necessarily to be ex cathedra: ergo Honorius's letters are ex cathedra. From this he thinks that the ex cathedra character of his teaching may be legitimately inferred. Is not this amazing? Does Mr. Renouf believe that all the decreta and decretales of the Roman Pontiffs contain infallible decisions ex cathedra? If not, how can he argue that the letters of Honorius contain an infallible definition ex cathedra, because they were called decreta and decretales by Baronius, Lupus, and others? But the Pope, replies he, speaks ex cathedra when he speaks as Pope; and when he speaks with supreme authority he speaks as Pope. But does Mr. Renouf truly believe that the Pope pronounces always an infallible definition of faith whenever he speaks as Pope? When the Pope publishes some disciplinary law or economical disposition, and authoritatively imposes it on the Church, he speaks as Pope and with supreme authority; but he does not pronounce thereby a definition of faith. A definition of faith or ex cathedra requires a definitive judgment pronounced by the Pope as universal teacher on a dogmatical question, which is addressed to all Catholics, or intended to be communicated to all, and requiring their interior assent. Mr. Renouf is of opinion that the necessity of interior assent is extremely modern; and he remarks that my opponents may safely challenge me to mention in the early centuries of the Church a single instance in which the contents of any Papal document were held to be binding upon the internal assent of all Christians. After having written a large volume on Papal Infallibility, I do not believe it necessary to answer Mr. Renouf here in few lines on that subject; but I may remind him that we have fully met his challenge throughout that volume, and that we are quite ready to hold our ground against our opponents, whoever they be.

As to the letters of Honorius, they do not contain any definition whatever with regard to the point in question. The Pope purposely abstained from defining the point in dispute, being satisfied if the two opponents, Sergius and Sophronius, would avoid the term "one or two operations," which would (as Sergius insinuated in his letter) cause scandal to the simple. "Laudamus," he said, "novitatem vocabuli auferentem, quod posset scandalum simplicibus generare. . . . . Hortantes vos ut unius vel geminæ novæ vocis inductum operationis vocabulum aufugientes. . . . . . Auferentes ergo, sicut diximus, scandalum novellæ adinventionis, non nos oportet, unam vel duas operationes definientes, prædicare, etc." By these and other words Honorius clearly declared what his mind was with reference to the question at issue; to wit, that he did not intend to condemn the doctrine of the two operations in Christ, but

only to discourage the use of certain terms. Meanwhile Mr. Renouf replies that the supposed economy of silence is a pure historical invention.* And he accuses me of unfairness in the analysis given of Sergius's letter; especially because I asserted that Sergius asked the Pope to sanction the economy of silence, and I attributed to the Byzantine Patriarch motives which were alien to his principles.† But what did Sergius mean when he said that it would be harsh and cruel to drive millions of souls into heresy and perdition for the sake of one expression; that in similar contingencies the Fathers had often followed an economy pleasing to God (θεαρέστοις οἰκονομίαις) for the salvation of many souls? Did he not assert that it would be a prudent economy to impose silence on both the contending parties; that either of the two opposite expressions would open the way to some error; and that Sophronius had already pledged his word to observe this economy of silence; and even the Emperor had adopted this advice? He concludes with the request that the Pope would read the account he had given, and let him know what should be done.§ As to the intentions attributed by us to Sergius, we said enough in our first article.

But Mr. Renouf insists, that the condemnation of the expression "one or two operations," was not economical, but dogmatical. Well, how can he prove that Pope Honorius condemned those expressions, because he forbade them economically? Our opponent should be reminded that the expression "two operations," was not at the age of Pope Honorius the technical term and the orthodox expression of Catholic doctrine, as it became after the Lateran Council, and still more after the Sixth Synod. But again, Mr. Renouf objects that, "even if the hypothesis of economy were allowed to be tenable as regards the prescription of silence, with reference to 'one or two operations,' there is not the shadow of a pretence for applying the hypothesis to the question of one or two wills." To this we reply:-1st. The question of one or two wills had not yet been explicitly mooted at the time of Sergius and Pope Honorius; nor had Sergius proposed

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§ Mr. Renouf remarks that we translated τὰ περὶ τούτων δοκοῦντα σημάναι by "that he would let him know his thoughts upon the matter." But who told Mr. Renouf that we meant to give a verbal translation of those words? Moreover, who told him that doкouvтa should necessarily be translated by the verb "to decree"? He alleges the words from Act. xv. 28, dožε T àyių πνεύματι καὶ ἡμῖν; but did he remember that the English version has seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us"?

"The Case of Pope Honorius," p. 86.

it

anything in his letter with reference thereto. Pope Honorius had then no reason either to defend anything on that subject explicitly, or to apply to it the economy of silence, though having regard to the nature of the Monothelitic dogma, that economy ought to be implicitly applied to the controversy of the two wills, which became later so prominent among the Monothelites. 2nd. The reason why Pope Honorius spoke of the will of Christ in his letter to Sergius, was that the Patriarch had mentioned in his letter that the term "two operations " would convey to the minds of many the idea of two contrary and conflicting wills coexisting in Christ. On this account the Pontiff proved that in Christ there were no conflicting wills, because there was no lust, or will of the flesh and for this reason he explained those passages of the Gospel which would seem to favour the error of two conflicting wills in Christ. In all this he gave no new definition; for such was neither asked for, nor wanted; but he repeatedly insists on the doctrine already set forth by Pope Leo, which so plainly implies the dogma of two wills and operations in Christ.

With regard to the ancient custom of the Popes publishing their dogmatical definitions in the Synod of the Bishops of Italy, or in the Assembly of the Clergy of the Roman Church, we will make but one remark. Mr. Renouf asserts, with his customary fairness, that I copied Orsi on this point. Now I find the following words in that part of my pamphlet :-"We do not now mean to spend time in demonstrating these points of ecclesiastical discipline; they will be found proved beyond all question in the learned works of Coustant, Thomassin, and Cardinal Orsi." * Is that what Mr. Renouf calls copying from Orsi? I said no more than that on that historical subject. I have moreover expressly maintained that it was not necessary for a Papal utterance ex cathedra at that age that it should be promulgated in a synod.† Mr. Renouf has wasted two pages in refuting what I did not assert, and moreover in fancying that the holy men, who, according to Abbot Anastasius, wrote Honorius's letter to Sergius, meant "a synod in the sense of Thomassin"!!I

And with this we conclude; because we do not think it worth while to go through other petty and merely grammatical remarks of our opponent, which bear very little or not at all on the subject, or to defend ourselves from other personal attacks, which have no reference to our Apology. We stop here, because we think we have fulfilled our promise.

ART. VIII.—THE VATICAN COUNCIL: ITS

AUTHORITY: ITS WORK.

Acta et Decreta Sacrosancti et Ecumenici Concilii Vaticani die 8 Decembris, 1869, a SS. D. N. Pio P. IX. inchoati. Cum permissione superiorum. Friburgi Brisgoviæ. 1871.

Documenta ad illustrandum Concilium Vaticanum anni 1870. Gesammelt und herausgegeben, von Dr. JOHANN FRIEDRICH, Professor der Theologie in München. Nördlingen. 1871.

Letters from Rome on the Council, by QUIRINUS. Reprinted from the "Allgemeine Zeitung." Authorized Translation. London. 1870.

E had intended to draw up a short concluding article on the Vatican Council, in which would be given at one view a summary sketch of that august assembly and of its work, together with the aim, the magnitude and the effect of that grand work,—grand, indeed, as we shall see, though as yet unfinished and but a part and instalment of a still grander whole. We are not sorry, we rather rejoice, that, up to the day of the present writing, certain impediments lay in the way of our executing this design. The great threatened schism, that was to sever half Germany and all the East from the Church, has had time to gather up and put forth all its strength. The great theological windbags of Munich have had time to exhaust all the resources of their "scientific history," their "liberal theology," their "higher criticism" and their "deeper views"-to shoot their last brittle sophism against the everlasting rock, to spit at it their last envenomed lie. What Bismarck, the Cavour of Prussia,† may yet do for their

*

* "All modern culture will separate itself in spirit from the Church." "Many Bishops..... know that the establishment of such doctrines [as Papal Infallibilty] would drive the educated classes of the country, if not into open schism, to an internal and lamentable breach with the Church." "An internal split in the Church is more and more revealing itself." "The promulgation of the dogma will lead to the definitive separation of the Uniate Churches in the East." "It is known [July 16, 1870] that the new dogma will lead to the separation of the Orientals."-Quirinus, pp. 33, 40, 388, 774-5, 795.

+ "M. de Bismarck's whole soul glowed with the passionate resolve to expel Austria from Germany. It was not in his character to hesitate as to means, and neither moral nor material obstacles diverted him from his object. In fact, he entered on the contest unencumbered by scruples of any kind. To raise Prussia to the political status which he thought his country ought

cause by means of penal legislation remains to be seen. But, in the line of theological assault, we may fairly assume that by this time they have left nothing substantially new to be yet advanced; that they have said their say, and can now only repeat the same thing in the same or in other words.

The Vatican Council opened on Wednesday, the eighth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine. On that day between seven and eight hundred Bishops, gathered from every region of the Christian world, met together before the throne of their supreme head. This the first was but the opening session. In it no business, whether of a doctrinal or disciplinary character, was entered on or éven alluded to. It was all worship, prayer, exhortationthe fitting preliminaries of a work that was yet to be begun; many members, but one heart, one soul, one voice, one holocaust of praise and supplication. This is the simple fact, the brief but true history of that day.

But the parable of the two standards had not yet ceasedwill indeed never cease to have its living illustrations and verifications. On the morning of that same eighth of December, 1869, before the opening of the Council, probably before a single Bishop had begun to wend his way to the Vatican Hall, an essay appeared in the London "Times" under the title of "The Crisis in the Roman Church," in which the following passage is contained :—

"The Council of the Vatican has revealed to the public gaze for the first time the internal divisions which rend asunder the unity of the Roman Catholic system from its summit to its base. . . . . For once the distractions and variations of Protestantism shrink into insignificance before the wider chasms which now yawn between the contending sections of Roman Catholic Christendom."

On reading these lines we could not trust the testimony of our eyes. We must surely, as often happens to readers as well as to copyists, have passed over some word, or phrase, or line, or even a whole sentence, which, if noticed, would entirely alter

to hold, was his religion. He entered the path of action with the fervour of a Mahomet enforcing a novel faith, and, like Mahomet, he succeeded."― The Overthrow of the Germanic Confederation by Prussia in 1866," by Sir Alexander Malet. London. 1870, (p. 8). In a leading article of the Times of last September 7, the following passage occurs :-"The ascendancy of Germany rests on her own and on the world's conceit of her strength-a strength which must not be merely preponderant, but absolutely irresistible. Strange to say, the real contest lies between the strong 'Man of Blood and Iron [Bismarck] at Berlin and the feeble old man at the Vatican."

*Exercitia Spiritualia S. Ignatii, Meditatio de Duobus Vexillis: 2 Heb. 4 die.