Page:Petri Privilegium - Manning.djvu/315



From the opening of the Council until the close of the Fourth Public Session, when leave was given to the Bishops to return for a time to their flocks, I thought it my duty to keep silent. It was not indeed easy to refrain from contradicting the manifold errors and falsehoods by which the Council has been assailed. But it seemed for many reasons to be a higher duty, to wait until the work in which we were engaged should be accomplished. That time is now happily come: and the obligation which would have hitherto forbidden the utterance of much that I might have desired to say has been by supreme authority removed.

To you therefore, Reverend and dear Brethren, I at once proceed to make known in mere outline the chief events of this first period of the Council of the Vatican.