Newman, universally received by the English and Irish Roman Catholics of the last generation. They are now pronounced to be heretical by certain leading authorities in the Church of Rome. Dr. Manning, Father Newman, the Pope, the Vatican Council, the German bishops, have all condemned them as heretical. What are these impious, detestable, infernal, and abominable doctrines? They are comprised in the four articles drawn up, in 1682, by Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, the Prince of Roman Catholic Controversialists,' and the archbishops and bishops of France assembled in synod, and subsequently received by the entire episcopate and clergy of that kingdom; in which kingdom they also became, and have continued to be, a fundamental law of the realm. The horrible and demoniacal principles embodied in these articles are in substance as follows:

:

1. The Pope has no power over princes in temporal matters. Princes are not subject in temporals to any Ecclesiastical power. They cannot by the authority of the keys (Pope) directly or indirectly be deposed; nor can their subjects be absolved from their faith and obedience to them, or from their oath of allegiance. 2. The decrees of the Synod of Constance concerning the superiority of a general Council to the Pope shall remain in force, and unshaken; and those who infringe their authority or wrest their meaning only to the time of schism are disapproved by the Gallican Church.

3. The exercise of the Papal power is to be regulated by the canons of the Universal Church. The ancient customs and institutions of the Gallican Church shall remain unshaken.

4. The judgment of the Roman See in matters of faith is not infallible.

Now if we take these doctrines and compare them with the doctrine of the Papal supremacy as actually admitted by the Gallicans, we see at once that they are entirely contradictory to it. To say that God has appointed a deputy on earth for the purpose of ruling, guiding, and teaching His Church, and then to assert that the Church has the power of ruling, restraining, judging God's deputy, is a contradiction in terms. It supposes God to have instituted two different supremacies and chief rules in His Church; to have given it, in fact, two heads. Or else, if it does not suppose the Church's authority to rest on Divine institution, how can it consistently pretend that under any circumstances the Church can limit the exercise of the Papal power, which is Divine?

This utter contradiction has in the end caused Gallicanism to be abandoned by great numbers. The argument of the Ultramontanes against it on this ground is irresistible. Gallicanism has conceded a principle which leaves it without a logical position.

The Gallican doctrine had been held and taught in France, under the protection of the kings, from the time of Philip the Fair (c. 1300), whose contest with Boniface VIII. has been already noticed. The first of the four articles above stated comprised the doctrine of regal independence, asserted by King Philip, and condemned in the Bull Unam Sanctam. The Popes always struggled, of course, to establish Ultramontanism in France, and the kings struggled as hard to prevent them. Both had

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partisans; but the clergy, for the most part, sided with the king, and made their peace with the Pope as best they might.

After the declaration of 1682 the professors of every university in France were obliged by edict to teach the articles comprised in it; and the English and Irish Roman Catholic priesthood, who were educated at Douay, St. Omers, and the Sorbonne, were duly trained in the Gallican doctrine; and were taught to reject the Pope's infallibility, his temporal power over kings, his right to depose princes and absolve subjects from their allegiance, and his despotic power over all laws of the Church.

Accordingly the whole Roman Catholic body in these countries, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, rejected Ultramontanism. When English statesmen manifested a willingness to relax the laws against Popery, the Roman Catholics publicly professed to reject Ultramontanism in all its details. The hierarchy from 1790 to 1826 on many occasions rejected the deposing power, the temporal power, and all the other tenets calculated to cause uneasiness to the State. They avowed perfectly orthodox Gallican principles.'

Hence the Vicar Apostolic Milner, in his End of Controversy,' repudiated the notion that Roman Catholics believed in the Pope's temporal supremacy, remarking that our Lord Himself 'positively declared that His king

1 See the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone's Vatican Decrecs, &c., p. 24-32.

dom was not of this world. Hence,' he continues, the Catholics of both our islands have, without impeachment even from Rome, denied upon oath that "the Pope has any civil jurisdiction, power, superiority, or pre-eminence directly or indirectly within this realm.”1

And again, in 1826, the hierarchy of the Roman communion, in its pastoral address, spoke thus:

They declare on oath their belief that it is not an article of the Catholic faith, neither are they thereby required to believe that the Pope is infallible.

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Now, while I am on this subject, I may be permitted to advert for a moment to a subject which has been handled at some length in the Expostulation.' It seems to me that something may be done to allay the popular indignation at what is naturally regarded as perfidy on the part of the Roman Catholics: the state of the case being this, that before political privileges were granted to them they denied the Ultramontane doctrines on oath, in order to obtain these privileges; but as soon as that point had been gained, they turned round and avowed the very principles which they had denied. The case wears so unpleasant an aspect that Father Newman feels obliged to apologise for his co-religionists, and to express his belief that there are few of his creed, who will not deeply regiet, though no one be in fault, that the English and Irish prelacies of 1826 did not foresee the possibility of the

131 Geo. III. c. 32.

synodal determinations of 1870; nor will they wonder that statesmen should feel themselves aggrieved that stipulations which they considered necessary for Catholic emancipation should have been, as they may think, rudely cast to the winds.'1

That there has been in fact a breach of the conditions on which emancipation was granted, is perhaps what few unprejudiced minds would be prepared to deny. But equity must, I think, acquit the Roman Catholics in the case. They have not, I believe, intentionally or voluntarily broken through the conditions of emancipation. We must endeavour to understand the real cause of their apparent perfidy.

Let it not be imagined then for a moment that the Roman Catholic hierarchy and people, in their many declarations to the English Government on doctrinal subjects, and especially on the rights of the Papacy, spoke without the direct sanction and authority of the Pontiffs. Every Roman Catholic bishop, priest, and theologian living knew as perfectly well as all those now living, that all questions regarding faith and morals, and the general belief of the faithful, are strictly reserved to the Pontiff; that they are amongst the causæ majores, the casus reservati, which belong exclusively to the cognisance of the Pope. Not a step could have been taken in these matters, not a declaration made, not an oath sworn, that was not

1 Newman, Letter to Duke of Norfolk, p. 14, 15.