Page:True and False Infallibility of Popes.pdf/53

44 that we Bishops too, and the Pope have a conscience, and that this doctrinal definition respecting the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff has been long and maturely weighed before God in prayer, and after long and earnest study has been declared with a quiet conscience; and I also declare it to be my firm belief that those Bishops who, in supplement to the Council, declared their adhesion to the doctrine, and gave their reasons in excellent pastorals, acted simply according to their own consciences. Lastly, as regards the good of the Church, which Dr. Schulte professes he thinks imperilled by the momentary perversion of the Hierarchy, I ask, who can imagine that things are come to such a pass that in this nineteenth century the Church of God has come to be betrayed by the Pope and Bishops, and that our opponent, Dr. Schulte, should be the man chosen by God to take the Church under his protection? Are, then, the Pope and Bishops so forsaken by God that He should let them sink into so dangerous an error in doctrine? Has the Lord forgotten His promises? Can He ever forget them, and give over His Church a prey to destruction?

Quite in unison with the Archbishop of Cologne are the sentiments (as they have been credibly reported to us by the public press) of the Prince Primate of Hungary, John Simor, Archbishop of Gran, and his sentiments may be taken as expressing those of the rest of the Hungarian Bishops. We are there told that the Prince Primate never for a moment contemplated denying that the Council was ecumenical; that 'He never was opposed to the doctrine itself "that the Pope was Infallible by virtue of the promise given to the Founder of the Church," but only to the opportuneness of so weighty a step, fraught with such important consequences, in the present deplorable