mistakes and errors, and he becomes immediately full of the Holy Ghost." But the explanation of the term ex cathedra, which follows, limits it to the periods, "when in discharge of the office of pastor, and doctor of all Christians, he defines a doctrine to be held by the Universal Church." But, inasmuch as the pope is always a pastor and always a doctor-for we read not that St. Peter put on or put off these offices as the occasion served, or that any of the popes who claim to be his successors, treated them as merely robes of office,-every one of the acts of the popes, which relates to the discharge of their inherent functions, must be equally guarded by whatever privilege was necessary to the conservation of any one of them.

The pastoral acts of the pope can be no more divided than the pastoral office itself, and every part of them must be protected by the same grace which was given for the direction of the office as a whole. The term er cathedrâ may either have the limited meaning attached to it by Serry, which would make it extremely difficult to prove anything to fall within its scope, or it may have the unlimited meaning of the most abject curialist.

If we restrict it to those documents in which the popes assume a judicial style, such as bulls and constitutions having an official and general publication, to the exclusion of briefs, epistles, exhortations, and resolutions of matters of faith-then we must arrive at the conclusion that even Innocent III. and Alexander III., as their style was rather consultative than judicial, never spoke ex cathedra, and that no such utterance exists in all the previous popes who still less affected the style of the Curia. The innumerable extracts from the Papal Epistles, which form the bulk of the Code of Gratian and the foundation of the Roman canon law, become thus mere private opinions, destitute of the seal of the so-called charisma.

"Rome itself," writes Bishop Ricci, of Pistoja, "did not at this time assume a legislative tone. The popes, when consulted, either resolved doubts or prescribed rules of observance, not alleging their own laws or reservations, but referring always to the authority of tradition and to the canons of the Church." The charisma must have, therefore, been altogether a new gift, derived to the later mediæval

*Vie de Scipion de Ricci, tom. iv. p. 223.

popes, in right of their assuming a new form of addressing themselves to the world—this new form, or stilus curia, being the only criterion distinguishing a papal opinion from a papal decree.

Yet, we gather from the third chapter of the definition, that this "charisma" is "given to all bishops who have been set by the Holy Ghost to succeed and hold the place of the apostles" (not excluding here Peter himself); and thus the infallibility and the charisma, which imparts it, becomes diffused over the whole church. The seven hundred bishops who surrendered their ancient liberties in this fatal Council, make here a last struggle for life, a desperate struggle to get back the precious legacy of St. Cyprian: "Episcopatus est unus, cujus a singulis in solidum pars tenetur."

The Council of Trent had fortunately secured it to the church during the darkest period of its eclipse, and even when this was exchanged for a willing slavery, the Vatican bishops could not quite forget that they once were free-once claimed to represent the apostles as co-heirs with the pope, their master, and "cast a longing, lingering look behind" in this re-assertion of their earlier rights.

This passage is memorable, inasmuch as it gives a death-wound to the wretched flattery which derives the episcopal jurisdiction mediately through the popes, instead of immediately from Christ Himself. Nay, it would seem that the charisma itself is transferred to the whole body in the words which follow, and which declare that the Roman pontiff "is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that His church should be endowed." For these words convey the infallibility to the church first, and then to the Roman pontiff; unless the pontiff is himself the church—a delusion which the Councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basle, sufficiently dispelled-not to speak of that earlier Council which cut off from the church Pope Honorius as a heretic and castaway. Christ (we are told) "willed His church to possess" this infallibility

-a higher title than that of the popes, who simply "will" themselves to possess it, and hesitated so long to proclaim the fact that they do possess it.

But, supposing the conveyance of the gift to be equally good in either case, the definition simply confers upon the pope that kind of power and that degree of power which Christ willed His church to

possess, and leaves it to be yet determined what the "infallibility" really is, and how far the will and design of Christ extended it. "Eâ infallibilitate quâ voluit." The question arises naturally, what was the Divine will in this respect; and we, at least, who hold to the lines of a more primitive faith, have no difficulty in recognizing the truth that where inspiration fails, infallibility fails also-that indefectibility was all that was conferred upon the church when the revelation of divine truth was completed that the confirmation in his first faith, and not the conformation of a new faith, was the chief gift of our Lord to the fallen but restored apostle, and through him to the whole church. One last feature remains in the Vatican definition-one last assertion which is in fact the only real gain to the papacy in this most confused and conflicting statement. It is involved in the words that the decisions of Rome "are irreformable of themselves and not from the consent of the church." This makes the papal judgments binding upon the church proprio vigore and not by any confirmation or reception by the church itself. This is assuredly one of the most extraordinary acts of self-annihilation which was