divided into four Sections. The section of Doctrine had for its centre the Holy Office; that of the Mixed Questions, political and ecclesiastical, the Congregation of Ecclesiastical Affairs; that of Missions, the Congregation of Propaganda; and that of Discipline was attached to the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, with the Congregation of the Council described before.

The object of this was to engraft these new consultative sections upon the departments in which the traditions of the Holy See and the maturest learning and experience in each separate matter are incorporated by immemorial usage. The special

labours of these sections were to be afterwards laid before the entire Congregation of Direction. These minute details are given in order to show with what extreme and vigilant care the work of the Council was provided for. Nothing that human diligence

could devise was omitted.

III. Thus far we have seen with what deliberation Pius the Ninth called to his Council the cardinals, theologians, and canonists of the Church in Rome. To these he proceeded also to add theologians and canonists from other nations to elaborate with prolonged examination, as we shall hereafter see, every part of the subject-matter to be proposed in the Council of the Vatican.

But even this was not deemed to be sufficient. The Pope then gave a further order that a circular letter should be sent to a number of the bishops of all nations, selected for their knowledge in theology and canon law and for their experience in the government of the Church. In this Pius the Ninth called to his aid those who were set as doctors by Christ Himself to teach the Church of God. Every bishop is, in virtue of his office, a doctor or teacher of the faith. It matters not how large or how small his diocese may be, whether it be in the Catholic unity or in partibus infidelium, whether he have a flock under his jurisdiction or not. The bishop of the least see in this is equal to the bishop of the greatest. He has been constituted a guardian of the faith by a divine commission, and his testimony as a witness is not greater or less in weight because the city over which he rules is greater or less in magnitude. It is the same in all. St Jerome says that in this all bishops are equal, and that the episcopate of the Bishop of Rome is no greater than that of the Bishop of Eugubium. We shall hereafter see the value and application of this principle.

This order was made in the audience given by Pius the Ninth to the secretary of the Congregation of Direction on the 27th of March 1865. Letters, under strict secret, were at once written to bishops selected

from various parts of Europe, enjoining them to send in writing an enumeration of the subjects which they thought the Council ought to treat. These letters were addressed on the 10th of April to thirty-six bishops. Letters of like tenor were then despatched to certain bishops of the Oriental Churches. The answers were all returned to Rome by the month of August.

Although the injunction contained in the letters regarded only the matters to be treated, yet the bishops, in their replies, could not refrain from expressing their joy that the Pope had decided to hold an Ecumenical Council. The letters exhibit a wonderful harmony of judgment. They differ, indeed, in the degree of conciseness or diffuseness with which the several subjects are treated; but in the matters suggested for treatment they manifest the unanimity which springs from the unity of the Catholic episcopate.

The bishops note that in our time there exists no new or special heresy in matters of faith, but rather a universal perversion and confusion of first truths and principles which assail the foundations of truth and the preambles of all belief. That is to say, as doubt attacked faith, unbelief has avenged faith by destroying doubt. Men cease to doubt when they disbelieve outright. They have come to deny that the light of

nature and the evidences of creation prove the existence of God. They deny, therefore, the existence of God, the existence of the soul, the dictates of conscience, of right and wrong, and of the moral law. If there be no God, there is no legislator, and their morality is independent of any lawgiver, and exists in and by itself, or rather has no existence except subjectively in individuals, by customs inherited from the conventional use and the mental habits of society. They note the wide-spread denial of any supernatural order, and therefore of the existence of faith. They refer to the assertion that science is the only truth which is positive, and to the alleged sufficiency of the human reason for the life and destinies of man, or, in other words, deism, independent morality, secularism, and rationalism, which have invaded every country of the west of Europe. The bishops suggest that the Council should declare that the existence of God may be certainly known by the light of nature, and define the natural and supernatural condition of man, redemption, grace, and the Church. They specially desired the treatment of the nature and personality of God distinct from the world, creation, and providence, the possibility and the fact of a divine revelation. These points may seem strange to many readers, but those who know the philosophies current in Germany and France will at once perceive the wisdom of these suggestions.

They then more explicitly propose for treatment the elevation of man by grace at creation to a superior natural order, the fall of man, his restoration in Christ, the divine institution of the Church, the mission entrusted to it by its Divine Founder, its organization, its endowments and rights, the primacy, and the jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff; its independence of civil powers, and its relation to them; its authority over education, and the present necessity of the temporal power of the Holy See. These points have been here recited in full in order to show that the one subject for which, we are told, the Council was assembled, was hardly so much as mentioned. Out of thirty-six bishops a few only suggested the infallibility of the head of the Church, though his primacy could not be treated without it.

They are very few (writes one of the bishops) who at this day impugn this prerogative of the Roman Pontiff; and this they do, not in virtue of theological reasons, but with the intention of affirming the liberty of science with greater safety. It seems that with this view a school of theologians has sprung up in Bavaria, at Munich, who in all their writings have principally before them, by the help of historical dissertations, to lower the Apostolic see, its authority, and its mode of government, by throwing contempt upon it, and by attacking, above all, the infallibility of Peter teaching ex cathedrâ.

With these few exceptions the bishops occupied themselves with Pantheism, Rationalism, Naturalism, Socialism, Communism, indifference in matters of re