Page:The Decrees of the Vatican Council.djvu/20

16 the sacred warfare; and the morals of the Christian world have been renewed by the more accurate training of the faithful and by the more frequent use of the sacraments. Moreover, there has resulted a closer communion of the members with the visible head and an increase of vigour in the whole mystical body of ; the multiplication of religious congregations and of other institutions of Christian piety; and such ardour in extending the kingdom of throughout the world, as constantly endures, even to the sacrifice of life itself.

But while we recall with due thankfulness these and other signal benefits which the divine mercy has bestowed on the Church, especially by the last Œcumenical Council, we cannot restrain our bitter sorrow for the grave evils which are due principally to the fact that the authority of that sacred Synod has been contemned, or its wise decrees neglected, by many.

No one is ignorant that the heresies proscribed by the Fathers of Trent, by which the divine teaching (magisterium) of the Church was rejected, and all matters regarding religion were surrendered to the judgement of each individual, gradually became dissolved into many sects, which disagreed and contended with one another, until at length not a few lost all faith in. Even the Holy Scriptures, which had previously been declared the sole source and judge of Christian doctrine, began to be held no longer as divine, but to be ranked among the fictions of mythology.

Then there arose, and too widely overspread the world, that doctrine of rationalism, or naturalism,