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26 reigned a perfect identity of faith. On this, three centuries of separation and divergence in all things of the natural order, had produced no effect. Nothing but the Church of God alone could have lived on immutable through three hundred years of perpetual changes, and under the most potent influences of the world. Nothing has ever more luminously exhibited the supernatural endowments of the Church than the Council of the Vatican. In these three centuries it had passed through revolutions which have dissolved empires, laws, opinions. But the Episcopate of the Catholic Church met again last December in Rome, as it met in Trent, Lyons, or Nicæa. At once it proceeded to its work; and began as if by instinct, or by the prompt facility of an imperishable experience, to define doctrines of faith and to decree laws of discipline. Such unity of mind and will is above the conditions of human infirmity; it can be traced to one power and guidance alone, the supernatural assistance of the Spirit of Truth, by Whom the Church of God is perpetually sustained in the light and unity of faith.

To those who were within the Council, this became, day by day, almost evident to sense. It was no diminution from this, that a certain number were found who were of opinion that it was inopportune to define the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff. This was a question of prudence, policy, expedience; not of doctrine or of truth. It was thus that the Church was united twenty years ago in the belief of the Immaculate Conception, while some were still to be found who doubted the prudence of defining it. Setting aside