Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/90

78 of Postulates were the two securities of the Council itself against any unreasonableness or imprudence of its own members. The adversaries of the Vatican Council will not deny that, according to their estimate of its members, such securities were not needless; and the friends of the Council will acknowledge that in a body of 700 men there might well be found some for whom such temperate restraints were not unwise.

4. The other point of chief importance was the method of discussion. It would be unnecessary, and indeed impossible in the space of this short narrative, to give all the reasons which were alleged, and either accepted or laid aside by the Commission of Direction, as to the best mode of conducting the discussions. It may be truly said that this most critical and difficult question was treated with a minuteness and a fulness which left nothing unweighed. Passing over the reasons, we will explain the method.

It was decided that the preparatory labours of the 102 theologians and canonists should be digested into schemata, or draft decrees—that is into a definite and positive form giving the result of the patient labours of those who had been chosen out from many nations for their learning and experience.

These schemata were altogether the work of the bishops and theologians who prepared them. They had not so much as the shadow of the supreme au-