Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/429

396 of these articles matters which were stated in a scattered and detached way throughout this same decree. For which reason have we not only far graver cause for expostulating regarding the synod than our predecessors, with respect to that meeting (of the Gallican clergy), but further, no inconsiderable injury is inflicted on the Gallican Church itself, which the synod deemed worthy to have its authority called in to patronise the errors with which that decree was contaminated.

Wherefore, whatever acts of the Gallican Convention, on their coming forth soon after, our venerable predecessor, Innocentius XI., by a letter in the form of a brief, on the 2nd of April, 1682, but afterwards more expressly, Alexander VIII., in the constitution Inter multiplices, on the 4th of August, 1609, in virtue of their apostolic duty, disapproved, rescinded, and declared null and void; our pastoral solicitude more forcibly requires of us to condemn and reprobate the recent adoption of these same acts which took place in the synod, and which laboured under so many vices, such adoption being rash, scandalous, and especially as being extremely injurious to the Apostolic See, as we reprobate and condemn it by this our present constitution, and wish it to be considered reprobated and condemned. To that class of fraud it appertains, that the synod, comprising in this very decree several articles regarding faith, which the theologians of the faculty of Louvain laid before the judgment of Innocentius XI., as well as twelve others also presented by Cardinal de Noailles to Benedict XIII., hesitated not to awaken an idle and silly fiction from the Second Council of Utrecht, which was reprobated, and inconsiderately blazoned it among the multitude, that it was well known to all Europe that those articles were submitted to the most rigorous examination at Rome, and that they not only escaped free from any censure whatsoever, but that they were recommended by the aforesaid Roman pontiffs; of which asserted commendation, however, there is no authentic document extant; nay more, this same is contradicted by the proceedings of the examination, which are preserved in the tablets of our Supreme Inquisition, from which this only appears, that no judgment had been published regarding them.