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FOOTNOTES:

[68] "I have no need to declare myself ready to repel and reject that which the Pope cannot do. He cannot do an act contrary to the Divine law."—Cardinal Manning, Vat. Dec., p. 41.

[69] Ultramontanism et la Société Moderne.

[70] Vol. i. p. 14.

[71] The principle here alluded to is elucidated in an instructive manner in Nazareth and its Lessons, by the Rev. G.S. Drew.

[72] VIII, i. 132.

CHAPTER XIII

Solemn Confirmation of the Syllabus by the Pope before the assembled Hierarchy, and their Acquiescence, June 17, 1867.

The twenty-first anniversary of the accession of Pius IX occurred shortly before the day for which the great assembly of 1867 was convened. As the Court historian omits all mention of the Syllabus when first issued, so does he also omit to say a word of its definite confirmation by the Pontiff on June 17, 1867, and of its formal acceptance by the episcopate. We are indebted for the details in this case to an author who published before the events of 1870. Important as the transaction was, we cannot find that at the time any of the ordinary organs of the Vatican notified it to the world. Many of the learned disputants in the controversies which were soon to arise took ground which showed that they were unaware of this decisive event.

It was Archbishop Manning who related how Mass was celebrated in the Sistine Chapel, and how the Pope retired, at its close, to robe in the Pauline Chapel. Here the Cardinal Vicar, Patrizi, followed by the whole of the Sacred College and the bishops, presented an address of congratulation, concluding with hopes for many years of additional life to Pius IX, that he might behold the peace of the Church, and her triumph.

As recorded by the Archbishop, the terms employed by his Holiness in reply were of historical importance.[73] It will be remarked that the watchwords, deprecated by the Pope, are not those of heretics, but of statesmen—Unity and Progress; and no Italian or German could doubt what were the unity and progress decried—

I accept your good wishes from my heart, but I remit their verification to the hands of God. We are in a moment of great crisis. If we look only to the aspect of human events, there is no hope; but we have a higher confidence. Men are intoxicated with dreams of unity and progress, but neither is possible without justice. Unity and progress based on pride and egotism are illusions. God has laid on me the duty to declare the truths on which Christian society is based, and to condemn the errors which undermine its foundations; and I have not been silent. In the Encyclical of 1864, and in what is called the Syllabus, I declared to the world the dangers which threaten society, and I condemned the falsehoods which assail its life. That act I now confirm in your presence, and I lay it again before you as the rule of your teaching. To you, venerable brethren, as bishops of the Church, I now appeal to assist me in this conflict with error. On you I rely for support. When the people of Israel wandered in the wilderness, they had a pillar of fire to guide them in the night, and a cloud to shield them from the heat by day. You are the pillar and the cloud to the people of God.

Here the bishops learned, with the full weight of pontifical authority, that the Syllabus was "the rule of their teaching." Some explained the Syllabus as affecting discipline, and therefore liable to alteration. The Civiltá and the Slimmen had always asserted that it was purely doctrinal, and therefore above all change. In pronouncing it the "rule of teaching" the Pope settled that vital point. Some, again, had been tempted to think that the Syllabus might be laid up, like an ancestral weapon; they were undeceived, and given to know that it must be tested in war. Such were placed in the dilemma of having to offer resistance to the sovereign thus surrounded, or of having to observe a silence which must ever after carry the effect of consent. Even if they did not feel with the Pope, that the foundations of universal society were crumbling in unprecedented decay, they did keenly feel with him that the foundations of his own temporal power were crumbling. Every doubter held his peace, and the Pope's act became virtually what, as we shall see, in a few days it became formally—the act of the whole episcopate.

The Pope is not fortunate in quoting Scripture, often showing that he takes glosses for the text. He imagines that the "cloud by day" was not a pillar before the host, but an extended field of clouds overshadowing the wide-spread multitudes and not merely the tabernacle.

FOOTNOTES:

[73] Centenary of St. Peter, p. 6.

BOOK II

FROM THE FIRST PUBLIC INTIMATION OF A COUNCIL TO THE EVE OF THE OPENING (June 1867 to December 1869)

CHAPTER I

First Public Intimation of the intention to hold a Council, June 26 to July 1, 1867—Consistory—Acquiescence in the Syllabus of the assembled Bishops—The Canonized Inquisitor—Questions and Returns preparatory to Greater Centralization—Manning on the Ceremonies—O'Connell on the Papist Doctrines—The Doctrine of Direct and Indirect Power.

June 26, 1867, was the day of the Secret Consistory, to which not less than five hundred bishops from all regions of the earth lent their splendours. The Pope in his allocution deplored the evils which had overtaken the Church, and, as he supposed, in equal measure had overtaken all society. And now, at length, did he reveal his intention of convoking such an assembly as had not been witnessed for three hundred years. He had firm hope that from a General Council the light of catholic truth would shine forth and scatter the darkness which enveloped the minds of men; and that the Church, like the battle-array of an unconquered host, discomfiting her enemies, rolling back their onset, and triumphing over them, would spread abroad over the earth the dominion of Christ.

Though journalists and bishops at the time bravely reproduced this martial figure, the Jesuit historian Sambin (p. 13), writing after the battles of 1870, makes the Pope say that the Church would gain her fairest triumphs by converting her enemies.

The very name of an Œcumenical Council, uttered in the tones of Pius IX, instinct with personal and official hope, caused among the assembled prelates a movement of effusive joy. They felt that such a council would prove a "marvellous source of unity, sanctification, and peace." On July 1, assembling in the great hall over the portico of St. Peter's, with all possible accessories of form, they presented to his Holiness what they called a Salutation. This had been drawn up by Archbishop Haynald of Colocza, assisted by Bishop Dupanloup, Archbishop Manning, and others. It had been proposed to proclaim Papal infallibility in the document itself; but this set the French prelates up in arms.[74] Though stopping short of that goal, the bishops go far in their approaches to it.

"May the unmeasured benefits assured to society by the Roman Pontificate," say the bishops, "be, by this deed of Thy providence, once more displayed to the world, and may the world be convinced of the powers of the Church, and of her mission as the mother of civil humanity!" They were persuaded that a Council would have the effect of showing that everything tending to consolidate the foundation of a community, and to give it permanence, is fortified and consecrated by the example of authority, and of the obedience due thereto, presented in the divine institution of the Pontificate. Princes and peoples would not, "in the face of such a display, allow the highest sanction of all authority, the august rights of the Pope, to be trampled upon with impunity, but would see him secured in the enjoyment both of the liberty of power and the power of liberty."[75]

The words in which the bishops confirm their testimony of 1862, to the "necessity," of the temporal power are few and firm. They then proceed to cover the space between that time and the present. "With grateful feelings do we recall, and with fullest assent do we commend, the things done by Thee subsequent to that time, for the salvation of the faithful and the glory of the Church." This is a waymark showing that the old doctrine still ruled the practice of the Court, though long banished from its theory. The acquiescence of the bishops was practically necessary to give the ultimate sanction to the acts of the Pope.

Then comes the solemn adhesion of the assembled hierarchy to the condemnations collected together in the Syllabus—"Believing Peter to have spoken by the lips of Pius the things which have been spoken, confirmed, and pronounced by Thee, for the safe keeping of the deposit, we also declare, confirm, and announce; and we reject with one heart and voice those things which Thou hast adjudged to be reprobated and rejected, as being contrary to divine faith, the salvation of souls, or the good of human society."[76]

So it was done. The Pope had called for the express submission of the episcopate to his own acts, hitherto variously understood and discussed, and they had given it in round terms. Dr. Manning, in characterizing their document as "The Address or Response, in which they united themselves in heart and mind to their supreme Head,"[77] might well speak of "the gravity and moral grandeur of that act," for with him vastness always seems to prove grandeur, and an act of vast moral consequence this surely was. We shall hereafter see the fact tardily come to light that absent prelates were called upon to give in their adhesion by letter, and did so.

On either the Papal or the Episcopal theory, the Syllabus had now the status of Church law, and had become to all the clergy "the rule of your teaching." On the Papal theory, because it was the formal act of the Pontiff for the teaching and ruling of the whole Church; and on the Episcopal theory, because the collective hierarchy had not only tacitly acquiesced but openly accepted it.

Yet it is worthy of special remark that the Syllabus is not mentioned in this Salutation. More than two years later, however, the Civiltá said, "There is no doubt that the prelates had the Encyclical and Syllabus in view, since in these two documents are contained all the things which the Pope has spoken, confirmed, announced, and reproved in matters of doctrine."[78] And even as early as one year from the time, we shall find that the double authority of the Bishop of Rome, and of all other bishops, was declared to be outraged by Darboy when he practically disowned the Syllabus.

The next point touched by the prelates was one lying near to the heart of the Pope. They had been moved with joy on beholding the loyal faith, love, and reverence of the Roman people for their most indulgent prince. "Happy people and truly wise"—Felicem populum ac vere sapientem.[79] So, whoever had doubted as to the Model State, it was not the five hundred. Were they sincerely ready to make the people of their respective nations "truly wise" by bringing them to look on that government as the model?

The bishops evidently knew that they were initiating a movement which would test the combative qualities of both Pope and prelates. Every discerning man among them must have felt what Archbishop Manning expressed, "This event may be taken, I believe, to be the opening of a new period, and to contain a future which may reach over centuries."[80]

Under anticipations so serious do these old men, addressing a very old one, thus conclude—

Courage, most Blessed Father! Guide the bark of the Church with a firm hand, as has been Thy wont, certain of gaining the port. The Mother of divine grace, whom Thou hast saluted with fairest titles of honour, will defend Thy course, by the aid of her intercession; she will be to Thee the star of the sea. … Thou wilt have the celestial choirs of the saints favouring Thee; those whose glory Thou hast, with diligence and apostolic toil, sought out, and also hast proclaimed to the exulting world, both aforetime and in these recent days. May the princes of the Apostles Peter and Paul stand by Thee! … At the helm now held by Thee once stood Peter. He will intercede with the Lord that the bark which, by the aid of his prayers, has for eighteen centuries traversed the deep sea of human life, may under Thy command enter the celestial haven, all sail set, and laden with richest spoil of souls immortal.[81]

It is to be remarked that in this passage Peter is not honoured, like his successor, with capitals to all his pronouns. Again, he and Paul are coupled together as if they might have been somewhat on a level. Perhaps in both points the bishops made an unconscious concession to history, but in the state of things now initiated, such jots and tittles were to become symptomatic.

One allusion in the Address, which would pass with a smile in England, had great significance for the mind of Pius IX. It is that made to his claim to peculiar aid from the Blessed Virgin, because of the higher exaltation which he had procured for her, and also to his claim upon new saints whose titles he had made out. In the case of the Japanese saints, we have already seen how practical were his views. He was fighting for the territory of his predecessors, and, finding that he had not hosts enough on earth, he reversed the ordinary process of binding on earth and leaving it to be ratified in heaven, and now bound in heaven, by creating "new patrons in the presence of God," leaving it to be ratified on earth by a corresponding increase of forces.

The vision of these new heavenly auxiliaries dazzled the imagination. Even the professor of history in the university speaks of the awful moment when the Pope raised them to their thrones as "the sublime rite, during which heaven and earth hung upon the lips of the Pope."[82] The expressions of confidence in these new-made powers, as champions in the thickening struggle for that patrimony which, though costing so much blood, forgery, and intrigue, so much dependency on foreign arms, so much slaughter of Italians, had been retained through evil report and good report, irresistibly remind one of Licinius when menaced by the advance of Constantine, under the auspices of one God only. Licinius feels the advantage he has in the numbers of gods on whom he can rely.

"This present day," he, as reported by Eusebius, says, "will either declare us conquerors, and so most justly demonstrate our gods to be the saviours and true assistants, or else, if this one God of Constantine's, who comes from I know not whence, shall get the better of our gods, which are many, and at present do exceed in number, nobody in future will be in doubt which God he ought to worship, but will betake himself to the more powerful God, and attribute to Him the rewards of victory. And if this strange God, who is now a ridicule to us, shall appear to be the victor, it will behove us also to acknowledge and adore Him, and to bid a long farewell to those to whom we light tapers in vain. But if our gods shall get the better—which no person can entertain a doubt of—after the victory obtained in this place we will proceed to bring a war upon those impious contemners of the gods."[83]

Even if this does not describe what Licinius really said, it does represent the view of the early Christian, as to the heathen mode of thought, putting confidence in a multiplicity of celestial patrons, in the lighting of tapers and such like.

The name of Arbues, the Spanish Inquisitor, has been mentioned as being second on the list of those now to be canonized. Professor Sepp, of Munich, long known as a Catholic theologian and Oriental traveller, says in his Deutschland und der Vatican (p. 52)—

Nothing was more calculated to degrade the Church, and render her unpopular, or to bring a flush of shame to the cheek of every Catholic, than this revival of the most disagreeable recollections of history. Had Arbues contended against the burning of heretics, we should have welcomed him, in the name of God, as a saint. But history gives us no information about the man except that he discharged the odious office of a Torquemada, and that the long-persecuted Jews brought him to an untimely end. The most that can be said for him is that he died for the idea of the Inquisition; and for that he is to be set up on our altars.

Many another Liberal Catholic blushed with Sepp. Baron Weichs, in Vienna, cried, "A single example will show you the difference between the spirit which reigns here and that which reigns on the banks of the Tiber. While here we speak of abolishing the penalty of death, there they canonize an Inquisitor, covered over with the blood of the victims whom he had immolated because they worshipped God in their own way." The Civiltá exclaims, "And men of this sort are to be reputed Catholics, and to make laws for Catholics. O tempora! O mores!"[84]

The Cardinals of the Holy Office had drawn up a list of questions on points of Church discipline, which was delivered to the bishops while in Rome, and afterwards sent to many, probably to all, of those who were absent. Lord Acton points out that these questions do not touch the depths of existing wants.[85] And Michelis seems to look upon them as a blind, to cover the real point at which the Council was to aim. They are, however, clearly framed to elicit facts bearing on uniformity of discipline, and especially on points of administration in mixed questions—that is, questions wherein both civil and ecclesiastical authority are concerned; for instance, schools, mixed marriages, civil marriages, domestic relations, and the like. The returns which the answers would supply would be of great value in the study of plans for reconstruction, and would seem to be of more practical importance than Lord Acton imagines, for the purpose of governing a mobilized clergy through bishops turned into prefects, by orders from one bureau, and of impressing through them a uniform movement on both institutions and families, in matters affecting national law.

The five hundred bishops soon dispersed to the four corners of the earth, carrying into their respective spheres enthusiastic descriptions of the beautiful, the grand, the splendid, the superb, the glorious, the unutterably majestic ceremonies which they had just witnessed, and no less enthusiastic hope of "the greatest event of the age," when the princes of the Church should assemble around her head to overawe her enemies and build her up anew. We do not use the epithet "divine," but it is perhaps right to say that the Civiltá described the appearing of the Pope "upon the portative throne, in all the majesty of his divine rank … the Pope-king, the supreme representative of the two-fold authority which rules the nations in the name of God."[86] It of course celebrates the "standards which represented the glory of the Princes of the Apostles," and does not forget the "twenty thousand wax candles."[87]

Archbishop Manning reminded his clergy that in the solemn adherence of the bishops to those acts of the Pontiff, they did not confirm those acts as if needing confirmation, or accept them as if needing acceptance, or imply that they had been "of imperfect and only inchoate authority until their acceptance should confirm them." … "They did not add certainty to what was already infallible."[88] The infallibility, he contended, belonged to all the approbations and condemnations alike—not, as some "blindly say," by virtue derived from canons, councils, or ecclesiastical institutions, "but from the direct grant of our Lord Jesus Christ, before as yet a canon was made or a council assembled." This is a somewhat crude statement of the doctrine which all the Irish and French Catholics we ever knew in our younger days resented, when ascribed to themselves by Protestants. They called it the doctrine of the "Papists," and contended that Protestants wronged all such Roman Catholics as were not Papists, by calling them so, indiscriminately. What we call "temporal authority," what the Jesuits have taught Rome to call "spiritual authority over temporal affairs," was one point, and the infallibility of the Pope was a second point, on which the Papist was at issue with the Liberal Catholic. In this sense Montalembert and O'Connell were not Papists. The latter says—

I am sincerely a Catholic, but I am not a Papist. I deny the doctrine that the Pope has any temporal authority directly or indirectly in Ireland. We have all denied that authority on oath, and we would die to resist it. He cannot, therefore, be any party to the Act of Parliament we solicit, nor shall any Act of Parliament regulate our faith and conscience. In spiritual matters too the authority of the Pope is limited: he cannot, although his conclave of Cardinals were to join him, vary our religion either in doctrine or essential discipline in any respect. Even in non-essential discipline the Pope cannot vary it without the assent of the Irish Catholic bishops. Why, to this hour the discipline of the General Council of Trent is not received in this diocese.[89]

The utterances of Archbishop Manning, though sweet to the ears of those who had the dispensing of the purple in Rome, were, nevertheless, hard on those who, as children, had learned that such doctrine was no part of their creed. In his day Alban Butler had proudly said, "But Mr. Bower never found the infallibility of the Pope in our creed, and knows very well that no such article is proposed [propounded] by the Church, or required of any one."[90]

Dr. Manning went on to declare that he had received the Syllabus at the first "as a part of the supreme and infallible teaching of the Church."[91] In this he proved how far he went before most prelates of experience on this side of the Alps and Pyrenees, although he coolly credits them, every one, with having done likewise.[92]

Just as the episcopate had been committed in 1862 to the temporal power, so was it committed in 1867 to the Syllabus. Whether a bishop believed that his assent had any constitutional effect or not was now a matter of comparative indifference, for his future action was bound; and the Syllabus was to prescribe the decrees and direct the deliberations of the future Council—in fact, to be its basis and its guide.

The language of Manning was treated by many Catholics as the menaces of a zealot; but the zealot knew that he spoke for the Pope and the Jesuits. During the conflict now on the point of breaking out, many honest men fought against the supposed design that the Syllabus should receive "doctrinal authority" from the Council, while in the mind of those in whose hands lay their future faith, the Council was under the doctrinal authority of the Syllabus. The Council might contribute to administration by turning the propositions into canons or constitutions, but could not add to their authority.

The anticipation of Archbishop Manning as to the political effect of the doctrinal change then impending was clearly recorded, and in terms never to be forgotten—

"Civil governments, so long as their Catholic subjects can be dealt with in detail, are strong and often oppressive. When they have to deal with the Church throughout the world, the minority becomes a majority, and subjects, in all matters spiritual, become free. We are approaching a time when civil governments must deal with the Church as a whole, and with its head as supreme; and a General Council which makes itself felt in every civilized nation will powerfully awaken civil rulers to the consciousness that the Church is not a school of opinion, nor a mere religion, but a spiritual kingdom, having its own legislature, tribunals, and executive."[93]

Some seven years after sounding this note, preparatory to a powerful awakening of civil rulers, the Archbishop, having seen some beginning of the results of that policy to which he was helping to hurry on his Church, could say, "I must add that they who are rekindling the old fires of religious discord in such an equal and tempered commonwealth as ours, seem to me to be serving neither God nor their country."[94]

The language of O'Connell, as above quoted, was not employed loosely. He spoke as a Catholic, and as a lawyer; but, above all, as a politician. Had his declaration with regard to the spiritual power been less explicit, that upon the temporal power might, though not without violence, have been open to an Ultramontane interpretation. It might have been said that he only meant that the Pope had no authority in Ireland, which either directly or indirectly sprang from a temporal origin; for, in the language of the Ultramontanes, temporal authority does not mean authority over temporal affairs, but authority of temporal origin. His statement on the spiritual authority however, precludes any such interpretation. Even the spiritual authority he declares to be limited, both in doctrine and in discipline: it cannot "vary" doctrine, and cannot even vary the essential points of discipline, without the consent of the Irish bishops. If spoken to-day, this reserve in favour of the bishops would involve nationalism; and O'Connell's denial of the Pope's infallibility, without the consent of the bishops, would be heresy. Archbishop Manning, with a great many others, sought to prove, before the Council sat, that the latter position was proximate to heresy. So O'Connell and Montalembert must always lie under the brand of having lived and died as proximate heretics. The elect champion of the Pope's faith to-day may, if he refuses to change, be the butt of his anathema to-morrow.

NOTE

DR. NEWMAN ON THE SYLLABUS

It was eight years after the Syllabus had been formally confirmed by the Pope, and after its ratification by the collective hierarchy had been officially communicated to the Papal clergy in England by Archbishop Manning, that Dr. Newman treated of it in his letter to the Duke of Norfolk, in reply to the "Expostulation" of Mr. Gladstone. The assertions in that reply are among the most unaccountable known to the history of our literature. Still, such as they are, they have been made in a pamphlet bearing the name of an English duke on its title-page, and that of an English gentleman at its end. Moreover, they were received by our Press—and the fact is known throughout Europe—with perfect gravity.

Dr. Newman (p. 78) asks and answers an important question as follows—

"Who gathered the propositions out of these Papal documents, and put them together in one? We do not know." After no more than three sentences he adds: "The Pope has had the errors, which at one time or other he therein condemned, brought together into one, and that for the use of the bishops." On the next page he asks: "Who is its author? Some select theologian or high official, doubtless; can it be Cardinal Antonelli himself? No, surely; anyhow, it is not the Pope." First he tells us that we do not know who put it together, then that the Pope has done it, or has had it done. Again, in the same manner, he first tells us that it is not Cardinal Antonelli's, and then more than once calls it Cardinal Antonelli's (p. 91), as if his authorship of the document was an established point on which arguments might be grounded. Dr. Newman in this manner procures for himself a double set of premises, which he employs throughout, with frequent shifting. His argument now assumes the affirmative, namely, that the Syllabus is the work of the Pope; and now it assumes the negative, that the Syllabus is not the work of the Pope; and this is what the English Press with, so far as we know, unanimity agrees to call logical.

"But," asserts Dr. Newman, "the Syllabus makes no claim to be acknowledged as the word of the Pope" (p. 80). The very heading of the Syllabus sets up the claim to be accounted the word of the Pope; ay, and his word in official, public, and teaching acts. The heading is, "The Syllabus of the Principal Errors of our Time set forth in Consistorial Allocutions, Encyclicals, and other Letters Apostolic, by our most holy lord, Pope Pius IX." This claim is not incidental, but formal and capital, incapable of being either overlooked or put aside. No man's judgments are here introduced but those of Pope Pius IX, and of his judgments not one here recited is less official than are Letters Apostolic.

"The Syllabus, then," further asserts Dr. Newman, "has no dogmatic force. It addresses us not in its separate portions, but as a whole" (p. 81). The affirmative is true, the Syllabus addresses us as a whole. The negative is not true, namely, that the Syllabus does not address us in its separate portions.

Does Dr. Newman mean that there is a single one of the eighty propositions which does not bear the Papal brand, "error"? It is very wide of the mark—no man in England better knows how wide of it—to talk about different brands, some more and some less damnatory, such as "heretical," "false," "impious," or the like.

"There is not a single word in the Encyclical to show that the Pope in it is alluding to the Syllabus" (p. 82). This is said to refute an allegation of Mr. Gladstone, which Dr. Newman calls "marvellously unfair." That allegation is, that the Encyclical virtually, though not expressly, includes the whole of the errors condemned. It will be seen by any one who refers to our own remarks upon the Encyclical (pp. 5–7), that had Mr. Gladstone read it as we do, he would not have written what he did. He would have written instead of it something to this effect, that the Encyclical includes the whole of these condemnations, not by reciting them, but by clearly expressed reference. What he did say, instead of being unfair, comes short of what is required by the evidence contained in the documents. The reference in the one to the other is formal. "In pursuance of our apostolic ministry, and walking in the illustrious footsteps of our predecessor, we have lifted up our voice, and in several published Encyclical Consistorial Allocutions, and other Letters Apostolic, we have condemned the errors of our sad times." This language proves that Mr. Gladstone in saying that the whole of the Pope's condemnations were virtually though not expressly included in the Encyclical, was within the limits of the evidence. They are expressly referred to, and those additional ones contained in the Encyclical itself are linked on to the previous ones as a complement, making them a whole. In itself the point is of no consequence whatever, but Dr. Newman has chosen to make it important, and for his theory it may have some importance.

"All we know," says Dr. Newman, "is that by the Pope's command this collection of errors is sent by his Foreign Minister to the bishops" (p. 78). That is not all we know. We also know that the Foreign Minister did not, by the Pope's command, send it as the work of Cardinal Antonelli. We know that he did send it as the work of Pope Pius IX. We know that he recited in one and the same note, once for all, the language common to the two documents. 1. As regards what is condemned—"the principal errors of our times." 2. As to who it was that condemned them—the Pope. 3. As to the official acts in which he did condemn them, namely, Allocutions, and so on.

The next assertion we have to note is made in a strong interrogative form. "How can a list of errors be a series of pontifical declarations?" (p. 84). We reply, how can it be otherwise? What does an error mean in the language of such a document? It means errors declared to be such by the Pontiff; a list of such "errors," therefore, is simply a list of pontifical declarations. Dr. Newman knows as well as he knows his own name, that every clause of the Syllabus is a pontifical declaration that the words there written express an error.

Alluding to the forty-second of the condemned propositions, namely, that in the conflict of laws, civil and ecclesiastical, the civil law should prevail, Dr. Newman says this is a universal, and the Pope does but deny a universal. A universal may be denied in two ways. First by its contradictory, which may amount only to saying in popular language that the rule is not without exceptions. But there is another way of denying a universal, namely, by its contrary; that is, asserting that the rule is just the contrary of what some one has stated.

Now if Dr. Newman believes that when the Pope denies that, in case of conflict, the civil law should prevail, the Pope means no more than that there are exceptions to that rule, he believes what is in flat contradiction to the whole tenor of the Pope's language, and that of his organs year by year—language cast in forms as forcible as the case admits of. If he does not mean that, his repeated statement about denying universals is, in a technical sense, incorrect, and, in a popular sense, misleading.

Dr. Newman's treatment of the Sentence (24) which condemns those who say that the Church has not the right to employ force, is very instructive. First, he says (p. 89), "Employing force is not the Pope's phrase, but Professor Nuytz's." And what then? Is this phrase, "It is an error to say the Church has not a right to employ force" Professor Nuytz's or the Pope's? Next Dr. Newman says that what the Pope means is, "It is an error to say with Professor Nuytz that what he calls employing force is not allowable to the Church." And what then? What does Professor Nuytz call force but force? Schrader translates it "outward force." Dr. Newman does not venture so far as to translate it "spiritual coercion." The whole sentence is about temporal power and the use of force—Vis inferendae—potestatem temporalem; it never glances at spiritual censures in the popular sense.

At the next step, Dr. Newman professes to "set down what the received doctrine of the Church is on ecclesiastical punishments" (p. 89). Does he do so, or make any straightforward attempt to do it? Not by any means. "Ecclesiastical punishments" is a term of wide extension, embracing great varieties of penalty, from the deposition of an Emperor to the paltry penance of a nun. In all this range of inflictions, the single point touched by Dr. Newman is that of corporal punishment. The selection of this one point proves that he was perfectly aware that both Nuytz and the Pope meant force when they said force; and this fact reduces the talk about Nuytz's sense of that term to what it is.

But having selected corporal punishment as the whole of ecclesiastical punishment, how does Dr. Newman set down the received doctrine regarding it? By quoting a passage which, under the appearance of surrendering something, really claims something additional, according to a common usage with Papal writers (p. 89). Cardinal Soglia, as quoted by Dr. Newman, makes a merit of giving up on behalf of the Church "the corporal sword by which the body is destroyed, or blood is shed." This, however, the Church formerly never claimed to hold in her hand, but only in her power and at her beck, in the hand of the temporal ruler. But, in giving up the corporal sword, Soglia is not contented to claim for the Church in her own hand what the bull Unam Sanctam claims; that is, the spiritual sword. He does of course claim that, but he further claims that the same hand should have and hold also the corporal instalments "of lighter punishments," such as imprisonment, flogging, and beating with sticks—anything "short of effusion of blood." The last penalty is the stroke of the corporal sword, and is left to the temporal arm. The Church did not in past time claim two swords in her own hand, the spiritual one and the corporal. She only claimed a spiritual sword according to Boniface VIII; and according to Dr. Newman she claims also a cat, a cudgel, and a rack.

Neither in what he writes, nor in what he quotes, on this subject does Dr. Newman allow even an allusion to appear to the question whether the corporal sword is or is not in the power of the Church. He cannot be unaware that untrained Englishmen, in reading the statement of his authority to the effect that the corporal sword is by some writers withdrawn from the Church, would suppose that they taught that it is not in her power. Dr. Newman knows that such an impression upon their minds would be a false one. He knows that Cardinal Soglia does not give any hint that the corporal sword is a weapon which the Church may not employ. Dr. Newman himself does not give any such hint. To ordinary readers, indeed, he seems to resent the assertion that she may employ it; but even in seeming to resent it he does not venture to affirm that she may not do so. Much less does he say, in plain English, that such is the received doctrine. He engages us in chat about flogging and thrashing, and forgets all about where his Church keeps her corporal sword—the only one we care about. Not that we like even the instruments of flogging and thrashing, much less the instruments of other corporal pains which fall short of the "effusion of blood."

Dr. Newman, at one time, says that the Syllabus does not address us in its separate portions; and at another, shows that every one of its portions refers to an original document, in which that portion is to be found. These documents, he admits, are authoritative; but the Syllabus, which culls out the really authoritative parts of them, is not authoritative. We can hardly credit Dr. Newman with making a distinction of the following sort: that one is to feel bound by the Pope's judgments when they lie buried in a clumsy document, and not feel bound by them when they have been culled out by himself, and put simply before us. If Dr. Newman feels free to teach in opposition to any one of the eighty sentences as read from the Syllabus, though bound to teach according to it when read in the original document, what he has written on the subject may have some kind of serious meaning for himself, though incomprehensible to other people.

One other point we would notice. "When we turn to these documents which are authoritative," says Dr. Newman, "we find the Syllabus cannot even be called an echo of the apostolic voice." We certainly do not profess to find that it is so. It is an echo of a voice very unlike an apostolic one. But Dr. Newman means the Pope's voice. Of that voice the words in the Syllabus are not an echo, because they are its own words. Dr. Newman says that, as uttered in the Syllabus, they are not an exact reproduction of the words of the Pope; meaning by that, as found in the original documents. The words in the Syllabus are the exact words of the Pope used on a second occasion, and sometimes slightly varied from those he originally did use.

Dr. Newman has a passage in his own history which is not to be forgotten, and which ought to have made it difficult for him to stand on points about a variation of language made by a Pope, objecting that it impairs the authority of solemn documents.

There was a moment in the life of Dr. Newman when he still retained the freedom of a Christian man to teach the Catholic faith, ancient, strong and true. But he was on the point of parting with it—in the very act of swearing away that blessed birthright of his soul. He had already recited the form of sound words called the Nicene Creed, and had come to the point where the plunge must be made from the rock of Scripture, on which it builds, into the quicksands of tradition. In the modern form of oath which, at that dark moment, he was venturing to take upon his conscience, the first sentences, after parting from the language of the Catholic Church, the first that are the work of Rome, shift to another foundation from that laid under the old, scriptural, abiding verities. The true and noble old words, "the life of the world to come," built on the living Rock, are immediately succeeded by such preparation for modern inventions as the following: "I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions, and the other practices and statutes of the said Church. I do also admit the Holy Scripture according to that sense which holy Mother Church has held and does hold, to whom it belongs to judge as to the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scripture; nor shall I ever receive or interpret it except according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers."

This new thing in a creed was said by the Pope to have been ordained by the Council of Trent. If Dr. Newman had taken the trouble to see how far the terms to which he had to swear were an "echo" of those of the Council, he would have found that there was a discrepancy, considerable in words, but, in practice, monstrous. The Council decreed that no one should interpret Holy Scripture against the unanimous consent of the Fathers. That decree was confirmed by the Pope. It had thus acquired all the warrant of infallibility, and the most solemn guarantee for being irreformable that Rome had it in her power to give. This decree was "of faith." How long did it continue to be "of faith"? Only until the Pope prepared his Bull, collecting the dogmatic decrees into a novel creed. Then it was altered. The men who, henceforth, were to be the priests of Rome found themselves called upon to take oath, not as the Council willed it and worded it, that they would never interpret Holy Scripture against the unanimous consent of the Fathers, but that they would never interpret it except according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers. This was another will and another wording altogether. The latter amounts to little less than an oath that they would never interpret it at all, except on very few points.

To make the scope of this alteration clearer, let us suppose the case of Dr. Newman himself, while yet in the enjoyment of that ministry of the English Church which he afterwards threw away. Had he then been required not to preach anything contrary to the unanimous opinion of the bench of bishops, he might have felt tolerably free. But had he been required never to preach anything except according to the unanimous opinion of the bench of bishops, he would have felt—Why, I can hardly preach at all. Yet this vast change is made in a creed while its articles are passing through the process of being culled from the original documents, and presented in a collected form. In this form it was imposed by oath upon the consciences of men for ever. One and the same Papal hand signed its infallible certainty and irreformable permanency in one shape, in a little time afterwards altered its tenor, destroyed its certainty, reformed its scope, and then signed its infallibility and its irreformable permanency in the new shape. And an Englishman who swallows this camel in the creed stands between us and the light, straining out a gnat that he says has got into the Syllabus.

But what is the real teaching, as to the use of physical force, of Cardinal Soglia, who is soberly put forward by Dr. Newman before the English public as justifying him in crying out against Mr. Gladstone for accusing the Church of claiming the right to use force? Page 216: "The Church, exercising her power in the external tribunal, has been long accustomed to chastise offenders even with prison, exile, confinement in monasteries, whipping or flagellation, with fine, and other similar penalties; which, inasmuch as they affect the body, are commonly called corporeal." Page 219: "We affirm that in the inherent authority of the Church, by which she can coerce offenders with salutary penalties, is certainly contained the right of awarding such temporal penalties as consist in fine, exile, prison, whipping, and other things of the same kind." Page 222: "If a case occurs in which severer punishment appears necessary, the ecclesiastical judge may not himself resort to it, but he is to hand over the delinquent to the secular power to be punished according to its will. Besides, it is evident that the crime of heresy itself was brought under the cognizance of the ecclesiastical tribunals up to the point when the heretics, being convicted, and found obstinate, were first punished by ecclesiastical censures, and afterwards, being subjected by the lay power to capital penalty, were exterminated." Page 222: "The Church never pronounced a sentence of blood. Even the Inquisition smote heretics with the spiritual sword, and prison, but the lay princes subjected them to the last capital penalty." Page 217: "Perhingius believes that the Church does possess the right of inflicting capital punishment, but that she is not accustomed to exercise it, or to carry it out by ecclesiastical ministers and judges, but through lay ones, and by means of the temporal power, because the latter is more becoming, and more appropriate to the claims of the Church." What follows would, by internal evidence, seem to be added by Vecchiotti, but no intimation is given to that effect. Page 217: "He [Cardinal Tarquini] held that there is no kind of penalty with which the Church may not in her own right punish offenders; and thus temporal goods, reputation, rights of office and of heritage, and life itself, are subject to the ecclesiastical power. Otherwise the Church could not compel disobedient rebels, or avenge herself for their crimes, nor could she cut off rotten and noxious members from the body." Soglia, or rather his continuator, speaking of the moderns, Tarquini and "other doctors," and their doctrine of physical force, says (p. 217), "They derive it from the character and constitution of the Church herself, or from the nature of a perfect society and its end. Hence, just as in a perfect civil society the right of execution jus necis belongs to the lay power for the good of the commonwealth and of the citizens, so do they assert that none can deny that by stronger reason the same right resides in the ecclesiastical power for the spiritual good of the faithful."