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60 the Church in Spain, and by a plenary council in Hungary. Three weeks after the four articles appeared they were condemned by Innocent the Eleventh, afterwards by Alexander the Eighth, and a second time upon his death-bed. After the death of Alexander the Eighth, Louis the Fourteenth wrote to his successor, Innocent the Twelfth, to retract the acts of 1682; and the bishops who framed the acts wrote also to retract them. They were likewise again condemned by Pius the Sixth, and by the whole consensus of schools, theologians, and universities, except only the Sorbonne and those who were formed by it or adhered to it. It may be truly said that, under the weight of all these condemnations, the opinion which ascribed infallibility to the See of Peter, but denied it to his successor, like the opinion of the Immaculate Nativity, to continue the parallel, had gradually declined, and that the opinion which affirms the infallibility of the Pontiff had become certain; so that if an Œcumenical Council had been held at any time between 1682 and 1869, there can be no doubt that the infallibility of the head of the Church would have been defined. But the time of definition was not yet come. There existed still, not in the tradition of the Church nor in theology, but in the minds of some, an obscurity as to the distinction between the person and the office. Controversies still went on as to whether the infallibility be