Page:Petri Privilegium - Manning.djvu/102

Rh dream of multitudes of the highest and noblest minds, out of the Catholic Church, in England in these last three hundred years. I hardly dare to speak with the precision of truth, lest I should seem to be severe and unkindly. But the suppression of truth is not charity; and silence in such times as these is suppression. The General Council which will be held hereafter, if God so permit, will be convened by the Roman Pontiff; and will be composed of those who believe, as an article of Divine faith, the visible unity and infallibility of the Catholic and Roman Church. Its first act will be to reaffirm, in all its amplitude, the Holy Catholic Faith as defined and declared by the sacred canons of the Council of Trent.

'The Council of Trent was a Council of recapitulation. It was the heir of all the definitions of the Church. The heresies of old assailed here and there a doctrine of the faith: but God had permitted now a heresy to assail, in a whole line of errors, not only the whole line of the faith, but also the Divine authority of the Church itself. The Council of Trent, therefore, summed up in its decrees what other Councils had declared. All their voices spoke by its one voice, as, on the day of Pentecost, all the Apostles spoke by Peter. The Councils of Africa again promulgated their decrees of original sin; the Council of Orange, of preventing grace; the Council of Vienne, of the infusion of spiritual habits in regeneration; the Council of Toledo, of the Procession of the Holy Ghost; the Council of Lateran, of the mystery