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Rh of the Roman Church and the primacy of the Roman Pontiff; let them, as is fitting, with us, reverence and honour with dutiful affection our Most Holy Father, Pius the Ninth, by God's Providence Pope, the lawful successor of the Prince of the Apostles, the Vicar of Christ on earth, the chief teacher of faith, and pilot of the ship of Christ, to whom the most exact obedience and internal assent is due from all who wish to belong to the fold of Christ. We declare and teach, that this authority of the Roman Pontiff comes from Christ our Lord, and that consequently it is dependent upon no power or favour of men, and remains unimpaired in all times, even in the most bitter persecutions which the Church of Rome has suffered, as was the case during the imprisonment and martyrdom of blessed Peter.'

4. The Provincial Council of Kalocza, held in 1860, declared: 'That as Peter was … the irrefutable teacher of the doctrines of faith, for whom the Lord Himself prayed that his faith might not fail, so his legitimate successors seated aloft on the Chair of Rome … preserve the deposit of faith with supreme and irrefutable powers of declaring the truth … Wherefore we also reject, proscribe, and forbid all the faithful of this province to read or maintain, and much more to teach, the propositions published by the Gallican clergy, in 1682, which have already been censured this same year by the Archbishop of Gran, of pious memory, and by the other bishops of Hungary.

5. The Plenary Council of Baltimore, which met in 1866, and to which 44 archbishops and bishops subscribed, says: 'The living and infallible authority flourishes in that Church alone which was built by Christ upon Peter, who is the head, leader, and pastor of the whole Church, whose faith Christ promised should never fail; which ever had legitimate Pontiffs, dating their origin in unbroken line from Peter himself, being seated in his Chair, and being the inheritors and defenders of the like doctrine, dignity, office, and power. And because, where Peter is, there also is the Church, and because Peter speaks in the person of the Roman Pontiff, ever lives in his