Page:William John Sparrow-Simpson - Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility (1909).djvu/90

 70 to antagonism and division. An historian of the Council says that the Pope advised the Legates that nothing should be defined without the Bishops' unanimous consent: a maxim to which constant appeal was made from the Age of Trent to that of the Vatican. The appeal was natural, for this maxim harmonised with the principle that the ultimate decision in faith rested with the Collective Episcopate.

Since Spanish and French opposition in the Council of Trent frustrated any endorsement of Italian theories of jurisdiction, it is clear what would have been the result of any attempt to make decrees on papal authority. No further addition was made in this direction. Belief in the supreme authority of the Council in matters of faith was left, so far as Trent was concerned, exactly where it was before. It remained the conviction of the Church in France.

The correspondence between Rome and the Legates at Trent has never been published yet. Members of the Council of the Vatican asked permission to see it, but Theiner, librarian of the Vatican, was not allowed to show the documents. Lord Acton says that Theiner deemed the concealment prudent.

Whether that opinion is correct or not, and it has been disputed, what is certain is that if a comparison be made between the relation of Pope and Council at Trent and at the Vatican, a vast development of papal authority will be found in the later period, and a corresponding diminution of the independent action of the Collective Episcopate. It will be sufficient here to note that at Trent the claims of minorities were respected; that nothing was passed without moral unanimity; that the Bishops framed the regulations by