Page:William John Sparrow-Simpson - Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility (1909).djvu/330

 310 this time difficult to predict. Hefele can see no glimmer of hope in any distant development. It is not to be expected that the Constitution Pastor Eternus will be revoked by a future Pope, or the fourth session of the Vatican Council pronounced invalid. The utmost that can be looked for is a further explanation. By this time he is the only German Bishop who has not published the Constitution. He cannot adequately express his grief that Döllinger should see no escape from suspension or excommunication. Is there no compromise with the Archbishop possible? He utters wild and useless laments over the Synod of German Bishops at Fulda. Oh, what might not have been done in Germany if only the Bishops at Fulda had stood firm! Yet he took no steps against them. Then he ends with deploring Döllinger's own impending fate. To think that Döllinger, so long the champion of the Catholic Church and its interests, the first of the German theologians, should be suspended or excommunicated; and that by an Archbishop who has not done a thousandth part of the service that Döllinger had done! That is terrible! The conclusion was now quite plain. Döllinger's replies were useless, and Hefele proceeded to publish the Vatican Decree.

It remained, and this was more difficult, to revise the case of Honorius in the light of the new dogma. In the second edition of his "History of the Councils," Hefele observes:

"We always were of the opinion that Honorius was quite orthodox in thought, but, especially in his first letter, he has unhappily expressed himself in a Monothelite fashion." This opinion he still retained, "even if … as a result of repeated new investigation of this subject, and having regard to what others have more recently written in defence of Pope Honorius, I now