Catholic faith, is vested in St. Peter and his successors. Nor should he overlook the arguments brought forward by theologians, to show that if the Infallibility of the Church be once admitted, the Infallibility of her Supreme Pastor follows as a necessary consequence.

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Secondly. In several episcopal pastorals and mandates which have lately appeared, it has been asserted, and not without an attempt to establish the truth of the assertion by historical evidence, that the doctrines lately proclaimed at Rome of the Omnipotence [!]of the Popes and their Infallibility in matters of faith, have been universally, or, at least, generally believed and taught in the Church from the beginning down to the present time. This assertion, as I am prepared to prove, is based upon an entire misconception of the tradition of the Church for the first thousand years, and upon an entire distortion of her history. It is, moreover, in direct contradiction with the most express testimonies of ecclesiastical writers and with the plainest matters of fact."

Statements, substantially identical with these, were put forward by Dr. Döllinger in his "Notes," and in the "Declaration," published in the Augsburg Gazette, on the 21st enim petram super quam Christus ædificat ecclesiam? An ecclesiam? Ambigua quippe locutio est : an quasi unam eandemque rem, petram et ecclesiam? Hoc verum esse existimo).

And it is not unworthy of notice that Father Perrone, in another portion of the same treatise, De Locis (Pars. i., n. 479), interprets the clause as referring directly to the Church,

of January, 1870. It is plain that the misconception which, as I have already pointed out, underlies Dr. Döllinger's first thesis, underlies his second also. The distinction between explicit and implicit belief in a doctrine must not be overlooked; nor ought the rule of St. Vincent Lerins [quod semper, et ubique, et ab omnibus] to be interpreted in an absolute and exclusive sense foreign to the intention of the Saint himself. And if some portions of the Church, under the influence of exceptional circumstances, have, at times, adopted less accurate views on any point of doctrine, the error cannot be regarded as involving any prejudice to the faith of the Catholic world.

It must be remembered that doctrines, the germs of which were always contained in the faith of the Church, may be evolved, and their truth placed in a clearer light by her teaching,1 especially when the purity of her faith has been imperilled by their being called in question; so that, in the course of time, what was in reality revealed from the beginning, becomes recognised and received as such by all the faithful.

Before the Definition of the Vatican Council, the children of the Church had been accustomed to submit unreservedly to the decisions of the Holy See, regarding them as final, and yielding to them, as such, internal assent as well as external submission, whilst the teachers of false doctrine have endeavoured, by means of evasive quibbles, to ward off the condemnation with which they were visited. The Definition of the Vatican Council has put an end to those evasions by formulating, in clear language, a truth which Catholics have always believed; it has made no change in the doctrine of the Church; it is not an alteration but a development of doctrine.

As the Fathers of the Latin Church pointed out during the controversy with the Greeks, that the doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son was contained in the doctrine of His Procession from the Father, so that the addition of the words Filioque involved no alteration of doctrine, but only a fulier exposition of the doctrine previously received; so, too, ecclesiastical writers of the present day explain that the doctrine of the Church's Infallibility implies, and necessarily involves, the doctrine of the Infallibility of the Pope, her head.

Those who regard this doctrine as new, because it had not previously been defined-although it was undoubtedly the doctrine commonly received, at least for centuries, throughout the greater portion of the Church-must be prepared to main

1 "Quid unquam aliud Conciliorum decretis enisa est (Ecclesia) nisi ut quod antea simpliciter credebatur, hoc idem postea diligentius crederetur ; quod antea lentius praedicabatur, hoc idem postea instantius praedicaretur; quod antea securius colebatur, hoc idem postea sollicitius excoleretur ?"-VINCENT LERIN, Commonit. n. 32.

tain that all the General Councils of the Church have defined doctrines which were new at the time of their definition. In the last century, Benedict XIV. pointed out that the doctrine of Papal Infallibility was universally received throughout the Church with the exception of France,1 where, as is still the case to some extent, the free expression of Catholic doctrine was impeded by the power of the State.

And if it be urged that for centuries the Popes have acquiesced in the denial of this fundamental doctrine by entire nations and theological schools, it must be remembered (1) that even Gallicans and Febronians never assailed the See of Peter with such audacity as the writers of Janus and their colleagues; that they never put forward a naked denial of the Infallibility of the Popes, but merely required the consensus of the universal Church; and that the Bishops, with scarcely an exception, accepted both in theory and in practice the Papal condemnations of Baius, Jansenius, and Quesnel; (2) That the forbearance of the Holy See never extended so far as to allow a doubt to be cast upon the doctrine of the Roman Church, which, at various times, found expression in Pontifical censures;2 and (3) That the Popes could afford to wait with confidence for the time when the differences of opinion amongst Catholics regarding the tribunal in which the Infallibility of the Church was vested, would disappear, and the necessity of a clear definition of the true doctrine in opposition to the encroachments. of its adversaries, ever growing bolder by toleration, would be universally recognised.

1 BENEDICT XIV., Ep. ad Inquis. Hisp.

W. J. W.

[In 1479 Sixtus IV. condemned as heretical the proposition of Peter de Osma :"The Church of the City of Rome may err."

In 1690 Alexander VIII. condemned thirty-one propositions, of which the following is the twenty-ninth :-"The assertion of the authority of the Roman Pontiff over Ecumenical Councils, and of his Infallibility in defining questions of faith is futile, and has often been refuted."

Three weeks after the publication of the famous Articles enacted by the Gallican Assembly of 1682, they were condemned by Innocent XI. (Paternae Charitati, 11 April, 1682). His successor, Alexander VIII. (Inter multiplices, Jan., 1691) followed his example. And on the accession of the next Pontiff, Innocent XII., the French King, Louis XIV., and the Bishops who had taken part in the proceedings of the Assembly, submitted without reserve to the judgment of the Holy See. "Inasmuch," wrote the king, "as I desire to testify my filial respect by the most effectual means in my power, I most gladly make known to your Holiness that I have given the necessary commands that the things contained in my Edict of the 22nd of March, 1682, shall not be observed." And the Bishops in their letter to the Pope declare:-" We vehemently, and beyond all that can be expressed, lament from our hearts the acts which were done in the aforesaid assemblies And therefore we hold them as not decreed, and declare that they ought to be so esteemed."

Subsequently, Pius VI. (Auctorem fides, 27th Aug., 1794), condemned the Synod of Pistoia for incorporating the Gallican Articles in its Decrees, and declared that the insertion of those Articles, already condemned by l'ontifical authority, was temerarious, scandalous, and greatly injurious to the Apostolic See.]

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