Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/204

192 which the Gnosticism, illuminism, and intellectual aberrations of the nineteenth century have especially fastened.

It was therefore most wisely decided to do first what was most wanted, and to do it speedily and surely.

11. The same is precisely true of the first schema on the Church of Christ. It was prolix and multifarious. It contained fifteen chapters. Much of its contents had been already implicitly or even explicitly defined. Its chief points, as, for instance, the infallibility of the Church, have never been denied or even doubted by any Catholic.

But as to the Roman Pontiff, the discussions on the third and fourth chapters, the number of the speakers, the multitude of amendments will show what was the mental anxiety even among the pastors of the Church. Certainly, then, it was wisely determined to define first the truths which had been denied, to declare that which had been contradicted, to settle that which had been in controversy, before treating of those things in which all men were agreed.

Besides, to treat of the whole schema of fifteen or (as it became) sixteen chapters, in the time still remaining to the Council, was impossible. It was foreseen that the summer heats would cut short the work of the Council before August. We have already