Page:On papal conclaves (IA a549801700cartuoft).djvu/219

 Rh expedient by circumstances. It will have been seen that an organism which at first sight appears framed on principles of the most rigid formalism, contains within it a vast stock of elasticity and capacity for adaptation to new forms. This faculty has been called into play on various and capital occasions, and such departures from precedent, under a wise regard for policy, have been approved of by the concurrent conscience of generations in the Church. The great schism was healed by one of the boldest and most revolutionary measures on record,—the creation of what was a religious Constituent Assembly for the nonce,—calling into existence for a special purpose an electoral body without precedent. On other occasions, Popes have of their own authority dispensed with the most time-honoured and the most carefully enjoined prescriptions, when these were found contrary to sound policy; and the Church has never considered them to have exceeded their legitimate attributes by such stretches of authority. The constitution of the Court of Rome is therefore so far from being what it is popularly supposed, a thing of strictly limited nature, over-weighted