Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/117

Rh it is alleged, by all but a small number, may indeed be exposed now to the questions as to the form and mode of its exercise. These questions will not become less clear by being defined, that is, by being made more clear. The complications which now arise from want of a clear declaration would then be avoided. Erroneous or doubtful opinions give rise to complications; but truth excludes doubt and obscurity in proportion as it is precisely defined.

IV. That if the bishops were not unanimous as to the making of a definition, no doubt the Council would know in its prudence what course to take. The Council of Trent made no definition of the Immaculate Conception. It went to the very verge of defining it, but no further. If the bishops were unanimous in declaring the prerogatives of the head of the Church, they would not thereby abdicate or divest themselves of any privileges or endowments divinely conferred upon the Episcopate. The divine endowments of the Church are not at war with each other. The apostles did not cease to be infallible because their Head was so. The infallibility of the Church does not diminish the infallibility of Councils. The endowments of the body are the prerogatives of the head. Both have their proper sphere and their full and legitimate exercise. No bishop alone is infallible, nor is the whole Episcopate infallible without its head. Of what, then, could they divest themselves by declaring their head to be infallible?

V. That all hope of reunion with the East is alone to be found in an explicit recognition of the divine prerogatives of the Church. Reunion on anything short of this, on any principle, obscure, ambiguous, or equivocal, could not endure for a day. The rent would be made worse. The decree of the Council of Florence, which is alleged to be sufficient, was not sufficient for the Greeks. They accepted it for a moment, but no sooner were they again at Constantinople than they threw it to the winds. Reunion is not to be gained or to be sought by reducing its conditions, like a bargain, to the minimum, but by an explicit and precise acceptance of the truth. Gregory the Thirteenth, Urban the Eighth, Benedict the Fourteenth, kept strictly to the