ments of the west of Europe are visibly weakindeed, that they seem to have lost the skill or the power of government-and that they have become simply the index of the changes of the popular will, which veers and travels throughout the whole cycle of the compass with the rapidity of wind. Another obvious interpretation of this dictum is that the first national separation from the unity of Christendom was effected by Luther. The conflicts of nations. during what was called the Great Western Schism, the separate and antagonistic obediences which for a time divided the nations, all based and defended themselves on the principle of unity which they claimed each one for their own section. But all these separations were once more reunited in the Council of Constance. The separations of the sixteenth century were not of this sort. They were the formal going out of nations from the world-wide family of Christendom, based and defended upon the principle that participation in the unity of the Catholic Church was not necessary, and that every nation contained within itself the fountain of faith and of jurisdiction, and being independent of all authority external to itself, was therefore self-sufficing. From this followed legitimately the attempt to transfer to the crown the jurisdiction of the spiritual head of the Christian Church. It has been truly said that

C

the royal supremacy is pregnant with negation. It denies and excludes the action of the Catholic Church throughout the world from any nation in which the sovereign is over all causes, ecclesiastical and civil, supreme. In Germany, Sweden, Denmark, England, the Lutheran supremacy of the crown was fully established, with what results the state of those countries at this day attests. But it was not on them that Pius the Ninth primarily and chiefly fixed his eyes. His chief care was for the Catholic kingdoms of Europe, in which the Lutheran Reformation has never established itself. Nevertheless, in them regalism, which is a royal supremacy pushed to the very verge of schism, has universally prevailed. France from Louis the Fourteenth to the other day, in Austria from Joseph the Second, in Tuscany from Leopold the First, in Spain from Charles the Third, in Naples from the beginning of the Sicilian monarchy, the royal power has oppressed and enslaved the Church with its fatal fostering protection. Constantine called himself only ἐπίσκοπος τῶν ἔξω. But the Catholic sovereigns of the last three centuries have meddled internally in everything, from the nomination of bishops to the number of candles to be lighted upon the altar. Frederick of Prussia used to call Joseph of Austria "mon frère le sacristan."

In

The consequences of this disastrous patronage were

manifold, and ramified throughout the whole organisation of the Church. It will be enough to name three: first, the lowering and secularising of the episcopate and priesthood by contact with courts and their ambitions; secondly, the suspension of the spiritual liberty of the Church in its discipline, synods, and tribunals; and, thirdly, the protection given by kings to unsound teachers, as Van Espen, de Hontheim in canon law, and in theology to the authors of the Four Articles, by Louis the Fourteenth. In this sense it is most true that the Lutheran movement has steadily penetrated into Catholic countries. This excessive regalism produced its inevitable reaction, and the revolutions of this century have paralysed all royal supremacies by establishing the doctrine that the State, as such, has no religion.

It may therefore be said that the second period of the Christian world has closed. Of thirty-six crowned heads ten are still Catholic, two are of the Greek separation, twenty-four are nominally Protestant. The people of many and great nations are faithful and fervent children of the Catholic Church, but the Revolution either openly or secretly, in its substance or in its spirit, is behind every throne and in almost every government and legislature of the Christian world. The public laws even of the

nations in which the people are Catholic are Catholic no longer. The unity of the nations in faith and worship, as the Apostles founded it, seems now to be dissolved. The unity of the Church is more compact and solid than ever, but the Christendom of Christian kingdoms is of the past. We have entered into a third period. The Church began not with kings, but with the peoples of the world, and to the peoples, it may be, the Church will once more return. The princes and governments and legislatures of the world were everywhere against it at its outset : they are so again. But the hostility of the nineteenth century is keener than the hostility of the first. Then the world had never believed in Christianity; now it is falling from it. But the Church is the same, and can renew its relations with whatsoever forms of civil life the world is pleased to fashion for itself. If, as political foresight has predicted, all nations are on their way to democracy, the Church will know how to meet this new and strange aspect of the world. The high policy of wisdom by which the Pontiffs held together the dynasties of the Middle Age will know how to hold together the peoples who still believe. Such was the world on which Pius the Ninth was looking out when he conceived the thought of an Ecumenical Council. He saw the world which was once all Catholic

tossed and

harassed by the revolt of its intellect against the revelation of God, and of its will against his law; by the revolt of civil society against the sovereignty of God; and by the anti-christian spirit which is driving on princes and governments towards antichristian revolutions. He to whom, in the words of St John Chrysostom, the whole world was committed, saw in the Council of the Vatican the only adequate remedy for the world-wide evils of the nineteenth century.

It will be remembered that the Consultors, in giving their opinion that the holding of a Council was expedient, gave no opinion as to the time when it could safely be convoked. The threatening aspect of the times was enough to make them hesitate.

On the 17th of November 1865, letters were written to the nuncios at Paris, Vienna, Madrid, Munich, and Brussels, announcing the intention of Pius the Ninth to hold an Ecumenical Council, and desiring them to give their opinion whether the circumstances of the times were such as to make its convocation prudent. They were also directed to send the names of two theologians or canonists of special reputation in the respective countries to which they were accredited. Their answers came at the close of the year 1865.

The Commission of Direction held its third session