Page:William John Sparrow-Simpson - Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility (1909).djvu/347

 ] the German Bishops, who, for the most part belonged to the Opposition; and was also on confidential terms with Mgr. Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, and with the Bishop of Orleans, and had not a little to do with bringing into closer union the Bishops of France and Germany. He was also active in furnishing the Opposition with Dr Döllinger and Professor Friedrich's historical criticisms of the Papacy. Lord Acton, as Manning knew well, did more than any other man, except the Bishop of Orleans, in exciting public feeling, especially in Germany and England, against the Vatican Council.

When, therefore, the Vatican Decree was passed and the process of reducing objectors to uniformity began, it was scarcely probable that Lord Acton would be left unchallenged. Nor did he continue silent. He published a sketch of the history of the Vatican Council which, while confined strictly to facts, must have been supremely distasteful to the victorious side. When he said that Pius was bound up with the Jesuits; made them a channel for his influence and became himself an instrument of their designs; when he gave illustrations of authority overriding history, and the unscrupulous suppression of uncongenial facts; when he quoted at length Montalembert's emphatic letter on the transformation of Catholic France into an anti-chamber of the Vatican—he was recording what was calculated to advance the other side. Yet, of course, the registration of adverse facts is a different province from personal belief.

But Acton went so far as to describe the Infallibility doctrine as independent of reason or history.