L I E> R.ARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N IVER5ITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS 
 
 n
 
 4 
 
 VAT I CAN ISM: 
 
 AN ANSWER 
 
 TO 
 
 REPROOFS and REPLIES. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 EIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN MUEEAY, ALBEMAELE STEEET. 
 
 1875. 
 
 [TTifi rigid of Translation is reserved.]
 
 BY THE SAME. 
 
 THE VATICAN DECEEES IN THEIE BEAEING 
 
 ON CIVIL ALLEGIANCE: A Political Expostulation. 
 lith Tliousand. 8vo. 2s. GJ. 
 
 Cheap Edition. 120th Thousand. 12mo. 6d.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. IXTEODUCTIOX 5 
 
 The Eeplies which have appeaked on this occasion. The 
 Insult. Evidences of Personal Loyalty, all that could 
 BE WISHED. Dr. Newman. His remarkable Admissions.. 
 Evidences as to the character and tendencies of Vati- 
 canism ; most unsatisfactory. 
 
 II. THE EUSTY TOOLS. THE SYLLABUS .. .. 19 
 
 1. What are its Contents? .. .. .. .. .. 21 
 
 2. What is its Authority? .. ,. ,. .. .. 32 
 
 III. THE VATICAN COUNCIL AND THE INFALLI- 
 BILITY OF THE POPE 37 
 
 Breach with History, No. 1. From the OpINlo^-s and De- 
 clarations OF the PiOMAN Catholics of the United 
 Kingdom for Two Centuries. 
 
 lY. THE VATICAN COUNCIL AND THE INFALLI- 
 BILITY OF THE POT-E.— continued 5S 
 
 Breach with History, No. 2. From the Hi^^tory of the 
 Council of Constance. Gallicanism. 
 
 V. THE VATICAN COUNCIL AND OBEDIENCE TO 
 
 THE POPE 05 
 
 VI. EEVIVED CLAIMS OF THE POPE 70 
 
 1. To THE Deposing Power .. .. .. .. .. 70 
 
 2. To THE use of Force .. .. .. .. .. 75 
 
 B 2
 
 •1 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 YII. WAEEANT OF ALLEGIANCE ACCORDINa TO 
 
 THE VATICAN 79 
 
 1. Its alleged Superiority .. .. .. .. •• 79 
 
 2. Its real Flaws .. .. .. .. •• •• 82 
 
 3. Alleged non-interference of the Pores for Two Hun- 
 
 dred Years .. .. .. .. .. •• 88 
 
 VIII. ON THE INTRINSIC NATURE AND CONDITIONS 
 OF THE PAPAL INFALLIBILITY DECREED 
 IN THE VATICAN COUNCIL 92 
 
 IX. CONCLUSION 109 
 
 APPENDICES 121 

 
 VATICANISM 
 
 I. IXTEODUCTIOX. 
 
 The number and quality of the antagonists, who have 
 been drawn into the field on the occasion offered by my 
 tract on the Yatican Decrees,* and the interest in the 
 subject which has been manifested by the public of this and 
 of many other countries, appear to show that it was not 
 inopportune. The only special claim to attention with 
 which I could invest it was this, that for thirty years I 
 had striven hard, together with others, to secure a full 
 measure of civil justice for my Eoman Catholic fellow- 
 countrymen, and that I still retained the convictions by 
 which these efforts had been prompted. Knowing well 
 the general indisposition of the English mind, amidst the 
 pressing demands of our crowded daily life, to touch any 
 subject comparatively abstract and remote, I was not 
 surprised when many journals of great influence, reflect- 
 ing this indisposition, condemned the publication of the 
 Tract, and inspired Eoman authorities among us with 
 the vain conception that the discussion was not practical 
 
 * Appendix A.
 
 8 VATICANISM. ; 
 
 or significant.* In Eome itself, a different view was 
 taken ; and the veiled prophets behind the throne, by 
 whom the Latin Church is governed, brought about its 
 condemnation as blasphemous, without perusal, from the 
 lips of the Holy Father.-j- The object, probably, was at 
 once to prevent or neutralise avowals of sympathy from 
 Eoman Catholic quarters. It may have been with a like 
 aim that a number of Prelates at once entered, though by 
 no means with one voice, into the lists. At length the 
 great name of Dr. Newman was announced, and he too 
 has replied to me, and explained himself, in a work to 
 which I shall presently refer. Even apart from the 
 spolia ojjima of this transcendent champion, I do not 
 undervalue the ability, accomplishments, and discipline of 
 that division of the Roman Army, which confronts our 
 Church and nation. Besides its supply from indigenous 
 sources, it has been strangely but very largely recruited 
 from the ranks of the English Church, and her breasts 
 have, for thirty years, been pierced mainly by the children 
 whom they had fed. 
 
 In these replies, of which the large majority adopt 
 without reserve the Ultramontane hypothesis^ it is most 
 commonly alleged that I have insulted the Roman 
 Catholics of these kingdoms. Dr. Newman, averse to the 
 use of harsh words, still announces (p. 3) that "heavy 
 
 * For example : " The various organs of the press, with the shrewd 
 political sense for which they are conspicnons, without any possible 
 collusion, extinguished its political import in a single morning." — 
 Bishop Vaughan's ' Pastoral Letter,' p. 5. 
 
 t The declaration of non avenu, which, after a brief interval, fol- 
 lowed the announcement of the condemnation, appeared upon some 
 subsequent discussion to be negatived by the evidence. But such 
 declarations are, I conceive, well understood in Eome to depend, like 
 an English " not at home,'' upon convenience.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 -charges have been made against the Cathohcs of Eng- 
 land." Bishop CHfford, in a pastoral letter of which I 
 gladly acknowledge the equitable, restrained, and Christian 
 spirit, says I have proclaimed that since the Vatican 
 Decrees were published "it is no longer possible for 
 English Catholics to pay to their temporal sovereign a 
 full and undivided allegiance" (p. 5). 
 
 I am obliged to assert that not one of the writers against 
 me has apprehended or stated with accuracy my principal 
 charge. Except a prospective reference to '* converts," 
 the subject (to speak technically) of all my propositions is 
 the word " Rome"; and with reference to these " converts," 
 I speak of what they suffer, not of what they do. It is an 
 entire, and even a gross, error to treat all affirmations 
 about Home as equivalent to affirmations about British 
 subjects of the Eoman communion. They may adopt the 
 acts of Rome : the question was and is, whether they do. 
 I have done nothing to leave this question open to doubt ; 
 for I have paraphrased my monosyllable " Rome " by the 
 words " the Papal Chair, and its advisers and abettors " 
 {p. 9). Unable as I am to attenuate the charges, on the 
 contrary bound rather to plead guilty to the fault of 
 having understated them_, I am on that account the more 
 -anxious that their aim shall be clearly understood. First, 
 then, I must again speak plainly, and I fear hardly, of 
 that system, political rather than religious, which in 
 •Germany is well termed Vaticanism. It would be affec- 
 tation to exclude from my language and meaning its con- 
 trivers and conscious promoters. But here in my mind, 
 as well as in my page, anything approaching to censure 
 stops. The Vatican Decrees do, in the strictest sense, 
 establish for the Pope a supreme command over loyalty 
 and civil duty. To the vast majority of Roman Catholics
 
 VATICANISM. 
 
 they are, and in all likelihood will long in their carefully 
 enveloped meaning remain, practically unknown. Of 
 that small minority, who have spoken or fitted themselves 
 to speak, a portion reject them. Another portion receive 
 them with an express reserve, to me perfectly satisfactory, 
 against all their civil consequences. Another portion 
 seem to suspend their judgment until it is determined 
 what is a free Council, what is moral unanimity, what are 
 declarations ex cathedra, whether there has been a decisive 
 and binding promulgation so as to create a law, and 
 whether the claim for an undue obedience need be con- 
 sidered until some act of undue obedience is asked. A 
 very large class, as it seems to me, think they receive 
 these Decrees, and do not. They are involved in in- 
 consistency, and that inconsistency is dangerous. So I 
 presume they would tell me that when I recite in the 
 Creed the words, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church,'^ 
 
 1 am involved in inconsistency, and my inconsistency 
 is dangerous. To treat this as a *' heavy charge " is 
 surely inaccurate ; to call it an insult is (forgive the 
 word) preposterous. 
 
 Not even against men who voted under pressure, against 
 their better mind, for these deplorable Decrees, nay, not 
 even against those who resisted them and now enforce 
 them, is it for me to utter a word of censure. The just 
 appreciation of their difficulties, the judgment of their 
 conduct, lies in a region far too high for me. To assail 
 the system is the Alpha and Omega of my desire ; and it 
 is to me matter of regret that I am not able to handle it 
 as it deserves without reflecting upon the persons, be they 
 who they may, that have brought it into the world ; have 
 sedulously fed it in its weakness ; have reared it up to its 
 baleful maturity ; have forced it upon those, who now
 
 IMTEODUCTION. 9 
 
 force It upon others ; are obtaining for it from day to day 
 fresh command over the pulpit, the press, the confessional, 
 the teacher's chair, the bishop's throne ; so that every 
 father of a family, and every teacher in the Latin commu- 
 nion, shall, as he dies, be replaced by some one more 
 deeply imbued with the new colour, until at the last, in 
 that moiety of the whole Christian family, nothing shall 
 remain except an Asian monarchy; nothing, but one 
 giddy height of despotism, and one dead level of religious 
 subserviency. 
 
 But even of the most responsible abettors of that system. 
 I desire once for all to say, that I do not presume in any 
 way to impeach their sincerity ; and that, as far as I am 
 acquainted with their personal characters, I should think 
 it great presumption to place myself in comparison or 
 competition with any of them. 
 
 So much for insult. Much has also been said of my 
 ignorance and incapacity in theology ;* a province which 
 I had entered only at the points where it crossed the 
 border of the civil domain. Censures of this kind have 
 great weight, when they follow upon demonstration given 
 of errors committed by the person who is the object of them ; 
 but they can have very httle, when they are used as sub- 
 stitutes for such a demonstration. In the absence of such 
 proof, they can rank no higher^ than as a mere artifice of 
 controversy. I have endeavoured to couch all my positive 
 
 * For example: — By Archbishop Manning, pp. 13, 177. Bishop 
 TJllathorne, Letter, p. 10. ' Exposition Unravelled,' p. 68. Bishop 
 Yaughan, p. 37. ' Month,' December, 1874, p. 497. Monk of St. Au- 
 gustine's, p. 10. With these legitimate reproaches is oddly combined 
 on the part of the Archbishop, and, apparently, of Bishop L'llathorne, 
 a supposition that Dr. Dollinger was in some manner concerned in 
 my tract on the Vatican Decrees. See Appendix B.
 
 10 VATICANISM. 
 
 statements in language of moderation, and not one among 
 them that appertains to the main line of argument has 
 been shaken. As to the use of rhetoric, another matter 
 of complaint, I certainly neither complain of strong lan- 
 guage used against me, nor do I think that it can properly 
 be avoided, when the matters of fact, carefully ascertained 
 and stated, are such that it assists towards a compre- 
 hension of their character and consequences. At the same 
 time, in the nse of such language earnestness should not 
 be allowed to degenerate into dogmatism, and to qualify 
 is far more pleasant than to employ it. 
 
 With so much of preface, I proceed to execute my two- 
 fold duty. One of its branches is to state in what degree 
 I conceive the immediate purpose of my Expostulation 
 to have been served ; and the other, to examine whether 
 the allegations of antagonists have dislodged my argu- 
 ments from their main positions, or, on the contrary, have 
 <3onfirmed them; and to re-state, nay, even to enlarge, 
 those positions accordingly. 
 
 In considering the nature of the declarations on civil 
 duty which have been elicited, it will not be thought 
 unnatural if I begin with the words of one to whom age 
 and fame combine in assigning the most conspicuous place 
 — I mean Dr. Newman. 
 
 Of this most remarkable man I must pause to speak a 
 word. In my opinion, his secession from the Church of 
 England has never yet been estimated among us at any- 
 thing like the full amount of its calamitous importance. 
 It has been said that the world does not know its greatest 
 men ; neither, I will add, is it aware of the power and 
 weight carried by the words and by the acts of those 
 among its greatest men, whom it does know. The Eccle- 
 siastical historian will perhaps hereafter judge that this
 
 INTKODUCTIOX. 11 
 
 secession was a mucli greater event even than the partial 
 secession of John Wesley, the only case of personal loss 
 suffered by the Church of England, since the Eeforrnation, 
 which can be at all compared with it in magnitude. I do 
 not refer to its effect upon the mere balance of schools 
 or parties in the Church ; that is an inferior question. I 
 refer to its effect upon the state of positive belief, and 
 the attitude and capacities of the rehgious mind of Eng- 
 land. Of this, thirty years ago, he had the leadership ; an 
 office and power from which none but himself could eject 
 
 him. 
 
 " Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus 
 Tarn cari capitis ?" 
 
 It has been his extraordinary, perhaps ujiexampled 
 case, at a critical period, first to give to the rehgious 
 thought of his time and country the most powerful im- 
 pulse which for a long time it had received from any 
 individual ; and then to be the main though, without 
 doubt, involuntary cause of disorganising it in a manner 
 as remarkable, and breaking up its forces into a multitude 
 of not only severed but conflicting bands. 
 
 My duty calls me to deal freely with his Letter to the 
 Duke of Norfolk. But in doing so, I can never lose the 
 recollection of the perhaps ill-appreciated greatness of his 
 early life and works. I do not presume to intrude into 
 the sanctuary of his present thoughts ; but, by reason of 
 that life and those works, it seems to me that there is 
 something we must look upon with an affection, like 
 that of Americans for those Englishmen who lived and 
 wrought before the colonisation, or the severance, of their 
 countr3^ Nay, it may not be presumptuous to say we have 
 a possessory right in the better half of him. All he pro- 
 duces is and must be most notable. But has he outrun, has
 
 12 VATICANISM. 
 
 lie overtaken the greatness of the ' History of the Arians ' 
 and of the ' Parochial Sermons,' those indestructible classics 
 of English theology ? 
 
 And again, I thankfully record the admissions, which 
 such integrity, combined with such acuteness, has not 
 been able to withhold. They are of the greatest import- 
 ance to the vindication of my argument. In my reading 
 of his work, we have his authority for the following state- 
 ments. That Roman Catholics are bound to be '' as loyal 
 as other subjects of the State ;" and that Rome is not to 
 give to the civil power " trouble or alarm " (p. 7). That 
 the assurances given by the Roman Catholic Bishops in 
 1825-6 have not been strictly fulfilled (pp. 12-14). 
 That Roman Catholics cannot wonder that statesmen 
 should feel themselves aggrieved (p. 17). That Popes 
 are sometimes in the wrong, and sometimes to be resisted, 
 even in matters affecting the government and welfare of 
 the Church (pp. 33, 34). That the Deposing power is 
 defensible only upon condition of " the common consent 
 of peoples" (p. 37). That if England supported Italy 
 against any violent attempt to restore the Pope to his 
 throne, Roman Catholics could offer no opposition but such 
 as the constitution of the country allows (p. 49). That 
 a soldier or sailor employed in a war which (in his 
 jorivate judgment, be it observed) he did not think unjust, 
 ought not to retire from the prosecution of that war on 
 the command of the Pope (p. 52). That conscience is the 
 aboriginal vicar of Christ (p. 57) : ein tuchtiges Wort I and 
 Dr. Newman, at an ideal public dinner, will drink to 
 conscience first, and the Pope afterwards (p. 66). That 
 one of the great dangers of the Roman Catholic Church is 
 to be found in the exaggerated language and proceedings 
 allowed among its own members (pp. 4, 80, 94, 125), and
 
 INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 that there is much malaria in the court of Rome. That a 
 definition by a general Council, which the Pope approves, 
 is not absolutely binding thereby, but requires a moral 
 unanimity, and a subsequent reception by the Church 
 (pp. 96-8). That antecedently to the theological defini- 
 tions of 1854 and 1870, an opponent might have "fairly 
 said " " it might appear that there were no sufficient his- 
 torical grounds in behalf of either of them ;" and that the 
 confutation of such an opponent is now to be sought only 
 in " the fact of the definition being made" (p. 107). I shall 
 indulge in none of the taunts, which Dr. Newman antici- 
 pates, on the want of correspondence between him and 
 other Apologists ; and I shall leave it to theologians to 
 examine the bearing of these admissions on the scheme of 
 Yaticanism, and on other parts of his own work. It is 
 enough for me to record that, even if they stood alone, 
 they would suffice to justify the publication which has 
 given " occasion " for them ; and that on the point of 
 Dr. Newman's practical reservation of his command over 
 his own " loyalty and civil duty/' they are entirely 
 satisfactory. As regards this latter point, the Pastoral of 
 Bishop Clifford is also everything that can be wished. 
 Among laymen who declare they accept the Decrees of 
 1870, I must specially make the same avowal as to my 
 esteemed friend Mr. De Lisle ; and again, as to Mr. Stores 
 Smith, who regards me with "silent and intense con- 
 tempt," but who does not scruple to write as follows : — 
 
 " If this country decide to go to war, for any cause whatsoever, I 
 will hold my own opinion as to the justice or policy of that war, but 
 I will do all that in me lies to bring victory to the British standard. 
 If there be any Parliamentary or Municipal election, and any Priest 
 or Bishop, backed by Archbishop and the Pope, advise me to take a 
 certain line of action, and 1 conceive that the opposite course is
 
 14 VATICANISM. 
 
 necessary for the general weal of my fellow-countrymen, I shall take- 
 the opposite." * 
 
 When it is considered that Dr. Newman is like the sun 
 in the intellectual hemisphere of Anglo-Eomanism, and 
 that, besides those acceptors of the Decrees who write in 
 the same sense, various Eoman Catholics of weight and 
 distinction, well known to represent the views of many 
 wore, have held equally outspoken and perhaps more 
 consistent language, I cannot but say that the immediate 
 purj)0se of my appeal has been attained, in so far that the 
 loyalty of our Eoman Catholic fellow-subjects in the mass 
 remains evidently untainted and secure. 
 
 It would be unjust to Archbishop Manning, on whose 
 opinions, in many points, I shall again have to anim- 
 advert, were I not to say that his declarations! also 
 materially assist in leading me to this conclusion; an 
 avowal I am the more bound to make, because I think the 
 premisses from which he draws them are such as, if I were 
 myself to accept them, would certainly much impair the 
 guarantees for my performing, under all circumstances, 
 the duties of a good subject. 
 
 This means that the poison, which circulates from Eome, 
 has not actually been taken into the system. Unhappily, 
 what I may term the minority among the Apologists do 
 not represent the ecclesia docens ; the silent diffusion of its 
 influence in the lay atmosphere ; the true current and aim 
 of thought in the Papal Church, now given up to Yatican- 
 ism de jure, and likely, according to all human probability, 
 to come from year to year more under its power. And 
 here again the ulterior purpose of my Tract has been 
 
 ^- Letter in 'Halifax Courier' of December 5, 1874. 
 t Archbishop Manning, ' Vatican Decrees,' pp. 136-40.
 
 INTRODUCTIOX. 15 
 
 tlius far attained. It was this. To provide that if, to- 
 gether with the ancient and loyal traditions of the body^ 
 we have now imported among ns a scheme adverse to the 
 principles of human freedom and in its essence unfaithful 
 to civil duty, the character of that scheme should be fully 
 considered and understood. It is high time that the chasm 
 should be made visible, severing it, and all who knowingly 
 and thoroughly embrace it, from the principles which we 
 had a right to believe not only prevailed among the 
 Roman Catholics of these countries, but were allowed and 
 recognised by the authorities of their Church ; and would 
 continue, therefore, to form the basis of their system, per- 
 manent and undisturbed. For the more complete attain- 
 ment of this object, I must now proceed to gather together 
 the many threads of the controversy, as it has been left 
 by my numerous opponents. This I shall do, not from 
 any mere call of speculation or logical consistency, but for 
 strong practical reasons. 
 
 Dr. Newman's letter to the Duke of Norfolk is of the 
 highest interest as a psychological study. Whatever 
 he writes, whether we agree with him or not, presents- 
 to us this great attraction as well as advantage, that 
 we have everywhere the man in the work, that his 
 words are the transparent covering of his nature. If 
 there be obliquity in them, it is purely intellectual obli- 
 quity ; the work of an intellect sharp enough to cut the 
 diamond, and bright as the diamond which it cuts. How 
 rarely it is found, in the wayward and inscrutable records 
 of our race, that with these instruments of an almost 
 superhuman force and subtlety, robustness of character 
 and energy of will are or can be developed in the same 
 extraordinary proportions, so as to integrate that structure 
 of combined thought and action, which makes life a moral
 
 16 VATICANISM. 
 
 whole ! " There are gifts too large and too fearful to be 
 handled freely/'* But I turn from an incidental reflection 
 to observe that my duty is to appreciate the letter of 
 Dr. Newman exclusively in relation to my Tract. I 
 thankfully here record, in the first place, the kindliness of 
 his tone. If he has striven to minimise the Decrees of 
 the Vatican, I am certain he has also striven to minimise 
 his censures^ and has put words aside before they touched 
 his paper, which must have been in his thoughts, if not 
 upon his pen. I sum up this pleasant portion of my duty 
 with the language of Helen respecting Hector : Trarrjp w^ 
 
 It is, in my opinion, an entire mistake to suppose that 
 theories like those, of which Rome is the centre, are not 
 operative on the thoughts and actions of men. An army 
 of teachers, the largest and the most compact in the world, 
 is ever sedulously at work to bring them into practice. 
 Within our own time they have most powerfully, as well 
 as most injuriously, altered the spirit and feeling of the 
 Roman Church at large ; and it will be strange indeed if, 
 having done so much in the last half-century, they shall 
 effect nothing in the next. I must avow, then, that I do 
 not feel exactly the same security for the future as for the 
 present. Still less do I feel the same security for other 
 lands as for this. Nor can I overlook indications which 
 lead to the belief that, even in this country, and at 
 this time, the proceedings of Yaticanism threaten to be 
 a source of some practical inconvenience. I am con- 
 fident that if a system so radically bad is to be made or 
 kept innocuous, the first condition for attaining such a 
 result is that its movements should be carefully watched, 
 
 * Dr. Newman, p. 127. t '^^^^^i ^xiv. 770.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 and, above all, that the bases on which they work should 
 be faithfully and unflinchingly exposed. Nor can I quit 
 this portion of the subject without these remarks. The 
 satisfactory views of Archbishop Manning on the present 
 rule of civil allegiance have not prevented him from 
 giving his countenance as a responsible editor* to the lucu- 
 brations of a gentleman, who denies liberty of conscience, 
 and asserts the right to persecute when there is the power ; a 
 right which, indeed, the Prelate has not himself disclaimed. 
 Nor must it be forgotten, that the very best of all the 
 declarations we have heard from those who allow them- 
 selves to be entangled in the meshes of the Yatican 
 Decrees, are, every one of them, uttered subject to the 
 condition that, upon orders from Eome, if such orders 
 should issue, they shall be qualified, or retracted, or 
 reversed. 
 
 " A breath can unmake them, as a breath has made." 
 
 But even apart from all this, do what we may in 
 checking external developments, it is not in our power 
 to neutralise the mischiefs of the wanton ao-PTession of 
 1870 upon the liberties — too scanty^ it is excusable to think 
 — which up to that epoch had been allowed to private 
 Christians in the Eoman communion. Even in those parts 
 of Christendom where the Decrees and the present atti- 
 tude of the Papal See do not produce or aggravate open 
 broils with the civil power, by undermining moral liberty 
 they impair moral responsibility^ and silently, in the 
 succession of generations if not even in the lifetime of 
 individuals, tend to emasculate the vigour of the mind. 
 
 In the tract on the Yatican Decrees I passed briefly 
 by those portions of my original statement which most 
 
 * 'Essays,' edited by Archbishop Manning, pp. 401-5, 467. 
 
 C
 
 18 VATICANISM/ 
 
 lay within the j)rovince of theology, and dwelt principally 
 on two main propositions. 
 
 I. That Rome had reproduced for active service those 
 doctrines of former times, termed by me " rusty tools," 
 which she was fondly thought to have disused. 
 
 II. That the Pope now claims, with plenary authority, 
 from every convert and member of his Church, that he 
 " shall place his loyalty and civil duty at the mercy of 
 another :" that other being himself. 
 
 These are the assertions, which I now hold myself 
 bound further to sustain and prove.
 
 THE RUSTY TOOLS. THE SYLLABUS. 19 
 
 IL THE EUSTY TOOLS. THE SYLLABUS. 
 
 1. Its Contents, \ 
 
 2. Its Authority. 
 
 With regard to the proposition that Eome has refur- 
 bished her "rusty" tools, Dr. Newman says it was by 
 these tools that Europe was brought into a civilized con- 
 dition : and thinks it worth while to ask whether it is 
 my wish that penalties so sharp^ and expressions so high, 
 should be of daily use.* 
 
 I may be allowed to say, in reply to the remark I have 
 cited, that I have nowhere presumed to pronounce a 
 general censure on the conduct of the Papacy in the 
 middle ages. That is a vast question, reaching far 
 beyond my knowledge or capacity. I believe much is to 
 be justly said in praise, much as justly in blame. But I 
 •cannot view the statement that Papal claims and conduct 
 created the civilization of Europe as other than thoroughly 
 unhistorical and one-sided : as resting upon a narrow 
 selection of evidence, upon strong exaggeration of what 
 that evidence imports, and upon an '' invincible ignorance " 
 as to all the rest. 
 
 Many things may have been suited, or not unsuited, to 
 rude times and indeterminate ideas of political right, the 
 reproduction of which is at the least strange, perhaps even 
 monstrous. We look back with interest and respect upon 
 our early fire-arms as they rest peacefully ranged upon 
 
 * Dr. Newman, p. 32. 
 
 c 2
 
 20 VATICANISM. 
 
 the wall ; but we cannot think highly of the judgment 
 which would recommend their use in modern warfare. 
 As for those weapons which had been consigned to 
 obscurity and rust, my answer to Dr. Newman's question 
 is that they should have slept for ever, till perchance 
 some reclaiming plough of the future should disturb 
 them. 
 
 "... quum finibus illis 
 Agricola, incurvo terrain molitus aratro, 
 Exesa inveniet scabra rubigine pila." * 
 
 As to the proof of my accusation, it appeared to me 
 that it might be sufSciently given in a summary but true 
 account f of some important portions of the Encyclica of 
 December 8th, 1864, and especially of the accompanying- 
 Syllabus of the same date. 
 
 The replies to the five or six pages, in which I dealt 
 with this subject, have so swollen as to reach fifteen or 
 twenty times the bulk. I am sorry that they involve me 
 in the necessity of entering upon a few pages of detail 
 which may be wearisome. But I am bound to vindicate 
 my good faith and care, where a failure in either involves 
 results of real importance. These results fall under the 
 two following heads : — 
 
 (1). The Syllabus ; what is its language ? 
 
 (2). The Syllabus ; what is its authority ? 
 
 As to the language, I have justly represented it : as to 
 its authority, my statement is not above, but below the 
 mark. 
 
 * Virgil, Georgics i. 493. 
 
 •f Erroneously called by some of my antagonists a translation, and 
 then condemned as a bad translation. But I know of no recipe for 
 translating into less than half the bulk of the original.
 
 THE EUSTY TOOLS. THE SYLLABUS. 21 
 
 1. The Contents of the Syllahiis. 
 
 My representation of the language of the Syllabus has 
 been assailed in strong terms. I proceed to defend it : 
 observing, however, that my legitimate object was to 
 state in popular terms the effect of propositions more or 
 less technical and scholastic : and, secondly, that I did 
 not present each and every proposition for a separate 
 disapproval, but directed attention rather to the effect of 
 the document as a whole, in a qualifying passage (p. 13) 
 which no one of my critics has been at the pains to notice. 
 
 Nos. 1-3. — The first charge of unjust representation is 
 this.* I have stated that the Pope condemns (p. 25) 
 liberty of the press^ and liberty of speech. By reference 
 to the original it is shown, that the right of printing and 
 speaking is not in terms condemned universally ; but 
 only the right of each man to print or speak all his 
 thoughts {suos conceptus quoscunque), whatever they may 
 be. Hereupon it is justly observed, that in all countries 
 there are laws against blasphemy, or obscenity, or sedition, 
 or all three. It is argued, then, that men are not allowed 
 the right to speak or print all their thoughts, and that such 
 an extreme right only is what the Pope has condemned. 
 
 It appears to me that this is, to use a mild phrase, 
 mere trifling with the subject. We are asked to believe 
 that what the Pope intended to condemn was a state of 
 things, which never has existed in any country of the 
 world. Now, he says he is condemning one of the 
 commonly prevailing errors of the time, familiarly known 
 
 * ' The Month,' December 1874, p. 494. |^Coleridge, ' Abomination 
 of Desolation,' p. 20. Bishop Ullathorne, 'Pastoral Letter,' p. 16. 
 Monk of St. Augustine's, p. 15. Dr. Newman, pp. 59, 72, in some 
 part.
 
 22 VATICANISM. 
 
 to tlie bishops whom he addresses.^ What bishop knows- 
 of a State which by law allows a perfectly free course tO' 
 blasphemy, filthiness, and sedition ? The world knows 
 quite well what is meant by free speech and a free press. 
 It does mean, generally, perhaps it may be said univer- 
 sally, the right of declaring all opinions whatsoever. 
 The limit of freedom is not the justness of the opinion,, 
 but it is this, that it shall be opinion in good faith, and 
 not mere grossness, passion, or appeal to violence. The 
 law of England at this moment, allowing all opinions 
 whatever, provided they are treated by way of rational 
 discourse, most closely corresponds to what the Pope has- 
 condemned. His condemnation is illustrated by his own 
 practice as Governor in the Roman States, where no- 
 oj)inion could be spoken or printed but such as he^ 
 approved. Once, indeed, he permitted a free discussion 
 on Saint Peter's presence and prelacy in the city ; but he 
 repented quickly, and forbade the repetition of it. We 
 might even cite his practice as Pope in 1870, where- 
 everything was done to keep the proceedings of the 
 Council secret from the Church which it professed to- 
 represent, and even practically secret from its members,, 
 except those who were of the governing cabal. But 
 there can be no better mode of exhibiting his real, 
 meaning than by referring to his account of the Austrian 
 law. Hdc lege omnis omnium opinionum et librarice artis 
 libertas, omnis turn Jidei, turn conscientice ac doctrince^ libertas^ 
 siaiuitur.^ To the kind of condemnation given, I shall again 
 
 * "Probe noscitis hoc tempore non paucos reperiri, qui," &c. — 
 'Encycl.,' December 8, 1864. 
 
 t From the Pope's Allocution of June 22, 1868 : " By this law 
 is established universal liberty of all opinions and of the press, 
 and, as of belief, so of conscience and of teaching." See Vering,
 
 THE EUSTY TOOLS. THE SYLLABUS. 23 
 
 refer ; but the matter of it is nothing abstract or imagi- 
 nary, it is actual freedom of thinking, speaking, and 
 printing, as it is practised in a great civilized and 
 Christian empire. I repel, then, the charge against me as 
 no better than a verbal subterfuge ; and I again affirm that 
 in his Syllabus, as in his acts, the Pope has condemned 
 liberty of speech and liberty of the press. 
 
 No. 5. — I have stated that the Pope condemns " those 
 who assign to the State the power of definiug the civil 
 rights {jura) and province of the Church." Hereupon it 
 is boldly stated that " the word civil is a pure interpola- 
 tion."* This statement Dr. Newman s undertaking tempts 
 him to quote, but his sagacity and scholarship save him 
 from adopting. Anticipating some cavil such as this, I 
 took car^ (which is not noticed) to place the word^wm in 
 my text. I now affirm that my translation is correct. 
 Jus means, not right at large, but a specific form of right, 
 and in this case civil right, to which meaning indeed the 
 word constantly leans. It refers to right which is social, 
 relative, extrinsic. Jus hominum situm est in generis 
 humani societate (Cic. Tusc. ii. 26). If a theological 
 definition is desired, take that of Dens : Accipitur potissi- 
 mum pro jure prout est in altera^ cui debet satisfieri ad 
 cequalitatem ; de jure sic swnpto hie agitur.^ It is not of 
 the internal constitution of the Church and the rights of 
 its members inter se that the proposition treats ; nor yet 
 of its ecclesiastical standing in reference to other bodies ; 
 but of its rights in the face of the State ; that is to say, of 
 
 Archiv fiir Katholisclies Kirchenreclit.' Mainz, 1868, p. 171, 
 Band xx. 
 
 * * The Abomination of Desolation,' p. 21. Dr. Newman, p. 87. 
 ■f * Tractatns de jure et justitia,' No. 6.
 
 24 VATICANISM. 
 
 its civil riglits. My account therefore was accurate ; 
 and Mr. Coleridge's criticism superfluous. 
 
 I must, however, admit that Vaticanism has a way of 
 escape. For perhaps it does not admit that the Church 
 enjoys any civil rights : but considers as her own, and 
 therefore spiritual in their source, such rights as we con- 
 sider accidental and derivative, even where not abusive. 
 
 On this subject I will refer to a high authority. The 
 Jesuit Schrader was, I beheve, one of those employed in 
 drawing up the Syllabus. He has published a work^ with 
 a Papal Approbation attached to it, in which he converts 
 the condemnatory negations of the Syllabus into the cor- 
 responding affirmatives. For Article XXX. he gives the 
 following proposition : — 
 
 " The immnnities of the Church, and of ecclesiastical persons, have 
 not their origin in civil right." 
 
 He adds the remark : " but are rooted in the Church's 
 own right, given to her from God." * 
 
 No. 7. — I have said those persons are condemned by the 
 Syllabus, who hold that in countries called Catholic the 
 free exercise of other religions may laudably be allowed. 
 Dr. Newman truly observes,f that it is the free exercise 
 of religion by immigrants or foreigners which is meant 
 (hominibus illuc immigrantihus), and that I have omitted 
 the words. I omitted them, for my case was strong 
 enough without them. But they seem to strengthen my 
 case. For the claim to a free exercise of religion on behalf 
 of immigrants or foreigners is a stronger one than on be- 
 half of natives, and has been so recognised in Italy and in 
 
 * ' Der Papst und die Modernen Ideen.' Von P. Clemens Schrader, 
 S.J. Heft ii. 65. 
 
 t Dr. Newman, p. 86.
 
 THE KUSTY TOOLS. THE SYLLABUS. 25 
 
 Rome itself. I think I am right in saying that difference 
 of tongue has generally been recognised by Church law as 
 mitigating the objections to the toleration of dissidence. 
 And it is this stronger claim, not the weaker one, which 
 is condemned. So that if there be a fault, it is the fault 
 of under-, not of over-statement. 
 
 Again I support myself by the high authority of 
 Schrader the Jesuit. The following is his Article LXX YII. 
 It draws no distinction of countries : — 
 
 " In our view it is still useful that the Catholic religion should be 
 maintained as the only State religion to the exclusion of every other."* 
 
 In the appended remark he observes, that on this account 
 the Pope, in 1856, condemned the then recent Spanish 
 law which tolerated other forms of worship, f 
 
 No. 8. — I am charged, again,| with mistranslating under 
 my eighth head. The condemnation in the Syllabus is, as I 
 conceived, capable of being construed to apply to the entire 
 proposition as it is there given, or to a part of it only. In 
 brief it is this : *' The Episcopate has a certain power not 
 inherent, but conferred by the State, which may therefore 
 be withdrawn at the pleasure of the State." The con- 
 demnation might be aimed at the assertion that such a 
 power exists, or at the assertion that it is withdrawable at 
 pleasure. In the latter sense, the condemnation is unwise 
 and questionable as a general proposition : in the former 
 sense it is outrageous beyond all bounds ; and I am boldly 
 accused of mistranslating J because I chose the milder im- 
 putation of the two, and understood the censure to apply 
 only to withdrawal ad libitum, I learn now that, in the 
 
 * Schrader, p. 80. 
 
 t Infra. 
 
 % Mr. Coleridge, ' Abomination of Desolation,' p. 21.
 
 26 VATICANISM. 
 
 oj^inion of this antagonist at least, the State was not the 
 source of (for example) the power of coinage, which was 
 at one time exercised by the Bishops of Durham. So 
 that the upshot is : either my construction is right, or 
 my charge is milder than it should have been. 
 
 Nos. 13, 14. — A grave charge is made against me re- 
 specting the matrimonial propositions : because I have 
 cited the Pope as condemning those who affirm that the 
 matrimonial contract is binding whether there is or is not 
 (according to the Eoman doctrine) a Sacrament ; and have 
 not at the same time stated that English marriages are 
 held by Eome to be Sacramental, and therefore valid.* 
 
 No charge, serious or slight^ could be more entirely 
 futile. But itr is serious and not slight; and those who 
 prompt the examination must abide the recoil. I begin 
 thus : — 
 
 1. I am censured for not having given [distinctions 
 between one country and another, which the Pope himself 
 has not given. 
 
 2. And which are also thought unnecessary by au- 
 thorised expounders of the Syllabus for the faithful. f 
 
 I have before me the Exposition, J with the text, of the 
 Encyclica and Syllabus, published at Cologne in 1874, 
 with the approval of authority (mit oherkircldicher Appro- 
 hation). In p. 45 it is distinctly taught that with mar- 
 riage the State has nothing to do ; that it may safely rely 
 upon the Church ; that civil marriage, in the eyes of the 
 Church, is only concubinage ; and that the State, by the 
 use of worldly compulsion, prevents the two concubinary 
 
 * Monk of St. Augustine's, p. 15. ' Abomination,' p. 22. 
 
 •f Appendix B. 
 ^ J ^ Die Encyclica, der SijUabus, und die iviclitigsten darin angefiiJirten 
 ActenstiicJce, nelst einer ausfiilirliclien EinleitungJ Koln, 1874.
 
 THE RUSTY TOOLS. THE SYLLABCS. 2T 
 
 parties from repenting and abandoning their guilty rela- 
 tion to one another. Exactly the same is the doctrine of 
 the Pope himself, in his Speeches published at Eome ; 
 where civil marriage is declared to be, for Christians, 
 nothing more than a mere concubinage, and a filthy concu- 
 binage {sozzo concuhinato).^ These extraordinary declara- 
 tions are not due to the fondness of the Pontiff for speaking-- 
 impromptu. In his letter of September 19th, 1852, to- 
 King Yictor Emmanuel, he declares that matrimony car- 
 rying the sacrament is alone lawful for Christians, and 
 that a law of civil marriage, which goes to divide them 
 for practical purposes, constitutes a concubinage in the 
 guise of legitimate marriage.f So that, in truth, in 
 all countries within the scope of these denunciations, the- 
 parties to a civil marriage are declared to be living in an 
 illicit connection_, which they are called upon to renounce. 
 This call is addressed to them separately as well as jointly ,. 
 the wife being summoned to leave her husband, and the 
 husband to abandon his wife ; and after this pretended 
 repentance from a state of sin, unless the law of the land 
 and fear of consequences prevail, a new connection, under 
 the name of a marriage, may be formed with the sanction 
 of the Church of Rome. It is not possible, in the limited 
 space here at my command, adequately to exhibit a state- 
 of facts, thus created by the highest authorities of the 
 Poman Church, which I shall now not shrink from calling 
 horrible and revolting in itself, and dangerous to the 
 morals of society, the structure of the family, and the peace 
 of life. 
 
 * 'Discorsi di Pio IX.' Eoma, 1872, 1873. Yol. i. p. 193, vol. ii. 
 p. 355. 
 
 t * Eecneil des Allocutions de Pie IX.' d:c. Paris : Leclerc, 1865, 
 p. 312.
 
 28 VATICANISM. 
 
 It is true, indeed, that the two hundred thousand non- 
 Roman marriages, which are annually celebrated in Eng- 
 land, do not at j)i'esent fall under the foul epithets of 
 Rome. But why ? Not because we marry, as I believe 
 nineteen-twentieths of us marry, under the sanctions of 
 religion ; for our marriages are, in the eye of the Pope, 
 purely civil marriages ; but only for the technical, ac- 
 cidental, and precarious reason, that the disciplinary 
 decrees of Trent are not canonically in force in this 
 country. There is nothing, unless it be motives of mere 
 policy, to j^i'Gvent the Pope from giving them force here 
 when he pleases. If, and when that is done, every mar- 
 riage thereafter concluded in the English Church will, 
 according to his own words, be a filthy concubinage. 
 
 The decrees have force already in many parts of 
 Germany, and in many entire countries of Europe. Within 
 these limits, every civil marriage, and every religious 
 marriage not contracted before a Roman loarochus^ as 
 the Council of Trent requires, is but the formation of a 
 guilty connection, which each of the parties seveially is 
 charged by the Church of Rome to dissolve, under pain 
 of being held to be in mortal sin. 
 
 In 1602, when the Decree of Trent had been in force 
 for thirty-eight years, it was applied by the Congregatio 
 Concilii, with the approval of Pope Clement YIII., to non- 
 Roman marriages, by a declaration that heretics were 
 bound to conform (which was impossible) to the rules of 
 the Council, in default of which their marriages, whether 
 religious or civil, were null and void.* 
 
 * "Heereticos quoque, ubi Decretum dicti capitis est publicatum, 
 teneri talem formam observare, et propterea ipsorum etiam matri- 
 monia, absque forma Concilii quamvis coram ministro haeretico vel 
 magistratu loci contracta, nulla atque irrita esse." — Vering, Archiv, 
 xvii. 46] , seq. See Siclierer, ' Eherecbt in Bayern/ Munich, 1875, p. 12,n.
 
 THE RUSTY TOOLS. THE SYLLABUS. 29 
 
 To tliis portentous rule exceptions have been made, 
 especially by Benedict XIY. in the case of Holland. In- 
 deed, he questioned its propriety ; and Pius YII., in a 
 communication to the Primate Dalberg, formerly Arch- 
 bishop of Mentz, referred with approval to the language 
 of Benedict XIY. Many theologians have held an opinion 
 adverse to it, and clergy have been allowed to act at times 
 upon that opinion, but only under cover of a policy of 
 dissimulation, a name by which the Court of Rome itself 
 has not been ashamed to describe its own conduct.* But 
 when the abrogation of the rule for non-Poman marriages 
 has been prayed for, even by Bishops, and bodies of 
 Bishops, the prayer has failed.y It has been kept alive ; 
 and transactions positively dreadful have taken place 
 under its authority, and under other provisions calculated 
 for the same end. Perrone, who may be called the fa- 
 vourite theologian of the Curia, points out that it works for 
 the benefit of heretics, as on their conversion it has often 
 given them an opportunity of contracting a new marriage; 
 during the lifetime, that is to say, of the former wife.J 
 
 The upshot_, then, seems to be this : that Rome, while 
 stigmatising marriages not Tridentine as concubinages 
 in the manner we have seen, reserves a power, under 
 the name or plea of special circumstances, to acknow- 
 ledge them or not, as policy may recommend. This is but 
 
 * Sicherer, ibid., p. 37, n. 56, 58. 
 
 t Sicherer, ibid., p. 66, n. 
 
 X " Si quid ex liac doctrina et praxi provenit, vertitiir demum in 
 bonnm ipsorum acatliolicorum, si quando contingat eos in Ecclesiee 
 CatholiccB sinum redire, dum ipsis indulgetur, ita poscentibus reriim 
 adJTinctis, vel ob mutua dissidia, vel ob separationem ab invicem, alia- 
 qne ejusmodi, novas inire miptias, nti ex non paucis resolutionibus 
 liquet : aut proprium instaurare conjugium, si ambo convertantur 
 conjuges." ' De ]\Iatrim. Christ.,' ii. 245, ed. Eome, 1856.
 
 •30 VATICANISM. 
 
 tlie old story. All problems, which menace the Roman 
 €hair with difficulties it dare not face, are to be solved, 
 not by the laying down of principles, good or bad, strict 
 or lax, in an intelligible manner, but by reserving all 
 cases as matters of discretion to the breast of the Curia, 
 which will decide from time to time, according to its 
 pleasure, whether there has been a sacrament or not, and 
 whether we are married folks^ or persons living in guilty 
 commerce, and rearing our children under a false pretext 
 of legitimacy. 
 
 This, then, is the statement I now make. It has been 
 drawn from me by the exuberant zeal and precipitate 
 accusations of the school of Loyola. 
 
 ]SyfQ^ Ig, — Finally, it is contended that I misrepresent 
 Rome in stating that it condemns the call to reconcile 
 itself with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization. 
 
 It is boldly stated that the Pope condemns not these, 
 but only what is bad in these.* And thus it is that, to 
 avert public displeasure, words are put into the Pope's 
 mouth, which he has not used, and which are at variance 
 with the whole spirit of the document that he has sent 
 forth to alarm, as Dr. Newman too well sees, the educated 
 mind of Europe.f It appears to be claimed for Popes, that 
 they shall be supreme over the laws of language. But 
 mankind protests against a system which palters in a 
 double sense with its own solemn declarations ; imposing 
 them on the weak, glorying in them before those who 
 are favourably prepossessed, and then contracting their 
 sense ad libitum, even to the point of nullity, by arbitrary 
 interpolation, to appease the scandalised understanding of 
 
 * ' The Month,' as suii. p. 496. Bishop Ullathorne, ' Expostulation 
 Unravelled,' p. 69. 
 
 •j- Dr. Newman, p. 90. |
 
 THE KUSTY TOOLS. THE SYLLABUS. 31 
 
 Christian nations. Without doubt progress, hberahsm 
 modern civiHzation, are terms more or less ambiguous ; 
 but they are, under a sound general rule, determinable by 
 the context. Now, the contexts of the Syllabus and En- 
 cyclica are perfectly unambiguous ; they perfectly explain 
 what the Pope means by the words. He means to con- 
 demn all that we consider fair limitation of the claims of 
 priestly power ; to repudiate the title of man to general 
 freedom of thought, and of speech in all its varied forms 
 of utterance ; the title of a nation to resist those, who treat 
 the sovereignty over it as a property, and who would 
 enforce on the people — for example, of the Papal States 
 — a government independently of or against its will ; in 
 a word, the true and only sure titles of freedom in all its 
 branches, inward and outward, mental, moral and political, 
 as they are ordinarily understood in the judgment of this 
 age and country. 
 
 I have gone, I believe, through every particular 
 impeachment of my account of the language of the 
 Syllabus and the Encyclica. If each and all of these 
 have failed, I presume that I need not dwell upon the 
 general allegations of opponents in respect to those 
 heads where they have not been pleased to enter upon 
 details.* 
 
 Now, it is quite idle to escape the force of these charges 
 by reproaches aimed at my unacquaiutance with theology, 
 and by recommendations, sarcastic or sincere, that I should 
 obtain some instruction in its elements. To such reproaches 
 I shall peacefully and respectfully bow, so soon as I shall 
 have been convicted of error. But I think I have shown 
 that the only variations from exact truth, to which I can 
 
 The Month,' as sup. p. 497.
 
 32 VATICANISM. 
 
 plead guilty, are variations in the way of understate- 
 ments of the case which it was my duty to produce. 
 
 2. The Authority of the Syllabus. 
 
 I have next to inquire what is the authority of the 
 Syllabus ? 
 
 Had I been inclined to push my case to extremes, I 
 might very well have contended that this document was 
 delivered ex cathedra, Schulte, whose authority as a 
 Canonist is allowed on all hands to be great, founds his 
 argument on that opinion.* Dr. Ward, who has been 
 thankedf by His Holiness for his defence of the faith, 
 wonders that any one can doubt it.J The Pope himself, 
 in his speeches, couples the Syllabus with the Decrees of 
 the Vatican Council, as being jointly the great funda- 
 mental teachings of these latter days ; and he even 
 describes it as the only anchor of safety for the coming 
 time.§ Bishop Fessler, whose work was published some 
 time after the Council, to tone down alarms, and has had 
 a formal approval from the Pope,l| holds that the Syllabus 
 is not a document proceeding ex cathedra. But it touches 
 faith and morals : its condemnations are, and are allowed 
 to be, assertions of their contradictories, into which asser- 
 tions they have been formally converted by Schrader, a 
 writer of authority, who was ofticially employed in its com- 
 pilation. Furthermore, though 1 was wrong (as Dr. New- 
 man has properly observed^) in assuming that the Encyclica 
 directly covered all the propositions of the Syllabus, yet 
 
 * ' Power of the Roman Popes ' (Transl.by Sommers. Adelaide, 1871). 
 
 •f 'Dublin Review,' July, 1870, p. 224. 
 
 X Ihicl July, 1874, p. 9. 
 
 § 'Discorsi di Pio IX.,' vol. i. p. 59. 
 
 II Fessler, ' True and False Infallibility,' Englisli transl., p. iii. 
 % Newman, p. 82.
 
 THE RUSTY TOOLS. THE SYLLABUS. 33 
 
 this document is addressed by the Pope through Cardinal 
 Antonelli to all the Bishops of the Christian (Papal) 
 world, therefore in his capacity as universal Teacher. 
 
 The reasons advanced by Bishop Fessler in the opposite 
 sense appear to be very weak. When the Pope (by 
 conversion of the 23rd Proposition) declares that preceding- 
 pontiffs have not exceeded the limits of their power, and 
 have not usurped the rights of princes, Bishop Fessler 
 replies that we are here dealing only with facts of history, 
 not touching faith or morals, so that there is no subject- 
 matter for a dogmatic definition.* But the depositions of 
 sovereigns were often founded on such considerations ; 
 as when Grregory YII., in a.d. 1079, charged upon Henry 
 TV, many capital crimes,! and as when Innocent III. 
 deposed Eaymond of Toulouse for (among other reasons) 
 not proceeding satisfactorily with the extirpation of the 
 Albigenses.J The Christian creed itself is chiefly com- 
 posed of matters of fact set forth as articles of belief 
 And apart from this, he who asserts, that the acts of 
 Popes did not go beyond their rights, thereby avers his 
 belief in the claims of right which those acts of deposition 
 involved. 
 
 Fessler's other objection is, that the form of the Syllabus 
 does not set forth the intention of the Pope.§ But he 
 appears to have overlooked the perfectly explicit covering 
 letter of Antonelli, which in the Pope's name transmits 
 the Syllabus, in order that the whole body of Latin Bishops 
 might have before their eyes those errors and false doc- 
 trines of the age which the Pope had proscribed. ^N'or 
 does Fessler venture to assert, that the Syllabus is without 
 
 * Fessler, 'Vraie et fausse Infaillibilite des Papes,' Frencli transL, 
 p. 89. 
 
 t Greenwood, ' Cathedra Petri,' iv. 420. 
 
 } Ibid. V. 546. § Fessler, p. 132. 
 
 1)
 
 34 VATICANISM. 
 
 dogmatic authority. He only says many theologians have 
 donbts upon the question whether it be ex cathedra: 
 theological science will hereafter have to examine and 
 decide the matter :* in the meantime every Roman Catholic 
 is bound to submit to and obey it. Such is the low or 
 moderate doctrine concerning the Syllabus.f 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. New- 
 man, I find myself to be breathing another air, and dis- 
 cussing, it would seem, some other Syllabus. If the Pope 
 were the author of it, he would accept it.J But he is 
 not,§ and no one knows who is. Therefore it has no 
 dogmatic force. |1 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 Ve learn its meaning. 
 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 cannot 
 renounce the use of our eyes. Fessler, who writes, as Dr. 
 Newman truly says, to curb exaggerations,** and who is 
 approved by the Pope, declaresff 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 
 
 * Fessler, pp. 8, 132, 134. t ■^&«^- P- 8- 
 
 X ISewman, p. 20. § Ibid. p. 79. 
 
 II Ibid. p. 81. IF Ibid. p. 8. 
 
 ** Ibid. p. 81. ^. tt Fessler, p. 8 (Fr. trans.).
 
 THE RUSTY TOOLS. THE SYLLABUS. 35 
 
 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 e.v cathedra, and this is his main contention against 
 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 
 Syllabus 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 documents 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 pro- 
 positions of those documents, it is the wider and not the 
 narrower form that binds, unless Dr. Newman is more in 
 the confidence 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 
 favoured organ of Roman opinions, that utterances e.v 
 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 
 
 * 'Dublin Eeview,' Jan. 1875, pp. 177, 310. 
 
 D 2
 
 36 VATICANISM. 
 
 opinion of Bisliop 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 Yatican Decree. 
 
 I have been content to argue the case of the Syllabus 
 upon the supposition that, in relation to this country 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. New- 
 man through his references to the Briefs and Allocutions 
 marginally noted. The Syllabus is part of that series of 
 acts to which the dogmatisations of 1854 and 1870 also 
 belong; and it bridges over the interval between them. 
 It generalises, and advisedly enlarges, a number of par- 
 ticular condemnations ; and, addressing them to all the 
 Bishops, brings the whole 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 fisherman 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 infalli- 
 bility of dogma : it unquestionably demands, and is entitled 
 (in the code of Yaticanism) to demand, obedience. 
 
 * Bishop Ullathorne, ' Expost. Unravelled,' p. 66.
 
 THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. 37 
 
 in. THE VATICAN COUNCIL AND THE INFALLIBILITY 
 OF THE POPE. 
 
 Breach with History^ No, 1. 
 
 Like the cMeftains 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 Yatican was held. 
 
 2. That the Yatican Decrees have in no jot or tittle 
 changed either the obligations or the conditions of civil 
 allegiance. 
 
 3. That the civil allegiance of Eoman Catholics is as 
 undivided as that of other Christians, and neither more 
 nor less limited. 
 
 4. That the claim of the Eoman Church against obe- 
 dience to the civil power in certain cases is the same as 
 that made by other religious communions in this country. 
 
 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 Eome and the German Empire ; 
 nor shall I now discuss his compendium of Italian
 
 38 VATICANISM. 
 
 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 Itahan people. But of 
 the four propositions I will say that I accept them all, sub- 
 ject to the very simple condition that the word "not" be 
 inserted in the three which are affirmative, and its equi- 
 valent 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 asser- 
 tions, 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 coad- 
 jutors 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 Yatican was held." 
 
 And that therefore the Vatican Decrees have changed 
 the obligations and conditions of civil allegiance. 
 
 2. That the claim 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 re- 
 ligious communions or by their members in this country. 
 
 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 his- 
 tory of the Church over which he presides, or the sister 
 Church in Ireland. This very grave deficiency I shall 
 endeavour to make good, by enlarging and completing the
 
 THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. 39 
 
 statement briefly given in my tract. That statement was 
 that the Enghsh and Irish penal laws against Eoman 
 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 difiSculties 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 Galilean 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 learn- 
 ing, 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 
 
 The Month,' December, 1874, p. 461.
 
 40 VATICANISM. 
 
 was firmly and even passionately* asserted, although the 
 subject-matter was one of civil allegiance, ''no pledge 
 from Catholics was of any value, to which Eome 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 Yatican 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," J and as he is the official head of the Anglo-Roman 
 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 Arch- 
 bishop to add,'^that he does not stand alone. Bishop 
 Ullathorne says, '^ The Pope always wielded this infalli- 
 bility, and all men knew this to be the fact." il We shall 
 presently find som-e men, whose history the Bishop should 
 have been familiar with, and who did not know this to be 
 the fact, but very solemnly assured us they knew the 
 exact contrary. 
 
 This is not an affair, as Dr. Newman seems to think, 
 of a particular generation of clergy who had been edu- 
 
 * Bishop Doyle, ' Essay on tlie Claims,' p. 38. 
 
 t Letter to the ' Times,' Nov. 7, 1874. 
 
 X Letter to ' New York Herald,' Nov. 10, 1874. Letter to 'Mac- 
 millan's Magazine,' Oct. 22. 
 
 § 'Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost,' p. 22G. 'The Yatican 
 Council and its Definitions,' 1870, p. 119. 
 
 II Bishop Ullathorne, Letter, p. 14.
 
 THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. 41 
 
 cated in Gallican opinions. In all ^times, from the reign 
 of Elizabeth to that of Yictoria, the lay Eoman Catholics 
 of England, as a body, have been eminently and unre- 
 servedly loyal. But they have been as eminently noted 
 for their thorough estrangement from Ultramontane 
 opinions; and their clergy, down to the period of the 
 Emancipation Act, felt with them ; though a school ad- 
 dicted to curialism and Jesuitism, thrust among them by 
 the Popes at the commencement of the period, first 
 brought upon them grievous sufferings, then succeeded in 
 attaching a stigma to their name, and now threatens 
 gradually to accomplish a transformation of their opinions, 
 with an eventual change in their spirit, of which it is 
 difficult to foresee the bounds. Xot that the men who 
 now hold the ancestral view will, as a rule, exchange it 
 for the view of the Yatican ; but that, as in the course of 
 nature they depart, Yaticanists will grow up, and take 
 their places. 
 
 The first official head of the Anglo-Eoman body in 
 England was the wise and loyal Archpriest Blackwell. 
 He was deposed by the Pope in 1608, " chiefly, it is sup- 
 posed, for his advocacy of the oath of allegiance,"* which 
 had been devised by King James, in order that he might 
 confer peace and security upon loyal Roman Catholics.f 
 Bellarmine denounced, as heretical, its denial of the power 
 of the Pope to depose the king, and release his subjects 
 from their allegiance. Pope Paul Y. condemned the oath 
 by a brief in October, 1606. The unfortunate members of 
 his communion could not believe this brief to be authentic. J 
 So a second brief was sent in September, 1607, to confirm 
 and enforce the first. Blackwell gallantly advised his 
 
 * Butler, 'Historical Memoirs,' iii. 411. 
 t Ibid. i. 303, seq. t Ibid. 317.
 
 42 VATICANISM. 
 
 flock to take the oath in defiance of the brief. Priests 
 confined in Newgate petitioned the Pope to have com- 
 passion on them. Forty-eight doctors of the Sorbonne 
 against six, declared that it might be taken with good 
 conscience. And taken it was by many ; but taken in 
 despite of the tyrannical injunctions of Paul Y., unhappily 
 confirmed by Urban YIII. and by Innocent X.* 
 
 When it was proposed, in 1648, to banish Eoman 
 CathoHcs on account of the deposing power, their divines 
 met and renounced the doctrine. This renunciation was 
 condemned at Rome as heretical ; but the attitude of 
 France on these questions at the time prevented the publi- 
 cation of the decree.f 
 
 When the loyal remonstrance of 1661 had been signed 
 by certain Bishops and others of Ireland, it was condemned 
 at Rome, in July 1662, by the Congregation de propa- 
 ganda; and in the same month the Papal Nuncio at 
 Brussels, who superintended the concerns of Irish Roman 
 Catholics at the time, denounced it as already condemned 
 by the constitutions of Paul Y. and Innocent X. ; and 
 specially censured the ecclesiastics who, by signing it, had 
 misled the laity.J 
 
 Well may Butler say, " The claim of the Popes to tem- 
 poral power, by Divine rights has been one of the most 
 calamitous events in the history of the Church. Its effects 
 since the Reformation, on the English and Irish Catholics, 
 have been dreadful." § And again : " How often did our 
 ancestors experience that ultra-catholicism is one of the 
 worst enemies of catholicity !"|| 
 
 * Butler, i. 352. 
 
 t Caron, ' Eemonstrantia Hibemorum.' Ed. 1731, p. 7. Comp. 
 Butler, ' Hist. Memoirs,' ii. 18. 
 
 X Caron, p. 4. Butler, ii. 401, 402. 
 
 § Butler, i. 192. |1 Ibid. ii. 85 ; also ii. 20.
 
 THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. 43 
 
 The vigour of the mind of Dryden is nowhere more evi- 
 dent than in parts of his poems of controversial theology ; 
 and they are important, as exhibiting that view of Eoman 
 Catholic tenets, which was presented at the time for the 
 purposes of proselytism. He mentions various opinions 
 as to the seat of infalhbility, describing that of the Pope's 
 infallibility, with others, as held by " some doctors," and 
 states what he considers to be the true doctrine of the 
 Latin Church, as follows : — 
 
 " I then affirm, that this unfailing guide 
 In Pope and general councils must reside, 
 Both lawful, both combined : what one decrees, 
 By numerous votes, the other ratifies : 
 On this undoubted sense the Church relies."* 
 
 When, in 1682, the Galilean Church, by the first of its 
 four Articles, rejected the sophistical distinction of direct 
 and indirect authority, and absolutely denied the power 
 of the Pope in temporals, to this article, says Butler, 
 there was hardly a dissentient voice either clerical or lay. 
 He adds that this principle is " now adopted by the 
 universal Catholic Church." f 
 
 Such was the sad condition of the Anglo-Roman body 
 in the seventeenth century. They were ground between 
 the demands of the civil power, stern, but substantially 
 just, on the one hand, and the cruel and outrageous 
 impositions of the Court of Rome on the other. Even 
 for the shameful scenes associated with the name and 
 time of Titus Gates, that Court is largely responsible : and 
 the spirit that governed it in regard to the oath of 
 Allegiance is the very same spirit, which gained its latest 
 triumphs in the Council of the Yatican. 
 
 * ' The Hind and Panther,' part ii. 
 t Butler, i. 358, and ii. 20.
 
 44 VATICANISM. 
 
 I now pass to the period, which followed the Eevolu- 
 tion of 1688, especially with reference to the bold asser- 
 tion that before 1870 the Pope's infallibility was a 
 doctrine of Divine faith. 
 
 The Revolution, brought about by invasions of the law 
 and the constitution, with which the Church of Rome 
 was disastrously associated, necessarily partook of a some- 
 what vindictive character as towards the Anglo-Roman 
 body. Our penal provisions were a mitigated, but also a 
 debased, copy of the Papal enactments against heresy. 
 It w^as not until 1757, on the appointment of the Duke of 
 Bedford to the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, that the first 
 sign of life was given.* Indeed it was only in 1756 that a 
 new penal law had been proposed in Ireland. f But, in the 
 next year, the Irish Roman Catholic Committee published 
 a Declaration which disavowed the deposing and absolving 
 power, with other odious opinions. Here it was averred 
 that the Pope had "no temporal or civil jurisdiction," 
 " directly or indirectly, within this realm." And it was 
 also averred that it " is not an article of the Catholic faith, 
 neither are we thereby required to believe or profess that 
 the Pope is infallible " : in diametrical contradiction to the 
 declaration of Archbishop Manning, that persons of his re- 
 ligion were bound to this belief before the Council of 18 70. J 
 
 It may, indeed, be observed that in declaring they are 
 not required to believe the infallibility of the Pope, the 
 subscribers to this document do not say anything to show 
 
 i * Butler, iv. 511. Sir H. Parnell, 'History of the Penal Laws.' 
 f Madden, ' Historical Notice of the Penal Laws,' p. 8. 
 j I cite the terms of this document from ' The Elector's Guide,' 
 
 addressed to the freeholders of the county of York. No. 1, p. 44. 
 
 York, 1826. It is also, I believe, to be found in Parnell's ' History of 
 
 the Penal Laws,' 1808.
 
 THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. 45 
 
 that they did not for themselves hold the tenet. But a brief 
 explanation will show that the distinction in this case is 
 little better than futile. As we have seen, the Declaration 
 set forth that the Pope had no temporal power in England. 
 Now, in the notorious Bull, Unam Sanctam, it had been 
 positively declared ex cathedra that both the temporal and 
 the spiritual sword were at the command of the Church, 
 and that it was the oflSce of the Pope, by a power not 
 human but Divine, to judge and correct the secular 
 authority. The language of the Declaration of 1757 was 
 directly at variance with the language of the Pope, speak- 
 ing ex cathedra, and therefore here if anywhere infallible. 
 It could, therefore, only have been consistently used by 
 persons, who for themselves did not accept the tenet. I 
 am aware it will be argued that the infallible part of the 
 Bull is only the last sentence. It is well for those who 
 so teach that Boniface YIII. is not alive to hear them. 
 The last sentence is introduced by the word " Porro," 
 furthermore: a strange substitute for "Be it enacted." 
 The true force of that sentence seems to be : '' Furthermore 
 we declare that this subjection to the Roman Pontiff, as here- 
 inbefore described, is to be held as necessary for salvation." 
 It is not the substance ; but an addition to the substance. 
 
 If, however, anything had been wanting in this Declara- 
 tion, it would have been abundantly supplied by the 
 Protestation of the Roman Catholics of England in 1788-9. 
 In this very important document, which brought about 
 the passing of the great English Relief Act of 1791, 
 besides a repetition of the assurances generally, which had 
 been theretofore conveyed, there are contained statements 
 of the greatest significance. 
 
 1. That the subscribers to it " acknowledge no infal- 
 libility in the Pope."
 
 46 VATICANISM. 
 
 2. That their Church has no power that can directly 
 or indirectly injure Protestants, as all she can do is to 
 refuse them her sacraments, which they do not want. 
 
 3. That no ecclesiastical power whatever can " directly 
 or indirectly affect or interfere with the independence, 
 sovereignty, laws, constitution, or government," of the 
 realm. 
 
 This Protestation was, in the strictest sense, a repre- 
 sentative and binding document. It was signed by two 
 hundred and forty-one priests,* including all the Yicars 
 Apostolic : by all the clergy and laity in England of any 
 note; and in 1789, at a general meeting of the Enghsh 
 Catholics in London, it was subscribed by every person 
 present, f 
 
 Thus we have on the part of the entire body, of which 
 Archbishop Manning is now the head,J a direct, literal, 
 and unconditional rejection of the cardinal tenet which he 
 tells us has always been believed by his Church, and was an 
 article of Divine faith before as well as after 1870. Nor 
 was it merely that the Protestation and the Eelief coincided 
 in time. The protesters explicitly set forth that the penal 
 laws against them were founded on the doctrines imputed 
 
 * Slater's Letters on ' Eoman Catholic Tenets,' p. 6. 
 
 t Butler, 'Hist. Memoirs,' ii. 118, 126. 
 
 j Prelates really should remember that they may lead their trustful 
 lay followers into strange predicaments. Thus Mr. Towneley (of 
 Towneley, I believe), in his letter of Nov. 18 to the ' Times,' dwells, 
 I have no doubt with perfect justice, on the loyalty of his ancestors ; 
 but, unhappily, goes on to assert that " the Catholic Church has 
 always held and taught the infallibility of the Pope in matters of 
 faith and morals." No : the Eoman Catholics of England denied it in 
 their [Protestation of 1788-9 ; and on the list of the Committee, 
 which prepared and promoted that Protestation, I find the name of 
 Peregrine Towneley, of Towneley. — Ibid. ii. 304.
 
 THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. . 47 
 
 to them, and they asked and obtained the relief on the 
 express ground that they renounced and condemned the 
 doctrines.* 
 
 Some objection seems to have been taken at Rome to a 
 portion (we are not told what) of the terms of the Pro- 
 testation. The history connected herewith is rather 
 obscurely given in Butler. But the Protestation itself 
 was, while the Bill was before Parliament, deposited in 
 the British Museum, by order of the Anglo-Roman body : 
 " that it may be preserved there as a lasting memorial of 
 their political and moral integrity." f Two of the four 
 Yicars Apostolic, two clergymen, and one layman, with- 
 drew their names from the Protestation on the deposit ; 
 all the rest of the signatures remained. 
 
 Canon Flanagan's ' History of the Church in England ' 
 impugns the representative character of the Committee, 
 and declares that the Court of Rome approved of pro- 
 ceedings taken in opposition to it.J But the material fact 
 is the subscription of the Protestation by the- clergy and 
 laity at large. On this subject he admits that it was 
 signed by " the greater part of both clergy and laity ";§ 
 and states that an organisation in opposition to the Com- 
 mittee, founded in 1794 by one of the Vicars Apostolic, 
 died a natural death after " a very few years." [| The 
 most significant part of the case, however, is perhaps this : 
 that the work of Flanagan, which aims at giving a tinge 
 of the new historical colour to the opinions of the Anglo- 
 Roman body, was not published until 1857, when things 
 had taken an altogether new direction, and when the 
 Emancipation controversies had been long at rest. 
 
 * Butler, 'Hist. Memoirs,' ii. 119, 125. f Ihid. ii. 136-8. 
 
 X Flanagan, ii. 398. § lUd. ii. 394. . 
 
 II Ihid. ii. 407.
 
 48 VATICANISM. 
 
 Tlie Act of 1791 for England was followed by that ot 
 1793 for Ireland. The Oath inserted in this Act is 
 founded upon the Declaration of 1757, and embodies a 
 large portion of it, including the words : — 
 
 "It is not an article of tlie Catholic Faith, neither am I thereby 
 required to believe or profess, that the Pope is infallible." 
 
 I refer to this oath, not because I attach an especial 
 value to that class of security, but because we now come 
 to a Sy nodical Declaration of the Irish Bishops, which 
 constitutes perhaps the most salient point of the whole of 
 this singular history. 
 
 On the 26th of February, 1810, those Bishops declared 
 as follows : — 
 
 " That said Oath, and the promises, declarations, abjurations, and 
 protestations therein contained are, notoriously, to tlie Boman Catholic 
 Church at large, become a part of the Boman Catholic religion, as taught 
 by us the Bishops, and received and maintained by the Boman Catholic 
 Churches in Ireland ; and as such are approved and sanctioned by tlie other 
 Boman Catholic ChurcJies.'' * 
 
 Finally : it will scarcely be denied that Bishop Baines 
 
 was, to say the least, a very eminent and representative 
 
 member of the Anglo-Eoman body. In 1822, he wrote 
 
 as follows : — 
 
 " Bellarmine, and some other Divines, chiefly Italians, have believed 
 the Pope infallible, when proposing ex cathedra an article of faith. 
 But in England or Ireland I do not believe that any Catholic maintains the 
 infallibility of the Bope'' f 
 
 It will now^ I think, have sufficiently appeared to the 
 reader who has followed this narration, how mildly, I may 
 say how inadequately, I have set forth in my former tract 
 the pledges which were given by the authorities of the 
 Roman Catholic Church to the Crown and State of the 
 
 * Slater on ' Eoman Catholic Tenets,' pp. 14, 15. 
 ■f Defence against Dr. Moyeey, p. 230, 1822.
 
 THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. 49 
 
 United Kingdom, and by means of which principally they 
 obtained the remission of the penal laws, and admission 
 to full civil equality. We were told in England by the 
 Anglo-Roman Bishops, clergy, and laity, that they rejected 
 the tenet of the Pope's infallibility. We were told in 
 Ireland that they rejected the doctrine of the Pope's tem- 
 poral power, whether direct or indirect, although the 
 Pope had in the most solemn and formal manner asserted 
 his possession of it. We were also told in Ireland that 
 Papal infallibility was no part of the Roman Catholic faith, 
 and never could be made a part of it : and that the impos- 
 sibility of incorporating it in their religion was notorious 
 to the Roman Catholic Church at large, and was become 
 part of their religion, and this not only in Ireland^ but 
 throughout the world. These are the declarations, which 
 reach in effect from 1661 to 1810 ; and it is in the light 
 of these declarations that the evidence of Dr. Doyle in. 
 1825, and the declarations of the English and Irish pre- 
 lates of the Papal communion shortly afterwards^ are 
 to be read. Here, then, is an extraordinary fulness and 
 clearness of evidence, reaching over nearly two centuries : 
 given by and on behalf of millions of men : given in docu- 
 ments patent to all the world : perfectly well known to the 
 See and Court of Rome, as we know expressly with respect 
 to nearly the most important of all these assurances, 
 namely, the actual and direct rej^udiation of infallibility in 
 1788-9. So that either that See and Court had at the 
 last-named date, and at the date of the Synod of 1810^ 
 abandoned the dream of enforcing infallibility on the 
 Church, or else by wilful silence they were guilty of 
 practising upon the British Crown one of the blackest 
 frauds recorded in history. 
 
 The difficulties now before us were fully foreseen during- 
 
 E
 
 50 VATICANISM. 
 
 the sittings of the Council of 1870. In the Address 
 
 prepared by Archbishop Kenrick, of St. Louis, but not 
 
 deUvered, because a stop was put to the debate, I find 
 
 these words : — • 
 
 " Quomodo fides sic gubernio Anglicano data conciliari possit cum 
 definitione papalis infallibilitatis . . . ipsi viderint qui ex Episeopis 
 Hiberniensibus, sicut ego ipse, illud juramentum praestiterint."* 
 
 " In what way the pledge thus given to the English 
 Government can be reconciled with the definition of Papal 
 infallibility let those of the Irish Bishops consider, who, 
 like myself, have taken the oath in question." 
 
 The oath was, I presume, that of 1793. However, in 
 Priedberg's ^ Sammlung der Actenstiicke zum Concil,' 
 p. 151 (Tubingen, 1872), I find it stated, I hope untruly, 
 that the ' Oivilta Cattolica,' the prime favourite of Yati- 
 canism, in Series viii. vol. i. p. 730, announced, among 
 those who had submitted to the Definition, the name of 
 Archbishop Kenrick. 
 
 Let it not, however, be for a moment supposed that I 
 mean to charge upon those who gave the assurances of 
 1661, of 1757, of 1783, of 1793, of 1810, of 1825-6, the 
 guilt of falsehood. I have not a doubt that what they 
 said, they one and all believed. It is for Archbishop 
 Manning and his confederates, not for me, to explain how 
 these things have come about; or it is for Archbishop 
 MacHale, who joined as a Bishop in the assurances of 
 1826, and who then stood in the shadow and recent recol- 
 lection of the Synod of 1810, but who now is understood 
 to have become a party, by promulgation, to the Decree 
 of the Pope's infallibility. There are but two alterna- 
 tives to choose between : on the one side, that which I 
 reject, the hypothesis of sheer perjury and falsehood ; 
 
 * Friedricli, ' Doc. ad Illust. Cone. Vat.,' i. 219.
 
 THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. 51 
 
 on the other, that policy of " violence and change in 
 faith " which I charged, and stirred so much wrath by 
 charging, in my former tract. I believed, and I still be- 
 lieve it to be the true, as well as the milder, explanation. 
 It is for those who reject it to explain their preference 
 for the other solution of this most curious problem of 
 history.* 
 
 And now what shall we say to that colouring power of 
 imagination with which Dr. Newmanf tints the wide 
 landscape of these most intractable facts, when he says it 
 is a pity the Bishops could not have anticipated the like- 
 lihood that in 1870 the Council of the Vatican would 
 attach to the Christian creed the Article of the Pope's 
 infallibility ? A pity it may be ; but it surely is not a 
 wonder : because they told us, as a fact notorious to 
 themselves and to the whole Roman Catholic world, that 
 the passing of such a decree was impossible. J Let us 
 reserve our faculty of wondering for the letter of an 
 Anglo-Eoman, or if he prefers it, Eomano-Anghnn 
 Bishop, who in a published circular presumes to term 
 *' scandalous " the letter of an English gentleman^ because 
 in that letter he had declared he still held the belief 
 which, in 1788-9, the whole body of the Roman Catholics 
 of England assured Mr. Pitt that they held ;§ and let us 
 learn which of the resources of theological skill will avail 
 to bring together these innovations and the semper eadem 
 of which I am, I fear, but writing the lamentable epitaph. 
 
 " Non bene conveniunt, nee in nna sede morantur," 
 
 * See Appendices D and E. 
 
 t Dr. Newman, p. 17. + See Appendix D. 
 
 § Letter of Mr. Petre to the 'Times ' of Xov. 15, 1874; of Bishop 
 Vaughan, Jan. 2, 1875. [) Qv. Metamorph. 
 
 E 2
 
 52 VATICANISM. 
 
 This question has been raised by me primarily as a 
 British question ; and I hope that, so far as this country 
 is concerned, I have now done something to throw light 
 ujoon the question whether Papal infallibility was or was 
 not matter of Divine Faith before 1870 ; and conse- 
 quently on the question whether the Yatican Decrees have 
 " in no jot or tittle " altered the conditions of civil 
 allegiance in connection with this infallibility * 
 
 The declaration of the Irish prelates in 1810 was a full 
 assurance to us that what they asserted for their country 
 was also asserted for the whole Eomish world. 
 
 But as evidence has been produced which goes directly 
 into antiquity, and arguments have been made to show 
 how innocuous is the new-fangled form of religion, I 
 proceed to deal with such evidence and argument, in 
 regard to my twofold contention against the Decrees — 
 
 1. In respect to infallibility. 
 
 2. In respect to obedience. 
 
 * For a practical indication of the effect produced by the Eoman 
 Catholic disclaimers, now denounced as "scandalous," see Aj)pendix E.
 
 THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. 
 
 IV. THE VATICAN COUNCIL AND THE INFALLIBILITY 
 OF THE POPE, CONTINUED. 
 
 Breach with History, No. 2. 
 
 In" a single instance, I have to express my regret for a 
 statement made with culj^able inadvertence. It is in 
 p. 28, where I have stated that the Popes had kept up their 
 claim to dogmatic infallibility with comparatively little 
 intermission " for well-nigh one thousand years." I cannot 
 even account for so loose an assertion, except by the fact 
 that the point lay out of the main line of my argument, 
 and thus the slip of the pen once made escaped correction. 
 Of the claim to a supremacy virtually absolute, which I 
 combined with the other claim, the statement is true ; for 
 this may be carried back, perhaps, to the ninth century 
 and the appearance of the false decretals. That was the 
 point, which entered so largely into the great conflicts 
 of the Middle Ages. It is the point which I have 
 treated as the more momentous; and the importance of 
 the tenet of infallibility in faith and morals seems to me 
 to arise chiefly from its aptitude for combination with the 
 other. As matter of fact, the stability^ and great authority, 
 of the Eoman Church in controversies of faith were ac- 
 knowledged generally from an early period. But the 
 heresy of Honorius, to say nothing of other Popes, became, 
 from his condemnation by a General Council and by a long 
 series of Popes as well as by other Councils, a matter so 
 notorious, that it could not fade from the view even of 
 the darkest age ; and the possibility of an heretical Pope 
 grew to be an idea perfectly familiar to the general mind 
 of Christendom. Hence in the Bull, Cum ex Apostolatus
 
 54 VATICANISM. 
 
 Officio, Paul lY. declares (1559), that if a heretic is 
 chosen as Pope, all his acts shall be void ah initio. All 
 Christians are absolved from their obedience to him, and 
 enjoined to have recourse to the temporal power.* So 
 likewise, in the Decretum of Gratian itself it is provided, 
 that the Pope can only be brought to trial in case he is 
 found to deviate from the faith.f 
 
 It is an opinion held by great authorities, that no 
 pontiff before Leo X. attempted to set up the infallibility 
 of Popes as a dogma. Of the citations in its favour 
 which are arrayed by Archbishop Manning in his Privi- 
 legium Petri^X I do not perceive any earlier than the thir- 
 teenth century, which appear so much as to bear upon the 
 question. There is no Conciliary declaration, as I need 
 scarcely add, of the doctrine. This being so, the point 
 is not of primary importance. The claim is oue thing, 
 its adoption by the Churchy and the interlacing of it with 
 a like adoption of the claim to obedience, are another. 
 I do not deny to the opinion of Papal infallibility an 
 active, though a chequered and intermittent, life ex- 
 ceeding six centuries. 
 
 Since, then, I admit that for so long a time the in- 
 fluences now triumphant in the Roman Church have 
 been directed towards the end they have at last attained, 
 and seeing that my statement as to the liberty which 
 prevailed before 1870 has been impugned, I am bound to 
 oflfer some proof of that statement. I will proceed, in 
 this instance as in others, by showing that my allegation 
 
 * ScliTilte, * Power of the Popes,' iv. 30. 
 
 ■f " Hujus culpas istic redargnere praesumit mortalinm nullus, quia 
 cunctos ipse judicatums a nemine est judicandus, rdd daprehendatur a 
 fide devius." — Deer. i. Dist. xl. c. vi. 
 
 t * Petri Privilegium,' ii. 70-91.
 
 THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. 55 
 
 is much within the truth : that not only had the Latin 
 Church forborne to adopt the tenet of Papal infallibility, 
 but that she was rather bound by consistency with her 
 own principles, as recorded in history, to repel and re- 
 pudiate that tenet. I refer to the events of the great 
 epoch marked by the Council of Constance. And the 
 proof of the state of facts with regard to that epoch will 
 also be proof of my more general allegation that the 
 Church of Rome does not keep good faith with history, as 
 it is handed down to her, and marked out for her, by her 
 own annals. I avoided this discussion in the former tract, 
 because it is necessarily tinctured with theology : but the 
 denial is a challenge, which I cannot refuse to take up. 
 
 It is alleged that certain of my assertions may be left 
 to confute one another. I will show that they are per- 
 fectly consistent with one another. 
 
 The first of them charged on Yaticanism that it had 
 disinterred and brought into action the extravagant 
 claims of Papal authority, which were advanced by Popes 
 at the climax of their power, but which never entered 
 into the faith even of the Latin Church. 
 
 The second, that it had added two if not three new 
 articles to the Christian Creed ; the two articles of the 
 Immaculate Conception, and of Papal Infallibihty ; with 
 what is at least a new law of Christian obligation, the 
 absolute duty of all Christians and all Councils to obey 
 the Pope in his decrees and commands, even where 
 fallible, over the whole domain of faith, morals, and the 
 government and discipline of the Church. This law is 
 now for the first time, I believe, laid down by the joint 
 and infallible authority of Pope and council. Dr. Newman* 
 
 Dr. Newman, pp. 45, 53.
 
 m VATICANISM. 
 
 wonders that I sliould call the law absolute. I call it abso- 
 lute, because it is without exception, and without limitation. 
 
 To revive obsolete claims to authority, and to innovate in 
 matter of belief, are things perfectly compatible : we have 
 seen them disastrously combined. In such innovation is 
 involved, as I will now show, a daring breach with history. 
 
 While one portion of the Koman theologians have held 
 the infallibility of the Pope, many others have taught that 
 an Ecumenical Council together with a Pope constitutes 
 per se an infallible authority in faith and morals. I 
 believe it to be also true that it was, down to that 
 disastrous date, compatible with Roman orthodoxy to hold 
 that not even a Pope and a Council united could give the 
 final seal of certainty to a definition, and tlmt for this 
 end there was further necessary the sanction, by accept- 
 ance, of the Church diffused. This last opinion, however, 
 seems to have gone quite out of fashion ; and I now 
 address myself to the position in argument of those who 
 hold that in the decree of a Council, approved by the 
 Pope, the character of infallibility resides. 
 
 Both the Council of Constance and the Council of the 
 Yatican were in the Roman sense CEcumenical : and it is 
 this class of councils alone that is meant, where in- 
 fallibility is treated of. I shall endeavour to be brief, 
 and to use the simplest language. 
 
 The Council of the Yatican decreed (chap, iii.) that the 
 Pope had from Christ immediate power over the uni- 
 versal Church (par. ii.). 
 
 That all were bound to obey him, of whatever rite and 
 dignity, collectively as well as individually {cujuscunque 
 ritus et dignitatis . . . tarn seorsum singuli, quam simul 
 omnes. Ibid.) 
 
 That this duty of obedience extended to all matters of
 
 THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. 57 
 
 faith, of morals, and of the discipline and government of 
 the Church {ibid., and par. iv.). 
 
 That in all ecclesiastical causes he is judge, 'without 
 appeal, or possibility of reversal (par. iv.). 
 
 That the definitions of the Pope in faith and morals, 
 delivered ex cathedra^ are irreformable, ex sese, non autem 
 ex consensu Ecdesice, and are invested with the infallibility 
 granted by Christ in the said subject matter to the Church 
 (ch. iv.). 
 
 Now let us turn to the Council of Constance. 
 
 This Council, supported by the following Council of Basle 
 before its translation to Ferrara, had decreed in explicit 
 terms that it had from Christ immediate power over the 
 universal Church, of which it was the representative. 
 
 That all were bound to obey it, of whatever state and 
 dignity, even if Papal, in all matters pertaining to faith, 
 or to the extirpation of the subsisting schism, or to the 
 reformation of the Church in its head and its members.* 
 
 In conformity herewith, the Council of Constance cited, 
 as being itself a superior authority, three Popes to its bar. 
 Gregory XII. anticipated his sentence by resignation. 
 Benedict XIII. was deposed, as was John XXIII., for 
 divers crimes and offences_, but not for heresy. Having 
 thus made void the Papal Chair, the Council made the 
 provisions, under which Pope Martin Y. was elected. 
 
 It is not my object to attempt a general apj)reciation of 
 the Council of Constance. There is much against it to be 
 said from many points of view, if there be more for it. 
 But I point out that, for the matter now in hand, the 
 questions of fact are clear, and that its decrees are in flat 
 and diametrical contradiction to those of the Vatican. 
 
 * Latbe, ' Concilia,' xii. 22, ed. Paris, 1672.
 
 58 VATICANISM. 
 
 This of itself would not constitute any difficulty for 
 Roman theology, and would give no proof of its breach 
 with history. It is admitted on all or nearly all hands 
 that a Council, however great its authority may be, is not 
 of itself infallible. What really involves a fatal breach 
 with history is, when a body, which professes to appeal to 
 it, having proclaimed a certain organ to be infallible, then 
 proceeds to ascribe to it to-day an utterance contradictory 
 to its utterance of yesterday ; and, thus depriving it not 
 only of all certainty, but of all confidence, lays its honour 
 prostrate in the dust. This can only be brought home to 
 the Eoman Church, if two of her Councils, contradicting 
 one another in the subject matter of faith or morals, have 
 each respectively been confirmed by the Pope, and have 
 thus obtained, in Roman eyes, the stamp of infallibility. 
 Now this is what I charge in the present instance. 
 
 It is not disputed, but loudly asseverated, by Yaticanists, 
 that the Council of the Vatican has been approved and 
 confirmed by the Pope. 
 
 But an allegation has been set up that the Council of 
 Constance did not receive that confirmation in respect to 
 the Decree of the Fifth Session which asserted its power, 
 given by Christ, over the Pope. Bishop Ullathorne says : — 
 
 " Altliough the mode of proceeding in that Council was really 
 informal, inasmuch as its members Yoted by nations, a portion of its 
 doctrinal decrees obtained force through the dogmatic Constitution of 
 Martin Y."* 
 
 Here it is plainly implied that the Decree of the Fifth 
 Session was not confirmed. And I have read in some 
 Ultramontane production of the last three months an 
 exulting observation, that the Decrees of the Fourth and 
 Fifth Sessions were not confirmed by the Pope, and that 
 
 * ' Expostulation Unravelled,' p. 42.
 
 THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. 59 
 
 thus, I presume like the smitten fig-tree, they have 
 remained a dead letter. Let us examine this allegation ; 
 but not that other statement of Archbishop Manning that 
 the proceeding was null from the nullity of the assembly, 
 the irregularity of the voting, and the heterodoxy of the 
 matter.* The Pope's confirmation covers and disposes of 
 all these arbitrary pleas. Whether it was given or not, is 
 to be tried by the evidence of authoritative documents. 
 
 In the record of the Council of Constance we are told 
 that, in its Forty-fifth Session, the Pope declared not that 
 he confirmed a part of its doctrinal decrees, but " that he 
 would hold and inviolably observe, and never counteract 
 in any manner, each and all of the things which the 
 Council had in full assembly determined, concluded, and 
 decreed in matters of faith (in materiis jidei) '' ^ And he 
 approves and ratifies accordingly. 
 
 Embracing all the decrees described in its scope, this 
 declaration is in tone as much an adhesion, as a confirm- 
 ation by independent or superior authority. But let that 
 pass. Evidently it gives all that the Pope had in his 
 power to give. 
 
 The only remaining question is, whether the Decree of 
 the Fifth Session was, or was not, a decree of faith ? 
 
 Now upon this question there are at least two inde- 
 pendent lines of argument, each of which respectively 
 and separately, is fatal to the Ultramontane contention : 
 this contention being that, for want of the confirmation of 
 Pope Martin Y., that Decree fell to the ground. 
 
 First; Pope Martin V. derived his whole power to 
 
 * ' Petri Privilegium,' ii. 95. 
 
 t Labbe, ' Concilia,' xii. 258. See Appendix F for the most impor- 
 
 nt passages.
 
 60 VATICANISM. 
 
 confirm from his election to the Papal Chair by the 
 Council. And the Comrcil was competent to elect, 
 because the See was vacant. And the See was vacant, 
 because of the depositions of two rival Popes, and the 
 resignation of the third ; for if the See was truly vacant 
 before, there had been no Pope since the schism in 1378, 
 which is not supposed by either side. But the power of 
 the Council to vacate the See was in virtue of the principle 
 asserted by the Decree of the Fifth Session. We arrive 
 then at the following dilemma. Either that Decree had 
 full validity by the confirmation of the Pope, or Martin 
 the Fifth was not a Pope ; the Cardinals made or con- 
 firmed by him were not Cardinals, and could not elect 
 validly his successor, Eugenius lY. ; so that the Papal 
 succession has failed since an early date in the fifteenth 
 century, or more than four hundred and fifty years ago. 
 
 Therefore the Decree of the Fifth Session must, upon 
 Eoman principles, have been included in the materice Jidei 
 determined by the Council, and, accordingly, in the con- 
 firmation by Pope Martin Y. 
 
 But again. It has been held by some Eoman writers 
 that Pope Martin Y. only confirmed the Decrees touching 
 Faith ; that the Decree of the Fifth Session did not touch 
 Faith, but only Church-government, and that accordingly 
 it remained unconfirmed. 
 
 Now in the Apostles' Creed, and in the Nicene Creed, 
 we all express belief in the Holy Catholic Church. Its 
 institution and existence are therefore strictly matter of 
 faith. How can it be reasonably contended, that the 
 organised body is an article of faith, but that the seat of 
 its vital, sovereign power, by and from which it becomes 
 operative for belief and conduct, belongs to the inferior 
 region of the ever mutable discipline of the Church ?
 
 THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. 61 
 
 But this is argument only ; and we have a more sure 
 criterion at command, which will convict Vaticanism for 
 the present purpose out of its own mouth. Yaticanism has 
 effectually settled this question as against itself. For it has 
 declared that the Papal Infallibility is a dogma of Faith 
 (divinitus revelatum dogma^ ' Const.' ch. iv.). But if by 
 this definition, the Infallibility of the Pope in definitions 
 of faith belongs to the province of materice fidei and of 
 ea quw pertinent adjidem, the negative of the proposition 
 thus affirmed, being in the same subject-matter, belongs 
 to the same province. It therefore seems to follow, by a 
 demonstration perfectly rigorous, — 
 
 1. That Pope Martin Y. confirmed (or adopted) a 
 Decree, which declares the judgments and proceedings of 
 the Pope, in matters of faith, without exception, to be 
 reformable, and therefore fallible. 
 
 2. That Pope Pius IX. confirmed (and proposed) a 
 Decree, which declares certain judgments of the Pope, in 
 matters of faith and morals, to be infallible ; and these, 
 with his other judgments in faith, morals, and the dis- 
 cipline and government of the Church, to be irreformable. 
 
 3. That the new oracle contradicts the old, and again the 
 Eoman Church has broken with history in contradicting 
 itself. 
 
 4. That no oracle, which contradicts itself, is an 
 infallible oracle. 
 
 5. That a so-called QEcumenical Council of the Eoman 
 Church, confirmed or non-confirmed by the Pope, has, upon 
 its own showing, no valid claim to infallible authority. 
 
 The gigantic forgeries of the false Decretals, the 
 general contempt of Yaticanism for history, are subjects 
 far too wide for me to touch. But for the present I 
 leave my assertion in this matter to stand upon —
 
 62 VATICANISM. 
 
 1. The case of the Koman CathoHcs of the United 
 Kingdom before 1829. 
 
 2. The Decrees of the Council of Constance, compared 
 with the Decrees of the Council of the Yatican. 
 
 When these assertions are disposed of, it will be time 
 enough to place others in the rank. I will now say a 
 word on the cognate subject of Gallicanism, which has also 
 been brought upon the tapis. 
 
 It would be unreasonable to expect from Archbishop 
 Manning greater accuracy in his account of a foreign 
 Church, than he has exhibited with regard to the history 
 of the communion over which he energetically presides. 
 
 As the most famous and distinct of its manifestations 
 was that exhibited in the Four Articles of 1682, it has 
 pleased the Archbishop to imagine, and imagining to 
 state, that in that year Gallicanism took its rise. Even 
 with the help of this airy supposition, he has to admit 
 that in the Church where all is unity, certainty, and 
 authority, a doctrine contrary to Divine faith, yet pro- 
 claimed by the Church of France, was, for want of a 
 General Council, tolerated for one hundred and eighty- 
 eight years. Indeed, he alleges* the errors of the 
 Council of Constance, four hundred and sixty years ago, 
 as a reason for the Council of the Yatican. 
 
 " Nor were Catholics free to deny his infallibility before 
 1870. The denial of his infallibility had indeed never 
 been condemned by a definition, because since the rise of 
 Gallicanism in 1682 no QEcumenical Council had ever 
 been convoked." f 
 
 I will not stop to inquire why, if the Pope has all this 
 
 * ' Petri Privilegmm,' ii. 40. 
 
 t Letter to ' Macmillan's Magazine/ Oct. 22, 1874.
 
 THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE. 63 
 
 time been infallible, a Council was necessary for the 
 issuing of a definition ; since we are now on matters of 
 bistory, and tbe real difiSculty would be to know where 
 to dip into the prior history of France without finding 
 matter in utter contradiction to the Archbishop's alle- 
 gation. An Anglo-Roman writer has told us that 
 in the year 1612 [query 1614?] the assembly of the 
 Galilean Church declared that the power of the Popes 
 related to spiritual matters and eternal life_, not to civil 
 concerns and temporal possessions.* In the year 1591, 
 at Mantes and Chartres, the prelates of France in their 
 assembly refused the order of the Pope to quit the king, 
 and on the 21st of September repudiated his Bulls, as 
 being null in substance and in form.f It has always been 
 understood that the French Church played a great part in 
 the Council of Constance : is this also to be read back- 
 wards, or effaced from the records ? "Or, to go a httle 
 farther back, the Council of Paris in 1393 withdrew its 
 obedience altogether from Benedict XIII., without trans- 
 ferring it to his rival at Rome : restored it upon con- 
 ditions in 1403 ; again withdrew it, because the conditions 
 had not been fulfilled, in 1406 : and so remained until the 
 Council of Constance and the election of Martin Y.J 
 And what are we to say to Fleury ? who writes : 
 
 ' Le concile de Constance etablit la maxime de tout temps enseignee 
 en France, que tout Pape est soumis au jugement de tout concile 
 universel en ce qui concerne la foi." § 
 
 * Cited in Slater's Letters, p. 23, from Hook's 'Principia,' iii. 577. 
 
 t Continuator of Fleury, 'Hist. Eccl.,' xxxvi. 337 (Book 169, ch. 84). 
 
 t Du Chastenet, ' Nouvelle Histoire du Concile de Constance ' (pre- 
 face); and 'Preuves,' pp. .79, 84, seq., 95, 479 (Paris, 1718). 
 
 § Fleury, ' Xouv. Opusc.,' p. 44, cited in Demaistre, 'Du Pape,' p. 82. 
 See also Fleury, ' Hist. Eccl.' (Book 102, ch. 188).
 
 64 VATICANISM. 
 
 One of the four articles of 1682 simply reaffirms the 
 decree of Constance : and as Archbishop Manning has 
 been the first, so he will probably be the last person to 
 assert, that Gallicanism took its rise in 1682. 
 
 This is not the place to show how largely, if less dis- 
 tinctly, the spirit of what are called the Gallican liberties 
 entered into the ideas and institutions of England, Grer- 
 many, and even Spain. Neither will I dwell on the 
 manner in which the decrees of Constance ruled for a 
 time not only the minds of a school or party, but the 
 policy of the Western Church at large, were confirmed 
 and repeatedly renewed by the succeeding Council of 
 Basle, and proved their efficacy and sway by the remark- 
 able submission of Eugenius TV, to that Council. But I 
 will cite the single sentence in which Mr. Hallam, writing, 
 alas, nearly sixty years back, has summed up the case of 
 the decrees of Constance. 
 
 *' These decrees are tlie great pillars of that moderate theory with 
 respect to the Papal authority, which distinguished the Gallican 
 Church, and is embraced, I presume, by almost all laymen, and the 
 major part of ecclesiastics, on this side the Alps." * 
 
 * ' Hist, of the Middle Age?,' chap. vii. part 2.
 
 OBEDIENCE TO THE POPE. C5 
 
 V. THE VATICAN COUNCIL AND OBEDIENCE TO THE 
 
 POPE. 
 
 Archbishop Manning has boldly grappled with my 
 proposition that the Third Chapter of the Yatican Decrees 
 had forged new chains for the Christian people, in regard 
 to obedience, by giving its authority to what was pre- 
 viously a claim of the Popes only, and so making it a 
 claim of the Church. He is astonished at the statement: 
 and he offers* what he thinks a sufficient confutation of 
 it, in six citations. 
 
 The four last begin with Innocent III., and end with the 
 Council of Trent. Two, from Innocent III. and Sixtus lY.^ 
 simply claim the regimen^ or government of the Churchy 
 which no one denies them. The Council of Florence 
 speaks of plena potestas, and the Council of Trent of 
 suprema potestas^ as belonging to the Pope. Neither ot 
 these assertions touches the point. Full power, and supreme 
 power, in the government of a body, may still be limited 
 by law. No other power can be above them. But it does 
 not follow that they can command from all persons an 
 unconditional obedience^ unless themselves empowered by 
 law so to do. We are familiar, under the British monarchy^ 
 both with the term supreme, and with its limitation. 
 
 The Archbishop, how^ever, quotes a Canon or Chapter 
 of a Roman Council in 863, which anathematises all who 
 despise the Pope's orders with much breadth and amplitude 
 of phrase. If taken without the context, it fully covers the 
 ground taken by the Yatican Council. It anathematise!^ 
 
 * Archbishop Manning, pp. 12, 13.
 
 66 VATICANISM. 
 
 all wliO coutemn the decrees of the Roman See in faitli, 
 discipline, or correction of manners, or for the remedy or 
 prevention of mischief. Considering that the four previous 
 Canons of this Council, and the whole proceedings, relate 
 entirely to the case of the Divorce of Lothair, it might, 
 perhaps, be argued that the whole constitute only a 
 privikgium, or law for the individual case, and that the 
 anathema of the Fifth Canon must be limited to those 
 who set at nought the Pope's proceedings in that case. 
 But the point is of small consequence to my argument. 
 
 But then the Roman Council is local ; and adds no very 
 potent reinforcement to the sole authority of the Pope. 
 The question then remains how to secure for this local 
 and Papal injunction the sanction of the Universal Church, 
 in the Roman sense of the word. Archbishop Manning, 
 perfectly sensible of what is required of him, writes that 
 '' this Canon was recognised in the Eighth Greneral 
 Council, held at Constantinople in 869." He is then 
 more than contented with this array of proofs ; and, con- 
 fining himself, as I am bound to say he does, in all 
 personal matters throughout his work, to the mildest 
 language consistent with the full expression of his ideas, 
 he observes that I am manifestly out of my depth.* 
 
 I know not the exact theological value of the term 
 '" recognised " ; but I conceive it to mean virtual adoption. 
 Such an adoption of such a claim by a General Council, 
 appeared to me a fact of the utmost significance. I referred 
 to many of the historians of the Church : but I found 
 no notice of it in those whom I consulted, including 
 Baronius. From these unproductive references I went 
 onwards to the original documents. 
 
 Archbishop Manning, ' Vatican Decrees,' pp. 12, 13.
 
 OBEDIENCE TO THE POPE. 67 
 
 The Eighth Greneral Council, so-called, comprised only 
 those Bishops of the East who adhered to, and were 
 supported by, the See of Rome and the Patriarch Ignatius, 
 in the great conflict of the ninth century. It would not, 
 therefore, have been surprising if its canons had given 
 some at least equivocal sanction to the high Papal claims. 
 But, on the contrary, they may be read with the greatest 
 interest as showing, at the time immediately bordering on 
 the publication of the false Decretals, how little way those 
 claims had made in the general body of the Church. The 
 system which they describe is the Patriarchal, not the 
 Papal system : the fivefold distribution of the Christian 
 Church under the five great Sees of the Elder and the 
 New Eome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. Of 
 these the Pope of Rome is the first, but as primus inter 
 pares (Canons XYII., XXI., Lat.).* The causes of clergy 
 on appeal are to be finally decided by the Patriarch in 
 each Patriarchate (Canon XXYI., Lat.) :f and it is declared 
 that any General Council has authority to deal, but should 
 deal respectfully, with controversies of or touching the 
 Roman Church itself (Canon XXI. Lat., XIII. Gr.)t 
 This is one of the Councils which solemnly anathematises 
 Pope Honorius as a heretic. 
 
 The reference made by Archbishop Manning is, as he 
 has had the goodness to inform me, to the Second Canon.§ 
 The material words are these : — 
 
 " Eegarding the most blessed Pope Nicholas as an organ of the Holy 
 Spirit, and likewise his most holy successor Adrian, "we accordingly 
 
 * Labbe (ed. Paris, 1671), vol. x. pp. 1136, 1140. 
 t lUd. 1143. 
 X Ibid. 1140, 1375. 
 
 § Ibid. p. 1127 Lat., p. 1367 Gr.; where the reader should be on 
 hie guard against the Latin version, and look to the Greek original. 
 
 F 2
 
 6S VATICANISM. 
 
 define and enact that all which they have set out and promulgated 
 synodically, from time to time, as well for the defence and well-being 
 of the Church of Constantinople, and of its Chief Priest and most 
 holy Patriarch Ignatius, as likewise for the expulsion and condemna- 
 tion of Photius, neophyte and intruder, be always observed and kept 
 alike entire and untouched, under (or according to) the heads set forth 
 (cum exjpositis capitulis)^ * 
 
 There is not in the Canon anything relating to the 
 Popes generally, but only to two particular Popes ; nor 
 any reference to what they did personally, but only to 
 what they did synodically ; nor to what they did synodi- 
 cally in all matters, but only in the controversy with 
 Photius and the Eastern Bishops adhering to him. There 
 is not one word relating to the Canon of 863, or to the 
 Council which passed it : which was a Council having 
 nothing to do with the Photian controversy, but called 
 for the purpose of supporting Pope Nicholas I. in what is 
 commonly deemed his righteous policy with respect to the 
 important case of the Divorce of Lothair.f 
 
 So that the demonstration of the Archbishop falls wholly 
 to the ground : and down to this time my statement 
 remains entire and unhurt. The matter contained in it 
 will remain very important until the Council or the Pope 
 shall amend its decree so as to bring it into conformity 
 with the views of Dr. Newman, and provide a relief to 
 the private conscience by opening in the great gate of 
 Obedience a little wicket-door of exceptions for those who 
 are minded to disobey. 
 
 Had the Decrees of 1870 been in force in the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries, Eoman Catholic peers could 
 not have done what, until the reign of Charles II., they 
 did ; could not have made their way to the House of Lords 
 
 * See the original in Appendix G. 
 •j" Labbe, x. 766 sqc[.
 
 OBEDIENCE TO THE POPE. 69 
 
 by taking the oatli of allegiance, despite the Pope's 
 command. But that is not all. The Pope ex cathedra 
 had bidden the Eoman Catholics of England in the 
 eighteenth century, and in the sixteenth, and from the 
 fourteenth, to beheve in the Deposing power as an article 
 of faith. But they rejected it : and no unquestioned law 
 of their Church forbade them to reject it. ',Are they not 
 forbidden now ? The Pope in the sixteenth century bade 
 the Roman Catholics of England assist the invasion of 
 the Spanish Armada. They disobeyed him. The highest 
 law of their Church left them free to disobey. Are 
 they as free now ? That they will assert this freedom for 
 themselves I do not question, nay, I sanguinely believe. 
 From every standing-point, except that of yaticanism_, 
 their title to it is perfect. With Yaticanism to supply 
 their premiss, how are they to conclude ? Dr. ISTewman 
 says there are exceptions to this precept of obedience. But 
 this is just what the Council has not said. The Church 
 by the Council imposes Aye. The private conscience 
 reserves to itself the title to say No. I must confess that 
 in this apology there is to me a strong, undeniable, smack 
 of Protestantism. To reconcile Dr. Newman's conclusion 
 with the premisses of the Vatican will surely require all, 
 if not more than all, " the vigilance, acuteness, and 
 subtlety of the Schola Theologorum in its acutest member."* 
 The days of such proceedings, it is stated, are gone by : 
 and I believe that, in regard to our country, they have 
 passed away beyond recall. But that is not the present 
 question. The present question is whether the right to 
 perform such acts has been effectually disavowed. With 
 this question I now proceed to deal. 
 
 * Dr. Kewman, p. 121,
 
 70 VATICANISM. 
 
 VI. EEVIVED CLAIMS OF THE PAPAL CHAIK. 
 
 1. The Deposing Power. 
 
 2. The Use of Force. 
 
 It will perhaps have been observed by others, as it has 
 been by me, that from the charges against my account of 
 the Syllabus are notably absent two of its most important 
 and instructive heads. I accuse the Syllabus of teaching 
 the right of the Church to use force, and of maintaining 
 the Deposing power. 
 
 When my tract was published, I had little idea of the 
 extent to which, and (as to some of them) the hardihood 
 with which, those who should have confuted my charges 
 would themselves supply evidence to sustain them. 
 
 Bishop Clifford, indeed, sustains the deposing power 
 on the ground that it was accorded to the Pope by the 
 nations. It was simply a case like that of the Geneva 
 Arbitrators.* Dr. Newman f defends it, but only upon 
 conditions. The circumstances must be rare and critical. 
 The proceeding must be judicial. It must appeal to the 
 moral law. Lastly, there must be an united consent of 
 various nations. In fine, Dr. Newman accepts the depos- 
 ing power only under the conditions which, as he thinks, 
 the Pope himself lays down. 
 
 These allegations quiet my fears ; but they strain my 
 faith; and, purporting to be historical, they shock my 
 judgment. For they are^ to speak plainly, without foun- 
 dation. The Arbitrators at Greneva settled a dispute. 
 
 * ' Pastoral Letter,' p. 12. 
 I Dr. Newman, pp. 36, 37.
 
 EEVIYED CLAIMS OF THE PAPAL CHAIE. 71 
 
 which, as they recited in formal terms, the two parties 
 to it had empowered and invited them to settle. The 
 point of consent is the only weighty one among the four 
 conditions of Dr. Newman, and is the sole point raised by 
 Bishop CHfford. Did then Paul III., as arbitrator in the 
 case of Henry YIII., pursue a like procedure ? The first 
 words of his Bull are, " The condemnation and excom- 
 munication of Henry YIH., King of England :" not an 
 auspicious beginning. There is nothing at all about 
 arbitration, or consent of any body, but a solemn and 
 fierce recital of power received from Grod, not from the 
 nations, or from one nation, or from any fraction of a 
 nation ; power " over the nations and over the kingdoms, 
 to pluck up and to destroy, to build up and to plant, as 
 chief over all kings of the whole earth, and all peoples 
 possessing rule." Exactly similar is the "arbitration" of 
 Pius Y. between himself and Elizabeth, to the " arbitra- 
 tion " of Paul ni. between himself and Henry YIII. 
 
 Archbishop Manning, indeed,* has thrown in a state- 
 ment the utility of which it is hard to understand, that 
 Queen Elizabeth "was baptized a Catholic." She was 
 baptized after Appeals to Eome had been abolished, and 
 two years after the Clergy had owned in the King that 
 title of Headship, which Mary abolished, and which never 
 has been revived. But Archbishop Manning knows quite 
 well that the Papal claims of right extend to all baptized 
 persons whatever, and Queen Yictoria could have no exemp- 
 tion unless it could be shown that she was unbaptized. 
 
 The doctrine of the consent of nations is a pure imagi- 
 
 * ArcLbisliop Manning, p. 89. See the Anathemas of the Council 
 of Trent against those who deny that heretics, as being baptized 
 persons, are bound to obedience to the Church. I hope the Arch- 
 bishop has not incautiouslv incurred them.
 
 72 VATICANISM. 
 
 nation. The general trutli of the matter is, that the Popes 
 of the middle ages, like some other persons and profes- 
 sions, throve upon the discords of their neighbours. Other 
 powers were only somewhere : the Pope, in the West, was 
 everywhere. Of the two parties to a quarrel, it was worth 
 the while of each to bid for the assistance of the Pope 
 against his enemy ; and he that bid the highest, not 
 merely in dry acknowledgment of the Papal prerogatives, 
 but also commonly in the solid tribute of Peter's pence, 
 or patronages, or other tangible advantages, most com- 
 monly got the support of the Pope. This is a brief and 
 rude outline ; but it is history, and the other is fiction. 
 
 But does Dr. Newman stand better at this point ? He 
 only grants the deposing power in the shape in which the 
 Pope asks it ; and he says the Pope only asks it on the 
 conditions of which one is " an united consent of various 
 nations." * In the Speech of the Pope, however, which 
 he cites, there is nothing corresponding to this account. 
 The Pope says distinctly, " of this right the Fountain is 
 (not the Infallibility, but) the Pontifical Authority." The 
 people of the middle ages — what did they do ? made him 
 an arbitrator or judge ? No : but recognised in him that 
 which — what ? he was ? no : but — " he IS ; the Supreme 
 Judge of Christendom." The right was not created, but 
 " assisted, as was DUE to it, by the public law and common 
 consent of the nations." If this is not enough, I will 
 complete the demonstration. An early report of the 
 Speech f from the Roman newspapers winds up the state- 
 ment by describing the Deposing Power as — 
 
 " A right which the Popes, invited by the call of the nations, had to 
 exercise, when the general good demanded it." 
 
 * Dr. Newman, p. 37. 
 ; t ' Tablet,' Nov. 21, 1874, Letter of C. S. D.
 
 EEVIYED CLAIMS OF THE PAPAL CHAIP. 73 
 
 But in the authorised and final report * given in the 
 Collection of the Speeches of Pius IX., this passage is 
 corrected, and runs thus : — 
 
 *' A riglit which the Popes exercised in virtue of their authority when 
 the general good demanded it." | 
 
 Thus Bishop Clifford and Dr. Newman are entirely at 
 issue with the Pope respecting the deposing power. Will 
 they not have to reconsider what they are to say, and 
 what they are to believe ? That power, it must be borne 
 in mind, appears to have one of the firmest possible Pon- 
 tifical foundations, in the Bull Uiiam Sanctam, which is 
 admitted on all hands to be a declaration ex cathedra. 
 
 But it is not to the more moderate views of the Bishop 
 and Dr. Newman that we are to resort for information on 
 the ruling fashions of Eoman doctrine. Among the really 
 orthodox defenders of Yaticanism, who have supplied the 
 large majority of Reproofs and Replies, I do not recollect 
 to have found one single disavowal of the deposing power. 
 Perhaps the nearest approach to it from any writer of this 
 school is supplied by Monsignor Capel, who remarks that 
 the Pope's office of arbiter is at an end, or " at least in 
 abeyance y % There are, indeed, enough of disavowals 
 wholly valueless. For example, disavowals of the uni- 
 versal monarchy ; by w^iich it appears to be meant that the 
 Popes never claimed, in temporals, such a monarchical 
 power as is now accorded to them in spirituals, namely a 
 
 * ' Discorsi di Pio IX.' voL i. p. 203. 
 
 t * Tablet ' original (for which I am not responsible) : " Un diritto, 
 «ehe i Papi, chiamati dal voto dei popoli, dovettero esercifare quando il 
 comun bene lo domandava." Authorised original : " Un diritto che i 
 Papi esercitarono in virtu della loro Autorita, quando il comun bene lo 
 dimandava." 
 
 J Monsignor Capel, p. 60.
 
 74 VATICANISM. 
 
 power absorbing and comprehending every other power 
 
 whatever. Or again, disavowals of the directa potestas. 
 
 For one, I attach not a feather's weight to the distinction 
 
 between the direct power and the indirect. Speaking in 
 
 his own person. Archbishop Manning eschews the gross 
 
 assertions to which in another work he has lent a sanction,* 
 
 and seems to think he has mended the position when he 
 
 tells lis that the Church, that is to say the Pope, " has a 
 
 supreme judicial office, in respect to the moral law, over all 
 
 nations, and over all persons, both governors and governed." 
 
 As long as they do right, it is directive and preceptive ; 
 
 when they do wrong, the black cap of the judge is put on, 
 
 ratione peccati^ " by reason of sin." That is to say, in plain 
 
 words, the right and the wrong in the conduct of States 
 
 and of individuals is now, as it always has been, a matter 
 
 for the judicial cognisance of the Church ; and the entire 
 
 judicial power of the Church is summed up in the Pope. 
 
 " If Christian princes and their laws deviate from the law of Grod, 
 the Church has authority from God to judge of that deviation, and hy 
 all its powers to enforce the correction of that departure from justice." "f 
 
 I must accord to the Archbishop the praise of manli- 
 ness. If we are henceforward in any doubt as to his 
 opinions, it is by our own fault. I sorrowfully believe, 
 moreover, that he does no more than express the general 
 opinion of the teachers who form the ruling body in his 
 Church at large, and of the present Anglo-Eomish clergy 
 almost without exception. In the episcopal manifesto of 
 Bishop Ullathorne I see nothing to qualify the doctrine. 
 In the Pastoral Letter of Bishop Yaughan the comfort we 
 obtain is this — " it will never, as we believe, be exercised 
 again ;" and '' it is a question purely speculative. It is 
 
 * ' Essays,' edited by Archbishop Manning. London, 
 "f Archbishop Manning, ' Vatican Decrees,' pp. 49-51.
 
 KEVIYED CLAIMS OF THE PAPAL CHAIP. 75 
 
 no matter of Catholic faith, and is properly relegated to 
 the schools."* Bishop Yaughan does not appear to bear 
 in mind that this is exactly what we were told, not by 
 his predecessors of 1789, who denied Infallibility outright : 
 not by the Synod of 1810, who affirmed it to be impossible 
 that Infallibility ever could become an article of faith ; but 
 even in the "bated breath" of later times with respect 
 to Infallibility itself, which, a little while after, was 
 called back from the schools and the speculative region, 
 and uplifted into the list of the Christian credenda ; and of 
 which we are now told that it has been believed always, and 
 by all, only its boundaries have been a httle better marked. 
 In the train of the Bishops (I except Bishop Clifford) 
 come priests, monks, nay, laymen : Vaticanism in all its 
 ranks and orders. And among these champions, not one 
 adopts the language even of Bishop Doyle, much less of 
 1810, much less of 1789. The " Monk of St. Augustine's " 
 is not ashamed to say that Bishop Doyle, who was put 
 forward in his day as the champion and representative 
 man of the body, " held opinions openly at variance with 
 those of the great mass."f 
 
 2. Title to the use of Force. 
 Equally clear, and equally unsatisfactory^ are the Ultra- 
 montane declarations with respect to the title of the 
 Church to employ force. Dr. Newman holds out a hand 
 to brethren in distress by showing that a theological 
 authority who inclines to the milder side, limits the kind 
 of force, which the Church has of herself a right to employ. 
 
 * ' Pastoral Letter,' pp. 33, 34. 
 
 t See ' The Month,' Jan. 1875, pp. 82-4. Monk of St. Augus- 
 tine's, p. 27, seq. Eev. J. Curry's 'Disquisition,' pp. 35, 41. Lord 
 E. Montagu, ' Expostulation in extremis,' p. 51.
 
 76 VATICANISM. 
 
 " The lighter punishments, though temporal and corporal, 
 such as shutting up in a monastery, prison, flogging, and 
 others of the same kind, short of effusion of blood, the 
 Church, jure suo, can inflict."* And again : the Church 
 does not claim the use of force generally, but only that 
 use of force which Professor Nuytz denied. 
 
 We can from this source better understand the meaning 
 of Archbishop Manning, when he states,f that the Church 
 has authority from God to correct departures from justice 
 by the use of " all its powers." The favourite mode of 
 <X)nveying this portion of truth — a portion so modest that 
 it loves not to be seen — is by stating that the Church is a 
 ^' perfect society." " The Church is a society complete and 
 perfect in and by itself, and amply sufficing not only to 
 bring men to salvation and everlasting bliss, but also to 
 .-establish and perfectly regulate social life among them."J 
 The Church has been created, says Bishop Yaughan, a 
 ■^^ perfect society or kingdom," ^' with full authority in 
 the triple order, as needful for a perfect kingdom, legis- 
 lative, judicial, and coercive."§ His Metropolitan treats 
 the subject at some length ; assures us that the members 
 of his communion would not make use of force even if 
 they were able, but nowhere disclaims the right. j| Indeed 
 he cannot: he dares not. The inexorable Syllabus binds 
 him to maintain it, as Ixion was bound to his wheel. 
 
 The subject, however, is one of the burning class ; and 
 it appears to terrify even Archbishop Manning. He refers 
 us to the famous brief or letter of Innocent III., headed 
 Novit, in his Appendix, where he states that the text is 
 
 * Cardinal Soglia, as cited by Dr. Kewman, pp. 89, 90. 
 t ' Vatican Decrees,' p. 43. 
 
 J Martin, S. J., ' De Matrimonio, Notiones Prasviae,' ci. 
 § ' Pastoral Letter,' p. 13. |J See Appendix H.
 
 EEVIVED CLAIMS OF THE PAPAL CHAIR. 77 
 
 given in full.* In the document, as it is there given, will 
 be found the Pope's assertion, that it is his part to pass 
 judgment on sovereigns in respect of sin {ratione j^^ccati)^ 
 and that he can coerce them by ecclesiastical constraint 
 (districtionem). But the text of the brief is, according to 
 my copy of the Decretals, not given in full; and the 
 copyist has done the Pope scanty justice. He seems to 
 have omitted what is the clearest and most important 
 passage of the whole, since it distinctly shows that what 
 is contemplated is the use of force. 
 
 "The Apostle also admonishes us to rebuke disturbers, and else- 
 where he says : ' reprove, intreat, rebuke with all patience and doe- 
 trine.' Now that we are ahle, and also hound to coerce, is plain from 
 this, that the Lord sa,js to the Prophet, who was one of the priests of 
 Anathoth : ' Behold, I have appointed thee over the nations and the 
 kings, that thou mayest tear up, and pull down, and scatter, and build, 
 and plant.' "f 
 
 With regard to Dr. Newman's hmitation of the Proposi- 
 
 tion, I must cite an authority certainly higher in the Papal 
 
 sense. The Jesuit Schrader has published, with a Papal 
 
 approbation attached^ a list of the affirmative propositions 
 
 answering to the negative condemnations of the Syllabus > 
 
 I extract his Article 24 : — J 
 
 " The Church has the power to apply external coercion (dusserem 
 Zivang anzmoenden) : she has also a temporal authority direct and 
 indirect." 
 
 The remark is appended, " Not souls alone are subject 
 to her authority." 
 
 All, then, that I stated in the Expostulation, on the 
 
 * Archbishop Manning, p. 62 n. 
 
 t ' Corpus Juris Canonici Decret. Greg. IX.,' II. i. 13. I cite from 
 Piichter's ed. (Leipsic, 1839). It has the pretensions, and I believe 
 the character, of a critical and careful edition. I do not however 
 presume to determine the textual question. 
 
 I Schrader, as above, p. 64.
 
 78 VATICANISM. 
 
 Deposing Power, and on the claims of the Roman Church 
 to employ force, is more than made good. 
 
 It was, I suppose, to put what Burnet would call a face 
 of propriety on these and such like tenets, that one of the 
 combatants opposed to me in the present controversy has 
 revived an ingenious illustration of that clever and able 
 writer, the late Cardinal Wiseman. He held that certain 
 doctrines present to us an unseemly appearance, because we 
 stand outside the Papal Church, even as the most beautiful 
 window of stained glass in a church offers to those without 
 only a confused congeries of paint and colours, while it is, 
 to an eye viewing it from within, all glory and all beauty. 
 But what does this amount to ? It is simply to say, that 
 when we look at the object in the free air and full light of 
 day which God has given us, its structure is repulsive and 
 its arrangement chaotic ; but, if we will part with a great 
 portion of that light, by passing within the walls of a 
 building made by the hand of man, then, indeed, it will 
 be better able to bear our scrutiny. It is an ill recom- 
 mendation of a commodity, to point out that it looks the 
 best where the light is scantiest.
 
 WAEEANT OF ALLEGIANCE ACCOEDINa TO THE VATICAN. 79 
 
 Vn. WARRANT OF ALLEGIANCE ACCORDING TO THE 
 
 VATICAN. 
 
 1. Its alleged Superiority, 
 
 2. Its real Flaws, 
 
 3. Alleged Non-interference " of the Popes for Tivo 
 
 Hundred Years, 
 
 Not satisfied with claiming to give guarantees for alle- 
 giance equal to those of their fellow-citizens, the cham- 
 pions of the Vatican have boldly taken a position in 
 advance. They hold that they are in a condition to offer 
 better warranty than ours, and this because they are 
 guided by an infallible Pope, instead of an erratic private 
 judgment; and because the Pope himself is exceedingly 
 emphatic, even in the Syllabus, on the duties of subjects 
 towards their rulers. Finally, all this is backed and 
 riveted by an appeal to conduct. " The hfe and conduct 
 of the Church for eighteen centuries are an ample gua- 
 rantee for her love of peace and justice."* I would rather 
 not discuss this " ample guarantee." Perhaps the Bishop's 
 appeal might shake one who believed : I am certain it 
 would not quiet one who doubted. 
 
 The inculcation of civil obedience under the sanction of 
 religion is, so far as I am aware, the principle and prac- 
 tice of all Christian communities. We must therefore look 
 a little farther into the matter in order to detect the 
 distinctive character, in this respect, of the Vatican. 
 '^ Unquestionably the Pope, and all Popes, are full and 
 
 * Bishop Vaughan, p. 28.
 
 80 VATICANISM. 
 
 emphatic on the duties of subjects to rulers ; but of what 
 subjects to what rulers ? It is the Church of England 
 which has ever been the extravagantly loyal Church ; I 
 mean which has, in other days, exaggerated the doctrine 
 of civil obedience, and made it an instrument of much 
 political mischief. Passive obedience, non-resistance, and 
 Divine right, with all of good or evil they involve, were 
 specifically her ideas. In the theology now dominant in 
 the Church of Rome, the theology which has so long had its 
 nest in the Roman Court, these ideas prevail, but with a 
 rider to them : obedience is to be given, Divine right is to 
 belong, to those Princes and Grovernments which adopt 
 the views of Rome, or which promote her interests : to 
 those Princes and Grovernments which do right, Rome 
 being the measure of right. I have no doubt that many 
 outside the charmed circle praise in perfect good faith the 
 superior bouquet and body of the wine of Roman Catholic 
 loyalty. But those within, can they make such assertions ? 
 This is not easy to believe. The great art, nowhere 
 else so well understood or so largely practised, is, in these 
 matters, to seem to assert without asserting. This has been 
 well-known at least for near five centuries, since the time 
 of Gerson,whose name for Yaticanism hAdulatio. " Sentiens 
 autem Adulatio quandoque nimis se cognosci, siudet quasi 
 modiciore sermone depressim uti, ut credihU'wr appareat''^' 
 I must say that, if Yaticanists have on this occasion 
 paraded the superior quality of the article they vend as 
 loyalty, they have also supplied us with the means of 
 testing the assertion ; because one and all of them assert 
 the corrective power of the Pope over Christian Sovereigns. 
 
 * ' De Potest. Eccl.,' Consideratio XII. Works, ii. 246, ed. Hague, 
 
 1728.
 
 WAEKANT OF ALLEGIANCE ACCOEDING TO THE VATICAN. 81 
 
 and Governments. I do not dispute that their commodity 
 is good, in this country, for e very-day tear and wear. 
 But as to its ultimate groundwork and principle, on 
 which in other places, and other circumstances, it might 
 fall back, of this I will now cite a description from one 
 of the very highest authorities ; from an epistle of a most 
 able and conspicuous Pontiff, to whom reference has 
 already been made, I mean Nicholas the First. 
 
 When that Pontiff was prosecuting with iron will the 
 cause against the divorce of Lothair from Theutberga, he 
 was opposed by some Bishops within the dominions of the 
 Emperor. Adventitius, Bishop of Metz, pleaded the duty 
 of obeying his sovereign. Nicholas in reply described his 
 view of that matter in a passage truly classical, which I 
 translate from the Latin, as it is given in Baronius. 
 
 *' You allege, that you subject yourself to Kings and Princes, be- 
 cause the Apostle says ' AVhetber to the king, as in authority.' Well 
 and good. Examine, however, whether the Kings and Princes, to 
 whom you say that you submit, are truly Kings and Princes. Examine 
 whether they govern w^ell, first themselves, then the people under 
 them. For if one be evil to himself, how shall he be good to others ? 
 Examine whether they conduct themselves rightly as Princes ; for 
 otherwise they are rather to be deemed tyrants, than taken for Kings, 
 and we should resist them, and mount up against them, rather than 
 be under them. Otherwise, if ^ve submit to such, and do not put 
 ourselves over them, we must of necessity encourage them in their 
 vices. Therefore be subject ' to the King, as in authority, in his 
 virtues that is to say, not his faults; as the Apostle says, for the 
 sake of God, not against God.' " * 
 
 I cite the passage, not to pass a censure in the case, but 
 for its straightforward exposition of the doctrine, now 
 openly and widely preferred, though not so lucidly ex- 
 pounded, by the teaching body of the Komish Church. 
 
 Baronius, a.d. 863, c. Ixx.
 
 82 VATICANISM. 
 
 Plainly enough, in point of right, the title of the temporal 
 Sovereign is valid or null according to the view which 
 may be taken by the Pope of the nature of his conduct. 
 " No just prince," says Archbishop Manning, can be 
 deposed by any power on earth ; but whether a prince is 
 just or not, is a matter for the Pope to judge of* 
 
 We are told, indeed, that it is not now the custom for 
 the Pope to depose princes : not even Victor Emmanuel.f 
 True : he does no more than exhort the crowds who wait 
 upon him in the Vatican to seek for the restoration of those 
 Itahan sovereigns whom the people have driven out. But 
 no man is entitled to take credit for not doing that which he 
 has no power to do. And one of the many irregularities 
 in the mode of argument pursued by Vaticanism is, that 
 such credit is constantly taken for not attempting the 
 impossible. It is as if Louis XVI., when a prisoner in 
 the Temple, had vaunted his own clemency in not putting 
 the head of Robespierre under the guillotine. 
 
 But there are other kinds of interference and aggres- 
 sion, just as intolerable in principle as the exercise, or 
 pretended exercise, of the deposing power. Have they 
 been given up ? We shall presently see. J 
 
 2. Its real Flaws, 
 
 Cooks and controversialists seem to have this in 
 common, that they nicely appreciate the standard of 
 knowledge in those whose appetites they supply. The 
 cook is tempted to send up ill-dressed dishes to masters 
 who have slight skill in or care for cookery ; and the 
 
 * ArcliHsliop Manning, p. 46. 
 
 I Bishop Vaughan, ' Pastoral,' p. 34. 
 
 X Infra, p. 88.
 
 WAKRANT OF ALLEGIANCE ACCOEDING TO THE VATICAX. 83 
 
 controversialist occasionally shows his contempt for tlie 
 intelligence of his readers by the quality of the argu- 
 ments or statements which he presents for their acceptance. 
 Bat this, if it is to be done with safety, should be done in 
 measure ; and I must protest that Yaticanism really went 
 beyond all measure when it was bold enough to contend 
 that its claims in respect to the civil power are the same 
 as those which are made by the Christian communions 
 generally of modern times. The sole difference, we are 
 told, is that in one case the Pope, in the other the ii] di- 
 vidual, determines the instances when obedience is to be 
 refused ; and as the Pope is much wiser than the 
 individual, the difference in the Eoman view is all in 
 favour of the order of civil society. 
 
 The reader will, I hope, pay close attention to this por- 
 tion of the subject. The whole argument greatly depends 
 upon it. Before repealing the penal laws, before granting 
 political equality, the statesmen of this country certainly 
 took a very different view. They thought the Eoman 
 Catholic, as an individual citizen, was trustworthy. They 
 were not afraid of relying even upon the local Church. 
 What they were anxious to ascertain, and what, as far 
 as men can through language learn the thought and 
 heart of man, they did ascertain, was this ; whether the 
 Eoman Catholic citizen, and whether the local Church, 
 were free to act, or were subjected to an extraneous 
 authority. This superior wisdom of the Pope of Eome was 
 the very thing of which they had had ample experience 
 in the middle ages ; which our Princes and Parliaments 
 long before the reign of Henry YIII. and the birth of 
 Anna Boleyn, had wrought hard to control, and which the 
 Bishops of the sixteenth century, including Tunstal and 
 Stokesley, Gardiner and Bonner, used their best learning 
 
 G 2
 
 S4 VATICANISM. 
 
 to exclude. Those who in 1875 propound the doctrine, 
 which no single century of the middle ages would have 
 admitted, must indeed have a mean opinion of any 
 intellects which their language could cajole. 
 
 As a rule, the real independence of States and nations 
 d<3pends upon the exclusion of foreign influence proper 
 from their civil affairs. Wherever the spirit of freedom, 
 even if ever so faintly, breathes, it resents and reacts against 
 any intrusion of another people or Power into the circle 
 of its interior concerns, as alike dangerous and disgraceful. 
 -As water finds its level, so^ in a certain tolerable manner, 
 the various social forces of a country, if left to themselves, 
 settle down into equilibrium. In the normal posture of 
 things, the State ought to control, and can control, its 
 subjects sufficiently for civil order and peace ; and the 
 normal is also the ordinary case, in this respect, through 
 the various countries of the civilised world. But the 
 essential condition of this ability, on which all depends, 
 is that the forces, which the State is to govern, shall be 
 forces having their seat within its own territorial limits. 
 The power of the State is essentially a local power. 
 
 But the Triregno of the Pope, figured by the Tiara, 
 touches heaven, earth, and Purgatory {Viscorsi, i. 133). 
 We now deal only with the earthly province. As against 
 the local sway of the State^ the power of the Pope is ubi- 
 quitous ; and the whole of it can be applied at any point 
 within the dominions of any State, although the far larger 
 part of it does not arise within its borders, but constitutes, 
 in the strictest sense, a foreign force. The very first 
 condition of State-rule is thus vitally compromised. 
 
 The power, with which the State has thus to deal, is one 
 dwelling beyond its limits, and yet beyond the reach of its 
 arm. All the subjects of the State are responsible to the
 
 WARRANT OF ALLEGIANCE ACCORDING TO THE VATICAN. 85 
 
 State: they must obey, or they must take the consequences. 
 But for the Pope there are no consequences : he is not 
 responsible. 
 
 But it may be said, and it is true, that the State will 
 not be much the better for the power it possesses of send- 
 ing all its subjects to prison for disobedience. And here 
 we come upon the next disagreeable distinction in the 
 case of the Roman Church. She alone arrogates to her- 
 self the right to speak to the State, not as a subject but 
 as a superior ; not as pleading the right of a conscience 
 staggered by the fear of sin, but as a vast Incorporation, 
 setting up a rival law against the State in the State's own 
 domain, and claiming for it, with a higher sanction, the 
 title to similar coercive means of enforcement. 
 
 No doubt, mere submission to consequences is, for the 
 State, an inadequate compensation for the mischief of dis- 
 obedience. The State has duties which are essential to its 
 existence, and which require active instruments. Passive 
 resistance, widely enough extended, would become general 
 anarchy. With the varying and uncombined influences of 
 individual judgment and conscience, the State can safely 
 take its chance. But here is a Power that claims authority 
 to order the millions ; and to rule the rulers of the millions, 
 whenever, in its judgment^ those rulers may do wrong. 
 
 The first distinction then is, that the Poj^e is himself 
 foreign and not responsible to the law ; the second, that 
 the larger part of his power is derived from foreign 
 sources ; the third, that he claims to act, and acts, not by 
 individuals, but on masses; the fourth, that he claims to 
 teach them, so often as he pleases, what to do at each 
 point of their contact with the laws of their country. 
 
 Even all this might be borne, and might be compara- 
 tively harmless but for that at which I have already
 
 86 VATICANISM. 
 
 glanced. He alone of all ecclesiastical powers presumes 
 not only to limit the domain of the State, but to meet 
 the State in its own domain. The Presbyterian Church 
 of Scotland showed a resolution never exceeded, before 
 the secession of 1843, in resisting the civil power ; but it 
 offered the resistance of submission. It spoke for the body, 
 and its ministers in things concerning it : but did not 
 presume to command the private conscience. Its modest 
 language would be far from filling the os rotundum of a 
 Eoman Pontiff. Nay, the words of the Apostle do not 
 sufEce for him. St. Peter himself was not nearly so great 
 as his Successor. He was content with the modest excuse 
 of the individual : '' We ought to obey God rather than 
 man."* Pome has improved upon St. Peter: *Your 
 laws and ordinances we proscribe and condemn, and de- 
 clare them to be absolutely, both hereafter and from the 
 first, null, void, and of no effect.' That is to say, the 
 Pope takes into his own hand the power which he thinks 
 the State to have misused. Not merely does he aid or 
 direct the conscience of those who object, but he even 
 overrules the conscience of those who approve. Above 
 all, he pretends to annul the law itself. 
 
 Such is the fifth point of essential distinction between 
 these monstrous claims, and the modest though in their 
 proper place invincible exigencies of the private con- 
 science. But one void still remains unfilled ; one plea 
 not yet unmasked. Shall it be said, this is all true, but it 
 is all spiritual, and therefore harmless ? An idle answer 
 at the best, for the origin of spiritual power is and ought 
 to be a real one, and ought not therefore to be used 
 a2:ainst the civil order : but worse than idle, because 
 
 * Acts V. 29.
 
 WAKKANT OF ALLEGIANCE ACCOKDING TO THE VATICAN. 87 
 
 totally untrue, inasmucli as we are now told in the 
 plainest terms (negatively in the Syllabus, affirmatively 
 in Schrader's approved conversion of it),* that the Church 
 is invested with a temporal power direct and indirect, and 
 has authority to employ external coercion. 
 
 Am I not right in saying, that after all this to teach 
 the identity of the claims of Vaticanism with those of 
 other forms of Christianity in the great and grave case of 
 conscience against the civil power, is simply to manifest a 
 too thinly veiled contempt for the understanding of the 
 British community, for whose palate and digestion such 
 diet has been offered ? 
 
 The exact state of the case, as I believe, is this. The 
 right to override all the States of the world and to 
 cancel their acts, within limits assignable from time to 
 time to, but not by those States, and the title to do battle 
 with them, as soon as it may be practicable and expe- 
 dient, with their own proper weapon and last sanction of 
 exterior force, has been sedulously brought more and more 
 into view of late years. The centre of the operation has 
 lain in the Society of Jesuits; I am loath to call them by 
 the sacred name, which ought never to be placed in the 
 painful associations of controversy. In 1870, the fulness 
 of time was come. The matter of the things to be believed 
 and obeyed had been sufficiently developed. But inasmuch 
 as great masses of the Eoman Catholic body before that 
 time refused either to believe or to obey, in that year the 
 bold stroke was struck, and it was decided to bring mis- 
 chievous abstractions if possible into the order of still more 
 mischievous realities. Tlie infallible, that is virtually the 
 Divine, title to command, and the absolute, that is the 
 
 * Sclirader, as above, p. 64.
 
 88 VATICANISM. 
 
 unconditional duty to obey, were promulgated to an as- 
 tonished world. 
 
 3. Alleged non-interference of the Popes for Two Hundred 
 
 Years, 
 
 It has been alleged on this occasion by a British Peer, 
 who I have no doubt has been cruelly misinformed, that 
 the Popes have not invaded the province of the civil 
 power during the last two hundred years. 
 
 I will not travel over so long a period, but am content 
 even with the last twenty. 
 
 1. In his Allocution of the 22nd January, 1855, Pius IX. 
 declared to be absolutely null and void all acts of the 
 Government of Piedmont which he held to be in prejudice 
 of the rights of Eeligion, the Church, and the Eoman 
 See^ and particularly a law proposed for the suppression 
 of the monastic orders as moral entities, that is to say 
 as civil corporations. 
 
 2. On the 26th of July in the same year, Pius IX. sent 
 forth another Allocution, in which he recited various act.'^ 
 of the Government of Sjoain, including the establishment 
 of toleration for non-Roman worship, and the secularisation 
 of ecclesiastical property ; and, by his own apostoHcal autho- 
 rity, he declared all the laws hereto relating to be abro- 
 gated, totally null, and of no effect. 
 
 3. On the 22nd of June, 1862, in another Allocution, 
 Pius IX. recited the provisions of an Austrian law of the 
 previous December, which established freedom of opinion, 
 of the press, of belief, of conscience, of science, of educa- 
 tion, and of rehgious professiooi, and which regulated 
 matrimonial jurisdiction and other matters. The whole 
 of these " abominable " laws " have been and shall be 
 totally void, and without all force whatsoever."
 
 WAKKANT OF ALLEGIANCE ACCORDING TO THE VATICAN. SB- 
 Ill all these cases reference is made, in general terms, ta 
 Concordats, of which the Pope alleges the violation ; but 
 he never bases his annulment of the laws upon this- 
 allegation. And Schrader, in his work on the Syllabus, 
 founds the cancellation of the Spanish law, in the matter 
 of toleration, not on the Concordat, but on the original 
 inherent right of the Pope to enforce the 77th Article of 
 the Syllabus, respecting the exclusive establishment of 
 the Roman religion.* 
 
 To provide, however, against all attempts to take 
 refuge in this specialty, I will now give instances where 
 no question of Concordat enters at all into the case. 
 
 1. In an Allocution of July 27, 1855, when the law for 
 the suppression of monastic orders and appropriation of 
 their properties had been passed in the kingdom of Sar- 
 dinia, on the simple ground of his Apostolic authority, the 
 Pope annuls this law, and all other laws injurious to the 
 Church, and excommunicates all who had a hand in them,. 
 
 2. In an Allocution of December 15, 1856, the Pope 
 recites the interruption of negotiations for a Concordat 
 with Mexico, and the various acts of that Government 
 against religion, such as the abolition of the ecclesiastical 
 foruin^ the secularisation of Church property, and the civil 
 permission to members of monastic establishments to with- 
 draw from them. All of these laws are declared absolutely 
 null and void. 
 
 3. On the l7th of September, 1863, in an Encyclical 
 Letter the Pope enumerates like proceedings on the part 
 of the Government of New Granada. Among the wrongs 
 committed, we find the establishment of freedom of worship 
 (cujusque acatholici cultus liber tas sancita). These and all 
 
 * Schrader, p. 80.
 
 90 VATICANISM. 
 
 otlier acts against the Church, utterly unjust and impious, 
 the Pope, by his Apostolic authority, declares to be wholly 
 null and void in the future and in the past.* 
 
 No more, I hope, will be heard of the allegation that 
 for two hundred years the Popes have not attempted to 
 interfere with the Civil Powers of the world. 
 
 But if it be requisite to carry proof a step farther, this 
 may readily be done. In his ' Petri Privilegium,' iii. 19, n.. 
 Archbishop Manning quotes the Bull In Coend Domini as 
 if it were still in force. Bishop Clifford, in his Pastoral 
 Letter (p. 9), laid it down that though all human actions 
 were moral actions, there were many of them which 
 belonged to the temporal power, and with which the Pope 
 could not interfere. Among these he mentioned the 
 assessment and payment of taxes. But is it not the fact 
 that this Bull excommunicates " all who impose new taxes, 
 not already provided for by law, without the Pope's 
 leave ?" and all who impose, without the said leave, special 
 and express, any taxes, new or old, upon clergymen, 
 churches, or monasteries ? f 
 
 I may be told that Archbishop Manning is not a safe 
 authority in these matters_, that the Bull In Coend Domini 
 was withdrawn after the assembling of the Council, and 
 the constitution Apostolicce Sedis^ substituted for it^ in 
 
 * All these citations, down to 1865, will be found in 'Eecueil des 
 Allocutions Consistoriales,' &c. (Paris, 1865, Adrien Leclerc et C'^). 
 See also ' Europaische G eschichtskalender,' 1868, p. 249 ; Yon Scliulte, 
 
 * Powers of the Roman Popes,' iv. 43 ; Schrader, as above, Heft ii. p. 80 ; 
 
 * Yering, ' Katholisches Kirchenrecht ' (Mainz, 1868), Band xx. pp. 
 170, 1, N. F. Band xiv. 
 
 I O'Keeffe, ' Ultramontanism,' pp. 215, 219. The reference is to 
 sections v., xviii. 
 
 i See Quirinus, p. 105; and see ' Constit. Apostolicse Sedis' in 
 Friedberg's ' Acta et Decreta Cone. Yat.,' p. 77 (Friburg, 1871).
 
 WAKKANT OF ALLEGIANCE ACCOKDING TO THE VATICAN. 91 
 
 which this reference to taxes is omitted. But if this be 
 so, is it not an astonishing fact, with reference to the spirit 
 of OuriaHsm, that down to the year 1870 these prepos- 
 terous claims of aggression should have been upheld and 
 from time to time proclaimed ? Indeed the new Constitu- 
 tion itself, dated October, 1869, the latest specimen of 
 reform and concession, without making any reservation 
 whatever on behalf of the laws of the several countries, 
 excommunicates (among others) — 
 
 1. All who imprison or prosecute (Jwstiliter insequentes) 
 Archbishops or Bishops. 
 
 2. All who directly or indirectly interfere with any 
 ecclesiastical jurisdiction. 
 
 3. All who lay hold upon or sequester goods of eccle- 
 siastics held in right of their churches or benefices. 
 
 4. All who impede or deter the officers of the Holy 
 Office of the Inquisition in the execution of their duties. 
 
 5. All who secularise, or become owners of, Church 
 property, without the permission of the Pope.
 
 92 VATICANISM. 
 
 VIII. ON THE INTKINSIC NATUEE AND CONDITIONS OF 
 THE PAPAL INFALLIBILITY DECREED IN THE 
 VATICAN COUNCIL. 
 
 I HAVE now, I think, dealt sufficiently, though at greater 
 length than I could have wished, with the two allegations^ 
 first, that the Decrees of 1870 made no difference in the 
 liabilities of Roman Catholics with regard to their civil 
 allegiance ; secondly, that the rules of their Church allow 
 them to pay an allegiance no more divided than that of 
 other citizens, and that the claims of Ultramontanism, as 
 against the Civil Power, 'are the very same with those 
 which are advanced by Christian communions and persons 
 generally. 
 
 I had an unfeigned anxiety to avoid all discussion of 
 the Decree of Infallibility on its own, the religious, ground ;: 
 but as matters have gone so far, it may perhaps be allowed 
 me now to say a few words upon the nature of the extra- 
 ordinary tenet, which the Bishops of one half the Christian 
 world have now placed upon a level with the Apostles' 
 Creed. 
 
 The name of Popery, which was formerly imposed ad 
 invidiam by heated antagonists, and justly resented by 
 Roman Catholics,* appears now to be perhaps the only 
 name which describes, at once with point and with accu- 
 racy, the religion promulgated from the Vatican in 1870.. 
 The change made was immense. Bishop Thirl wall, one of 
 the ablest English writers of our time, and one imbued 
 almost beyond any other with what the Germans eulogise 
 as the historic mind, said in his Charge of 1872, that the 
 
 Petri Privilegmm,' part ii. pp. 71-91.
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 93 
 
 promulgation of the new Dogma, which had occurred 
 since his last meeting with his clergy, was " an event far 
 more important than the great change in the balance of 
 power, which we have witnessed during the same interval." * 
 The effect of it, described with literal rigour, was in the 
 last resort to place the entire Christian religion in the 
 breast of the Pope, and to suspend it on his Avill. This is 
 :a startling statement ; but as it invites, so will it bear, 
 examination. I put it forth not as rhetoric, sarcasm, or 
 invective ; but as fact, made good by history. 
 
 It is obvious to reply that, if the Christian religion is 
 in the heart of the Pope, so the law of England is in the 
 lieart of the Legislature. The case of the Pope and the 
 case of the Legislature are the same in this : that neither 
 the one nor the other is subject to any limitation whatever, 
 except such as he or it respectively shall choose to allow. 
 Here the resemblance begins and ends. The nation is ruled 
 by a Legislature, of which by far the most powerful branch 
 is freely chosen, from time to time, by the community 
 itself by the greater part of the heads of families in the 
 country ; and all the proceedings of its Parliament are not 
 only carried on in the face of day, but made known from 
 day to day, almost from hour to hour, in every town and 
 village, and almost in every household of the land. They 
 are governed by rules framed to secure both ample time 
 for consideration, and the utmost freedom, or, it may be, 
 even licence of debate ; and all that is said and done is 
 subjected to an immediate sharp and incessant criticism : 
 with the assurance on the part of the critics, that they will 
 have not only favour from their friends, but impunity 
 from their enemies. Erase every one of these propositions, 
 
 Charge of the Bishop of St. David's,' 1872, p. 2.
 
 94 VATICANISM. 
 
 and replace it by its contradictory ; you will then have a 
 perfect description of the present Grovernment of the 
 Koman Church. The ancient principles of popular elec- 
 tion and control, for which room was found in the Apo- 
 stolic Church under its inspired teachers, and which still 
 subsist in the Christian East, have, by the constant aggres- 
 sions of Curialism, been in the main effaced, or, where not 
 effaced, reduced to the last stage of practical inanition. 
 We see before us the Pope, the Bishops, the priesthood, 
 and the people. The priests are absolute over the people ; 
 the Bishops over both ; the Pope over all. Each inferior 
 may appeal against his superior; but he appeals to a 
 tribunal which is secret, which is irresponsible, which he 
 has no share, direct or indirect, in constituting, and no 
 means, however remote, of controlling; and which, during 
 all the long centuries of its existence, but especially during 
 the latest of them, has had for its cardinal rule this — that 
 all its judgments should be given in the sense most cal- 
 culated to build up priestly power as against the people, 
 episcopal power as against the priests. Papal power as 
 against all three. The mere utterances of the central See 
 are laws ; and they override at will all other laws : and if 
 they concern faith or morals, or the discipline of the 
 Church, they are entitled, from all persons without excep- 
 tion, singly or collectively, to an obedience without quali- 
 fication. Over these utterances — in their preparation as 
 well as after their issue — no man has lawful control. They 
 may be the best, or the worst ; the most deliberate, or the 
 most precipitate : as no man can restrain, so no man has 
 knowledge of, what is done or meditated. The prompters 
 are unknown ; the consultees are unknown ; the procedure 
 is unknown. Not that there are not officers, and rules ; 
 but the ofScers may at will be overridden or superseded ;
 
 ox THE NATURE OF THE PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 95 
 
 and the rules at tyiH, and without notice, altered ^yro 
 re natd and annulled. To secure rights has been, and is, 
 the aim of the Christian civilisation : to destroy them, 
 and to establish the resistless, domineering action of a 
 purely central power, is the aim of the Roman policy. 
 Too much and too long, in other times, was this its ten- 
 dency : but what was its besetting sin has now become, as 
 far as man can make it, by the crowning triumph of 1870, 
 its undisguised, unchecked rule of action and law of life. 
 
 These words, harsh as they may seem, and strange as 
 they must sound, are not the incoherent imaginings of 
 adverse partisanship. The best and greatest of the children 
 of the Roman Church have seen occasion to use the 
 like, with cause less grave than that which now exists, and 
 have pointed to the lust of dominion as the source of these 
 enormous mischiefs : — 
 
 " Di oggimai, clie la Chiesa di Eoma 
 Per confondere in se due reggimenti 
 Cade nel fango, e se brutta, e la soma."^'' 
 
 Without doubt there is an answer to all this. Publicity, 
 responsibility, restraint, and all the forms of warranty and 
 safeguard, are wanted for a human institution, but are 
 inapplicable to a " Divine teacher," to an inspired Pontiff, 
 to a " living Christ." The promises of God are sure, and 
 fail not. His promise has been given, and Peter in his 
 Successor shall never fail, never go astray. He needs 
 neither check nor aid, as he will find them for himself. 
 He is an exception to all the rules which determine human 
 action ; and his action in this matter is not really human, 
 
 * Dante, ' Purgatorio,' xvi. 127 — 9. 
 
 " The Church of Eome, 
 Mixing two governments that ill assort, 
 Hath missed her footing, fallen into the mire, 
 And there herself, and burden, much defiled." — Cary.
 
 1^6 VATICANISM. 
 
 but Divine. Having, then, tlie Divine gift of inerrancy, 
 why may he not be invested with the title, and assume 
 the Divine attribute, of omnipotence ? 
 
 No one can deny that the answer is sufficient, if only it 
 be true. But the weight of such a superstructure requires 
 B firm, broad, well-ascertained foundation. If it can be 
 ■shown to exist, so far so good. In the due use of the gift 
 of reason with which our nature is endowed, we may look 
 for a blessing from God ; but the abandonment of reason 
 is credulity, and the habit of credulity is presumption. 
 
 Is there, then, such a foundation disclosed to us by 
 Dr. Newman* when he says "the long history of the 
 contest for and against the Pope's infallibility has been 
 but a growing insight through centuries into the meaning 
 of three texts " ? First, " Feed my sheep " (John xxi. 
 1 5-17) ; of which Archbishop Kenrick tells us that the 
 very words are disputed, and the meaning forced.f Next, 
 '' Strengthen thy brethren ;" which has no reference 
 whatever to doctrine, but only, if its force extend beyond 
 the immediate occasion, to government; and, finally, 
 ^'Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my 
 Church ;" when it is notorious that the large majority of 
 the early expositors declare the rock to be not the person 
 but the previous confession of Saint Peter ; and where it is 
 plain that, if his person be really meant, there is no dis- 
 tinction of ex Cathedra and not ex Cathedra, but the entire 
 proceedings of his ministry are included without dis- 
 tinction. 
 
 * Dr. Newman, p. 110. 
 
 I ' Concio habenda at non habita,' i. ii. Friedrich, ' Documenta ad 
 illustrandum,' Cone. Vat. Abth. i. pp. 191, 199. I leave it to those 
 better entitled and better qualified to criticise the purely arbitrary 
 construction attached to the words. Upon inquiry, I find the MSS. 
 give serious grounds of doubt as to the received text.
 
 ox THE XATUEE OF THE PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 97 
 
 Into three texts, then, it seems the Church of Rome 
 has at length, in the course of centuries, acquired this 
 deep insight. In the study of these three fragments, 
 how much else has she forgotten ! the total ignorance of 
 St. Peter himself respecting his " monarchy ;" the exercise 
 of the defining office not by him but by St. James in 
 the Council of Jerusalem; the world-wide commission 
 specially and directly given to St. Paul ; the correction 
 of St. Peter by the Apostle of the Gentiles ; the inde- 
 pendent action of all the Apostles ; the twelve founda- 
 tions of the New Jerusalem, " and in them the names of 
 the twelve Apostles of the Lamb " (Rev. xxi. 14). But 
 let us take a wider ground. Is it not the function of 
 the Church to study the Divine Word as a whole, and to 
 gather into the foci of her teaching the rays that proceed 
 from all its parts ? Is not this narrow, sterile, wilful, 
 textualism the favourite resort of sectaries, the general 
 charter of all licence and self-will that lays waste the 
 garden of the Lord ? Is it not this that destroys the 
 largeness and fair proportions of the Truth, squeezing 
 liere and stretching there, substituting for the reverent 
 jealousy of a faithful guardianship the ambitious aims of 
 a class, and gradually forcing the heavenly pattern into 
 harder and still harder forms of distortion and caricature? 
 
 However, it must be observed that the transcendental 
 answer we have been considering, which sets at nought 
 all the analogies of God's Providence in the government 
 of the world, is the only answer of a breadth equal to the 
 case. Other replies, which have been attempted, are 
 perfectly hollow and unreal. For instance, we are told 
 that the Pope cannot alter the already defined doctrines 
 of the Faith. To this I reply, let him alter them as he 
 will, if only he thinks fit to say that he does not alter 
 
 H
 
 98 VATICANISM. 
 
 them, his followers are perfectly and absolutely helpless. 
 For if they allege alteration and innovation, the very 
 same language will be available against them which has 
 been used against the men that have had faith and 
 courage given them to protest against alteration and 
 innovation now. " Most impious are you, in charging on 
 us that which, as you know, we cannot do. We have not 
 altered_, we have only defined. What the Church believed 
 implicitly heretofore, she believes implicitly hereafter. 
 Do not appeal to reason ; that is rationalism. Do not 
 appeal to Scripture; that is heresy. Do not appeal to 
 history ; that is private judgment. Over all these things 
 I am judge, not you. If you tell me that I require you 
 to affirm to-day, under anathema, what yesterday you 
 were allowed or encouraged to deny, my answer is that 
 in and by me alone you have any means of knowing 
 what it is you affirm, or what it is you deny." This is 
 the strain which is consistently held by the bold trum- 
 peters of Yaticanism, and which has been effectual to 
 intimidate the feeble-minded and faint-hearted, who 
 seem to have formed, at the Council of the Vatican, so 
 large a proportion of its opponents ; nay, which has con- 
 vinced them, or has performed in them the inscrutable 
 process, be it what it may, which is the Eoman substitute 
 for conviction, that what in the Council itself they de- 
 nounced as breach of faith, after the Council they are 
 permitted, nay bound, to embrace, nay to enforce. 
 
 Let me now refer to another of these fantastic replies. 
 
 We are told it would be an entire mistake to confound 
 this Infallibility of the Pope, in the province assigned to 
 it, with absolutism : — 
 
 " The Pope is bound "by the moral and divine law, by the command- 
 ments of God, by the rules of the Gospel, and by every definition in
 
 ox THE NATURE OF THE PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 99 
 
 faith and morals that the Church has ever made. No man is more 
 bound by law than the Pope ; a fact plainly known to himself, and to 
 every bishop and priest in Christendom." * 
 
 Every definition in faith and morals! These are 
 written definitions. What are they but another Scrip- 
 ture ? What right of interpreting this other Scripture 
 is granted to the Church at large, more than of the real 
 and greater Scripture ? Here is surely, in its perfection, 
 the petition for bread, answered by the gift of a stone. 
 
 Bishop Yaughan does not venture to assert that the 
 Pope is bound by the canon law, the written law of the 
 Church of Eome. The abolition of the French Sees under 
 the Concordat with Napoleon, and the deposition of their 
 legitimate Bishops, even if it were the only instance, has 
 settled that question for ever. Over the written law of his 
 Church the pleasure of the Pope is supreme. And this 
 justifies, for every practical purpose, the assertion that law 
 no longer exists in that Church ; in the same very real sense 
 as we should say there was no law in England in the reign 
 of James the Second, while it was subject to a dispensing- 
 power. There exists no law, wherever a Irving ruler, an 
 executive head, claims and exercises, and is allowed to 
 possess, a power of annulling or a power of dispensing 
 with the law. If Bishop Yaughan does not know this, 
 I am sorry to say he does not know the first lesson 
 that every English citizen should learn ; he has yet 
 to pass through the lispings of civil childhood. This 
 exemption of the individual, be he who he may, from 
 the restraints of the law is the very thing that in England 
 we term absolutism. By absolutism we mean the supe- 
 riority of a personal will to law, for the purpose of putting- 
 aside or changing law. Now that power is precisely what 
 
 * Bishop Vaughan's ' Pastoral Letter/ p. 30.
 
 100 VATICANISM. 
 
 the Pope jDossesses. First, because he is infalHble in faith 
 and morals, when he speaks ex cathedra, and he himself is 
 the final judge which of his utterances shall be utterances 
 ex cathedra. He has only to use the words, '' I, ex cathedra, 
 declare ;" or the words, ^* I, in the discharge of the office 
 of pastor and teacher of all Christians^ by virtue of my 
 supreme Apostolic authority, define as a doctrine re- 
 garding faith or morals, to be held by the Universal 
 Church ;"* and all words that may follow, be they what 
 they may, must now and hereafter be as absolutely 
 accepted by every Eoman Catholic who takes the Yatican 
 for his teacher, with what in their theological language they 
 call a Divine faith, as must any article of the Apostles' 
 Creed. And what words they are to be that may follow, 
 the Pope by his own will and motion is the sole judge. 
 
 It is futile to say, the Pope has the Jesuits and other 
 admirable advisers near him, whom he will always coasult. 
 I am bound to add that I am sceptical as to the excellence 
 of these advisers. These are the men who cherish, 
 methodise, transmit, and exaggerate, all the dangerous 
 traditions of the Curia. In them it lives. The ambition 
 and self-seeking of the Cou]|t of Pome have here their 
 root. They seem to supply that Eoman malaria, which 
 Dr. Newmanf tells us encircles the base of the rock of St. 
 ■Peter. But the question is not what the Pope will do ; it 
 is what he can do, what he has power to do; v/hether, in 
 Bishop Yaughan s language, he is bound by law ; not 
 whether he is so wise and so well-advised that it is per- 
 fectly safe to leave him not bound by law. On this latter 
 question there may be a great conflict of opinions ; but it 
 is not the question before us. 
 
 * ' Yatican Decrees,' chap. iii. 
 ^ •]• Dr. Newman, p. 94,
 
 ox THE NATUKE OF THE PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 101 
 
 It cannot be pleaded against him, were it ever so clear, 
 that his declaration is contrary to the declaration of some 
 other Popes. For here, as in the case of the Christian 
 Creed, he may tell you — always speaking in the manner 
 supposed — that that other Pope was not speaking e^c 
 cathedra. Or he may tell you that there is no contrariety. 
 If you have read, if you have studied, if you have seen, if 
 you have humbly used every means of getting to the truth, 
 and you return to your point that contrariety there is, again 
 his answer is ready: That assertion of yours is simply 
 your private judgment ; and your private judgment is just 
 what my infallibility is meant and appointed to put down. 
 My word is the tradition of the Church. It is the nod of 
 Zeus : it is the judgment of the Eternal. There is no 
 escaping it, and no disguising it : the whole Christian re- 
 ligion, according to the modern Church of Rome, is in the 
 breast of one man. The will and arbitrament of one man 
 will for the future decide, through half the Christian world, 
 what religion is to be. It is unnecessary to remind me that 
 this power is limited to faith and morals. We know it is ; 
 it does not extend to geometry, or to numbers. Equally 
 is it beside the point to observe that the infallibility 
 alleged has not received a new definition : I have nowhere 
 said it had. It is the old gift : it is newly lodged. What- 
 ever was formerly ascribed either to the Pope, or to the 
 Council, or to the entire governing body of the Church, or to 
 the Church general and diffused, the final sense of the great 
 Christian community, aided by authority, tested by discus- 
 sion, mellowed and ripened by time — all — no more than 
 all, and no less than all — of what God gave, for guidance, 
 through the power of truth, by the Christian revelation, to 
 the whole redeemed family, the baptized flock of the Saviour 
 in the world ; all this is now locked in the breast of one
 
 102 VATICANISM. 
 
 man, opened and distributed at liis will, and liable to assume 
 whatever form — whether under the name of identity or 
 other name it matters not — he may think fit to give it. 
 
 Idle then it is to tell us, finally, that the Pope is bound 
 " by the moral and divine law, by the commandments of 
 God, by the rules of the Gospel :" and if more verbiage 
 and repetition could be piled up, as Ossa was set upon 
 Olympus, and Pelion upon Ossa, to cover the poverty and 
 irrelevancy of the idea, it would not mend the matter. 
 For of these^ one and all, the Pope himself, by himself, is 
 the judge without appeal. If he consults, it is by his 
 will : if he does not consult, no man can call him to 
 account. No man, or assemblage of men, is one whit the 
 less bound to hear and to obey. He is the judge of the 
 moral and Divine law, of the Gospel, and of the command- 
 ments ; the supreme and only final judge : and he is the 
 judge, with no legislature to correct his errors, with no au- 
 thoritative rules to guide his proceedings : with no power 
 on earth to question the force, or intercept the effect, of 
 his decisions. 
 
 It is indeed said by Dr. Newman, and by others, that 
 this infallibility is not inspiration. On such a statement 
 I have two remarks to make. First, that we have this 
 assurance on the strength only of his own private judg- 
 ment ; secondly, that if bidden by the self-assertion of the 
 Pope, he will be required by his principles to retract it,* 
 and to assert, if occasion should arise, the contrary ; 
 thirdly, that he lives under a system of development, 
 through which somebody's private opinion of to-day may 
 become matter of faith for all the to-morrows of the future. 
 What kind and class of private opinions are they that are 
 
 * Dr. Newman, pp. 99, 131. Tlie Papal newspaper, 'Voce della 
 Verita,' of Jan. 21 comi:>lains seriously of parts of Dr. Newman's Eeply.
 
 ON THE NATUKE OF THE PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 103 
 
 most likely to find favour with the Yatican ? History, the 
 history of well-nigh eighteen centuries, supplies the answer, 
 and supplies it with almost the rigour of a mathematical 
 formula. On every contested question, that opinion finds 
 ultimate assent at Eome, which more exalts the power of 
 Eome. Have no Popes claimed this inspiration, which 
 Dr. Newman so reasonably denies ? Was it claimed by 
 Clement XI. for the Bull Unigenitus ? Was it claimed by 
 Grregory the Second in a judgment in which he authorised 
 a man, who had an invalid wife, to quit her and to marry 
 another ? Is it or is it not claimed by the present Pope, 
 who says he has a higher title to admonish the govern- 
 ments of Europe than the Prophet Nathan had to ad- 
 monish David ? * Shall we be told that these are his 
 utterances only as a private Doctor ? But we also learn 
 from Papal divines, and indeed the nature of the case 
 makes it evident, that the non-infallible declarations of 
 the Pope are still declarations of very high authority. 
 Again, is it not the fact that, since 1870, many bishops, 
 German, Italian, French, have ascribed inspiration to the 
 Pope ? Opinions dispersed here and there were, in the 
 cases of the Immaculate Conception, and of the Absolute 
 Supremacy and the Infallibility ex cathedra^ gathered up, 
 declared to constitute a consensus of the Church, and made 
 the groundwork of new Articles of Faith. Why should 
 not this be done hereafter in the case of Papal inspiration ? 
 It is but a mild onward step, in comparison with the 
 strides already made. Those who cried " magnificent," 
 on the last occasion, will cry it again on the next. Dr. 
 Newman and the minimising divines would, perhaps, 
 reply " No : it is impossible." But this was the very 
 
 Discorsi cli Pio IX.,' voL i. p. 366, on March 3, 1872.
 
 104 VATICANISM. 
 
 assurance which, not a single and half-recognised divine, 
 but the whole synod of Irish prelates gave to the British 
 Government in 1810, and which the Council of the 
 Yatican has authoritatively falsified. 
 
 Now, let us look a little more closely at this astonishing 
 gift of Infallibility, and its almost equally astonishing, 
 because arbitrary, limitations. The Pope is only infallible 
 when he speaks ex cathedra. The gift, we are told, has 
 subsisted for 1800 years. "When was the discriminating- 
 phrase invented? Was it after Christendom had done 
 without it for one thousand six hundred years, that this 
 limiting formula of such vital moment was discovered ? 
 Do we owe its currency and prominence — with so much 
 else of ill omen — to the Jesuits ? Before this, if we had 
 not the name, had we the thing ? 
 
 Dr. Newman, indeed, finds for it a very ancient extrac- 
 tion. He says the Jewish doctors taught ex cathedra, 
 and our Saviour enjoined that they should be obeyed. 
 Surely there could not be a more calamitous illustration. 
 Observe the terms of the incoherent proposition. 
 
 The Scribes and Pharisees sit in the cathedra of Moses : 
 " all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that 
 observe and do."* The Pope sits in the cathedra of Peter, 
 not all therefore, but only a very limited part of what he 
 enjoins, you are to accept and follow. Only what he says 
 under four well-defined conditions.f Only, writes Dr. 
 Newman, when he speaks " in matters speculative,"! and 
 "bears upon the domain of thought, not directly of 
 action."! Let us look again to our four conditions : one 
 of them is that he must address the entire Church. It is 
 singular, to say no more, that St. Peter, in his first 
 
 * St. Matt, xxiii. 2. t Newman, p. 115. ± Ibid. p. 127.
 
 ON THE NATUKE OF THE PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 105 
 
 Epistle, which has always been unquestioned Scripture^ 
 does not address the entire Church ; but in his Second, 
 which was for a time much questioned, he does. It is 
 much more singular that the early ages are believed to 
 afford no example whatever of a Pa23al judgment addressed 
 to the entire Church. So that it is easy to say that Honorius 
 did not speak ex cathedra : for no Pope spoke ex cathedra. 
 It is even held by some that there was no Bull or other 
 declaration of a Pope corresponding with this condition 
 for one thousand three hundred years ; and that the un- 
 happy series began with Unam Sanctam of Boniface YIII. 
 But how is it beyond all expression straDge that for one 
 thousand three hundred years, or were it but for half one 
 thousand three hundred years, the Church performed her 
 high office, and spread over the nations, without any in- 
 fallible teaching whatever from the Pope, and then that it 
 should have been reserved for these later ages first to 
 bring into exercise a gift so entirely new, without example 
 in its character, and on the presence or absence of which 
 depends a vital difference in the conditions of Church life ? 
 The declarations of the Pope ex cathedra are to be the 
 sure guide and mainstay of the Church ; and yet she has 
 passed through two-thirds of her existence without once 
 reverting to it ! Nor is this all. For in those earlier 
 ages, the fourth century in particular, were raised and 
 settled those tremendous controversies relating to the God- 
 head, the decision of which was the most arduous work the 
 Church has ever been called to perform in the sphere of 
 thought. This vast work she went through without the 
 infallible utterances of the Pope, nay at three several 
 times in opposition to Papal judgments, now determined 
 to have been heretical. Are more utterances now begun 
 in order to sustain the miserable argument for forcing his
 
 106 VATICANISM. 
 
 Temporal Sovereignty on a people, whom nothing but the 
 violence of foreign arms will bring or keep beneath it ? 
 
 Yet one more point of suggestion. There are those 
 who think that the craving after an infallibility which is 
 to speak from human lips, in chapter and verse, upon 
 each question as it arises, is not a sign of the strength 
 and healthiness of faith, but of the diseased avidity of its 
 weakness. Let it, however, be granted, for the sake of 
 argument, that it is a comfort to the infirmity of human 
 nature thus to attain promptly to clear and intelligible 
 solutions of its doubts, instead of waiting on the Divine 
 pleasure, as those who watch for the morning, to receive 
 the supplies required by its intellectual and its moral 
 trials. A recommendation of this kind, however little it 
 may endure the scrutiny of philosophic reflection, may 
 probably have a great power over the imagination and 
 the affections (affectus) of mankind, For this, however, it 
 is surely required that by the ordinary faculties of 
 mankind, rationally and honestly used, these infallible 
 decisions should be discernible, and that they should stand 
 severed from the general mass of promiscuous and 
 ambiguous teaching. Even so it was that, when Holy 
 Scripture was appointed to be of final and supreme 
 authority, provision was also made by the wisdom of 
 Providence for the early collection of the New Testament 
 into a single series of Books, so that even we lay persons 
 are allowed to know so far what is Scripture and what is 
 not, without having to resort to the aid of the " scrutinis- 
 ing vigilance, acuteness, and subtlety of the Schola Theo- 
 logorumr^ But let not the Papal Christian imagine that 
 he is to have a like advantage in easily understanding 
 
 * Dr. Newman, p. 121.
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 107 
 
 what are the Papal Decrees, wliicli for liim form part of 
 the unerring revelation of God. It would even be pre- 
 sumptuous in him to have an opinion on the point. The 
 Divine word of Scripture was invested with a power to 
 feed and to refresh. " He shall feed me in a green 
 pasture ; and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort."* 
 And, by the blessing and mercy of God, straight and 
 open is the access to them. In no part of the Church of 
 Christ, except the Roman, is it jealously obstructed by 
 ecclesiastical authority ; and even there the line of the 
 sacred precinct is at least perfectly defined. But now we 
 are introduced to a new code, dealing with the same high 
 subject-matter, and possessed of the same transcendent 
 prerogative of certain and unchanging truth ; but what 
 are the chapters of that code, nobody knows except the 
 Schola Theologorum, Is for example the private Christian 
 less humbly desirous to know whether he is or is not 
 to rely absolutely on the declarations of the Syllabus as 
 to the many and great matters which it touches ? No 
 one can tell him. Bishop Fessler (approved by the Pope) 
 says so. He admits that he for oue does not know. It 
 seems doubtful whether he thought that the Pope 
 himself knew. For instead of asking the Pope, he 
 promises that it shall be made the subject of long inquiry 
 by the Schola Theologorum. " Ce sera tout d'abord a la 
 science theologique que s'imposera le devoir de rechercher les 
 diverses raisons qui militent en faveur des diverses opinions sur 
 cette question.'' j But when the inquiry has ended, and the 
 result has been declared, is he much better off? I doubt 
 
 * Psalm xxiii. 2. 
 II t ' Yraie et fausse Infaillibilite des Papes,' ix 8. AngL : " It will at 
 once become the duty of theological science to examine into the 
 various reasons which go to support each of the various opinions on 
 that question."
 
 108 VATICANISM. 
 
 it. For the declaration need not then be a final one. 
 " Instances," says Dr. Newman, " frequently occur, when 
 it is successfully maintained by some new writer, that the 
 Pope's act does not imply what it has seemed to imply ; 
 and questions, which seemed to be closed, are after a 
 course of years reopened."* It does not appear whether 
 there is any limit to this " course of years." But whether 
 there is or is not, one thing is clear : Between the solid 
 ground, the teri^a fir ma of Infallibility, and the quaking, 
 fluctuating mind of the individual, which seeks to find 
 repose upon it, there is an interval over which he cannot 
 cross. Decrees ex cathedra are infallible ; but determi- 
 nations what decrees are ex cathedra are fallible ; so that 
 the private person, after he has with all docility handed 
 over his mind and its freedom to the Schola Theologoi^mn^ 
 can never certainly know, never know with "divine 
 faith," when he is on the rock of infallibility, when on the 
 shifting quicksands of a merely human persuasion. 
 
 Dr. jSTewmanf will perhaps now be able to judge the 
 reason which led me to say, " There is no established or 
 accepted definition of the phrase ex cathedral By a 
 definition I understand something calculated to bring the 
 true nature of the thing defined nearer to the rational 
 apprehension of those who seek to understand it ; not a 
 volume of words in themselves obscure, only pliable to 
 the professional interest of Curialism, and certainly well 
 calculated to find further employment for its leisure, and 
 fresh means of holding in dependence on its will an un- 
 suspecting laity. 
 
 But all that has been said is but a slight sample of the 
 strange aspects and portentous results of the newly dis- 
 covered articidus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiw. 
 
 Dr. Kewman, p. 121. t -^J"^- P- 107.
 
 CONCLUSION. 109 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 I HAVE now, at greater length than I could have 
 wished, but I think with ample proof, justified the follow- 
 ing assertions : — 
 
 1. That the position of Roman Catholics has been 
 altered by the Decrees of the Vatican on Papal Infalli- 
 bility, and on obedience to the Pope. 
 
 2. That the extreme claims of the Middle Ages have 
 been sanctioned, and have been revived without the 
 warrant or excuse which might in those ages have been 
 shown for them. 
 
 3. That the claims asserted by the Pope are such as to 
 place civil allegiance at his mercy. 
 
 4. That the State and people of the United Kingdom 
 had a right to rely on the assurances they had received, 
 that Papal Infallibility was not, and could not become, an 
 article of faith in the Roman Church, and that the 
 obedience due to the Pope was limited by laws inde- 
 pendent of his will. 
 
 I need not any more refer to otliers of my assertions, 
 more general, or less essential to the main argument. 
 
 The appeal of the ' Dublin Review ' * for union on the 
 basis of common belief in resisting unbelief, which ought 
 to be strong, is unhappily very weak. " Defend," says 
 the Reviewer, " the ark of salvation precious to us both, 
 though you have an interest (so to speak) in only a part 
 of the cargo." But as the Reviewer himself is deck- 
 loading the vessel in such a manner as to threaten her 
 foundering, to stop his very active proceedings is not 
 
 * For Jan. 1875, p. 173.
 
 110 VATICANISM. 
 
 opposed to, nay, is part of, the duty of caring for the safety 
 of the vessel. But weaker still, if possible, is the appeal 
 which Archbishop Manning has made against my publi- 
 cation, as one which endeavours to create religious 
 divisions among his flock, and instigate them to rise 
 against the authority of the Church. For if the Church 
 of England, of which I am a member, is, as she has never 
 ceased to teach, the ancient, lawful, Cathohc Church of 
 this country, it is rather Archbishop Manning than I that 
 may be charged with creating, for the last twenty years 
 and more, religious divisions among our countrymen, and 
 instigating them to rise against that ancient, lawful, and 
 mild authority. 
 
 There may be, and probably are, great faults in my man- 
 ner of conducting this argument. But the claim of Ultra- 
 montanism among us seems to amount to this : that there 
 shall be no free, and therefore no effectual, examination of 
 the Vatican Decrees, because they are the words of a 
 Faither, and sacred therefore in the eyes of his affec- 
 tionate children.* It is deliberately held, by grave and 
 serious men, that my construing the Decrees of the 
 Vatican, not arbitrarily, but with argument and proof, in 
 a manner which makes them adverse to civil duty, is an 
 " insult " and an outrage to the Roman Catholic body, 
 which I have nowhere charged with accepting them in 
 that sense. Yet a far greater licence has been assumed by 
 Archbishop Manning, who, without any attempt or proof 
 at all, suggests^! if he does not assert, that the allegiance 
 of the masses of the English people is an inert confor- 
 mity and a passive compliance, given really for wrath and 
 not for conscience' sake. This opinion is, in my judg- 
 
 * ' Dublin Review,' Jan. 1875, p. 172. 
 I Archbishop Manning, pp. 345.
 
 CONCLUSION. Ill 
 
 ment, most untrue, most unjust ; but to call even this an 
 insult would be an act of folly, betokening, as I think, an 
 unsound and unmanly habit of mind. Again, to call the 
 unseen councillors of the Pope myrmidons, to speak of 
 " aiders and abettors of the Papal chair," to call Rome 
 " headquarters," these and like phrases amount, accord- 
 ing to Archbishop Manning,* to " an indulgence of 
 unchastened language rarely to be equalled." I frankly 
 own that this is in my eyes irrational. Not that it is 
 agreeable to me to employ even this far from immoderate 
 liberty of controversial language. I would rather pay 
 an unbroken reverence to all ministers of religion^ and 
 especially to one who fills the greatest See of Christen- 
 dom. But I see this great personage, under ill advice 
 aiming heavy and, as far as he can make them so, deadly 
 blows at the freedom of mankind, and therein not only at 
 the structure of society, but at the very constitution of otu\ 
 nature^ and the high designs of Providence for trying and 
 training it. I cannot under the restraints of courtly phrase 
 convey any adequate idea of such tremendous mischiefs ; for, 
 in proportion as the power is venerable, the abuse of it is 
 pernicious. I am driven to the conclusion that this sen- 
 sitiveness is at the best but morbid. The cause of it may 
 be, that for the last thirty years, in this country at least, 
 Ultramontanism has been very busy in making contro- 
 versial war upon other people, with singularly little re- 
 straint of language ; and has had far too little of the truth 
 told to itself. Hence it has lost the habit, almost the idea, 
 of equal laws in discussion. Of that system as a system, 
 especially after the further review of it which it has been 
 my duty to make, I must say that its influence is adverse 
 
 * Archbishop Manning, p. 17'
 
 112 VATICANISM. 
 
 to freedom in the State, the family, and the individual ; 
 that when weak it is too often crafty, and when strong 
 tyrannical ; and that, though in this country no one could 
 fairly deny to its professors the credit of doing what they 
 think is for the glory of God^ they exhibit in a notable 
 degree the vast self-deluding forces, which make sport of 
 our common nature. The great instrument to which 
 they look for the promotion of Christianity seems to be an 
 unmeasured exaltation of the clerical class and of its 
 power, as against all that is secular and lay, an exalta- 
 tion not less unhealthy for that order itself than for 
 society at large. There are those who think, without being- 
 mere worshippers of Luther, that he saved the Church of 
 Rome by alarming it, when its Popes, Cardinals, and Pre- 
 lates were carrying it " down a steep place into the sea ;" 
 and it may be that those who, even if too roughly, 
 challenge the proceedings of the Vatican, are better 
 promoting its interests than sudi as court its favours, 
 and hang upon its lips. 
 
 I am concerned, however, to say that in the quick re- 
 sentment which has been directed against clearness and 
 strength of language, I seem to perceive not simply a 
 natural sensitiveness, hut a great deal of controversial 
 stratagem. The purpose of my pamphlet was to show 
 that the directors of the Roman Church had in the 
 Council of the Vatican committed a gross offence against 
 civil authority, and against civil freedom. The aim of 
 most of those, who have professionally replied to me, seems 
 to have been at all hazards to establish it in the minds of 
 their flocks, that whatever is said against their high cle- 
 rical superiors is said against them, although they had 
 nothing to do with the Decrees, or with the choice or 
 appointment of the exalted persons, who framed and passed
 
 CONCLUSION. 113 
 
 them. But this proposition, if stated calmly as part of an 
 argument, will not bear a moment's examination. Conse- 
 quently, it has been boldly held that this drawing of dis- 
 tinctions between pastors and the flock, because the one 
 made the Decrees and the other did not, is an insult and 
 an outrage to all alike ;* and by this apj^eal passion is 
 stirred up to darken counsel, and obscure the case. 
 
 I am aware that this is no slight matter, and I have 
 acted under a sense of no trivial responsibility. Earely in 
 the complicated combinations of politics, when holding a 
 high place in the councils of my Sovereign, and when 
 error was commonly visited by some form of sharp and 
 speedy retribution, have I felt that sense as keenly. At any 
 rate, I may and must say that all the words of these Tracts 
 were written as by one who knows that he must answer 
 for them to a Power higher than that of public opinion. 
 
 If any motive connected with religion helped to sway 
 me, it was not one of hostility, but the reverse. My hos- 
 tility, at least, was the sentiment wdiich we feel towards . 
 faults which mar the excellencies, which even destroy the 
 hope and the promise of those we are fain to love. At- 
 tached to my own religious communion, the Church of my 
 birth and my country, I have never loved it with a merely 
 sectional or insular attachment, but have thankfully re- 
 garded it as that portion of the great redeemed Christian- 
 family in which my lot had been cast — not by, but for me. 
 In every other portion of that family, whatever its name, 
 whatever its extent, whatever its perfections, or wliatever 
 
 * I witli]iold the references — they are numerous, although by no 
 means universal. Having said so much of the extreme doctrines of 
 Archbishop Manning, I have pleasure in observing that he does not 
 adopt this language. And also in acknowledging the charitable tone 
 of Cardinal Cullen, who, in his Lenten Pastoral, commends me to 
 the prayers of his people for my enlightenment. 
 
 I
 
 114 VATICANISM. 
 
 its imperfections, I have soiiglit to feel a kindly interest, 
 
 varying in its degree according to the likeness it seemed 
 
 to bear to the heavenly pattern, and according to the 
 
 capacity it seemed to possess to minister to the health and 
 
 welfare of the whole. 
 
 " Le frondi, onde s' infronda tutto 1' orto 
 Del Ortolano Eterno, am' io cotanto 
 Qiiauto da Lui in lor di bene e porto." * 
 
 Whether they be Tyrian or Trojan,"]- Eastern or Western, 
 Eeformed or Unreformed, I desire to renounce and repu- 
 diate all which needlessly wounds them, which does them 
 less than justice, which overlooks their place in the affec- 
 tions and the care of the Everlasting Father of us all. 
 Common sense seems to me to teach that doctrine, no less 
 than Christianity. Therefore I will say, and I trust to the 
 spirit of Charity to interpret me, I have always enter- 
 tained a warm desire that the better elements might 
 prevail over the worse in that great Latin communion 
 which we 'call the Church of Rome, and which comprises 
 one-half, or near one-half, of Christendom : for the Church 
 which gave us Thomas a Kempis, and which produced 
 the scholarlike and statesmanlike mind of Erasmus, the 
 varied and attractive excellencies of Colet, and of More ; 
 for the Church of Pascal and Arnauld, of Nicole and 
 Quesnel ; for the Church of some now living among us, of 
 whom none would deny that they are as humble, as tender, 
 as self-renouncing, and as self-abased — in a word, as Evan- 
 gelical as the most ' Evangelical ' of Protestants by possi- 
 bility can be. 
 
 * Dante, ' Paracliso,' xxvi. 6-i — 6. 
 
 " Tlie leaves, wherewith embowered is all the garden 
 Of the Eternal Gardener, do I love 
 As mnch as He has granted them of good." — Longfellow. 
 t TEn. X. 108.
 
 COXCLUSION. 115 
 
 Xo impartial student of history can, I think, fail to 
 regard with much resj)ect and some sympathy the body 
 of British Christians which, from the middle period of the 
 reign of Elizabeth down to the earlier portion of the 
 present century, adhered with self-denying fidelity, and 
 with a remarkable consistency of temper and belief, to the 
 Latin communion. I lament its formation, and I cannot 
 admit its title-deeds ; but justice requires me to appreciate 
 the high c|ualities which it has exhibited and sadly pro- 
 longed under sore disadvantage. It was small, and dis- 
 persed through a mass far from friendly. It was cut off 
 from the ancient national hierarchy, and the noble esta- 
 blishments of the national religion : it was severely smitten 
 by the penal laws, and its reasonable aspirations for the 
 measures that would have secured relief were mercilessly 
 thwarted and stifled by those Popes whom they loved too 
 well. Amidst all these cruel difficulties, it retained within 
 itself these high characteristics ; it was moderate ; it was 
 brave ; it was devout ; it was learned ; it was loyal. 
 
 In discussing, however sharply, the Yatican Decrees, 
 I have endeavoured to keep faith ; and I think that 
 honour as well as prudence required me, when offering 
 an appeal upon public and civil grounds, to abstain not 
 only from assailing, but even from questioning in any 
 manner or regard, the Eoman Catholic religion, such as 
 it stood before 1870 in its general theory, and such as it 
 actually lived and breathed in England during my own 
 early days, half a century ago. 
 
 It was to those members of such a body, who still 
 cherish its traditions in consistency as well as in good 
 faith, that I could alone, with any hope of profit, address 
 my appeal. Who are they now ? and how many ? Has 
 what was most noble in them gone the way of all flesh, 
 
 I 2
 
 116 VATICANISM. 
 
 together with those clergy of 1826 in England and Ire- 
 land, who, as Dr. jSTewman tells iis, had been educated in 
 Gallican opinions ? 
 
 More than thirty years ago, I expressed to a near 
 friend, slightly younger than myself, and in all gifts 
 standing high even among the highest of his day, the deep 
 alarm I had conceived at the probable consequences of those 
 secessions of educated, able, devout, and in some instances 
 most eminent men to the Church of Eome, which had 
 then begun in series, and which continued for about ten 
 years, I had then an apprehension, which after-experience 
 has confirmed in my mind, though to some it may ap- 
 pear a paradox, that nothing would operate so power- 
 fully upon the England of the nineteenth century as a 
 crowd of these secessions — especially if from Oxford — in 
 stimulating, strengthening, and extending the negative 
 or destructive spirit in religion. My friend replied to 
 me, that at any rate there w^ould, if the case occurred, be 
 some compensation in the powerful effect which any great 
 Enghsh infusion could not fail to have, in softening the 
 spirit, and modifying the general attitude, of the Churcli 
 of Kome itself. The secessions continued, and multiplied. 
 Some years later, the author of this remark himself 
 plunged into the flood of them. How strangely and 
 how sadly has his estimate of their effects been falsified ! 
 They are now seen, and felt as well as seen, to have con- 
 tributed everywhere to the progress and to the highest 
 Gxa2:2:erations of Yaticanism, and to have altered in that 
 sense both profoundly and extensively, and by a process 
 which gives no sign of having even now reached its last 
 stage, the complexion of the Anglo-Eoman communion. 
 
 It is hard to recognise the traditions of such a body in 
 the character and action of the Ultramontane policy, or
 
 COXCLUSIOX. 117 
 
 In its influence either upon moderation, or upon learning, 
 •or upon loyalty, or upon the general peace. 
 
 I have above hazarded an opinion that in this country 
 it may cause inconvenience ; and I have had materials 
 ready to hand which would, I think, have enabled me 
 amply to prove this assertion. But to enter into these 
 details might inflame the dispute, and I do not see that it 
 is absolutely necessary. My object has been to produce, if 
 possible, a temper of greater watchfulness ; to promote 
 the early and provident fear which, says Mr. Burke, is 
 the mother of necessity ; to disturb that lazy way of 
 thought, which acknowledges no danger until it thunders 
 at the doors ; to warn my countrymen against the velvet 
 paw, and smooth and soft exterior of a system which is 
 dangerous to the foundations of civil order, and which 
 any one of us may at any time encounter in his daily 
 path. If I am challenged, I must not refuse to say it is 
 not less dangerous, in its ultimate operation on the human 
 mind, to the foundations of that Christian belief, which it 
 loads with false excrescences, and strains even to the 
 bursting. 
 
 In some of the works, to which I am now ofiferina' mv 
 rejoinder, a protest is raised against this discussion in the 
 name of Peace.* I will not speak of the kind of peace 
 which the Eoman Propaganda has for the last thirty years 
 been carrying through the private homes of England. But 
 I look out into the world *, and I find that now, and in 
 great part since the Vatican Decrees, the Church of Eome, 
 through the Court of Rome and its Head, the Pope, is in 
 direct feud with Portugal, with Spain, with Germany, 
 with Switzerland, with Austria, with Pussia, with Brazil, 
 with most of South America : in short, with the far larger 
 * Dr. Capel, p. 48. Arclibisliop Manning, p. 127.
 
 118 VATICANISM. 
 
 part of Cliristendom. The particulars may be found in, 
 nay, they almost fill, the Speeches, Letters, Allocutions, of 
 the Pope himself So notorious are the facts that, according 
 to Archbishop Manning, they are due to a conspiracy of the 
 Grovernments. He might as reasonably say they were 
 due to the Council of the Amphictyons. On one point I 
 must strongly insist. In my Expostulation, I laid stress 
 upon the charge of an intention, on the part of "Vaticanism, 
 to promote the restoration of the temporal sovereignty of 
 the Pope, on the first favourable opportunity, by foreign 
 arms, and without reference to the wishes of those who were 
 once his people. From Archbishop Manning downwards, 
 not so much as one of those, who have answered me from 
 his standing-ground, has disavowed this project : many of 
 them have openly professed that they adopt it, and glory 
 in it. The meaning of Monsignor Nardi, in his courteous 
 Peply, written almost from beneath the Papal roof, cannot 
 be mistaken (pp. 57-62). Thus my main practical accu- 
 sation is admitted ; and the m^ain motive which prompted 
 me is justified. I am afraid that the cry for peace, in the 
 quarters from which it comes, has been the complaint of 
 the foeman scaling the walls, against the sentry who gives 
 the alarm. That alarm every man is entitled to give, 
 when the very subject, that precipitates the discussion, is 
 the performance of duties towards the Crown and State^ 
 to which we are all bound in common, and in which the 
 common interest is so close, that their non-performance 
 by any one is an injury to all the rest. 
 
 It may be true that in human things there are great 
 restraining and equalising powers, which work unseen. 
 It may be true that the men of good systems are worse 
 than their principles, and the men of bad systems better 
 than their principles. But, speaking of systems, and not
 
 COXCLUSIOX. 110 
 
 of men, I am convinced that the time has come wlicu 
 religion itself requires a vigorons protest against this kind 
 of religionism. 
 
 I am not one of those who find or imagine a hopeless 
 hostility between authority and reason ; or who undervalue 
 the vital moment of Christianity to mankind. I believe 
 that religion to be the determining condition of our well 
 or ill-being, and its Church to have been and to be, in its 
 several organisms, by far the greatest institution that the 
 world has ever seen. The poles on which the dispensation 
 rests are truth and freedom. Between this there is a 
 holy, a divine union ; and, he that impairs or impugns 
 either, is alike the enemy of both. To tear, or to beguile, 
 away from man the attribute of inward liberty, is not 
 only idle, I would almost say it is impious. When the 
 Christian scheme first went forth, with all its authority, 
 to regenerate the world, it did not discourage, but invited 
 the free action of the human reason and the individual 
 conscience, while it supplied these agents from within 
 with the rules and motives of a humble, which was also a 
 noble, self-restraint. The propagation of the Gospel was 
 committed to an organized society ; but in the constitution 
 of that society, as we learn alike from Scripture and from 
 history, the rights of all its orders were well distributed 
 and guaranteed. Of these early provisions for a balance 
 of Church-power, aud for securing the laity against sacer- 
 dotal domination, the rigid conservatism of the Eastern 
 Church presents us, even down to the present day, with 
 an authentic and living record. But in the Churches sub- 
 ject to the Pope, clerical power, and every doctrine and 
 usage favourable to clerical powe]', have been developed, 
 and developed, and developed, while all that nurtured 
 freedom, and all that guaranteed it, have been harassed and
 
 120 VATICANISM. 
 
 denounced, cabined and confined, attenuated and starved, 
 with fits and starts of intermitted success and failure, but 
 with a progress on the whole as decisively onward toward 
 its aim, as that which some enthusiasts think they see in the 
 natural movement of humanity at large. At last came the 
 crowning stroke of 1870 : the legal extinction of Bight, and 
 the enthronement of Will in its place, throughout the 
 Churches of one-half of Christendom. While freedom and 
 its guarantees are thus attacked on one side, a multitude of 
 busy but undisciplined and incoherent assailants, on the 
 other, are making war, some upon Revelation, some upon 
 dogma^ some upon Theism itself. Far be it from me to ques- 
 tion the integrity of either party. But as freedom can never 
 be effectually established by the adversaries of that Gospel 
 which has first made it a reality for all orders and degrees 
 of men, so the Gospel never can be effectually defended 
 by a policy, which declines to acknowledge the high place 
 assigned to Liberty in the counsels of Frovidence, and 
 which, upon the pretext of the abuse that like every 
 other good she suffers, expels her from its system. 
 Among the many noble thoughts of Homer, there is not 
 one more noble or more penetrating than his judgment 
 upon slavery. " On the day," he says, " that makes a 
 bondman of the free," 
 
 " Wide-seeing Zeus takes half tlie man away." 
 
 He thus judges, not because the slavery of his time was 
 cruel, for evidently it was not ; but because it was slavery. 
 What he said against servitude in the social order, we may 
 plead against Yaticanism in the spiritual sphere ; and no 
 cloud of incense, which zeal, or flattery, or even love, can 
 raise, should hide the disastrous truth from the vision of 
 mankind.
 
 ( 121 ) 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 APPENDIX A (p. 5). ' 
 
 The following are the principal Keplies from antagonists wliicli 
 I have seen. I have read the whole of them with care ; and I 
 have 'not knowingly omitted in this Eejoinder anything material 
 to the main arguments that they contain. I place them as nearly 
 as I can in chronological order : — 
 
 1. 'Pieply to Mr. Gladstone.' By A Monk of St. Augustine's, 
 
 Eamsgate. Nov. 15, 1874. London. 
 
 2. ' Expostulation in extremis.^ By Lord Eohert Montagu. 
 
 London, 1874. 
 
 3. ' The DoUingerites, Mr. Gladstone, and the Apostates from the 
 
 Faith.' By Bishop Ullathorne. Nov. 17, 1874. London. 
 
 4. ' The Abomination of Desolation.' By Eev. J. Coleridge, S.J- 
 
 Nov. 23, 1874. London. 
 
 5. Yery Eev. Canon Oakeley, Letters of. Nov. 16 and 27, 1874. 
 
 In the ' Times.' 
 
 6. ' Catholic Allegiance.' By Bishop Clifford. Clifton, Nov. 25, 
 
 1874. 
 
 7. 'Pastoral Letters.' By Bishop Yaughan. Dec. 3, 1874. 
 London. The same, with Appendices, Jan. 1875. 
 
 8. Eeview of Mr. Gladstone's Expostulation, in ' The Month ' for 
 
 Dec. 1874 and Jan. 1875. By Eev. T. B. Parkinson, S.J. 
 
 9. ' External Aspects of the Gladstone Controversy.' In ' The 
 
 Month ' of Jan. 1875. 
 
 10. ' An IJltramontane's Eeply to Mr. Gladstone's Expostulations.' 
 
 London, 1874. 
 
 11. Letter to J. D. Hutchinson, Esq. By Mr. J. Stores Smith, 
 
 Nov. 29, 1874. In the ' Halifax Courier ' of Dec. 5, 1874. 
 
 12. 'Letter to the Eight Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P.' By A 
 
 Scottish Catholic Layman. London, 1874. 
 
 13. 'Eeply to the Eight Hon. W. E. Gladstone's Political Ex- 
 postulation.' By Monsignor Capel. London, 1874. 
 
 14. ' A Yindication of the Pope and the Catholic Eeligion.' By 
 Mulhallen Marum, LL.B. Kilkenny, 1874.
 
 122 APPENDICES. 
 
 15. ' Catliolicity, Liberty, Allegiance, a Disquisition on Mr. Glad- 
 
 stone's Expostulation.' By Eev. John Curry, Jan. 1, 1875. 
 London, Dublin, Bradford. 
 
 16. 'Mr. Gladstone's Expostulation Unravelled.' By Bishop Ulla- 
 
 thorne. London, 1875. 
 
 17. ' Sul Tentativo Anticattolico in Inghilterra, e 1' Oj)uscolo del 
 
 On™°* Sig. Gladstone.' Di Monsignor Francesco Nardi. 
 Koma, 1875. 
 
 18. 'A Letter to his Grace the Duke of Norfolk, on occasion of 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's recent Expostulation.' By John Henry 
 Newman, D.D., of the Oratory. London, 1875. 
 
 19. ' The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance.' 
 
 By Henry Edward, Archbishop of "Westminster. London, 
 1875. 
 
 20. ' The Dublin EevieAV, Art. YIL' London, Jan. 1875. 
 
 21. ' The Union Keview,' Art. I. By Mr. A. P. de Lisle. London, 
 
 February, 1875. 
 I need not here refer particularly to the significant letters of 
 favourable response which have proceeded from within the Koman 
 Catholic communion, or from those who have been driven out of 
 it by the Vatican Decrees. 
 
 APPENDIX B (p. 9). 
 
 *' I lament not only to read the name, but to trace the argu- 
 ments of Dr. Von Dollinger in the pamphlet before me." — Ahj). 
 Manning. Letter to the * Times,' Nov. 7, 1874. — ' Vatican Decrees,^ 
 
 Justice to Dr. Von Dollinger requires me to state that he had 
 no concern, direct or indirect, in the production or the publication of 
 the tract, and that he was, until it had gone to press, ignorant of 
 its existence. Had he been a party to it, it could not have failed 
 to be far more worthy of the attention it received. 
 
 Bishop Ullathorne goes further, and says of Dr. Von Dollinger 
 that "he never was a theologian." — Letter, p. 10. 
 
 Then they have made strange mistakes in Germany. 
 
 Werner, a writer who I believe is trustworthy, in his ' Geschichte 
 der Katholischen Theologie,' 1866, is led by his subject to survey 
 the actual staff and condition of the Koman Church. He says, 
 p. 470 : " Almost for an entire generation. Dr. I. Von Dollinger 
 has been held the most learned theologian of Catholic Germany ; and
 
 APPENDICES. 123 
 
 he indisputably counts among tlie greatest intellectual lights that 
 the Catholic Church of the present age has to show." 
 
 I cite a still higher authority in Cardinal Schwarzenberg, Arch- 
 bishop of Prague. On May 25, 1868, he addressed a letter to 
 Cardinal Antonelli, in which he pointed out that the theologians, 
 who had been summoned from Germany to the Council, were all 
 of the same theological school, and that for the treatment of dog- 
 matic matters it was most important that some more profound 
 students, of more rich and uniyersal learning, as well as sound in 
 faith, should be called. He goes on to suggest the names of 
 Hefele, Kuhn, and (with a high eulogy) Yon Dollinger. 
 
 The strangest of all is yet behind. Cardinal xintonelli, in his 
 reply dated July 15, receives with some favour the suggestion of 
 Cardinal Schwarzenberg, and says that one of the three theo- 
 logians named would certainly have been invited to the Council, 
 had not the Pope been informed that if invited, he would decline 
 to come. That one was Dr. Yon DoIlins:er. 
 
 I cite the original documents, which will be found in Friedrich's 
 ' Documenta ad illustrandum Cone. Yat.,' pp. 277-80. 
 
 APPENDIX C (p. 26). 
 
 As I have cited Schrader elsewhere, I cite him here also ; simply 
 because he translates (into German) upon a different construction 
 of the Seventy-third Article of the Syllabus from that which I had 
 adopted, and makes a disjunctive proposition out of two statements- 
 which appear to be in effect identical. In English, his conversion 
 of the article runs as follows : — 
 
 " Among Christians no true matrimony can be constituted by 
 virtue of a civil contract ; and it is true that either the marriage 
 contract between Christians is a Sacrament, or that the contract 
 is null when the Sacrament is excluded. 
 
 " Eemark. And, on this very account, is every contract entered 
 into between man and woman, among Christians, without the 
 Sacrament, in virtue of any civil law whatever, nothing else than 
 a shameful and pernicious concubinage, so strongly condemned by 
 the Church ; and therefore the marriage-bond can never be sepa- 
 rated from the Sacrament."* 
 
 The sum of the matter seems to be this. Wherever it has 
 
 * Schrader, Heft ii. p. ^9. Wien, 1 
 
 865.
 
 i24 APPENDICES. 
 
 pleased the Pope to proclaim the Tridentine Decrees, civil marriage 
 is concubinage. It is the duty of each concubinary (or party to 
 concubinage), with or without the consent of the other party, to 
 quit that guilty state. And as no law of Church or State binds a 
 concubinary to marriage with the other concubinary, he (or she) is 
 free, so far as the Church of Eome can create the freedom, to 
 marry another person. 
 
 APPENDIX D (p. 51). 
 
 I do not think myself called upon to reply to the statements by 
 which Bishop Yaughan has sought (' Pastoral Letter,' pp. 35-7) to 
 show, that the fear of civil war ultimately turned the scale in the 
 minds of the chief Ministers of 1829, and led them to propose the 
 Bill for Emancipation. First, because the question is not what 
 influences acted at that moment on those particular minds, but 
 how that equilibrium of moral forces in the country had been 
 brought about which made civil war, or something that might be 
 called civil war, a possibility. Secondly, because I am content 
 with the reply provided in the Goncio of Archbishop Kenrick, 
 c. viii. See Friedrich's ' Documenta ad illustrandum Concilium 
 Yaticanum,' vol. i. p. 219. The statements would, in truth, only 
 be relevant, if they were meant to show that the Eoman Catholics 
 of that day were justified in making false statements of their 
 belief in order to obtain civil equality, but that, as those state- 
 ments did not avail to conciliate the Ministers of 1829, they then 
 materially fell back upon the true ones. 
 
 To show, however, how long a time had to pass before the 
 poison could obtain possession of the body, I point, without com- 
 ment, to the subjoined statement, anonymous, but, so far as I 
 know, uncontradicted, and given with minute particulars, which 
 would have made the exposure of falsehood perfectly easy. It is 
 taken from the 'Cornish Telegraph' of Dec. 9, 1874, and is 
 signed Clericus. It follows a corresponding statement with 
 regard to America, which is completely corroborated by Arch- 
 bishop Kenrick in his Goncio : see Friedrich's ' Documenta,' i. 215. 
 
 " Of a painful alteration in another popular work, Keenan's 
 * Controversial Catechism,' (London, Catholic Publishing and 
 Bookselling Company, 53, New Bond Street,) I can speak from 
 two gravely differing copies, both professedly of the same edition, 
 now lying before me. This is so singular a case that I venture
 
 APPENDICES. 125 
 
 to give it in a little detail. Keenan's ' Catechism ' has been very 
 extensively used in Great Britain and America. In his preface 
 to the third edition, the author speaks of it as ' having the high 
 approbation of Archbishop Hughes, the Eight Eev. Drs. Kyle and 
 Carruthers ; as well as the approval of the Eight Eev. Dr. Gillis, 
 and the Eight Eev. Dr. Murdoch.' These last-named four eccle- 
 siastics were vicars-apostolic of their respective districts in Scot- 
 land, and their separate episcopal approbations are prefixed to 
 the * Catechism ;' those of Bishops Carruthers and Kyle are dated, 
 respectively, 10th and 15th April, 1846; those of Bishops Gillis 
 and Murdoch, 14th and 19th November, 1853. 
 
 " Thus this work was authenticated by a well-known American 
 archbishop and four British bishops thoroughly familiar with the 
 teaching of their Church, long before Archbishop Manning joined 
 it. Now, at page 112 of one of my copies of the ' new edition, 
 corrected by the author, twenty-fourth thousand,' are the following 
 question and answer : — 
 
 Q. — " * Must not Catholics believe the Pope in himself to be 
 infallible?' 
 
 "^. — 'This is a Protestant invention; it is no article of the 
 Catholic faith ; no decision of his can oblige, under pain of heresy, 
 unless it be received and enforced by the teaching body, — that is, 
 by the bishops of the Church.' 
 
 " It would be satisfactory if Archbishop Manning would explain 
 how his statement to Mr. Bennett squares with this statement of 
 Keenan's, and with that of the 50 Reasons. 
 
 "But, further, it would be highly satisfactory if Archbishop 
 Manning, or some representative of the ' Catholic Publishing and 
 Bookselling Company ' would explain how it came to pass that, 
 on the passing of the Vatican decree, apparently whilst this very 
 edition of Keenan's Catechism was passing through the press, the 
 above crucial question and answer were quietly dropped out, 
 though no intimation whatsoever was given that this vital altera- 
 tion was made in the remainder of the edition. Had a note been 
 appended, intimating that this change had become needful, no 
 objection, of course, could have been made. But no word has 
 been inserted to announce, or explain, this omission of so material 
 a passage ; whilst the utmost pains have been taken, and, I must 
 add, with great success, to pass off this gravely altered book as 
 being identical with the rest of the edition. The title-pages of 
 both copies alike profess that it is the ' new edition, corrected by 
 the author,' (who was in his grave before the Vatican Council was
 
 126 APPENDICES. 
 
 dreamed of) ; both profess to be of the * twenty-fourth thousand ;' 
 both have the same episcopal approbations and prefaces ; both are 
 paged alike throughout ; so that, from title-page to index, both 
 •copies are, apparently, identical. I have very often placed both 
 in the hands of friends, and asked if they could detect any differ- 
 ence, but have always found they did not. The Koman Catholic 
 booksellers, Messrs. Kelly and Messrs. Gill, in Dublin, from whom 
 I purchased a number of copies in August, 1871, were equally 
 unaware of this change ; both believed that the Publishing Com- 
 pany had supplied them with the same book, and both expressed 
 strongly their surprise at finding the change made without notice. 
 Another Dublin Eoman Catholic bookseller was very indignant at 
 this imposition, and strongly urged me to expose it. It is no 
 accidental slip of the press ; for whilst all the earliest copies of 
 the edition I bought from Messrs. Kelly contained the question 
 and answer, they were omitted in all the later copies of Messrs. 
 Gill's supply. The omission is very neatly, cleverly made by a 
 slight widening of the spaces between the questioiifs and answers 
 on page 112 and the beginning of page 113 ; so skilfully managed 
 that nobody would be at all likely to notice the difference in these 
 pages of the two copies, unless he carefully looked, as I did, for 
 the express purpose of seeing if both alike contained this question 
 and answer." 
 
 APPENDIX E (p. 51). 
 
 Extract from ' The Catholic Question ;' addressed to the Free- 
 holders of the County of York, on the General Election of 1826, 
 p. 31. 
 
 " The Catholic religion has three great seras ; first in its com- 
 mencement to the dark ages; then from the middle centuries 
 down to the Preformation ; and lastly from the Eeformation to the 
 present day. The Popish religion of the present day has scarcely 
 any resemblance with its middle stage ; its powers, its preten- 
 sions, its doctrines, its wealth and its object are not the same ; it 
 is a phantom, both in theory and practice, to what it once was ; 
 and yet the bigots draw all their arguments from the Middle Ages 
 and, passing all the manifest alterations of modern times, set up a 
 cry about the enormities of times long past, and which have been 
 dead and buried these three hundred years. This unjust conduct 
 is just the same as if you were to hang a faithful, tried domestic, 
 who had served you forty years, because he had committed some
 
 APPENDICES. 127 
 
 petty theft when he was a boy. It is the most illiberal and the 
 most unjustifiable mode of arguing, and if applied to the Church 
 of England, would reduce it to a worse case than that of her old 
 rival." 
 
 The " bigots," who are here charged by the Liberal electors of 
 Yorkshire with reviving mediaeval Eomanism, are not Yaticanists, 
 but Protestant bigots, whose sinister predictions the Yaticanists 
 have done, and are doing, their best to verify. 
 
 Both by reason of the language of this extract, and of its being 
 taken out of the actual working armoury of one of the great elec- 
 tioneering struggles for the County of York, which then much 
 predominated in importance over every other constituency of the 
 United Kingdom, it is important. It shows by direct evidence 
 how the mitigated professions of the day told, and justly told, on 
 the popular mind of England. 
 
 APPENDIX F (p. 59). 
 
 I. From the Decree. 
 
 " Et primo declarat, quod ipsa in Spiritu Sancto legitime con- 
 gregata, concilium generale faciens, et ecclesiam Catholicam re- 
 prsesentans, potestatem a Christo immediate habet, cui quilibet 
 cujusque status vel dignitatis, etiam si papalis existat, obedire 
 tenetur in his quse ])ertinent ad ficlem et extirpationem dicti schis- 
 matis, et reformationem dictse ecclesise in capite et in membris." — 
 Cone. Const. Sess. v. ; Labbe et Cossart, tom. xii. p. 22. 
 
 From the account of the Pope's confirmation. 
 
 " Quibus sic factis, sanctissimus dominus noster papa dixit, 
 respondendo ad praedicta, quod omnia et singula determinata con- 
 clusa et decreta in maferiis fidei per praesens concilium, con- 
 ciliariter tenore et inviolabiliter observare volebat, et nunquam 
 contraire quoquo modo. Ipsaque sic conciliariter facta approbat 
 et ratificat, et non aliter, nee alio modo." — Cone. Const. Sess. xlv. ; 
 Labbe et Cossart, tom. xii. p. 258. 
 
 APPENDIK G (p. 68). 
 
 Labbe, Concilia, x. 1127, ed. Paris, 1671, Canon 11. 
 
 " Ohedife lyrsepositis vestris, et siibjacete iUis ; ipsi enim prsevigi- 
 lant fro animahis vestris, tanquam rationem reddituri : Paulus
 
 128 APPENDICES. 
 
 magnus Apostolus prsecepit. Itaque beatissimum Papam Nico- 
 laum tanquam organum Sancti Spiritus habentes,* necnon et 
 sanctissimum Hadrianum Papam, successorem ejus, definimus atque 
 sancimus, etiam omnia quae ab eis synodice per diversa tempora 
 exposita sunt et promulgata, tarn pro defensione ac statu Constanti- 
 no])olitanorum ecclesm, et summi saeerdotis ejus, Ignatii videlicet, 
 sanctissimi Fatriarchse, quaon etiam pro PJiotii, neoplujti et invasoris^ 
 expulsione ac condemnatione, servari semper et custodiri cum expo- 
 sitis capitulis immutilata p)ciriter et illxsa.^' 
 The Canon tben goes on to enact penalties. 
 
 APPENDIX H (p. 76). 
 
 It appears to me tbat Archbisbop Manning lias completely 
 misapprehended the history of the settlement of Maryland and 
 the establishment of toleration there for all believers in the Holy 
 Trinity. It was a wise measure, for which the two Lords Balti- 
 more, father and son, deserve the highest honour. But the 
 measure was really defensive ; and its main and very legitimate 
 purpose fplainly was to secure the free exercise of the Koman 
 Catholic religion. Immigration into the colony was by the Charter 
 free : and only by this and other popular provisions could the 
 territory have been extricated from the grasp of its neighbours in 
 Yirginia who claimed it as their own. It was apprehended that 
 the Puritans would flood it, as they did : and it seems certain that 
 but for this excellent provision, the handful of Eoman Catholic 
 founders would have been unable to hold their ground. The facts 
 are given in Bancroft's 'History of the United States,' vol. i. 
 chap. vii. 
 
 I feel it necessary, in concluding this answer, to state that 
 Archbishop Manning has fallen into most serious inaccuracy in 
 his letter of November 10 (p. 6), where he describes my Expostu- 
 lation as the first event which has overcast a friendship of forty- 
 five years. I allude to the subject with regret; and without 
 entering into details. 
 
 * In the Greek, ibid. p. 1167, cos opyavov rov aytov Ili/ev/xaros e^orTes. 
 
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