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Rh separate the See from the Successor of Peter, affirms the identity, and therefore the infallibility, of both.

In order to narrow the question, I may add that no one now contends for the necessity of General Councils. The framers of the Four Articles of 1682 were too intelligent to contend that the assent of the Church congregated in Council is necessary to an infallible declaration of the Pontiff. They contended only for the consent of the Church dispersed. But it will be difficult for them to show that such an opinion is to be found in the tradition of the Church. It is the inversion of the immemorial belief and practice of the Church. It will not be difficult to show, even in the narrow limits of a Pastoral, that the tradition of the Church is not to test the teaching of the Pontiffs by the assent of the Church, but to take the doctrine of the Pontiffs as the test of the doctrine of the Church. The Head spoke for the whole Body, and the utterances of the Head were the evidence of what the Body believed and taught. It can hardly be necessary to add that, in order to constitute an article of faith, two conditions are necessary, the one intrinsic, the other extrinsic: the former, that the doctrine to be defined be contained in the divine revelation; the latter, that it be proposed to us by the Church as revealed.

If there be anything for which the whole tradition of the Church bears witness, it is to the stability in faith of the See and of the Successor of Peter.

If there be anything not yet defined which is nevertheless proposed, as of divine certainty, by the constant tradition of the Church, both dispersed and