Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/86

74 ings of the Council should be regulated. After full discussion and a careful examination of the precedents of former councils, it was concluded that the forming of such order could ultimately belong to no authority except to the same which alone has the power to convene, to prorogue, to suspend, and to confirm the Council, or even to withhold confirmation from any or all of its acts. It was manifest that whensoever the head of the Church had invited the bishops in Council to express their pleasure as to the order to be observed, it had been done by way of prudence and from the desire to satisfy every reasonable wish. The experience of all numerous assemblies and even of General Councils shows that a supreme power of direction is often needed; and if this be true in assemblies of one nation, and with identity of habits and interests, how much more in an Œcumenical Council of many nations, among whom, being men, national sympathies and antipathies are often strong, notwithstanding their unity in faith. On the 29th of June 1869, it was therefore decided that the right of regulating the Council belonged to the authority which convened it, and that it was of the highest prudence to retain that right in the hands of him who is the head not only of the Council but of the Church. The importance of this, which may be called a vital law of the Church, will appear in our future narrative.