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HISTORY 
 
 BXt 
 
 THE COUNCIL OF TRENT 
 
 FROM THE FRENCH OK 
 
 L. F. BUNGENEB, 
 
 AUTHOR OF " A SERMON UNDER LEWIS XIV." ETC. 
 
 WITH THE AUTHOR'S LAST CORRECTIONS AND ADDITIONS 
 COMMUNICATED TO THE TRANSLATO 
 
 
 SECOND EDITION, WITH COPIOUS INDEX 
 
 EDINBURGH : THOMAS CONST ABLE*s4|0) CO. 
 LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. 
 
 DUBLIN: J. M'GLASHAN. 
 MDCCCLIII. 
 
l-:MN3L'r.GH : T. COSSTAliLE, PIUNTEll TO HKS 3IAJK5T! 
 
38269 
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 If ft be our highest civil privilege and indefeasible right to 
 have law deduced from the purest known fountains of morality, 
 and enforced by the strongest known sanctions, the British con- 
 stitution is deservedly most dear to us. For its morality is that 
 of the Holy Scriptures, and the sanction of its laws is that of 
 the Divine Authority as revealed there. 
 
 Viewed in this merely civil light, all religious bodies which 
 proclaim the Holy Scriptures to be the sole and sufficient rule of 
 faith and duty, whether they be endowed by the State or not, 
 are eminently conservative of our civil constitution. For the 
 more widely spread, and the more powerfully inculcated the 
 principles, the motives, and the sanctions of the Bible, the 
 better our warranty for security without despotism, liberty with- 
 out licentiousness, mutual toleration without infidelity and indif- 
 ference. 
 
 The Chmch of Eome does not rest on that foundation ; its 
 influence cannot be deemed conservative of our civil constitu- 
 tion ; yet it is eagerly bent on having a powerful organization 
 within our commonwealth. Its success must prove the reverse 
 of conservative to all that we hold most dear — to all that we 
 can most legitimately claim. Its morality has not the purity of 
 Holy Scripture, and even where most pure, being sanctioned, 
 
VI TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 not by God addressing us in his Word, but by a body weakened 
 by a thousand associations with human fallibility and corruption, 
 it has of necessity a comparatively feeble purchase on the con- 
 science and the life. Hence, wherever it reigns, no security 
 without despotism, no liberty without licentiousness, no mutual 
 toleration without infidelity and indifference. 
 
 To acquaint ourselves, then, with this antagonistic organiza- 
 tion of the Eoman hierarchy, its doctrines, its laws, its adminis- 
 tration, may be regarded as henceforth an indispensable part of 
 a sound and complete education. 
 
 And if important in a merely civil point of view, how infi- 
 nitely more so in the religious and theological ? 
 
 For this end it is not enough that Ave know something of the 
 Decrees and Canons of the last solemn Council of the Eoman 
 Church, and of the Catechism drawn up and published after its 
 close. New translations of both have lately issued from the 
 London press, 1 and testify to the interest widely felt in the sub- 
 ject. It is still more necessary that the history of that assembly 
 which, after having both added to and taken from the Word of 
 God, characteristically closed its sittings with reiterated ana- 
 themas to all who differed from it, should be known, the vague- 
 ness and variableness of its doctrines exposed, and the tendency 
 of its errors to gather force with time demonstrated by the ad- 
 vance made in some of the worst of them since. 
 
 I had long meditated some such work when that of M. 
 Bungener was put into my hands by a valued relative. It 
 came highly recommended, and at once recommended itself by 
 
 1 The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, with a Supplement, containing the 
 condemnation? of the early Reformers, and other matters relating to the Council. Literally 
 translated into English, by Theodore Alois Buckley, B.A., of Christ Church, Oxford. 
 London, 1851. 
 
 The Catechism of the Council of Trent. Translated into English, with Notes, by the same 
 Author. London, 1S52. 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. VII 
 
 a clearness, truthfulness, and vigour in the narrative, an acute- 
 ness and terseness in the reasoning, and a spirit of Christian 
 fidelity and charity, which I am sure my countrymen will 
 appreciate, if I have at all succeeded in doing it justice in the 
 translation. 
 
 It was no small encouragement, that, though personally un- 
 acquainted with the author, happening to learn how I was en- 
 gaged, he wrote me expressing his satisfaction, and offering to 
 send me his last notes and additions. These I have since 
 received and incorporated, so that the work in English is more 
 complete in this respect than the original one in French. 
 
 David D. Scott. 
 St. Andrews, May 1852. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/historyofcouncilbung 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 The Author of this History had been for some time engaged 
 on it, when the newspapers informed him that preparations were 
 in progress for celebrating, in 1845, throughout all the Churches 
 of Roman Catholicity, the three hundredth anniversary of the 
 opening of the Council of Trent. 
 
 This news not a little surprised him. He could hardly com- 
 prehend how an appeal could thus be made to so stormy an 
 epoch. Rome is surely too much interested in having the 
 Decrees of Trent regarded as oracles, to be in the least desirous 
 to have their history too narrowly scrutinized. Amid the chaos 
 which Ave were engaged in elucidating, and which we could see 
 at a glance was replete with matter as little creditable to papal 
 authority as it was to that of Roman Catholicism in general, — 
 the Church of Rome, thought we, must have strangely reckoned 
 on the ignorance of some, and on the infatuation of others, when 
 she could present herself nitron eously to be tried by such an 
 ordeal. 
 
 There was some risk, in fact, of the trial proving a rough one. 
 Some popular author might take up the subject. His book, 
 which he could easily render amusing without making it untrue, 
 might make an immense impression. The Council of Trent 
 began to be talked of in the social circles of Europe, and this 
 
 A 
 
surely was not what had been thought desirable when instruc- 
 tions were issued for having it recalled to men's minds. 
 
 The anniversary came. Nobody took advantage of it to tell 
 the world what that famous assembly was. It would seem that 
 the Church of Rome had herself taken it to heart, and had 
 seriously pondered the subject. Whether the festival was coun- 
 termanded we do not know ; we have had no news as to that. 
 At Rome, in particular, not a word was said about it. It was 
 the day on which the Pope had an interview with the Emperor 
 of Russia. 
 
 Be that as it may, we proceeded with our task, and now com- 
 mit it to the public. 
 
 We will not say that there has been any generally felt want 
 of it. To say this, would not only be, as it always is, ambi- 
 tious ; it would be untrue. Who now dreams of the Council 
 of Trent? Truly, the public has something else to do than to 
 ransack the acts of a council. 
 
 But although the want of some such work may not be gener- 
 ally felt, it is felt, nevertheless, by some, and it would be felt 
 by manv, were the idea but suggested to them, and were they 
 but offered the means of satisfying it without too much trouble. 
 Statesmen, public writers, numbers of Roman Catholics, Pro- 
 testants of all the Churches which Roman Catholicism now 
 renders restless and uneasy, alike in religion, politics, and 
 morals, by the feverish revival to which it calls our attention — 
 all at this day are interested in knowing what took place, and 
 what was done, in the assembly at which that Roman Catholi- 
 cism was definitively constituted. 
 
 Father Paul Sarpi and Pallavicini, the only two historians 
 of the Council down to this day, are little read, and we cannot 
 well expect them to be so. Differing profoundly in their quali- 
 ties and in their views, they are but too much alike in their 
 
PREFACE. 6 
 
 faults. In both we find diffuseness and dryness ; no plan, no 
 philosophy ; an absence, in fine, of all that is now looked for in 
 an historian. Sarpi's work is nothing better than a long satire, 
 lifeless and insipid ; often, too, inaccurate and unfair : Pallavi- 
 cini's is but a long and dull apology, more accurate in its 
 details, but feeble in its reasonings, and in the aggregate childish 
 and false. 
 
 Sarpi has been put on the Index Expurgatorius ; Pallavicini 
 ought to be there. His puerilities, his absurd reasonings, often 
 say more than the attacks of the opponent whom he thinks he is 
 refuting. After having read the former, who blames everything, 
 you dread being too severe ; after having read the latter, who 
 approves of everything, you are reassured. The weakness of 
 the defence clearly enough attests the weakness of the cause. 
 You feel that severity is only justice. 
 
 We would fain hope that we have been just. The preten- 
 sions of the Council of Trent, and of its foolhardy heirs, authorize 
 our sifting its claims. But when will they be sifted by those 
 who have been fashioned into obedience to them ? A colossus 
 with feet of clay, — those on whom it treads might make its 
 fragility better known than we can do, and might labour more 
 effectually towards its downfal. 
 
CONTENTS OF BOOK FIRST. 
 
 Introduction — First wishes — Saint Bernard and Luther — Awakening — Antipathies — 
 Leo X. — Illusion — Twenty-four years to wait — Adrian VI. — His theory of Indulgences- 
 Projected reforms — Projected exterminations — The Popedom in Germany — Admissions 
 made by the Pope — The hundred grievances — Clement VII. and the Diet of Nuremberg 
 — Counter-diet — Charles V. and Francis I. — Battle of Pavia — Two letters — The Colonnas 
 — The Throne and the Tiara — The Constable de Bourbon — The Sack of Rome — Hypocrisy 
 — Reconciliation — Interview at Bologna — The Augsburg Confession — Christ and Belial — 
 There is no fear of the heavens falling — The League of Smalkalde — The Turks — Geneva 
 —Paul III. — Ten years yet — The Sons of the Pope — Negotiations — Difficulties — Mantua — 
 Vicenza — Trent — War breaks out again — Hostilities cease — The Council is about to open — 
 Retrospect. 
 
 The arrival — Three years' indulgence — Scruples — Four hundred seats and no bishops — 
 Parturiunt monies — The imagination of Father Biner — Simple arithmetic — A notable ad- 
 mission — (Ecumenical Councils —The Church's Representatives — Jerusalem and Trent. 
 
 Diplomacy — Had the Protestants promised obedience — Every epoch has its fixed idea — 
 Luther's trepidation — The real object of his wishes — Vicious circle — Where was the doctrine 
 of Infallibility — Affairs of Cologne — Who was in the wrong — Complications — By what did 
 the Council hold. 
 
 The Procurators — Infallibility by Delegation — Charles V. and heresy — The Pope's offers 
 — The priest-king — The 3Iorals of the Popes — New Scandals — Of happy memory — Papal 
 Infallibility — Certain questions — The Popedom at Rome. 
 
 People begin to be impatient — 13th December 1-345 — Formidable task — What Catholi- 
 cism had been hitherto — Bossuet and St. Augustine — Progress in Religion — Reasonable 
 Inconsistencies and absurd Logic. 
 
 A wise Decree — In whose name was it to be published — Pope and Council — Prccsidenti- 
 bus legatis — Foxes — Second Session — Protests — Were appearances really saved — People 
 know not where to begin — Indecision and Alarm — "Day of Battle! Glorious Day!" — 
 Dangerous medley — What the weak-minded may think — The Queen of the Virtues — Credo 
 — Third Session — An able General — The Italians at Trent — Their Oath — The Consent of 
 the Church. 
 
 Luther dies — Shut, shut the Bible ! — Let us open it — The question of Authority — Its bear- 
 ing exaggerated — What is Authority in Religion — What can it be — Dilemma — What, at 
 bottom, is the Submission of those who think — What is Authority without Force — God 
 might have, God ought to have — What know you of that — Three Objects — To regulate the 
 faith, to preserve the faith, to maintain unity — Regulate the Faith — What that supposes 
 and to what it leads — To preserve Vie Faitlt — Have they succeeded — Variations — An eternal 
 burthen. 
 
 Unitv — Does God intond it — Conclusion. 
 
HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 BOOK FIKST. 
 
 The history of a council is not confined to the circumstances 
 amid which it was called, and which have marked its proceed- 
 ings. It properly commences with the first of those expressions 
 of the general feeling which led to its being assembled, and 
 with the wants which it had to satisfy. 
 
 But these wants and those feelings may possibly have had 
 their nature insensibly modified by time. If there are ideas in 
 which the essence remains although the forms vary, there are 
 those also in which the essence changes without any alteration 
 having taken place in the forms. Liberty, for example, has 
 hardly anything now in common with what was once understood 
 by the word; and when our modern demagogues speak of a 
 Leonidas, or of a William Tell, it is most frequently a mere 
 play of words. 
 
 When he spoke of a council for the reformation of the faith, 
 was Luther, as Bossuet 1 alleges, pursuing quite a different path 
 from Saint Bernard, when, four centuries earlier, he called for a 
 reformation in discipline ? We think not. 
 
 " Who will give me," exclaimed the Abbot of Clairvaux, 2 
 " who will give me the satisfaction, ere I die, of seeing the 
 Church in the condition she was in in her early clays !" But in 
 the twelfth century, at an epoch essentially practical, and with 
 a man who had above all things a genius for organization, the 
 
 1 Variations, B. I. 2 Epistle to Pope Eugenius III, 
 
<> HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 perfect ideal of the Church was also, above all things, an ideal 
 of order, of practical faith, and of purity of manners. 
 
 It is thus that we should account for the faith being appar- 
 ently left out of consideration in that appeal to antiquity. It 
 remains to be seen whether serious attempts to answer that 
 appeal could have left the question on the domain where people 
 thought they had placed it. 
 
 Attempts there were ; but serious attempts, or at least seri- 
 ously pursued, there were none. That the Councils of Basle 
 and Constance had not answered the desire expressed of old by 
 St. Bernard, may be seen from the fact, that the nations had 
 not ceased to call for a reformation — a council, and that people 
 spoke generally as if nothing had as yet been done. 
 
 This being the case, can it be admitted that a serious, learned, 
 and impartial council, such, in fine, as the Bishop Durand de 
 Mende fixed the basis of at the beginning of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, 1 — that such a council, even in the twelfth, would not have 
 heen led off, in spite of itself, into the domain of the faith ? 
 And had it really entered on it with the desire of seeing the 
 Church again " such as she was in her first days ;" had it, in 
 harmony with that wish, frankly placed Scripture again above 
 all traditions, who will say that discipline and morals alone 
 would have appeared altered ? We are now about to have a 
 proof to the contrary almost at every page. 
 
 Nevertheless, this work, which so many councils had been 
 unable or unwilling to undertake, nations and doctors had been 
 silently accomplishing without being aware of it. The instinct 
 of the former, and the logic of the latter, equally revolted against 
 that strange abstraction, of a church infallible in its doctrines 
 yet increasingly fallible in its manners ; people had believed 
 that they were only sighing for a disciplinary reformation, and, 
 lo ! a single shake was all that was required in order to the half 
 of Europe arousing itself from its lethargy, and sighing for a 
 reformation of the faith. 
 
 But, down to this time, the very word council was hateful 
 to the Church of Rome. In vain had it attempted to palm off a 
 deception, by itself adorning with that name some petty assem- 
 blies held in Italy by the Popes. Council, in the language of 
 Europe, no longer meant anything short of general, universal 
 council. Rome struggled to put people off with courts of an 
 
 1 Trar'utii.t d • mtuln conciln cpneraJis celebrandi. Reprinted nt Brusces in 1545. raid 
 dedicated by the Juria^imsult Probus to tha Fathers of the Cuuneil of Trent. 
 
inferior grade, but from all other quarters there arose the cry for 
 the supreme court, the States- General of Christendom. 
 
 Pallavicini has endeavoured to prove that the popes were less 
 afraid of it than people said ; but truth wrests from him, from 
 time to time, admissions that more than suffice to overturn all 
 the rest. " Just as in the pupil of the eye, the smallest grain of 
 dust causes extreme uneasiness, so, when things of the highest 
 value are in agitation, the remotest dangers give occasion to the 
 cruellest alarms." l Sarpi himself never said more or spoke better. 
 The breath of public opinion had set in motion enough of those 
 " grains of dust" so menacing to the eye of the popedom. Could 
 it proceed, then, and place itself without alarm in the midst of 
 the whirlwind ; Basle and Constance had not allowed it to en- 
 tertain any doubt as to the immensity of the danger that threat- 
 ened it. 
 
 Be that as it may, when the question had undergone the 
 change that Ave have indicated, the Court of Rome seemed re- 
 conciled for a moment to the idea of a council. On the field 
 of doctrine, it believed itself sure of victory. So in fact it was. 
 Not a single bishop had as yet deserted it ; Leo X. would have 
 thought it a fine thing to reply to the Saxon monk, by the 
 imposing voice of the whole Christian episcopate. This illusion 
 lasted but a short time ; and, to tell the truth, few had shared 
 it. Leo X.'s advisers were frightened at his confidence. They 
 were right. Whatever inxportance dogmatic questions had ac- 
 quired, it was soon easy to see that people had not on that 
 account laid aside their old complaints or their old longings. 
 The secular princes of Christendom spoke more than ever of 
 setting limits to the encroachments of the clergy ; their subjects 
 talked more than ever of their unwillingness to receive in future 
 any but men of respectable character for their pastors ; and 
 bishops spoke, too, of insisting on the restoration of those rights 
 of which Rome had gradually deprived them. In fine, Luther 
 and his friends, after having called so warmly for a council, had 
 not been slow to add the expression of their desire, that it 
 should not be convoked or presided over, or directed by the Bishop 
 of Rome. To that the pope could only reply as a pope might 
 be expected to do : he caused him to be excommunicated. 
 
 Leo X. considered himself nevertheless as engaged, if not to 
 the Lutherans, at least to the princes who had supported their 
 first appeal. In 1521, and even before that, we see him occu^ 
 
 1 Pallav.. Introd. ch. x. 
 
<S HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 pied about the selection of a city in which the council might be 
 conveniently held. But towards the close of that same year he 
 died, very far probably from suspecting that twenty-four years 
 would elapse before matters should be in a train for the accom- 
 plishment of such a purpose. 
 
 Adrian, his successor, was a man of honest intentions ; he 
 desired a reformation of abuses, but he desired to see it effected 
 by the pope ; as for reformation in matters of faith, he could not 
 conceive how any one could have so much as the idea of such a 
 thing. In his eyes, it was all one to deny the mass and to deny 
 that the sun exists ; and Luther, he thought, was less a heretic 
 than a madman. All the Eoman dogmas had for a long time 
 been struck at by the axe of Wittemberg, when he believed that 
 they were still at the cpiestion of indulgences, and spoke of 
 arranging the affair by giving explanations on that point. With 
 this view he proposed to proclaim to all Christendom, as pope, a 
 doctrine which he had taught before as a divine. According to 
 him, 1 the effects of the indulgence purchased or acquired, are 
 not absolute, but more or less good, more or less complete, 
 according to the dispositions of the penitent, and the manner in 
 which he performs the work to which the indulgence is attached. 
 A bull to this effect was said to be ready for publication; but 
 alarm seized all the pope's circle, and not without reason, for 
 their master would thereby employ his own hand in opening the 
 door by which all Luther's ideas had been successively intro- 
 duced into Germany. In vain would the indulgences continue, 
 according to the bull, to be powerful means of salvation ; for it 
 is clear that if their virtue — it matters not in what degree — de- 
 pends on the dispositions of the believer, it is very difficult to 
 avoid the conclusion, either that the indulgence, received without 
 piety, is null, or that piety, from the moment that it is true and 
 solid, may dispense with the indulgence. In either case, it is 
 not easy to see what value indulgences can have by themselves, 
 and what is, in reality, the power of granting them. We shall 
 have to return to this subject at another place. 
 
 The pope's counsellors, accordingly, resolved to leave the 
 question at rest. He confined himself to reforming, but very 
 quietly, and with a most careful avoidance of any apparent con- 
 cession, some part of what had been most criticised in the traffic 
 of indulgences. 
 
 This first step in the path of the reforms, by which he had 
 
 i Commentary on the Fourth Book of The Sciences. 
 
PROJECTED REFORMS. ■' 
 
 i 
 
 flattered himself that he was to stop the progress of Lutheran- 
 ism, was almost the last which he was to succeed in effecting. 
 We shall also have to show elsewhere, with more details, what 
 the hest-intentioned popes had to encounter on every side in the 
 way of resistances, obstacles, and inextricable embarrassments. 
 There were then at Rome, according to Ranke's calculations, 
 two thousand five hundred venal charges, the property of titulars, 
 whose incomes ought to have corresponded to the interest of the 
 capital sunk in purchasing them. They were created in batches, 
 according as the exigencies of the treasury required ; one day 
 twenty-five secretaries, another fifty registrars, and all acquired 
 the right of living at the expense of Christendom ; unless the 
 purchase-money were repaid, which it would have required 
 enormous sums to do, they could not be touched ; to diminish 
 the revenue would therefore have been unjust. " Yes, dear 
 Leo," wrote Luther in 1520, " you remind me of Daniel in the 
 den, and of Ezekiel among the scorpions. What could you do 
 alone against all those monsters ? Let us add, moreover, three 
 or four learned and virtuous cardinals : — Were you to hazard 
 attempting a remedy for so many abuses, would you not be 
 poisoned ? wretched Leo, seated on that accursed throne ! 
 If St. Bernard felt compassion for his pope Eugenius, what 
 shall not be our lamentations for thee, after a farther four hun- 
 dred years' increase of corruption ! — Yes, thou shouldst have 
 to thank me for thy eternal salvation, were I to succeed in 
 bursting that dungeon, that hell in which thou dost find thyself 
 imprisoned." Leo X. alas ! did not think himself so very ill off 
 in that frightful prison. He did his best to embellish it with all 
 that was festive and magnificent ; with those farces, 1 in short, 
 that had made it the most splendid and amusing Court in 
 Europe ; but one may readily conceive what a pious and serious 
 man must have suffered, while lying in that den and unable to 
 extricate himself, on seeing it the prolific source of all the 
 Church's murmurs, and all its evils, and all its causes of offence. 
 Adrian had not been three months on the throne when he 
 groaned to think how wanting he was in ability to accomplish 
 his fondly- cherished reforms ; and he had not been in it a year 
 when, in the bitterness of disappointment and vexation, the ex- 
 termination of the Lutherans seemed the only feasible means of 
 having done with them. 
 
 1 Pallavicini, B. I. ch. ii. It was to provide the money required for these forces that Leo 
 X. himself erected nearly twelve hundred of the offices we have mentioned. 
 
10 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 He began, accordingly, to sound the dispositions of the 
 princes of Germany ; hut he found them generally far from 
 zealous in a cause which they had long been accustomed to iden- 
 tify far more with the interests of the pope than with those of 
 religion and the Church. Those sovereigns that were farthest 
 removed from Lutheranism, were less afflicted at its progress 
 than secretly gratified at the disappointments of the Court of 
 Rome ; and old Germany had not forgotten the humiliating 
 spectacle of her emperor grovelling for three days in the snow 
 at the bottom of the walls of Canossa. 1 The remembrance of 
 Henry IV. weighed heavily on all the electoral and ducal 
 crowns. " Luther is a demon," the pope exclaimed to them. 
 "Ay," thought they, "but he is an avenging demon." And 
 they were in no haste to lay an arrest on his proceedings. 
 
 The diet was about to meet. 2 Did the pope hope to obtain 
 from the princes in a body, what each individually had all but 
 refused ? If he flattered himself with this prospect, lie was soon 
 to be undeceived. Meanwhile he neglected nothing that could 
 help him to break with that hated past of which he felt himself 
 the heir. All the disorders with which the Court of Rome was 
 reproached, he humbly confessed ; to every reasonable and use- 
 ful proposal he engaged to apply his endeavours ; but in spite of 
 all this, he did not even succeed in having his demand for an 
 anti-Lutheran crusade taken into consideration. These engage- 
 ments, it was seen, it was beyond his power to keep ; those con- 
 fessions were admitted to be sincere, but this was only one proof 
 more of the immensity of the evil. All he gained by them Avas 
 the censure of his Court, where he was openly charged with 
 weakness, cowardice, and folly ; and Pallavicini, though he uses 
 milder expressions, seems to have been sufficiently of this opin- 
 ion. He came to the conclusion that Adrian was a holy priest 
 but a wretched pope, and, in short, a poor creature. 
 
 The diet, accordingly, replied, that before proceeding to extir- 
 pate heresy, measures must be taken for extirpating that which 
 was the cause, or at least the occasion, of heresy. It had seen, 
 it said, with the liveliest satisfaction, that the pope seriously 
 thought of this. It had no doubt of a council-general being in 
 his eyes the first and the best of means. 
 
 But we have already seen that one of the pope's reasons for 
 testifying to his readiness to undertake so many reforms, was 
 precisely this, that it might put it cpute out of people's thoughts 
 
 1 1077. Disputes with Gregory Til. 2 At Nuremberg, November 1522. 
 
PROJECTED EXTERMINATIONS. 1 1 
 
 to dream of obtaining them by means of a council. Strong in 
 the consciousness of his good intentions, he had supposed himself 
 in a better position than any one else for preserving, in all its 
 fulness, the absolute power which he confessed had been so 
 much abused. And the diet had not only asked for a council, 
 but a godly, free, and Christian council, convoked as soon as 
 possible, and with the emperor's consent, in one of the cities of 
 Germany ; thus comprising, in the compass of a few lines, all 
 that was most contrary to the pope's views and interests. And 
 the Italians could but say, with redoubled murmuring, " He has 
 got only what he has brought upon himself." 
 
 Ere long the secular princes proceeded to still greater lengths. 
 About twenty years previous to this period, the Emperor Maxi- 
 milian had caused ten of the main grievances of Germany 
 against Rome to be put into a regular form ; and this document, 
 although expressed with much reserve, had produced an im- 
 mense sensation. The time for such reserve had now gone by. 
 Maximilian had noted ten grievances ; the princes proceeded to 
 note a hundred. This formed the famous Centum gravamina — 
 a writing which, in the course of a few days, found its way over 
 all Germany and Europe. 
 
 The diet had separated in March (1523). In September, 
 Adrian died. Enjoying the esteem of his enemies, but detested 
 by those who formed his immediate circle, he congratulated him- 
 self on his death-bed, on his escape from this labyrinth of tor- 
 menting reflections, and his friend Cardinal Enckenwort could 
 write upon his tomb, — Here lies one, who in his life found 
 nothing more miserable than his being called to reign. 1 
 
 The heir to his embarrassment began to pursue quite a differ- 
 ent course. As for obstacles, Clement VII. 2 was resolved to act 
 as if he saw them not ; abuses could never draw a sigh from his 
 breast ; affronts he would contrive to devour in silence, at least 
 as long as he felt that he was not in a condition to revenge them. 
 Accordingly, in a new diet, 3 he caused it to be seriously asked, 
 what people complained about; and on being referred to the 
 hundred grievances of the preceding year, he replied that he did 
 not knoAv what people were saying. He recollected, said Car- 
 dinal Campeggio, his ambassador, that a certain writing of that 
 kind had been in circulation ; but he would have considered him- 
 self guilty of insulting the princes in attributing such a pamphlet 
 
 1 . . . Qui nihil sibi infelicius in vita duxit, quam quod imperaret. 
 - Julian di Medici, cousin of Leo X. 3 Nuremberg, 15'24. 
 
12 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TKENT. 
 
 to them. As for the rest, added the legate, he was ready to give 
 every satisfaction to the Germans ; and he, Campeggio, had full 
 powers to that effect. He was then asked, where he proposed to 
 begin ? On this he shewed the plan he meant to follow, com- 
 prising some good enough reforms, but confined almost entirely 
 to the lower clergy. The diet replied, that it was ridiculous to 
 think of healing the leaves, or at most some branches, while the 
 trunk was left sickly and cankered. In an edict of the 18th of 
 April, it did not confine itself to declaring, as it had done before, 
 that it were good to call a council ; it decreed that a council 
 should actually be called, and that as soon as possible. 
 
 Campeggio now lifted the mask. As the emperor 1 was in 
 Spain, his brother, the Archduke Ferdinand, represented him in 
 the diets, and in his name exercised a part of the imperial func- 
 tions. The legate contrived to persuade him to convoke at 
 Ratisbon a kind of counter-diet, where an attempt might be 
 made to amend the decrees of that which had been dissolved. 
 The meeting did take place, but not a single elector was there. 
 Some had positively refused ; the rest had hesitated ; and, in 
 short, no one came. There were present only two didves, one 
 archbishop, two bishops, and the deputies of nine others. Cer- 
 tainly it had been the wisest course for them quietly to dissolve 
 the meeting ; but the cardinal insisted. On the 6th of July, 
 they decreed that the old decree of Worms against the Lutherans, 
 should be put in force ; and on the 7th, they adopted the project 
 of reformation, which the diet had rejected as insignificant and 
 ridiculous. 
 
 Charles V. could not openly give his sanction to decisions 
 taken without regard to legal forms ; but as it was of consequence, 
 on account of his squabbles with France, to remain on as good 
 terms as possible with the pope, he blamed the peremptory tone 
 of the Nuremberg decree. It lay with him, he said, and with 
 him alone, to demand a council. The diet might request him to 
 use his good offices with the pope ; but as for acting of itself, it 
 had no right to do so. And as it had farther decreed to meet 
 again at Spires, in the last months of that same year, to see how 
 matters went, and, if need were, to hasten their progress, the 
 emperor prohibited any such meeting. 
 
 He was soon to speak another language. Conqueror at Pavia,- 
 master of the fortunes of Francis I., his victory had made him 
 master of Italy. He no longer stood in need of the pope, who 
 
 i Charles V. - 1 525. 
 
DIET OF NUREMBERG. 13 
 
 was now no more to him than one of the petty potentates who 
 shared that country among them. In June 1526, while the diet 
 was sitting at Spires, he himself sent an order to deliberate on 
 the affairs of the Church ; and it was decided, in conformity with 
 his views, that he should be besought to endeavour with the 
 utmost expedition to have a council-general, or failing that a 
 national council, convened in Germany. 
 
 This was a new step ; and it was a great one. If the court 
 of Kome so much dreaded a council open to all its friends and to 
 all its influences, what would it not apprehend from one altogether 
 German ? 
 
 Driven to extremity, the pope did not wait until the demand 
 should be presented to him. Certain imperial decrees, more or 
 less hostile, on some points, to the rights or to the pretensions of 
 the Church, furnished him with an occasion for speaking out. 
 On the 23d of June he wrote a violent letter ; on the 25th, it 
 was followed by a brief in much milder terms, full of flatteries 
 and of promises, and without any allusion to the other. Charles 
 did the same. In a first letter, meant as a reply to the first 
 brief, he boldly recriminates ; he will appeal from it, he says, 
 like the Lutherans, to a universal and free council. In another, 
 written also two days after the first, he seems to have forgotten 
 the first altogether ; he protests his respect for the pope ; his 
 love of peace, his desire for the fraternal union of the two powers. 
 In a third letter, in fine, it is to the cardinals he addresses him- 
 self. It is for the cardinals, says he, to convoke the council, 
 should Clement persist in refusing. 
 
 He knew to whom he spoke. A powerful party, sustained and 
 encouraged by him, had been labouring for some time in Eome 
 itself, to bring down the pope. Cardinal Pompey Colonna, head 
 of the family of that name, had declared himself on the emperor's 
 side. It was the destiny of his family, he would say, not only 
 to be hated by the popes, but also to deliver the Church from 
 them. " If his ancestors had made a Boniface VIII. tremble, he 
 would contrive to bring a Clement VII. to reason." And it was 
 not only by violent measures that he had it in his power to 
 torment the unhappy pope. Clement's election had been signa- 
 lized, it would appear, by some dishonourable doings. There 
 had been cabals, and promises of money and of places ; not 
 at all uncommon, generally speaking, in the elections of those 
 days, yet strictly prohibited by the canons of the Church, and 
 consequently sufficient, should the emperor concur, for effecting 
 
14 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 the deposition of a pope on the ground of Ins being an illegiti- 
 mate intruder. Add to this an illegitimacy of another kind, that 
 of his birth. The son of one of Julian di Medici's mistresses, he 
 had never been able to prove that Ins father had married her. 
 In creating him a cardinal, Leo X. had caused a solemn sentence 
 to be passed, in which his legitimacy was acknowledged ; but 
 this was only an additional proof that it had till then been at least 
 doubtful — and people had continued to doubt. Now, the ancient 
 canons had likewise forbidden the elevation, even to the priest- 
 hood, of any one whose birth had not been legitimate or regularly 
 legitimated. 
 
 The storms were now gathering overhead ; but the pope on 
 his part had lost no time. Before breaking with the emperor he 
 had made sure of the support of France. All the oaths which 
 the royal prisoner of Pavia had been made to swear, in his prison 
 at Madrid, for the recovery of his liberty, he had been secretly 
 loosed from by the pope. Secretly leagued also under his aus- 
 pices against the emperor's encroachments, the princes of Italy 
 were ready to rise at the first signal. 
 
 They rose accordingly. The pope then sent all his disposable 
 forces into Lombardy ; but no sooner was Rome left defenceless, 
 than the Colonnas approached its walls with all the soldiers and 
 banditti they could muster. They entered the gates. The pope 
 wanted to wait their coming, seated on his throne, with the tiara 
 on his head, and the cross in his hand, like Boniface of old. 
 'Let us see,' he said, 'whether they will dare to lay hands on 
 the successor of St. Peter!' Peter himself would hardly have 
 known who he was, in such a dress and with such appurtenances. 
 Let us be just notwithstanding; there was something fine in 
 Clement's purpose. But his friends took fright, and advised him 
 not to be so confident. The Colonnas were not the men to go 
 down on their knees ; they had seen the popedom too close at 
 hand ; they knew what fir-work there was under the velvet of 
 its throne, and what pasteboard under the gems of its tiara. 
 Clement fled to the Castle of St. Angelo, and the Colonnas pil- 
 laged the Vatican. Repulsed by the people, they proceeded to 
 encamp outside the gates, whither the King of Naples, at his 
 own instance, or upon orders from the emperor, sent them daily 
 reinforcements. The pope capitulated ; he engaged to recall his 
 troops, and the Colonnas were to retire. But hardly were his 
 troops on their way back when he excommunicated the Colonnas, 
 their adherents, their friends — all in fine who aided, or shoidd in 
 
THE COLONNAS. 15 
 
 future aid them. This was neither more nor less than to ex- 
 communicate the emperor. Taking refuge in the house of the 
 Viceroy, Pompey Colonna appealed "to a future council," and 
 the appeal was found mysteriously attached one morning to the 
 church-doors in Kome. 
 
 Ere long, from the north and the south simultaneously, the 
 tempest approached. Here the viceroy demanded a reason for 
 the excommunication of the Colonnas ; there it was Charles of 
 Bourbon, the general of the imperial army, who advanced, no one 
 knew why — a minister of the evil one, according to some — the 
 minister of God, according to others, to chastise Borne, and there 
 to perish. No one knew at the time whether he had any order, 
 and it is a problem to this day whether he had any. Certain it 
 is, that he had none to the contrary, and that he was never seri- 
 ously disavowed. 
 
 Clement upon this offered again to reinstate the Colonnas. 
 The viceroy accepted this offer and returned ; Bourbon made no 
 reply, and behold him ere long at the foot of the walls of Borne ! 
 On the 6th of May 1527, the assault is given ; the general is slain, 
 but the city is taken, and fourteen thousand Germans, almost all 
 Lutherans, are left to see to the emperor's being avenged. From 
 the top of the towers of St. Angelo, the pope looks on while his 
 city is pillaged. He sees his cardinals led in procession, mounted 
 on asses. The bells sound, salvos of artillery are fired. It is 
 Luther whom they are proclaiming pope. An old soldier crowned 
 with a tiara, is by way of burlesque enthroned in his name. 
 
 Meanwhile, from one end of Europe to the other, all that still 
 cling to Boman Catholicism, and to the Boman Church, are in- 
 dignant at the very idea of an imprisoned pope. But the first to 
 utter groans on the subject is Charles V. He orders processions 
 for the pope's deliverance ; he intermits the festivities at Valla- 
 dolid on account of the birth of a son ; there is but one thing 
 that he forgets, and that is to issue orders for his troops to quit 
 Borne, and set the pope at liberty. Infamous farce ; and yet it 
 lasted six whole months. 
 
 As for the rest, as regards dissimulation, Borne is never far 
 behind. Clement proceeded to present an example less odious, 
 indeed, but still more extraordinary. 
 
 The princes who were leagued against the emperor had now 
 at last some success. A French army occupied the kingdom 
 of Naples. The pope was free. Now was the time, if ever, for 
 excommunicating- Charles V., combining with his enemies, and 
 
16 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TKENT. 
 
 giving freedom to Italy. Warmly urged to declare himself, 
 Clement hesitated, drew hack, refused. In secret he could find 
 no expressions strong enough for cursing the emperor ; in public 
 he flattered him, and loaded him with civilities ; he seemed like 
 one who never dreamed for a moment that Charles had had 
 anything to do with the siege of Rome, or his six months' cap- 
 tivity. 
 
 Why this change ? The cause of it was an enigma to nobody. 
 Florence had availed itself of the pope's reverses for the purpose 
 of shaking off the yoke of the Medieis, and Clement was bent, 
 above all things, on its recovery. To this we must ascribe his 
 meekness, and the attentions which he paid to the only one who 
 had the power to accomplish that object. Besides, nothing but 
 a sense of danger and resentment could have united him, even 
 momentarily, with his neighbours. He well knew that it was 
 not in Germany that he had the worst enemies to fear; and 
 that he had more need of the emperor to aid him against the 
 princes of Italy, than lie had of those princes against the em- 
 peror. 
 
 Charles, on his side, began to need the support of the court of 
 Rome. Never having acknowledged himself the author of the 
 pope's reverses, his pride was not engaged in having the pontiff 
 kept in abasement ; and so, no sooner were negotiations com- 
 menced, than one would have supposed that their mutual friend- 
 ship had never been clouded for a moment. The pope promised 
 all that was required of him; Charles Y. made all the returns 
 that were asked, and engaged, in particular, to [tut Florence again 
 under the power of the Medieis. One point alone remained in 
 suspense, and that again was, the grand affair of the council. 
 Charles had mentioned it, hut without any urgency, and it was 
 clear that for the moment he had ceased to care about it ; and 
 Clement, who cared about it still less, had said neither Yes nor 
 No in reply. 
 
 In March 1529 a new diet was held at Spires, and much 
 debating took place. An edict was passed, bearing that the in- 
 novations already received might be tolerated by the princes, 
 but that new ones ought not to he authorized. Against this de- 
 cree six princes and fourteen free cities protested ; and hence 
 arose the name Protestants, which was ere long to become com- 
 mon to all the Reformed. 
 
 The pope and the emperor were now reconciled ; nothing 
 seemed wanting but that they should embrace each other before 
 
ALARMS OF CLEMENT VII. 17 
 
 the eyes of all Europe. In November, accordingly, we find them 
 met at Bologna, lodged in the same palace, and eating at the 
 same table. How laughable would be those grand scenes on the 
 stage of human politics, were not their chief characteristics most 
 deplorable and most immoral ! But let us proceed with our 
 narrative, and cease to judge. We shall have enough to judge 
 ere long. 
 
 The conferences between the two potentates lasted four months. 
 The emperor, from all that appears, had seriously returned to 
 the idea of a council. He insisted on having it, and was almost 
 at the point of exacting it. Nevertheless, Clement succeeded in 
 diverting him from his purpose. He demonstrated — what, in- 
 deed, had begun to be evident — that a council could only serve 
 to interpose a gulf between the Church of Borne and the Be- 
 formed. It was necessary, before setting about having one, either 
 to bring back the Beformed, or to crush them. It was in this 
 spirit that Charles V. set out for Germany. A diet was about 
 to be opened at Augsburg, and Campeggio, the papal nuncio, 
 was to precede him there. 
 
 Though sure of the emperor's concurrence, — as far, at least, 
 as any one could safely trust in the promises of Charles V., — still 
 Clement was not without alarm. It was much to have rid him- 
 self for the moment of the dangers of a council, but the grand 
 object was to prevent the far worse evil of the diet constituting 
 itself a judge in matters of faith. To this, even without desiring 
 it, it might be led at last. The Lutherans had announced their 
 having drawn up a confession of faith, and this was to be pre- 
 sented by the Elector of Saxony. But what reception would it 
 be proper that it should receive ? If not at once condemned, 
 people everywhere would say that it was approved ; if condemned 
 at its reception, this would imply that the diet was acting as a 
 council. If the diet should refrain from meddling with it, to 
 whom should it be sent ? To the pope ? Clement would fain 
 hope not ; and not without reason. To a future council ? In 
 that case one must be called, and this is what the pope desired 
 above all things to avoid. Meanwhile, the confession made its 
 appearance ; and already it had come to be commonly called 
 the Confession of Augsburg. But what was to be done with 
 it? 
 
 By dint of great caution and contrivance, the nuncio succeeded 
 at once in concentrating the dispute between the divines of the 
 two parties. "I learn," wrote Luther to the Elector of Saxony's 
 
18 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 chaplain, Spalatin, " that you have undertaken an admirable task 
 — that of bringing Luther and the pope to agree. Should you 
 succeed I promise to reconcile Christ and Belial." On some 
 points, nevertheless, the two parties agreed ; at least they believed 
 that they were agreed. Melanchthon, in his ardent desire for peace, 
 had hazarded certain concessions, which neither Luther nor the 
 Lutherans could ratify. Moreover, even had those first points been 
 got over, there were quite enough left on which it was evident 
 that they never could hope to come to a common understanding-. 
 
 The conferences now began to languish ; nothing more could 
 be expected than that they would be broken up as soon as the 
 chief points in dispute should be brought forward. The emperor 
 had been too much accustomed to act to permit his remaining 
 long a mere spectator. In a first edict he allowed the Lutherans 
 six months to make up their - minds to become Roman Catholics ; 
 in a second, he regulated and determined, with the air of a pope, 
 what men were to believe and teach, until the approaching 
 council, on all the controverted points. To the refractory he de- 
 nounced imprisonment and death. 
 
 And, amid the general stupefaction, at a time when all the 
 human props of the Reformation seemed ready to fall away, " I 
 saw, not long since," cried Luther, "a sign in the heavens. I 
 was looking out of my window at night, and beheld the stare and 
 the whole majestic vaidt of God held up, without my being able 
 to see the pillars on which the Master had caused it to rest. 
 And yet, there Avas no appearance of its being about to fall. 
 There are some men who look about for those pillars, and would 
 fain toiieh them with their hands. And because, forsooth, they 
 cannot, they begin to tremble anon and to lament. They fear 
 that the sky may fall. . . . Poor souls ! Is not God always 
 there?" 
 
 To the contraveners, then, the prospect was that of imprison- 
 ment and death. 
 
 The conclusion suited the pope admirably, 1 but not the pre- 
 mises. No doubt the imperial edict was rigorously Roman 
 Catholic ; Charles V. said nothing in it that Clement would not 
 have said in his place. But was it for Charles to speak on this 
 occasion ? What right had he to say, " This is the faith, and 
 that is not the faith?" After his having made himself pope in 
 
 1 " Cine has a right to destroy those venomous plants vri'.h fire and sword," said Caropeggio, 
 Che name of che pope, in his " Ins'ruetio data. Cae ari in dieta Augustana." 
 
CHARLES V. IMPATIENT. 19 
 
 one sense, the Elector of Saxony, or any other prince, might 
 equally make himself so in another. 
 
 Clement took the best course, by quietly leaving to be pre- 
 sumed that nothing had been done without his approval. He 
 himself wrote to all the princes, recommending them to execute 
 the edict. The Protestants among them refused ; and as the 
 emperor talked of resorting to compulsion, they resolved to unite 
 for the common defence of their states and their faith. Such 
 was the origin of the League of Smalcalde (1531.) 
 
 Notwithstanding the League, Charles still found himself 
 strong enough to act against them ; but the nearer the moment 
 for action approached, the more repugnant did he feel to fight 
 as the mere soldier of the pope. It was from a council only, 
 thought he, that he could with any decency receive the sword 
 with which he, the emperor, was to march against the Lutherans. 
 Hence arose a fresh pressure on the pope, and fresh tergiversa- 
 tions on his part. He consented to the calling of a council, but 
 on condition that it should be held in his, the Papal States. He 
 consented to the Protestants being heard, but on condition that 
 the bishops, according to use and wont, should alone have the 
 right to vote. In a word, it was easy to see that were all these 
 demands to be conceded, it would only be at the last extremity 
 that he would yield his consent and co-operation. 
 
 The emperor now began to be impatient. The Turks were 
 all the while making rapid advances, and a few days more 
 would find them at the gates of Vienna. Charles V. required 
 all the forces that Germany could furnish, and the Protestants 
 refused theirs unless the Edict of Augsburg was revoked. This 
 point was conceded ; the pope reclaimed in vain ; freedom of 
 conscience was granted, but the decree ran thus, " until the 
 council." The summons was to be issued in six months, and 
 the opening was to take place in a year. And so, when hardly 
 done with the conquest of the Turks, we find Charles again in 
 Italy. New conferences followed with the pope, and new tergi- 
 versations, so that the parties separated almost in a quarrel. 
 
 The pope now returned to the French alliance, and Germany 
 and France being at peace, Clement could closely unite himself 
 with the king without breaking ostensibly with the emperor. 
 The negotiations went on prosperously. Catherine di Medicis, 
 the pope's niece, was to marry Henry, second son of Francis I., 
 and that monarch, on his side, was to employ all his influence 
 with the Germans, in order to prevail on them either to renounce 
 
20 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 altogether the idea of a council, or to consent to its being- con- 
 vened in Italy. He tried this, but found them intractable. By 
 dint of solicitation he obtained their promise, that they would 
 consent to a council being- held out of Germany, provided it were 
 not to be in Italy. 
 
 Where then should it be held? The French ambassadors 
 suggested Geneva as the proper place, cfi which the pope asked 
 if his ally were jesting with him, by proposing a city in which 
 Catholicism was at the lowest ebb. Shortly afterwards Clement 
 VII. fell sick, and his last days were embittered by the defection 
 of England. He died, he said, without any regrets ; he had 
 done his duty in opposing Henry VIII. 's divorce. Possibly so, 
 and Roman Catholic historians have sufficiently praised him for 
 it ; only it is forgotten, that before condemning that famous 
 divorce, he had long shown himself quite favourable to it. The 
 very act of approval had been drawn up. Pallavicini denies, 
 while Guicciardini affirms this, and Burnet 1 proves it by the pro- 
 duction of pieces which clearly suppose either the existence of 
 the brief or a formal promise to publish it. 
 
 Paul III., Clement VII. 's successor, had been cardinal under 
 six popes ; no man was more deeply conversant with all the 
 secrets of Roman policy. He saw that for the moment resist- 
 ance was impolitic ; and, accordingly, hardly had he taken his 
 seat on the throne when he began to speak of the council as the 
 sole remedy for the evils of the time. He made it his own affair, 
 and outstript all men's wishes for it. 
 
 Ten years, notwithstanding, were destined still to elapse be- 
 tween words and deeds. It is true that people were not long of 
 seeing what they had really to expect from him. Amid the 
 plans of reform which he took a pleasure in unfolding, and for 
 the execution of which he desired nothing better, he would say, 
 than the support of a council, two youths, the one sixteen, the 
 other hardly fourteen years of age, were at once created cardi- 
 nals — and these youths were his own children. 2 
 
 In spite of this scandal, or, perhaps, because of this scandal, 
 and in order to lessen the noise it made, he declared (January 
 1535) that the convocation was about to meet. Vergerio had 
 
 1 Letters of Henry VIII. and Woticy. Burnet, Collection of Records. See also Herbert's 
 Life of Henry I'll/., and Kanke's Popes. 
 
 2 His grandchildren, Alexander Farnese and Gui-Ascagnio Sforza, the issue the one of 
 his son Lewis Farnese, and the other of his daughter Constance. The follies of his youth 
 had been such, that his mother had found it necessary to have him shut up in the Castle of 
 St. Angelo, from which he escaped by letting himself down by a rope. 
 
PAUL III. ABORTIVE CONVOCATION. 21 
 
 set off for Grermany. He was to see all the princes, all the men 
 of influence : the Roman Catholics, to keep them from opposing 
 a council held in Italy ; the Protestants, to prevail on them to 
 engage to observe its decrees ; Luther, Luther most especially, 
 to keep him from opposing it. What idea, then, could have 
 been formed, we do not say of conscience, but of mere human 
 self-respect, by these men, when we see them capable of imagin- 
 ing that, after eighteen years of warfare, Luther could still have 
 remained accessible to their seductions ? Vergerio saw him only 
 once, for a very short time, according to some, and for a very 
 long time according to others. What is certain is, that he 
 gained nothing, and that some years afterwards this " great 
 mignon of the pope," as a chronicler calls him, went himself 
 over to the Reformation. As for the princes, the Roman Catho- 
 lics were unanimous in declaring that they had no wish for a 
 council held in Italy, and the Protestants, that they had no 
 wish for one held in Italy or anywhere, if the pope was to be at 
 the head of it. 
 
 From all this, Paul would have gladly allowed himself to 
 conclude, that it was no longer to be dreamt of; but he was 
 pushed on in spite of himself. " A council," reiterated the em- 
 peror, " a council we must have ! . . . I charge myself with 
 the execution of its decrees." He consented, besides, in spite of 
 the princes, to its meeting in Italy. Thus there was no longer 
 any pretext either for refusal or delay. Paul submitted, and 
 fixing on the city of Mantua, the 7th of May of the following 
 year (1537) was appointed for the opening. 
 
 Hardly had the bull of convocation appeared when it was 
 evident that it would end in nothing. Germany, France, Eng- 
 land, Italy itself, were all in a ferment with protests. Nay, the 
 very Duke of Mantua, of whom Paul had reckoned himself so 
 sure, started a thousand difficulties with respect to the favour 
 proposed to be shown to his city. Paul then fixed on Vicenza. 
 This involved a sacrifice, for Vicenza belonged to the Venetians, 
 who were often at enmity with the Court of Rome ; and so the 
 pope took advantage of this change to put off the opening for a 
 year. He fixed it for the 1st of May 1538. 
 
 On that day his legates 1 were at Vicenza : there they waited 
 for the arrival of the bishops ; no bishops came. As for those 
 of Italy, a word from Paul would have sufficed to send a host of 
 them ; but he felt that he was bound to wait until some, at 
 
 1 Cauipeggio, Simonetta, and Aleander. 
 
I'l HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 least, appeared from other quarters. The legates waited three 
 whole months, still nobody, actually nobody, appeared. It be- 
 gan to be evident that the emperor himself had no longer any 
 wish for a council, for there were plenty of bishops, both in 
 Spain and Austria, whom he might at once have sent. Upon 
 this the pope recalled his legates, but without revoking the sum- 
 mons of convocation. He fixed the opening for the month of 
 April 1539 ; afterwards, in a final bull, the time was adjourned 
 indefinitely. 
 
 We shall not enter into the details of the negotiations of all sorts 
 which occupied the years 1538, 1539, and 1540, 1 for we should 
 only have to behold anew, under almost identically the same 
 forms, all that we have had hitherto to observe. We should see 
 the same feelings of repugnance, the same obstacles, the same 
 oscillations. We hold ourselves bound to omit nothing that is 
 essential, but by no means to say everything. The preliminaries 
 of the council fill a whole book in Sarpi, and three in Palla- 
 vicini. 
 
 It was in 1541, at a new interview between the pope and the 
 emperor, that the city from Avhich it was to derive its name was 
 first spoken of as that in which it was to meet. Trent, in the 
 heart of the Tyrol, offered the advantage of being one of the 
 most central cities of Europe. It was neither so very Italian as 
 that the Germans should refuse to repair to it, nor so very Ger- 
 man as to make the pope despair of remaining master of any 
 assembly that might be held in it. 2 He only thought it very 
 far from Rome ; but after so many disputes and altercations he 
 had reason to think himself fortunate when other parties were 
 content. Time, besides, was pressing. The diet had again 
 decreed, at Ratisbon, that something absolutely must be done, 
 and that if there was to be no council-general, one must be 
 convened in Germany. Accordingly, the bull of convocation 
 appeared early in 1542, and the 1st of November was fixed for 
 the opening. 
 
 While these things were transacting, war again broke out be- 
 tween the emperor and France. It was meant, nevertheless, 
 that matters should proceed. The pope sent his legates, and 
 
 1 It was in 1538 that there appeared the famous Consilbnii de Emcndanda Ecclesia, 
 addressed by Paul III. to the Commission, which he had charged with drawing up a state- 
 ment of the disorders of the Church. To it we would refer beforehand those of our readers 
 who may think we exaggerate matters in what we shall hare to Fay of the evil-; signalized 
 in that memoir. It bears the signatures of all the most respectable Romanists of the time, 
 ('•intarini. Sadolet. Giberto, Aleander. &c. 
 
 - Trent was a dependence of the Empire, but the bishop heM the government of it. 
 
PAUL III. NEW CONVOCATION. 23 
 
 the emperor an ambassador and some bishops. After waiting 
 seven months without any one else appearing, those who had 
 come went away, and all was broken off anew. 
 
 Who, shall we say, was in fault? Francis I., it was said, 
 for it was he that broke the truce. Francis I, took revenge on 
 the Protestants ; he was resolved to shew, that if he had broken 
 up the council, he was not on that account the less a Roman 
 Catholic. The victims he sent to the stake would soon have 
 regained for him the friendship of the pope, much disposed as 
 the pontiff was otherwise not to allow his irritation to go too 
 far against anything that contributed to delay the great affair. 
 Charles V., besides, had united himself with Henry VIII., that 
 excommunicated heretic and personal enemy of the Pope ; the 
 Diet of Spires had passed an edict so frightfully tolerant, that 
 it seemed to have been dictated by the Protestants. The pope 
 reclaimed, urged, and threatened. The emperor held his peace, 
 and followed his own course. 
 
 Peace, in fine, was proclaimed between Charles and Francis, 
 and one of the articles of the treaty (24th December 1544) 
 bears that they were to unite their efforts for the meeting of the 
 council. Paul anticipated them. A new bull was published ; 
 the council was to meet on the 15th of March. It was the 
 emperor now who was angry ; he thought it strange that he had 
 not been consulted about the fixing of the time ; but as he made 
 it a point that he should be able to say, that to him, and to him 
 alone, the world was to be indebted for the council, he himself 
 became the grand mover in the matter ; and in all the courts of 
 Europe his ambassadors eagerly urged that the bishops might 
 be sent to attend it. Paul appointed his legates ; there were 
 still to be three, but three new ones. These were the Cardinals 
 del Monte, Santa-Croce, and Pole. This last (Reginald Pole) 
 was of the royal family of England. The two others we shall 
 hereafter see occupying the papal throne. Europe now began 
 to believe that, for this time at least, the council would not pass 
 off in smoke. 
 
 And now, before proceeding farther, shall we pause for a 
 little, and take a retrospect of what had been done ? We have 
 been rapid enough in our narrative for the attentive reader to seize 
 its general features, and to deduce its legitimate consequences. 
 Mutual distrust, intrigues, misapprehensions, and quarrels of all 
 sorts, acts of violence and acts of baseness, together with the 
 most inextricable mingling of interests, views, and passions, all 
 
2 f history or the council of trknt. 
 
 manifestly and grossly human, — such was the chaos from which 
 the council was to emerge ; such was the basis on which that 
 seat was to be constructed from which God himself was to be 
 considered as about to speak. Meanwhile, he who had been 
 contemptuously called by Leo X. " a clever fellow," had been 
 permitted by God to see Europe pervaded with his doctrines ; 
 and that council which Luther had called for in 1517, and 
 which he might have dreaded in 1520, — in 1545, even before it 
 had been opened, had altogether ceased, before he descended to 
 the grave, to give any serious ground of alarm to the Reforma- 
 tion. It had lost its charm before it met. Twenty-five years 
 of delays had proved superabundantly — 
 
 To some, that Borne did not wish for the Council, never had 
 seriously wished for it, and could not have any wish for it ; 
 
 To others, that the princes who had most called for it, really 
 cared very little about it ; 
 
 To the Protestants, that no concession whatever would be 
 made to them ; 
 
 To the Roman Catholics, that small abuses would be amended, 
 and the great ones preserved ; 
 
 To all, in fine, that it would not be the Church's council, but 
 the pope's council. 
 
 And as for those, if there still were such, who persisted in 
 hoping something from it, can it be imagined that they would 
 at that time have dared to promise to its dogmatical decisions the 
 authority which has been given to them since ? No ; the human 
 springs of the machine had creaked too long and too lamentably. 
 They were destined still to creak too long. The authority of 
 the Council of Trent commenced, in fact, only after its close. 
 This we shall prove, and without difficulty ; but this is just 
 what we think it of most importance to prove well. 
 
 The grand day of the opening approached at last, and all 
 eyes in Europe were fixed on the small town which was to be 
 rendered for ever memorable by the proceedings of that day. 
 
 On the 13th of March 1545, two of the legates, the Cardinals 
 del Monte and Santa-Croce, arrived at Trent. They came 
 armed with two papal bulls: the one public, merely appointing 
 them to preside in the council ; the other secret, authorizing 
 them to dissolve it, should the pope's interests seem so to re- 
 quire. This was nothing new. Martin V. had taken the same 
 precaution when the Council of Pavia met. 
 
THE LEGATES ARRIVE AT TRENT. 25 
 
 A vast crowd greeted the cardinals on their arrival, and 
 being received as princes, they responded to the popular enthu- 
 siasm, as princes indeed, hut as princes of the Church. Three 
 years 1 indulgence was bestowed on all who were fortunate 
 enough to see them pass. Then came a scruple to perplex 
 them. Every indulgence proceeds from the pope, but among 
 the powers conferred upon them, that of granting indulgences 
 had been omitted. Legitimately, therefore, they could grant 
 none — no, not for three days ; and yet they had granted one for 
 three years. What, then, was to be clone ? They wrote to 
 Eome. The pope could ask for nothing better than to have to 
 confirm what his legates had done. Three years ! what is that 
 to him ? Thirty or three hundred years would have cost him 
 no more. But, behold, he also finds a scruple to annoy him. 
 It was all very easy to give validity to the indulgence for the time 
 that had to run ; but was it possible, even for him, to declare it 
 available for the time during which it had been absolutely null '? 
 God himself cannot change the past. Let people do as they 
 might, there must always have elapsed a certain time during 
 which the faithful must have believed that they had what they 
 had not. If any of them had died during that interval, they 
 must have passed into the other world with a false passport. 
 This apparently childish embarrassment proved really a most 
 serious affair for a Eoman casuist. There was no getting rid of 
 it directly ; but it was evaded by sending the legates a brief, 
 antedated by several weeks, and which they were presumed to 
 have brought with them from Rome. Pallavicini has been at 
 great pains to put this historical incident in a proper light, but has 
 succeeded only in proving that he himself thought it very strange. 
 
 There had been a crowd, then, at the arrival of the legates, 
 but people began to ask themselves where was the council. 
 Not a bishop had appeared except Cardinal Madrucci, the 
 bishop of Trent, who had preceded the legates in order to do the 
 honours of his city and of his palace. Four hundred seats were 
 nevertheless prepared in a place set apart for them in the 
 cathedral. Although the legates were far from having any 
 desire to see all these filled, yet such a huge void could not fail 
 to be disquieting, and to have much the appearance of an affront. 
 The pope felt greatly annoyed. He was well aware that a 
 number of bishops, particularly in Italy, had thought to pay 
 court to him by not repairing to Trent ; but he felt at the same 
 time, that their absence would be attributed to him. How was 
 
2G HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 he to contrive to bring together enough without there being too 
 many ? 
 
 The 14th of March had now come, still there was nobody; 
 the 15th — still nobody, and the opening was adjourned. On the 
 23d, Diego de Mendoza, Charles V.'s ambassador, arrived at 
 Trent, and begged that they would hasten proceedings. The 
 legates held council as to what should be done. Three bishops 
 had arrived, were they to open the council ? But how open a 
 general, oecumenical, and universal council with three Italian 
 bishops ! Let us wait, they said, for a few days. These few 
 days were to be prolonged to nine months. 
 
 We refrain from repeating the jests that passed from mouth 
 to mouth when people began to see the ridiculous issue of 
 this solemn convocation of Christendom, after being twenty- 
 five years of coming to the birth. Romanists and Reformed 
 could not avoid meeting on the common ground of an ancient 
 apologue, already suggested, no doubt, to our readers, and to 
 which the name of the premier legate, Del Monte, or Of-the- 
 Mountain, gave a burlesque application. But let us not laugh. 
 This is a history, not a squib. It may, however, be very seri- 
 ously remarked, that among so many persons to whom the 
 Council of Trent has never appeared as anything but an im- 
 mense and majestic assembly, there is surely more than one 
 with regard to whom these first details must make us suspect at 
 once, that the imagination has had something to do with what 
 they have said of it. " The Council of Trent," says one of its 
 apologists, 1 " was composed of all that was most illustrious in 
 Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Hungary, Bohemia, England, 
 Ireland, Portugal, Poland, Sweden, Belgium, Moravia, Illyria, 
 and Greece." We shall soon see what all this amounted to. 
 When the imagination takes such a flight as this, it is very near 
 deserving another name. 
 
 And since we have touched on the question of number, we 
 crave leave to say a word on the subject. 
 
 We shall not go so far as to maintain that a council cannot be 
 properly called general, unless composed, literally, of all the 
 bishops of the Church ; but from this generality to that of the 
 Council of Trent, the distance was to prove so wide, that one 
 might well ask, in good faith, if no conclusion was to be drawn 
 from it. We do not think, indeed, that a more numerous assem- 
 
 1 Father Biner, s. Jesuit. 
 
QUESTION OF NUMBER. '27 
 
 ' bly would have voted differently ; the doctrinal decisions proba- 
 bly would have been the same. But, after all, had we as much 
 sympathy for the results, as we have little, it would always re- 
 main to be seen whether those results may be considered to have 
 been legally and honestly obtained. 
 
 In all deliberative assemblies, law, or custom, has fixed a mini- 
 mum of members entitled to vote. It may be the half, the third, 
 or at the least, a fourth part of the total number ; below that 
 proportion there can be no voting. In councils, although there 
 is no formal law on the subject, the dictates of common sense are 
 plain enough to make anything else unnecessary. If you summon 
 together a hundred persons, and there come only ten, no doubt 
 you may allow such a meeting, strictly speaking, the name which 
 it would have had, had it been complete ; but it is clear that this 
 would be a fiction. Now, let us see what happened at Trent. 
 
 There were three convocations in all : — the first (1545), under 
 Paul III., the second (1551), under Julius III., the third (1562), 
 under Pius IV. 
 
 In the last, the number of voters rose, towards the close, to 
 two hundred and fifty. This was a considerable number ; still, 
 it was but a feeble minority of the bishops of Christendom. Italy 
 alone reckoned more than two hundred and fifty bishops. 
 
 Yet this number, relatively so small, was nearly fourfold what 
 had appeared at the two other convocations. On the clay of 
 opening, there were only five-and-twenty ; afterwards we find 
 sixty, at most seventy, but rarely all met at once ; in several of 
 the sessions they were even under fifty. And yet that was the 
 period at which were regulated and fixed, such fundamental 
 points as scripture, tradition, original sin, grace, the sacraments, 
 &c. "What madness," said Paul IV. one day, in an access of 
 ill-humour and candour, " to have sent threescore bishops, from 
 among the least capable, to a small city among the mountains, 
 there to decide so many things !" It is true that this madness, 
 according to him, consisted in not having simply left the matter 
 in the hands of the men of ability, of whom, he added, " Rome 
 is full ;" but if his conclusion is not ours, his exclamation about 
 the threescore bishops is not the less worth recording. 
 
 Nothing can be less clear, moreover, than the distinctions by 
 which Pome has come to endow councils with the imposing title 
 oecumenical, 1 or to deprive them of it, according as it suits her 
 
 1 Universal, met from the whole inhabited earth, which, in the Roman system, implies in- 
 fallibility. 
 
28 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 to accept or reject their decrees. What legal difference will she 
 show us between the Council of Nice condemning Arianism, and 
 the Council of Tyre, ten years afterwards, condemning the faith of 
 Nice ? That of Tyre, you say, was composed only of the enemies 
 of Athanasius. An Arian will reply, that neither were there 
 in the other any but the enemies of Arms. 1 But at Nice there 
 were delegates from the pope present ; at Tyre there were none. 
 No more were there any at Constantinople in 381. That 
 council, nevertheless, is admitted as oecumenical, although there 
 was but one Latin bishop there against a hundred and forty-nine 
 Greeks. At Nice, there had been three against three hundred 
 and fifteen ; at Chalcedon, there were again three against three 
 hundred and fifty. The greater number of oecumenical councils 
 have been, numerically and geographically, much smaller than 
 many of those to which that title has been denied. 2 " They 
 became oecumenical," it is said, " by the sole fact of their having 
 been universally approved." This is a mere playing with words ; 
 a particular assembly does not become a general assembly in 
 virtue of the fact alone of its decisions having been generally re- 
 ceived ; at the most, it will be said, that it is ecpiivalent to a 
 general assembly. Then, is it well considered in this theory, to 
 what it leads ? If the number and the nationality of those pre- 
 sent prove nothing — if four hundred bishops, come from all parts 
 of the Church, can form only a particular and fallible council, 
 whilst another with forty, may become oecumenical, infallible, — 
 what then are they both at the moment of their taking their de- 
 cisions ? Why, nothing. Their authority depends on the pos- 
 terior judgment of the Church. Until the Church shall have 
 pronounced, at least by its silence, on all the points regulated by 
 the assembly, neither the faithful, nor the assembly itself, know 
 whether they can, in conscience, admit what has been decided. 
 In this manner, therefore, you escape from the objection founded 
 on the small number of bishops ; and had they been no more than 
 ten, the council might have been oecumenical ; but you can do 
 so only by admitting that every assembly of this kind, were it to 
 be composed of a thousand bishops, has no authority of itself. 
 It is only a consultative commission. Its judgments may be re- 
 formed. Infallibility comes to it from elsewhere. 
 
 u Was the Council of Trent," says an author, 3 "infallible of 
 
 1 Be it remembered, that we are here engaged in a question of legal right, {droit) of forms, 
 and we are not called upon to pronounce, for the moment, either for or against any dogma. 
 
 2 See Jurieu, Reflexions sitr les Conciles. 
 
 8 Boyer, Director of the Seminary of Saint-Sulpiee. 
 
COUNCILS HOW COMPOSED. 29 
 
 itself, or in virtue of having been subsequently accepted by the 
 Church? This we may regard as a useless question." Yes, 
 at the close of three centuries ; but we have now to do with 
 1545. We make ourselves spectators of the first proceedings of 
 the council ; here then there is a question of right, which we 
 cannot allow to be omitted. Now, then, there can be no middle 
 course ; either an oecumenical council is infallible of itself — but it 
 is not so unless it be veritably oecumenical, universal ; or it be- 
 comes infallible by virtue of the general assent of the Church, 
 in which case until this assent is ascertained, its decrees are 
 only opinions not yet clothed with the authority of decrees. 
 
 This last concession, from which so many Roman Catholics re- 
 coil, is made, on the contrary, by the ultramontanists with the 
 utmost eagerness. They view it, and with reason, as conducting 
 right on to the superiority of the pope over councils, and conse- 
 quently to his infallibility. But as this part of the question was 
 debated at Trent itself, we shall recur to it at the proper time 
 and place. 
 
 To the question of the number of the bishops in attendance, 
 should be added, in justice to the subject, that of their assumed 
 exclusive right to sit in councils. 
 
 No society whatever can logically have for its representatives 
 any but men chosen by itself. Now, are bishops chosen by the 
 Church? Twelve hundred years have past, during which the 
 people of Eoman Catholic Christendom have had no part in the 
 choice of their chief pastors. Were it otherwise, still it would 
 be no more than an ecclesiastical and human affair. Assuming 
 that you have proved the Church's infallibility, you will not 
 have thereby proved that the bishops are its only organs. 
 Assuming that you have proved the infallibility of councils- 
 general, you have still to demonstrate what is maintained at 
 Rome, — " That it is by Divine right that councils are composed 
 of bishops." 1 
 
 On this subject one may well be confounded at seeing with 
 what assurance the most important doctrines and the most formal 
 theories are sometimes deduced from a phrase, from a word, — 
 while conclusions from the plainest facts, and the most circum- 
 stantial details, are obstinately resisted. You would call by the 
 name of council, and liken to posterior councils, the humble 
 meeting held by the apostles at Jerusalem. 2 Be it so. That 
 meeting having said, — " It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost 
 
 1 Father Biner. 2 Book of Acts, ch. xv. 
 
30 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 and to us," — here, as you will have it, is the intervention of the 
 Holy Ghost in the decrees of all legitimate councils. You can- 
 not well put them on the same footing, seeing that the apostles 
 were individually inspired, and that the bishops, you admit, are 
 not. But let this too be granted. Take these words, if you will, 
 but then, at least, take all of them. " Then pleased it the apos- 
 tles and elders, with the vrfiole Church, to send," &c, so the pas- 
 sage runs. Hence, it seems to follow, plainly enough, that the 
 inferior ministers, and even the laity, intervened. Pallavicini is 
 very merry at the expense of those who would insist that the 
 Church, the whole Church, that is to say, several thousands of 
 persons, took part in the deliberation, and asks where in all Jeru- 
 salem a place could have been found large enough for such a 
 meeting? " Evidently," he concludes, " there was only a certain 
 number, a small number of the laity." What does it signify? 
 If a small number was there, is this less embarrassing than a 
 great ? The author is compelled to add, in order to escape from 
 this embarrassment, that they did not intervene in the decision. 
 But this is a pure invention, contradicted at once by the general 
 tenor and by the details of the narrative. The more you shall 
 have sought to represent the apostles, not as the merely spiritual 
 founders, but as the legislators and organizers of the Church, 
 the better right would you give us to regard nothing as having 
 emanated from them, but what they appear to have made it a 
 matter of conscience clearly to teach. Had the author of the 
 Book of Acts had the least idea that the laity should be excluded 
 from councils, who will believe it possible that he could write, as 
 the winding up of his narrative, — " Then pleased it the ajiostles, 
 and elders, with the whole Chitrch?" . . . That, as a general 
 position, the laity would do better to leave doctrinal questions to 
 the decision of the pastors, is incontestable ; that the Church, in 
 convoking councils, has done well in calling only bishops to 
 them, may be plausibly maintained ; but if there has been a 
 single council which was not prevented from being legitimate by 
 the intervention of the laity, and if this council be precisely that 
 whose history has been transmitted to us by an inspired author, 
 — then it cannot be of Divine right that bishops alone enter 
 those assemblies, and thereby have seized the monopoly of infal- 
 libility. 
 
 " Scripture," says the Roman Catechism, "often enough em- 
 ploys the word Church in designating those who are its pastors,, 
 and who preside in it. It is hi this sense that Christ has said, 
 
PROVISIONAL COMMITTEE DOUBLE DESPATCHES. 31 
 
 if he whom you reprove, does not listen to you, tell it to the 
 Church, — for here it is evident, that by the Church he means 
 the pastors of the Church." What is evident is just the contrary. 
 " Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell 
 him his fault between thee and him alone : if he shall hear thee, 
 thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then 
 take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or 
 three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall 
 neglect to hear them, tell it unto the Church." Thus, first of 
 all, thou, quite alone ; next, one or two persons ; then the entire 
 community. The citation, we see, is doubly false ; we might 
 even say triply false. False, because the whole flock, with or 
 without its pastors as you choose, is spoken of; false, because 
 here the word Church does not mean the Church in general, but 
 that of which each is specially a member ; false, in fine, when 
 one would find here an argument in favour of the dogmatical au- 
 thority of the Church, seeing that the case in hand is that of a 
 quarrel between two individuals, not at all a question to be re- 
 solved. 
 
 And now, let us return to our history. 
 
 By the end of March there were still but four bishops, and 
 two spoke of going away. To give them something to do, and 
 keep them there, a kind of provisional committee was constituted, 
 which the legates, as a matter of form, consulted on a certain 
 number of affairs. Into this Mendoza was admitted. Ere long 
 this committee, having the air of persons setting themselves to a 
 task in good earnest, and viewing themselves as the commence- 
 ment of the council, it was necessary to find some means of 
 checking, without giving offence, a course of procedure which 
 could not fail to cause uneasiness as soon as the meetings were 
 at all numerous. There was an understanding, accordingly, be- 
 tween the legates and the pope, that there should always be two 
 despatches, the one confidential and secret, the other containing 
 no more than those parties were willing should be communicated 
 to the bishops. " Such was the preparation made for receiving 
 the communications of the Holy Ghost." 1 To be sure they were 
 only human affairs that were as yet treated of; and no doubt a 
 sovereign has a right to send confidential notes to his ministers. 
 But this, in courts, is a thing admitted and known to everybody ; 
 in the case before us, the bishops knew nothing about it. There 
 
.12 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 was deception, then, in their being left under the impression 
 that everything was submitted to them. We shall see anon 
 whether political affairs were to have the pitiful honour exclu- 
 sively confined to them, of having double despatches and notes 
 secret or in cipher. 
 
 We shall not stop to review the angry disputes that arose in 
 the course of April on the subject of ranks and precedencies. 
 With these Ave do not charge the council as a crime ; it was no 
 fault of the bishops or of the pope, if Charles V. by his ambas- 
 sador, compelled them to make those matters the subject of regu- 
 lations. Still, let us note the fact. The more the council came 
 to resemble a purely human convention, the better right have 
 we to ask in what respects it was the work of God. 
 
 Meanwhile the diet had met at Worms. The emperor was 
 still uncertain whether he should march against the Turks or the 
 Protestants. 
 
 The first thing done was to cause the convocation of the council 
 to be intimated to the Protestants, and this to remind them of 
 these two things : first, that they had been the first to speak of 
 a council ; second, that the truce was about to close, seeing that, 
 according to the terms of the decree, it was until the approaching 
 council that they were to be allowed toleration and peace. On 
 this last point any warning was superfluous. They could not 
 doubt that the emperor, to whom the pope was writing letters 
 upon letters, was really prepared to attack them the moment he 
 ceased to be disquieted on the side of the Turks. 
 
 On the other point, their sentiments had long been known. 
 It was to make a mere jest of them to say — " You wanted a 
 council; here it is. You promised to submit to it ; now submit." 
 It was evident that in asking for a council, and in promising to 
 surrender and obey, Luther had never meant, nor could have 
 meant, a council held by the pope, composed of bishops subject 
 to the pope, and, in fine, manifestly assembled not to examine, 
 but to condemn. Nevertheless, who could believe it? this re- 
 proach of inconsistency and bad faith, addressed then to the Pro- 
 testants on their openly refusing beforehand to accept of the de- 
 cisions of Trent, has been repeated in our hearing, in our own 
 day. It has been alleged that seeing they craved that council, 
 it argued a want of good faith to persist in repelling it. 
 
 They might reply, first, that these are not things in which the 
 engagements of the fathers can bind the children. Next, they 
 might ask if it be indeed true that they had promised obedience. 
 
EVERY EPOCH HAS ITS FIXED IDEA. 33 
 
 Could they have seriously promised it? One may engage to do 
 a thing, but not to believe a thing. Is it fair to suppose that 
 men profoundly hostile to such or such a doctrine, could engage 
 to admit it so soon as a council should decree it anew ? 
 
 Anew, we say ; for one of the best proofs that there could not 
 have been any promise to obey a council of this sort is, that the 
 greater number of the doctrines then denied, had been solemnly 
 admitted by councils quite of the same kind. Transubstantia- 
 tion, with all that is attached to it, had been definitively voted as 
 true under Innocent III., at the fourth council of Lateran. The 
 depriving the laity of the cup had been confirmed at Constance, 
 in 1414 ; and the number of sacraments fixed at seven, at 
 Florence, in 1438. Could it possibly have been hoped that 
 all these decisions, when corroborated by time, would be an- 
 nulled by a court that was to meet with the same views and 
 under the same influences? What, then, did the Protestsnts 
 mean, or rather, what had they wanted when they asked for a 
 council ? 
 
 Evidently they had formed to themselves no clear idea either of 
 the thing itself, or of the means by which it was to be accomplished. 
 Every epoch has its own fixed idea ; every minority is naturally 
 led to take advantage of that idea. Luther had found the word 
 council in all men's mouths, and the desire for a council in all 
 men's minds, and all their hearts ; he forthwith laid hold of it. 
 Shall we suppose that he really shared in all the illusions of 
 which other men were the dupes with respect to that alleged 
 remedy for all the church's ills ? Perhaps he might ; but it was 
 rather from the need he felt of emboldening himself in his auda- 
 city, by indulging the vague prospect of an authority which 
 should pronounce in the matter. Even Luther had trembled, 
 and had trembled long, before raising the standard. " No one 
 can know," he wrote long afterwards, "what my heart suffered 
 those two first years, or in what depression, in what despair, I 
 may say, I was often plunged. Even at this day, the pope's 
 splendour and majesty sometimes dazzle me, and it is with 
 trembling that I attack him." "Oh, how much pains it cost 
 me," he wrote in 1521, to the Augustinians of Wittemberg, "to 
 justify me to myself for having alone ventured to rise against the 
 pope ! How often did I in bitterness of soul oppose to myself 
 that argument of the papists, — Art thou alone wise? Can all 
 besides have been deceiving themselves, and been deceived for 
 so long?" This responsibility frightened him. He felt that, at 
 
34 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TKKXT. 
 
 any price, lie must have something behind which to shelter 
 himself. 
 
 Bnt he had traced the ideal to himself of that council amid 
 which he was to make his audacity disappear ; he intended it to 
 be " free and Christian ; " he meant, above all r that people should 
 proceed on an engagement to judge only according to Scripture. 
 There lay the illusion ; there began the impossible. To propose 
 shutting out Borne from the arsenal of tradition, was to require 
 that she should lay down all pretensions to the primacy, that she 
 should cease to be the Church, so as to be no more than a church, 
 the sister, the fellow of those new churches, born but as yester- 
 day according to her, and whose very existence, according to 
 her, was no better than a permanent crime. In brief, it was to 
 require that Borne should commence by embracing, if not the 
 Reformation, at least the fundamental principle of the Beforma- 
 tion. 
 
 But if the one party erred in misplacing the question, or, to 
 speak more correctly, in not perceiving that it was insoluble, the 
 other party were still more in the wrong, in believing that they 
 exclusively were called upon to decide it. To have the council 
 convened by the pope, and to have it meet under the direction 
 of the pope, was to assume as admitted and incontestable the 
 most contested of all the points in question, namely, the supremacy 
 of Borne. This was the vast and vicious circle in which Europe 
 was to be driven about for twenty years. 
 
 All this, however, leads to an important conclusion, which has 
 been too much forgotten : that the doctrine of the Church's in- 
 fallibility, so boldly advanced in our times by the Romish doctors 
 as the basis of the whole edifice, was at that time, we do not 
 say unknown, but certainly very far from being held so rigor- 
 ously as it has been since. Had it been a positive tenet that 
 Borne could change nothing, absolutely nothing, of aught she 
 had once decided in points of doctrine, it is evident that the idea 
 of an appeal from her, in the matter of dogmas, to a future council, 
 never could have entered any one's head, and no more that of 
 Luther than of any one else. To whom could such a thought 
 suggest itself at the present day? What Protestant would now 
 dream of asking Borne to change or even to modify her creed on 
 a single point ? If, therefore, there were demands of this sort in 
 the sixteenth century, and if such demands could be preferred 
 without its being felt that what was asked was an impossibility 
 — what, we repeat, is the inevitable conclusion, but that the 
 
AFFAIRS OF COLOGNE. 35 
 
 Church's infallibility was not yet a formal dogma, and the pope's 
 still less so ? Of this we shall hereafter have proofs of another kind. 
 
 When the Lutherans, in protesting against all that was to 
 be done at Trent, craved an indefinite prolongation for the 
 truce granted until the opening of the council, the emperor re- 
 plied, that it did not belong to him to withdraw them from what- 
 ever might be the judgment of that supreme tribunal. His 
 proper part would be to attack them as heretics, solemnly con- 
 demned, rather than as his own proper enemies ; all he desired 
 was, that the condemnation might be delayed until the state of 
 his affairs should admit of his giving effect to it. On this side, 
 therefore, he was well content that there should be no precipi- 
 tation. But, on the other, numerous embarrassments were 
 accumulating. Though in no haste, for the moment, to see sen- 
 tence pronounced on the Reformed in general, still there was one 
 individual who gave him much disquiet, and of whom he was 
 eager to be rid. This was Hermann von Meurs, Archbishop of 
 Cologne. A secret partisan of Luther, he had introduced into 
 his diocese a certain number of reforms, at first disciplinary, then, 
 by little and little, some that touched more or less on doctrine, 
 The defection of Cologne would have been a terrible blow, and 
 the movement that had commenced required to be checked at 
 any cost. So intent was Charles V. upon this being done, that 
 he forgot that a council was expected, nay, he seemed to forget 
 even that there was a pope. It was before himself, the emperor, 
 that he caused the archbishop to be summoned, nor did he even 
 speak of delivering him afterwards to the judgment of the Church. 
 From the council not having yet done anything, he seemed to 
 conclude that all questions remained untouched, and that it 
 remained for him to determine the grounds on which Hermann 
 was to be condemned. Once more, accordingly, he appointed a 
 public conference to be held, of certain doctors of both parties, 
 and even went so far as to give instructions for an abstract of 
 the discussion being laid before the diet the following year. 
 This was a plain enough intimation, that in the case in hand he 
 was to make the diet serve as council. As for the pope, he was 
 entirely left out of view. 
 
 Paid said nothing, and contented himself with summoning the 
 archbishop also. He devoured the affront in secret; but the 
 council narrowly escaped being dissolved by it. The fifteen or 
 twenty bishops who happened to be then at Trent, asked them- 
 selves what they had come there for, if the emperor employed 
 
36 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TKFNT. 
 
 himself in summoning 1 prelates, drawing up articles of faith, and 
 acting as council and as pope. These complaints found their 
 way to Eome, where it was not easy to know whether they should 
 he encouraged or suppressed. In itself the dissolving of the 
 council could not hut .gratify the pope ; hut was he sure that he 
 would have restored to him, intact, that authority of which he 
 was partially deprived by the convocation of a council-general ? 
 The future diet might, at the voice of the emperor, act as heir 
 to the rights of the council, after it had expired at its birth. 
 The affair of Hermann might also call for an explanation on the 
 subject of the limits of the two powers, and the emperor seemed 
 little disposed to have all his rights comprised in that of sending 
 the archbishop to the pope. It was better, therefore, for the 
 latter that no such explanation should take place, and, in order 
 to that, it was requisite that the council should continue in pro- 
 spect, even although it shoidd remain indefinitely thus. 
 
 Whom shall we pronounce to have been really in the wrong ? 
 we cannot but admit that it was the emperor. Whatever might 
 have been his opinion in the everlasting dispute about the supe- 
 riority of councils over popes, or of popes over councils, he could 
 not seriously believe himself authorized to pronounce on the 
 orthodoxy of an archbishop. In protesting, the pope would have 
 done no more than his duty. His councillors urged him to it ; 
 his silence was called treason. It is not for us to blame him for 
 having persisted in it ; but as we hold ourselves bound to collect, 
 in passing, all that can throw light on what some were interested 
 in leaving in the shade, we would here remark how much the 
 authority of the Church and of its head was still vague, obscure, 
 and little understood. It was rather a fact than a right. As a 
 tact, the strong made a jest of it ; as a right, from the moment 
 of its not being an absolute right over everything and every- 
 body, no man knew exactly how he stood with regard to it. 
 Men took the place of principles. A strong pope encroached on 
 the civil power; a strong prince on the spiritual. At Rome, a 
 priest took away kingdoms : at Cologne, a prince spoke of taking 
 away an archbishopric. And amid all this, that council which 
 Home represents to us as a citadel built upon the rock, is 
 shewn by all the histories of the time, even the most Eomanist 
 of them, to have held by a thread, a hair, a nothing — to have 
 been dependent to an incredible extent on the wretched springs 
 of nolitical intrigue and human passion. If in all this, some see 
 .,ujv one farther proof of the Divine intervention such as alone, 
 
INFALLIBILITY BY DELEGATION. 37 
 
 in their opinion, could have removed so many obstacles — do we 
 not reverence God more, when we say, with this history in our 
 hand, that it would have been unworthy of Him to have veiled 
 the august action of the Holy Ghost under such a tissue of 
 human frailty and selfishness? 
 
 Erelong there arose a new difficulty. 
 
 The kingdom of Naples had about a hundred bishops, the 
 greater part of whom were devoted to the pope, and ready to 
 repair to the council as soon as he should signify a wish to see 
 them there. Now, the viceroy 1 having proposed that four only 
 should go — these four acting at once for themselves and for all 
 the rest, to this they refused to agree. The matter was referred 
 to the pope, who pronounced them in the right. 
 
 In the Roman point of view, and in regard to a council, the 
 viceroy's idea was absurd. Nothing more legitimate or more 
 simple than to vote by procuration in a matter where a man's 
 self, his own interests, and his own rights are concerned ; but 
 who could reasonably dream of such a thing as to concur in the 
 same way by procuration, in dogmatical decisions, and in decrees 
 viewed beforehand as infallible? In fact, it is in the body of 
 the bishops that infallibility is supposed to reside. There could 
 be no assurance that each mandatory would vote on all points as 
 his constituents would have done. The viceroy had never 
 thought of this. And here we see a fresh proof of what we have 
 just remarked, as to the obscurity in which, in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, those grand theories still fluctuated, which are represented 
 in our days as dating from the earliest times of the Church. 
 
 But was this theory, obscure to a statesman, clear at least to 
 •the understanding of the pope ? His bull makes no mention of 
 it. Nevertheless, that would have been the best way to make 
 it displease nobody. " The episcopal body," he might have said, 
 " cannot err ; but every bishop is fallible. Each, therefore, can 
 represent only himself. To allow one to vote for several, would 
 be to trench upon the infallibility of the body." As for repre- 
 sentation by procurators who should not be bishops — for this 
 question also had been raised, the pope would have had even less 
 difficulty in demonstrating that it was impossible. " It is of 
 Divine right" he might have said, " that a council should be 
 composed of bishops. It is through them that the Holy Ghost 
 reaches it. We cannot, therefore, make Him pass through 
 
 i Peter of Toledo. 
 
38 
 
 HISTORY OF TITE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 channels in which we have no warranty that His influences will 
 not he tampered with and altered." Sneh is the manner in which 
 one would reason at the present day. 
 
 Instead of reasoning", the pope confined himself to mere de- 
 fence, and condemned the idea, not as absurd, hut simply as had. 
 People settled down generally into the conviction that his first, 
 and perhaps his only motive, was the fear that the foreign bishops 
 might take advantage of it to secure for themselves the majority 
 in the council. Such even was his alarm that he declared every 
 bishop suspended and interdicted, ipso facto, who should dare to 
 vote by proxy. The legates thought the bull so absolute and so 
 harsh, that they durst not give the actual text. They craved 
 that the pope would allow them to publish the meaning only, 
 and even that with much softening of its pung-ency. 
 
 It was well that they did so, for it was to happen with this, 
 as with so many other bulls, which, notwithstanding the severity 
 of their terms, and the pretension of speaking in the name of 
 God, had accommodated themselves admirably to all the exi- 
 gencies which Eome had not the courage, or the ability, directly 
 to confront. Hardly had it been received at Trent, when, be- 
 hold, the procurators of Albert of Brandenburg, archbishop of 
 Mayence, arrived; and although he could not have piirposely 
 violated the pope's order, since he knew nothing of it, they did 
 not venture to apply it to him. No time was lost in assuring 
 him that the prohibition could not concern so eminent a person 
 — a cardinal-prince — as he was. An unjust distinction this, any 
 way, but passing strange when viewed in the light of the coun- 
 cil's Divine mission. The members are equal — all share in the 
 council's infallibility; but, if you are a mere bishop, it is lost 
 unless you exercise it yourself ; if you are a prince, you may 
 transmit and delegate it. 
 
 Dispensation followed dispensation, until at last the procura- 
 tors that were admitted, became sufficiently numerous. At the 
 close of the council we find forty-nine. 
 
 In the beginning of May, the preparatory committee being a 
 little more numerous, various matters of form, costume, cere- 
 monies, ivc, were regulated. After that, the opening of the 
 council was spoken of. The majority thought that this should 
 be done. It was said that it would be the best way to get those 
 bishops to come who desired to do so, but who grudged risking a 
 fruitless journey ; and, further, that it would be the best method 
 a.lso of putting a stop to the liberties in which Charles V. was 
 
CHARLES V. AND THE HERETICS, 39 
 
 disposed to indulge. The legates decided that they must wait 
 for Cardinal Farnese, who was now papal nuncio at the court of 
 the emperor. But they did not fully speak out their mind. 
 
 This was because to the palpable difficulties of their position, 
 there was now daily added one or other of those which would 
 not bear to be openly avowed, and yet were all the more vexa- 
 tious. The pope could do nothing without the emperor ; the 
 emperor wanted nothing better than to dispense with the pope, 
 and what he had already done sufficiently indicated what he might 
 prove capable of doing, were the occasion to offer. His love for 
 the Church, which he was constantly parading, did not prevent 
 his entering perpetually into conferences with those heretics that 
 were so heartily cursed by Rome, and he was more or less severe, 
 more or less insinuating, just in proportion as the Turks avoided 
 or approached the Austrian frontiers. Sometimes he merely 
 pressed them to agree to the council, promising for the rest, that 
 he would act mildly ; sometimes, renouncing the idea of religious 
 unity, he went so far as even to propose to them that it should 
 be dissolved immediately, provided they would sincerely resume 
 their places within the sphere of that political unity of which he 
 was resolved, above all things, to be the chief. Was it his pur- 
 pose, as the Protestants generally thought, to crush them after- 
 wards ? This is possible, and even probable : but the pope felt 
 that this accord, were it to last no more than two months, could 
 only be at his expense. It was necessary, therefore, at any cost, 
 not only to retard it, but to make it impossible ; and for this it 
 was indispensable that war should commence without any longer 
 delay. Cardinal Farnese, accordingly, had received orders to 
 labour to that effect to the utmost of his power. On the pope's 
 part he offered twelve thousand men and five hundred horses. 
 
 Let us, on this subject, repeat what has been so often said, 
 or written, on this strange and fatal transformation of a bishop 
 into a king, of a priest into a warrior, of the professed father 
 of Christians into a man having soldiers to furnish by the 
 twelve thoiisand, and who offers them — we have seen for what 
 purpose ! It is annoying that so many mere declaimers should 
 have meddled with the theme, and that so many infidels should 
 have laid hold of it for their own purposes. So much viru- 
 lence has been shewn in exclaiming against the pope and the 
 clergy, that sober people have almost been condemned to say 
 nothing of a certain number of complaints, well-founded, no 
 doubt, but too often and too ambitiously repeated. Happily, a 
 
40 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 truth is not the less a truth though often harped upon. Should 
 we take advantage of the occasion to say again that the temporal 
 power of the popes lias often been as odious in practice as it is 
 illegitimate and anti-Christian in theory, — would this be any the 
 less true, because Raynal and Diderot have demonstrated it be- 
 fore us ? 
 
 The same may be observed with respect to the morals of the 
 popes ; for here, too, we might have an excellent opportunity of 
 speaking of those morals. Amid so many cares to engage and 
 distract him, Paul did not forget his family. We have seen how 
 he raised his two grandsons to the cardinalship ; but his son was 
 still nothing — nothing but a burden on his purse. Paul had no 
 wish to die without having first secured for him one of the first, 
 if possible the first, place among the princes of Italy. So early 
 as in 1538, lie had asked that he might have the Dukedom of 
 Milan. 1 In despair of being able to obtain this, he had dreamt 
 of that of Parma and Placentia. This last was a dependence of 
 the domain of the Church ; but the consent of the emperor also, 
 as lord-paramount, had to be obtained. Besides, it was at the 
 outset a question of no small gravity, if a pope, possessing the 
 usufruct of what was called St. Peter's patrimony, were autho- 
 rized to erect any portion of it into an independent sovereignty. 
 If he could give Parma to his son, he must also have had it in 
 his power to give him Eome. This was the emperor's objection. 
 In point of law he had nothing to answer ; but Cardinal Farnese 
 was not the man to leave the question on this ground. The 
 pope's son was his father. Now, he hoped, that once he were 
 the son of a duke, people would perhaps forget to reproach 
 him with being the son of a bastard and the grandson of a 
 pope. "If you give us Parma," said he to the emperor, "you 
 will see the dukedom in the possession of a family which will be 
 indebted to you for its elevation, and for ever devoted to you ; 
 if you leave it in the hands of the pope, who shall answer for 
 Paul III.'s successor not being your enemy?" In fine, Octavius, 
 the heir of Lewis Farnese, had married Margaret, Charles V.'s 
 natural daughter. Thus, in consenting- to the elevation of the 
 Farneses, the emperor secured the rank and fortune of his own 
 daughter. Yet he yielded only with reluctance. The pope, in 
 the beginning of August, solemnly gave Lewis the investiture 
 of the dukedom. 
 
 1 This fact, denied by Pallavieini, has been proTed from incontestable documents by 
 Ranke 
 
MORALS OF THE POPES. 41 
 
 On this occasion the Protestants were not the only persons to 
 exclaim against the shamelessness of Paul III. Bitter reflections 
 were cast upon him throughout all Italy, at Trent, at Eome, and 
 even among the cardinals ; those even who were too much accus- 
 tomed to the pontifical disorders to censure them in the name of 
 religion and morals, not the less regarded the success achieved 
 hy Paul as imprudent and fatal. In other times it would only 
 have been one scandal in addition to many others ; but at a 
 moment when all eyes were fixed on the court of Eome, when a 
 council was just about to open, when even those nations that 
 were most opposed to any reformation in the faith, loudly called 
 for reformation in the morals of the Church, — Paul's conduct 
 was that" of a person out of his senses and mad. 
 
 For the Protestants that madness was a triumph. Such an 
 affair as this told more against the pope and the popedom than 
 all the folios of the doctors ; they asked themselves whether 
 people would not be compelled by seeing him scandalously fal- 
 lible in so many things, to end with admitting that he might be 
 fallible in all. 
 
 And we, too, ask ourselves the same thing. 
 
 It is true that we have no longer scandals of such magnitude 
 to appeal to. But of what consequence is this ? The theory of 
 papal infallibility has undergone no change since the faults of a 
 Paul III., or the orgies of an Alexander VI. ; on the contrary, 
 it is taught at the present clay with less reserve and more gene- 
 rally than ever. If the present pope is a respectable man, so 
 much the better ; but he might not be so, and yet not the less 
 be pope. 1 Nothing, consequently, more illogical than the igno- 
 rant charity of those people who profess not to understand how 
 we reproach the popedom of the present day with the faults and 
 vices of the popedom of three centuries ago. Whatever changes 
 for the better the court of Eome may have effected in its own 
 immediate circle, the question remains, and will for ever remain 
 the same. Should we find in the whole series of the popes but 
 
 1 Would the reader like to know how M. le Maistre, in his book entitled Du Pape, tries to 
 elude this objection ? " At a time when courtesans, monsters of licentiousness and wicked- 
 ness, taking advantage of the public disorders, disposed of all things at Rome, and contrived 
 to place their sons and their lovers on the seat of St. Peter, I most expressly deny that those 
 men were popes." Very convenient, no doubt ; but if every one has a right to decide who 
 have been, and who have not been popes, to what does this lead us ? If there have been no 
 lawful popes but such as have owed nothing to corruption and to intrigue, the Church must 
 then have remained for whole ages without a head. Much more ; as every election, even 
 the best, may have been secretly indebted to some disgraceful motive, it would follow that 
 we cannot be sure of the legitimacy of any pope. 
 
42 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OP TRENT. 
 
 a single man decidedly too bad for reason and conscience not to 
 revolt at the idea that he could have been infallible in point of 
 doctrine, we should be authorized to refuse, even to the best, 
 a privilege which has necessarily belonged either to all or to 
 none. 
 
 What more curious, on this subject, than the embarrassment 
 into which they themselves are thrown when they have to speak 
 of such or such a pope among their predecessors'? It is the 
 usual practice, in official acts, that the name of every bygone 
 pope should be followed with the words " of happy memory ;" 
 but as there are several to whom those words very ill apply, how 
 do people think it is contrived to avoid openly depriving such 
 popes of the title? Why, they are quoted in notes. Thus 
 Gregory XVI., in his encyclical letter of 1832, having occasion 
 to speak of bad books, mentions first Leo X., then Clement 
 XIII., as the authors of certain decrees on the subject, and the 
 words of happy memory 1 failed not to accompany these names; 
 but Alexander VI., 2 a bull of whose issuing, under the title Inter 
 Multiplices 1 ought to have figured in the first line, was named 
 merely in a slight reference. There, as the formula was not 
 strictly required, its omission was a matter of no difficulty. And 
 so, though to this man the heir of his throne is obliged to refuse 
 not only his esteem, but even the hackneyed homage of a vain 
 formula, — yet even to him, pope, under the penalty of redu- 
 cing yourself to nothing, you are compelled to say to his face, 
 that the Holy Ghost was in him. That mind teeming with so 
 many infamous ideas, had only to wish it, in order to its being 
 put into a condition for sounding the most unfathomable mys- 
 teries without a chance of error. That hand, which was so 
 skilled in the management of poisons, it depended only on him- 
 self to employ in tracing lines as holy, as venerable, as infal- 
 lible as those of a St. Paul or a St. John. That body rendered 
 impure by every vice, — but no; you would not dare to do so. 
 You would find it hard to say whether it would be most odious 
 or most absurd. And yet, if you recoil, all is lost. The cause 
 of Borgia is identified with yours. On the pontiff's throne every 
 stain is indelible. 
 
 Are those Eoman Catholics who reject the doctrine of the 
 pope's infallibility in a better position than others for declining 
 our conclusions ? We shall elsewhere examine whether it be 
 
 1 Felieis recordationis predecessor noster. 
 - "A great rogue," says De Maistre. 
 
PAPAL INFALLIBILITY IN DISCIPLINE. 43 
 
 true that a man can be a Roman Catholic without believing in 
 that infallibility, and whether he has only to deny it, in order to 
 escape from the difficulties which it involves. It is incontestably 
 an article of faith for a great part of their Church, for those 
 countries that have the reputation of being most Roman Catholic, 
 for Italy, for Rome, for the cardinals, for the pope, inasmuch as 
 we are not aware that the popes of our age have ever withdrawn 
 the decrees in which so many bygone popes openly arrogate that 
 privilege. As for those persons who would say, ' We don't believe 
 in it, your objections do not affect us,' we might always prove 
 to them that in refusing to answer those objections, they only 
 make them recoil with augmented force — upon whom? Why, 
 upon the pope and upon those whom the pope regards as his best, 
 indeed as his only true friends. It is known that Rome would 
 never listen for a moment to the middle terms, imagined by 
 certain Romanists, for the purpose of getting rid of the papal 
 infallibility, without having the air of denying it. Jansenius 
 having said that " the Holy See sometimes condemns a doctrine 
 solely for the sake of peace, without thereby meaning to declare 
 it false," his assertion was formally reproved by Clement VIII. 
 
 As for those even who, while they admit the pope's infalli- 
 bility in matters of doctrine, think to render that position more 
 tenable by denying that he is infallible in point of discipline, — 
 we might prove to them also, that this denial has never had the 
 consent of Rome. The Church cannot err, says the Roman 
 Catechism, 1 either in the faith, or in the rule of manners. In 
 that same encyclical letter of 1832: "It would," wrote the 
 pope, "be criminal" 1 and altogether contrary to the respect due 
 to the laws of the Church, to carp at the discipline which it has 
 established." Shall it be said that the pope, in this passage, 
 seems rather to ordain respect for established discipline than 
 belief in its infallibility in general ? Let us hear : " As it is 
 certain," he goes on to say, "to use the words of the Fathers of 
 the Council of Trent, in their thirteenth session, that the Church 
 has been taught by Jesus Christ and His apostles, that she is 
 under the constant teaching of the Holy Ghost, it is altogether 
 absurd to moot the idea of a restoration, of a regeneration, — 
 as if she could be thought capable of falling." Behold discipline 
 put positively under the safeguard of the general infallibility 
 admitted by the Council of Trent ; and as the pope, in that 
 document, puts no difference betwixt the laws of the Church 
 
 1 Chap. ix. '- Nefas esset. 
 
44 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 and the laws of the popes, as, moreover, discipline is the work of 
 the popes much more than it is the work of the Church, all that 
 he has said of the Church he has virtually said of the popes ; 
 to them, as well as to the Church assigning that disciplinary 
 infallibility quite as much as the infallibility in matters of faith. 
 Deny it ; say that it is a mistake, that you have only to make 
 the same objections as ours on that point — all well ! But re- 
 member, let us once more be allowed to say, that you then send 
 them back more strong, more direct, more crushing — to whom? 
 To the pope, to the head of your Church, to all who, according 
 to him, exclusively hold the truth. 
 
 Of those last then, — and we have already said that their 
 numbers are on the increase in the Koman Church, — we would 
 ask what they would make of Pope Liberius, who for four years 
 was an Arian ; of Liberius excommunicating Athanasius, the 
 author of the Roman Symbol ; of Liberius, to whom Bishop 
 Hilary of Poitiers, champion of the Nicene Creed, wrote on that 
 occasion : " I anathematize thee, Liberius, both thee and thine. 
 I anathematize a second and a third time, liberius, the preva- 
 ricator !" 
 
 We would ask them what they make of Innocent X., who, 
 shortly before condemning Jansenius, said : " Let me be left at 
 peace • this is no business of mine ; I am old ; I have never 
 studied theology;" which did not prevent him, however, from 
 pronouncing, and leaving others to teach as infallibly true, what 
 he himself had never taught but hesitatingly. 
 
 We would ask them what they would make of Innocent XII., 
 approving, praising, admiring a book, 1 and then, on being solicited 
 by a king, and after two years of resistance, condemning it ? 
 
 We would ask them where infallibility resided when there 
 were two, three, or four popes, all at once, a thing which hap- 
 pened, not once or twice as is generally thought, but twenty-four 
 times; 2 where, when those popes mutually condemned and ana- 
 thematized each other ; where, when their rights — or their crimes 
 — were so equally balanced, that there was no means of distin- 
 guishing the true pope from the anti-pope, and the direct chain 
 of succession from the violent and intrusive one ? 
 
 We would ask them, — but to what purpose multiply these 
 questions? — one or a hundred, what does it signify? The 
 
 i F>'nelim'i Maximes des Saints. 
 
 2 In 250, 336, 418, 408, 530, 686, 637, 767, 824, 855, 9G3, 9S4, 096, 1012, 1033, 1058, 1061, 
 1073, 1118, 1130, 1159, 1316, 1378, 1431. From the third to the fifteenth century, one only 
 did not witness a .schism, and the eleventh saw rive. 
 
INFALLIBILITY OF PAPAL DOTARDS. 45 
 
 objection is the same. And who might best multiply these ques- 
 tions, if not those who are brought into immediate contact with 
 Rome, and the popes, and the circle around the popes ? It is in 
 Italy, in fact it is at Rome, and in the palace of the popes, that 
 the idea of their infallibility must have had to encounter, it 
 would seem, most opposition. At a distance, people see only the 
 head of the Church, the vicar of Jesus Christ. His words never 
 reach them but in august phraseology ; he finds no difficulty in 
 gaining and preserving a certain grandeur in the popular ima- 
 gination. Close at hand, be he ever so respectable as an indi- 
 vidual, still he is a mere man ; often all that is to be seen is a 
 worn-out old man, a poor shrivelled body, a sinking mind, a 
 failing memory, a master, in fine, who has ceased to see, to 
 hear, to think, and who lives only in the persons of his servants. 
 What ! you may have seen this old man last night ; you may 
 have conversed with him familiarly ; you may even have cor- 
 rected him in a mistake, and contradicted him, as will sometimes 
 happen in all the conversations in the world ; he himself may 
 sometimes have admitted that you were in the right, and may 
 have politely said, "Very true — I was mistaken." And lo, 
 at the close of this colloquy, he may have dictated some lines 
 on questions which the greatest genius would only study with 
 trembling. Now, these few lines you present to me as in- 
 fallible and sacred ; as a decision which I cannot attack with- 
 out revolting from God himself. Further, who knows after 
 all whether it be really from him? Who knows but that 
 it may have been you, his counsellor, Avho suggested, nay, 
 perhaps, who dictated the whole of it? Elsewhere, ministers 
 are responsible, and the prince alone is irresponsible ; at Rome, 
 in everything not political, it is the pope alone who is responsi- 
 ble. A fallible and irresponsible monarch may, without com- 
 promising himself, put his signature to what is done in his name ; 
 an infallible doctor cannot avoid assuming the responsibility of 
 all that he signs. But those who direct him ; those who pre- 
 pare his decrees, those who put the pen into his hand to sign 
 them ; those who can say, " Such or such an article of faith 
 was made by me ;" — how can they, unless indeed they believe 
 themselves to be infallible — how can they seriously teach the 
 pope's infallibility ? Pallavicini, our historian, was one of the very 
 men who pushed on Innocent X., old and tremulous, to the con- 
 demnation of Jansenius. He himself has preserved for us the 
 details of the pope's hesitations. "When he placed himself," 
 
4G HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 says he, " on the brink of the ditch, and measured in thought 
 the space he had to clear, he paused, and could not be made to 
 go farther.' 1 What language! What a comment on our reason- 
 ings on the authority of the pope ! Ah, however annoying it 
 may be to mix up a charge of bad faith with calm and serious 
 arguments, how can we but feel convinced that the folks at 
 Rome, those who proclaim most loudly the pope's infallibility, 
 are certainly, of all Roman Catholics, those who believe it least, 
 and who can least believe it ? 
 
 But why do we speak of the folks at Rome ? Beyond the 
 circle of those who have an interest in allowing the fundamental 
 principle of ultramontanism to live and revive to the utmost, 
 there is not a place in the world where the general body of pro- 
 fessing Christians is farther from according to the pope any 
 supernatural and divine authority. On arriving from France, 
 Germany, or Switzerland, where so many bow at the mere name 
 of our Holy Father the Pope, where those even who least believe 
 in him, generally speak of him with respect — one is confounded 
 at the boldness with which the lowest shopkeepers in Rome, the 
 moment their tongues are unloosed, express themselves with re- 
 spect to his character, his person, the people he has about him, 
 and his doings. The very police, generally so active and so sus- 
 ceptible in matters affecting the civil power, are much less so 
 with respect to the Head of the Church and God's representa- 
 tive. They make no long speeches against his infallibility ; they 
 have never asked themselves theoretically what it means, and 
 whether they believe in it ; but the less they have reflected on 
 it, the less do they try, as so many Roman Catholics do else- 
 where, to conceal from you, and to conceal from themselves, that 
 they cannot believe in it. And how could they? With what 
 powers of abstraction would they not need to be indued in order 
 to their seriously accepting as infallible, sacred, above all attack, 
 what they see emanating from the same source with the decrees, 
 political, or others, which they may have attacked, criticised, 
 possibly cursed? Were you to force them to reason, to draw con- 
 clusions, think you that you would find much difficulty in wrest- 
 ing from them the confession of that which, without their being 
 aware of it, is really at the bottom of their thoughts? 1 Think 
 
 1 " Rome knows this : it i ; Ion.; sinse the pope's authority has been nowhere less deeply 
 rooted than in Italy. Not that the people do not, from habit, respect it in all that does not 
 traverse their own ideas, or their favourite passions, or their interests ; but. above the people, 
 one hardly finds any but eensurers and enemies. Not only does nobody believe in it, but 
 they scout it and hate it." — Laraeanais, Affaires dc Rome. 
 
THE BISHOPS LOSE PATIENCE. 47 
 
 vou, to return to our history, that those who were so scandalized 
 at the decree by which Paul III. gave a dukedom to his son, could 
 have been really and intimately convinced of his infallibility in 
 such or such a decree, published perhaps the same day, subscribed 
 perhaps with the same pen, and on the same parchment ? No, 
 we will venture to say, they did not believe in it. No more do 
 those who are about the pope at the present day believe in it ; 
 or if they do believe in it, — for it were too painful to suppose 
 there could be hypocrisy so long persisted in, — it is because they 
 are self-blinded; it is because from the strong feeling they have 
 of the need there is for a pope in order to their reigning over 
 people's consciences in his name, they end at last in submitting 
 their own consciences to him. 
 
 Could those men who took part in the opening proceedings of 
 the council, have any more believed in the infallibility of coun- 
 cils? Let us proceed with our narrative ; that will be a suffi- 
 cient reply. 
 
 The year was now drawing to a close. The bishops were 
 beginning to lose patience ; the legates had exhausted their 
 means of amusing them. It had even been found necessary to 
 grant some assistance in money gratifications — not pensions, the 
 legates would say, for it was of essential consequence that the 
 pope should never be obnoxious to the charge of having mem- 
 bers of the council in his pay. By and by people became less 
 scrupulous. 
 
 Cardinal Farnese had returned from Germany, but without hav- 
 ing obtained more than the emperor's consent to his father's ele- 
 vation to the dukedom. Charles V. had refused the offer of 12,000 
 men ; the news of an agreement between him and the Lutherans 
 was what might at any moment arrive. Then no more council; 
 but the pope preferred risking its chances, to seeing it break up 
 in a manner so humiliating for him. Eesolving, therefore, to be 
 beforehand, he begged that a choice of one of these three might 
 be made, the suspension, the translation, or the immediate open- 
 ing of the council. Now, the suspension of the council could 
 not suit the emperor, as long as the agreement with the Protest- 
 ants remained unconcluded, and it was of importance that he 
 should continue to have it in his power to threaten them, if not 
 with the council — for they had no great fear of it, yet at least 
 with the crusade which it would be sure to ordain against the 
 refractory. No more did it suit his views that the council should 
 
48 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 be transferred to another place ; he knew that the pope would 
 never consent to its being held in a town at a greater distance 
 than Trent, and Trent was only too near Rome. There re- 
 mained the opening ; and the emperor had always less and less 
 cause to be eager for that. In the end he offered to oppose it 
 no longer, but upon one condition ; namely, that the assembled 
 bishops, at least, in the first stages of their proceedings, should 
 occupy themselves with matters of discipline, should omit all de- 
 cision of doctrinal questions, and, in one word, abstain from 
 everything that might offend the Protestants. 
 
 The pope's patience was now exhausted. In asking that all 
 cause of irritation to the Lutherans should be avoided, Charles 
 let it be seen clearly enough, that, should he come at last to 
 an accommodation of his differences with them, he would no 
 longer permit their being anathematized ; and what a strange 
 part then would be that of a council, forced to remain mute in 
 presence of such a schism ! Without either refusing or promis- 
 ing, Paul hastened to send to the legates, on the 31st of October, 
 the order to commence on the second Sunday of December. In 
 the bull, he confined himself to saying, that the council should 
 proceed "in full liberty." We shall see what was the real ex- 
 tent of this "full liberty," promised, and even ordained, as the 
 privilege of the assembly. 
 
 On the 13th of December, accordingly, twenty-five bishops, 
 clothed in their pontifical robes, went in procession to the 
 cathedral church, and Cardinal del Monte, the first legate, cele- 
 brated mass there. Then, after a sermon by Cornelio Musso, 
 Bishop of Bitonto, and an address composed by the legates, the 
 council was declared to be opened, to the glory of the holy 
 and undivided Trinity — for the extirpation of heresies, the 
 peace and the union of the Church, the reformation of the clergy 
 and the people, the suppression and extinction of the enemies of 
 the Christian name. 1 In fine, it was decided that the second 
 formal meeting should not be held until the 7 th of January 
 (1546). This, said the legates, was on account of the Christmas 
 holidays ; but the truth was, that they had nothing in a state of 
 readiness, and that people knew not where to begin. 
 
 The task, it must be allowed, which these few doctors were 
 about to undertake, that, too, under the burthen of an immense 
 
 1 " Ad laiulem et gloriam sanctre et individaae Trinitaris — ad extirpationem hajresum, 
 ad picem et unionem Ejcleske. ad depressionem et exlinetionem hostium Christiani 
 mmrinis " 
 
ROMAN UNITY IS OF MODERN DATE. 41) 
 
 responsibility, in the face of embarrassments and obstacles of all 
 sorts, and of innumerable uncertainties and obscurities, was truly 
 formidable. For it was to no purpose that they advertised them- 
 selves as the organs of the Holy Ghost ; not the less did they 
 feel what poor weak creatures they were when they came to 
 handle certain questions. Amid the labours which this history 
 has cost us, we have repeatedly forgot at once our antipathy to 
 their pride and their errors. The pen has clropt from our fingers ; 
 we have felt that we could only pity them ; we have thought 
 they must have had punishment enough in the frightful labours 
 of these endless eighteen years. Down to that period, in fact, 
 Roman Catholicism had never seriously attempted the systematic 
 arrangement of its doctrines and its laws. For more than a 
 thousand years, decisions, on each occasion when they had been 
 promulgated, had hardly touched more than one or a small num- 
 ber of points ; councils and popes had never dreamt of looking 
 beyond the interests, the perils, and the desires of the passing 
 moment. Let Roman Catholic historians say what they please, 1 
 it is not true that the dogmatical theology, or the unity of Trent, 
 was that from which the Protestants separated. It is true, no 
 doubt, in this sense, that what was about to receive the force of 
 decrees at Trent, had already been, on the whole, the Roman 
 faith ; but to say that Luther had had such a teaching body to 
 break with as has existed since, would be an anachronism. 
 The Roman unity of the present day dates from the Reforma- 
 tion ; its first cause, as well as its strongest bond of union, must 
 be sought for in the re-action against the Reformation. 
 
 Down to this period, then, each workman had but brought his 
 own stone to the mass, and, accordingly, it was not before an 
 edifice, requiring repair and completion, that the council had to 
 set itself to work, but only before a heap of materials. And 
 these materials they were not even allowed to sift. To reject a 
 single stone would have been to unsettle the right of all the rest 
 to be employed in the edifice ; whether the builders desired it or 
 no, it behoved that all should be taken in. But, perhaps, the 
 plan had been clearly traced, and the foundations positively 
 laid ! Not at all : the plan existed only in fragments, and in 
 fragments of different proportions, varying with the different 
 ages of the Church. The only entire plan they possessed was 
 that of the Bible, and that they would not have ; it was but too 
 evident that they could not find places for all their materials 
 
 1 See in particular ftloehler's Symbottcon. 
 D 
 
50 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 there. They were about to pronounce a curse on all who had 
 dared to take up that plan anew, and to hold to it. What a com- 
 plexity ! And well surely may we forgive some trepidation in 
 those who had to disentangle it, and those, in particular, who 
 had to superintend and direct the operation. 
 
 "Heresy," says Bossuet, 1 "feeble production of the human 
 mind, can constitute itself only in ill-assorted pieces ; catholic 
 truth, proceeding from God, is perfect from the outset." How 
 many things must have been forgotten before a man durst write 
 these words ! What a defiance to history— -to that of the first 
 fifteen centuries of the Church, to that of the council whose 
 gropings in the dark are about to interrupt our progress at every 
 step ! What ! perfection stamped from the first those dog-mas 
 which we behold, one after another germinating, growing up, 
 straggling for admission, and at last, but only at the close of six 
 or ten centuries, effecting an entrance into the domain of the 
 faith ! Those doctrines were perfect, forsooth, from the outset ; 
 doctrines which we shall see were admitted at Trent only after 
 debates without end, numerous modifications, and final votes 
 carried by a bare majority. And to give but one example, one, 
 however, which comprehends all, "perfection from the outset" 
 belonged, forsooth, to that grand fundamental dogma, that in- 
 fallibility, which the council itself declined to encounter face to 
 face, although it had occasion to meet it at every step, and 
 in which it has left the capital point undecided. Even although 
 it had decided that point, Ave should still have had to confront 
 hJossuet's allegation with the words of a man often quoted, but 
 who in our opinion ought to be quoted oftener still, for he is 
 sometimes the least Eoman Catholic of the Fathers. "With re- 
 spect to Scripture," says he, "there cannot be either discussion 
 or doubt on what it eAddently teaches ; but the letters of bishops 
 may lawfully be reprehended by what may happen to be the 
 wiser discourse of any one more skilled in the matter, and by 
 the Aveightier authority of other bishops, and by councils." 2 
 Here, truly, Ave have what has very little resemblance to the 
 infallibility of the Fathers. They might be reprehended and 
 set right, not only "by other bishops," but "by the opinion 
 
 i Preface to "the Variations." 
 
 - " Quis autem nesciat Sanctam Scripturam canonicam omnibus posterioribu9 episcopu- 
 rum Uteris ita prasponi in ... ; episcoporum autem litems . . et per ser- 
 rnonem forte sapientiorem cujuslibet in eu re peritioris. et per aliorum episcoporum gravi- 
 orem auetoritcttem ; et per concilia licere reprehendi." — August, de Bapt.. contra Donat. 
 !. 11 1. 
 
KT, AUGUSTINE NO ROMAN CATHOLIC. 51 
 
 «>!' one more skilled," bishop or not. They might be so, espe- 
 cially "by councils." Augustine, accordingly, would have been 
 not a little surprised to see them so often cited, and himself 
 among the number, in the decrees of many a council, as of the 
 same authority with Scripture. " National or provincial coun- 
 cils," he goes on to say, "ought to yield without more ado to 
 councils-general ; but it often happens that councils-general are, 
 themselves amended by posterior councils, when experience opens 
 what was shut, and makes known what lay hid." 1 Change one 
 or two words here, and you have one of the ideas which the 
 Roman Catholicism of the present day treats with most indigna- 
 tion, 2 that of perfectibility in men's views of the faith. Pro- 
 ceeding from God, revelation in itself is perfect ; delivered to 
 man, it is necessarily perfectible in this sense that posterior 
 studies and meditations may always modify the manner in which 
 it shall be understood, whether in its details, or in its totality. 
 This mobility, with which Protestantism has been so often re- 
 proached, is accepted by Augustine as one of the necessities of 
 the human mind ; and while we see Protestants themselves com- 
 plain of it, and throw themselves, out of spite, either into infi- 
 delity, or into Roman Catholicism, the good bishop of the fifth 
 century speaks of it without a word of regret. In vain would 
 you seek to limit by other passages the disquieting latitude of 
 the above, and never could you so restrict its meaning as to ad- 
 mit of St. Augustine having been a Roman Catholic when he 
 wrote it. He seems to admit, indeed, that in passing through 
 this series of sifting processes, 3 the truth will become more and 
 more (whilst according to our apprehensions, it has often become 
 less and less) complete and pure ; but that is of little consequence ; 
 if such was his belief in the Churoh's infallibility, he did not be- 
 lieve in it at all, and he was quite as far as we are from admit- 
 ting, with Bossuet, that the Romish system of doctrine was 
 perfect from the outset. 
 
 Strange to say, at the opening of this council, which Avas 
 to be followed by the prevalence of the idea of an absolute in- 
 fallibility, it was rather according to St. Augustine's view that 
 
 1 " Bt ipsa concilia quae per singulas regiones vel provincias sunt, plenariorum conciliorum 
 auctoritate quae fiunt ex universe- orbe sine ullis ambagibus cedeve ; ipsaque plenaria s<epe 
 priora posteriorfbus emendari, cum aliquo experiment!) rerum aperitur quod clausuni era/, 
 (t ivgnoseitur quod lateb.it." — August, de Bapt., contra Uonat. 
 
 2 See Lamennais' preface to the second volume of his Essais stir V Indifference. 
 
 3 Marie, let us observe in passing, the omission of the pope. Had Augustine assigned to 
 him we do not say infallibility, but a simple doctrinal supremacy, how could he have left 
 him out in this enumeration ? 
 
52 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 the legates had composed their exhortation. That address, 
 bating certain forms, breathed throughout a high Christian 
 spirit ; too high, as we might easily demonstrate, to be considered 
 strictly Roman Catholic. After a frightful picture of the cor- 
 ruption of the clergy — the first authors, according to them, of all 
 the evils of the Church, the legates declared that the first thing 
 to be done was to repent and abase themselves. " Without this 
 profound sense of our failings," they added, "in vain shall we 
 enter the council, in vain have we invoked the Holy Ghost. 
 We cannot receive him." Nothing more wise, but what then 
 were they thinking about ? If infallibility depends, in however 
 small a degree, on the religious and moral dispositions of those 
 who are to be the organs of the Church, to what council, to what 
 pope can we trust? Let a pope be notoriously immoral — we 
 should then be authorized to refuse him any dogmatical autho- 
 rity. And as for a council, — how shall it be known whether a 
 meeting of two or three hundred bishops shall have presented, 
 on the whole, enough of good individual dispositions, to secure 
 the direction of the decisions of the majority, by God himself, who 
 alone sees men's hearts? Nobody remarked this. The exhor- 
 tation was extremely praised, and deserved to be so. We shall 
 have here and there more than one example of these passing re- 
 turns to good sense and the gospel. These were involuntary 
 and illogical ; but what would you have ? When people start 
 from false principles, it is only by reasoning ill that they have 
 any chance of being reasonable. 
 
 The Bishop of Bitonto, in his sermon, reasoned much better, 
 at least much more logically. "The moment is come," he said, 
 "God must speak, and he will speak." Next, like the legates, 
 he exhorted all the bishops to repentance and humiliation. 
 "But," he added, "were you even to remain in impenitence, 
 don't go on to imagine that thus you would have it in your 
 power to shut the mouth of God. Happen what may in that re- 
 spect, the Holy Ghost will find it easy to open yours, and em- 
 ploy it in his service." In other terms: "If your hearts art- 
 pure, so much the better ; if they are not, still the voice of the 
 council will not the less be God's voice." This was absurd. 
 Let us rather say, it was impious. But was it anti-Roman 
 Catholic? Quite the contrary. Listen to Palla\T.cini : — " If the 
 illumination of the Holy Ghost can be looked for only in a coun- 
 cil of men inwardly sanctified, that sanctity being invisible and 
 uncertain, their authority and their decisions remain in like 
 
CORNELIO MUSSO S OPENING SERMON. 00 
 
 manner uncertain." 1 Cornelio Musso's sermon, then, was only, 
 after all, the candid expression of the system, on the strength of 
 which the council was about to fix and command the faith. 
 People, generally, however, were shocked at it. 
 
 They were no less so at the ultramontane ideas with which 
 its author had interspersed it, with a garnishing, too, of conceits 
 and oddities of all sorts. Even at Rome people give him no 
 thanks for this stupid and unseasonable frankness. In an apos- 
 trophe to the mountains that rise around Trent, he called on 
 the rocks, the woods, and the torrents, to proclaim to the whole 
 universe, that all ought to submit to the council ; " And if it do 
 not," he added, " one might say with reason that the light of the 
 pope hath come into the world,' 2 and that the world hath preferred 
 darkness to light." This was tantamount to a plain, and withal 
 ridiculous avowal, that nothing more was meant at Trent than 
 a mere consultative commission, an opaque star receiving its 
 light from the rays of Rome. Pallavicini does not see, so he 
 says, why one should be so indignant at the expression lumen 
 papoe. Does not all the world know that papce, in Latin, is 
 merely an exclamation signifying alas ! What more natural, 
 then, than to have said, " The light, alas ! hath come into the 
 world, and the world," &c. ? We leave our readers to pronounce 
 on the fairness of this elucidation. Were they even to admit it, 
 not the less will it remain, and Pallavicini confesses it, a detest- 
 able play upon words. There were many besides. To open 
 the gates of the council is to open the gates of heaven, whence 
 was to descend the living water which shall fill the whole earth 
 with the knowledge of the Lord. Jesus Christ will be present 
 there. How could he refuse this favour to St. Vigil, the vigi- 
 lant patron saint of this blessed city? At another place he 
 indulged in a grand eulogy of the pope, the emperor, the king 
 of France, several other sovereigns, and also of the legates ; but 
 as for these last, it was their names and surnames that furnished 
 matter for his praise. Behold the Cardinal del Monte, turning 
 his heart and his eyes towards the mountain which is Christ ; 
 behold his colleague della Santa Croce, Politian, 3 and who now 
 for a long time has applied himself to the reformation of political 
 affairs among Christians ; behold the virtuous Polus, " Angina 
 by birth, but who should be called Angelus rather than Anghis." 
 " In fine, seeing the council is open, let all who have the right, 
 
 1 Book v. ch. xviii. - Lumen papas venit in numdimi. 
 
 s Politianus, born at Polizio, in Sicily. 
 
• r )4 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 hasten to repair to us, as if into the Trojan horse" This last 
 stroke of eloquence had no doubt some profound meaning which 
 escapes us, and which we shall not, like Pallavicini, take the 
 trouble to look for. Only, on reading- so strange a production, 
 we are apt to say to ourselves, that surely a man of good taste 
 must needs make great efforts before he can sincerely consent to 
 having among the supreme arbiters of his faith, one who was 
 capable of thinking and of writing thus, and who exercised, 
 nevertheless, a very great influence on his colleagues. 1 In vain 
 should we be told, that " such was the taste, such the eloquence, 
 of the time. Luther has done sometimes worse." Not in the 
 pulpit, we might observe. And even were it so, what of that? 
 Betwixt a play upon words by the fallible Luther, and those 
 which we must listen to in an infallible assembly, no compari- 
 son can be instituted. Luther, by himself, is nothing. When 
 you accept the articles of his creed, it is because, on inquiry, 
 you find there are good reasons for doing so. If some are set 
 off in bad taste, so much the worse • but that proves nothing 
 either way. With infallibility everything becomes serious. 
 With the man who commands you to believe, the smallest 
 mental aberration, be the object of it what it may, is an argu- 
 ment against the authority which he arrogates to himself. He 
 who makes bold to build for eternity, more or less compromises 
 his work by every imperfection in the materials. 
 
 Most of the bishops had been displeased by the adjournment 
 to the 7th of January. After waiting so long, they thought it 
 singular that no plan for the preparation of the questions had 
 ever been dreamt of. It was proposed to them, indeed, to begin 
 with a decree on the private conduct of members of the council. 
 This they thought a good idea, but they also thought that it 
 was no great matter for the occupation of a whole month, all 
 the more as they did not see to what they were next to apply 
 themselves. Meanwhile the decree passed with much applause. 
 It is full of excellent prescriptions, excellent counsels ; and we 
 may acid, that from this time forward, in what respected morals, 
 it was religiously observed. The Reformation was beginning 
 to bear its fruits. The scandalous debaucheries of the Council 
 of Constance were no longer either permitted or possible ; a 
 
 1 " He it was who, on this theatre of Christendom, had raised the curtain by pronouncing 
 the opening discourse, and, after that, being always employed on the gravest deliberations, 
 wr^s no longer a mere ordinary member : he was the right arm of that whole bodv." — 
 Pallav. 1. Yin. 
 
IN WHOSE NAME WERE THE DECREES TO RUN" ? 55 
 
 small part of what was tolerated then, would have been sufficient 
 now to deprive the meeting of all respect, and perhaps to compel 
 its dissolution. 
 
 The prelates, accordingly, had no difficulty in coming to a 
 general understanding on the tenor of the decree ; but the next 
 thing to be done was to publish it, and then their embarrass- 
 ments began. That of the first session had been drawn up in 
 the form of a minute : " Is it your pleasure that the holy 
 Council of Trent should be declared opened ? To which the 
 prelates replied, Yes!" 1 All explanation respecting the nature 
 and the rights of the assembly, and in particular of its attitude 
 with regard to the pope, had thus been avoided. But now there 
 was required a formal decree and a preamble. In whose name 
 were they to speak ? In whose name was the decree to be pub- 
 lished? In the name of the council alone, or of the pope 
 alone, or of the pope and the council, or the council and the 
 pope ? for the very order in which they were to be put, in case 
 of their both being introduced, was a matter of moment. What- 
 ever form they might adopt, a question had always to be deter- 
 mined, in one sense or other, which it was felt could not be 
 determined without slaying the council. As for that assembly's 
 being superior to the pope, this was what Paul had said he 
 would rather die than proclaim. Then, as for the pope's being 
 superior to the council, it was known that a decree to that effect 
 would bring down upon its authors the most dangerous protesta- 
 tions from Germany and from France. Three centuries have 
 past, and the question still remains undecided. That which 
 you can read at the head of all constitutions, even the most in- 
 complete, to wit, what is the source of authority, here you find 
 an infallible Church has never yet succeeded in putting at the 
 head of her's. She who has decided so many mysterious, so 
 many useless points ; she in whose name so many victims have 
 been burned alive for having desired to remain free in the midst 
 of misery, behold her permitting free opinions — on what? On 
 the question on which it would have been most natural, and 
 was most necessary, that she should pronounce a clear decision. 2 
 
 1 Placetne vobis ? — liesponderunt .- Placet. 
 
 2 " What are we to think of that famous session where the Council of Constance declares 
 itself superior to the pope ? The answer is easy : the assembly talked nonsense. . . . 
 Men of fine genius in the following centuries reasoned no better." — Jos. de Maistre, Dit Paix. 
 
 Those men of fine genius who talked nonsense were Bosquet, Arnold, Pascal. 
 
 " And if certain persons persist," continues the author, " we, instead of laughing at that 
 session alone, will laugh at that session, and at all who refuse to laugh at it." — Unity ! 
 unitv ! 
 
56 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 One feels curious to know what would be the reply of a Eoman 
 doctor to an honest peasant of his Church, who, happening to 
 hear of these details, should come to him with the simple ques- 
 tion, " Instead of puzzling itself so much as to the particular 
 manner in which it was to word its decree, why did not this 
 council, of which it had been said that God would speak by its 
 mouth, begin by deciding, once for all, the question itself?" 
 Ah, poor peasant ! it was just because saying and believing 
 are different things. It is easy to say we are infallible, and 
 to give ourselves the air of being so, as long as all we have to 
 do is to condemn, and when we are sure of being agreed ; but 
 to believe ourselves infallible, and seriously to act as such, 
 when well aware that we cannot speak without raising in the 
 very bosom of the Church contentions that would rend it asunder, 
 this is a very different thing, and then the very boldest men 
 recoil. But we shall have again to return to this. 
 
 The pope had thought of the matter. A commission of 
 cardinals, recently created by him for directing, from Rome, the 
 operations of the assembly, had long tried to find a formula for 
 the decree which might satisfy all, or, at least, offend none. 
 They thought that they had succeeded at last. The most holy 
 Council of Trent, legitimately assembled lender the conduct of the 
 Holy Ghost, the three legates of the apostolic see presiding at it, 
 decrees, 1 &c. To the words most holy council might be added, 
 should there be a request to that effect, the words oecumenical 
 and general. 
 
 The majority appeared satisfied ; but a numerous minority 
 required, if not a formal admission of the pope's inferiority, at 
 least a clearer declaration of the equality of the two powers. 
 The words prcesidentibus legatis might, in fact, be very well 
 understood as implying, not only a mere presidency, in the 
 ordinary meaning of the word, but an authority superior, 
 supreme, and indispensable to the existence of the council ; and 
 it was very well known besides, that such was the meaning 
 which the Italians attached to it. It was proposed, accordingly, 
 that the word oecumenical should be superseded by representing 
 the universal Church. 2 These words being placed before praisi- 
 dentibus legatis, the presidency of the legates ceased to be clearly 
 indicated as indispensable to the legitimacy of the council. An 
 
 1 !-'aero pancta TviJcntina Synodus, in Spiritvi sancto legitime congregata, in ea prcesiden- 
 tiVms tribus apostolicse sedis legatis. 
 - Ecclesiam universalem representans. 
 
SESSIONS AND CONGREGATIONS HOW DISTINGUISHED. O < 
 
 Italian called those members foxes 1 who supported such an 
 alteration ; and, to say the truth, amid these contests in which 
 no one spoke out all he thought, that was an epithet which the 
 members might, in all justice, have given each other every day. 2 
 The majority, however, were inclined to grant, if not the thing, 
 at least the words ; but, in consequence of orders from the pope, 
 the legates made such a work about it, that this was refused. 
 More than that, the words oecumenical and general were deleted. 
 "What purpose could they serve?" said the legates. " Is it not 
 sufficiently stated, in the pope's bull, that this council is oecu- 
 menical and general?" In a word, the first hankering for 
 independence made them withdraw even the concessions already 
 made. We find these words, however, reoccur in the decree of 
 the third session. 
 
 The opposite party did not hold themselves defeated. On 
 the 7th of January, when the cathedral was at the fullest, after 
 the reading of the decree, they repeated their demand, and 
 obliged the others to repeat their refusal. 
 
 Now this public protestation against a decision of the majority 
 was a serious matter, especially at the commencement. It had 
 been understood that all should proceed as at the Council of 
 Lateran, under Julius II., that is to say, that all discussion 
 should be interdicted except in congregations, or meetings with 
 closed doors. The public assembly or session was to be exclu- 
 sively for the publication of laws elaborated and voted at the 
 congregations. This was, in fact, the only means of keeping 
 out of sight the divisions that might exist among the members, 
 and of giving themselves, in default of a more real authority, 
 that, at least, of unanimity. 
 
 Accordingly, in the following congregation (13th January) 
 the legates made bitter complaints. They were at no loss to 
 shew that the greatest enemies of the council would do it less 
 harm than its own members, however little they might renew 
 such scenes in public. Nothing more true ; but in saving ap- 
 pearances, why not also avoid the reality ! Congregations with 
 shut doors ! why, we know almost all that past. Sarpi's revela- 
 
 1 Vulpeeidas. De Vargas's Memoirs. 
 
 2 " There happened on this occasion what commonly makes endless debates : the reason 
 expressed by the legates was not that which touched them most, so that to oppose them with 
 arguments was to attack the shadow and not the substance. They themselves sent word to 
 the pope, that what had made them reject with horror that denomination (representing the 
 universal Church) was, that they thought of the addition that had been made to it at Con- 
 stance and at Basle, viz., that the council has received immediately from Jesus Christ a 
 power to which all dignity, even that of the pope, is bound to submit." — Pallav. B. v. ch. ii. 
 
58 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TKENT. 
 
 tions, often inexact, compelled Pallavicini to publish a mass of 
 facts which would otherwise have remained in the archives of 
 the Vatican ; and the cardinal's corrections have already fur- 
 nished us, and will yet furnish us, with more weapons than the 
 monk's assertions have done. 1 We shall abridge much ; yet 
 there is not a discussion, not a vote, on which we shall not have 
 it in our power to give a thousand details, and this will not be 
 without our having many a time asked ourselves, as we have 
 already done, where there is to be seen any difference at all 
 between the deliberations of the holy council, and those of any 
 ordinary and merely human meeting. And who can doubt that 
 differences of sentiment, but for the immense interest which all 
 alike — Italians, French, and Germans — had in appearing united, 
 particularly on questions of doctrine, would have been exhibited 
 with far more persistency and noise ? 
 
 To return to the 13th of January. The discussion of some 
 plan of operations was looked for, for it was said that the 
 legates had been occupied with laying its bases, and were about 
 to submit it to the assembly. Great, then, was the surprise 
 that was felt when they confined themselves to simply remind- 
 ing the members of the three leading points noted by the pope 
 in the bull of convocation : the extirpation of heresies, the re- 
 formation of discipline, the re-establishment of peace. And 
 when their advice was asked on the course that was to be pur- 
 sued, " Yours shall be ours," was their reply. " Eeflect and 
 pray to God." Excellent advice; but unhappily it was too 
 clear that the grand object all the while was to gain time. The 
 legates had received no directions from Eome, and knew not 
 what either to propose or to do. Such, as several bishops said 
 in the face of the whole assembly, was the whole secret of their 
 humble declaration. Meanwhile, against all but the unanimous 
 opinion of the members, they obtained this point, that the 
 council should not seal its decrees and its letters with a seal of 
 its own. They urged, " that there was no engraver at Trent 
 that could make one. It was necessary to send to Venice ; 
 
 1 Pallavicini, at this very passage, is much more curious than Sarpi. In his statement of 
 the reasons alleged against the titles which the minority wished to give the council, " Imi- 
 tate," he makes the premier legate say, " imitate much rather the pope, who, though 
 entitled to the reasonable assumption of the sublimest names, prefers keeping to the very 
 humble title of servant of the servants of God." " Besides," he makes others say, " the 
 emphasis of that epithet {(ecumenical) would ill suit an assembly composed of so few bishops, 
 and so poor in ambassadors. The Lutherans would be sure to recall the old proverb, that 
 little men arc apt to stand on their tiptoes." — Pallavicini, 13. v. eh. vi. 
 
 Have we said anything else ? 
 
ANTI-ROMAN MAJORITY THE POPE ALARMED. 59 
 
 that would cause too long a delay. It would be seen to after- 
 wards." And nothing more was said about it. The seal of 
 the premier legate served for all. Even down to the smallest 
 matters, the council was condemned to exist only by and for the 
 pope. 
 
 On the 18th of January there was the same silence on the 
 part of the legates, the same indecision on the part of the 
 assembly. The discussion was opened, but came to no result. 
 The Italians wanted the council to begin with the settlement of 
 doctrines ; to that the imperialists objected then, as always, 
 that the extirpation of heresies was not to be thought of until 
 scandals were first extirpated. The meeting adjourned itself to 
 the 22d, and then rose. 
 
 A majority now began to take shape, but it was on the 
 German side. Had the vote been taken at once, the matter 
 would have been at an end ; reforms were taken up ; they be- 
 came the grand affair. The pope was aware of plans being in 
 agitation against his court, and against himself. The council 
 once embarked in that course, what was he to do ? — " Make an 
 inglorious surrender ; permit the council, which he himself had 
 convened against heresy, to do him more harm than heresy 
 itself? Or should he resist? Was he to deprive of all its 
 credit the very assembly whose sole weapon against heresy was 
 the public veneration ? Was the general to quarrel with his 
 army at the moment of engaging in battle ? Was he to renew 
 the troubles of Basle, the results of which would be all the 
 more to be feared, inasmuch as the materials being still more 
 ready to catch fire now than they were then, the smallest of 
 these sparks might make them burst into a flame?" 1 His 
 whole hope lay in his legates, whom he treated, however, 
 very ill, for having so imprudently left the decision to the 
 assembly. 
 
 On the 22d of January, the members were almost unanimous 
 in requiring that reforms should be taken up first, and doctrines 
 afterwards. This compelled the legates to raise the mask, and 
 to state plainly that such were not the views of the pope. The 
 council might well have asked why the pope had not explained 
 himself sooner ; they did not care, however, to allow themselves 
 to be drawn off to that ground. But said the legates, " Has 
 not the emperor spoken of convening a council himself for the 
 purpose of putting an end to the present disputes ? And who 
 
 1 Pallav. B. v. ch. viii. 
 
60 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 will keep him from doing so, should we put off questions of 
 faith?" This argument prevailed. Indirectly charged with 
 delaying doctrinal q\;estions for the mere purpose of giving the 
 emperor an opportunity of breaking with the pope, the impe- 
 rialists dared not hold out any longer. " Day of battle ! glori- 
 ous day for the apostolic see !" wrote the legates in transmitting 
 to Cardinal Farnese the details of their victory. Such, in their 
 view, had been the greatness of the danger. 
 
 And yet this victory was not complete. It had been found 
 necessary to yield so far as that the questions of discipline should 
 be mingled, as much as possible, with the doctrinal ones. The 
 bishops recollected Constance and Pisa, where, on the latter 
 being decided, the councils had been dismissed without having 
 had it in their power to occupy themselves with the former. 
 They had taken their precautionary measures, it remained for 
 the pope also to take his. 
 
 To the dangers which he suspected, there was added one 
 which he hardly dreamt of, but which time has made evident. 
 We refer to the intermingling of disciplinary and doctrinal 
 decrees. For those who regard both as infallible there is no- 
 thing untoward in this, but as respects those who do not believe 
 in disciplinary infallibility, it supplies a serious argument against 
 them. In that case, in fact, what an odd medley is presented 
 by the decrees of the council ! Here we find one on discipline : 
 that is fallible. Next comes one on doctrine : this is infallible. 
 They stand side by side, lie parallel, and are closely connected 
 together; — what of that! The one is the work of man, 
 the other is the work of God. This you must receive at the 
 peril of your salvation ; that you may reject. And let us not 
 forget there are those — we shall see several — in which some 
 articles are doctrinal, others disciplinary. In that case behold 
 the fallible and the infallible, the mutable and the immutable, 
 mingled, interlaced, and running into each other, in the same 
 chapter, on the same page, sometimes even in the same phrase. 
 No, there is no middle course ! Either be frankly ultramontane, 
 and we shall know with whom we have to do ; or admit, that if 
 a council is fallible in one of the halves of a chapter, of a page, 
 of a phrase, it cannot be infallible in the other. 
 
 The third session, fixed for the 4th of February, was now 
 approaching, and yet nothing, absolutely nothing to be done at 
 it. Had they set to work immediately, it was impossible to have 
 any decree sufficiently matured for that date. The bishops mur- 
 
COUNCIL DIVIDED INTO THREE CONGREGATIONS, AND WHY. Gl 
 
 mured ; forty had now arrived, and though that was hut a small 
 number for a council, yet they were no longer the small body 
 which it had been found possible to keep so long idle. Already, 
 to prevent the irregularities that were dreaded, the Fathers, says 
 Pallavicini, 1 " had been adroitly separated into three several 
 congregations, which were to meet at the houses of the three 
 legates respectively. The apparent reason adduced by the 
 legates for this was, that in three different places more business 
 would be done in less time. . . . But in their own secret 
 hearts, they proposed to themselves three other advantages. 
 One was that of being better able to lead the whole body, when 
 weakened by division, into three separate brooks, instead of 
 being allowed to gather into a river. The other .... 
 &c, &c." Here we find a Jesuit frank enough. He adds, ac- 
 cordingly, that for some weak minds, this might seem to furnish 
 arms to the enemies of the council's authority. We confess we 
 are such weak-minded persons, who have the unlucky humour of 
 calling intrigue — intrigue ; and thinking that where there is in- 
 trigue, there the Holy Ghost is not. " But," says the author, 
 " is there intrigue, then, in the pope's desiring to preserve intact 
 that sovereign authority, of which God has made him the depo- 
 sitary ? And if such a preservation is to be blamed because it 
 is at the same time agreeable to himself, we must blame the man 
 also who eats to live, because no more can one eat without gra- 
 tifying one of the senses. . . . And, as for his ministers, 
 the more address they showed in their efforts, the more praise do 
 they deserve ; for prudence, that queen of the moral virtues, 
 consists precisely in the art of attaining an honest end by using 
 only allowable means." True ; it only remains that Ave be sure 
 that all that is allowable in politics, is allowable also in a council, 
 and that even policy would sanction all that the legates had to 
 do. This we shall have occasion more than once to ask them- 
 selves ; and the cries of their conscience, their remonstrances to 
 the pope, and their confessions to intimate friends, will suffici- 
 ently prove to us, either that they did not consider prudence to 
 be the queen of the virtues, or that, even in their own eyes, they 
 had been something else than prudent. 
 
 Already, notwithstanding its having been decided that doc- 
 trines and discipline were to be taken up simultaneously, they 
 cleverly contrived to prevent this plan from being indicated in a 
 decree. " To what purpose would you write it out'?" said they. 
 
 1 B. v. ch. vii. 
 
<>2 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 " Is it not enough that you follow it?" Nothing being in readi- 
 ness for the session, it was proposed that it should be devoted to 
 the solemn reading and acceptation of the confession of faith, 
 called the Athanasian Creed, forming part of the canon of the 
 mass. Several councils, it was said, had done this. It was 
 like arming themselves with a buckler before marching to 
 the attack of heresies. Several had, in fact, placed it at the 
 head of their decrees ; but there never had been an instance of 
 a session having been devoted to it, especially after having had 
 two months to prepare for something else. Besides, the singu- 
 larity of proceeding with great pomp, to read what people could 
 hear every day at all the masses, it was objected that that creed 
 was not attacked by the Protestants, and furnished no arms 
 against them, if, on the contrary, it was not even in their hands, 
 a weapon rather against the Church. In fact, the circumstance 
 of a creed having been admitted at Nice as complete, having 
 been maintained afterwards without addition, and being still read 
 daily in all the churches of Catholicity, containing nothing, 
 or almost nothing of what was attacked by the Reformation, was 
 one the bearing of which could hardly be dissembled. But 
 what was objected most, was that, after having promised to 
 bring forward discipline and doctrine abreast, they should com- 
 mence with doctrine alone. 
 
 Here, as in all cases, the legates carried their point, A pre- 
 amble was drawn up, in which it was said that the Fathers, 
 under a conviction of the immensity of their task, felt how need- 
 ful it was for them mutually to exhort each other to take, ac- 
 cording to the saying of an apostle, "the shield of faith, the 
 helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit ?" Consequently, 
 they thought they could do nothing better than repeat, word for 
 word, (totidem verbis,) that ancient and venerable symbol, "by 
 means of which alone, on some occasions, infidels have been con- 
 verted and heretics overwhelmed." A piece of pure fanfaronade 
 at that moment, seeing that the heretics of the clay declared their 
 belief in it, 
 
 The session was held, accordingly, and the 8th of April fixed 
 for the next, 
 
 Two months seemed a long time. Many of the bishops 
 complained ; but it was replied that several foreign prelates were 
 on their way, and that it was proper that they should wait for 
 them. In point of fact, the parties meant were twelve Spanish 
 bishops sent by the emperor. 
 
ITALY ALWAYS IN THE MAJORITY. 63 
 
 The pope, on his side, was about to send much the same num- 
 ber of Italians. We shall see that Italy never ceased to be at 
 m11 times in the majority in the assembly, but that no more did 
 the number of its bishops much exceed that of those from other 
 countries. Like an able general who knows the exact number 
 of soldiers required for each affair, Rome sent or recalled her 
 partisans, according to the necessities of the moment. Certain 
 of victory, she did not wish to give herself the air of being able 
 to overwhelm her foes. 1 
 
 Notwithstanding this precaution, and although there were 
 always some independent men among the Italians, there is no 
 fact shown by the annals of the time to have been more fre- 
 quently or more universally alleged, whether against the council, 
 or against the pope. On the least check, the foreign (non-Italian) 
 bishops wrote to all Europe, that they could do nothing, that they 
 were nothing, that the Italians voted as one man ; on the least 
 discontent being felt against the pope, the secular princes ex- 
 claimed with still more vehemence, that he was the master, the 
 only master; and that the Italians swept all before them. 
 
 Now, what are we to think of this ? 
 
 In point of right, it could be no objection. The council was 
 open to all bishops ; all had been invited in the bull by which 
 it was convoked. Had there been but one foreigner against a 
 hundred Italians, the assembly was regular, and its decisions 
 legal. 
 
 In point of fact, the matter stood quite otherwise. If injustice 
 was done to the Italians, when they were accused of being always 
 Italians above all things, it is incontestable that they brought 
 with them ideas more or less peculiar to their nation, and the 
 constant triumph of which, in a council-general, might easily 
 appear contrary to the very end and essence of such a council. 
 The independence of which some gave proof, hardly lasted longer 
 than the first few months ; and when these were over, we see 
 Them openly form a party. Private meetings, compact votings, 
 reproaches of treason against all who refused to follow the tor- 
 rent — nothing was wanting. While, however, we blame the 
 Italians, we nowise mean to exculpate others. Each of the 
 nations showed plainly enough, that it only wanted appearing in 
 sufficient number, to do likewise. " Count not up the Fathers 
 
 1 We have calculated, on this occasion, the total number of bishops or abbeys who figured 
 at Trent. It was about 450 ; of whom there were 180 foreigners, and 270 Italians ; 27 to 1 8, 
 or 3 to 2. 
 
()4 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 at Trent," says one of its apologists; 1 " ash them not from what 
 country they come ; a Christian's country is the universe." Fine 
 words these, of which the whole history of the council is nothing 
 hut a perpetual refutation ; and which of the two are we to be- 
 lieve, the author who at the close of three centuries has pictured 
 to us this magnificent unity, or the members themselves of the 
 council, who never passed a clay without mutually accusing each 
 other of violating it '? And all were right. It was impossi- 
 ble to be more French than were the French, — more German 
 than the Germans, — more Italian, to return to them, than the 
 Italians. How could it be otherwise ? The Lutherans, it is 
 true, asked for what was impossible, when they would have had 
 the bishops, first of all, loosed from obligations by oath to the 
 pope ; but the oath which many Italian bishops had to swear, 
 comprised, even in the eyes of some who were not Lutherans, 
 clauses that were incompatible with the liberty which every 
 member of a deliberative assembly ought to enjoy. It ran thus: 
 '• I engage to preserve, to defend, to augment, to advance the 
 rights, the honours, the privileges, and the authority of the holy 
 church, and of our lord the pope; not to take part in any deli- 
 beration, any act, any transactions, in which there is set on foot, 
 against our said Lord, or the said church, anything whatsoever 
 contrary to, or to the prejudice of, their rights, their honours, 
 their position, and their authority.'" 2 Such had been the oath 
 sworn on the day of their consecration, by the numerous prelates 
 of the papal states ; and the same formula was in use, with but 
 a few words of difference, in other states of Italy. Those pre- 
 lates, then, were in the hands of the pope, not only as subjects 
 are which have merely sworn to be faithful, and are left free to 
 see, in their own conscience, in what this allegiance consists, — 
 but fully, absolutely. Whatever displeased, or might displease 
 the pope — whatever his ministers combated, or even did not 
 support, all this they could not, without perjury, either accept or 
 allow to pass unopposed. This does not prove that they were 
 always kept, in point of fact, in this absolute incapacity for doing 
 anything, or wishing anything, of themselves ; but it is not neces- 
 sary that a judge should have been actually deprived of his 
 liberty : it is enough that he might have been deprived of it, in 
 
 1 The Abbe Prompsault. almoner of Quinze-Vingts. 
 
 2 Jura, honores, privilegia et auctoritatem SancUe Rom. Ecclesiae et domini nostri papa? 
 conservare, defendere. augere et promovere curabo. Neque ero in consilio, vel facto, vel 
 tractatu in quibus contra ipsum dominum nostrum vel eandem Rom. Ecclesiam, aliqua sin- 
 istra Tel prejudicial juris, honoris, status, et potestatis eorum machinentur. 
 
THE COUNCIL ACCEPTED BY THE ROMAN CHURCH. 65 
 
 order to a legal exception lying against his decision. Accord- 
 ingly, we see that in all that has been written, in a legal point 
 of view, against the council of Trent, 1 this oath taken by the 
 Italian members is the first alleged ground of nullify. Will it 
 be said, with an author already quoted, 2 that they remained free 
 in the discussion of matters relating to the faith ? No ! the pope 
 as dogmatical head of the Church was then more than ever 
 mixed up and confounded with that same pope as head of the 
 hierarchy. Granting that if those bishops remained free in some 
 points not as yet definitely settled, it is clear that they were no 
 longer free on those upon which the pope had pronounced a de- 
 cision ; the slightest resistance to his doctrinal decisions would 
 have been an insult, a rebellion, of much more serious conse- 
 quence than the most vigorous assaults by word or deed against 
 his usurpations as a sovereign. Nor was this enthralment of the 
 faith so peculiar to the Italians, as that a still more general juri- 
 dical nullity might not be deduced from it against the acts of 
 the council. All had sworn to believe what the Church tanght ; 
 all were bound beforehand to a certain course, both as respects 
 the general result, and the details of the process. 
 
 As for us, we attach little importance to these considerations, 
 all the more as they have not been left without reply. Illegal 
 or not at the date of its being held, the council has been accepted 
 by the Roman Church. Have not the ample folds of her infalli- 
 bility been thrown over all irregularities, intrigues, and nulli- 
 ties both of form and principle? If, then, we have to complain 
 of the enthralment of the members of the council, it is of 
 another enthralment that we would speak ; it is that which 
 bears down and trammels the pope as the ultimate bishop or 
 priest. There is something stronger than an oath, stronger 
 even than conscience. Habit, interest, esprit-du-corps, true or 
 false shame, the impossibility of retracting on one point without 
 retracting on many more, the desire of unity for the sake of 
 domination, and of domination for the preservation of unit}', — 
 here we see what would explain to us much better than an oath 
 to the pope, both the council and its votes, and the maintenance 
 of the Roman system. How ridiculous, be it said in passing, 
 this pretended approbation of the Church as the last seal of. 
 infallibility! At the consecration of the kings of France, just 
 as the crown was placed on their head, a herald proceeded to the 
 
 i ^entillet, Dumoulin, Ranchin, Spanheim, Heidegger, Jurieu, Leibnitz, &c, So. 
 • Prompsault 
 
66 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 gate of the church and called aloud, " Are the people content 
 with the king that has been given them?" On this the crowd 
 called out, "Yes;" and the herald returned to say that the 
 people had signified their approval. Such is the history of 
 many articles of faith, except that the crowd has not always 
 even heard the question put to it, whether it approved or not. 
 It has said nothing, and that has been held enough ; its con- 
 sent is inferred. — As if from the moment that an idea has 
 made some progress, and that Rome appears to favour it, it 
 were not morally impossible that a bishop should venture to 
 write, or even to speak against it ! For we all know that the 
 Church means the bishops. Rome admits to the right of pro- 
 testing those only whose position guarantees their never exer- 
 cising that right. She has never even acknowledged their right 
 to do so. The popes have submitted, when necessary, to the 
 doctrine of the consent of the bishops, but they have not 
 acknowledged it, and still less have they taught it. The pure 
 ultramontanists laugh at it. " This right," says De Maistre, 
 " was exercised in the case of Fenelon, with a pomp that was 
 quite amusing." Such is the very episcopate in the Roman 
 system. 
 
 In fine, for the first time (it was now the 22d of February) 
 the council met to deliberate in good earnest. The legates 
 appeared radiant with smiles. Why so? Nobody could tell. 
 Could it be because the council was now about to put itself in 
 motion, and because,, after having held a session for the Credo, 
 they would not be obliged to hold one for the Pater, as was 
 remarked by some mischievous wits ? This was doubted. The 
 legates had not hitherto looked like men who were eager for the 
 council proceeding to business.. Could it be that the emperor 
 had at last consented to declare war against the Protestants? 
 possibly so ; a courier had arrived from G-ermany that very morn- 
 ing. — No. It was because of something else ; something better 
 still — Luther was dead ! 
 
 Yes : the veteran father of the Reformation was dead — 
 if the Reformation had any father but God, any mother but the 
 Word of God. He was dead, but only after having viewed with 
 a smile of pity the grand projects and the small intrigues of 
 men, so infatuated as to think of arresting by their decrees the 
 movements of human thought and the very breath of God. 
 And see now how glad they are, these very men ! Even when 
 
QUESTION OF THE COUNCIL'S AUTHORITY. 67 
 
 feeble and dying, the old monk of Wittemberg still terrified 
 them. One might have said, that they could never turn round 
 to look at Germany without their eyes meeting his, and without 
 quailing before that eagle glance which had once embraced all 
 Europe from the top of the donjon towers of the Wartburg. At 
 Trent, at Rome, at Vienna, wherever the partisans and cham- 
 pions of the popedom were to be found, never could they meet 
 by two or three, without a voice, at once serious and sarcastic, 
 seeming to pierce the wall, to overawe theirs and to silence 
 them. Now, then, ye oracles of the council, you may proceed 
 at your ease. Shut, shut the Bible ! Luther no longer lives to 
 open it. Poor insensate creatures ! see you not, that once 
 opened, no human power shall shut it? " My good princes 
 and lords," said Luther shortly before his death, " you are 
 truly far too eager to see me die — me who am but a poor man. 
 You fancy, then, that after that you shall have got the vic- 
 tory !" But no ; they did not think so, for they proceeded to 
 close their ranks, and to advance more vigorously than ever 
 against the book which he had used as his own buckler, and that 
 of his adherents. 
 
 Now, then, let us open that Bible, and let us not take our 
 eyes off it, we who, after the lapse of three centuries, are about 
 to relate the doings of that famous assembly which laboured so 
 hard to have it closed. If it is by history and reason that we 
 can shake the authority of the Council of Trent, it is by the 
 Bible only that we can hope to subvert it altogether. 
 
 Here our First Book should close. The council was about to 
 open, questions of quite another kind will now present them- 
 selves. It is by design that Ave have brought together in this 
 first part, at the risk of weakening its interest, all the prelimi- 
 nary objections bearing on the convocation and the composition 
 of the assembly, on its relations with the pope and the secular 
 sovereigns ; in a word, on its position, and the part that it had 
 to perform in the Church. But there is another question which 
 is paramount to all the rest, and with which Ave shall close this 
 first series of our observations — the question, to wit, of the 
 council's authority. 
 
 Let us say frankly at the outset, that there has been a little, 
 if Ave may not rather say a great deal, of exaggeration in the 
 importance people have giA T en to it. One thing strikes us in 
 •the preaching and the Avritings of the Roman Catholicism of our 
 day : it is the care with which it avoids discussions in detail. 
 
68 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 and controversies positively doctrinal. The course almost in- 
 variably pursued by the great preachers of the day, 1 is to preach 
 authority, the Church, and then to assume as admitted all that 
 the Church teaches. Think you that they have proved tran- 
 substantiation to the thousands whom they sometimes, in large 
 cities, succeed in inducing to communicate? Not at all. After 
 long discourses on the authority of the Church, they have not 
 even said to them, ■' She teaches transubstantiation ; you ought 
 therefore to believe in it." That you ought would have spoiled 
 all. They feel that the smallest objection of detail which they 
 could not fully overmaster, would instantly deprive the prin- 
 ciples they had so laboriously laid down, of all worth, all force. 
 In vain would you have led people to say with you that there 
 must be an authority, that there actually is one, and that it is 
 that of the Church : should there happen to be a single point in 
 what you shall have taught them in its name, which they cannot 
 decidedly admit, it will be all one as if you had done nothing. 
 
 Such is the sense in which we would say that the importance 
 of the question of authority is at the present day exaggerated. 
 People start with the idea that it is everything, when in reality 
 it is nothing. Although Ave should commence here with the 
 confession that we have not a word to say in reply, in theory, 
 lo such or such a book, in which this system is elocpiently set 
 forth, a Roman Catholic doctor would not the less be bound, 
 under the penalty of yielding to us with one hand the victory 
 carried off by the other, to reply to all which we shall after- 
 wards object in detail to the decisions of Trent. Let him then 
 be beaten on a single point, and we shall be entitled to say to 
 him, " Your authority has been mistaken ; what you have told 
 us of its infallibility, therefore, is necessarily false. It makes no 
 answer to objections ; in fact, it exists only for the man who 
 renounces objecting." Shall we after this discuss in detail the 
 texts which the Church brings in support of her infallibility? 
 " The Church," she says, " is, according to St. Paul, the pillar 
 and stay of the truth." " The gates of hell,'' according to Jesus 
 Christ himself, " shall not prevail against it." And is it not 
 Jesus Christ, too, who promised to St. Peter, to pray for him — 
 that thy faith fail not f 
 
 Much might be said about the very meaning of these declara- 
 
 1 [t is also, in general, that of Wiseman in his Cnnfi-rrixxsj "This -die demonstration,?" 
 says he, " suffices to put beyond the reach of attack all the points on which we have been 
 accused of lein,-' in error. " 
 
IMPOSTURE NOT DEMONSTRATION. 69 
 
 tions, and of that last one in particular ; for faith, in the Saviour's 
 discourses, means generally confidence, fidelity, clevotedness, not 
 belief in such and such doctrines. But had we no such objec- 
 tion, it is a question on which texts of Scripture prove nothing- 
 more than a priori reasonings do. If Jesus Christ has said to 
 his apostles, — " I am with you always even to the end of the 
 world;" it is he also, who declared, that "wherever two or 
 three are met together in his name, there is he in the midst of 
 them;" if he has promised to his Church the aids of his Holy 
 Spirit, he has said by the mouth of one of his apostles, that "God 
 giveth the Holy Spirit to those who ask him." What would 
 you reply to him who, resting on that last passage, should insist 
 that he is infallibly in the right? Would you object to him that 
 he has asked for the Holy Spirit, but that he cannot affirm that 
 he has obtained it ? No, he will say, for the promise is express : 
 " Grod giveth the spirit to them who ask it;" and Jesus Christ 
 has elsewhere said, — " Whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in 
 my name, he will give it to you." We should find, in short, as 
 many and more passages in favour of individual infallibility than 
 of the infallibility of the Church. If the former are evidently 
 figurative, the latter may be so too. In order to prove that 
 they are not so — that Cod has promised to his Church never 
 to suffer it to err, we must ever revert to the proof that it has 
 not erred. 
 
 Of what avail, in fine, in this question, can be any appeal 
 whatever to Scripture ? To quote it, is neither more nor less than 
 to assume the very contrary of what one wants to establish ; it 
 is to call us to the exercise of the right that is refused to us. 
 We are told that we must renounce our own individual judgment; 
 that to the Church alone belongs the right to interpret the 
 Bible ; — and, lo, the first thing done, is to give us the Bible 
 to interpret. If the passages adduced seem insufficient, what 
 shall be done? Should they appear conclusive, should the 
 Church, happy to see us enter into her views, tell us that Ave 
 have judged rightly, — we then come to a very simple conclusion, 
 which is this : that if we have made a good use of our judgment 
 once, we cannot believe ourselves incapable of making an equally 
 good use of it another time. 
 
 Thus every demonstration of the Church's infallibility is, of 
 itself, a vicious circle. Infallibility gains converts by imposture, 
 not by demonstration. 
 
 We might ask then, in the first place, if the Eoman authority, 
 
70 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 if any authority whatever, — in the Roman sense of that word, — 
 can be anything hut a word, a misconception, an illusion '? 
 
 "My body is in your hands," said a philosopher to a tyrant. 
 " You may sew up my mouth, shut me up, load me with chains, 
 reduce me to eternal immobility ; but my soul is free, and will 
 remain free." 
 
 For twenty centuries and more these words have been ad- 
 mired, not only as courageous, but also and above all as pro- 
 foundly true. Well, then, if the philosopher was right before a 
 pagan tyrant, could he be wrong before an inquisitor ? 
 
 The only being to whom we cannot hold this language is God. 
 For man, with respect to all that pertains to thought, the sole 
 means of his acting upon man, is persuasion. To this add two 
 indirect methods ; the one, to habituate the mind to be silent ; 
 the other, to constrain it by external acts of violence. 
 
 Let us first demonstrate — and it will not take us long — that 
 none of these three means, the only means possible, is really 
 authority. 
 
 Logically, we have said, the only one possible is persuasion. 
 And, accordingly, we do not see that our adversaries are unwill- 
 ing to place it in the first line, be it ever so little feasible, or 
 though there be the means of doing otherwise. They will not 
 tell an atheist to believe in God because the Church ordains 
 him to do so ; and even, whoever the person may be who is to 
 be convinced, before proceeding to the grand argument, " the 
 Church has said it" they will always put forward, at least for 
 form's sake, some rational arguments. 
 
 Then, of two things, one must happen : either these arguments 
 suffice for conviction, or they do not suffice. 
 
 If they suffice, you then submit; but how? Precisely as you 
 would to any mere man, who alone, armed with nothing but his 
 reason, should labour to inculcate his ideas on you. On this 
 field, the priest's authority is just that of every man who reasons. 
 That of the Church is not required. If these arguments do not 
 suffice, you resist. Then you are told to believe, for so the 
 ( Ihurch ordains. But here, again, of two things we have one ; 
 either you make up your mind to believe, or you persist in not 
 believing. If you persist in not believing, the man who has ad- 
 dressed you in the name of the Church, finds himself exactly in 
 the same position as one who should have addressed you in his 
 own name, and failed at last for want of new arguments. If 
 you make up your mind to believe, will it be, really and truly, 
 
kome's methods of acting on men. 71 
 
 because you have been commanded to do so ? No ; it does not 
 depend on you to obey an order of this nature. What then has 
 been the result? 
 
 First of all, it is possible that the testimony of the Church 
 may have reinforced in your eyes the reasons which you had 
 previously found wanting in force. But, then, it is still to 
 reasons that you yield ; the Church's part is reduced to that of 
 every person of weight placed in a position to augment the pro- 
 bability of an opinion, by his example and his words. It is an 
 authority in the vulgar sense of the word} it is not authority in 
 the Roman sense. 
 
 It may happen, in the second place, that, without ceasing to 
 consider the reasons weak, you come at last to distrust yourself, 
 and to think it more prudent, more conformable with Christian 
 humility, more convenient also, to bow the head and be silent. 
 
 It is this — Rome makes no secret of it — it is this disposition 
 which Rome chiefly requires, and which she has constantly 
 sought to maintain, both among individuals and nations. Thus 
 we come to the second of the three means indicated above : the 
 habituating of the mind to silence and to keep aloof. 
 
 It is the surest of the three ; and the Roman Church has 
 largely and ably employed it. She found it attended with two 
 advantages : first, it enabled her to reign ; next, to reign with- 
 out obstacle, without having the air of oppressing, without seem- 
 ing to rest on anything but the unanimous assent of her mem- 
 bers. Can it be said that her doctors and her chiefs have really 
 had among them a regular, positive, invariable plan for the en- 
 slavement of mankind? No; her doctors and her chiefs them- 
 selves, as we have already remarked, have merely yielded to that 
 mysterious spirit under whose influence their part has been at 
 once active and passive, haughty and humble. If there was any 
 calculation, it was a calculation altogether of instinct. They 
 were sufficiently aware, that in order to demand submission with 
 effect, they must begin with submission on their own part. 
 Hence the astonishing docility of which so many men of fine 
 genius have given proof towards the Church of Rome ; hence 
 that respectful silence which they have shown on so many diffi- 
 culties, which we could not conceive their not having seen as we 
 see them, and even better than we. 
 
 But Rome has not always succeeded in obtaining this silence 
 so completely as that we should not be able to analyze it and 
 discover its true meaning. " God has permitted a bad success," 
 
i - HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 wrote Fenelon, 1 on learning that he had been condemned by the 
 pope. Certainly the man who says, " God has permitted me to 
 be condemned," is far from having abjured, in his own secret 
 heart, the ideas for which he has been condemned. " I hold my 
 peace, but not the less convinced am I that I was right ;" such, 
 according to this letter, and several others, 2 was what Fenelon's 
 submission came to at last. 
 
 Listen to Luther as he expressed himself in 1518 : — " I pre- 
 sent myself to you, and throw myself at your feet, Most Holy 
 Father, myself, and all that is in me. Bestow life or death ; 
 call, recall, approve, disapprove. — I recognise your voice as the 
 voice of Christ, who speaks and reigns in you." The voice spoke 
 — and Luther remained none the less Luther. 
 
 Listen to Lamennais in 1831 : — " Father, condescend to 
 look down on some of thy children who are accused of being 
 rebels against thine infallible authority. If one thought, one 
 single thought of theirs, departs from thine, they disavow it, 
 they abjure it." The voice spoke — and Lamennais not the less 
 became, what he is, an infidel. 
 
 Accordingly, we repeat, authority exists for him only who 
 has the wish, for him only who has the power to submit to it. 
 Direct influence it has none. Even with the most ardent desire 
 to be docile under it, still this may be beyond your power. In 
 that case, either you submit, but with a submission altogether 
 external, altogether in show, like that of Fenelon, of the Jan- 
 senists, and many more ; 3 or, like Luther, like all whom reason, 
 right or wrong, has kept from obeying, — you resist. 
 
 In that case there remains the third means — constraint. 
 This is the natural, the indispensable complement of the Eoman 
 system ; and it is in fact always associated with it, everywhere, 
 at least, wherever it has the power. Unaided by the civil 
 authority, it is clear that the Church's authority is in the same 
 conditions as every other intellectual and moral authority : a 
 little weaker, a little stronger, according to individuals — that is 
 all. Let the humblest plebeian get some new idea into his 
 mind : twenty popes, twenty councils, the whole Christian world 
 leagued against him, will not change his conviction by com- 
 manding him to change it. If he persist in calling for proofs, 
 you must give them to him ; if you have none, or if he think 
 
 1 Letter to the Abbe' de Chanterac, his agent at Rome. 
 - These will be found in bis Life, by the Cardinal de Bausset. 
 
 ° The pope threatens us with thundering onrstitutions. A good intention, irilli Utile en- 
 lightenment, is a great evil in high places. — Bossuet, Letter to the Abbe d: Ranee. 
 
AUTHORITY IX THE ROMAN SENSE ILLUSIVE- i A 
 
 them bad, what can you do? Imprison him, torture him, you 
 may ; convince him you cannot. Accordingly, now-a-days, in 
 those countries where the secular power is not at the service of 
 the Roman Church, what does its authority amount to? Does 
 it arrest the progress of a single idea ? Where are there printed 
 most immoral and infidel books — at London or at Paris ? 
 Where are religion and its ministers subjected to most contemp- 
 tuous ridicule ? Although Rome should succeed in reconquering, 
 without any external aid, all the power she has ever possessed 
 only through the assistance of physical force, still this would be 
 a fact which could prove nothing in point of right. Although 
 you were to shew us the entire world laid prostrate before the 
 Roman infallibility, not the less might we say, " It may rise 
 again to-morrow, and, should it rise again, it escapes from you." 
 
 To recapitulate : If you persuade me by dint of reasons, you 
 deal with me on a footing of equality. There will be no 
 authority there. If you habituate me to dispense with reasons, 
 no more do you exercise any empire over my understanding. 
 It holds itself aloof, but it does not submit. The proof of this 
 is, that at any moment it may rise again with all its rights, all 
 its audacity, all its doubts. Neither is there authority here. If 
 you have recourse to physical force, — you have, then, to do with 
 my body ; my soul is, and remains free. Still less is there 
 authority in this case. The best way, therefore, of combating 
 authority, such as Rome arrogates, is to deny it. Legitimate or 
 not, infallible or not, one word decides all ; it is impossible. 
 Either there is persuasion, or there is nothing, nothing but a 
 brute force which the first tyrant that comes may quite as well 
 put forth to the advantage of any idea, any ambition whatever. 
 But if the authority of the Roman Church, let people do what 
 they please, reduces itself necessarily to two means altogether 
 human, persuasion or constraint, — does not this prove at once 
 that it has not received that authority from God ? God would 
 have trifled with the Church had he authorized her to impose 
 creeds, without at the same time enabling her to operate inter- 
 nally on men's souls so as to make them accept those creeds. 
 But the Church has never pretended to be endowed with any 
 such power. She has only had that of persecuting, and that, it is 
 clear, God never gave her any more than he had given it before 
 to a Nero or a Diocletian. He left her to do as she pleased, as 
 he had left them to do as they pleased. Patiens quia mternus. 
 
 After this, what becomes of reasonings a priori? What do 
 
74 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 they prove at bottom, even although all we have said should go 
 for nothing? If there has been a revelation, it is said, there 
 ought to be an authority accompanying it. How reconcile the 
 idea of a revelation given by a God, with the idea that revela- 
 tion has not been secured, from its origin, against all alteration ? 
 How could Luther have been able to believe in the divinity of 
 Jesus Christ, and yet doubt for a moment that that same Jesus 
 behoved to guard, and knew how to guard his religion against 
 all which . . . &C. 1 This we find reiterated in every form, from 
 the pulpit, in books, everywhere. 
 
 Let us see. We, too, venture to reason. " How can you 
 reconcile the idea of God's holiness with the idea that the crea- 
 ture of his predilection, the creature made in his image, man in 
 short, has not been secured from his origin, against all invasion 
 of moral evil?" Well, then, if evil had not been there, evident, 
 palpable, we might defy any one to demonstrate wherein this 
 reasoning is less conclusive than the former. 
 
 God might have ! No doubt. God ought to have ! What 
 know you of that? Are there not enough of other things which, 
 to our poor human eyes, seem necessary, and which God, never- 
 theless, has not done? 
 
 An authority is necessary. — Why ? For three things, we are 
 told, — to regulate the faith ; to preserve it ; to maintain unity. 
 One word on each of these three points. 
 
 To regulate the faith. — This presupposes, 1st, the insuffi- 
 ciency of written revelation ; 2d, the possibility of remedying 
 that insufficiency. 
 
 Now, let us go back eighteen centuries. Suppose yourself at 
 Rome ; a pagan, but, like Plato, sighing for an illumination from 
 above. Suppose the history of the Jews, of the Saviour, of the 
 apostles, to be entirely unknown to you. A book is announced 
 to you, and in that you are told is to be found the desideratum 
 you have longed for. 
 
 What idea would men naturally form, before being acquainted 
 with it, of the much desired volume? Some would figure to 
 themselves a book of philosophy ; others, a dialogue between 
 God and man ; these would expect to find it a course of theology, 
 those a positive and compact code of laws. In a word, each 
 would construct the work after his own manner, and put into it 
 his own ideas, his own tastes, perhaps even his own passions. 
 
 1 RubeUit, Influence rf-' la Reformation de Luther. 
 
THE BIBLE ADDRESSED TO EVERYBODY. 75 
 
 But if there be one idea which, according to all probabilities, 
 would never enter any one's head, it is that the book should not 
 be for everybody, and that there should be men exclusively 
 commissioned to read it, and to impose upon others what they 
 shall have believed that they have found in it. " There will be 
 some," people would naturally think, "who shall make it their 
 special study. And to such men it will be natural for people to 
 listen with the deference due to their superior intelligence and 
 their labours ; but not the less must the book remain the com- 
 mon property of all. To study it must be considered as the 
 right of all and the duty of all." 
 
 Here, too, we admit, there is an argument a priori. We 
 draw no conclusion from it. Let us only see what shall be 
 thought of it afterwards by those who shall have formed it. 
 
 What shall they think of it? They will not even have any 
 occasion to return to it. When they come to read the book, 
 will they find in it a single word likely to suggest a doubt as to 
 the justness of their anticipations ? Will they find a single word 
 indicating that the instructions which it contains must neces- 
 sarily pass through the mouths of certain men ? A single word, 
 in fine, which does not appear to be addressed to everybody, in 
 order that each may take from it whatever his mind, his con- 
 science, his heart shall have found in it. No ; it required seve- 
 ral ages and all the perspicacity of ambition to discover in some 
 of the Master's words, the germs of that power which Eome has 
 arrogated to herself. Even although we should accept, as ad- 
 dressed to Aer, all the promises of aid and inspiration made to 
 the Church in general, still she would be far from having re- 
 ceived as many of them as the Jewish Church, of which God 
 was so long the head, and almost the visible head, so direct was 
 his intervention in the smallest details of that Church's destiny. 
 Was the Jewish Church, on that account, exempt from error? 
 Did Jesus Christ find nothing to reproach her with ? Did she 
 open her eyes to that new light which had been announced to 
 her for a thousand years ? The Jews called themselves " the 
 chosen race," and hence they concluded that the truth could 
 never depart from among them. What less reason had they for 
 this, than Rome has at the present day ? If they erred, nothing 
 will demonstrate that Rome may not err. 
 
 Thus, although there were as much proof as there is little of 
 the insufficiency of the Bible, still nothing could prove that the 
 Roman Church is charged, and alone charged, with the task of 
 
71! HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TKENT. 
 
 supplying what is wanting in it. And what if, passing to facts, 
 we should now inquire how she has done this? With what has 
 she filled up those vacuities which she has thought good to per- 
 ceive in written revelation ? Are those doctrines of which, 
 according to her own admission, there are few, and according to 
 our conviction, no traces in the Bible, — are they, at least, so 
 much in accordance with the spirit of the rest, that one can 
 readily believe them to have emanated from the same source ? 
 What ! the God who could dictate several hundreds of pages 
 without there being a single word in them about such and such 
 Roman doctrines, it is He who long afterwards dictated the 
 decrees by virtue of which those doctrines have obtained a place ; 
 — and what place ! often the first among the doctrines of 
 Christianity! But let us not anticipate. We have here to do 
 with a question of principles, and must say nothing that is not 
 followed up with proof. 
 
 Nevertheless, it would be by facts that we should again be 
 able best to reply to the second thing alleged, that authority is 
 necessary for the preservation of the faith. We would ask our- 
 selves how it has preserved it ; we would call upon it to justify, 
 one by one, the alterations of all sorts to which it has lent itself, 
 and, as we said at the commencement of these reflections, one 
 single unjustifiable point would suffice to annihilate the very 
 strongest pleas that could have been urged in favour of authority. 
 This is just what we have had chiefly in view in the composi- 
 tion of the present history, and here we can but refer the reader 
 to it. 
 
 As long as Christian doctrines preserved their primitive sim- 
 plicity, — as long as the Scripture was in every one's hands, — as 
 long as the pulpits resounded with invitations to study it, — we 
 do not see that the idea ever entered any one's head of setting 
 up that abstract being, the Church, as the regulator and the 
 preserver of doctrine, still less of granting her any right to lord 
 it over the conscience and the reason of her members. There 
 were councils ; be it so ; still there was none in the course of the 
 first three centuries. But it is one thing to meet for the pur- 
 pose of coming to a common understanding as to what is to be 
 taught, to condemn accidentally such or such an opinion which 
 is believed to be mischievous, and quite another thing to arro- 
 gate, as with Divine authority, the absolute right of teaching; 
 and condemning. We deny that this right was arrogated. If 
 there was in the third, the fourth, or even the fifth century, any- 
 
TWO AUTHORITIES MERGED IN ONE. i i 
 
 thing resembling it, what could he the meaning of those con- 
 stant calls on the part of the Fathers, to the reading, the study, 
 the examination of the Holy Scriptures? Accordingly, it was 
 not till after having admitted certain articles of faith, which, to 
 say the least, were hazardous and controvertible, that it was 
 found necessary to fall upon some means of binding them up with 
 those which nobody contested ; in short, the protection of that 
 which was not sufficiently protected by the authority of the Holy 
 Scriptures, was the desideratum which gave birth to the autho- 
 rity of the Church. By little and little this protection was ex- 
 tended to the Bible itself; it was no longer from the hands of 
 God, but from the hands of the Church, that men had to believe 
 they got the sacred volume. Henceforward the two authorities 
 were merged in one. And this fusion, altogether to the advan- 
 tage of the Church, became every day more complete ; the Bible 
 disappearing as, when a building is finished, the first laid stones 
 disappear in the foundations. At this very day, three centuries 
 after the Reformation, there are people whom an appeal to the 
 Bible profoundly astonishes, whom a quotation from the Bible, 
 even when they have no reply to make to it, does not in the 
 least shake. And yet they will not tell you either that it is 
 wrong, or that it has been abrogated ; they very well know that 
 their Church sometimes quotes it ; but to quote it otherwise than 
 the Church does, is a novelty which confounds them. Why 
 should that Bible interfere? No doubt, the instrument is good; 
 but just because it is good, why should it produce any sounds 
 different from those that the Church extracts from it. 
 
 We admit, on the credit of science, things quite contrary to 
 the evidence of the senses, the earth's motion round the sun, for 
 example ; why, then, not admit, on the credit of the Church, 
 something different from what seems to be said in the Bible ? 
 So, then, this is the way in which some remain Boman Catholics, 
 although they see clearly in the Bible the contrary of what they 
 believe. 1 
 
 1 It is an observation, which we will take the liberty of recommending to Protestant con- 
 troversialists, that they forget too much, in general, that they have to do with people for 
 whom the Bib'e is nothing, — nothing at least by itself, from the moment it docs not seem 
 to be in accordance with the Church ; they make it too much their only battle-axe, and are 
 not aware of the slight effect of their heaviest blows. Were these only blows that had missed 
 their proper aim, one would only have to take a surer aim the next time. But the worst of 
 it is, that by having recourse to the Bible against people who have not yet recognised its 
 supreme authority, we are always habituating them more and more to recognise it only as a 
 secondary authority, and not to look upon it as pronouncing in the last resort Thus in all 
 polemics with people who have not yet approached the Bible with the most profound re-pect, 
 call not in the Bible to your aid. until vou have in some sort driven them from all other 
 
78 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 Yes, doubtless, an authority was necessary, absolutely neces- 
 sary, for the preservation of so many things which reason, con- 
 science, and most of all, the Gospel, would so soon have exploded ; 
 but, would that same Gospel, abandoned to itself, delivered into 
 men's hands as it came from the apostles, with nothing but its 
 divine beauty to defend it, without other means of constraint 
 than are to be found in the majesty of its doctrines, and the re- 
 sistless charm of its morality, — would that Gospel run any risk 
 of being lost? Would it not always have been there, an in- 
 spired guide, an immutable regulator, to keep people in the way 
 of truth, or to bring them back to it ? Throw into one heap all 
 the variations, all the divergences, all the modifications, to which 
 the Gospel may have been subjected among those countless sects 
 which have been made a matter of reproach against the Re- 
 formation, — and let it be shown us, with the Bible in our hand, 
 whether all of them taken together, have altered it more than 
 Roman Catholicism alone has done. With authority the Bible 
 was eclipsed ; with liberty never, whatever some men may have 
 said or done, never have men's eyes ceased to be fixed on it. 
 Amid the most violent disputes, amid troubles and convulsions, 
 amid attack and retaliation with the pen and the sword, it has 
 kept its place on the altar, ever circled about with men's homage, 
 ever studied, ever pondered, ever ready to produce its fruits of 
 peace and salvation. Read those eloquent counsels of a Chry- 
 sostom, of a Basil,, of an Augustine, of all the Fathers, in fine, 
 on the duty of seeking in the Book of Life the daily food of our 
 souls, and say if ever there was an epoch in which their counsels 
 were better followed than in the first times of the Reformation. 
 By way of answer we are told to look at the picture of the ex- 
 travagancies occasioned, in some places, by this superabundance 
 of religious and theological life ; but though some minds, on 
 being set free by the Reformation, may have here and there 
 given birth to things that by no means embellished its history, 
 would it be difficult, on the other hand, to find in that of Roman 
 Catholicism, vagaries which it would fain obliterate? To sub- 
 vert authority, say you, is to surrender the faith to all the 
 caprices of the human mind ; but you may long ransack the 
 annals of the Reformation before you shall find anything there 
 
 positions oil to it, by means of every other argument that you have been able to find ; do not 
 allow the sword of God to be empl >yed in uselessly beating the air. Let this observation, at 
 the same time, be oar excuse, with such as may find fault with this book for not being bibli- 
 cal enough. For Protestants it is sufficiently so ; for Roman Catholics, it is better to havu 
 it no more so than it is. 
 
ROMAN VAGARIES PROTESTANT VARIATIONS. 79 
 
 to equal the lucubrations of your mystics, the ecstasies of some, 
 the macerations of others, the stigmata of this saint, and the mira- 
 cles of that. When the infidelity of the last century gathered 
 jn with so much care all that could throw ridicule on Christi-' 
 anity, on what field did it collect the largest harvest ? Besides, 
 let us not forget, that nothing then gleaned in the field of the 
 Reformation had ever been so sanctioned by it, as to make it re- 
 sponsible for such scandals ; they could permanently affect the 
 character of the particular sect or individual only that was guilty 
 of them. But you have canonized by hundreds your illuminati, 
 your innumerable dreamers of every age, of every country, and 
 of either sex ; and though there may not have been any approval 
 of follies, there has always been a bond of attachment which 
 Rome will never break. While interdicting all discussion of the 
 essence of doctrines, the mind has been allowed a frightful lati- 
 tude in the way of analyzing them, diving into them, and setting 
 them off with a thousand fancies. What has been lost in liberty 
 in one sense, has been regained, for better or worse, in another ; 
 and the Church has shut her eyes, like a sovereign who allows 
 his subjects to sing, provided they obey and pay. What a strange 
 book might be made by collecting the products of this passive 
 and hampered half-liberty ! The mind of man cannot remain 
 inactive. Authority, while it prevented it straying to the right, 
 was compelled, by doing so, to tolerate much erratic movement 
 on the left. 
 
 " Did Protestants," says Bossuet, " really know with how many 
 variations their confessions of faith have been framed, that Re- 
 formation of which they boast would inspire them only with con- 
 tempt." 1 We could wish that some one would explain to us, 
 once for all, what is proved, in good logic, by the argument 
 drawn from the variations of Protestantism. When, for example, 
 it shall have been demonstrated that Protestants have not been 
 all, and always, agreed on the subject of the Eucharist, what 
 weight will this have taken from any single direct argument of 
 theirs against the mass ? When it shall have beon proved, that 
 with a pope they would have been more united, in what will this 
 have weakened their historical and doctrinal attacks against the 
 popedom? "Before accusing us of variations," says Bossuet 
 again, 2 " let them begin with clearing themselves." To what 
 purpose? The two positions are totally different. After having 
 written four volumes on the variations of Protestantism, a system 
 
 1 Preface to the Variations. 2 Uriel. 
 
80 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 of liberty, you hjive made less progress than lie who shall have 
 found a single variation in Eoman Catholicism, a system of au- 
 thority and infallible unity. 
 
 With liberty, any party whatever, — individual, congregation, 
 or people, that momentarily loses the true doctrines of the Bible, 
 never loses, at least, the thread by which it may be led back to 
 them. The Roman Catholic, if he reject one single error of his 
 Church, must break with a past, extending over twelve cen- 
 turies — must repudiate a whole world of traditions, and sever ties 
 of every kind. The child of the Reformation, should his ances- 
 tors have erred, is not rivetted by any such chain to their errors; 
 these had not at their side, like the Roman Catholic's ancestors, 
 an immutable power ready to stereotype all their imaginations. 
 In all churches it may constantly happen that Christianity may 
 be mingled with more or less alloy, according to times and places. 
 With authority, the alloy and the metal are thrown into one ; it 
 would be rebellion and sacrilege to separate them. With liberty, 
 the alloy, should any remain, ever lies in the crucible of the 
 Bible, and is ever subject to the action of that divine fire which 
 alone is capable of separating it and expelling it. 
 
 This operation, which Rome does not desire, should be left to 
 proceed of itself with the aid of the Bible ; she must, wherever 
 she is not as much mistress of men's bodies as she desires "to be 
 of their souls, allow to proceed of itself, and that, too often, under 
 the empire of the most untoward passions. Do people suppose 
 that Voltaire, had he had the Bible put into his hands from his 
 earliest years, even admitting that he might have become an in- 
 lidel, would have persecuted it so ruthlessly ? Witness Rousseau, 
 who at bottom believed in the Bible no more than Voltaire did. 
 A Protestant may become an unbeliever, but not an impious 
 blasphemer. He may abandon, he may attack Christianity, but 
 he will not hate it ; he will not call it the infamous wretch 
 (I'infame) ; he will not insist on crushing it (I'ecraser). Without 
 the deplorable identity which authority had established between 
 that of the Bible and that of Rome, never should ignorance, 
 never should dishonesty, have gone so far as to charge religion 
 itself with whatever might be found ridiculous, or odious, in its 
 history. Established for the purpose of conservation, authority 
 behoves to preserve everything, and this is the greatest evil she 
 has done to religion and to herself. At the present day, among 
 so many new obstacles, does any believe that she would not 
 think herself all too happy could she but lay down part of the 
 
UNITY DESIRABLE IS IT NECESSARY ? 8 1 
 
 burthen which she has bound herself to carry to the end of time? 
 She does in fact so far make it lighter, by the care with which 
 she allows so many ideas to fall out of notice, the mere announce- 
 ment of which would ruin her for ever ; but all that she thus 
 abandons without its being perceived, we are entitled to gather 
 up and replace on her shoulders, and at the same time to repeat 
 to her, that unless she would repudiate herself, she must take it 
 with her to the last. 
 
 But, we are told, without authority there can be no unity. 
 
 This argument, from which so much is attempted to be drawn 
 every day, is, in itself, the most incorrect of the three. It as- 
 sumes as admitted and incontrovertible what has first of all to 
 be demonstrated. Has it entered into God's purpose that there 
 should be an entire unity of faith in the Church? This is the 
 question. Authority is required to maintain unity. Be it so. 
 But is unity itself necessary ? 
 
 Let us not be misunderstood. That it is desirable, infinitely 
 desirable ; that we ought to be disposed to concur towards it 
 with all our efforts, all our prayers, all the concessions that con- 
 science will permit, is what we suppose none will deny. Who 
 doubts or ever doubted it ? A Church at once zealous and peace- 
 able, is one of the most ravishing spectacles the earth can pre- 
 sent; and the clay on which all Christians shall unite to form 
 but one will be the brightest that shall ever have shone on this 
 scene of discords and contentions. 
 
 But what do we say? The brightest of days has already 
 shone on the world. It was the clay on which the earth beheld 
 the arrival of Him who was announced as the Saviour of men ; 
 of men, mark well the word, that is to say, of every man, of every 
 soul. What is the Church, after all ? The Church, in the eye 
 of God, means the individuals who go to compose it ; for it, as 
 the Church, no more than for a nation as nation, is there re- 
 sponsibility, or judgment, or a future, or a paradise, or hell. 
 Promises and threatenings, all that you read in the Scripture, all 
 that you hear from the mouth of Gospel preachers, all is from 
 time to time pressed in vain under a collective form ; there does 
 not, and there cannot exist any responsibility but that of the in- 
 dividual. Religion, let people do what they please, remains an 
 affair between each individual and God. If my religion be in 
 conformity with that of my fellow-citizens, so much the better, 
 and I ought to wish it may be so ; if it be not, it is an evil, an 
 evil which I ought to combat, as far as may be, with charity and 
 
 F 
 
82 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 forbearance ; but any real, direct, logical relation between the 
 salvation of my soul and the greater or less conformity there may 
 be betwixt their views and mine, is what I cannot in the least 
 perceive. United or not united with others in this world, each 
 of us will not the less be judged alone, condemned alone, saved 
 alone. Though unity have important advantages, though it 
 powerfully concur towards obtaining many of the objects of re- 
 ligion here below, such as union, peace and civil order, — it is 
 not the less clear, that it is not indispensable as respects the first, ' 
 the greatest of all those objects — the essential object, the sancti- 
 fication and salvation of each individual soul. 
 
 If it is not indispensable, nothing authorizes us to affirm that 
 God behoves to have desired it. And now, have we facts to 
 support the affirmation that God has desired it ? 
 
 " God is holy. God has made man. God, therefore, must 
 have desired that man should be holy and should remain holy." 
 Such is the reasoning, the falseness of which, we have already 
 said, cannot be logically demonstrated. What, then, should we 
 do to refute it ? We should say, — " Evil exists. There are vices, 
 there are crimes. Then, God has not wished that there should 
 not be either vices or crimes." Why has he not wished that 
 there should be neither? This we cannot tell. There stands 
 the fact ; the argument to the contrary vanishes. Facto cedit 
 argumentum. 
 
 Well, then, when we see the Christian world so profoundly 
 divided, when we see all that is factitious in the Roman unity, 
 and all that is atrocious in the means which it has been found 
 necessary, nevertheless, to employ for maintaining that unity for 
 good or evil ; when we say to ourselves that so many anxious 
 thoughts, so much vigilance, so much blood, have not prevented 
 Rome from losing a third, almost the half of Europe, and that 
 a reduplication of horrors was required in order to shut the gates 
 of Spain and Italy on the Reformation, countries the conquest 
 of which would have been the death of Roman Catholicism, — 
 we think it proved to demonstration that unity, meaning thereby 
 the system to which that name is given, is a human invention, 
 a mere dream, very fine in theory, often most hideous in prac- 
 tice, and the realization of which, if it is to take place at all, 
 pertains only to the Great Master of all hearts. 
 
 The question, then, remains entire. Nothing proves to us, in 
 theory, either the authority or the infallibility of the council. 
 Let us see how far it will itself prove it by its decrees and the 
 history of its decrees. 
 
83 
 
 BOOK SECOND. 
 
 Homage to the Bible— What is Tradition — Limits to credibility — What the Fathers 
 thought of it ; and the councils — What it had hitherto been — Papal aberration — Of what 
 is Holy Scripture composed — Why had this still to be decided — The divines at the coun- 
 cil — The apocryphal writings — Three opinions — Strange omnipotence — The Vulgate — Its 
 history down to the time of the council — The decree would admit no delay — Results — The 
 Vulgate as it stands — Whose province is it to interpret Scripture — Demi-liberalism — Ab- 
 solute bondage — The god of Epicurus — Historical question — The Old Testament — The New 
 — The Fathers — The last of the Fathers — Saint Augustine and the Bible Societies — A false 
 quotation — Decree on the reading and the interpretation of the Bible — Fate of this decree 
 in the hands of the popes— Deadly Pastures — Port-Royal — Liberty in Roman Catholicism — 
 Sophisms — Difficulties in drawing up the decree — The Anathemas — Historical aspect of the 
 case— Hesitations in the council — Decrees on the faith — Decrees on reformation — Alarms — 
 Precautions — Fourth Session — The pope's confirmation — What had been gained — Perpetual 
 compromise — External difficulties. 
 
 Altercations about the choice of subj ects — Preaching — The bishops and the monks — Mutual 
 recriminations — Indemnifications to the bishops — General relaxation of morals to the ad- 
 vantage of the. popes — Lutheran opinion— Question of original sin — Four problems — Infants 
 dying without baptism — The Roman catechism — All explanations but by anathemas, aban- 
 doned — Reflections on this subject — Five canons — The immaculate conception — Historical 
 views — Fluctuations — How the Roman dogmas establish themselves — Fifth Session — Dis- 
 puted votings — The ambassadors — Peter Danes — Holy War — Jubilee — Miscalculations — 
 Alarms on the side of Trent — Projects for transferring the council to another place — Vic- 
 tories of Charles V. — Fresh altercations on the choice of subjects — Residence — Historical 
 view — The legates severe at the expense of the bishops, and the bishops severe at the expense 
 of the pope — Grace — Two extremes — What is in truth the Romish doctrine — Warm dis- 
 putes — What we are to believe respecting grace — Draft of the decree — Herculean task — 
 Inconsistency and audacity — Quarrel betwixt Soto and Catherine -No solution. 
 
 Benefices — Historical view — Pious donations — Origin of the quarrel about the Divine 
 right — Efforts to keep the pope out of it — Decree on residence — Abuses without end — Sam- 
 son's courage — Sixth Session — To be still and adore — Question of the Sacraments — The 
 number seven — Historical and dogmatical difficulties — Oddities — Omnia a Christo instituted 
 — How this decree was twisted — The sacraments. — Their necessity — Inaccuracies and 
 sophisms — Intention necessary— Occasions or causes of grace — Warm disputes — What does 
 the Roman Church really teach — The intention of the priest — Objections — What is to be done ? 
 
 Baptism — Baptism of heretics — Holy Chrism — Confirmation — Historical view — Anathe- 
 mas. — Whose province is it to confirm — Receiving the holy Chrism — Gratuitously — His- 
 torical view — Sad realities — Twenty-seven anathemas — Water of baptism — Human ar- 
 rangements. 
 
 Pluralities — Historical view — Unions and commendams — The pope, always the pope — 
 The eleven articles of the Spanish prelates — Beference to the pope — Replies — Salva semper 
 — Results — Roman immutability. 
 
 Seventh Session — Projects of translation — The plague — Great hurry — Decree of trans- 
 lation — Eighth Session— Minority — Resistance — To obey in order to be obeyed. 
 
 The selection that had. been made of the subjects that were 
 first to be treated, implied an homage, no doubt very involun- 
 tarily paid, to the supreme authority of the Bible, and to the 
 
84 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 opinions of the man whose recent death had been thought so 
 auspicious. Met for the purpose of systematically arranging and 
 fixing the Church's creed, why should not the council have, first 
 of all, defined the right in virtue of which they were to proceed 
 to do so? This question, like that of the relative position of the 
 pope, was not yet so clear but that many of the faithful, those 
 even most disposed to obedience, would have been happy to re- 
 ceive some new light upon it. But with whatever sincerity the 
 assembled prelates may have believed in the divine authority of 
 their mission, they could not fail to see how strange it would 
 have looked for them to issue a declaration, amounting in fine 
 to this, — " We are infallible, because we affirm that we are in- 
 fallible, and our affirmation is true, because Ave are infallible." 
 An inevitable sophism, with regard to which, as well as so many 
 others, men may indeed delude themselves, but which, even in- 
 sincerely, one would hardly venture openly to propound. 
 
 The assembly, therefore, passed at once to the question which 
 ought to have stood second, — "What is the source of the faith?" 
 And to this the reply had to be, — " It is Scripture." Luther 
 could hardly have spoken better. 
 
 This, accordingly, was not the point at which it stopped. Is 
 it Scripture alone ? A Roman council which should reply, Yes ! 
 and which at the same time would prove its consistency, could 
 have had no other course than to break up and disperse. The 
 reply, therefore, as might be expected, was this, — Scripture and 
 Tradition. 
 
 But what is tradition? Nothing more easy to define, pro- 
 vided you keep to vague description. The New Testament is 
 not a large book. But the apostles spoke and preached for a 
 course of years and in many churches ; it follows, therefore, that 
 we do not possess in writing all the words that fell from their 
 lips. Several of the apostles even wrote nothing; nothing at 
 least that we possess. Tradition, consequently, is the entire 
 body of those apostolical instructions and facts which have been 
 transmitted, or were capable of being transmitted, otherwise 
 than by writing, otherwise than by the New Testament, in the 
 state in which it has reached us. 
 
 Here all, it will be observed, seems very simple ; and yet even 
 here, without departing from the vagueness in which people 
 would appear to be so nearly agreed, we find already, if not 
 positive objections, at least improbabilities, of little less weight 
 than arguments. That the apostles may have given expression. 
 
WHAT IS TRADITION ? 85 
 
 in their oral discourses, to ideas which unhappily we do not find 
 in their writings, is possible ; still, it is very little probable that 
 a single truth of any importance can have been omitted in four 
 gospels and so many epistles. But this possibility has limits, 
 and very narrow limits too. Had the worship of the Virgin, 
 for example, occupied in the primitive Church, we do not say 
 the place it has at this day in the Eoman Church, but any place, 
 however insignificant, can it be admitted that the apostles would 
 have failed to say one word about it ? Utterly improbable this 
 would be, had even no more of their writings come down to us 
 than four or five epistles, of four or five pages each. Were the 
 primacy of Home and of the pope an apostolic idea, who shall 
 explain to us how St. Paul could have written, from Borne 
 itself, to several important churches, without making the slight- 
 est mention of any tie established, or to be established, betwixt 
 them and it ? Shall it be said that God has thus permitted it, 
 and that it is not for us to ask why ? God has permitted it ! Still 
 this would not be enough. In order to their having been able 
 to omit things of so much importance, it is not enough that God 
 may have permitted it ; it must be maintained that he himself 
 commanded their silence in such a case. 
 
 Is tradition at least favourable to itself? And could we forget 
 the evil that Scripture says of it, 1 does it appear in the Fathers, 
 and in the decrees of the first councils, with a part at least of 
 that supreme authority which it was to assume at Trent ? 
 
 No. Never did Luther or Calvin appeal more formally to 
 Scripture, and to Scripture alone, than did the authors of the 
 four first centuries. " This gospel," says one of them, " was first 
 preached by the apostles ; then, by the will of God, they ivrote it, 
 in order that it might become the foundation and the pillar of 
 our faith." Who is it that speaks thus? Why, it is Iremeus, 2 
 a disciple of a disciple of St. John. He who had received the 
 instructions of an apostle so fresh from their first source ; he it 
 is, further, who thus writes in a homily, 3 — " We must neces- 
 sarily appeal to the testimony of the Scriptures, without which 
 our discourses are entitled to no credit." 
 
 "Let the disciples of Hermogenes," says Tertullian, 4 "shew 
 that what they teach is written ; and if it be not written, let 
 them tremble at the anathema pronounced on whosoever takes 
 from or adds to Scripture." 
 
 J Matt. xt. 3. 6 0. a Homily I. on Jeremiah. 
 
 2 Against heresies, b. iii. 1. * Aijaimt Hdrmog., eh. xxi. 
 
Mb HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 " It is necessary," says St. Basil, 1 " that every one instruct 
 himself, by means of the divine Scriptures, in the necessary 
 verities, both that he may make progress in piety, and not ac- 
 custom himself to human traditions. . . . What is written, 
 do thou believe ; what is not written, seek thou not after." 
 
 " If you take away, or add ought," says St. Ambrose, 2 " this 
 seems to be a prevarication. . . . When the Scriptures do 
 not speak, who shall speak?" 
 
 And now, mark what Augustine says, — "Let us not stop at 
 what I have said, or you have said, but at what the Lord hath 
 said. We have the Lord's books . . . there let us look 
 for the Church." 3 
 
 Mark Chrysostom : "When impious heresy shall occupy the 
 churches, know that then there will be no proof of true faith, 
 but by Holy Scripture. Have recourse, therefore, only to it, 
 for those who go elsewhere shall perish." 4 
 
 In fine, to that oft-repeated assertion, that there behoves to 
 have been some means of preserving what was written by the 
 apostles, it is Augustine again who will lend us his answer. 
 " Under pretext of the Lord's having said, ' I have yet more 
 things to say to you,' heretics try to give a plausible colour to 
 their inventions. But if the Lord has not said, who among us 
 will venture to say, It is this, it is that ! And if he is rash 
 enough to say it, how will he prove it ? And who will be pre- 
 sumptuous enough to affirm, without any divine testimony, that 
 what he says, even although it were true, is precisely what the 
 Lord meant to say." 5 Does the author, doubtless, proceed to 
 add, that though individuals have no such right, yet the Church 
 has it? No ; there is not a word of restriction. The expres- 
 sions are as precise, as absolute as possible. And if he grant 
 elsewhere, as was quite natural at that epoch, a certain authority 
 to traditions guarded by certain warranties, these lines, as well 
 as many others, sufficiently prove that he had no faith, either in 
 infallible traditions, or in the possibility of discerning them in- 
 fallibly. Athanasius, before him, had been still more precise. 
 " The Scriptures suffice, of themselves alone, for making known 
 the truth. . . . We are resolved to listen to nothing, to 
 say nothing, beyond what has been written. ... It is a 
 
 1 Moral Rvle.', Quest. 95. Homily on the Trinity. 
 
 2 On Paradise, eh. xii. On tin- calling of the Gentilrs, ii. 3. 
 s On the Unity of the Chimh. 
 
 4 Homily XLIX. on St. ilatthew. 
 
 5 Xinety-seveuth Treatise on St. John. 
 
AVIIAT FATHERS AND COUNCILS THOUGHT OF IT. 87 
 
 mockery to raise questions or discussions on what lias not been 
 written." 1 
 
 Thus did the hero of the Council of Nice express himself. 
 Do we find any trace of that council and those following having 
 thought otherwise ? Not the smallest. It was not until the 
 sixth' 2 that it was decided to be necessary to recur, in case of 
 need, to sources not written. This must not be understood, it 
 is true, as if people had never yet allowed themselves to recur 
 to these ; but as little do we find anything that approaches to 
 an official recognition of them ; and the passages we have 
 adduced sufficiently shew how far they were from anything of 
 the sort. The decrees of Nice, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, are 
 framed as resting on Scripture alone, and as being incompetent 
 to rest on anything but Scripture ; if here and there we find 
 appeals to tradition, it is never except in the form of an acces- 
 sory ; the council would never have had the idea of proving 
 anything by it that should not have been sufficiently demon- 
 strated already. Now, even had the Church all the power that 
 Romanists arrogate for her, still it would be matter of doubt if 
 she could exercise that power in favour of tradition. Not to 
 grant it in the first ages, and at a short distance from its 
 sources, more than a restricted and conditional authority, was 
 this not tantamount to interdicting herself from granting it any 
 more a thousand years after ? There is no middle position : 
 either tradition has always been one of the legitimate sources of 
 the faith, and then we beg to know why the fathers made so 
 little account of it ; or it was not so originally, and then, being 
 human and alterable, it never could be so. 
 
 Whatever, in point of fact, it from of old had been, its posi- 
 tion, in point of right, had never been regulated. Popes, 
 doctors, councils, had vied with each other in drawing from it ; 
 but on this point there did not exist, as yet, either special 
 decrees or precise rules. As for rules, no one could dream of 
 making them ; for how could it be exactly determined at what 
 degree of credibility a point of tradition shall become an article 
 of faith ? As for a special decree, one was made, but not with- 
 out difficulty. However accustomed people had become to 
 regard tradition with as much, and even more respect than 
 Scripture, many felt reluctant to declare this. The way had 
 first been opened by the Council of Florence, but in 1441, at a 
 
 1 Against the Gentiles. Treatise on the Incarnation, — Epistle to Serapion. 
 
 2 Constantinople in 680. 
 
88 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 time when it "was disorganized, and when doubts might have 
 been felt as to the validity of its decrees ; besides, that was not 
 a council-general, and its sentence could not be held as defini- 
 tive. Several bishops, accordingly, gave expression to their 
 scruples. A few went so far as to call for a decree declaring 
 the inferiority of tradition, when it was suggested that it w T ere 
 better not to say anything about it. Those even who desired 
 as explicit and as favourable a decree as possible, were far from 
 being agreed on what should be inserted in it. The very word 
 tradition, in the vague and absolute sense which it has since 
 taken, was then unknown. People did not say tradition, but 
 the traditions, and this plural seemed to require that they 
 should be enumerated, that they should be arranged at least 
 under several heads, for the council could not reasonably seem 
 to sanction, with their eyes open, every kind of tradition. The 
 discussion accordingly was very long. Sarpi and Pallavicini 
 are not at all agreed in the details they have given ; but the latter 
 says, that " there were almost as many opinions as there were 
 heads." 1 Let us pass over the details, then, curious as they 
 are. Let us do no more than remark how far these tentative 
 efforts are from indicating that confidence with which " tradi- 
 tion'' is now spoken of by Eomanists, as a Protestant would 
 speak of " Scripture," or as an advocate speaks of " the law." 
 
 It is true, that on the decision being once taken, Eome was 
 not slow to give precision, for her own interest, to what the 
 council had left in it vague and obscure. The council went no 
 farther than to say, " that the truth being in the traditions as 
 well as in Scripture, they were received with equal piety." 2 
 Equality — this was a great step ; but it was not enough. 
 Already, in 1520, Prierio, one of the first theologians of Leo X., 
 had said, " He is a heretic whosoever does not rest on the doc- 
 trine of the Eoman Church, and of the Roman pontiff, as the 
 infallible rule of faith, from which Holy Scripture itself derwes 
 its force and its authority." 3 A year after the close of the 
 council, a bull of Pius IV. fixes the oath to be taken by all 
 ecclesiastics. " I admit," they behoved to say, " I firmly em- 
 brace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions, and all the 
 constitutions of the mother Church ; moreover, I admit holy 
 Scripture, according to the sense which the said Church holds, 
 
 i Book vi. ch. xi. 
 
 - Xecnon tvaditioncs ipsas . . . pari pietatis affectu ac reveratioue suscipit et venuratur. 
 
 ■'■ A qui etiam Scriptura saaa robur trahit et auetoritatem. 
 
WRITINGS OF THE FATHERS MUTILATED. 80 
 
 and has held, to which Church it appertains to judge," &c. 
 Moreover ! Here we see the principal formally become the ac- 
 cessory. The door was opened ; divines rushed into it ; and ere 
 long you will see them as far removed from the decree itself of 
 Trent, as that decree had been already from the view enter- 
 tained by the fathers. " We shall endeavour to demonstrate," 
 says Bellarmine, ] " that the Scriptures without the traditions 
 are neither sufficient, nor simply necessary." " Tradition is the 
 foundation of the Scriptures," says Baronius, 2 " and surpasses 
 them in this, to wit, that the Scriptures cannot subsist unless 
 fortified by tradition, whereas tradition has sufficient force with- 
 out Scripture." " The excellence of the non-written word," 
 says another, 3 " far surpasses that of the Scriptures. 
 Tradition comprises in itself all truth. . . . We ought not 
 to appeal from it. to any other judge." And Lindanus : 4 " Scrip- 
 ture is a nose of wax, a dead letter, and that kills, a very husk 
 without a kernel, a leaden rule, a school for heretics, a forest 
 that serves as a refuge for robbers." Chrysostom, Augustine, 
 where are you ? Can you believe that it is a Christian who 
 thus speaks, and not rather a pagan, who of set purpose takes 
 the direct opposite of what you used daily to inculcate on your 
 flocks? 
 
 Thus had the council broken down the last remaining bridge 
 that spanned the abyss between the Reformation and Rome. 
 Tradition, "that impenetrable buckler ofAjax," as Lindanus 
 also says, had been declared to be of the same tissue with the 
 buckler of the enemies of Rome, and that " after the example 
 of the orthodox fathers," said the decree. The passages, ac- 
 cordingly, which we have borrowed from them, figure among 
 those which the Inquisition was afterwards audacious enoug-h to 
 order to be effaced from their works. 5 
 
 Scripture had been named. The council was called upon to 
 state precisely where it was to be found, and what the books 
 are which compose it. 
 
 How happened it that such questions still remained to be 
 decided ? To be infallible, and to remain for fifteen centuries 
 without saying precisely what went to make up the Bible, was, 
 
 ' On the Word of God, b. iv. ch. iv. 2 Annals, year 58, No. 11. 
 
 . ' Coster, Enchiridion, ch. i. * Punoplia, books i. and vi. 
 
 5 See the Indices Expurgatoriae, published in Spain and in Italy in consequence of a 
 decree of the eighteenth session. An edition of Augustine published at Venice in 1584. 
 omits all the pas ages favourable to Protestants. " Curavimim rrmoveri," say the editors. 
 " ea omnia qxiafdclium mentis hceretica pravitat: posscnt inficere." 
 
90 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 on the Church's part, either a singular forgetfulness of her 
 mission, or a singular avowal of her impotence. And one cannot 
 say here, that if she had neglected to pronounce, it was because 
 there was no doubt on the subject. The discussion shewed that 
 there was more than one. 
 
 For the rest this is an objection which we might renew on 
 many occasions. Does not the Church, in arrogating to herself 
 this absolute right of teaching, and of being the only teacher, 
 authorize us to demand of her a reckoning of what she has not 
 done, as well as of what she has done ? An infallible authority 
 charged with the regulation of the faith, and a fundamental 
 cpiestion that has remained for ages doubtful, will always, 
 people may say what they will, present a contradiction. We 
 shall return to it again. What is certain is, that on the 7th of 
 April 1546, the day before that on which the council's decision 
 came to be known, there was not a single Roman Catholic in 
 the whole world that could tell, either of his own authority, for 
 none had the right to do so, or on his Church's part, seeing she 
 had never formally pronounced her opinion — the exact number 
 of the canonical books. " Many," says Pallavicini, " lived in 
 the most distressing ignorance with regard to this ; the same 
 book being adored by some as the expression of the Holy Ghost, 
 and execrated by others as the work of a sacrilegious impostor." 
 The divisions of Protestants on this subject have never gone 
 nearly so far as this. 
 
 The discussion was warm, and even in some respects suffi- 
 ciently learned, but not on the part of the bishops. Pallavicini, 
 at this very place, would fain make them out to have been men 
 of high theological capacity. He mentions as men of particular 
 ability the three legates, two other cardinals, and the heads of 
 religious orders ; l for the rest, he is obliged to say, without 
 mentioning names, that they were the elite of the bishops. 
 Why the elite ? There was no choice ; most of them were, and 
 still continue to be, unknown in the theological world. Their 
 hesitations, their embarrassments in a multitude of cases, their 
 perpetual recourse to divines by profession, all being things 
 which Pallavicini does not attempt to deny, sufficiently refute 
 his assertion. 
 
 Here, then, should be the place for noticing the intervention 
 
 1 There were, then, eight at the council, and rive of these were of mendicant orders. When 
 we speak of the members under the general name of bishops, the chiefs of the orders are 
 meant to be included. 
 
THE DIVINES AT THE COUNCIL THEIR OFFICE. 01 
 
 of that other class of members, the divines, who had been called 
 to the council for the purpose of elucidating the questions under 
 discussion, but without voting', that privilege being exclusively 
 confined to bishops, mitred abbots, and the heads of religious 
 orders. From the first sessions there had been for some time 
 thirty ; their number was at all times much about the same as 
 that of the voting members. Were we not too tired of the sub- 
 ject to return again to the question of infallibility, viewed in the 
 relation to forms, we might be tempted to ask if their presence 
 accorded with the spirit of the system in virtue of which the 
 body of bishops is alone infallible ; with the spirit we say, for, as 
 respects the letter, the reply would be, that they did not vote. 
 A great many questions were, in fact, handed over to them ; the 
 majority of votes was in many instances determined by the con- 
 fidence reposed in their statements. The bishops were, doubt- 
 less, right in collecting all the elucidations possible ; but one can 
 hardly understand how a court should remain incapable of error, 
 and yet pronounce its sentences according to the opinions of cer- 
 tain adepts who are not infallible. 
 
 Nevertheless, in the question of the canonical books, the con- 
 trary was about to take place, for in that case the decision came 
 from the bishops. Let us see how far this was to the honour of 
 the council. 
 
 The divines were unanimous in recognising the inferiority of 
 the books which Protestants regarded then, and still regard, as 
 apocryphal. 1 Could they hesitate ? Josephus, Eusebius, Origen, 
 Athanasius, Epiphanius, Cyril, Gregory of Nazianzen, Hilary of 
 Poictiers, Augustine, 2 Jerome above all, he who of all the Fa- 
 thers had laboured most on the Bible, speak of it as a generally 
 acknowledged fact ; and if, after all that these have said, there 
 is still some room for discussion as to the views they entertained 
 of such or such a particular book of those in question, it is not 
 the less beyond doubt that they all believed in the non-authen- 
 ticity of some, and the inferiority of all. 
 
 Such, then, was the state of matters ; but this unanimity on 
 the part of the divines did not extend to their being agreed as 
 to the rank to be assigned to those books in the Bible. Some 
 wanted a simple statement of their inferiority without determin- 
 
 1 Tobit, Judith, Esther, Maccabees, &c. 
 
 2 It was he who, at the councils of Hippona and Carthage, caused these books to be re- 
 ceived into the canon of the Bible, but with this clause that the advice of other Churches 
 should first be taken. Further, they were not put on the same rank with the canonical 
 books ; it was ofjly decided that they might be read and quoted. 
 
92 H1STOUY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 ing the degree ; others that they should be divided into two 
 classes, one of which should serve as an intermediate between 
 those universally admitted as canonical, and the apocryphal 
 which had been generally reputed as doubtful. A third party 
 merely required that there should simply be a list drawn up, 
 without explanation, of all the books ; and, last of all, a fourth, 
 consisting of but a feeble minority among the divines, without 
 denying that the apocryphals had held hitherto a more or less 
 inferior rank, proposed to put an end to the matter by declaring 
 them canonical. 
 
 Will it be believed? The last of these opinions carried the 
 day. This was to trample under foot the testimony of twenty 
 Fathers ; it was to deny the superabundantly demonstrated fact 
 that the ancient Jews did not believe in the canonicity of those 
 books ; it was to brave the general opinion of the Eoman Catho- 
 lics, as well as the recriminations of the Protestants ; it was even 
 to overlook the scruples of the very divines of the council. No 
 matter! Was the assembly not omnipotent? And had the 
 bishops been pleased to insert Plato's Phaido, or Aristotle's 
 Logic, in the Bible, what could a Roman Catholic say against 
 it? Ah, when we see how much sweating and sophistry it has 
 cost during the last three centuries, in order to sustain this un- 
 tenable decree, one may be allowed to think that the champions 
 of Rome have more than once cursed, in their heart, the day on 
 which so imprudent a denial was given to one of the most un- 
 questionable facts in the whole history of the Church. But what 
 is sadder still than the infatuation of the men who imagined that 
 they could change the past as they fettered the future, is the 
 impudent fury with which some would dare, down to this very 
 day, to repeat that the Protestants mutilate the Bible ; and 
 why? Because, forsooth, they allow themselves to print it 
 without those books which Rome herself, down to the Council 
 of Trent, had never declared canonical. 
 
 It has happened, accordingly, with this decree as with that on 
 tradition. Hardly was it made, when it was rested on as if it 
 had existed for a thousand years ; as if its roots had reached 
 down to the very earliest days of the Church. " In like manner." 
 St. Jerome 1 had said, " as the Church reads the books of Judith, 
 of Tobit, and the Maicabees, without receiving them, however, 
 into the number of the canonical Scriptures, those of Wisdom and 
 Ecclesiasticus may also be read for the edification of the people, 
 
 1 Preface to the books of Solomon. 
 
.ST. JEROME AND THE COUNCIL ON THE APOCRYPHALS. 93 
 
 but not to prove or sanction any article of faith." Well, now, 
 there are Latin Bibles in which the decree of 1546 is printed at 
 the beginning of the book, and St. Jerome's dissertation a little 
 farther on. At the distance of some pages you will learn from 
 St. Jerome that there are apocryphal books, and if you turn to 
 the council's verdict, you will be told that there are none. " I 
 always thought that the heart had been on the left side," says 
 one of the dramatis personal in a play, astonished to hear it 
 spoken of as on the right. " Yes, so it was once," replies the 
 physician, "but we have changed all that." We are ashamed, 
 we confess, to have a scene from Moliere suggested to us in 
 speaking about the Bible; but who is to be blamed for that? 
 It would be quite as easy to change the position of the heart as 
 to prevent St. Jerome, his contemporaries, his predecessors, his 
 successors, the whole Church, in fine, during more than fifteen 
 hundred years, from having regarded as inferior those books 
 which were placed at Trent on the same rank with the others. 
 
 This decision, of which Romanists have sought to avail them- 
 selves with such hardihood since that time, has not even the 
 merit of clearly belonging to the category of those which every 
 Roman Catholic is bound to admit. It is generally acknowledged 
 that the Church, that the pope, may be mistaken about facts, 
 may admit, for example, a false miracle on false testimony. Now, 
 the authenticity of a book is a question of fact, of history ; it 
 may be excellent in point of doctrine, without being any the 
 more admissible in point of canonicity. Hence, though the 
 Church has proclaimed it canonical, the only thing a Roman 
 Catholic is bound to believe is, that it is good and orthodox ; the 
 historical question remains intact, and the Church's testimonv 
 on that part of the inquest remains purely human. Some authors 
 have maintained, it is true, that certain questions of fact, and this 
 one in particular, come within the domain of infallibility, but 
 they do not agree upon the characteristic points by which ques- 
 tions of this class are to be recognised, and this distinction, be- 
 sides, is too manifestly ex post facto for our observation to be at 
 all weakened by it. 
 
 It remained to be decided in what language the books of the 
 Bible — from henceforth all put on the same level in point of 
 authority — should be reputed inspired and infallible. Here, 
 again, a point occurred on which the council's decision was about 
 to be opposed to the clearest data of learning, history, and com- 
 mon sense. 
 
94 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 At bottom, it was not a matter about which there could rea- 
 sonably be a question. Inspired or not, a man writes. Is it in 
 Hebrew ? Then it is in Hebrew and in Hebrew alone that you 
 are sure of having his thoughts, all his thoughts, nothing but 
 his thoughts. Is it in Greek'? Then it is in Greek you will 
 rind what he meant. If you do not understand those tongues, 
 nothing is more natural than that you should make use of a 
 translation ; but if you do understand them, why should you be 
 prevented from going to the book as it came from the hands of 
 the author '? The only way would be to prove to you that the 
 translation is of an absolutely perfect accuracy. But if you have 
 to do with an inspired book, it is only by bringing the trans- 
 lator to an equality with the author, and making him inspired 
 also, that we can make the translation equal to the original. 
 
 Now, St. Jerome, the chief author of the Vulgate, 1 has no- 
 where said a word from which it might be conjectured that he 
 thought himself aided in his translation by any assistance from 
 on high. Had he affirmed this, Ave should have appealed against 
 it on the ground of the numerous faults which, as we shall see 
 anon, have been corrected in that still very imperfect work. 
 Was the work, at least, all done by him ? No ; several parts 
 are taken from a more ancient version, 2 clone by nobody knows 
 whom, and which he thought tar from good, seeing that it Avas 
 in order to have it superseded by a better, that he undertook his 
 own. Notwithstanding the superiority of the latter : " Those 
 who speak Latin," says Augustine, "require, in order to the 
 understanding of the Scriptures, to be acquainted with two other 
 languages, Hebrew and Greek, so that they may have recourse 
 to ancient copies Avhen the disagreement of Latin interpreters 
 suggests any doubt." 3 Thus, notwithstanding his esteem for St. 
 Jerome, he confounds him with the Latin interpreters, Avhose 
 disagreement, he says, produces doubts which can be removed 
 only by going to the originals. A century and a half after him, 
 two versions only Avere in use, that of Jerome, which took the 
 name of the New, and the Italic or Old one. Gregory the 
 Great, in his commentary on Job, says that he prefers the New 
 as being more conformed to the Hebrew, but that he quotes them 
 both indifferently ; this, he adds, is AA'hat is usually done by 
 popes and their doctors. Gradually the tAA'o versions past into 
 
 1 Editio vulgata, the edition in general circulation. Hence the name Vuhi tie given to the 
 Latin Bible used in the Roman Church. 
 - Italica veins. 3 Christian Doctrine, b. ii. 
 
GREEK AND HEBREW VIEWED WITH JEALOUSY. 95 
 
 eacli other. Whatever could not be changed without inconve- 
 nience in the Old, was retained, — the Psalms, in particular, being 
 what everybody knew by heart ; the rest was taken from the 
 New. One sole book was at length the result, namely, the Vul- 
 gate. But, for a series of centuries, the Church made use of it 
 as one uses a book absolutely in his power, without disapproving 
 of it, but yet no more approving of it otherwise than by the 
 mere fact of its using it, in fine, without forbidding any one 
 to have recourse to some other quarter. 
 
 No one, it is true, had any idea of doing so. Greek and 
 Hebrew were not only dead tongues — they were annihilated. 
 The Latin, by unanimous consent, had succeeded to their rights ; 
 and it had no more to reckon with those tongues than a son 
 with a father many years dead. Accordingly, when the fifteenth 
 century drew them from the dust with which they were covered, 
 you would have said they were like dead men reappearing amid 
 their confounded heirs. " A new language," said a monk from 
 the pulpit, has been discovered, " which is called the Greek. 
 It must be carefully avoided. This language is the mother of 
 all heresies. I see in the hands of many a book written in 
 that tongue ; it is called the New Testament. It is a book full 
 of briars and vipers. As for Hebrew, those who learn it imme- 
 diately become Jews." Whether such was or was not the 
 monk's discourse — and a very grave historian 1 reports it as 
 authentic — it admirably expresses the astonishment and the fears 
 of the time. Those two tongues, new in virtue of being old, 
 people were tempted to look upon as intruders, and to ask them 
 what right they had to come and disturb the Latin in its occupa- 
 tion of the throne which it had now so long engrossed. They 
 crowded around it ; they confirmed it in the enjoyment of all 
 the rights which it held from usage. Both Greek and Hebrew 
 were to be allowed to subsist, but they were to be neither its 
 superiors nor its equals ; and, in 1502, in the famous Bible of 
 Alcala, in putting the Vulgate between the Hebrew text and 
 the Greek text, it was Cardinal Ximenes who said, in the pre- 
 face, that it was Christ betwixt the two thieves. 
 
 Thus we see that the foundations of the strange decree that 
 was about to be passed, had been laid at the commencement of 
 that century. And yet, when the subject began to be more 
 closely examined, the members were far from agreed about it. 
 
 At first, although the council was by no means rich in 
 
 1 Sismondi, Hist, of the French, xvi. 
 
96 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 Hellenists, and still less in Hebrew scholars, several of its 
 divines were not without having made the discovery, either by 
 their own labours or by those of others, of some, at least, of the 
 imperfections of the Vulgate. These were interdicted at once 
 by common sense and by conscience from putting their hands to 
 a law, carried in the face of facts proved by evidence, patent, 
 incontestable. The idea, therefore, was entertained for a moment, 
 of taking up some certain copy of the original texts, and trans- 
 lating it into Latin, advantage being taken of all the lights 
 that the age could supply ; but people were alarmed at the 
 immensity of the labour that this would entail, all the more, 
 inasmuch as to proceed logically, all doctrinal decisions would 
 have to be suspended until the entire completion of the new 
 translation. For surely a judge is not competent to pronounce 
 in a cause, as long as he admits his not being sure of having in 
 his possession the exact text, or a faithful translation of the 
 law. 
 
 Despatch, therefore, was required, and those who wanted a 
 new translation were not listened to. 
 
 Even after admitting the Vulgate in principle, all was not 
 over : it was necessary that the title on which it was received 
 should be declared. Some wished that the approbation should 
 be full, entire, without restriction of any kind. " Either God 
 has failed in his promise of keeping his Church from error, or it 
 is impossible," said they, " that he can have left her to make 
 use of an erroneous translation. If Providence has given an 
 authentic Scripture to the Jews, and an authentic Scripture to 
 the Greeks, is it not insulting to that Providence to suppose 
 God's well-beloved Roman Church should have been left with- 
 out such an advantage ?" Others, without going back so far, 
 gave an artless picture of the embarrassment people would bring 
 on themselves if they did not begin by shutting up the source 
 of all embarrassment for ever. " It would be grammarians, 
 then, that would become the arbiters of the faith ! An inquisi- 
 tor would have to listen to answers made in Greek and in 
 Hebrew ! Passages from Scripture that have been intercalated 
 for ages in the Church's prayers, the decrees of popes, the 
 canons of councils, might be attacked, refashioned, and dis- 
 sected ! This would be to yield the victory to Luther, Zwingli, 
 and, in short, to all heretics past, present, and to come." All, 
 in fine, with a little more or a little less bashfulness in the rea- 
 sons they assigned, were agreed in practically assuming the 
 
ABSURDITY ADDED TO FALSEHOOD. 97 
 
 necessity of immediately establishing one fixed and immutable 
 basis. 
 
 It is from this alleged necessity that the council's apologists 
 still argue in their attempts to find an excuse for the strange 
 decree which was adopted on the strength of it. " Had one of 
 the doctors," says the Abbe Prompsault, " quoted the Hebrew 
 text, another the Greek text, another the Syriac, another the 
 version of Luther or of Servetus, the confusion would have been 
 worse than at the tower of Babel." Possibly it might; but 
 what has that to do with the proof of the authenticity and cor- 
 rectness of the Vulgate ? How did the embarrassment resulting 
 from the variety of the texts sanction the council's choosing one 
 from the rest for the purpose of declaring it authentic ? And, 
 accordingly, great efforts have been made to prove that such 
 was not the meaning of the decree. The council, it has been 
 said, does not pronounce the Vulgate infallible. " Its decision 
 is not a dogmatical decision ; it is merely a disciplinary regula- 
 tion, made in view of the circumstances and the wants of the 
 moment." 1 Be it so ; but where is this to be seen ? Certainly 
 not in the text of the decree. The council ordains and declares 
 that in all public lessons, discussions, preachings, and exposi- 
 tions, this ancient version shall be held as authentic, and that 
 no one shall dare, or shall presume, to reject it, under any pre- 
 text whatever. 2 Not even, consequently, under pretext that 
 such or such a passage shall have been recognised as false, and 
 the future, in this manner, is as much fettered as the past. 
 But let us accept the explanation. We had only to do with 
 the false ; we have now to do with the absurd. The Vulgate is 
 not infallible, and it is the Vulgate which alone, without con- 
 trol, without its being permissible to reject a single word of it, 
 is to serve the purpose of infallibly fixing the faith. The doctor, 
 in his professor's chair, is not authorized to quote it as rigor- 
 ously correct, and he is authorized to declare the nullity of all 
 the corrections you may presume to suggest. Each passage, 
 then, is like a piece of money bearing the image of the Council 
 of Trent. You are not held bound to believe it good, but you have 
 no right to refuse it. 3 " The council," says an author already 
 
 1 Hug, Introduction to the Books of the New Testament. 
 
 2 Statuit et declarat ut . . . pro authentica ; ut earn nemo rejicere quovis prjetextu audeat 
 vel praesumat. 
 
 3 This strange reasoning has been carried into a much more serious question, that of in- 
 fallibility. " Infallibility in the spiritual order," says De Maistre, " and sovereignty in the 
 temporal order, are two perfectly synonymous words. When we say that the Church io 
 infallible, we do not ask any special privilege for it ; we only ask that it should enjoy rights 
 
 (i 
 
98 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 quoted, " has not said that the Vulgate alone shall be authentic ; 
 it has only declared that it shall be held as authentic." This 
 only is curious. The council has not denied that the original 
 texts are authentic ; it has only declared that the Vulgate is so 
 also, although it departs from them at a thousand points. This 
 is what the expression really implies. 
 
 Was there, at least, an edition universally admitted, correct, 
 and unique ? No ; it had to be decided that one should be 
 made. There was much wisdom in this ; but it made the pre- 
 ceding decree only all the more strange. It would have been 
 not more reasonable, but certainly more rational, to deny the 
 faults of the Vulgate, and to proclaim it at once infallible and 
 perfect, than to declare it inviolable, even while confessing it 
 faulty, and that it was about to be corrected. 
 
 In consequence of this last decision, one naturally desires to 
 know through what process it has passed. 
 
 A commission had been named which did nothing. Towards 
 the close of the council Pius IV. appointed another, but at 
 Rome. Pius V. renewed it, and accelerated its labours. Twelve 
 years afterwards, at the accession of Sixtus-Quintus, the work 
 had hardly commenced, and that impetuous pontiff began to 
 lose patience. He made it his own affair, and, at the commence- 
 ment of 1589, announced by a bull, that the work was drawing 
 to a close. The new Vulgate was printed under his own eyes 
 at the Vatican, and he himself revised the proofs. " We have 
 corrected them with our own hand," 1 he says in the preface. 
 " The work appeared, and it was impossible," says Hug, " that 
 it should not have given occasion for criticism and pleasantry. 
 Many passages were found, particularly in the Old Testament, 
 covered with slips of paper, on which new corrections had been 
 printed ; others were scratched out, or merely corrected with a 
 pen. ... In line, the copies issued were far from all pre- 
 senting the same corrections." 
 
 It had accordingly to be done over again. Gregory XIV., 
 the successor of Sixtus-Quintus, set to work without delay, and 
 after him Clement VIII. had the satisfaction of publishing, in 
 1592, the text which was to undergo no change. But what 
 
 common to ;i11 possible sovereignties, all of which should necessarily reign as infallible, fur 
 all government is absolute : and from the moment that it may be resisted under the pretext 
 of error and injustice, it no longer exists." What flows must clearly from this passage is 
 that, provided a man submit to the Church's decisions, he is not bound to think the Church 
 in the right, any more than a citizen in obeying a law is bound to believe it good. To 
 understand infallibility in this sense is to deny it. 
 1 Nostra nos ipsi manu correximus. 
 
THE VULGATE AUTHENTIC YET IMPERFECT. 99 
 
 was the public to think ? How Avere corrections to be acknow- 
 ledged, of which there were about six thousand on matters of 
 detail, and a hundred that were important. Bellarmine under- 
 took the preface. The honour of Sixtus V. was saved : all the 
 imperfections of his Vulgate were — errors of the press. 
 
 Was this version, which, after forty-six years of corrections 
 and recorrections, was to enter into full possession of the privi- 
 leges announced in the decree, issued at least in the best state 
 possible ? No ; Bellarmine admits in that same preface, that 
 the revisers had allowed many things to pass that needed a 
 stricter examination. But enough of this. Were it at this day 
 the best of all the translations of the Bible, we have seen what 
 it was when the council placed it on the altar, and how much 
 audacity or ignorance it must have taken to declare it authentic., 
 even in that indirect and weakened sense which people were 
 afterwards compelled to attach to the word. 
 
 A fourth point, in fine, had been submitted to the assembly. 
 To whom does the interpretation of Scripture belong ? 
 
 Here, too, the divines shewed themselves men of larger and 
 more reasonable minds than the bishops. However they might 
 hate the reformers, they themselves being men of study, could 
 not propose that the study of the Bible should be interdicted ; 
 the utmost they could venture, was to seek for some means of 
 reconciling this exercise of liberty with the Church's authority, 
 and the maintenance of her dogmas. This, it is true, was no 
 easy task. Some said that new interpretations ought not to be 
 rejected, provided they were not contrary to the faith ; others 
 would not have people frightened at diversity of interpretations, 
 provided that this did not go the length of contrariety. As if it 
 were possible, after having once permitted examination, to come 
 under an engagement never to be in contradiction with received 
 ideas ! Let us thank the divines for these feeble yearnings after 
 liberty ; but they should have seen that this was a point in 
 which no middle term is admissible. There is but one choice, 
 subjection or liberty. 
 
 Such was the view taken of it by the bishops ; and we need 
 not add to which side of the alternative they leaned. They 
 were told by Cardinal Pacheco, that " Scripture having been ex- 
 plained by so many persons eminent for piety and doctrinal 
 learning, it could not be hoped that anything better could be 
 added. Had not all new heresies arisen from the new meanings 
 that had been given to Scripture ?" The advances made by the 
 
100 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TKENT. 
 
 Reformation were little calculated, indeed, to recommend free 
 inquiry to the eyes of any one that desired the maintenance of 
 Rome ; it would have required more than human largeness of 
 mind and tolerance to accept a principle, the consequences of 
 which it was impossible to avoid regarding as so fatal and so 
 impious. Here, accordingly, the bishops of Trent lay under the 
 pressure of a vital and absolute necessity. 
 
 More than this, once under that pressure, they were compelled 
 to go on to the end. To forbid the teaching of any new opinion 
 would have been but tacitly to permit the search for it, and the 
 conception of it, provided it was not published. But there is 
 but a short way from the heart to the lips. In interdicting the 
 teaching, unless you take measures at the same time for restraining 
 thought, you have done nothing. People were prohibited, there- 
 fore — such are the very terms of the decree — were prohibited 
 from interpreting Scripture " in a sense contrary to that which 
 the Church has held, and holds;" and that " even although a 
 man should hare the intention of holding these interpretations 
 secret." 1 
 
 This last clause evidently annihilated what little liberty one 
 might suppose to have been accorded in other parts of the decree. 
 If I cannot, without crime, I will not say teach, but even conceive, 
 in the depths of my conscience, interpretations contrary to the laws 
 of the Church, what means can I then take to keep myself with- 
 out reproach ? One only ; that is, never to open the book where 
 I might risk seeing, right or wrong, what the Church does not 
 wish me to see. " Scripture nmst not be given," says Fenelon, 2 
 to any but those who, receiving it only as from the hands of the 
 Church, only desire to look for the Church's meaning therein." 
 " To look for it " — that we can understand ; " to find it " — who 
 can be sure of that beforehand ? And if the council forbids the 
 finding of anything else, is not this, we repeat, to forbid search f 
 "When Doctor Usingen," says Luther, 3 "saw me reading the 
 Bible so much: Ah, brother Martin, he would say to me, what 
 is the Bible ! Read, read rather the old doctors, who have sucked 
 the honey out of it." Doctor Usingen ought to have lived until 
 1546, and to have gone to the council ; he would have been sure 
 to make the same reflection with ourselves on the inconsistency 
 of the decree. Better had it been frankly to decide, as was de- 
 sired by a certain Norman divine, called Richard, that Scripture 
 
 1 Etiameii hujusmodi interpretationes nullo unquain tempore in lucem edendoe forent. 
 i Letter to the Bishop of Aitoa s Tischnden, (Table-Talk.) 
 
THE BIBLE ADDRESSED TO EVERYBODY. 10 1 
 
 from henceforth is useless, since it is long since the Church has 
 taken out of it all that it was proper to take. " It is true," he 
 added, " that it was read in former days in the churches for the 
 instruction of the people, and that it was studied also with that 
 view ; but now-a-days it is used only in the way of prayer. Let 
 it still be employed for that purpose ; but not as an object of 
 study. Such is the mode in which we ought now to shew our 
 respect for the Bible." Would not one say that it was the god 
 of Epicurus momentarily proceeding from nothing to create the 
 world, and returning to nothing immediately on his work being 
 done? The Franciscan's opinion seemed strange and almost 
 blasphemous ; and yet, leaving out of view the bluntness of the 
 terms, was it not the equivalent of the decree ? Take the Eoman 
 system in its rigour ; doctrines irrevocably fixed ; an omnipo- 
 tent authority charged with the maintenance of them, prohibi- 
 tion against change, or exposing one's self to the risk of chang- 
 ing anything, even in the secret of the conscience, and you must 
 admit, that with all this, it is not easy to find for Scripture any 
 place to occupy, or part to fulfil, even in reducing it to that of a 
 mere book of edification. 
 
 And now, should we think of taking up the same question in 
 the historical and critical point of view, we should have quite a 
 book to make ; a book, moreover, of which we should not have 
 much to do in searching for the materials, so manifest are the 
 objections, and so abundant are the testimonies. 
 
 First, then, in the Scripture itself, there is not a word, not a 
 syllable, from which one might deduce an authority for not leav- 
 ing it at the disposition of everybody. 
 
 The Old Testament, — we there read in a hundred passages 
 that the reading of it was not only permitted, but formally com- 
 manded. 
 
 The New, — what do we find there ? Historical books emi- 
 nently popular, epistles addressed to numerous churches, not to 
 pastors or to leading men, but to all the members without dis- 
 tinction. Epistle to the Romans, to the Corinthians, to the 
 Philippians, say all the Bibles, the Vulgate as well as others. In 
 the book of the Acts (xvii.), when St. Paul preached at Berea, 
 what did the Bereans do? — they searched the Scriptures daily, 
 lohether these things were so. Did Paul blame them for this? 
 By no means ; St. Luke, who records the fact, mentions it on 
 the contrary as a proof of their zeal. And could this same Paul, 
 who saw nothing wrong in people going to the Scriptures, when 
 
102 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 it was be, the Apostle, who taught, — blame us for going to them, 
 and to his own writings among others, to see, like the faithful of 
 Berea, whether things are as we are told! 
 
 Does this idea, receiving no support from the Bible, emanate 
 at least from an ancient tradition ? No. It receives no coun- 
 tenance from the writers of the first ages of the Church. Of re- 
 commendations touching the respect with which Scripture ought 
 to be read, of advices on the methods of reading it to advantage, 
 of reproaches addressed to those who read it ill, of regrets for 
 those who have allowed themselves to be led astray in reading 
 it, — you will find as many as you could wish ; but what do all 
 those regrets, counsels, and reproaches prove, if not this — that it 
 was read? And yet never, never did the Fathers proceed from 
 this, to restrain, or to deny the right to read it. The abuse does 
 not destroy the right. After having enumerated all the varia- 
 tions, all the errors, all the extravagances even, which may have 
 arisen from the free interpretation of the Bible, you will not have 
 proved that any single individual, or body of individuals, any 
 pope or Church, is authorized to forbid its use. 
 
 And, far from confining themselves to not interdicting, with 
 what urgency do not the Fathers recommend it ! Must we quote 
 instances ? Why, the difficulty is to choose ; for were all the 
 passages over which we have cast our eyes to be adduced, they 
 would amount, without exaggeration, to several hundreds, besides 
 entire discourses, quite as positive, and as strong as anything 
 ever said by the Bible Societies. 
 
 " Search the Scriptures," says Clement of Borne ; and his 
 famous epistle to the Corinthians, so much venerated, that it has 
 been sometimes proposed to have it introduced into the New 
 Testament, perpetually recalls or assumes this precept. 
 
 "I am confident," says Folycarp, 1 "that you are well exer- 
 cised in the Holy Scriptures, and that no part of them is un- 
 known to you." 
 
 " Each of you," says another of the Fathers, 2 " in meditating 
 on the word, will find there a treasure of succours for all spi- 
 ritual evils." Each of you, — and lie that thus spoke, uttered 
 these words from the pulpit, while a whole people heard them. 
 Elsewhere, in a letter, " If thou knowest how to search in Scrip- 
 ture, for the succours that it offers, thou wilt not have need either 
 of me or of any one." And it is to a woman that he writes 
 this. 
 
 1 Epistle t" the Philippians. - Basil, Homily on the First Psalm. 
 
THE BIBLE RECOMMENDED BY THE FATHERS. 108 
 
 Ambrose 1 says, " Holy Scripture edifies everybody. We speak 
 to Christ when we pray ; we listen to him when we read the 
 Scriptures." 
 
 Origen, 2 " The true nourishment of our soul, is the reading of 
 the Word of God. Let us nourish ourselves on the Gospels. 
 Let us quench our thirst by the reading of the writings of the 
 Apostles." 
 
 Isodorus of Pelusium, 3 " The heavenly oracles have been 
 written for the whole human race. Even husbandmen are in a 
 condition to learn there what it is fitting for them to know. The 
 learned and the ignorant, children and women, may equally in- 
 struct themselves there." 
 
 Jerome, 4 " It is for the whole people that the Apostles wrote. 
 The laity ought to abound in the knowledge of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures." And at another place, writing to a woman too, " What 
 I shall never cease to recommend to you, is to love the Scripture 
 and to read it." 
 
 Augustine, 5 " What happens to our flesh when it takes nour- 
 ishment only once in the course of several days, happens to our 
 soul when it does not nourish itself frequently on the Word of 
 God. Continue, then, to listen at church to the reading of Holy 
 Scripture, and read it over again in your houses." 
 
 But of all the Fathers, the most ardent on this point is 
 Chrysostom. Besides a host of direct exhortations which it is 
 needless to adduce after having given so many others, let us hear 
 him refuting all the objections which this subject might suggest. 
 "When we receive money," says he, 6 "we like to count it over 
 ourselves ; and when divine things are what we have to do with, 
 should we bend our necks and submit at once to the opinions of 
 others? Consult, then, the Scriptures." But it may be alleged 
 that they are not sufficiently clear. " The Holy Ghost intrusted 
 the composition of them expressly to illiterate men, in order that 
 every one, even the least educated, might understand the Word, 
 and profit by it." 7 But have we time to occupy ourselves with 
 these things? "Let none," says he, "offer me these wretched 
 excuses : I must earn my bread ; I must find food for my chil- 
 dren. It is not for me to read the Scriptures, but for those who 
 have renounced the world. Poor man ! Is it then because thou 
 
 1 Ps. xlviii. On the office of the. ministry, B. 1. 
 
 - Homily on Leviticus. Philocalia, 11. 3 Epistles 9] and C". 
 
 * On Ps. lxxxvi. On the Epistle to the Colossians. Epistle 97. 
 
 « Homily lxvi. On time. ° Homily xiii. On the Epistle to flte Corinthians. 
 
 ' Homily iii. On Lazarus. 
 
104 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 art too much distracted with a thousand cares, that it does not 
 belong to thee to read the Scriptures ? But thou hast still more 
 need of this than those who have withdrawn from the world in 
 order to devote all their time to God." 1 
 
 After the Fathers, let us turn to him who has been sometimes 
 called the last of the Fathers. Later than they by several ages, 
 his testimony is all the stronger. "Persevere," says St. Ber- 
 nard, 2 " persevere in nourishing yourselves with the Word of 
 God. Exercise yourselves in it continually, until your spirits 
 fail, that is, until death." 
 
 Must you have the opinion of a pope? "Scripture," says 
 Gregory the Great, 3 " is an epistle addressed by God to his crea- 
 ture. Meditate, then, upon it every day, and through the "Word 
 of God, learn to know God." 
 
 "Must you, in fine, have the opinion of a council itself? We 
 shall not go a hunting after those of the first ages, at times when 
 the reading of the Sacred Books was so natural, and so univer- 
 sally recommended, that it was not even a cpiestion about which 
 there was anything to decree ; but mark what the council of Aix- 
 la-Chapelle said in the year 816, "Let young women even love 
 the Holy Scriptures. Let them draw wisdom from the books of 
 Solomon ; form themselves to patience by reading the book of 
 Job ; and then take up the Holy Gospels, never to quit them 
 again." 
 
 Yet there were at Trent, and there are still people who are 
 ready to denounce as new, the idea that the Bible is for all ! It 
 was thought monstrous that Luther should have translated it 
 into the vulgar tongue ; what then did Jerome do when he trans- 
 lated it into Latin ? What did Ulphilas, one of the Fathers of 
 Nice do, when he translated it into the language of the Goths ? 
 Why did the venerable Bede say with joy, that in his time 
 Scripture was read in England in five different languages ? Why. 
 according to Augustine, 4 is it " by the wisdom of God" that Scrip- 
 ture, " from one sole language in which it was originally, has 
 been multiplied into an infinity of languages and dialects, in 
 order that it may be diffused everywhere ?" Wherefore so many 
 ages, so many councils, without the smallest word of blame 
 directed against those daily exhortations, against that "infinity" 
 of translations, against those efforts to prevent there being a 
 country, a village, a house, without the Bible? 
 
 i Hoim'yiii. On Lamrus. s Book iv. Ep. 4<>. 
 
 £ Sermon xiiv. 4 Christian Doctrine, ii. o. 
 
FALSE CITATION FROM JEROME BY A POPE. 105 
 
 But let us take care. " Not a word of blame," we have said ; 
 and yet a pope has not long since 1 affirmed the contrary 
 " Thus," says he, " that which St. Jerome deplored so earl?/ as 
 in his time, the interpretation of the Scriptures is left to the 
 babbling of old women, to the dotage of decrepit old men, to the 
 pert sophist, to all men, in short, of all conditions, provided they 
 can but read." What answer shall we make ? 
 
 Just none at all. The citation is false ; and even had we had 
 no means of verifying this, we should not have believed it. It 
 cannot be true, we should have said ; if any one ever wrote this, 
 it must have been any one rather than St. Jerome. 
 
 And, in fact, this is what he wrote : " Labourers, masons, car- 
 penters — those even who engage in the vilest employments, 
 cannot become masters of their trades without having learnt 
 them — there is nothing but the art of the Scriptures that every 
 one claims for himself — the old woman, the old dotard, the pert 
 sophist, pretend to know it, and mangle it and teach it — before 
 having learnt it." 2 
 
 Thus, what the pope thought he might travesty into a re- 
 proach against the Scriptures, was a reproach — to whom ? To 
 those who did not read and study them enough. 
 
 The decree of Trent on this point is more discreet than people 
 have been since. The Roman Church was not yet in a condi- 
 tion to say her last word ; she behoved to confine herself to sur- 
 round the printing, the sale, and the reading of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures with restrictions, some of which are good. But by that 
 very act she constituted herself supreme dispensatrix of those 
 books, and of all that they contain. Though this decree does 
 not forbid the reading of the Bible, not the less does it avoid 
 recognising the reading of it as a right, still less as a duty ; the 
 interdiction appears in no part of it, and yet it may be deduced 
 as a consequence from every part of it. If proofs are wanted, 
 we have only to mark what were its results. 
 
 Three months after the close of the council, Pius IV., in 
 publishing a catalogue of forbidden books, caused it to be pre- 
 faced with ten rules, the fourth of which is conceived thus, — 
 " Experience having proved that the reading of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures, granted without distinction to everybody, does more harm 
 than good, because of the rashness of men, it will thenceforth 
 
 i May 1844. 
 
 2 Lacerant, docent, antequam discard. Second epistle to Paulinus, On the Stud.// of the 
 Seriptures. 
 
108 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 depend on the judgment of the bishop, or of the inquisitor, to 
 grant, according as he may he advised by the parish priest or 
 confessor, leave to read those books, translated into the vulgar 
 tongue by (Roman) Catholic authors, to those who they know 
 can derive from them nothing prejudicial to faith and piety. 
 That permission ought to be given in writing. Whoever shall 
 not be furnished with it, and who, nevertheless, shall have the 
 presumption to read or to possess the Scriptures, shall not have 
 it in his power to obtain the absolution of his sins, if he shall 
 not have previously handed them over to the bishop." 
 
 See now what begins to be clear : the bishop might refuse on 
 the previous recommendation of a mere priest, that which thou- 
 sands of bishops have, during many centuries, pressed, besought, 
 conjured the souls committed to their charge, to have perpetually 
 in their hands. 
 
 He might refuse, but he might also grant the leave in ques- 
 tion. Even this is too much. Thirty years after the publica- 
 tion of this rule, it was confiscated by one pope for the exclusive 
 advantage of all popes. — " It is to be observed," says Cle- 
 ment VIII., " that this rule has not conferred on bishops and 
 inquisitors any new powers of granting licenses to buy, read, or 
 possess the Bible in the vulgar tongue, seeing that hitherto, by 
 the order and usage of the holy and universal Roman Inquisi- 
 tion, that power had been withdrawn from them — which thing 
 ought to be rigorously observed." So well was it observed, 
 that matters were often carried farther than the pope had pre- 
 scribed. Alphonso de Castro, highly praises 1 Ferdinand and 
 Isabella for having, at their own instance, interdicted all trans- 
 lation. In 1750, Perez del Prado, an inquisitor-general, ex- 
 claims with groans, that " Some men had pushed their audacity 
 to the execrable extremity" — of reading the Bible in the vulgar 
 tongue? No; of asking permission to read it. 2 
 
 Thus, wherever the Church was mistress, we see the decree 
 of Trent transforming itself rapidly into an absolute prohibition 
 to read or to possess the Bible. The penalties are not always 
 the same. In Spain it is death by fire ; in other places only im- 
 prisonment ; but everywhere it is made a crime, or, at the least, 
 a serious misdemeanour. At this day, in Savoy, at two leagues 
 from Geneva, you have but to have a Bible in your house, and 
 you will be sent for ten years to the Castle of Pignerol, incon- 
 testably a more monstrous proceeding in the nineteenth century 
 
 1 On Heresies, chap. xiii. - Llorente's History of the Inquisition, chap. xiii. 
 
ENMITY OF THE POPEDOM TO THE BIBLE. 107 
 
 than torture or the flames in the sixteenth. It often happens 
 in France, that a Protestant colporteur, after having sold many 
 copies of the Bible in a village, finds they have all disappeared 
 on his paying it a second visit. The parish priest has burnt 
 them all. "They are Protestant Bibles," he has said, and the 
 terrified parishioner has hastened to rid himself of them. But, 
 for the greater part of the time that this has been going on, the 
 version has been that of Sacy, a Eoman Catholic version, ap- 
 proved in former times by many bishops, and in which pains had 
 been taken not to change a single word, albeit that, from having 
 been made from the Vulgate, it is very often faulty. It was not, 
 therefore, the Protestant Bible that the priest burnt ; it was the 
 Bible, and this he well knew. But what he knows still better, 
 is the impossibility of refuting, on a multitude of points, those 
 who shall accept of it as their battle-field. Emser, that wise 
 man, was not quite sure, he would say, if it was well that the 
 Bible had been translated into German. Perhaps he did not 
 fully know how far it was well that it should have been written 
 in Hebrew, in Greek, or in Latin. It and the Church are too 
 much at variance. 1 It is against the versions of the Bible, 
 accordingly, into the vernacular tongues that Rome has set her- 
 self to exhale the spite which she dared not express against the 
 Bible itself. From the pope to the village priest, from the Vati- 
 can to the poor huts into which the Roman missionary carries 
 his faith, that is to say, before all else, the pope and the virgin 
 — we have now for thirty years been hearing a concert of male- 
 dictions raised against the translators, the colporteurs, the readers 
 of that book which an Augustine blessed God for having "mul- 
 tiplied" in all the languages of the world. It was Pius VII. 
 who, in 1816, gave the signal. What was it that men had done ? 
 Why, they had printed a new edition in Polish, first published, 
 however, in 1599, by Wink, the Jesuit, with the approbation of 
 Gregory XIII. and of Clement VIII. But, not content with 
 reprinting it, they had sent it out in profusion. Hence the 
 wrath of the pope ; hence that torrent of epithets, very common 
 in former times, in pamphlets, but which are no longer to be 
 found in the style of the Roman Chancery. All this, accord- 
 ingly, in the eye of Pius VII., was " the most malignant of in- 
 ventions, a pestilence, the destruction of the faith, the conception 
 of a new kind of tares, an impious machination, an irreparable 
 ruin, the malice of a villanous society," 2 &c, &c. But that society 
 
 1 Luther in one of his prefaces. 2 Brief to the Archbishop of Gne en. 
 
108 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 had not been singular in dipping into this villany ; a priest, a 
 bishop had openly advised people to purchase those Bibles. 
 Anon, a new brief; fresh lamentations. "We have been over- 
 whelmed with much profound distress, on being made acquainted 
 with the dismal project, such as was never conceived before, of 
 disseminating everywhere the most holy books of the Bible in 
 the new translations made contrary to the Church's salutary 
 regulations. . . . But we have been seized with an infinitely 
 greater affliction still, on perusing certain letters in which thou 
 dost exhort the people to purchase these new versions, to accept 
 them when offered gratuitously, for the purpose of attentively 
 studying them. Nothing, assuredly, more distressing could 
 happen to us," 1 &c. What could be added to these lines'? Had 
 we given a rhetorician the task of drawing up a piece of writing 
 diametrically opposite to all that we have quoted from earlier 
 times, could he have performed it better ? Other times, other 
 laws, will it be said? Very true; and we do not allege that 
 all that was good fifteen centuries ago is necessarily good now. 
 But between the opinion of the Fathers and that of the pope in 
 these two briefs, there lies a gulf which not fifteen hundred, 
 no, not fifteen thousand years could have created, had men's 
 principles on the subject remained in the least the same. And 
 what mean these words — such as teas never conceived before ? 
 Yes, doubtless, the Bible societies are later in date than the in- 
 vention of printing; but when Chrysostom said, — " Read, read the 
 Scriptures in your houses," while others are delighted with the 
 enumeration, such as the Bible societies are wont to make in our 
 day, of the languages into which the Bible has been translated, 
 who will ever be brought to believe that the Fathers would not 
 have blessed God for an institution having for its object the 
 depositing of the Scriptures, if possible, in all houses throughout 
 the world? 
 
 In 1824, on the occasion of the jubilee for 1825 being pro- 
 claimed, a new assault was made on that book on which Luther 
 had rested, just three hundred years before, as his authority for 
 saying, — " We know, thank God, that those who believe in the 
 Gospel have a jubilee every day." 2 " Several of our predeces- 
 sors," says Leo XII., "have made laws for averting this scourge 
 (the Bible societies). In our own time, Pius VII. , of happy 
 memory, issued two briefs. — In those briefs, we find testi- 
 monies drawn either from Holy Scripture or from tradition, to 
 
 1 Brief to the Archbishop of Mohilj'.v. - Oj the Jubilee Bull of 1.525. 
 
THE BIBLE PRONOUNCED TO BE DEADLY PASTURES. 109 
 
 | shew how hurtful this invention is to faith and to morals." We 
 I have no need, after what we have laid before our readers, to say 
 \ what sophistry, what an abuse of ideas and of words, have been 
 required for the purpose of concocting " these testimonies taken 
 I from tradition and from Scripture" The pope does not repro- 
 duce them. "And we, too," he proceeds to say, "that we may 
 acquit ourselves of our apostolic duty, exhort you to withdraw 
 i your flocks from these deadly pastures." " Deadly pastures J" 
 , The Bible ! And if he says this, it is in virtue " of his apostolic 
 ; duty!" Oh, ye popes ! if you cannot have any modesty in your 
 ideas, you ought to preserve some at least in the use you make of 
 words, and avoid courting, from sheer wilfulness, contrasts so 
 scandalous, so crushing. 
 
 More recently, 1 Gregory XVI. also entered the arena. His 
 bull, though more moderate in its terms, is still more unjust in 
 its attacks, and still more severe in its injunctions. The Protes- 
 tants are formally accused of adulterating the Bible ; the pope 
 positively refuses to believe that they can have any intention but 
 that of subverting the Church and destroying souls ; it is in this 
 bull that the strange falsification of which we have spoken 
 i, occurs. Next, "Be it yours, then," says he, addressing the 
 I bishops, "be it yours to remove from the hands of the faithful, 
 1 the Bible translated into the vulgar tongue," that is, in plain 
 terms, "to take the Bible from them;" for what difference can 
 there be between a French Bible, for example, for the man who 
 I speaks French, and a Latin Bible for the man who knows Latin ? 
 Will it be said, forsooth, that acquaintance with Latin pre- 
 supposes a certain amount of instruction, a favourable condition 
 I to which the Bible is less dangerous ? Let us listen to Alex- 
 I ander VII. 2 " Unless, in all their thoughts, — those who apply 
 I to letters, cleave immutably to all the decisions of the Holy See, 
 - — the more penetration and force a man's mind has, the more is 
 J he apt to be led away from the right path." But who risk most 
 ,»i not adhering immutably to the decisions of the Holy See, if not 
 i those to whom, just because they are educated, that which is 
 =1 refused to the vulgar, must perforce be granted ? To these, 
 . therefore, the law ought to be specially applied. If Borne dared 
 U to be consistent, they would be the first to be designated for 
 ; refusal. 
 
 And let us not be told, in reply, of those whom the highest 
 talents have not prevented from being, and from remaining, 
 
 May 1844. - Letter to the University of Louvain, 16G5. 
 
1 1 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 Roman Catholics, and that, too, while they read and studied the 
 Bible. We have already seen what we must think of their 
 alleged submission to the decrees of their Church ; only let us 
 note, to keep within the bounds of our subject, that while these 
 great men were, or appeared to be, Roman Catholics on various 
 points, there was certainly one point at least on which they were 
 little so in reality, and troubled themselves little about appearing 
 to be so ; that point was the very reading of the book which 
 they so much loved and admired. Was there much of the 
 Roman Catholic in Pascal when he said, in contradiction to so 
 many papal decisions, 1 — " Mahomet established his authority in 
 a prohibition to read, and Jesus Christ his, in commanding 
 people to read?" The book so proscribed was spoken of by the 
 Port-Royal men just as the ancient Fathers spoke of it, just as 
 Luther spoke of it. They desired to see it in everybody's 
 hands ; in fact, towards this they did everything but found a 
 Bible society. Hence He Sacy's version ; hence those bold words 
 which were condemned at Rome in 1713, 2 — "The reading of 
 Sacred Scripture is useful at all times, in all places, and to all 
 sorts of persons." How they contrived to reconcile this idea 
 with the Tridentine decree, we shall not attempt to explain ; in 
 any case this were more easy than to comprehend how Clement 
 XL could dare to denounce as false, captious, scandalous, im- 
 pious, and blasphemous, 3 &c, assertions which might have been 
 shewn to him, word for word, in' the writings of twenty Fathers 
 But there is something consolatory in seeing that long chain of S 
 testimonies in favour of the Bible being left free to all, and being I 
 read by all, a hundred and fifty years after it had been broken i 
 by the council, taken up again and continued by such men. It 
 is owing to this, that at the risk of being inconsistent, they gave I fclf 
 truth the precedency of the Church ; while our council, on the 
 contrary, we shall find, always placed the Church before the 
 truth. The Church, the maintenance of the Church, such was 
 the settled idea, the ultima ratio of almost all the bishops, in all. I. 
 the discussions, and all the decrees. "Is there a God?" said n'i 
 grand lady of last century to a young libertine abbe. " Cer- 
 tainly," he replied, "seeing that I am an abbe." This argu- 
 ment, which in that case was but an impious quibble, will be 
 found at the base of all the Roman decisions. Shall tradition t 
 be put on a level with Scripture? Certainly, seeing that the 
 
 t- 
 n 
 
 1 Pascal's Thoughts, Art. 12. - Bull Unigenitua 
 
 3 Nineteen epithets in all. 
 
 
FALSE PRETENSIONS TO LIBERTY. Ill 
 
 Church equally rests upon it. Shall the apocryphal books be 
 pronounced canonical ? Certainly, seeing that the Church avails 
 herself of them as such. Shall the Vulgate be made the sole 
 official and unassailable text ? Certainly, for new translations 
 might shake the Church and disquiet her doctors. Shall the 
 free interpretation of the Sacred Books be interdicted? Cer- 
 tainly, for the Reformation sprang from that. It is not fifteen 
 years since a cardinal said, with an amusing candour, to Lamen- 
 nais — "With your liberty, what will become of the Inquisition?" 
 Ever the same system. This is, it therefore ought to be. " The 
 Inquisition exists ; that, therefore, which is contrary to it, ought 
 not to exist." Ever the bed of Procrustes ; excepting that 
 he, while he was cutting people short, made no attempt to con- 
 vince them that he did them no harm. .The Roman Catholicism 
 of the present day, wherever it has not the mastery, is the most 
 noisy of all parties in proclaiming the rights of conscience and 
 of reason. To hear it speak, one must needs believe that it is 
 prepared to acknowledge and to sanction all the liberties ac- 
 quired by mankind in the course of three centuries, in the freest 
 states. But, though it might desire this — flatly contradicting 
 its conduct wherever it reigns supreme — could it do so ? Would 
 it depend on itself to abjure laws in which it has preached the 
 contrary, not temporarily, but in virtue of principles which it has 
 declared to be immutable, eternal ? In the matter of promises, 
 which party are we to believe ? The Gazette de France, or the 
 Council of Trent ? The Abbe de Genoude preaching a liberty 
 without bounds, or Pope Gregory XVI. calling liberty of con- 
 science "an absurd maxim, an idle dream," 1 and the liberty of 
 the press " a monstrous liberty which cannot be sufficiently de- 
 tested, sufficiently execrated." 2 Shall we forget that in 1804, 
 one of the first of the motives put forth by the pope for refusing 
 to come and consecrate Napoleon, was that the consecration 
 oath mentioned the liberty of worship ? Shall we forget that, 
 in 1832, the famous Cardinal Pacca, the pope's prime minister, 
 wrote as follows : — " If, under certain circumstances, prudence 
 demands their toleration (that is, toleration of liberty of worship 
 and liberty of the press) as one tolerates a less evil to avoid a 
 greater, such doctrines never can be presented by a Roman 
 Catholic as a good or as a desirable thing." This, at least, is 
 frank ; and what is hardly so is that, in presence of such decla- 
 
 i Encyclical Letter of 183?. 
 
 2 Libei tas ilia tctcrrima, ac nunquam satis exccranda ac dettstdbUis. 
 
112 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 rations, there are still to be seen books, sermons, and journals, 
 in which the name of Roman Catholicism is mixed up with the 
 most enlarged ideas of toleration and emancipation. Let us 
 beware of trusting to this pretended Eomanism which is not that 
 of councils, or that of popes, and which could not reign for two 
 days without falling back perforce into what it has ever been, 
 what it is wherever it has the power, what it declares, when it 
 durst venture, that it ought always to be. But how should these 
 men be so scrupulous in their promises, who are so little scru- 
 pulous in speaking of the past ? At the moment we are writing, 
 it is not a month since, at Paris, from the pulpit, in Notre Dame, 
 before thousands of auditors, people were told that the Roman 
 Church had never had recourse to violence whether for the pur- 
 poses of extension or self-preservation. It is not two years since 
 a Roman Catholic pamphlet, published at Geneva, contained 
 these words, — " The Inquisition never forced any one to become 
 a Roman Catholic. The Inquisition never punished any but 
 revolutionists in arms. Never will it penetrate into the secret 
 court of a man's conscience to ask people, What do ye believe?" 1 
 Seriously to refute such assertions were almost as ridiculous as 
 to have made them; but these travesties of the past are what 
 may best supply the least distrustful, if they be ever so little not 
 incurably blind, with the proper measure for estimating the worth 
 of engagements taken for the future. 
 
 There is yet another thesis, moreover, which is neither the 
 less false nor the less strange for being less indicative of bad 
 faith. That for which Roman Catholicism has been most re- 
 proached, that for which all candid men, even the most Romanist 
 in their religious tenets, have come at last to reproach it for, to 
 wit, its intolerance, its despotism, its frightful persecutions at no 
 very distant period, that has been pertinaciously attributed by 
 some, not to Roman Catholicism, but, on the contrary, to its de- 
 cline. This is the position now maintained by the self-called 
 liberal Romanists; it was this, in particular, which Lamennais 
 and his disciples were developing in their journal, the Avenir, 
 when Rome shut their mouths. Three years later, Lamennais, 
 in his Affaires cle Home, still recurred to it. Profoundly detached 
 as the sequel has proved him to be, not only from the Roman 
 discipline, but from all the Roman, and, alas ! from more than 
 one Christian doctrine, he could not make up his mind to abandon 
 liis old sophistry. If the pope, in his famous encyclical letter of 
 
 1 Di'fcnse tie la relit io?t Catholique, par im Cure. Gein-ve, U44. 
 
LIBERTY IN UoMANISM AN ILLUSION. 113 
 
 1832, condemned in the lump both political liberty and civil 
 liberty, both the liberty of worships and the liberty of the press, 
 — the author can see nothing in this but " a distressing decline 
 of the Koman Catholic spirit." Then, is it not so? If the 
 Catholic sjjirit were in full vigour, were the pope and his court 
 no longer under the yoke of Austria, lie would have nothing 
 more at heart than to give his people all the liberties which he 
 execrated in 1832. You do not believe this at bottom more than 
 we do, and under this form you would not dare to affirm it ; but 
 as you cannot dream of making us accept of the men of the pre- 
 sent day, or of your popedom as it is at present, or of your 
 Catholicism such as it has ever been, some method must be taken 
 for associating them, for good or evil, with the ideas and the in- 
 stincts of the present age. Thus, men of sincerity may be found 
 even among those whom our first impulse would urge us to accuse 
 of dishonesty. Fondly clinging at once to the past and to the 
 present, to their Church's tenets and to the liberal ideas of their 
 own times, they cannot resign themselves, in spite of the plainest 
 acts and the most formal declarations, to the belief that between 
 Kome and the present age there lies so wide a gulf. They see 
 in futurity the popedom, better informed, extending its hand to 
 all that is reasonable and good in the ideas which it has hitherto 
 abhorred ; but as they would not dare to exhibit it contradicting 
 itself, this, according to them, would be but a return to the true 
 and eternal principles of Catholicism and the Church. Consola- 
 tory fiction — which has nowhere been worse received than at 
 Eome, or more keenly repelled than by the very power which 
 ought, we are told, to make it a reality. 1 
 
 Here, it would seem, we have got far from Trent ; but really 
 we have never left it. It would not be doing justice to the his- 
 tory of a law, were we not to follow it out, in the effects that it 
 has produced. 
 
 After having voted the principles, the question then arose, 
 under what form were they to be embodied in decrees ? 
 
 Now, it was usual for the decrees of councils either to be, or 
 not to be, accompanied with anathemas, according as the infrac- 
 tion of them should be deemed heresy or mere disobedience. 
 The anathema is, as it were, the seal, on seeing which the faith - 
 
 1 These reflections were written under Gregory XVI. Will they require modification 
 under his successor '! That he has the will, is possible ; that he has the power, we do not 
 believe. The liberties granted by a pope will always of necessity be of small consequence 
 compared with what is elsewhere understood by that term. 
 
 U 
 
1 14 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 fill recognise an article to be one touching the faith, and one 
 which it would he a crime to deny or to doubt. 
 
 First of all, this method of sealing and sanctioning all that is 
 alleged to be a matter of faith, calls for more than one observa- 
 tion. 
 
 What, then, is the meaning of a curse attached to the ad- 
 mission or the non-admission of a dogma? When we have to 
 do with an overt act, all well. " Cursed is he who shall have 
 struck his father." " Cursed /'s he who knowingly causes his 
 brother to sin." Still it must not be abused; this would ere 
 long be found far from Christian. But when we have to do 
 with an idea, a dogma, as it is not directly in our power to be 
 able to believe it, or not to believe it, in such matters there can 
 be no farther blame than the negligence one may have shewn in 
 procuring instruction. But, in the Roman Church, there is no 
 room for negligence : all that you have to believe is presented 
 to you and imposed on you. When, accordingly, you are ana- 
 thematized for not believing, it is certainly on the non-acceptance 
 of an idea ; that is to say, it is on a fact independent of your 
 will that the malediction falls. " Believe this," you are told. 
 lt In my soul and conscience," you reply, " I cannot." " Well, 
 then, be accursed." Such is the exact translation of every de- 
 cree on matters of faith accompanied with an anathema. It is 
 either this, or it is nothing ; nothing but a big word with which 
 to frighten the simple. 
 
 That word Borne understood, and had always caused it to be 
 understood in the most terrifying sense that it could bear. 
 Anathema, among the Greeks, signified originally deposited in a 
 temple consecrated to a god ; afterwards it meant consecrated to 
 the infernal gods, that is, accursed. In passing over to Chris- 
 tianity, this last meaning was farther aggravated by the idea of 
 a far more terrible hell than that of the pagans. To be ana- 
 thema, meant to be damned, and damned to all eternity. 
 
 Will it be said that St. Faul used this expression ? In fact, 
 >l If any man preach any other Gospel, let him be anathema," 
 Gal. i. 9. But besides that this formula, still cpiite pagan, could 
 not have had any very precise meaning under his pen, it is one 
 thing to curse, in general, whosoever announces another Gospel, 
 and quite another thing to attach this awful sanction to each of 
 the points of detail of which it is maintained that the Christian 
 faith is composed. Then, again, has the Church necessarily the 
 right to do what an Apostle did under the guidance of the Holy 
 
ANATHEMAS HOW EMPLOYED BY THE COUNCIL. 115 
 
 Ghost? Every objection to its infallibility — and we have seen 
 whether there be few of them — is an objection to the right of 
 the anathema. 
 
 Just as it was about to exercise this formidable right the 
 council hesitated. Not that it did not believe it was fully in 
 possession of it ; but the four decrees that had been made 1 were 
 of a nature diverse enough to admit of the question being put, 
 how far it -was right that they should be placed in the same 
 line, and be followed by the same sanction ? The doctors who 
 were consulted did not agree. They sent back the question to 
 the bishops, and still less mutual agreement was there among 
 them. Truly an odd spectacle, that of a council directed from 
 on high for the regulation of the faith, and which, after having 
 pronounced on four points, did not well know whether it had 
 made decrees on articles of faith, or mere decrees on discipline ! 
 
 Two parties were seen from the first to take shape ; the one 
 wanting four anathemas, the other desiring that there might be 
 none. To the latter it was objected that the council would 
 have the appearance of not having made articles of faith, or of 
 having not believed that it had the power to make them ; to the 
 former, that it would be very hard to envelop in the same con- 
 demnation an infidel who should reject the Bible, and a learned 
 man who should reject the Vulgate. After long parleyings a 
 middle course was adopted, and the decision was as follows : — 
 
 On the first point, anathema. Anathema, accordingly, to 
 whosoever should appeal from tradition to the Scriptures, from 
 revelation falsified, or at least falsifiable, to revelation remaining 
 intact. 
 
 On the second point, again an anathema. Anathema, ac- 
 cordingly, to whosoever shall deny the canonicity of any one 
 of those books which had passed for two thousand years as 
 apocryphal, and which no doctor until then T even of those who 
 accepted them, had dared to place in the same rank with the 
 rest of the Scriptures. 
 
 On the third and fourth point, (the Vulgate and the inter- 
 pretation of the Scriptures,) a mere prohibition, but, as we have 
 seen, a prohibition formal and absolute. Let none, on any pre- 
 text, reject the Vulgate ; let none take it into his head to inter- 
 pret Scripture against the sense which the Church has held and 
 holds, or against the unanimous consent of the fathers ; 2 that 
 
 1 Tradition, the Apocryphal books, the Vulgate, the Interpretation of the Scriptures. 
 - Aut etiam contra unanimum consensum patrum. 
 
I I<) HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 ■unanimous consent which, be it said in passing, hardly goes be- 
 yond the existence of God. 1 
 
 These prohibitions entered, accordingly, into a decree said to 
 be of reformation, and decrees of that kind were considered as 
 not bearing anathema. This, doubtless, was the best thing that 
 could be done ; but it was complained of by many. They called 
 to mind that, in speaking of reformation, and of the reforms that 
 were to be effected by means of a council, everybody had in view 
 the abuses that prevailed in the Church ; why, then, they would 
 say, attack first of all abuses that exist only among the Protes- 
 tants ? Is this the practical interpretation that is to be put on 
 the decision that discipline and faith should be treated simulta- 
 neously ? These reproaches were rather specious than just ; the 
 assembly thus far had been unable to pursue any other course, 
 hut when it was added that the legates were very well pleased 
 at being able to delay as long as possible the examination of real 
 abuses, nothing was said that the sequel did not justify. 
 
 Let us mention, to conclude this subject, the prohibition against 
 employing words of Scripture in pleasantry, sorcery, flattery to 
 the great, &c. A prohibition, also, against publishing aught on 
 religion without the consent and approval of the bishops. This 
 naturally followed all the rest, but with the addition of an en- 
 croachment on the civil authority, mention being made of fines 
 to be inflicted on contraveners. This decree, accordingly, was 
 never admitted beyond the states of the pope. Governments the 
 farthest from wishing to establish freedom of the press among their 
 subjects, have not recognised the Church's right to prevent it. 
 
 Everything, then, was now ready for the session ; and yet the 
 legates were not without apprehension. The greater number of 
 the decisions that had been taken had not been unanimous. 
 There had been disquieting minorities which, even after the 
 vote, had nowise shewn by their looks and manner, that they 
 believed the voice of the majority to have been the voice of 
 God. ISTaclantus, bishop of Chioggia, went so far as to treat 
 as impious the idea of putting tradition on an equality with 
 Scripture. 
 
 At a final preparatory meeting, the Cardinal del Monte made 
 a speech, in which, after much commendation of the wisdom and 
 tlie learning of the fathers, he adroitly insisted on the necessity 
 
 1 On this last subject we refer the reader to quite a late production by a priest who has 
 broken with Rome, 31. Trivier of Dijon. There is a curious chapter in it on the perplexities 
 of the man who should seriously set himself to search in the tiro hunrhrd Jto vols, of the 
 Collection of the Fathers, what he has to believe on any point whatever. 
 
AUDACITY OF THE COUNCIL. 1 1 I 
 
 of having at the public meeting but one heart, one soul, and, ■ 
 above all, but one voice. As some distrust was still felt on this 
 head, the Cardinal Santa Croce called a special meeting of those 
 who had shewn themselves the most intractable on the article of 
 the Vulgate, and conjured them anew not to disturb, by an 
 imprudent veto, the imposing harmony of the public voting. 
 
 The session was held, accordingly, on the 8th of April 154(j. 
 Five cardinals and forty-eight prelates were present. The ex- 
 hortations of the legates had not been thrown away : there was 
 no protest. Only instead of replying by the word placet, (I ap- 
 prove^) the Bishop of Chioggia said, / will obey. Another bishop 
 repeated, but in writing, the petition that the title of represent- 
 ing the universal Church should be added to those of the council. 
 Two others, in fine, declared that they did not demand the 
 adoption, at that moment, of this title, but with the understand- 
 ing that the council should assume it when it saw fit. 
 
 Notwithstanding the happy issue of the public sitting, and 
 the incontestable legality of the decrees thus admitted, no little 
 trepidation was felt at the council's having cut through, at the 
 first stroke, so many questions, so much controverted and so 
 grave ; and it was not clear that, in particular, the pope would 
 not be in some trepidation from the same cause. In sending 
 him the decrees, his legates made no secret that they were far 
 from having entire confidence in the solidity of the structure 
 they had just erected ; they almost prevailed on him to put off, 
 from a dread of compromising himself, the confirmation and 
 publication of these first acts. But the pope was not a man to 
 disquiet himself about so little. The decrees suited his pur- 
 poses : that was enough. Besides, was not any defect they 
 might have in point of authority about to be supplied by his 
 confirming them? Accordingly he did confirm them, and no- 
 thing more needed be said. 
 
 All was said, in fact, in the Boman point of view, seeing that 
 it acknowledges nothing superior to a council-general approved 
 by the pope. In reality, what had been gained? 
 
 For the present nothing. The spectacle had been presented 
 to the Brotestants of the numerous uncertainties amid which the 
 very foundations of the faith that people pretended to impose on 
 them shook and tottered ; the council had thrust itself, at the 
 very entrance, on questions which could not be treated without 
 letting it be seen that tradition itself was on the Brotestant side ; 
 it had pronounced itself, in fine, on two points, perhaps on three, 
 
113 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 in a sense which had never yet been held by any one university, 
 or any one doctor of any estimation. 
 
 For the future a great deal. " Fortune," said the ancients, 
 " helps those who dare ;" and this is not less true in the world 
 of ideas than in that of politics or of arms. Every principle 
 boldly laid down, every doctrine which takes a fixed position, 
 by that very fact, acquires a solidity which is almost independent 
 of the solidity or fragility of the foundations. When an army is 
 routed, let but a single man stop in his flight, and it may happen 
 that all will stop. In a brook that sweeps away a mass of in- 
 coherent bodies, let but one of these fix itself in the bed of the 
 stream, and you have an island begun which will perhaps out- 
 last even the banks at the side. Such has been the history, 
 such is the present state, of the Roman faith. Until 1546, 
 although a certain number of points appeared to be fixed, it was 
 no more in reality than a huge river in which the elements of 
 the future land lay tossing about. Let but one of these become 
 fixed, and were it no more than a pile of grass, all would be 
 done. But whence was this pile of grass to be taken? To 
 what should be hooked on (let us be forgiven this word) the 
 equality of tradition and the Scriptures? For it was neces- 
 sarily with that they had to begin, and, as long as that point 
 should remain afloat, the utmost result would have been but a 
 floating island. To what? the council has not told us, audit 
 would have found it not a little difficult to do so. It assumed 
 the thing to be admitted, demonstrated, incontestable. The con- 
 temporary generation doubted and said nothing ; the following 
 generation believed. But the question, the eternal question, is 
 to know whether a man of common sense can admit on the faith 
 of the council, what the very presidents of that council admitted 
 only while pale and trembling at the very thought of their 
 audacity. 
 
 Meanwhile, in spite of their having been solemnly proclaimed 
 at Trent, the pope ordained the publication of the decrees as if 
 that had still remained to be done, and as if, without his con- 
 currence, it were of no signification. We have said elsewhere 
 how false this position of his was. We observed that, however 
 people may try to elude the question, we have only to transport 
 ourselves to the epoch of the holding of the council, in order to 
 see that the difficulties it presents are incapable of any solution. 
 What was most dreaded was being led off into an explanation. 
 The pope would have shuddered to think of provoking such 
 
TACIT COMPROMISE BETWEEN ROME AND TRENT. IIS) 
 
 manifestations as those of Basle and of Constance, where the 
 councils declared that they could dispense with the pontifical 
 sanction ; the council, on its side, did not ' like either to break 
 with the pope, for the Church had more need of a chief than 
 ever, or to submit ostensibly to that chief, for that would have 
 been to renounce all influence beyond Italy. Hence the tacit 
 compromise that had united Rome and Trent. People who at 
 bottom are least agreed, are often the very persons who ap- 
 parently are most agreed. A friend with whom you are gener- 
 ally on good terms, you are not afraid to contend with on some 
 points ; but you studiously avoid touching on what may give 
 offence to a person from whom you feel that you are separated 
 by a profound difference of sentiments, and nothing, to all ex- 
 ternal appearance, prevents your being thought intimate friends. 
 As a farther precaution, the pope ordered his legates to commu- 
 nicate to him, before the final voting, all the drafts of decrees, 
 or, to speak more correctly, all the amendments discussed in the 
 assembly, for the drafts themselves behoved to come from Eome. 
 The legates, to the best of their powers, were not to allow the 
 vote to be taken until after the pope should have replied; it 
 would be for them to prevent anything from being voted in op- 
 position to his views, and, in this manner, all confliction would 
 be avoided. It was quite understood, moreover, that this 
 arrangement was to remain secret, and that the decrees were to 
 be understood as not transmitted to Rome, until after the session 
 in which they were to be promulgated. Were there nothing to 
 be saved but appearances, this was much — it was everything. 
 
 But there were things in which appearances could be saved 
 no longer. The emperor kept himself aloof. The pope felt 
 himself affronted both by his silence and by his words. 
 
 First, there was not a single German bishop at Trent, and 
 none could doubt that their absence was owing to secret orders 
 to that effect. The procurators of the Archbishop of Mayence 
 had remained only a few weeks ; the Bishop of Augsburg had 
 sent one, but he was a native of Savoy. A most severe sum- 
 mons had been prepared for the session of 8th April, to be 
 addressed to the absent bishops, particularly those who might be 
 seen from the windows of Trent, says Pallavicini, that is to say, 
 to the Germans, several of whom were, in point of fact, situate 
 but a few leagues from the council ; but the emperor took 
 offence at this, and the decree, though voted, had to be left out. 
 Thus he was evidently reserving for himself the possibility of 
 
ll- ; <> HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 refusing to recognise the council, and his prelates were no more 
 to he reckoned upon than himself. 
 
 It was much worse to see him continue to treat as an arch- 
 bishop and a prince that same Elector of Cologne whom the 
 pope had first summoned to appear before him, and next had 
 excommunicated. And yet the sentence was anything but 
 secret. It had been solemnly published at Eome, and that, too, 
 in the strongest terms. The prince-archbishop's subjects had 
 been loosed from their oath of allegiance; his rights and his 
 title had been given to his coadjutor, Adolphus von Schauen- 
 burg. It pertained to the emperor to execute this decree; but 
 Hermann, although a Lutheran, or almost a Lutheran, had 
 remained faithful to him, and he had no wish to throw him into 
 the ranks of the Protestant confederation. In vain did Paul 
 III. entreat and urge; the emperor turned a deaf ear to all ln- 
 said. It was Hermann who gave way, but without appearing 
 to obey the pope; he quitted Cologne and resigned, as if of his 
 own free will. For the rest we do not approve what the German 
 Protestants said on this occasion, alleging that the pope, during 
 the sitting of a council, could not condemn a person on points 
 upon which that council had not yet come to any vote. The 
 pope was incontestably hi the right; and we have seen with 
 pain, be it said in passing, that the greater number of priests 
 converted in our days to Protestantism, have indulged in recri- 
 minations of this sort. They admit that they are no longer 
 Roman Catholics, and they exclaim against despotism because 
 they are turned out of their places. The bishops have only 
 done their duty. Declare war against the Church, all well; 
 but let it be in fair fight, not by chicane. 1 
 
 The fifth session had been fixed for the 17 th of June. Pre- 
 parations had now to be made for it. 
 
 Then were renewed the disputes about the selection of sub- 
 jects. The legates had been ordered so to arrange matters that 
 
 i Here our national views, as well as individual convictions, compel us to dissent from 
 the author. Were the Church autocratic in the person of the pope or of the bishops, 
 difference from them might legitimate the deposition or dismissal of parish priests. But it 
 is as ministers of Christ's Church that those priests de jure hold office, exercise their func- 
 tions, and are paid. That Church is an absolute monarchy, and against the rights of Christ's 
 crown no prescription runs. De jure therefore the priest's office, functions, and stipend 
 commence, not with his allegiance to a usurper in the person of the pope, and with his pro- 
 fession of doctrines that are not those of Christ's Gospel, but with his abjuring that alle- 
 giance and those doctrines. To submit without protest to dismissal when converted to the 
 Gospel, may be prudent, but cannot surely consist with the testimony required on such an 
 occasion from the priest. — Til. 
 
RELIGIOUS TEACHING BISHOPS AND MONKS. 121 
 
 original sin should occupy the council next ; Charles the Fifth's 
 ambassador, 1 supported by some bishops, called Germans although 
 all of them were Spaniards or Italians, 2 insisted anew that the 
 council should keep to subjects calling for reformation. As for 
 the determination to which they had come to keep the two 
 things abreast, these prelates observed, that in soliciting that 
 course, their main object had been to prevent their being ab- 
 sorbed with questions of faith, to the exclusion of the others ; 
 there were to be no sessions, consequently, without disciplinary 
 decrees, but nothing obliged them to mingle with these, decrees 
 on matters of faith. This was, no doubt, a sophism, but the 
 emperor was behind. After many twistings and windings, the 
 legates were once more compelled to allow the tenor of their 
 instructions to be seen ; they declared that such was the will of 
 the pope, but offered, at the same time, to write to him anew. 
 
 This proposal was accepted ; and while waiting for the reply, 
 the members occupied themselves with some internal regulations. 
 It Avas ordered that there should be three sorts of congregations, 
 first, those in which the divines should deliver their views on 
 points of doctrine ; next, those in which the doctors of the canon 
 law should discuss questions of discipline ; the third, in fine, 
 where none but the bishops should be admitted, and in which 
 the decrees should be drawn up. 
 
 This over, as the pope shewed no haste to reply, an important 
 point was resumed, which had repeatedly been touched upon in 
 the course of the labours of the fourth session, to wit, religious 
 teaching, and in particular, preaching. 
 
 The question was a thorny one. Were they not all that ? We 
 shall hardly find one in which Borne had not to hold the balance 
 betAveen opposing ambitions and interests, yet, though opposite, 
 equally necessary to the existence and consolidation of her em- 
 pire. 
 
 In the case in hand, the bishops were ranged on the one side, 
 and the monks on the other ; the bishops, charged in point of 
 right AAdth all that bore on religious instruction, the monks 
 charged in point of fact, and for more than three centuries, with 
 the deliA*ery of sermons, and now Avith catechising. The bishops 
 made no demand to have the monks deprived of those functions ; 
 but they wished to regain the power of investing them with 
 that trust. As the religious orders held only of the pope, the 
 episcopal authority had been constantly exposed to encroach- 
 
 1 Francis de Toledo, successor to Diego de Mendoza. - Of the Emperor's states in Italy. 
 
122 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 merits from men who could plant themselves, with the pope's 
 sanction, in the midst of a diocese, preaching, hearing confessions, 
 and drawing to themselves the minds and hearts of the people. 
 It was like a second net thrown over that of the hierarchy, and 
 enveloping the hierarchy itself. " The monks," said Luther, 
 "are the best fowlers the pope has." And when Henry VIII., 
 in the first commencements of his reformation, seemed disposed 
 to preserve them, " It is as if he had done nothing," said the old 
 monk ; "he torments the body of the popedom, but he preserves 
 its soul." And it was, in fact, for the bishops a perpetual sub- 
 ject of unpleasantness, contestation, and disgusts. 
 
 Great keenness was shewn, accordingly, in the council, in at- 
 tacking the pretensions and intrigues of the monks ; but the de- 
 fence was no less keenly maintained than the attack. As there 
 were, among the divines, representatives of all the orders, they 
 spoke, they wrote, and the episcopate was forced to listen to some 
 harsh truths. They proved that if they had taken possession of 
 the pulpits, they had found them unoccupied, seeing that the 
 bishops and parish priests had altogether abandoned preaching ; 
 they shewed that the papal bulls, in virtue of which they taught 
 and preached, had been granted generally in view only of posi- 
 tive wants, incontestably proved to exist. The popes it is true, 
 had often let it be seen that this neglect of preaching was any- 
 thing but displeasing to them ; and that the desire of instructing 
 the populations of Christendom, was neither their only, nor their 
 principal motive j 1 but the monks were at bottom in the right ; 
 and this discussion fully bore out the Protestants in one of their 
 heaviest charges against the Church. They accused it of having 
 suffered the habit of instructing and preaching to die out among 
 the whole body of the clergy to whom was committed the care of 
 souls ; and it was easy for them to shew, both from Scripture 
 and by history, how opposed this neglect was to the laws and 
 to the practice of the first ages. Look to the epistles of St. Paul, 
 and see if a pastor, a bishop, be not, before all else, a preacher. 
 Rome had turned him into a priest, in the pagan sense of the 
 word ; at the very most, in the Hebrew sense of it ; a sacrificer, 
 a Levite, an arranger of ceremonies. There have been certain 
 ameliorations in this respect, still these are not found in countries 
 where Roman Catholicism prevails without control ; but, in the 
 
 1 See St. Bernard, De considerat.ione. Besides, he speaks with great force against the in- 
 dependence of the monks. " liberty, worse than slavery ! I would not have a liberty that 
 imposes on me the debasing yoke of pride." 
 
HISTORICAL INVESTIGATIONS PRUDENTLY AVOIDED. 123 
 
 sixteenth century, this reproach attached to almost the entire 
 body of the clergy. 
 
 Thus, the council had first to put the Church in a condition 
 to dispense with the services of the preaching monks, before it 
 proceeded to attack them. Besides, as they had got their pri- 
 vileges from the popes, it was felt that the pope alone could 
 meddle with them ; the smallest decision to the contrary, would 
 have been an invasion of his rights, and would have led to the 
 verification of those rights themselves — that is, to the most dan- 
 gerous of all investigations. The more incontestable it was that 
 a pope of the sixteenth century could not have entertained the 
 idea of sending into a diocese men who should be independent 
 of the bishop, the greater would have been the imprudence of de- 
 claring this by a vote ; for a cloor would thus have been opened 
 for the historical examination of all rights, and there were many 
 . which the most independent bishops were as little desirous 
 as the pope was to submit to the ordeal of verification. Thus, 
 some from devotion to the pope, others from necessity, or from 
 reason, all were of one mind in thinking that on this point, with- 
 out his sanction, nothing could be done. 
 
 He declared, in fact, that the council had no concern with the 
 privileges of the monks ; but, reserving his own rights in the 
 • matter, he authorized the legates to grant the bishops all the in- 
 demnifications that would not endanger that principle. Two 
 were found ; one, that no monk or friar should preach without 
 the bishop's permission, beyond the monasteries and convents of 
 his order ; the other, that in every cathedral there should be a 
 doctor of theology, nominated and directed by the bishop. It 
 was also decreed that there should be one in each of the princi- 
 pal monasteries ; but it was not well known what right the bishop 
 could exercise over him, that would not infringe on the inde- 
 pendence of the order. The idea was therefore entertained of 
 putting him under the superintendence of the bishop, acting, not 
 as bishop of the place, but as the pope's delegate ; a distinction 
 which, as we shall see, was very helpful in the sequel. This was 
 the best measure that could be fallen upon for restoring to the 
 bishops, without affecting the rights of the popes, part of those 
 of which the Holy See had deprived them ; but we shall also 
 find that they did not always lend themselves with a good grace 
 to the acceptance of that as a favour which they could claim as 
 a right. 
 
 As for the rest, the abbots themselves, much embarrassment 
 
124 HISTORY OE THE COUNCIL 01 TRENT. 
 
 as they caused to the bishops, were not altogether secure from 
 the encroachments of Rome. In the face of his vow of obedi- 
 ence to his own superior, every monk could purchase the pope's 
 intervention, and practically escape from the authority of his 
 chiefs. In 1517, some abbots in Germany having forbidden their 
 monks to accept Tetzel's scandalous indulgences, the latter, in 
 virtue of a papal commission, forced upon them confessors, with 
 power to absolve all who had recourse to them, even against the 
 rules of their order. Thus, provided all things should be found 
 more and more directly linked to the papal throne, Rome troubled 
 itself little about relaxing all the bonds of obedience and order 
 in the inferior regions of the Church. 
 
 The replies given by the monks were not without effect. 
 The decree on preaching commences with rules which Luther 
 might have subscribed. "As it is no less necessary to preach 
 the Gospel than to teach it in the schools, and as it is even the 
 principal function of bishops, 1 the holy council ordains that all 
 bishops, archbishops, primates, and others set over the conduct 
 of the churches, shall be lield and obliged themselves to preach 
 the holy Gospel of Jesus Christ." Nothing could be better, but 
 never was a decree worse observed. How many bishops are 
 there that preach? The decree adds, it is true, "unless they 
 shall be legitimately prevented." Judging by the actual state 
 of matters, it would seem that it is the episcopate itself that is 
 considered as the legitimate hindrance. But after this solemn 
 declaration that preaching is the principal function of bishops, 
 there ought at least to have been candour enough not to twit 
 Protestantism with making preaching the main function of its 
 ministers. 
 
 During these discussions, Paul III. had repeated his first orders. 
 He no longer asked, he insisted that the council should proceed 
 to doctrines, beginning with that of original sin. This had 
 therefore to be done, but the prelates of the emperor's party did 
 not even try to dissimulate any longer their desire to put off to 
 the last possible moment, the decrees that were to mark out the 
 Protestants, and to condemn them. The farther the council ad- 
 vanced, the more clearly might the political question be seen 
 occupying the first rank. Had it ever ceased, could it ever 
 cease to be there? All that can be said is, that it was more or 
 less apparent there, more or less veiled, according to circum- 
 stances. 
 
 1 Et hoc est prsecipuum episcoporum munus. 
 
QUESTIONS ON ORIGINAL SIN. 125 
 
 The legates who, on the contrary, wanted nothing better than 
 to have the party fhlly committed, in order that there might be 
 no longer any possible agreement betwixt the emperor and the 
 Protestants, had prepared a list of nine propositions for condem- 
 nation. They had taken care to include in this list those only 
 in condemning which they could count on perfect unanimity ; a 
 few hours of deliberation, and all would be done. Upon this the 
 imperialists changed their tactics. They craved that the Church's 
 doctrine on the subject in question, should first be established ; 
 they were sensible that the discussion once begun, the council 
 would not be long in a condition to draw up decrees. The 
 legates felt this also, but how refuse ? 
 
 Four questions, consequently, were set down for debate : — 
 
 I. What was the nature of Adam's sin ? 
 
 II. In what sense are we to say that it passes to his posterity ? 
 
 III. How is it transmitted? 
 
 IV. How is it effaced? 
 
 Before proceeding farther, we would remind the reader that 
 our plan could not admit of the theological discussion of any of 
 the questions mooted in the council. Wherever we shall have 
 merely to allow Scripture, common sense, and history to speak, 
 we will do so, as we have done already ; wherever we should 
 have to enter into the labyrinth of human opinions, and to choose 
 between ideas equally probable, or equally improbable, we will 
 be silent. 
 
 Now, nothing can be more natural than to try to ascertain, 
 according to the Bible, if we must believe in original sin, that is 
 to say, in a certain transmission of Adam's sin ; but this fact 
 once admitted, we apprehend there would be rashness, pride, 
 folly, in setting ourselves to analyze and to explain it. The 
 ( Christian who is most disposed to see in it a fundamental doc- 
 trine, is compelled to avow, if he reasons, that it is one of the 
 points on which God has evidently not seen fit that our view 
 should penetrate into the full depth of its bearings. 
 
 The divines, accordingly, were far from being agreed even on 
 the first question. More clear, it would seem, than the other 
 three, it is in reality perhaps the most obscure. What, in fact, 
 1 was the sin of the first man? Had it been related to us as an 
 ordinary sin, we could have figured to ourselves well enough its 
 nature and its seriousness. It was, we should have said, curi- 
 osity, gluttony, pride ; and as these vices are not rare, we should 
 find no great difficulty in determining to what degree they were 
 
126 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 to be blamed in the case. But when we behold them followed 
 by terrible consequences, permanent in duration, and quite dis- 
 proportioned, in the eye of mere man, to the gravity of the crime 
 — here there was evidently a relation which escapes us, and 
 which God only knows. 
 
 On the second and third questions, the divines did not even 
 dispute, so sensible were they of the impossibility of coming to a 
 common understanding. Unanimous in affirming that Adam's sin 
 has had certain consequences for his posterity, how could they 
 expect to be so when they came to state precisely in what these 
 consequences consist ? But they were not circumspect enough 
 to decline any such precise statement. Each had his own system ; 
 one followed Augustine, another Thomas Aquinas, a third Duns 
 Scotus ; but they confined themselves each to saying what his 
 own view was, leaving to the bishops the task of selection and 
 arrangement. 
 
 None of the questions, even to the fourth, on being narrowly 
 examined, failed to become a source of embarrassment. The 
 members were agreed in saying, that original sin is effaced by 
 baptism ; but the door once opened to the questions why and 
 how, a cloud of obscurities gathered round the subject. From 
 the moment you give baptism any other bearing but that 
 of an external sign, announcing the fact of entrance into the 
 Church, and figuring by water the purification of the soul, — 
 where would you stop ? You are then caught, hi particular, in 
 the question as to infants dying without baptism, and, in spite of 
 your reason and your sensibility, which revolt from the idea, it 
 is impossible for you not to declare them shut out from salvation. 
 
 The council ventured , however, not to confine themselves 
 altogether to St. Augustine's opinion, who, with his merciless 
 logic, makes those infants to be so many lost souls ; nay, Doctor 
 Ambrose Catharini went so far as to beg that that opinion might 
 be declared heretical. Condemn Augustine ! They recoiled 
 from that ; l but these infants once out of hell, they knew not 
 where to put them. Some Franciscan divines ventured to say 
 that their dwelling was not under the earth, like that of the 
 lost, but somewhere on the earth, in the air, or in the sun ; 
 some placed them in a sort of terrestrial paradise, where they 
 employed themselves in reasoning on the marvels of nature, but 
 
 1 The dogmatical authority of the fathers was, however, still far enough from what it has 
 been since. Cardinal Oajetan had written at the commencement of the century, that .a 
 divine might sometimes interpret Scripture without following the torrent of the Fathers (con- 
 tra torrentem Putrum). What ultra-montanist would say as much at the present day ? 
 
UNBAPTIZED INFANTS, HOW DISPOSED OF. 127 
 
 without thinking, or having the power to think, of God. 
 Catharini, who had constituted himself their patron, found even 
 this last opinion too hard : the angels and saints, he affirmed, 
 are constantly visiting them. The Jacobin divines chose a 
 middle course, which, without having been decreed, has become 
 the ordinary doctrine of the Church. According to them, in- 
 fants dying without baptism have their abode between paradise 
 and hell ; they are neither happy nor miserable, neither joyous 
 nor sad. In short, one would have said, that the council were 
 called, not to say where these infants were, but to determine 
 where they themselves should put them ; and this was what was 
 done. What folly ! And but for the necessity of keeping one's 
 gravity in all that is connected, even remotely and by ties that 
 are absurd, with the grand ideas of religion, who could seriously 
 relate such monstrous extravagances ? All well to explain and 
 develop doctrines, though one ought to know where to stop 
 
 ( even there. But to wish to guess out, fix, and set up as doc- 
 trines, facts of which revelation does not inform us, and which 
 are utterly beyond every kind of observation and verification — 
 this is a freak which we should consider as incredible were it 
 
 ',! less established by evidence, and as what might be presented in 
 a history of paganism, as an unheard-of instance of the temerity 
 of the learned, the credulity of their disciples, and the senseless- 
 ness of the people. If this reproach is not precisely applicable 
 to the present decree, seeing that explanation on the state of 
 infants dying without baptism was abandoned, how much was 
 
 |i there not attempted afterwards on points of which we have no- 
 thing more taught us in the Bible, and which are equally 
 incapable of being elucidated without it ! Besides, on this very 
 
 j point, why, seeing the council decreed nothing, are details given 
 in the catechisms, which it did not give ? 
 
 For the rest, while withal it teaches, according to the council, 
 
 | that there is " no other means but baptism for procuring the 
 
 i salvation of infants," the famous Catechismus Ro?nanns, com- 
 
 t monly called the Catechism of the Council of Trent, 1 admits a 
 fact which would suffice for the subversion of that doctrine, if 
 for this common sense were not already all that is required. 
 That fact is, that in the primitive Church, Easterday and Whit- 
 
 1 We shall often have occasion to quote it. Published under the express order of the 
 '& council, (session xxiv.,) based on the council's decrees, approved by Pius V. in 1570, and by 
 Gregory XIII. in 1583, this book has been placed, in the Church of Rome, almost in the 
 same line with the decrees of councils, and is, in fact, the basis of religious instruction 
 throughout the wholo Roman Catholic world. 
 
128 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 Sunday were the only ones on which baptism was administered. 1 
 Although the Catechism adds, " saving eases of necessity," 
 how exceedingly improbable that infants, however thriving, 
 would have been left for so many months without baptism, had 
 it been thought that their salvation might thus have been com- 
 promised ? 
 
 After long and fruitless conferences, the majority returned to 
 its first opinion ; there was to be nothing directly taught on ori- 
 ginal sin, but only the simple condemnation of a certain number 
 of heretical ideas on that subject. It was in vain that several 
 bishops, and still more the divines, remonstrated that a council 
 is convened for the instruction of the faithful as well as for the 
 condemnation of error ; in vain did some, and Jerome Seripandi, 
 the general of the Augustinians in particular, give it to be under- 
 stood that here this would be a confession of the council's im- 
 potency. The bishops felt themselves decidedly incapable of 
 drawing up articles in which they themselves should have suffi- 
 cient confidence to authorize their imposing them upon the Church, 
 They persisted accordingly. Shall we commend them for doing so ? 
 Their reserve ought to have been more steadily maintained : and 
 as we shall see them often pronounce without hesitation, without 
 their being, at bottom, either better informed, or more sure, Ave 
 cannot give them much credit for a modesty so transient, when 
 preceded, accompanied, and followed by so much pride and 
 audacity. Then, in another view, how reconcile this silence 
 with the council's authority and divine inspiration ? If it has 
 recoiled from original sin, what right will it have to impose 
 what it shall decree on justification, on grace, on twenty other 
 subjects, before which it must have had quite as many motives 
 to fall back and be silent ? The great inducement, we have 
 said, was that the members felt that they were not of one mind ; 
 and on the questions of the same kind which they had to decide 
 afterwards, they were a little better agreed. Such is the secret 
 of the matter; but then there starts up a new objection. This 
 agreement which, in other cases, has given you the courage to 
 pronounce a decision, was, you say, a token of the divine assist- 
 ance ; Cod could not permit your being unanimous in decreeing 
 an error. Be it so. But then, to what a strange part you con- 
 demn the Holy Spirit ! Here we have two parallel qttestions, 
 original sin, on which you have said nothing, and grace, on 
 
 1 Quibus tantum diebus, nisi necessitas alitor faccre ci>-egis*ot. in veteris e.-clcsiaa more 
 positum fuit ut baptismus adrainistvavetur. 
 
THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 129 
 
 which you are about to indite (for this was what was done) six- 
 teen chapters. On the latter subject, accordingly, the aid of the 
 Holy Spirit was full and entire ; on the former, nothing or next 
 to nothing. What caprice ! And how strange should we deem 
 the conduct of a protector to be, who should sometimes succour, 
 sometimes abandon, sometimes maintain unanimity, sometimes 
 leave to stray in all directions those who, he knows, cannot dis- 
 pense with him, and are nothing without him ! " To insist," 
 says Father Biner, " that so numerous an assembly should pre- 
 sent no example of dissidence, would be to go out of the world, 
 and to have a mind to look on at a meeting of a council held by 
 the angels." We, too, think it quite a thing to be expected that 
 there should have been questions on which members were not 
 agreed ; but the farther we shall conceive the assembly to have 
 been from resembling a council of angels, the more reason shall 
 Ave have for thinking it rash to have pretended to pronounce in- 
 fallibly on things of which the angels themselves, say the Scrip- 
 tures, do not penetrate the depths. 
 
 The council, therefore, confined itself to the forming of five 
 decrees with accompanying anathemas. The first was directed 
 against those who deny that Adam lost original righteousness ; 
 the second, against those who deny the transmission of original 
 sin ; the third, against those who think that baptism does not 
 entirely obliterate it ; the fifth, in fine, against those who say that 
 after baptism, concupiscence is still sin. 1 
 
 On the occasion of the second of these decrees, a quarrel, al- 
 ready of four centuries' standing, burst out afresh between the 
 Cordeliers and the Jacobins, a quarrel which the council was not 
 to compose, and which lasts to this clay. 
 
 Was the Virgin Mary comprehended in the decree which de- 
 clares all the children of Adam subject to original sin ? Such 
 was the question. 
 
 An idle question, if ever there was one. Idle in itself: as 
 long as the Bible says nothing about it, what means shall we 
 find for resolving it ? Idle in its results : of what moment to us 
 whether the Virgin Mary was conceived under the empire of ori- 
 ginal sin or not? Wherein can this circumstance influence in 
 
 1 In theology the collective desires of revolt existing in man ithe revolt of the flesh 
 against the spirit, of the spirit against God, &c.) are called concupiscence. Those desires, 
 viewed as the consequences of original sin, cease through baptism to be sins : they become 
 criminal only when we yield to them ; whilst in the man who is not baptized, they are culpa- 
 ble by the simple fact of their existence. — Such is the Roman doctrine, and it is in that 
 sense that the council condemns those who shall attack the efficacy of baptism, while they 
 maintain that it does not prevent concupiscence from being sin. 
 
 I 
 
130 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 the least our faith or our works ? And although the immaculate 
 conception of the Virgin were a fact capable of being established, 
 shall we hold that Christianity was incomplete until people be- 
 gan to speak about it ? 
 
 Until the twelfth century, in fact, we find nothing formal on 
 this strange problem. Of this we have a proof in the quotations 
 accumulated by Pallavicini, at this part of his work, for the pur- 
 pose of demonstrating the antiquity of the acts of homage ren- 
 dered to the sanctity of the Virgin. The stronger these decla- 
 rations, the more inconceivable would it be that the exemption 
 from the stain of original sin should not be mentioned in them, 
 if it were believed ever so little or even so much as dreamt of. 
 It was towards 1130, at the very height of the kind of fever that 
 led to a continual addition of new honours to the worship of 
 Mary, and of new marvels to her history, that the canons of 
 Lyons set themselves all at once to preach this new doctrine ; 
 they spoke even of instituting a festival in honour of it. St. Ber- 
 nard opposed this. He wrote them a severe letter, which it has 
 been attempted, but in vain, 1 to transform into a simple repri- 
 mand, for their not having begun by referring the matter to the 
 pope. The man who called that idea a presumptuous novelty, 
 mother of temerity, sister of superstition, daughter of fickleness, 
 could not have intended to attack it merely in point of form. It 
 did not arise, however, from his being habitually chary of his ex- 
 pressions of homage to the Virgin, for he calls her elsewhere, in 
 language more picturesque than noble, " the neck of the Church, 
 the channel through which all good influences and divine graces 
 pass from the head to the members ;" but as he, after all, was a 
 superior man, he resisted a little better than the rest of his age, 
 the passion for ransacking the worlds of fancy for the purpose of 
 finding there what was futile or absurd. Eighty years after we 
 see John Scot taking up the question, and on reading him, find 
 it had made some progress. The idea of the immaculate con- 
 ception had charms for him that led him to maintain it, but only 
 as a possibility. Direct proofs of it he neither gives nor seeks, 
 and seems to think that they are never to be had. In his latest 
 writings he decidedly leans to its being admitted, but always as 
 a matter of sentiment. He feels repugnant at the thought that 
 the Virgin ever could have been for a single moment under con- 
 demnation. Christ redeemed all mankind ; nevertheless he 
 could not have been a perfect redeemer had there not been one 
 
 1 Pallaricini, 1. vii — Cardinal de Bonald, mandement of 21st November 1843. 
 
HISTORICAL RETROSPECT. 131 
 
 being, at least, whom he should save, not only from the conse- 
 quences of original sin, but from original sin itself. And who 
 could this being have been but his own mother ? Admirable 
 reasonings these, on which a man of science could not admit the 
 existence of a single plant, of an insect, of an atom, — yet with 
 which people have so often been content in establishing the sub- 
 limest mysteries ! As the disciples of John Scot, the Cordeliers 
 went much farther than he did, and thus the immaculate con- 
 ception was openly maintained as a dogma, but was keenly at- 
 tacked, at the same time, by their enemies, the Jacobins. As 
 the Church did not pronounce a decision, the field remained 
 open, and hence arose wr anglings, writings pro and con, and 
 deadly animosities without end. Another subject began likewise 
 to be discussed with an ever increasing vivacity, that of the vir- 
 ginity of Mary, held to have been perpetual, according to some, 
 ending, according to others, with the birth of Jesus Christ, or 
 with that of other children born after him. The former of these 
 opinions gained ground every day. There were purposes to be 
 served by it, and this was enough to secure its being believed to 
 rest on a sound foundation. In vain do the gospels shew us the 
 Virgin married to Joseph, living long years with him, altogether 
 a stranger to the mystical notions imputed to her, and which, 
 besides, would have been in positive contradiction to Jewish 
 ideas, seeing that with them virginity in marriage was a kind of 
 opprobrium ; in vain do these same books present her to us as 
 several times accompanied by those whom they call the brethren 
 of Jesus : all these difficulties have been overleapt. Mary is 
 not only a " Virgin," as saith the Scripture in its charming in- 
 troduction to the wonders of Bethlehem, she is " the Virgin," 
 the type of virginity, and of all the perfections of which that 
 state, according to Rome, is the source. The council has not 
 said this, but the Church of Rome teaches it ; the Roman 
 catechism enlarges upon it with explanations which we would 
 not dare to quote, even in Latin. Nevertheless, were the rea- 
 sons adduced in support of it as strong as they are feeble, not to 
 say ridiculous; were the " brethren" of Jesus not his brethren, 
 as has been alleged, but his cousins ; it must ever be admitted, 
 that the evangelists attached very little importance to the 
 doctrine, seeing that they have given, without a single hint to 
 the contrary, so many details which could not but render it im- 
 probable, and dispel the very idea of it. 
 
 Meanwhile, on the question of the Immaculate Conception the 
 
132 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 popes have fluctuated like the doctors. Some would declare 
 themselves for, and others against it, hut always as divines, not 
 as popes ; in short, opinions have been too much divided for 
 any of them to venture upon an official decision. From time to 
 time some steps have been made in favour of or against it. John 
 XXII., from hatred of the Cordeliers, 1 seemed for a moment pre- 
 pared to condemn then doctrine ; Sixtus TV, a Cordelier himself, 
 openly favoured them. In 1476 he forbade their being accused 
 of heresy, and sanctioned the festival first conceived at Lyons. 
 The fact, however, still remained undecided, Sixtus IV. not 
 affirming, but only forbidding the condemnation of those who 
 did affirm it. 
 
 Such then, in 1546, was the state of the question. If not yet 
 sufficiently advanced for the one party to venture on deciding it 
 in the way prepared by Sixtus IV., it was too much so for the 
 Jacobins to attempt having it decided in the other. They con- 
 fined themselves, therefore, to insisting that no exception to the 
 law of original sin should be mentioned. More bold, because 
 they felt themselves more popular, the Cordeliers called for the 
 express exception of the Virgin. The legates, although divided 
 on the question at bottom, 2 were agreed as to the necessity of 
 saying nothing about it ; nevertheless, anxious to screen them- 
 selves from responsibility, they referred the matter to the pope, 
 and, at his suggestion, a middle course was again adopted. The 
 decree was left as it stood, only it was added, that the question 
 remained intact ; that the Virgin was neither comprised nor 
 excepted, that the bull of Sixtus IV., in fine, should rule the case. 
 
 Has that rule been kept ? The Immaculate Conception had 
 been voted at Basle, 3 and that, no doubt, was one of the reasons 
 that prevented its being voted at Trent. Here, then, there was 
 a step backwards. But time has advanced. The idea has made 
 progress ; it only had to be left to itself in order to its regaining, 
 and more than regaining, all that it had lost. At the present 
 day matters stand thus. There are no positive decrees ; but 
 every bishop that asks leave to establish the worship of the 
 Immaculate Conception in his diocese, has this granted to him 
 by the pope, and hence it has now become almost universal. 
 Let but some years more elapse and nothing will prevent the 
 fact from taking its place definitively among the articles of faith. 
 
 1 They had supported the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria, whom he had excommunicated. ' >n 
 such threads hung the fate of the Immaculate Conception ! 
 - Uel Monte was for, Cervini against, and Pole wavered. ;; Session xxxiv. 
 
USUAL COURSE OF ROMAN DOGMAS. 133 
 
 Some years hence, then, we may expect it to he pronounced 
 heresy to deny what as yet one may safely deny or helieve. The 
 history of this point, were it to remain for ever undecided, is that 
 of many others. Is this not, in fact, the course that all the 
 Roman dogmas have run ? An idea starts up. Some defend, 
 others attack it. It fluctuates for two or three centuries, some- 
 times for five or six, sometimes for more, in the midst of desires, 
 of fears, of interests, which invite or repel it ; next, some day, 
 when the Church seems to he sufficiently impregnated with it to 
 secure the step from being assailed with too much violence of 
 protest, behold, it is made an article of faith. And then at least 
 people know how they stand ; but until then what an indescrib- 
 able medley of certainty and uncertainty, of bondage and of 
 freedom ! Was the Virgin exempt from original sin ? You are 
 invited to believe that she was, but without your being assured 
 that it is true. Perhaps it will be affirmed to-morrow, and then 
 anathema to him who shall deny it ; possibly it will never be 
 affirmed ; perhaps, for this is no more impossible than the rest, 
 the contrary will one day be affirmed. Here then Ave have an 
 infallible Church which shall have remained for a thousand 
 years, perhaps two thousand, before regulating — what ? why a 
 pure matter of fact ; a question, consequently, on which time 
 brings no new light. If one can decide it to-morrow, there 
 should be the power of deciding it to-day, there should have 
 been power to do so in the sixteenth century ; and if there was 
 no power of deciding it in the sixteenth century, there ought to 
 be none to-day or to-morrow. The present pope goes farther 
 than had ever been done before ; why this advance ? have any 
 new proofs been discovered ? No. There are not even any old 
 ones, for had there been any the question would have been de- 
 cided long ago. Has the pope received any revelation more than 
 his predecessors ? On a matter of positive fact there can be no 
 half-revelation ; it must be ay or no. Wherefore, then, we 
 repeat, wherefore this half- affirmation ? Wherefore these ex- 
 hortations to believe what neither the Church nor the pope can 
 yet affirm to be true ? 
 
 The fifth session accordingly took place on the 17th of June. 
 Pallavicini, as usual, after having peevishly noticed some of 
 Father Paul's mistakes, says more even than he does on the 
 divisions in the assembly. The following passage is extracted 
 from him word for word, it is only abridged in some places : — 
 
 " The decree on original sin was approved, notwithstanding 
 
134 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 the opposition of Cardinal Pacheco and those who in the con- 
 gregation had desired that the exception with respect to the 
 Virgin, should be expressed in more favourable terms. Some of 
 these craved that at least silence should be imposed on the 
 partisans of the contrary opinion, either generally or only in 
 public preaching. There were some who advised that of the 
 two opinions, that in favour of the Virgin's exception was simply 
 pious ; others required that it should be declared the more pious 
 of the two. The Archbishop of Sassari alleged that — this de- 
 cree did not please the Bishop of Cava ! Not the less did pro- 
 tests continue to be made against the title of the council, &C." 1 
 
 And when we reflect that all this transpired in full session, 
 in an assembly of at most sixty persons, in view of a numerous 
 public, or, more properly, before the eyes of all Europe, after so 
 many private sittings, where the members might have come to 
 a common understanding, after so many exhortations on the 
 necessity of being united, and on the immense inconvenience of 
 their not being so, — one may judge as to what that general 
 agreement was at bottom, in virtue of which they proceeded to 
 fix the faith of the Church, and to anathematize all that was not 
 the faith so constituted. 
 
 The ambassadors of Francis I. arrived a few days after. 
 These were Claude d'Urie, Jacques de Ligneris, and Pierre 
 Danes, afterwards Bishop of Lavaur. What did they come to 
 do '? The part properly belonging to the ambassadors who 
 attended the council was never well defined. We behold them 
 there doing a little of everything, from la haute politique, which 
 never ought to have found access there, to the most insignificant 
 doctrinal squabbles, in which they protested they had no call 
 to intervene. We see them, according as their masters were on 
 good or bad terms with the Court of Koine, repressing or en- 
 couraging the opposition made by their bishops. That same 
 ambassador from Spain who, a month before, had asked leave 
 to be present at the congregations, that he might, as he said, 
 restrain the bishops of that country, was the first, afterwards, to 
 excite them against the pope. We cannot blame, absolutely, 
 the presence of a diplomatic body at Trent. It was one of the 
 necessities of the moment. We will not accuse, either the pope 
 Tiir having asked ambassadors, or the secular sovereigns for hav- 
 ing sent them, but if they enhanced the external lustre of the 
 council, still more did they contribute to deprive it of the very 
 
 1 Pallavicini, W>k vii. ch. xiii. 
 
PAUL III. LENDS TROOPS TO CHARLES V. 135 
 
 appearance of what it behoved to have been, in order to its 
 commanding respect and confidence. 
 
 The French ambassadors were admitted to the general con- 
 gregation on the 8th of July, and there expressed themselves, 
 by the mouth of Danes, with a boldness and independence that 
 were but thinly veiled by courtesy in point of forms. In re- 
 minding his audience that his royal master had resisted the 
 example and solicitations of Henry VIII., he almost hinted that 
 for this the council and the pope ought to be extremely grateful ; 
 then, going back to the early times of the French monarchy, he 
 drew a pompous picture of the services it had rendered to the 
 Church, and particularly to the popes. He quoted the humble 
 thanks with which a pope had repaid the succour and the hos- 
 pitality of the Kings of France ; he even advanced a fact, which 
 has not been proved, namely, that Adrian I. had recognised in 
 Charlemagne the right not only of confirming, but of naming 
 the pope ; a right which would never have been lost but for 
 the renunciation of Louis le Debonnaire. He was allowed to 
 speak on, but the pope's friends were excruciated. If some of 
 the facts which this speech comprised were inexact, there were 
 others to which there could be no reply ; and all these recollec- 
 tions, which Rome might have despised when she was at the 
 pinnacle of her glory, formed a melancholy addition to the checks 
 which this century had seen her receive. 
 
 Meanwhile the Bishop of Trent had brought to a successful 
 termination the negotiations begun with Cardinal Farnese. 
 Charles V. had accepted the offered twelve thousand men, and 
 was about to open the campaign. By a secret convention the 
 pope engaged to excommunicate the King of France should he, 
 directly or indirectly, furnish any aid to the Protestants of 
 Germany. But while nothing was neglected on the part of Paul 
 III. to give the opening hostilities the character of a holy war, 
 and while, with this in view, he went so far as to permit the 
 emperor to appropriate the half of the ecclesiastical revenues of 
 Spain, the emperor persisted, at least in Germany, in denying 
 that religion had anything to do with it, as respected him. 
 Solely intent on retaining on his own side those Lutheran princes 
 who had not yet deserted him, he would say that he attacked 
 the others only as faithless and revolted vassals. Their rebellion 
 against the Church and the pope was no affair of his, and still 
 less were the council's anathemas. 
 
 Paul III. thought to shew the hand of a master in publishing 
 
136 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT: 
 
 a jubilee u for the success of the Church and the emperor.'' 1 He 
 thought he should thus compel the latter to avow the alliance, 
 and to advertise himself as the champion of the Church. This 
 too was in vain. Charles was not the man to put himself in an 
 inferior position. Like the pope, and in general like all the popes, 
 ;dl obstacles which he could not throw down, or which, for the 
 moment, it was not convenient for him to throw down, he would 
 pass, affecting not to notice them. Eight days after the celebra- 
 tion of the jubilee, he quietly put the Elector of Saxony, and 
 the Landgrave of Hesse to the ban of the empire, without alter- 
 ing a word of the formularies usually employed in those cases. 
 He reproached them, it is true, among other misdeeds, with lay- 
 ing violent hands on Church property, but without seeming to be 
 aware whether this had been done svstematicallv and hereti- 
 c-ally. 
 
 The pope's situation became daily more and more painful. 
 Xot only did the undertaking not assume the character he had 
 desired, at all costs, to give to it, but his efforts caused uneasi- 
 ness and discontent in most of the Italian princes. Good Eoman 
 Catholics, but extremely tired of the imperial tutelage, they felt 
 an interest, in spite of themselves, in the German princes who 
 dared to think of casting it off; they could perceive that Charles 
 V. could not again become absolute in Germany without his 
 yoke becoming more hard to bear in Italy, and beheld with 
 grief the pope supplying him with the means for being so. 
 
 Is it true, as Sarpi will have it, that the ruin of the Protest- 
 ants was not the sole object of the wily pontiff, and that he still 
 hoped to find, amid the engrossing contingencies of war, a pre- 
 text for ridding himself, in an honest way, of the council '? Al- 
 though nothing had as yet been done for which he had any posi- 
 tive ground of complaint, and although, besides, all due measures 
 had been taken to enable him to manage the threads of secret 
 influence to the last, it was with an ever increasing anguish that 
 he felt himself Avatched by the eye of that hitherto benevolent 
 rival, Avhose sopited rights might reawake some day, under the 
 slightest breath of wind wafted from Ratisbon or Spires. Then, 
 too, although the ability of the legates, and still more, the feel- 
 ing of a common interest, had succeeded hitherto in keeping off 
 storms, more than one black cloud had appeared on the horizon. 
 " The council is not free!" one bishop had exclaimed. "The 
 council,''' cried another, pointing to the legates, "is composed of 
 only three members !" These legates had been openly assailed 
 
INTRACTABLE SPIRITS IN THE COUNCIL. 137 
 
 a hundred times ; and as the system of the responsibility of min- 
 isters was not yet admitted, either in the laws or the manners of 
 society, their master felt himself really and truly reached by all 
 the strokes directed apparently only against them. " It must 
 not be imagined," they wrote to him in confidence at the time of 
 the first session, " that the bishops here are such as we are ac- 
 customed to see at Eome. They feel their importance ; and 
 they desire that it should be felt." And, in fact, although the 
 great mass of the Italians were devoted to a degree that nothing 
 could shake, it was amongst them that some of the most dis- 
 quieting members were to be found. To such as were so from 
 the spirit of opposition, or from asperity of character, were joined 
 those who were so from conscience and from piety. The most 
 dangerous to Eome were those who honestly believed in the 
 divine authority of the council ; these it was found impossible 
 to convince, that while voting against reason and conscience 
 alike, still they were the oracles of the Holy Ghost. Add to 
 this the prospect of so many difficult, obscure, and insoluble 
 questions, of which they already had many a specimen, of so 
 many reforms that were called for, and promised, yet which there 
 was no disposition to grant ; and one can very easily comprehend 
 that Paul III. was burning with eagerness to have done with it. 
 This, at least, was the opinion so generally entertained, that 
 nobody felt a moment's scruple in giving a corresponding inter- 
 pretation to all that he did, and said, and thought. The legates 
 had done nothing hitherto that had not been done in concert 
 with him ; when they were heard alleging the near approach of 
 the armies as a reason for proposing what was known to be one 
 of his most cherished wishes — the translation of the council into 
 his own states, — who could doubt that they did so by orders from 
 him ? Pallavicini positively says no, and his reasons, we must 
 admit, are good. But though he may prove tolerably well that 
 the legates acted at their own instance, he proves also, uninten- 
 tionally, that nothing but dread of the emperor had prevented 
 Paul III. from announcing this to be his wish. Besides, to 
 translate the council, would, at such a crisis, have been tanta- 
 mount to dissolving it ; without the council, the pope could no 
 longer expect that the war which was about to commence would 
 assume the aspect of a war of religion. The legates, conse- 
 quently, were disavowed and censured ; but, says the historian, 
 to mitigate the bitterness of this censure, word was sent them 
 that the pope would fain believe that they had not so much 
 
138 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 yielded to a shameful panic, as to their excessive eagerness for 
 the translation ; that meanwhile, the more honourable it was to 
 desire it, the more unseasonable was it to speak of it at that 
 moment. In fact, it was positively said that the emperor had 
 spoken of nothing short of tossing into the Adige whoever should 
 dare to propose such a thing. They had no choice, then, bnt to 
 prorogue, for six months, the session appointed for the 29th July. 
 
 The two armies remained long enough in presence of each 
 other. If the Protestants had not had two chiefs, an untoward 
 circumstance at all times, hut especially in war, they might have 
 acted on the offensive ; their united forces were for a short time 
 decidedly superior to those of the emperor. Once, indeed, they 
 made an advance to within some leagues of Trent. The em- 
 peror had engaged to see to the safety of the council ; had they 
 pursued their advantage, could he have done that '? The council 
 might have been dispersed or captured, before he could come up 
 to its defence. They went off; having no desire, it was said, to 
 do the pope so signal a service as to rid him of it. 
 
 Notwithstanding the disagreement of the elector and the land- 
 grave, their affairs were at first tolerably successful. Until the 
 end of October success was about equally divided. But, then, 
 the imperialists having invaded Saxony and Hesse, those two 
 leaders had to fly to the defence of their estates, and the emperor, 
 almost without any fighting, found himself master of all Upper 
 Germany. Meanwhile, more eager to beat those who still held 
 out against him, than to crush those whom he had beaten, he 
 merely levied contributions ha money and men from the latter. 
 Religion was left free, or almost free ; he openly promised the 
 electorate of Saxony to Duke Maurice, who was devoted to 
 Austria, but quite as much a Lutheran withal as the prince who 
 had been deprived of it. 
 
 Then it was that the pope opened his eyes, or, to speak more 
 correctly — for he was not the man to have had them shut — he 
 ventured at last to let the world know that they were open. He 
 recalled his troops. The emperor had the bad faith to complain 
 of this, and Paul, the weakness to excuse himself on the score of 
 its being impossible for him to support any longer so heavy an 
 expenditure. 
 
 We shall ere long resume the march of events. Meanwhile, 
 let us return to Avhat was passing at Trent. 
 
 The very next day after that of the session held in June, wit- 
 nessed the revival of keen disputes and busy intrigues, about the 
 
QUESTION OF EPISCOPAL RESIDENCE. 139 
 
 i selection of the subjects to be treated in the session that was to 
 ■ follow. The pope's divines said that after having spoken of the 
 1 evil, it behoved them to speak next of the remedy ; first, original 
 sin, then grace. This was sound logic ; but logic, it was too well 
 known, was no more their real motive in proposing this course, 
 than the good of the Church was that of the others when they 
 persisted in rejecting everything but decrees of internal reforma- 
 tion. 
 
 In order to propitiate these opponents, the legates gave out 
 that the subject of grace, committed to the divines, would not be 
 long of being in a fit state to be resumed in a general congrega- 
 tion. While waiting for that, then, they might take up some 
 subjects of a different nature. The legates suggested that of re- 
 sidence, and after some difficulties it was accepted. 
 
 This question is in theory one of the simplest that can be ima- 
 gined. Ought a bishop to reside within the bounds of his church? 
 I Does he do wrong when he does not reside there ? Nobody ever 
 replied in the negative ; and the Christians of the first ages of 
 the Church would have been scandalized at the mere utterance 
 of a doubt on the subject. 
 
 In point of fact, it is otherwise. For a course of at least eight 
 centuries — for it is not threescore years since the reform in this 
 respect has been actually in operation — the history of the Church 
 has been saddened by the complaints of the faithful on account 
 of the non-residence of their first pastors. 
 
 It were impossible, therefore, for us to attack this abuse more 
 | warmly than has been done, amid the applauding shouts of the 
 people everywhere, by the most eminent men of the Koman 
 Church. Much more than this, to all that we might say, it may 
 be objected that not only mere authors, but councils, and even 
 popes themselves, have been of one mind in holding residence to 
 be the law, and in censuring non-residents. What then have 
 i we to do here? And how can we reproach Eoman Catholicism 
 for what it has never ordained, never approved? 
 
 If these decrees absolve it, its own acts condemn it. How 
 
 could you prove that an abuse which you find prevalent, for 
 
 I whole centuries, everywhere, always, universally ; l an abuse 
 
 . which has stood out not only against the unanimous reprobation 
 
 of the faithful, against apparently the most stringent decrees, 
 
 1 " What a sight for a Christian who traverses the Christian world ! All the pastors have 
 abandoned their flocks ; all the flocks are in the hands of mercenaries." — Memorial to Paul 
 III. on the amelioration of the Church, 1538. 
 
140 HISTOEY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 those of the Council of Trent, as well as the constitutions of 
 Innocent III., — how could you prove that it was not profoundly 
 inherent in the Church's tendencies, and that it may at this day 
 wash its hands of it, by merely pointing to certain laws, more or 
 less severe, intended for its repression. 
 
 And can it he said that the regularity observed at present has 
 been the effect of those decrees and those laws'? No. This 
 abuse, like so many others, has disappeared only in consequence 
 of the timely aid of the Church's enemies. But for the Revohi- 
 tion, we see no reason to suppose that the bishops of France 
 would not have been at this day what they were in Louis the 
 Fourteenth and Louis the Fifteenth's times, when to send a bishop 
 to his diocese was, according to the approved phraseology, to 
 banish him. Without the diminution of the revenues of the 
 clergy, without the active superintendence of the civil authority 
 and of the press, why should we suppose that Roman Catholicism 
 would all at once have found in itself that power of self-reform 
 which it did not possess when it reigned without control ? 
 
 As for the effects of non-residence, as little could we speak of 
 them more severely than the Roman Catholic historians have 
 done, or than the Cardinal del Monte did, when he opened the 
 discussion. He went, however, a little too far. The Reforma- 
 tion itself, according to him, was but one of the results of that 
 same abuse. Had all the bishops, said he, been at their posts, 
 heresy would not have found its way among their flocks. This 
 might have been true in some places ; but we see that the 
 bishops were not generally wanting, either in zeal or in courage, 
 from the moment they had to struggle against the Reformation. 
 It was because it is not enough that a general be at his post ; 
 he must also have troops to fight with. "What could scho- 
 lasticism and authority do against those soldiers of the Bible 
 who went right to the heart of the citadel ? The cardinal did as 
 many do still. Compelled to own that the Church had given 
 occasion for attacks under which it risked being destroyed, he 
 purposely exaggerated its errors and vices in discipline, with the 
 view of making people think that these formed the source of all 
 that was wrong. Then, this was a subject on which Rome 
 could be severe without condemning herself, and there were so 
 few such, that we cannot wonder at her anxiety to profit by 
 them. 
 
 The president, therefore, had sought to acquire popularity at 
 the expense of the bishops: he forgot that the bishops had 
 
EPISCOPAL JEALOUSY OF THE MONKS. 141 
 
 ample materials for doing the same thing at the expense of the 
 Court of Rome and of the pope. Residence, said James Cortesi, 
 bishop of Fiesoli, I admit to have been at one time absolutely 
 necessary ; but at the present clay, what use can it serve ? To 
 : preserve purity of doctrine ? Why, the first monk that comes 
 may preach what doctrines he thinks fit, without the bishop 
 i having any power to silence him. To check the corruption of 
 ! the clergy? The most corrupt portion of them — the monks — 
 ! are out of their jurisdiction, and there is not a paltry priest who 
 I cannot purchase, or procure the purchase, at Rome, of exemp- 
 tions, with which to screen himself from episcopal authority. 
 To exercise a stricter oversight in admitting men to the priest- 
 hood ? There are itinerant bishops sent out from Rome, who, 
 i for ready cash, make priests of those whom the bishop has 
 I rejected. If the bishops don't reside, it is because they have 
 i nothing to do. Give them a true authority, or, rather, restore 
 t that of which they ought never to have been deprived, and then 
 i they will reside. 
 
 These remarks, though bitterly severe, were not the less 
 generally just. The greater number of the bishops would not 
 venture to express themselves thus ; all they durst do, and it 
 J. was a great deal, was to decide, that in treating of the residence 
 i of the bishops, the re-establishment of their authority should 
 also be seen to. We shall have frequent occasion to revert to 
 ■ the difficulties with which the question, thus stated, was encom- 
 passed, and which kept it for sixteen years before the council 
 before it could be brought to a conclusion. 
 
 Five-and-twenty propositions on grace, extracted from the 
 ; books written by Luther and other divines, were to serve the 
 j purpose of fixing the limits of the field for debate. We do not 
 reproduce the discussions that followed. Without explanation 
 they would be little understood by the common reader ; to ex- 
 plain them we must defend some, and attack others, all which 
 would take us far too much out of our regular course. 
 
 In the face of a religion in which works were tending more 
 i and more to be everything, Luther may possibly have failed to 
 explain, with sufficient clearness, from the very first, in what 
 sense he considered works to be nothing. " If at the com- 
 mencement," he afterwards said, 1 " I spoke and wrote with 
 such asperity against works, it Avas because Christ had been 
 
 i Table-Talk. 
 
1 L2 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 hidden and obscured in the Church, and buried under a load of 
 superstitions. My desire was to liberate from this tyranny pious 
 and God-fearing souls. But never, never have I rejected works." 
 Thus, in his alarm at the consequences of a system in which 
 people seemed hardly to have any more need of a Saviour to 
 merit, to effect their salvation, he had not sufficiently kept in 
 mind that one extreme never can justify another. But if guilty 
 of exaggeration it was more in words than in ideas, and the 
 twenty-five propositions submitted to the council did not repro- 
 duce his ideas so much as his words. 
 
 Bossuet would fain prove that the reformer's exaggerations 
 had not even a pretext to excuse them. " The Koman Church," 
 says he, 1 " fully admits salvation by grace ; never has she 
 taught that it may be bought, paid for, by the efforts and the 
 works of man." He demonstrates this by some expressions in 
 the decree itself, which was to be promulgated in the sixth 
 session. 
 
 But when Luther spoke, where was that decree ? Shall we 
 be told that there were others. In fact, we know that several 
 councils, several popes even, Innocent III. in particular, had 
 written some fine things on the subject of justification by faith. 
 In theory, and with the pen in their hand, how could they 
 speak otherwise ? Unless they would maintain that man could 
 save himself, and that Jesus Christ might have dispensed with 
 coming, there must always have been the necessity of abiding 
 more or less in the ideas preached by Luther. But did those 
 ideas pass into practice ? Were they to be found, we will not 
 say among the common people, with the strong tendency they 
 have, whatever doctrines they hear preached, to believe in justi- 
 fication by works, but in the ordinary instructions, in the usages, 
 in the laws, in the manners, in the ceremonies of the Church ? 
 What can be adduced from these sources that did not, in spite 
 of those few words hidden in books, lead at that time directly, 
 inevitably, to that tyranny of works from which Luther desired 
 to deliver Christendom ? But, after the council, was there any 
 change ? And supposing that the council had frankly decreed 
 that it is by works that we are to be saved, what would there 
 have been to change in the actual religion that was then to be 
 found in those countries where Koman Catholicism was all 
 powerful, in Italy, at Borne, under the eyes of the pope ? 
 
 Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, published 
 
 1 Variations, book iii. 
 
ENDLESS CONTENTIONS ON GRACE. 143 
 
 at Rome under the assumed name of Fregoso, had met with 
 i great success there. 1 It had been found necessary to know who 
 ) the author was, in order to discover the poison which the council 
 was about to analyze. But on the question of original sin, it 
 was much more easy to condemn than to say why they con- 
 demned, and still more, to come to agree as to what should be 
 ; put in the place of the propositions that were condemned. We 
 should find twenty pages too little for the shortest possible 
 ■ abridgment of the opinions that were expressed in the course 
 of the discussion. Not an idea, true or false, that was not pre- 
 I sented with an interminable train of scholastical divisions and 
 subdivisions ; not a single point on which there were not at 
 least two quite different opinions, and as for different shades of 
 I sentiment, there were almost as many as there Avere divines. 
 . Hence endless contentions ; hence scenes in which the disputants 
 went so far as to seize each other by the beard, 2 and in which 
 the dignity of the assembly was miserably frittered away and 
 disappeared. 
 
 Faithful to their old promise of delaying to the utmost the 
 condemnation of the Lutherans, the legates felt no uneasiness at 
 | the length of the disputes ; people did not seem to be sensible of 
 the damage thus done beforehand to the authority of the decrees 
 that were to issue from so troubled a source. However, when 
 i it was seen that they could not last longer without the council's 
 being transformed into a school of angry theologues, the drawing 
 j up of the decrees began to be seriously considered. Here, then, 
 it was for the bishops to set themselves to work ; but their pre- 
 vious embarrassments had been mere child's play compared with 
 | those into which they were now about to plunge. In the ques- 
 tion of original sin, two or three points had at least remained 
 I free from all attempts at unsettlement ; here there was nothing 
 ! that was not contested, or, at least, explained so variously, that 
 j the variety of forms was equivalent to a complete disagreement 
 in the essence. Grace presents one of those problems which 
 • the heart can alone resolve ; the moment you would reduce it 
 (into articles it eludes your grasp. You believe, of course, in 
 ;iheat, in light. Try to seize, to imprison it. — This you think 
 
 J J See in Ranke how nearly, at the time of Luther's first publications, his doctrine of justi- 
 fication was about to become that of all the learned and pious Italians. Thou hast brought 
 to the light that precious stone which the Ghurcli kept half concealed, wrote Pole himself to 
 
 | Contarini, afterwards cardinal, but at that time the most Lutheran of the Roman Catholics 
 The dread of consequences alone had led to the abandonment of the principle. 
 
 2 San Felix, bishop of Cava, and Zannetino, bishop of Chiron. — Pallavicini, b. viii. ch. vi. 
 
144 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 would be insanity. Do you therefore deny its existence ? No ; 
 that would he still greater insanity. Well, then, believe in 
 grace as you believe in light, in heat, in life, in love. Love ! 
 whatever be the kind of love in question, if you set yourself to 
 study it as a schoolman would do, you will not find four men in 
 a thousand who agree on the definition that should be given to 
 it, or on the divisions and subdivisions to be introduced into it. 
 Leave to it its own undefined and noble amplitude, and there 
 will nowhere be found a man who, however he may deny it in 
 theory, is not compelled to open to it, under one form or another, 
 some one of the thousand entrances into his heart. 
 
 To the difficulty of drawing up any decree on a subject of this 
 nature there was added that of veiling the infinite diversity of 
 views that had come to light. It was not, however, proposed, 
 not at least openly, to get rid of the matter by paying no atten- 
 tion to these. Many indeed would have been delighted at this 
 being done. After what has been seen in the preceding session 
 we seem fully warranted to believe this ; but the general feeling 
 was that it was too soon to return to that course. Besides, the 
 observations of parties beyond the council had not been wanting ; 
 the epithet most prudent had been ironically added in many a 
 pamphlet to the titles assumed by the council. In fine, as it was 
 in the course of discussions on grace that the Eeformation had 
 made such an explosion, the council felt itself not in a position to 
 condemn it without having fixed this first ground of doctrine. 
 
 It was Cervini, cardinal of Santa Croce, the second legate, 
 who undertook this thorny and bold piece of business. A com- 
 mission, however few the members, would never have brought it 
 to a close ; it was necessary that there should be one man to do 
 it, and that a person who was not to be lightly trifled with. 
 Yet the cardinal shewed himself beyond measure kindly and com- 
 plaisant. So accessible was he to the smallest observations, so 
 ready was he to modify and change words and ideas, that you 
 would have said that he was not the president but the humble 
 clerk, writing out everything, preserving everything, elaborating 
 everything. His sole object, his sole thought, was to bring the 
 matter to a close to everybody's content, or at least so to con- 
 trive that there should be no one discontented enough to protest. 
 
 And he succeeded, but not until the close of three fatiguing 
 months and fifty sittings, particular or general. Sarpi asserts 
 that he had seen the minutes of countless changes made by the 
 cardinal on the first draft ; he shews that the greater number of 
 
HERCULEAN LABOUR INCONSISTENCY. 145 
 
 those modifications tended to substitute vagueness for what was 
 positive, obscurity for clearness, and for contested points ambi- 
 guous expressions, iu which the most diverse, nay, the most con- 
 tradictory opinions, as we shall yet see, might equally claim the 
 credit of having made the law. We know nothing more de- 
 plorably astute than the sixteen chapters of that decree. It pre- 
 sents one of those Herculean labours which we admire in spite 
 of ourselves, not for their intrinsic worth, but in consideration of 
 the pains, the time, the imperturbable patience of which they are 
 the fruit. But here, together with perseverance and art, what 
 incredible audacity ! What, pretend that this decree, which has 
 cost you three months' hard labour, and in the arrangement of 
 which you have so often felt your absolute inability to decide 
 with precision any of the points to be found in it ; this decree, 
 in which you have openly made concessions to the most opposite 
 opinions, and which, only yesterday, you held yourself quite pre- 
 pared to modify, here and there erasing or putting in, just as you 
 would do with any other piece of writing — this decree, on the 
 arrival of the session, has been read with the usual ceremony, 
 and, lo ! it is forthwith inviolable and sacred ! It will traverse 
 
 . ages without man, angel, prophet, no, not the Son of God him- 
 self, were he to return to this world, having the power to alter 
 
 | a word of it, seeing that would infer a disavowal of the Church, 
 to which, according to you, he himself dictated it. Nothing is 
 more curious than the sincerity with which, by way of compli- 
 
 l ment to the council, this tedious operation has been acknow- 
 ledged, although its very length and laboriousness form, self- 
 evidently, so strong an argument against that very council's 
 authority. " It is not to be believed," says Pallavicini, 1 "with 
 what care, with what subtlety, with what perseverance, every 
 
 |l syllable of it was weighed and discussed, first in the congrega- 
 
 f tions of the divines, who only advised in the matter, and after- 
 wards in that of the fathers who had the definitive voice." " In 
 vain," says Father Biner, " would any one charge the council 
 with having treated subjects superficially. . . . Long delibe- 
 
 i rations were often thought necessary before a single word could 
 be added, taken away, or altered." This does not prove, be it 
 remarked in passing, that there may not also have been subjects 
 that were treated with far too much haste, and we shall see that 
 there was more than one such ; but to keep to the point of view 
 
 1 B. viii. ch. xi. 
 K 
 
1 16 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 thus indicated, what an imprudent apology ! When called upon 
 to speak, said Jesus Christ to his apostles, " take no thought 
 beforehand what ye shall speak.'' This is inspiration : this is 
 infallibility. Without this we cannot have any conception of it. 
 If you required whole hours, whole days to decide upon a word, 
 who shall guarantee that by prolonging your deliberations a little 
 mure you would not at last have decided in favour of some 
 other ? You prove to us the matureness of the decrees ; but 
 matureness, quite a human thing, necessarily supposes the pos- 
 sibility of a still higher degree of matureness ; the moment you 
 make it of any avail in favour of a decree, you acknowledge the 
 introduction of an element that is human, variable, fallible. If 
 not, then would you have it that God, by the medium of your 
 hand, has made those innumerable erasures. These gropings 
 in all dh'ections — shall we say of them that it was the Holy 
 ( 3-host, who, before dictating his last word to you, led you dancing 
 about from error to error ? Go, after this, go and declaim against 
 the vagaries of Paganism ! Never did Greece, never did Italy, 
 or India, adopt any such monstrous improbability. When the 
 Brahmin ordains anything to be believed, it is at least in the 
 name of decrees which he himself has not made, and whose 
 origin is lost in the night of time ; but to command faith, to shut 
 and to open heaven, on^the strength of a law which may be found 
 in its rough draft with blots and erasures, why, this is an 
 audacity which has never been approached by the very falsest 
 religions. 
 
 The fruits of all this were not long in making their appear- 
 ance. The council had sown the wind and could expect only to 
 reap the whirlwind. " Some men speak in order to be under- 
 stood,'' wrote afterwards Gui de Pibrach to the Chancellor de 
 l'Hopital ; " these men speak that they may not be understood. '^ 
 This was soon to be proved by a strange occurrence. 
 
 Shortly after the publication of the decree upon grace a book 
 appeared with the title, " De Natura et Gratia." Dominick 
 Soto, the author, was one of the council's leading divines. To 
 the council itself he dedicated his work. Before the authority 
 of that venerable body he humbly prostrates himself in his pre- 
 face; he speaks of the decree with profound admiration, a feeling 
 to which he was no doubt all the more alive, inasmuch as that 
 decree was partly his own work. ;t The book," he says, " will be 
 
 1 •• Cum • aateri homines loquunturut intelligi possint. isti nihil magis vplunt quarn ne 
 intellisianuu-." 
 
DISPUTE BETWIXT SOTO AND CATHARINI. 147 
 
 no more than a feeble commentary upon it." And, in fact, there 
 is not a page of it in which he has not the air of a man who rests 
 implicitly on the ideas and the expressions of that decree. Never 
 were the Scriptures themselves more respectfully turned to 
 account. 
 
 The book was read, and it suggested reflections ; it was viewed 
 with a certain feeling of anxiety. Some readers, at a great loss 
 to recognise in the commentary what they had put, or thought 
 they had put, into the text, were ready to exclaim with Socrates 
 in reference to Plato, — " What things he makes us say !" Others, 
 although they leant to Soto's views, hesitated to accept from his 
 hand a victory which the council had left undecided. Not a 
 word was said on either side ; it was felt that a single word was 
 all that was required to re-open an abyss. 
 
 That word was launched by Catharini. Passing by all the 
 points on which there was scope for shifts and evasions, he went 
 straight to the one that was most susceptible of being decided 
 by a yes or a no. Can the just man be sure of his having grace ? 
 No had been Soto's answer, and according to him it was the 
 opinion also of the council. Yes, replied Catharini, and so. 
 according to him, had the council decreed. Which was in the 
 wrong? Why, neither the one nor the other, for the council 
 had said neither yes nor no ; but both were wrong in wishing to 
 extract from the decree what both well knew not to be there. 
 Soto resumed his thesis ; Catharini returned to the charge. And 
 it was always to the council that they addressed themselves, 
 always to the council that they complained, with equal bitter- 
 ness, that its decisions were perverted from their proper sense ; 
 always to the council, in fine, each of them presented himself as 
 the true and sole defender of its infallible authority. And the 
 i council held its peace, and was to do so to the last. Neither the 
 urgent appeals of the two champions, nor the solicitations of some 
 i of the members, neither the visible uneasiness of all good Roman 
 1 Catholics, nor the jests which were current all over Europe, 1 
 nothing, in short, could prevail with it to put an end to the contest 
 by saying, once for all, what the meaning was which it wished to 
 be attached to its decree. 
 
 But why press this ? It is a case in which, if ever, the facts 
 speak for themselves. Any ordinary assembly which should see 
 
 1 The council prophesied, it was said, like Caiaphas, who prophesied without knowing what 
 he said. And the sting of the jest lay in this, that it was but the reproduction of one of the 
 figures employed by the Bishop of Bitonto in that famous sermon in which he had tried to 
 prove, that whether it meant it or not, the council would be the organ of God. 
 
148 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 serious controversies occasioned by the vagueness of one of its 
 decisions, and should refuse to give a precise statement of its 
 bearing, would be of itself a singularity perhaps unique in his- 
 tory ; but should that assembly , at the very time that it main- 
 tained this silence, persist in holding itself out to the Christian 
 world as the regulator of its faith, it would present an instance 
 of contempt for common sense which it would be difficult to find 
 terms to describe. 
 
 Let us now resume the thread of our history. The picture of 
 dissension would be incomplete without adding that of the de- 
 bates of another kind, which had never ceased to obstruct the 
 tedious elaboration of the decree. We have seen the emperor, 
 up to the commencement of hostilities, do his best to retard the 
 condemnation of the Lutherans, with whom he did not despair 
 of coming to a settlement of differences. At the moment of his 
 marching against them he had seemed to desire that Trent should 
 have its thunders in readiness ; after vanquishing them he 
 thought his own were enough, and had begun to slacken fire. 
 As for the translation of the council, he persisted in refusing his 
 consent, and the pope, consequently, ceased to have the ap- 
 pearance of desiring it. We have seen that the legates wished 
 it ; with the conviction that the pontiff would like it as soon 
 as it was possible, all their efforts were directed to procuring the 
 consent of the emperor. Meanwhile, at Trent, they loudly opposed 
 the idea of it ; they even menaced with the pope's indignation 
 those who spoke of going away ; but their sentiments were so 
 well known, that this was a task they had to begin afresh every 
 day. Those who returned to the charge well knew whose favour 
 they were courting, 
 
 From all this there arose a medley of the most heterogeneous 
 discussions. One day there would be a meeting to discuss one 
 of the most abstruse articles of the decree on grace, but hardly 
 would the members be assembled when they would begin to 
 debate about the chances of war, the urgent reasons for quitting 
 the city, the best means of diminishing the dearth of provisions, 
 &c. Another day, with their minds absorbed with such subjects 
 of anxiety and alarm, they would bravely set themselves to the 
 task of weighing the syllables of that chef-d'oeuvre of obscurity 
 which they must needs terminate at some time. 
 
 Finally, and at the same time too, the decree on the residence 
 of bishops had to be elaborated. We have spoken of the diffi- 
 
HISTORICAL REVIEW PIOUS DONATIONS. 149 
 
 culties that beset the subject, and will now present some farther 
 explanations. 
 
 From the fourth or the fifth centuries, perhaps even earlier, 
 the practice had been introduced of ordaining priests without 
 attaching them to any church. Those priests received no pay ; 
 those even who belonged nominally to a church, but without 
 permanent residence or the discharge of ministerial functions 
 there, had no share in the revenues of their working colleagues. 
 So strictly were those revenues regarded as solely destined to 
 the men who had earned them as their wages, that the very 
 savings of a priest did not belong to him, but reverted at his 
 death to the general fund. A testament to the contrary would 
 have been null and void, and it was even looked upon as a fraud 
 to attempt the evasion of this law by disposing of them in the 
 way of a donation inter vivos. 1 By little and little, in proportion 
 as the Church grew in wealth, and as its charges became dig- 
 nities in the worldly sense of that word, secular princes arrogated 
 to themselves the right of bestowing them as a recompense for 
 services rendered to the state or to them. Hence the name of 
 benefices, (beneficia, favours,) under which people came at last 
 to designate all those of which the revenues exceeded a mere 
 stipend, barely proportioned to the work performed ; hence, also, 
 the custom of leaving that work to be done by an inferior 
 minister, paying him shabbily for his trouble, and leaving the. 
 spot to reside elsewhere. From the sixth to the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, ecclesiastical charges were multiplied beyond measure. 
 Gifts bestowed on the Church were generally converted into 
 foundations of places to be endowed ; this, in most instances, 
 was the express desire of the donors. People wished to carry to 
 the grave with them the assurance that a priest would be main- 
 tained, in all time, on their donations to the Church. In found- 
 ing chapels — and who, that had the ability, did not then found 
 them ? — the founders would have thought their purpose but half 
 accomplished if they did not bequeath enough of property for 
 the maintenance of one or more priests, to perform divine service 
 in them. In the greater number of cathedrals, the number of 
 canons far exceeded, we do not say the actual needs, for they 
 could have been dispensed with altogether, but what might have 
 been reasonably allotted for the external necessities of worship. 
 At Kouen, at Clermont, at Saintes, and in many other cities, 
 
 1 See Hurter's Institutions of the Chunh, b. iv. 
 
150 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 there were as many as forty ; at Autun, fifty ; at Toul, sixty ; at 
 Blois, eighty. The number of vicars attached to those churches 
 was generally greater still : Toul cathedral had nearly a hundred. 
 Some mere parish churches were in the same case. That of 
 St. Alban, at Namur, had twenty canons and twenty vicars. 
 Campelt, a village three leagues from Paris, had also twenty 
 canons. At the commencement of the last century there were 
 about an hundred and sixty thousand priests in France, four 
 times the number at present, although the population was less 
 by a third. No law, in fine, regulated their distribution over 
 the country. At the side of a village having a complement of 
 twenty canons, you would find another where a single priest had 
 hardly wherewithal to live. 1 The donors scattered their gifts 
 where they pleased ; there was nothing to compel them to take 
 the real wants of the people into consideration. Often a mere 
 casual circumstance would enrich a church and multiply its 
 priests. A nobleman, setting off for war, might have a sudden 
 access of piety. Stopping at the first village that offered itself, 
 he would enter the church, make a vow, and, if he returned safe 
 and sound, the humble parish living would become perhaps a 
 wealthy benefice. A petty Savoyard herdsman takes a fancy 
 for entering into orders, and with this in view leaves his home 
 for Avignon. At Geneva be covets a pair of shoes. But how 
 is be to pay for them, for be has nothing? " Take them," says 
 the shoemaker, '•' and pay me when you are a cardinal." Forty 
 years afterwards, on the spot where once stood that humble shop, 
 a sumptuous chapel arose, 2 served by thirteen priests. This was 
 the ( Jardinal de Brogny's payment of his debt. 
 
 Far be it from us, then, to pretend to censure, in themselves, 
 such exhibitions of a piety, sometimes very unenlightened, but 
 certainly lively and sincere. The history of pious foundations 
 teems with affecting facts, and with admirable legends ; but the 
 more these facts, each viewed apart, interest and disarm you, the 
 more occasion will you find for being surprised, if not scandalized, 
 at the abuses of all sorts which could not fail to spring out of 
 them. The greater number of the beneficiaries having literally 
 nothing to do, nothing, at least, which they could not do equally 
 
 1 It oddly happens that odc of the countries in which these whimsical inequalities are 
 most preserved is a Protestant country. But what is more curious still, is the declamation 
 of Human Catholicism against Anglican opulence and the rices of that organization. 
 What then has England done but made no change on this point from what existed previous 
 to Henry VIII. ? 
 
 '- Called the Chapel of the Maccabees, at the side of the Cathedral. 
 
RESIDENCE ENJOINED BY GOD OR THE POPE? 151 
 
 well elsewhere, 1 it would have been absurd to force them to 
 reside on their benefices. Hence, for all others as well as them, 
 a perpetual encouragement to negligence, to sloth, and to the 
 disorders that arise from sloth. Had they all been either ab- 
 solutely bound to residence or absolutely released from it, the 
 evil might possibly have been less ; but from the beneficiary 
 without functions, to the parish priest burdened with ministerial 
 duties, there was a multitude of degrees, none of which was far 
 enough removed from its neighbour for non-residence, when once 
 established with respect to the one, not to establish itself in the 
 other also. In fine, notwithstanding the severity of general 
 rules, made or renewed from time to time by councils and popes, 
 there ceased to be any benefices in which exemption from obli- 
 gation to residence, might not be either taken at once, or pro- 
 cured. The bishops, in particular, arrogated for themselves full 
 liberty in this respect, and their indulgence for themselves forced 
 them to wink at all disorders of the same sort. 
 
 Of one mind in acknowledging that here there was an evil, 
 and a great evil too, the members of the council ere long fell out 
 among themselves when a remedy had to be sought for, and the 
 nature of that remedy determined. 
 
 Is residence a matter of divine or only of ecclesiastical obliga- 
 tion ? In other terms, when a bishop dispenses with residence 
 in his own case, does he disobey God or the pope ? And if 
 it be with the papal sanction, can he be considered as guilty 
 towards God '? 
 
 Here we have another of those questions the very statement 
 of which is of itself an indictment against the Church in which 
 they could have possibly occurred. That a pastor called to pre- 
 side over a flock might forsake it without sinning against God, 
 or that, after having obtained authorization to do so from a man, 
 he should be, before God, free from blame, is an opinion which the 
 primitive Christians would not even have condemned as an error. 
 He who could have entertained it, would have seemed rather to 
 be pitied as having lost his senses, than held guilty of a heresy. 
 
 At Trent, not only was this opinion announced but it found 
 warm defenders. 
 
 Their adversaries, to say the truth, did not well know what 
 to adduce in reply. Often the plainer a truth is, the more diffi- 
 cult it is to demonstrate it in set phrases. Were we to be asked 
 
 1 Many were bounl to nothing but reading the BreTiary, nnd dispensations might he ob- 
 tained even from that. 
 
152 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 why we think that a priest offends God, directly God, and not 
 the pope or God in the pope, when he abandons his Church and 
 keeps his revenues, in truth we should not know what to reply. 
 We should say that there can be no doubt about it ; that the 
 plainest common sense sufficiently demonstrates it ; but as for 
 arguments and proofs, to what quarter could we go for them ? At 
 the most we might quote St. Paul, " Take heed to the flock over 
 which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers;" 1 or St. Peter, 
 " Feed the flock of God which is among you ;" 2 still we might 
 possibly meet with the reply, on the latter text, that, seeing it is 
 from St. Peter, it ought rather to prove the papal right. Such, 
 in fact, was the drift of the reasoning adopted at Trent by the 
 partisans of the opinion that was cherished by the popes. One 
 might have been able, without going beyond that same chapter, 
 to defy them to shew a single word in it where Peter speaks 
 with the air of a chief speaking of his own authority. " The 
 elders," says he, " which are among you I exhort, who also am 
 an elder. Feed the flock of God, and when the Chief Shepherd 
 shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not 
 away." But how shall we think to convince by proofs from 
 Scripture men who have so far rid themselves of respect for its 
 authority as to build up the system on which they are fool-hardy 
 enough to lean ? " The episcopate," said some, " is of divine 
 institution, only in the person of the pope ; among all other 
 bishops, consequently, it is of papal institution. Since it per- 
 tains to the pope to assign to them the number of sheep they 
 have to feed, it is for him also to prescribe the manner ; and 
 seeing that he may, if he shall think fit, deprive them of the 
 power, may he not also permit them to abstain from exercising 
 it ?" Then, is not this the case ? — should a pope think fit to 
 consider himself, as, literally, the sole necessary bishop, to dis- 
 miss all others, and to extinguish with them the whole inferior 
 clergy, so as to remain sole and only pastor of all the Eoman 
 Catholic parishes in the world, would lie not have the right to 
 do so? It is absurd, but it is logical ; and we have already seen 
 whether these words are not often synonymous when people 
 would press the consequences of the Eoman system. 
 
 Now, this absolute concentration in the hands of the pope of 
 all the powers of the Church is, although many Eoman Catholics 
 are ignorant of it or conceal it, — the Eoman system, is the pure 
 and invariable ultramontane doctrine, that of the court of Borne, 
 
DECREE ON RESIDENCE ITS 1NEFFICACY. 158 
 
 that of the popes. This we shall ere long prove, and to do so 
 we shall only have to leave those divines and bishops to speak 
 who were regarded, at Trent, as the pope's procurators — the 
 ; avowed representatives of the papal doctrines. 
 
 Meanwhile the dispute became envenomed. The legates saw 
 
 that the moment had arrived when the authority itself of the 
 
 ; Holy See, in so far as it is the source of the episcopal power, 
 
 I was about to be questioned ; and of all the posts they had to 
 
 ' defend there was none worse than this. " We shall return to 
 
 that," they said ; " let us proceed to what is more urgent." They 
 
 did return to it, in fact, but at the end of fifteen years, quite at 
 
 the close of the council, and the storm was only all the more 
 
 violent. 
 
 The pope being thus put out of the discussion, the sound part 
 of the council could hardly have any farther confidence in the 
 i efficacy of what was about to be laid down as the law in these 
 matters. Of what use was it to prescribe residence, as long as 
 the Court of Rome should be free to exempt whomsoever it 
 pleased from the operation of the law, or to shut its eyes on all 
 contraventions? The course taken was that of laying down the 
 rules, without disquieting themselves, and, above all, without 
 appearing to disquiet themselves about future consequences. 
 Those rules, besides, were by no means hard. The prelate who 
 without sufficient reason should remain six months continuously 
 absent from his diocese, was to lose the fourth part of his re- 
 venues ; an absence of a year was to infer deprivation of the 
 half. Nothing more easy, therefore, than to keep within the 
 rule, and yet be absent nearly all the year ; the bishop had only 
 to reside one month in six, or even one month in twelve, pro- 
 , vided that month was laid out in two fortnights properly placed. 
 Then, who was to deprive a delinquent of the quarter or half 
 revenue he might forfeit ? The metropolitan ? It is doubtful 
 whether he would be disposed to do so, and, were he disposed, 
 whether he would have the power. The pope ? But, according 
 to the terms of the decree, the affair ought not to reach the pope 
 I until it had passed the hands of the metropolitan. And if it be 
 the latter who offends, where then will the sanction be ? This 
 i is all evident ; it would have availed as much to have said 
 l nothing, and to have done nothing. Had all the members of 
 the council been profoundly desirous of remedying the evil, what 
 could they have done ? They had their hands tied and their 
 tongues also ; for if individually free, up to a certain point, to 
 
154 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 say all that they thought, as a body they were not so. They 
 were bid to look at abysses on all sides ; " take care," they were 
 told, " if the pope should tumble into one of these, you will 
 tumble in along with him I" And it was all true. In order to 
 correct the abuses of which we have spoken, they could only be- 
 take themselves, in the last resort, to the very power which had 
 been their first and permanent cause ; and as for those grand 
 ideas of order, piety, morality, duty, which alone could have 
 formed an adecpiate barrier against like disorders, it would not 
 have been possible seriously to appeal to these without engaging 
 in a contest with him whose will, it was thought desirable, 
 should hold the place of all laws, and exclusively determine all 
 duties. 
 
 Non-residence accordingly was, on the whole, rather facili- 
 tated than interdicted, inasmuch as the law furnished bishops 
 with the means of reducing it to rules. Henceforward, how could 
 they be reckoned on in compelling the holders of inferior bene- 
 fices to reside ? It was decided, however, that they should, not 
 as bishops, but as the delegates of the pope, have a certain autho- 
 rity over those even who had or might have pontifical dispensa- 
 tions. Those dispensations they behoved to verify, to see also 
 that the absentee had provided a suitable substitute, that this 
 substitute had a suitable salary, &c. Excellent measures these 
 in detail, but which ended only, in point of legal principle (chrjit), 
 in the confirmation of the papal omnipotence, since bishops 
 could only give a regular execution to the dispensations, but 
 could neither reject nor annul them. It was also decided that 
 no bishop could ordain priests in another's diocese without that 
 other bishop's sanction ; finally, that every bishop should, for the 
 future, notwithstanding any contrary usage or even any exemp- 
 tion that might have been granted, have the inspection and the 
 direction of the chapter of his cathedral church. This last 
 article presented, of itself, the measure of excess into which the 
 abuse of dispensations had fallen. What could we suppose the 
 position of a bishop to be in the face of a body created of old to 
 serve as his council, and transformed, by the will of the pope, 
 into an independent and rival power? It was enough to drive 
 out of his diocese any bishop that hated bickerings and intrigues. 
 
 Such, nevertheless, was the point now reached, even in spite 
 of the episcopal body, by the Koman system when left to itself 
 and to its own encroaching tendencies. There had not been in 
 the Eoman Church a single struggle, a single innovation, a single 
 
ALL MEN HAVE NOT SAMSOn's COURAGE. 155 
 
 decree, which had not ended at last, directly or indirectly, in 
 
 i the extension of the pope's authority. As for the public advan- 
 tage and the salvation of souls, these were as little thought of 
 as if the whole concern had been some vast industrial enterprise ; 
 
 i there was not even the affectation of these objects being cared 
 for. See with what keenness, in this very session, the Italians 
 made residence an affair of papal right. This was very impolitic, 
 it seems, and very imprudent ; it involved the transference to 
 the pope's shoulders of all the disorders and all the evils arising 
 from non-residence, and of which the legates themselves had, at 
 the opening of the council, drawn so frightful a picture. Well, 
 strange to say, this danger did not disquiet them in the least. 
 Provided the question of right was settled, they did not mind 
 what reproaches might arise from matters of fact. Little cared 
 they though the court of Eome were accused of having ruined 
 the Church, by pushing the abuse of dispensations to its very 
 utmost verge, provided it should become the standing law that 
 of these dispensations she was to be sole arbitress, and that it 
 should depend only on herself, should she see fit, to do as much 
 in time to come as had been done in time past. Then, even had 
 they desired it, how could they break with that past accumula- 
 
 I tion of abuses and disorders ? Often had the council allowed an in- 
 tention of doing so to escape; but we should greatly err were we to 
 suppose that the members were diverted from that intention only 
 by the resistance made by the pope and by the skilful manage- 
 ment of his agents. Not a step could be taken in that direction 
 without making the council press against one of the support- 
 ing pillars of the edifice, and all men have not the courage of 
 Samson. 
 
 After so many months spent in trying to come to a common 
 understanding, the contending parties were still so far from this, 
 
 t that the public sitting (13th January 1547) witnessed the re- 
 commencement of the debate on residence ; the decree, a circum- 
 stance which had not occurred before, could not be admitted. 
 "The voting slips," says Pallavicini, 1 " were covered with so many 
 conflicting remarks, that it was found impossible then to decide 
 anything ; the legates reserved to themselves the power of ex- 
 amining these, and of determining the residt according to the 
 views of the majority in a general congregation." This congre- 
 gation did not meet until the 25th of February, and as the decree 
 had in the interval undergone several modifications, we do not 
 
 1 Book viii ch. xviii. 
 
156 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 see how it could have been legally maintained at the 13th of 
 January, which is the date it bears in all the collections. 1 
 
 As for the decree on grace, it had passed without opposition. 
 " Truly it was on that day," says Pallavicini, "that the council 
 might glorify itself on the most sublime of its works, for that 
 was the first day on which the Church, enlightened by the Holy 
 Ghost, taught fully to man the sequel of his origin and the true 
 property of his nature." Between what the historian tells us of 
 the interminable labours attending the birth of this decree, and 
 all that he is afterwards compelled to say about the obscurities 
 that were allowed to remain in it, what are we to think of these 
 words ? Is this sarcasm, or is it falsehood ? It is neither. Palla- 
 vicini does not lie ; still less does he sneer. The decree is passed. 
 He submits to it. The statue, after six months' efforts, has 
 reached the altar : what did it signify to him in what manner, 
 or of what metal, it had been made ? It is there, and so he falls 
 down and worships. 
 
 The seventh session was fixed for the 3d of March ; the council 
 then had two months before it. It had been previously resolved 
 that the order to be followed should be as much as possible that 
 which appears in the Confession of Augsburg ; but as this course 
 would have led them to treat next of the Church and its autho- 
 rity, points which many were fain to treat, but more were afraid 
 to touch, the legates contrived to have it decided that they should 
 be passed over. 
 
 This then brought them" to the grand question of the sacra- 
 ments. Cardinal Santa Croce undertook the charge of the con- 
 gregations in which the subject was to be discussed in its doc- 
 trinal aspect, and Cardinal del Monte those which were to take 
 up the disciplinary questions attached to it. But notwithstand- 
 ing the novelty and the interest of the subject, the legates found 
 it beyond their power to divert a great many bishops from pro- 
 posing that the question of residence should be discussed concur-, 
 rently. " Declare it to be of divine right," said the Spaniards, 
 " and there will no longer be any need for entering into so many 
 details, and removing so many obstacles. It will speak suffi- 
 ciently for itself." They were not mistaken, but this was pre- 
 
 1 Had we any wish to engage in disputes about forms, we should find plenty of them on 
 this occasion. Thus, for example, in the decree of the first session, no mention is made of 
 the legates ; and in that of the second, it is said, — " Under the presidency of the same three 
 legates." This could not bave been a slip of the memory ; it is evident that there had been 
 ■a wish to evade, at the commencement, the serious question of the presidency, and to resolve 
 it afterwards by assuming it as a past fact. The same irregularity reappears in the 12th 
 session, at the resumption of the council in 1.551. In strict justice, the act should be null. 
 
NUMBER OF THE SACRAMENTS. 157 
 
 cisely what their opponents were resolved not to have at any 
 price. To declare openly that it was not a matter of papal right, 
 all well ; but that it was of divine right, never. Cardinal del 
 Monte began by representing that they should at least leave time 
 | for the passions to cool ; next, as they still pressed the matter, 
 he had recourse to what cut all knots : he told them that the 
 pope did not wish them to take that side of the question. It 
 was decided, nevertheless, that the examination of the causes of 
 non-residence should be continued, and that the plurality of 
 benefices in particular should be discussed. 
 
 How many sacraments are there ? This is what had, first of 
 all, to be determined. 
 
 When the Eoman Catholics of our clay tell us that there are 
 seven, they do so with so much confidence that one could hardly 
 think it possible that this was still an open question three cen- 
 turies ago. They themselves, for the most part, suspect this less 
 than any one. They have not the most distant idea that it has 
 mot been recognised and taught in their Church since its foun- 
 ! dation, and it is with the most perfect good faith that they ask 
 i how any man can be bold enough to attack that venerated 
 number. 
 
 True it is, that the number seven had then for a long time 
 been generally acknowledged. But although admitted at the 
 council of Florence, this was still an opinion only, not a dogma ; 
 and when it was seriously proposed to make it a dogma, the 
 subject was beset with uncertainties. 
 
 First of all, it was found impossible to justify by Scripture, 
 not only the number seven, but the existence even of such or 
 such an one of the seven. This we shall have occasion to de- 
 monstrate ere long. 
 
 In the second place, — a still more serious matter for the 
 Roman divines, — it was found impossible to discover anything 
 at all settled among the Fathers on this point. In Augustine, 
 for example, the word sacrament is sometimes used in the sense 
 of sacred thing, and applied to all the Church's ceremonies ; 
 sometimes it is restricted, 1 as among Protestants, to baptism and 
 I the Lord's supper. St. Ambrose, under the general title, De 
 ) Sacramentis, speaks also of those two only. This number, two, 
 5'Occurs, once and again, even in the writings of St. Thomas 
 : (Aquinas). 2 "As Eve," he says, "was taken from Adam's 
 side, so from the pierced side of Jesus Christ have proceeded the 
 
 i Christian Doctrine, iii. 9. 2 Questions 62, 5 : 66, 3. 
 
158 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 two sacraments that form the Church ; " that is to say, according 
 to the explanation which he adds, Baptism represented by the 
 water, and the Supper represented by the blood. In St. Bernard 
 also, the meaning of the word is so far from fixed, that we see it 
 applied to the act known in the Roman Church under the term 
 foot-washing. After this we should like to know how the Roman 
 Catechism could venture to say that the number seven has come 
 "from the tradition of the Fathers." 1 
 
 That same catechism might, on this subject, furnish us with 
 -a curious specimen of exegesis. "The Latin Fathers," it tells 
 us, " have employed this word in the same meaning with that of 
 mystery, as employed by the Creeks. It is thus that St. Paul 
 employs it in those words (Eph. i.) : — " Having made known 
 unto us the sacrament of his will;" and in these (1 Tim. iii.), 
 " Great is the sacrament of godliness.'" And the explanation con- 
 tinues. Now, in the Greek text the word is mystery. Thus, 
 the catechism begins by putting sacrament for mystery, and rea- 
 sons, then, as if St. Paul had written sacrament. It is true that 
 it is the Vulgate that has made the change, and, of course, after 
 that, all error is impossible. 
 
 The best proof of the vagueness and uncertainty that still pre- 
 vailed on the subject, is to be seen in the discussions that took 
 place. Several clivines proposed that the simple enumeration of 
 the sacraments should be thought enough, without saying whether 
 they were seven, or more, or fewer. They remarked, that by 
 following any other course, the council could hardly dispense 
 with defining what was meant by the general term sacrament, 
 and this would be found a very knotty undertaking as soon as 
 two or at the most three were admitted. In fact, if the defini- 
 tion be made wide enough to comprise things so different as 
 marriage and holy orders, it is impossible that it should not com- 
 prise also things which the Church does not call sacraments, as, 
 for example, monastic vows. The schoolmen had tried to pro- 
 vide for this. The sacraments, they said, confer grace ex opere 
 operato ; the vows confer it ex opere operantis. 2 A poor subtle- 
 ty, manifestly contrived to meet the emergency, by justifying 
 the exclusion of the vows and the number seven, but which 
 could not stand for a moment before evident reason and common 
 sense. 
 
 Here, then, lay the difficulty which frightened many of the 
 
 ' Patvura traditlone ail nos perrenit. 
 
 - By the work done.— By the work of him who does it. 
 
.REASONS ADDUCED FOR THE NUMBER SEVEN. 159 
 
 divines. But among these, as well as among the bishops, there 
 were many who longed to see the matter set at rest. They held 
 the dignity of the Church and of the council to be interested in 
 it ; nor were they mistaken. If there were really seven sacra- 
 ments, it was very strange that the Church should have allowed 
 fifteen centuries to pass without teaching this to the faithful. 
 They behoved, therefore, to bring the matter to a conclusion. 
 Next, had they not already the seven cardinal virtues, the seven 
 capital sins, the seven days of the week, the seven planets, the 
 seven candlesticks of the Apocalypse, which had been so feli- 
 citously taken advantage of in the golden bull, for fixing at seven 
 the number of the electors in the empire, — without reckoning 
 the mysterious anciently acknowledged excellence of that num- 
 ber in itself? "Being certain," says Pallavicini, 1 "that God 
 Bi an infinite wisdom, that no reason, no fitness, however subtle, 
 can present itself to us before having first presented itself to him, 
 \we need be under no apprehension, that in the interpretation of 
 ihis works and of his words, it may be with us, as it was with 
 Plutarch, when he found in Homer's verses so many mysterious 
 meanings of which that author had never dreamt." It is evi- 
 dent, then, according to this grave historian, that in conceiving 
 the most uncouth idea, a man may always say to himself, " God 
 has had it before it suggested itself to me." This is truly a 
 novel way of understanding the infinite wisdom of God. Temerity 
 for temerity, we should prefer that of Luther when he said, with 
 unaffected simplicity, " We doctors say such subtle things, that 
 God himself is astonished at them ! " 
 
 It was not thought fit, however, to insert any of these fine 
 treasons in the decree ; and as there were no others for holding 
 ;to the number seven, none were inserted at all. " If any one 
 ishall maintain that there are more or fewer than seven sacraments, 
 let him be anathema." 2 The Roman Catechism is less laconic. 
 > Seven things," it says, " are necessary to man in order to his 
 iving and preserving life. He must be born, he must grow, 
 ae must take food, he must use remedies for the recovery of his 
 aealth when he has lost it, he must regain his strength when his 
 energies are weakened, he must have magistrates to govern him, 
 lie must by means of lawful children perpetuate the human race. 
 All these having corresponding points in the life by which the 
 >oul lives to God, one may easily deduce from them what ought 
 
 1 Book ix. ch. it. 
 , - Si quis dixerit sacramenta esse plum vel pauoiora quam septem , . . anathema sit. 
 
160 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 to be the number of the sacraments. By baptism, we are born 
 anew in Jesus Christ ; by confirmation, divine grace makes us 
 grow and strengthens us ; by the Eucharist, our soul is fed and 
 sustained ; by penance, we are cured of the plagues caused by 
 sin in our souls," &c. Mark that this odd catalogue has not 
 even the merit of being complete, and it is the only merit that 
 anything so extremely silly can have. Sleep is far more uni- 
 versally necessary to life than the use of cordials or of remedies. 
 What sacrament shall be made to correspond with sleep ? And 
 yet it is not as a figure of rhetoric that the catechism employs, 
 and counsels the employment of such reasoning. It gives it as 
 a good reason; 1 and the French translation of 1844 is still more 
 explicit, " In order to shew the faithful that there are seven 
 sacraments, neither more nor less, pastors may employ this rea- 
 soning, which is very fit for convincing them of it." We may be 
 allowed to suppose, that before reasonable people, they, on the 
 contrary, take good care not to employ it. 
 
 Here, then, we have seven sacraments, and now who has in- 
 stituted them? 
 
 To say that such or such an one was instituted by Jesus 
 Christ, would be to admit that others were not instituted by him, 
 and by doing so, to assign to them an inferior rank. What was 
 to be done ? Nothing more simple : they must all be attributed 
 to Jesus Christ. 
 
 This was to trifle with tradition quite as much as with Scrip- 
 ture. Hitherto, in fact, nothing but baptism and the supper 
 had been regarded universally as instituted by the Saviour. For 
 all the rest, people had seldom gone farther than the Apostles. 
 Many Eoman Catholics, and those among the best, did not even 
 go so far, at least for one or two of them ; many left marriage 
 expressly out, not that they denied it a place among the sacra- 
 ments, but because it seemed by no means natural to attribute 
 to Jesus Christ, what he spoke of so often without anywise at- 
 tributing it to himself. All this was said ; but it was one of 
 those moments with the council when the wind of omnipotence 
 seemed to have turned the heads of all the members. They 
 would have been terrified at the least exception, as it might ap- 
 pear to be a triumph conceded to the Lutherans. They gave 
 no reasons, and entered into no details : anathema to whosoever 
 should deny that all the sacraments were instituted by Jesus 
 Christ ; and it was even with this that the decree was to open, 
 
 1 Probabilis ratio. 
 
SACRAMBNTA OMNIA A CHRISTO INSTITUTA. 161 
 
 Si Si quis dixerit sacramenta non fuisse omnia a Chiisto institiita 
 — anathema sit." 
 
 In spite of the anathema, it was found necessary to find some 
 means of mitigating a little the palpable falseness of the decree. 
 Even as early as in the oath of the bishops, drawn np by Pins IV. 
 immediately after the close of the council, the word all is left out. 
 " I acknowledge that there are seven sacraments, instituted by 
 Jesus Christ." The sense is the same, but already the assertion 
 is a little less formal. From this time forth it has been inter- 
 preted generally by saying, that the sacraments were all, indeed, 
 instituted by Jesus Christ, but some immediately, that is to say, 
 from his own mouth, the rest mediately, that is to say, by the 
 Apostles or by the Church, under an inspiration derived from 
 him. If this is not more true, it is assuredly more reasonable ; 
 , what is certain is, that it is not in the decree, and that if the 
 I council, foreseeing this interpretation, had wished, on the con- 
 trary, to proscribe it, it could not have expressed itself more 
 • clearly than it has done. Yet listen to what Bossuet says, 
 I' The divine institution of the sacraments appears in the Scrip- 
 ture, either by the express words of Jesus Christ who established 
 them, or by the grace which, according to the same Scripture, is 
 j. attached to them, and which necessarily marks an order from 
 God." 1 After this, if Claude and Jurieu were wrong in accus- 
 ing Bossuet of having made the decrees of Trent suit his 
 own purposes, we must give up insisting that black and white are 
 i not the same colour. To bring this subject to a close, we have 
 j still one word, one only word to say, but we defy any man to 
 ; gainsay it ; it is this, that a reader altogether ignorant as yet of 
 : Christian doctrines, and who should look for them in the decrees 
 I of the council, never could avoid the conclusion, and would believe 
 without any kind of hesitation, that all the sacraments were 
 'positively instituted by Jesus Christ, — being what Bossuet and 
 \what all the Boman Catholic doctors of the present day admit 
 (to be false. 
 
 As it was thought a matter of principal importance to give 
 expression to nothing but absolute decisions, where the authority 
 of the form might supplement whatever was wanting in the 
 i principle, the council were sufficiently embarrassed at first on 
 'the great question of the use of the sacraments, and, in particular, 
 of their necessity. Not that too many bishops were not quite 
 ready to say, without disquieting themselves about reasons or 
 
 1 Exposition de la foi catholique, ch. ix. 
 L 
 
162 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 consequences, that the sacraments are necessary ; but it was re- 
 plied that there is none of them that is so in the same manner 
 with the rest. Baptism had been declared indispensable to sal- 
 vation ; and whatever opinion might be formed of the excellence 
 of the others, it was evidently the only one of which tins could 
 be thought. An infant dying immediately after baptism, a 
 Christian living far from any church, in a desert island, or among 
 heathens, never had been regarded as lost, even although they 
 had never participated in six out of the seven sacraments. On 
 tbe other hand, the Protestants had never maintained that the 
 sacraments which they admitted, were not necessary in the sense 
 of there being no impropriety in abolishing them ; they only 
 maintained that they were not the necessary and indispensable 
 channels of saving grace. But Luther had said, " The sacra- 
 ments are not necessary ;" and this was enough for the council 
 to think itself obliged to say that they are necessary. Notwith- 
 standing the remonstrances of the most sensible of the divines, 
 the article passed. " Anathema to whosoever shall maintain 
 that the sacraments are not necessary, but superfluous." 1 A 
 mere play upon words. Betwixt indispensable and superfluous 
 there is a middle point, which the Protestants have constantly 
 maintained. On whom and on what, then, did this anathema 
 fall ? Besides, can it be logically correct to range under the 
 same epithet, things that receive it in a different sense '? The 
 sacraments are necessary, says the decree. But necessary ap- 
 plied to baptism, and necessary applied to the supper, and to 
 marriage, are, in reality, two different words. The decree adds, 
 that " all are not necessary to all men;"' 2 an elucidation which is 
 only an additional obscurity. If necessary, in that part of the 
 phrase, means indispensable, it ought not to have been said that 
 " all are not necessary to all," but that one alone, baptism, is uni- 
 versally necessary. If it be something else than indispensable, still 
 baptism ought to have been mentioned apart, and the assertion, 
 that " all are not necessary to all," could apply only to the other 
 six. To get rid of these uncertainties, it has been suggested that 
 the decree should be understood as merely teaching, "that it is 
 necessary there should be sacraments." Strictly speaking, this 
 is not in opposition with the text ; but the simpler this last pro- 
 position, the more must it be admitted that the text is confused. 
 But is even this proposition clear? It is susceptible of two 
 
 1 Siquis dixerit sacvamenta non esse ad salutem necessaria sed supei'fl^a . . . anathema sit. 
 J Licet omnia singulis necessaria nun sint . 
 
EXTREME UNCTION FACT AND INTENTION. 163 
 
 meanings. Do you mean to say that it is good, useful, excellent, 
 jthat there should be sacraments ? The Protestants have never 
 isaid the contrary. Mean you to say that we must absolutely 
 .have them ? Then, what know you of that ? Who has told 
 you that God may not save by quite other means ? And what 
 do you make of so many passages of Scripture, in which salva- 
 tion is promised either to faith or to works emanating from faith, 
 without any mention of the sacraments '? In the hypothesis of 
 their absolute necessity, the omission is inexplicable. 
 
 Still further to augment this indistinctness, there has been 
 .added an old scholastical distinction between necessity of fact 
 and necessity of intention. 1 Thus, for example, extreme unction 
 as to be held as necessary, not in this sense, that it must abso- 
 lutely have been received in order to a man's dying in a state 
 tof grace, but in this sense, that he must have desired it. And 
 ,'if some have died in a state of grace without having desired it, 
 without even having thought of it, without having so much as 
 ,ever heard it mentioned, it was because they were in such a 
 state of mind that they would have desired it had they known 
 |^af it, or had they thought of it. Eeduced to such proportions, 
 f'-the necessity of the sacraments ends at last in becoming some- 
 M thing altogether reasonable ; but then all the more unreasonable 
 -.lis it, to have called that necessary which turns out to be so far 
 i.from necessary. It is, besides, inconsistent with the absolute 
 
 1, necessity of baptism. Those infants who have not the happiness 
 J(to receive it would most certainly desire it, if they knew of it. 
 | If, then, this last proposition is well founded, why exclude them 
 pcom heaven only because of their not having received it ? And 
 {if that sacrament be an exception, why does the council continue 
 ;,to speak of all of them at once '? 
 
 These are criticisms that may be made by anybody. Although 
 We were to receive this decree as true, it strikes us that still we 
 should find it singularly ill drawn up ; the more we cleaved to 
 T its doctrines, the more annoyed should we be at so faulty an ex- 
 position of them. Many other decrees are in this case. We 
 i shall give here and there some specimens of such. 
 
 It had yet to be decided, in flue, how the sacraments take effect. 
 
 Are they the occasions of grace or the causes of grace ? Or, have 
 
 they any virtue independent of the sentiments of the recipient ? 
 
 Common sense says, no ; so also does the Scripture. This we 
 
 shall ere long demonstrate with respect to each of them. Un- 
 
 1 Si quis dixerit sine eis ant eorum voto. 
 
164 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 fortunately, after what had been already voted on the influence 
 of baptism, it was hardly any longer possible to abide by either 
 common sense or Scripture. If baptism works such a marvellous 
 result upon a babe, who can have no idea of what it is, nor can 
 in any way accept it, it is, in fact, not easy to admit that the 
 other sacraments have not, of themselves, by the fact of their 
 having been received, opere operato, any influence whatever. 
 If the babe has been saved by a ceremony in which it has not 
 taken, and could not take, any part whatever, wherefore should 
 the dying and unconscious invalid not be saved by a ceremony 
 to which he remains a stranger ? It is thus that one error leads 
 on to another. What had been pronounced to hold true with 
 respect to an infant, had to be repeated with respect to the 
 sacraments in general. They were proclaimed, therefore, to be 
 causes of grace. 
 
 And now, how were they to be said to be so ? This was 
 another question which could not be forgotten. Upon this there 
 flared up among the divines one of the fiercest disputes that the 
 council had yet witnessed. Some maintained that the sacra- 
 ments are only physical and instrumental causes of grace, which 
 amounted to this, for example, that the good effects of commu- 
 nion in a soul are essentially connected with the act itself of 
 receiving and swallowing a wafer. The rest, more reasonable, 
 said, that a spiritual effect cannot depend on a physical cause ; 
 that hence the efficacy of the sacraments arises from this, that 
 God has engaged to operate on the soul within, every time that 
 such or such a material act shall have taken place without. 
 The latter, not without reason, were charged with being Lu- 
 therans ; the former were charged by the Lutherans with teach- 
 ing an absurdity ; — and as for us, we are compelled to add, that 
 this absurdity is the thing that best agrees with the totality of 
 Roman doctrines and usages. With Eoman doctrines, as a 
 whole, we say, for one does not see to what, if not to this, we 
 are led by the eighth canon, which runs thus : — " If any one 
 says that the sacraments do not confer grace of themselves ex 
 opere operator — let him be anathema." 1 With the Roman 
 usages, as a whole, we further say — for the adoration of the 
 wafer, the character so profoundly sacred attributed to the 
 chrism, endless minute ceremonies employed in the administra- 
 tion of the sacraments, everything in fine sanctions the belief, 
 
 1 Si quis dixerit per ipsa novas leg's sacrameuta ex opere operate non conferre gratiam . . . 
 anathema sit. 
 
 
' 
 
 NECESSITY OF INTENTION CONSEQUENCES. 165 
 
 J whatever attempts there may have been at times to deny it — 
 that the Koman Church ascribes, or allows its members to 
 1 ascribe, a certain direct action on the human soul to things that 
 1 are altogether and purely material. 
 
 1 Be this as it may, so keen was the contention, that the 
 
 legates complained to the chiefs of the monastic orders, of the 
 
 • want of moderation exhibited by their members ; they even 
 
 1 wrote to the pope that something must be done in order to keep 
 
 ! them down. But how ? They could not be dispensed with ; 
 
 and it cannot be wondered at that, on the strength of their seeing 
 
 this, they permitted themselves, from time to time, to fancy that 
 
 they were not only the assessors of a council, but a council itself. 
 
 After divers discussions more or less futile, the council pro- 
 
 " ceeded to ask, up to what point is the intention of the priest 
 
 necessary to the validity of the sacrament which he has admin- 
 
 S istered ? " The smallest mistake, even though made involun- 
 
 -- tarily," a pope had said, 1 " nullifies the whole act." The council 
 
 1 of Florence had pronounced the same opinion, and it was a link 
 
 which people durst not break ; but they took fright at the con- 
 
 1 sequences. They were, indeed, frightful. Let an infidel, or a 
 
 ' dreamy priest, baptize a child without having seriously the idea 
 
 !■ \ of baptizing it, that child, if it die, is lost ; let a bishop ordain a 
 
 "I priest, without having actually and formally, from absence of 
 
 1 mind or any other cause, the idea of conferring the priesthood, 
 
 and behold we have a priest who is not a priest, and those whom 
 
 he shall baptize, marry, or absolve, will not be baptized, married, 
 
 i or absolved. The pope himself, without suspecting it, might 
 
 have been ordained in this manner ; and as it is from him that 
 
 everything flows, all the bishops of the Church might some day 
 
 find themselves to be false bishops, and all the priests false 
 
 priests, without there being any possibility of restoring the 
 
 ) broken link. 
 
 Pallavicini begins with treating all these suppositions, which 
 
 Catharini had enlarged upon with great warmth, as " marvellous 
 
 I 1 tragedies ;" and when reproduced by Sarpi, they become no 
 
 : 'i better, always according to the cardinal historian, than " specious 
 
 Hricks." "There is nothing new," says he, "in these argu- 
 
 ! iments." Have they not been refuted a hundred times after the 
 
 j decree of Florence ? He makes a jest of Catharini " painting in 
 
 affecting terms the anxiety of a father who having a child in the 
 
 agonies of death, should say that the poor child has not been 
 
 1 Innocent III., Ep. ix. 
 
166 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 baptized, perhaps, and is about to be excluded from heaven." 
 And yet the historian comes at last to admit that that anxiety is 
 perfectly justifiable. " As for the rest," says he, " there is nothing 
 repugnant in the idea that no person in particular, after all pos- 
 sible researches, can come to be perfectly sure of his baptism. 
 Nobody can complain that he suffers this evil without having de- 
 served it. God, by a goodness purely arbitrary, delivers the one 
 without delivering the other." Admirable reasoning ; but be- 
 hold, we are brought at once by it to the very predestination 
 which has been made such a matter of reproach against Calvin ; 
 and while Calvin makes it at least depend solely on the will of 
 God, here we have it made to depend on the inattention of a priest. 
 
 This was remarked by Catharini. No reply was made. The 
 votes were taken. The decree of Florence was maintained ; 
 there was only a slight softening of the terms, but, after all, 
 without any change in the substance. " If any one say that 
 the intention, that, at least, of doing what the Church does, is 
 not required in the priest — let him be anathema." This is not 
 clear ; but we should in vain take it in the widest possible 
 meaning, and say, for example, that baptism is valid, provided 
 that the priest, in administering it, has not the formal intention 
 of making it null, — not the less will there remain with the 
 priest the infernal power of excluding from heaven an infant 
 whom he makes a show of baptizing. From the moment you 
 shall admit the very smallest possibility that God may save 
 that child — and Pallavicini himself is compelled to say that the 
 thing is not impossible — you would upset the decree. With or 
 without reservations, it is of little consequence : you admit that 
 the intention is not indispensable. 
 
 But, it will be said, what then ought the council to have 
 done? Ought it to have said, that the intention is useless? 
 That certain movements of the hands and lips suffice for the 
 baptism of a child, for the ordination of a priest, for bringing 
 Jesus Christ from heaven and incarnating him in a wafer ? It 
 is then, indeed, that the cry of formalism might be raised ! No 
 doubt, but why pronounce at all ? Say that the intention is 
 necessary, and you open an abyss of improbabilities ; say that it 
 is not necessary, and you land yourself in gross formalism. 
 There might readily have been found a rational solution, and it 
 was that which Luther had had in view when he denied the 
 necessity of intention on the part of the priest ; but this the 
 council did not wish, and could not wish to adopt. It would 
 
 
 i 
 
DECREE AND CATECHISM DIFFER. 167 
 
 have been, as we have already remarked, to connect the effect 
 of the sacrament, not with the intention of him who administers 
 it, but with the disposition of mind in the person receiving it. 
 Then, of what consequence is it how, or by whom, you have 
 been baptized? To you, and to you alone, it pertains to ratify 
 your baptism by accepting the engagements taken for you ; for, 
 as St. Paul says, the baptism that saves " is the engagement 
 of a good conscience before God." From the hands of a Avorth- 
 less priest there is nothing to prevent your having been legiti- 
 mately sealed with the seal of divine grace ; from the hands of 
 an unbeliever who, in giving you the bread of angels, shall 
 have made a jest both of God and of you, you may have com- 
 municated, and that in all holiness. Of course the priest would 
 be a miserable wretch, were he to think himself authorized on 
 that account to administer the sacraments without intention and 
 without piety ; but not the less is it the only idea which does 
 no offence to reason, to justice, and to the general character of a 
 worship " in spirit and in truth." 
 
 But why should we seek to justify our criticisms? The 
 Roman Church herself has sufficiently justified them by the 
 changes she has made, or permitted to be made, in this decree. 
 Hardly a year after its publication, Catharini wrote a book, in 
 which he ventured to affirm that the council had voted according 
 to his view. He was exclaimed against, but was not condemned. 
 " I think," says Pallavicini, " that his view is a false one, but 
 has not been expressly condemned by the decree ; and therefore 
 he could legitimately maintain that it was not opposed to the 
 council." Since that, what do we find has been done? In the 
 article of the sacraments in general, the Roman Catechism 
 admits fully, as the council had done, the necessity of the inten- 
 tion, but in the details it abandons it. Thus, in speaking of the 
 Eucharist, " It will be recollected," it says, " as we have said 
 above, that the sacraments may be legitimately administered by 
 wicked priests, provided the things necessary to the consumma- 
 tion of the act be exactly observed;" and the word which we 
 translate by exactly, rite, is hardly ever used in speaking of 
 anything but exactness in forms. In fact, saving the circum- 
 locutions necessary for saving the council's honour, the non- 
 necessity of the intention ended at last with being universally 
 taught. The Tridentine anathema has been transformed by 
 little and little into mere exhortations on the seriousness which 
 ought to be felt in the administration of the sacraments. This 
 
168 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 is most reasonable, it is most Christian — but it is no longer the 
 decree. 
 
 Let us notice, on this subject, a striking difference between 
 the modifications that time has introduced into the council's de- 
 cisions. Modifications of dogma — these have, for the most part, 
 been made in a reasonable and Christian sense ; but in matters 
 of practice, it is the council, on the contrary, as we shall see, 
 that was more reasonable and more Christian than the Church. 
 In both cases we might ask, what becomes of the authority of 
 the supreme code written at Trent ? 
 
 After having thus regulated what bore upon the seven sacra- 
 ments in general, the council applied itself to its next duty — 
 that of examining them apart, beginning with baptism. Who 
 could have imagined that it would be fifteen years before they 
 reached the last of them ? 
 
 Several of the points relating to baptism had been previously 
 decided in the question of original sin ; a few only remained, 
 and on these there was little difficulty in coming to an agree- 
 ment. One alone occupied the council some little time. Is the 
 baptism of heretics a true baptism ? May their re-baptism be 
 dispensed with when they become Catholics ? 
 
 For a considerable time Romanists had been agreed in consi- 
 dering their baptism as valid, and in making no difference 
 amongst them in this respect ; but it could not be forgotten that 
 the time had been when the Church shewed herself much less 
 liberal. At several epochs there had seemed to be a disposition 
 rather to re-baptize all heretics, without exception. The Coun- 
 cils of Nice and Constantinople having thought that they ought 
 to specify those who should be re-baptized, and those who 
 might not be so, some bishops made propositions to that effect, 
 but the majority saw that they could never bring the matter to 
 a bearing. So it was decided that a sanction should be given to 
 the opinion generally received ; only to avoid the appearance of 
 contravening former decisions and former usages, they confined 
 themselves to declaring the validity of every baptism adminis- 
 tered " in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, 
 with the intention of doing what the Church does." 1 But in what 
 did this intention consist? The decree does not say. Had it 
 told us, it would still have had to say, up to what point there 
 must be this intention, for it is clear that all men cannot have it 
 in the same degree, or in the same way. The Roman Catechism 
 
 i Cum intentione faciendi quod facit Eoclesia. 
 
BAPTISM OF HERETICS. 169 
 
 i is still more liberal. " Every body may baptize, men or women, 
 ' whatever be their sect or profession, Jews, pagans, or heretics." 1 
 i! How Jews and pagans can have, in any degree whatever, the 
 | intention of doing, when baptizing, what the Church does, it is 
 i not easy to comprehend ; and one may very well be excused for 
 ! seeing here the abandonment of the necessity of intention. Next, 
 | how admirable this gradation ! — Jews, pagans, heretics. Pro- 
 j testant minister, know that you are less fit to baptize than a 
 i rabbin or a brahmin. 
 
 This decree ends at last in committing the matter to the 
 | caprice of bishops, and often of mere priests. When the case is 
 that of a Protestant who, on being perverted into Roman Catho- 
 licism, is not disposed to make a public spectacle of himself, any 
 such proposal as that he should be baptized again would be 
 I studiously avoided ; but when notoriety is thought desirable, 
 i and the pervert lends himself to that object, it is thought impos- 
 f sible to refuse, it is then made the first step in the proceedings. 
 But as baptism, according to another article of the decree, stamps 
 : an indelible impression on the soul, and cannot without sacrilege 
 i be received twice, " If thou art baptized,*" says the priest in 
 : these cases, " I baptize thee not ; if thou art not baptized, I 
 i baptize thee." 
 
 What finally remained to be done, was so to contrive, that in 
 acknowledging the validity of the baptism of heretics, there 
 should be no appearance of admitting the uselessness of the ac- 
 i cessory ceremonies, 2 of which they had disencumbered the ad- 
 i ministration of that sacrament. It was therefore declared, that 
 saving the greater impossibility, the priest could not omit in any 
 | sacrament any of the rites approved by the Church. The coun- 
 > cil was prudent enough to avoid saying a word about their an- 
 il tiquity and their apostolicity ; but doctors of divinity are left 
 I free to carry these as far back as they may think proper ; and 
 I the Church has never, in so far as we know, condemned those 
 \ who have boldly attributed them to the Apostles. " Although 
 i natural water suffices," says the Roman Catechism, "theprac- 
 I tice has been always observed in the Church, in conformity with 
 l the tradition of the Apostles, when baptism is solemnly adminis- 
 
 1 The manifest object of this extraordinary liberality in making all men capable of cele- 
 I brating the sacrament of initiation into the Church, is the multiplication of her subjects, of 
 I those to whom she may afterwards apply the laws against apostates. — Tr. 
 
 2 Exorcism for chasing away the devil, salt placed in the mouth, making the sign of the 
 cross on the forehead, the eyes, and the shoulders, putting spittle on the nostrils and the ears, 
 chrism on the top of the head, &c. 
 
170 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 tered, of accompanying it with the holy chrism." Here we 
 have the chrism carried up to the time of the Apostles. But let 
 us not be too loud in our reclamation ; we shall find it traced 
 hack anon to Jesus Christ. 
 
 On the whole, then, in the decree on baptism, certain conces- 
 sions were made ; on confirmation, with which the council was 
 next to be occupied, there could be none. The Roman Church's 
 teachings, where she has departed most from apostolic Chris- 
 tianity, are, in general, those with respect to which she is least 
 disposed to make concessions, and those, too, where she can least- 
 afford to make them ; for, as soon as she shall have yielded on 
 one detail, there would be no reason for her not yielding on 
 others. Here it was not on details that she had been attacked ; 
 it was the sacrament itself that was denied, and there was no 
 middle course betwixt abandoning it and maintaining it. 
 
 If confirmation, in itself, has nothing bad or absurd in it, it is 
 nevertheless one of the points on which it will be found most 
 difficult to be consistent with the Bible, and even with tradition ; 
 with the Bible, for it says nothing about it ; with tradition, for 
 it had long spoken of something quite different. The early 
 fathers speak of a ceremony, in which young Christians, at their 
 admission to the supper, came previously to declare themselves 
 members of the Church, and to confirm, in public, the engage- 
 ments they had made, or that had been made for them ; this is 
 what takes place, in most Protestant churches, under the name of 
 reception of catechumens. The priest's part was confined to the 
 interrogation of the neophytes, the receiving of their oath, mak- 
 ing them an exhortation, and, finally, offering up a solemn prayer 
 for them. As it was natural, considering the occasion, that that 
 prayer should have for its special object their obtaining grace to 
 be steadfast in their faith, there came to be gradually attached to 
 it a certain sacramental importance. Next, there followed, it is 
 not known at what period, the use of a certain anointing ; it was, 
 as it were, a second baptism, or, if you will, the complement of the 
 first. In proportion as baptism assumed a more formal and com- 
 plete signification, confirmation could not but become more and 
 more dissociated from it ; from being the portion of a sacrament 
 it became a distinct sacrament itself. Upon that, both word and 
 thing underwent a change. The word, for instead of indicating 
 a ceremony in which certain vows were confirmed, it designated 
 that only in which young Christians were confirmed in their re- 
 solution to be Christians ; the thing also, for the accessory be- 
 
CONFIRMATION ITS EARLY HISTORY. 171 
 
 came the principal, the custom of pronouncing certain vows, cer- 
 tain declarations of faith, fell into disuse, and the anointing only- 
 remained. 1 
 
 It is the anointing, then, accompanied by a certain formula, 
 that now constitutes confirmation in the Roman Church. Under 
 that form it is clear that it could not be maintained either that 
 the first Christians made a sacrament of it, or that they had any 
 idea of it at all. Accordingly, more than one scruple arose in 
 the very midst of the council. Some members went so far as 
 timidly to recall the old ceremony of the confirmation of vows. 
 " In opposition to this," says Sarpi, " it was urged that since that 
 was no longer practised, it must be believed that it had never 
 been practised, seeing that the Church never would have abolished 
 so useful a ceremony. 11 An argument this, it will be seen, quite 
 irrefutable. Next, if it was thought useful, why not re-establish 
 it without abandoning confirmation by anointing? Far from 
 that, precisely the contrary had been already voted. " If any 
 one," it is said in one of the canons on baptism, "maintains that 
 children, come to the age of reason, ought to be called upon to 
 confirm the vows taken in their name by their godfathers and 
 godmothers, let him be anathema." Anathema, also, to whoso- 
 ever shall maintain that the privation of the sacraments ought to 
 be the only penalty inflicted on those who should refuse to sanc- 
 tion that which their godfathers and godmothers have promised 
 for them." What, then, shall their punishment be? Of this 
 the decree says nothing. The sentence is left blank, to be after- 
 wards filled up by the Inquisition. 
 
 A point remained which had never yet been definitively settled. 
 Is the bishop alone competent to administer confirmation ? 
 
 To this idea church usage had long been favourable; but one 
 would fain have said why, and this was not easy. In fact, it is 
 impossible to give any other reason than custom. The Catechism, 
 which never recoils from a difficulty, thinks it has found one. 
 " Holy Scripture" it says, " informs us that the bishop alone 
 can confirm. We read in the Acts that those of Samaria having 
 received the Gospel, Peter and John prayed for them, that they 
 might receive the Holy Ghost, — they having only as yet been bap- 
 
 1 The Roman Catechism does not even attempt to establish confirmation by Scripture : it 
 contents itself with quoting two passages which two of the Fathers, it says, applied to this sa- 
 crament. One, quoted by St. Ambrose, is the following, " Grieve not the Holy Spirit, by whom 
 ye have been sealed as with a seal." The other, quoted by St. Augustine, is this, " The love 
 of God has been shed abroad in your hearts, by the Holy Spirit whom he hath given to us." 
 To cite this is tantamount to a confession that there is nothing to cite. 
 
172 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 tized." Where do we find the bishop here? it will be asked, 
 and it might quite as well be asked, Where is there any anoint- 
 ing ? Where is there confirmation ? For what is here related 
 singularly resembles all those cases in which the Holy Ghost is 
 spoken of as conferred by the Apostles. But wait, — " Philip, 
 who had baptized the Christians of Samaria, was only a deacon. 
 It is seen, then, according to what is here stated, that he had 
 not had the power to confirm them." What is seen here is that 
 the Apostles alone conferred the Holy Ghost ; but that that 
 means confirmation is what nobody would ever have the idea of 
 seeing if not suggested to him beforehand. Next, what are 
 people thinking of? If this incident prove anything it would 
 prove, in fact, that a deacon cannot confirm ; could it prove that 
 a priest can no more do so than a deacon ? 
 
 As for logical motives, they were completely wanting. Con- 
 firmation is neither as important as baptism, seeing that it is not 
 held to be indispensable to salvation, nor so solemn as the supper, 
 seeing that nothing can be imagined more awful than the act of 
 in some sort creating the divine body of the Saviour. If, there- 
 fore, a mere priest is competent to administer these two sacra- 
 ments, why not the other also? By the light of the historic 
 details given above this may be well enough understood. When 
 confirmation was what we have said it was, it was natural for 
 the bishop, the first pastor of the place, to preside at the cere- 
 mony ; when anointing was made an additional part of it, it was 
 further natural that the honour of performing it should be left to 
 him; but there is nothing to prove that it was an exclusive 
 right, or, still less, that the hand of a bishop was considered as 
 necessary to the spiritual validity of the sacrament. In the 
 Greek Church mere priests have always had the right to confirm. 
 We might refer, moreover, to what we shall afterwards have 
 occasion to say on the impossibility of finding, in the early times 
 of the Church, any appreciable difference betwixt bishops and 
 simple pastors. 
 
 The majority of the council shewed itself, nevertheless, in- 
 clined to decide the question definitively in favour of the bishops; 
 but as some instances were adduced of priests who had confirmed 
 in virtue of a papal commission, it was found necessary to say 
 no more than that " the bishop is the ordinary minister of con- 
 firmation." 
 
 As for the act in itself, neither its nature nor its object was 
 explained. The first canon bore anathema against whosoever 
 
SHOULD THE SACRAMENTS BE GRATUITOUS? 173 
 
 should refuse to call it a sacrament, and the second against who- 
 soever should maintain that there is no virtue in the sacred oil 
 with which it is administered. It is upon this that the Roman 
 Catechism displays a naivete, we had almost said an impudence, 
 at which many Roman Catholics might well feel as much con- 
 founded as ourselves. " In order that the faithful," it says, 
 " may be more penetrated with the sacredness of this sacrament, 
 they ought to be shewn, not only that Jesus Christ is its author, 
 but that it is he who, as Pope Saint Fabian attests, prescribed 
 the use of the chrism. As for the consecration of the chrism, 
 it is the bishop that performs it with particular ceremonies, and 
 those ceremonies, as Pope Fabian attests, were prescribed to the 
 Apostles by Jesus Christ at the last supper, where he shewed them 
 the way in which the chrism was to be made." Had we not the 
 text before our eyes in Latin, in French, in two different edi- 
 tions, we should feel apprehensive lest, in quoting the above 
 lines, we might be only repeating a malicious bit of fun taken 
 from some anti-Romanist pamphlet. 1 
 
 The other congregation, that of the Cardinal Del Monte, had 
 taken up the same questions under their disciplinary point of 
 view. 2 They had succeeded tolerably well in putting together, 
 without serious disputes, the old regulations made by councils 
 and by popes. Only after having placed at the head of the draft 
 of the decree, that the administration of the sacraments should 
 be gratuitous, there was much difference of opinion as to what 
 that should mean. Some desired that not only should the priest 
 ask nothing, but that he should accept of nothing. " Freely ye 
 have received," says the Gospel, " freely give." It was replied, 
 also out of Scripture, " That he that serves the altar should live 
 by the altar," and that the prohibition to accept any pay, how- 
 ever good in the case of churches rich enough to support their 
 priests, evidently could not be applied to those which had no 
 revenues. In support of this a canon of the fourth Council of 
 Carthage was adduced, which canon permits the receiving of 
 what may be offered by the parents of a child who has been 
 baptized ; the Council of Lateran also, under Innocent III., was 
 adduced, which authorizes and even approves the custom of mak- 
 ing offerings on sacramental occasions. Notwithstanding this, it 
 
 1 Where ? In one of his decretals, " qttas dubias esse non dubium est," says Baronius, 
 " The Church," adds the latter, " has no need of these intruded documents." We know that 
 such is not the opinion of the Catechism. It is right. The day that the Roman Church 
 should proscribe all such documents it would sign its own abdication. 
 
 3 It is not certain that this examination took place at this time ; but the precise date is 
 of little consequence in relation to what we have to say about it. 
 
174 HISTORY OF THE COUN'CIL OF TRENT. 
 
 was found impossible to come to a common understanding on 
 the point. The drafts that were proposed always said either too 
 much or too little, opened the door for making a traffic of sacred 
 things, or shut it on lawful resources. The matter was resumed 
 in a general congregation, but there the members were as little 
 of one mind upon it, and the idea of pronouncing any decision 
 was abandoned. The great majority of priests, it is known, 
 have not thought themselves interdicted from interpreting this 
 silence in the sense of a sanction. 
 
 At all events, taking the thing in its general aspect, and apart 
 from the abuses that have mingled with it. we could not have 
 reproached the council with not having forbidden the acceptance 
 of any offering. At an epoch in which the clergy nowhere had 
 any fixed stipend, there were many churches which, without the 
 casual (fees), could not have had ministers at all. There, all 
 that could reasonably be required of the priests was, that they 
 should not refuse the sacraments to those who might wish to 
 have them gratis. Even in wealthy churches the acceptance of 
 voluntary offerings had not, in itself, anything contrary to good 
 order, to the spirit of Christianity, to the dignity of religion and 
 its ministers. 
 
 The evil, an inevitable evil, is that offerings of this kind soon 
 end in being neither voluntary nor free. Have you a child to 
 present to baptism ? You will not, it is true, be made to pay 
 in advance, and, if known to be not in a condition to pay, your 
 child will nevertheless be baptized ; but however near you may 
 be to a state of entire and absolute incapability of paying, you 
 will pay ; you will, though it should be while murmuring, nay, 
 perhaps, while cursing the priest, and possibly religion too, sub- 
 mit to the miserable tariff, in which all that is most holy in this 
 world is charged for in shillings and pence. Your father, your 
 son, may have died. A good Catholic, you would fain that a 
 mass were said for his soul's repose ; but the tariff is there, and 
 money you have none. Well, then, it is very possible that the 
 priest to whom you shall apply, may consent to say for nothing 
 a mass for which you have not wherewithal to pay ; but it is 
 very possible also that he may refuse ; most of all, it is very 
 possible that you will not venture to ask it of him. Let him 
 refuse it, or let him grant it, it will not the less be received, 
 acknowledged, and universally admitted that in the Roman 
 Church if one wants a mass, he must pay ; and the more con- 
 vinced you shall be of the efficaciousness of masses for the de- 
 
PRIESTS THAT MAKE MONEY OF EVERYTHING. 175 
 
 liverance from the flames of purgatory of some soul who is dear 
 to you, the more monstrous will it appear in your eyes that that 
 inequality between poor and rich which already seems so sad 
 and deplorable in this world, should perpetuate itself beyond the 
 tomb. 
 
 Such are the natural inconveniences attending this dangerous 
 state of things. But we have thus far supposed the priests to 
 be as accommodating and as charitable as possible, as desirous 
 as all ought to be to lessen by kindly concession the suffering 
 which the natural inequality of conditions may produce. Is it 
 generally so ? This is what the most devoted champion of 
 Eoman Catholic honour would not dare to affirm. Wherever 
 Etonian Catholicism has not been obliged to moderate, under the 
 eye of the Reformation, or of the vigilant superintendence of the 
 press, the shameless dealings with which it has been reproached, 
 how many priests do we see that seem to have the slightest sus- 
 picion that there can be the smallest harm, the very least im- 
 propriety, in openly making money of everything ? In such 
 places, it is true, the people are no more scandalized than the 
 priests are ashamed ; but this accordance between the brutish- 
 ness of the one party, and the greed of the other, this silence on 
 the part of the populace with such abuses before their eyes, this 
 absence of any suspicion that all this is not the due course of 
 things, forms only an additional and a permanent plea against 
 the religion which has so far deprived people and priests alike 
 of the capacity for perceiving the commonest proprieties. In 
 other countries, for the rest, with a little more modesty in respect 
 
 1 of forms, the system is ever the same. In France, for example, 
 little as the public are allowed to peep behind the curtain, not 
 a day passes without the discovery of things alike incredible and 
 scandalous. When a French Eoman Catholic, on his return 
 from Italy, takes occasion to praise the Catholicism of his own 
 
 i country, as infinitely purer and nobler than that which he has 
 left, you will only have to shew him in France, in the towns 
 
 ; as well as in the villages, at Paris as well as in the heart of 
 Brittany and of Provence, the greater number of the things he 
 
 1 had been most scandalized with at Rome, at Naples, at Palermo. 
 Yet well does the Roman Church know, and a hundred times 
 has she proved it to her cost, that it is by questions bearing on 
 money that her opponents succeed best in decrying her among 
 the masses. She cannot have forgotten that the sale of indul- 
 gences was, not indeed the cause, but certainly the occasion, of 
 
176 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 the most terrible blow she has ever received. And yet nothing 
 is changed. Indulgences, masses, dispensations, all continue to 
 be sold, to be negotiated we ought to say, for the spirit of the 
 age has passed over this quarter, and it presents one of the rare 
 instances in which Roman Catholicism keeps pace with the 
 modern march of ideas. Of all the details recently given by the 
 journals on the trade in masses, not one has been contradicted. 
 More than that, the result of these has been to prove that it was 
 not an abuse but a necessity. A priest can say only one mass 
 in the day. As soon as a church has more demands upon it than 
 it can meet, it must, unless it would embezzle the money it has 
 received, contrive that the masses with which it is charged shall 
 be said somewhere. It will content itself, therefore, with deduct- 
 ing a certain per centage, and a mass ordered at Paris shall be 
 said at a hundred, at two hundred leagues' distance, perhaps 
 beyond France altogether. This is one way among others of 
 honestly doing business ; but while these details supply excuses 
 for individuals, they not the less cast a bitter reflection on the 
 system. And what shall we say of that Agency of the Catholic 
 Apostolate, established at Rome as the commercial go-between 
 for the clergy of all countries in transacting with the Roman 
 chancery ? All may have read that famous circular in which 
 commercial forms, oddly accoutred in pious phraseology, re- 
 appeared with a curious mysticism. 1 Shall we be told that the 
 pope neither created nor sanctioned that agency ? It may be 
 so, but where then did the agency find the tariff annexed to the 
 circular '? If it has somewhat enhanced the sums charged, since 
 it must be allowed to reimburse itself for its outlay, it has not 
 changed the nature of the articles. 2 And if such be the state 
 of matters at the centre, why should it be otherwise at the 
 extremities ? Each parish, accordingly, has its chancery, its 
 articles, its tariff; and although it might be shewn that, after 
 
 1 " I have the honour to transmit to you the table of the principal petitions which the 
 Agency undertakes to obtain at Home. Your zeal for the glory of God and the salvation 
 of souls inspire me with the confident assurance that you will select such articles as are 
 best fitted for obtaining that end in your parish." 
 
 " Plenary indulgence, . . . . 10 fr. 80 c. equal to £0 9 
 
 Right of giving it, . . . , . 12 „ 80 „ 10 8 
 
 Right to indulgence-cTaa,-plets, crosses, &c, . 12 ,, SO ,, „ 10 8 
 
 Right to obtain from an ordinary confessor absolution 
 
 in cases reserved to the pope, . . . 25 „ ,,100 
 
 Dispensation from the celebration of masses with 
 
 which one has been charged, . . . 27 „ ,,118 
 
 Dispensations from the recitation of the breviary, dispensations of all sorts, in marriage 
 affairs, dispensations from vows of virginity, power to read forbidden books, to give dying 
 persons the papal benediction, &c. &c. 
 
SILENCE ON IMPORTANT QUESTIONS. 177 
 
 i all, the average income of Eoman Catholic priests is not more 
 
 ! than that of Protestant ecclesiastics, we might repeat, that here 
 
 ..' we have not to do with persons but with principles. The 
 
 , question is not how little or how much this way of making 
 
 money may at the present clay produce. We make hold to 
 
 , assert, in accordance with thousands of Roman Catholics, as well 
 
 as with a notable part of the council itself, that fiscality played, 
 
 : and has not ceased to play in their Church, a part which is in- 
 
 ; compatible alike with the true interests of religion and the true 
 
 dignity of the priesthood. 
 
 In congregation general, the sacraments had the same fate 
 with original sin ; the members shirked the difficulty of exhibit- 
 ing what had been so often called, in the course of discussion, 
 the doctrine of the Church. They voted the twenty-seven ana- 
 themas, (fourteen on the sacraments hi general, ten on baptism, 
 and three on confirmation,) and to this they confined themselves. 
 ! Many bishops began to be seriously uneasy about the reception 
 \ which this silence on the part of the council, with respect to so 
 many important questions, might provoke in other quarters. 
 '> Protestants have been much censured for exhibiting their own 
 creed only in attacking that of Roman Catholics. To this re- 
 proach, often just, often exaggerated, and which, moreover, 
 i applies only to individuals, who shall forbid our opposing the 
 course which, on so many occasions, the council itself pur- 
 sued? On the sacraments in general, on baptism, on confirma- 
 tion, we are told what must not be believed ; but where are we 
 to find what is to be believed? In the Roman Catechism, no 
 .. doubt ? It is very true, we find no lack of assertions there. We 
 have quoted it for light on certain details ; taken as a whole it 
 would not be less curious. " It is certain," it says, " that Jesus 
 j Christ instituted baptism." All well ! you think, here is what 
 ji is reasonable and not to be doubted. But wait ! something more 
 i must be said ; that alone would be far too scriptural and too 
 • simple. Jesus Christ instituted baptism ; but when ? You be- 
 |i lieve that it was when he said to the Apostles, — " Go, baptize 
 j all nations?" Quite a mistake ; it was when, after being him- 
 self baptized by St. John, he communicated to the water, by 
 contact with his divine body, the power to sanctify men. " All 
 1 the world is satisfied of this," adds the French translation. It 
 . is unfortunately true that some of the Fathers have taught, or 
 have appeared to teach, this miraculous consecration of water by 
 the baptism of Christ ; but if this was anything more than a 
 
 M 
 
178 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 figure, if a certain character was really communicated to water 
 in general — who shall explain to us how there should be no pro- 
 fanation or sacrilege in employing it daily for the vilest purposes? 
 What becomes of this so great and divine virtue 1 in the water of 
 a brook or a sewer, — that virtue which, as you would have it, has 
 passed from Jordan into all the waters of the universe ? One 
 feels ashamed at having anything to do with such miserable 
 questions; but to whom belongs the shame, if not to those who 
 provoke them ? 
 
 And on what has been said of all Jews, pag'ans, heretics even, 
 being competent to baptize, "who would not," says the cate- 
 chism, " admire the goodness and the wisdom of our God ! " Cer- 
 tainly, once make baptism indispensable to salvation, and it 
 would have been a piece of frightful barbarity not to have faci- 
 litated the administration of it ; but where do we discover that 
 God has granted to baptism greater facilities than to the other 
 sacraments ? Shall we say, in the institution of it ? No ; when 
 the Saviour said, " Go, baptize," it was to the Apostles that he 
 addressed himself, cpiite as much as when he instituted the sup- 
 per. Shall we say. in the writings of the Apostles ? But there 
 is not a trace of it there. In the usages of the primitive Church? 
 Xo more shall we find it there. If, at that epoch, there were 
 facilities, it was much rather for the supper, which we see gene- 
 rally celebrated under the form of a repast, while baptism re- 
 mained a ceremony, and a ceremony, we have said, occurring but 
 twice a year. Thus, in all this, there is no divine order but the 
 ingenuity of the Church, no concessions but those which were 
 indispensable to the Church's being able to teach, since she had 
 made it a tenet, the absolute necessity of baptism. 
 
 And now, leaving doctrines, let us proceed to decrees of refor- 
 mation. 
 
 The cpiestion of the plurality of benefices was of immense ex- 
 tent ; immense from the number of cases which it embraced, and 
 still more from the number of difficulties which it started. To 
 elude it was impossible. If a man have two bishoprics, it is 
 evident that, with the best intentions, he must always be out of 
 one of them. As for the inferior . benefices, the same man had 
 often four or five, sometimes ten or twelve, sometimes twenty, 
 There had been cases of cardinals having thirty. Leo X., on 
 
 1 Tanta et tarn dirina virtus a Domino aquis tributa. 
 
PLURALITIES BOSSUET, FENELON, CARRERO. 179 
 
 pi his coming to the popedom, had twenty-eight, and those of the 
 richest. 
 
 Sad as this state of things must have been, the abuse had not 
 (i been carried so far in all cases as one might think. Many bene- 
 ' fices being too poor for a priest to live by them, the holding of 
 s more than one became, in many instances, positively necessitated 
 \ by the inadequacy of the revenues ; but this inadequacy of re- 
 <j venue, people soon became habituated to estimate much less by 
 the legitimate wants of the titular than by the exigencies of his 
 rank in the world or in the Church. The son of a nobleman 
 
 • would have thought it beneath his dignity not to have more than 
 one. In default of nobility, the very possession of one important 
 benefice gave a man a pretext for possessing others, in order that 
 he might with the better grace support the first. Almost all the 
 
 : bishops held abbacies, let us add, and we shall then have noted 
 beforehand the feeble efficacy of the regulations which were to 
 be made, let us add, we say, that they continued to have as 
 many and more of them than ever. One day, a century and a 
 half after the time of the council, a French bishop, in the course 
 of conversation, happened to inveigh against pluralities. This 
 caused no small astonishment, and naturally enough. The man 
 
 • who spoke was abbot of St. Lucien, prior of Gassicourt and of 
 j Plessis-Grimaux. He then began to explain how, looking at the 
 
 expenses he had to meet, he thought himself authorized to in- 
 fringe the rules he preached. And yet that bishop was Bossuet. 
 The liberty he allowed himself from motives which we may 
 believe to have been justifiable, might be taken by others quite 
 
 i as well, although with less to justify them. When Fenelon, on 
 his being appointed Archbishop of Cambray, resigned the only 
 abbacy he had, that of St. Valery, "You are ruining us," said 
 
 I the Archbishop of Bheims, who had a dozen at least. " Let each 
 do as his conscience bids him," said Fenelon in reply. "Well, 
 
 | then," rejoined Le Tellier, " my conscience ordains me to keep 
 
 fi what I have." Hear, too, John Carrero, relating to the Senate 
 of Venice in 1569, five years after the close of the council, what 
 he had seen in France, whence he had just returned : " Things," 
 
 S< said he, " are come to that pass, that people trade openly in 
 
 \ bishoprics and abbacies, as they would do in pepper and cinna- 
 mon. It is seldom that the collation of a benefice does not bring 
 
 - much money to the man who gives notice of it, to the man who 
 obtains it, and to the broker who takes it up as a job. In most 
 instances they are given away before they are vacant. Thus, 
 
180 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 in my time, some one found it difficult to convince people that 
 he was not dead." 1 And a Eoman Catholic writer, 2 after having 
 adduced this passage, adds, " There was a little more modesty 
 at Rome, but, at bottom, things went on in no other way." 
 
 Originally, care was taken to unite in the same hands what 
 were called compatible benefices only, that is to say, without 
 the cure of souls and without any obligation to residence. But 
 for a long time all distinction had been effaced. The plurality 
 of incompatibles had only to be paid for at a somewhat higher 
 rate. 
 
 Often, by a curious subterfuge, people contrived to have the 
 union of two benefices pronounced at Rome, and the beneficiary 
 was then considered to have only one. The pope ordinarily 
 required that these benefices should be adjacent to each other, 
 but distance was not an absolute hinderance. Such or such a 
 benefice lay half in France, half in Italy, or in Germany. On 
 the death of the beneficiary the union ceased, but might be re- 
 newed by a fresh act of the will of the pope. 
 
 Let us recall, finally, the commendams, the most fertile of all 
 those sources of abuse. Amid the disorders of the middle ages, 
 it often happened that a benefice, in danger of perishing by usur- 
 pation or pillage, was remitted, recommended (commendatum) 
 either to a lord or to some other person in a condition to protect it. 
 This kind of tutelage was given at first only for a time, and until 
 the election of a titulary ; but as the commendatory, meanwhile, 
 drew the revenues, a taste was acquired for the office. The popes, 
 on their side, had discovered it to be an excellent means of adding 
 to the number of their creatures ; the commendatory, besides, 
 was always willing to purchase the indefinite prolongation of his 
 right with a portion of the revenues. Commendams, accordingly, 
 came to be granted for life ; new ones were erected every day, 
 and it was long since any anxiety had been felt about justifying 
 them on the plea of their being necessary for the protection of 
 the benefice. "Were an Indian to come among us," says Mon- 
 tesquieu, 3 " it would take six months before he could be made to 
 comprehend what a commendatory abbe is, as he paces the pave- 
 ments of Paris." Those abbes, in fact, were not priests ; they 
 were only what was called in orders / they could go out of these 
 and marry, on condition of relinquishing their commendams ; 
 
 1 Thus Leo X., when at the age of seven, was nominated by the King of France to the 
 archbishopric of Aix, and while the papal confirmation was in coui-e of being gut, word 
 came that the titular was still alive. 
 
 - The Abbe Prompsault. :; See his Pensi'es diverges. 
 
COMMENDAMS HISTORICAL NOTICES. 181 
 
 still there were ways and means of escaping from this condition. 
 It was thus that, under Lewis XIII., the Count de Soissons had 
 accumulated several abbacies on the head of a poor abbe from 
 Poitou, his preceptor, to whom he gave a thousand crowns a 
 year, while he took from him a hundred thousand. Even 
 bishoprics had been sometimes put in coram endam, in the hands 
 of laymen, by means of their having a coadjutor ad sacra, that 
 is to say, charged with the ecclesiastical functions of the 
 bishopric. In short, the most fertile imagination could not 
 invent anything, in point of abuses of this sort, which had not 
 existed somewhere, and often everywhere. Sovereigns, we are 
 aware, had much to do with these disorders. Shall we hold this 
 to be an excuse ? We have seen that " There was a little more 
 modesty at Eome, but, at bottom, things went on in the same way." 
 The most respectful objection had always met with a worse re- 
 i ception than the most exorbitant demands, always flattering as 
 1 these were, in one sense, to him in whom the right of granting 
 them was acknowledged to reside. In fine, if the abuse of the 
 commendams was a little less excessive in Italy than in other 
 countries, that of pensions secured on benefices was pushed farther 
 there than anywhere else. A century after the council, in 1663, 
 we find De Angelis, bishop of Urbino, complaining that his rich 
 see, after deducting the pensions charged upon it, only brought 
 I him sixty crowns. About the same period we see the bishoprics 
 of Ancona and Pesaro vacant for several years, none being found 
 willing to occupy them under the burdensome conditions that 
 were required. In 1667, there were at Naples twenty bishops 
 j or archbishops who had preferred quitting their sees to ruining 
 themselves by paying the pensions with which they were bur- 
 dened. It was the same thing with parish livings. The owner 
 of the richest of them had sometimes hardly wherewithal to 
 I live Down to the country livings there was hardly one the 
 \ petty casual income of which was not burdened with obligations 
 of this sort. Such was the state of the clergy in Italy under 
 ( l the eyes of the pope. 
 
 Never had the plurality of benefices, under all its forms, been 
 I more severely stigmatized than it was now in full council ; and 
 ; all that was said on the subject was so true, so incontestable, 
 I that there was nothing to say in reply. The legates allowed the 
 torrent to pass ; aware that every objection would only serve to 
 provoke details that would become always more and more pre- 
 cise. Already, not a word could be said that was not an allusion 
 
182 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 to facts generally known, and which did not call up proper names 
 on all lips. 
 
 But there was one name which none durst pronounce, and 
 which yet was only all the more clearly to be read alike in the 
 quailing looks of some, and in the delight shewn by others — it 
 was that of the pope. Of three cases marked out for the ani- 
 madversion of the assembly, there were always at least two in 
 which he was an interested party, and really the only interested 
 party. From whom had those countless dispensations been 
 bought which subverted everything? From the pope. Who 
 had erected those scandalous commendams ? The pope. Who 
 had granted those benefices without end, enjoyed by Cardinal 
 Kidolfi, who was unceasingly adduced as the very type of pre- 
 lates born to snatch up everything and do nothing ? The pope. 
 One could not thump the shoulders of such delinquents without 
 the pope's shoulders feeling the whole weight of the blow. 
 
 But as there had been an affectation of criticising particularly 
 the abuses that prevailed among the cardinals and his holiness's 
 officers, the legates cleverly availed themselves of this fact, to 
 obtain from the assembly an order to write to him about these. 
 He alone, said the Italians, is fit to reform his own court. This 
 was true ; men of the best intentions felt only too sensibly that 
 nothing could be done without him. After having discoursed at 
 great length on the evil, a round of consultation had been made 
 as to the remedies that should be determined upon, and the 
 severest canonists had been unable to suggest anything that had 
 not been oft-times decreed by other councils, nay, by popes them- 
 selves, without its having ever resulted in any true and lasting 
 amelioration. What made the question still more complicated 
 was, that there were several points which none could dream of 
 regulating by precise laws, many outlets which it was impossible 
 to close effectually. However scandalous the abuses of dispensa- 
 tions might have been, it would have been unreasonable to de- 
 prive the pope absolutely of the right of granting them, after 
 assuming that he had the power ; whatever evil might arise from 
 the plurality of benefices, still there were cases in which it was 
 natural and necessary ; so that it could not but remain permitted. 
 But on what conditions? There was nothing to forbid the fixing 
 of a certain number. But who should be the person to judge of 
 these ? The pope, ever the pope. If, then, they were to accept 
 the proposal of remitting the affair to him, it was quite as much 
 from their own embarrassment as from deference to him. Next, 
 
ELEVEN ARTICLES OF THE SPANISH PRELATES. 183 
 
 !i to put a stop to murmuring, the legates affirmed that Paul would 
 i confine himself to the reformation of his own court, and would 
 I leave the rest to the deliberations of the assembly. 
 
 There is no need to shew that this distinction was illusory - 
 
 ! " Could we make a single regulation," said those who ventured 
 
 to speak freely, " in which some of the officers of the pope would 
 
 ii not be found interested ? There is nothing for it, then, but either 
 
 li to be for ever falling back and keeping quiet, or asking the 
 
 pope's permission to go on." This became still more evident on 
 
 i, the arrival of the brief by which he authorized the assembly to 
 
 d regulate certain points relative to benefices, and, in particular, 
 
 to restrain unions. The legates durst not even give official 
 
 information of it. The authorization assumed far too plainly 
 
 inferiority, dependence, and the boldest felt, nevertheless, that 
 
 I in things of this kind the council could not regulate matters 
 
 alone. This twitching sense of the indignity done to the council 
 
 jji may be perceived in all those articles of the decree that emanated 
 
 ■i from those deliberations. 
 
 But it had first to pass through many modifications. Discus- 
 - sion tending only at first to augment uncertainty and embarrass- 
 ment, some bishops asked whether it would not be better for 
 4 each to produce his own plan. They should thus have at least 
 4 some clear ideas before them, and would know what they had to 
 discuss. "As for themselves," they said, "they were about to 
 set about doing this." Now, there were twenty of them, and 
 1 those of the least timid, some devoted to the emperor, others, and 
 j this was still more disquieting, determined to quail before no 
 difficulty in having clone with a state of things which they looked 
 ' ; upon as deadly to religion and the Church. Great, therefore, 
 | was the anxiety of the legates. 
 
 Those bishops kept their word. After several meetings had 
 I been held, Cardinal Pacheco, their president, presented a rnemo- 
 •i rial, in which they craved : — 
 
 Before all, and as the first foundation of all true reformation 
 A in these matters, that residence be declared of divine right ; 
 
 That those cardinals who had several bishoprics should imme- 
 diately be compelled to make their option, and to keep only one ; 
 That all the dispensations should be revoked where the neces- 
 sity for them should not be sufficiently demonstrated ; 
 That the union of offices should be abolished ; 
 That pluralities should be confined to cases of evident necessity ; 
 And other analogous measures. In all, there were eleven 
 
184 HISTORY OF Till: COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 articles, forming the ground-work of a complete code on the 
 subject. 
 
 It was an admirably well concocted plan ; but it was clear that 
 unless the council meant to declare itself above the pope, it 
 could not pretend to decree all this. And yet the legates were 
 so much afraid of any direct discussion on the respective autho- 
 rity of the two powers, that they dared not attack, nor prompt 
 others to attack the document as tending to weaken that of the 
 pope. What especially alarmed them was, not so much the 
 boldness of the articles, as the fact itself of meetings held without 
 their cognizance, and beyond the reach of their influence. 
 Twenty bishops ! Ten or twelve more and they would be the 
 majority. 
 
 The legates hastened, therefore, to send off the memorial to 
 Rome. The pope would no more venture than they to reject it 
 as invasive of his rights. Most of its authors were Spaniards ; 
 there was an impression that Charles Y. was at their back. The 
 pope appointed a commission, and, contrary to the advice pre- 
 viously given by Del Monte, that commission recommended con- 
 cessions on some points ; it being clearly understood that there 
 should be nothing yielded on principles, and that means should 
 be reserved for retaining with one hand what might be yielded 
 by the other. Each of the eleven demands was the object, 
 therefore, of a reply more or less favourable, more or less evasive ; 
 still the pope did not deem it tit to cause the work of the com- 
 mission to be communicated to the assembly. He sent it to the 
 legates, instructing them to use their discretion in yielding nothing 
 if they could possibly avoid it, or in conceding, within those limits, 
 what it might seem to them impossible to refuse. It is but doing 
 justice to Paul III. to admit, that amid all his efforts for the 
 maintenance of his privileges, he viewed them, in theory, with 
 far more reason and coolness than other popes have done. He de- 
 fended them as acquired rights, rather than as rights inherent in 
 the popedom. A man of a practical mind, he had little taste for 
 the doating sophisms with which others had attempted to stay 
 up papal omnipotence. If he committed faults, he did not at least 
 insist on people giving them the stamp of divinity ; if he made 
 little use of the lessons of reason, at least he made no shew of 
 setting it at defiance and believing himself above it. It was to 
 him that Contarini ventured to say in an epistle, " Christ's law is 
 a law of liberty. It forbids that gross servitude which the 
 Lutherans have justly compared to the Babylonish captivity." 
 
THE SPANIARDS BEATEN AT ALL POINTS. 185 
 
 He had given permission, accordingly, for some concessions 
 being made. Cervini, the second legate, wished to avail himself 
 of that permission ; Del Monte, more candid, or more able, 
 
 1 opposed this. Provided that the votings were, in the end, such 
 as he should desire, he treated it as of little consequence that an 
 imposing minority should acquire shape and consistence in the 
 debates. Was he already thinking of the tiara? We know 
 not ; but he said to himself, no doubt, that the council would 
 come to an end while the popedom would not come to an end ; 
 
 I that the rubs and annoyances therefore would be of short dura- 
 tion, while the advantages would be permanent. At all events 
 the sequel shewed that he had struck on the right path. Such 
 as we see him when cardinal at Trent, the same we shall find 
 him when pope at Kome. 
 
 The Spaniards had already protested against the transmission 
 
 ( of their memorial to the pope. In fact, to put the question to 
 himself on what matters he would permit them to vote, was to 
 
 I enter into the spirit of his last bull, and to condemn themselves 
 never to pronounce on a single point beyond what it might be 
 his good pleasure to leave to the decision of the assembly. Fresh 
 protests met with no better success, and when the decree came 
 to be drawn up, the Spaniards were beaten at all points. The 
 legates had brought a plan conceived after their own fashion, and 
 with which at first it seemed impossible that all should not be 
 satisfied. A host of abuses were noticed in it, and among these, 
 several that the Spaniards themselves had not specifically men- 
 tioned. But, at bottom, there were hardly any that were seri- 
 ously proscribed ; and, indeed, strictly speaking, none were pro- 
 scribed. The preamble of the decree bore these words, " saving 
 always in all things the authority of the apostolic see j" 1 and as 
 it was not declared that the holy see had ever exceeded its rights, 
 this was as much as to say, that its power, for the future, would 
 be absolutely the same as during the past. There was some 
 courage in having thus plainly avowed that the pope meant to 
 remain master ; it was really throwing down the gauntlet to the 
 council and to the Church. A Spanish doctor went so far as to 
 apply the epithet diabolical to the opinion that residence was a 
 matter of papal right. Several begged that the clause salvd 
 semper might be removed ; many also complained that the canons 
 drawn up by the legates, frequently referred to the pontifical 
 
 1 Salv.l semper in omnibus sedis apostulic-te auctoritate. 
 
186 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 decrees, which were placed, by this fact, on the same footing 
 with those of the council, and even above them ; for they seemed 
 less to confirm them than to seek to be confirmed by them. Care 
 had been taken, in truth, to put this honour only on popes that 
 were even then of ancient date ; but, in point of legal principle, 
 i if what consequence was antiquity ? They were popes ; it was 
 the pope. And, moreover, among the decrees quoted in those of 
 the council, there was not one in which the superiority of the 
 pope, if not taught, was not at least constantly assumed. Thus, 
 in the question of benefices, reference was made to a constitution 
 of Innocent III., where the plurality of benefices is forbidden, it 
 is true, but always saving those cases in which it shall have been 
 permitted by the pope. To condemn the abuse they did only 
 what confirmed the right. As for the salvd semper of the pre- 
 amble, not only was it allowed to remain, but it re-occurs, under 
 all forms, in the greater number of the articles. 
 
 This decree has fifteen. Had we to prove in detail the cor- 
 rectness of the preceding observations, we should take the sixth, 
 being that which treats of the unions of benefices. It has been 
 seen that of all the abuses that were attacked, this, if not the 
 most deplorable, was often the most strange. The pope had 
 noted it in his bull as one of those which he allowed the council 
 to discuss. Hence, it appeared at once that it was less as mem- 
 bers of a council, than as councillors of the pope, that the prelates 
 had to pronounce on this point. Did they proceed at least to 
 make a liberal use of the permission? But they could decide 
 nothing for the future which would not go to bind the hands of 
 the pope, and it is clear that this was not what he meant to per- 
 mit them to do. They proceeded, then, to the more limited task 
 of repairing the past ; but here, again, they behoved, hi applying 
 a remedy to an evil, not to appear as if the pope were its author. 
 The bishop, accordingly, not as bishop, but as the pope's dele- 
 gate, might demand an inspection of the titles of all the unions 
 dating within the last bygone forty years. Those which should 
 have been fraudulently obtained, he should declare to be null 
 and void ; those which did not appear to be justified by sufficient 
 reasons, he should declare to have been fraudulently obtained, 
 and nullity was to follow. Thus the bishop has no part in the 
 proceedings at all ; it is a delegate of the pope, who in the name 
 of the pope, verifies an act that emanates from the pope. Is that 
 act of the nature of an abuse ; is it bad '? The pope then is not 
 supposed to have anything to do with it ; but this does not pre- 
 
UNIONS ABBES UNDER LEWIS XV. 187 
 
 vent its being competent for him, in spite of the judgment pro- 
 i nounced by the bishop, and without his ceasing to pass for 
 : nothing in all that is bad and improper in the act, to renew and 
 i to uphold it. " The union shall be null," says the decree, " un- 
 less the pope shall judge otherwise." 1 Thus he remained in 
 everything, and everywhere supreme. And not only could he 
 reverse all that might be done by the bishops, but one might 
 foresee that the bishops would care little to commence the strug- 
 gle and set themselves up as judges of the sovereign judge. 
 
 Accordingly, although the prospect of this verification by the 
 bishops may from time to time have inspired more or less shy- 
 ness and caution, there is hardly one of those abuses which, as 
 we have already said, may not be found re-occurring long after 
 the council had had its day ; that is to say, if they have disap- 
 peared at last, we can hardly give the credit of this either to the 
 assembly that condemned them, or to the bishops who were 
 charged with the duty of prosecuting them, or to the supreme 
 authority which remained the principal source of them. We 
 have already seen what residence practically was in the seven- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries. All those abbes who were so 
 famed under Lewis XV. for their wit, their gallantry, and often, 
 too, for their infidel opinions, held abbacies in commendam. 
 Cardinal Mazarin held forty abbacies. The infamous Cardinal 
 Dubois had, in addition to the archbishopric of Cambray, within 
 which he never set a foot, above a million and a half (of francs) 
 in revenues drawn from various benefices. The last abbe of St. 
 Denis was a bastard of Louis XIV. ; he was three years old 
 when his father conferred that dignity on him. Down to the 
 close of the last century, we everywhere see prelates devouring 
 what might have sufficed for the support of two or three hundred 
 priests; everywhere we see, at the same time, priests, .parish 
 priests, living in the deepest distress ; almost everywhere also, in 
 contempt of another canon, we see sacred buildings, monuments 
 of the piety of the fathers, falling into ruins in the hands of their 
 children. Many cathedrals suffered less from jacobin vandalism 
 than from the long continued neglect of their bishops. " This 
 is mine, or it is the Church's," Henri IV. would say when he saw 
 a building in a dilapidated state. Bishops, abbes, beneficiaries 
 of all kinds, thought of nothing but making money. Exceptions 
 there were, no doubt, but how many ? The general mass were 
 all infected with this vice ; all seemed to say with Louis XV., 
 
 1 Nisi aliter a sede apostolica declaratum fuerit. 
 
188 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 " This will last out my time at least." The Revolution came. 
 It rendered, the same service to the Church that it did to the 
 states which it entered. It made a clean sweep of abuses ; it 
 took from Roman Catholicism the possessions that impaired her 
 respectability, and were destroying her. It compelled her to re- 
 constitute herself, at least partially, on bases more in harmony 
 with the new ideas and the ancient wishes of the populations 
 around her. There is but one country in which as yet nothing 
 is changed, and that country is Rome. " Mastai, what doest 
 thou?" was lately inscribed on one of the walls of the palace of 
 Pius IX., "Wait, and you shall see," was the reply. We are 
 now waiting, and all the good that Pius IX. shall do we shall 
 applaud ; but our remarks will not the less for that hold good. 
 Although we should cease to see, side by side with the abuses 
 which he can destroy, other abuses to destroy which would be 
 for the popedom an act of suicide ; although the Roman govern- 
 ment should become, in a few years, the best government in 
 Europe, — what is certain is, that it is not six months since it 
 was the very worst. The plans of the new pope having loosed 
 many tongues, hitherto condemned either to praise or to be 
 silent, there is no lack of revelations ; the abyss is shewn to be 
 deeper than the greatest enemies of the popes even thought it 
 had been, or said that it had been. People praise the present ; 
 magnificent pictures are presented of the future ; it seems not to 
 be perceived that this is to condemn the past. Are not the 
 eulogies now heaped on Pius IX. a satire on all that has been 
 done hitherto by others clown to his time ? What is, after all, 
 the love with which the Romans surround him, if not the hatred 
 with which his predecessor had inspired them '? Where, conse- 
 quently, could you find, six months ago, those replies which will 
 not fail to be made, from henceforth, when we shall say that 
 Roman Catholicism has lagged behind all the ideas, all the im- 
 provements of the age ? No, no ! Resistance to all reforms has 
 been too long, too obstinate, to permit the popedom, whatever 
 should happen, to have one day the right to vaunt of the small 
 measure of reform that it has done or suffered. If Pius IX. shall 
 keep his promises, we shall give the credit of it to Pius IX. the 
 man, but never to the popedom. 
 
 The seventh session (3d March, 1547) went off better than 
 had been expected. The doctrinal canons had passed unani- 
 mously ; the others had been contested by only thirteen bishops, 
 
SLEEPLESS NIGHTS OF PAUL III. 189 
 
 several of the opposing members having accepted the assurance 
 I that there would be a return to those subjects, and that the 
 I making of more efficacious regulations would be seen to. 
 j Meanwhile, Paul III. began to be tired of the sleepless nights 
 J that the council cost him. It was long since he had been weary- 
 ing to get rid of a tribunal where such bold truths might be 
 | uttered with impunity. The very decrees, although the work of 
 j his ministers, nevertheless, were always saying what was still 
 
 • too much. Thus, in the last, notwithstanding the precautions 
 | that had been taken to avoid censure, and to prescribe nothing, 
 . the decree as a whole was not the less a censure on the past 
 
 and a formal vow for the future. Those unions which, in respect 
 of the scandalous nullity of the motives alleged in their favour, 
 were about to pass for having been obtained by fraud, the pope 
 i well knew he himself had oft-times granted, knowingly, wilfully, 
 i without having been in the least taken at unawares or de- 
 ceived. The more, therefore, there was the affectation of his 
 i being supposed incapable of doing such things, the more plainly 
 '.were they declared to be heinous offences, and he himself inter- 
 dicted from relapsing into them. And what was to be made of 
 ithat canon, the first of the decree, where it was said that no man 
 I should be a bishop who was not born in lawful wedlock ? More 
 I fortunate than his predecessor, Paul III. could name his father ; 
 but he who ought not to have been a father, had children ; and 
 those children he had created cardinals ! 
 
 In fine, notwithstanding the devotedness and the ability of 
 j his legates, he could see that the assembly might, in a moment, 
 
 • escape their grasp, and that the least step taken out of the course 
 traced out for it, would infallibly be followed by many more. 
 
 i* Any moment, too, the emperor might end in placing himself at 
 j the head of the pope's opponents. Was it not to him that even 
 i already the kind of insurrection on the part of the Spanish pre- 
 dates was attributed? Had he not himself said to the nuncio, at 
 i the time of the departure of the pontifical troops, that he had no 
 | greater enemy than the pope ? Had he not openly imputed to 
 the pope's son, the Duke of Parma, the sedition that had nearly 
 cost him Genoa ? And one may be allowed to suppose that 
 Paid III., pre-occupied as he might be with the political side of 
 all the questions then agitated, had not remained insensible to 
 1 the untowardness of theological quarrels, and to the danger of 
 exposing to the public gaze so many divisions that had hitherto 
 remained hid within the bowels of the Roman unity. 
 
190 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TKENT. 
 
 The memorial of the Spanish bishops had filled up the measure. 
 There was now an absolute necessity to have done with such 
 risks, but neither the pope nor his councillors knew how to set 
 about it. They durst not dream either of closing' the council, 
 seeing so much still remained for it to do, or of suspending it, 
 since it would have been impossible to say why, and ere long 
 there would be a cry for the suspension being taken off. There 
 remained a third course to follow, and that was to transfer the 
 assembly to some locality where the pope would be its master ; 
 yet it did not well appear how, unless he were to employ actual 
 force, he could be more its master, wherever else it might meet, 
 than at Trent. In any event a pretext was necessary ; and 
 seeing they had remained at Trent, at the very height of the 
 agitation caused by the war, how could they excuse their quit- 
 ting it, when the emperor was quite in a condition to provide for 
 the security of the city ? Thus the pope could do no more than 
 simply recommend his legates to hold themselves ready to seize 
 the slightest occasion that might occur. They behoved, for the 
 rest, to beware of alleging that they had the pope's orders, but 
 were to act, as if at their own instance, in virtue of the bull 
 which they had received two years before. The sequel shewed 
 that it was not without having an object that he had ordered 
 them to act in virtue of general powers, now somewhat old in 
 date. Thus he reserved to himself the means not only of ap- 
 pearing a stranger to the translation, but of disavowing it, in 
 case the scheme should not have the majority in its favour, or 
 should raise too many storms in other quarters after being voted 
 by the assembly. He was sure, besides, that the legates would 
 not hesitate either to take upon themselves the whole respon- 
 sibility, or to submit, if necessary, to a public disavowal. Was 
 not his cause that of all the cardinals ? And of what consequence 
 was it that a legate should compromise himself in the eyes of 
 all Europe, provided he thereby saved or strengthened that 
 ancient throne on which he might hope to sit one day himself? 
 But here devotedness was not enough. All the questions that 
 people had put to themselves at Borue, without seeing what an- 
 swer could be given, were found again, at Trent, as insoluble 
 as ever. To gain all the voices underhand, supposing even that 
 that had been possible, would have availed nothing ; there be- 
 hoved to be some reason, good or bad, put forward in the decree 
 of translation. 
 
 The session, accordingly, was held on the 3d of March. One 
 
PROJECTS OF TRANSLATION THE PLAGUE. 191 
 
 I day, two days passed. The members began to talk over the 
 i matters to be treated of at the next, fixed for the '21st of April, 
 f Should it not be the Eucharist? The legates hesitated; the 
 little ardour they shewed in organizing the debates contrasted 
 strangely with the importance of the subject. They seemed to 
 ] be absorbed with some grand problem ; and so, in fact, they 
 J were. They consulted their confidential friends. Still nothing, 
 ,; absolutely nothing, turned up. At last a bishop happened to 
 J die. Magnificent obsequies were ordered on the occasion. The 
 i; legates were present, and all the council along with them ; it 
 
 I was at least another day gained. All at once it was recollected 
 j that two or three other persons had died that same week, and 
 J that several were seriously ill. A light seemed to flash upon 
 ] their minds. The problem was resolved ; the pretext was found 
 j at last. The Plague was at Trent ; there was nothing for it 
 | but to leave as speedily as possible. 
 
 " Was it not," says Father Paul, " merely an artifice of the 
 .legates?" This question has given rise to keen controversy. 
 } One party, perhaps, has yielded too much to the pleasure derived 
 ; from relating a scene worthy of a comedy; the other, perhaps, 
 
 I I ought to have abandoned the idea of representing the legates 
 jias having followed, instead of having given the impulsion. That 
 fa disease prevailed is incontestable. But whether the legates 
 j seriously believed that it was pestilential, and that, as such, it 
 .was dangerous, is what we shall never know. At all events, if 
 j'we have no proof that they were not sincere, we consider that 
 [i neither have we enough of proof on the other side justly to banish 
 a all suspicion of insincerity. After all, of what consequence is it ? 
 ^ It was at the worst no great crime to take advantage of a risk 
 | which came so miraculously to their aid; the essential and the 
 ] truly characteristic fact is the order that they had received to 
 ]!do all that was in their power to get the council transferred to 
 
 another place. Now, this fact is admitted by Pallavicini. " It 
 *? appeared to them," 1 he says, " that they would never have a 
 <j> better opportunity of transferring the council, a measure which 
 . they thought of great consequence to the security of the Church. 
 [They resolved to avail themselves of previous orders, orders quite 
 recent and reiterated. These orders prescribed to them to pro- 
 ceed to the translation, if the majority should consent to it, and 
 .'should they themselves reckon that the Holy See was threatened 
 with some serious mischief." 
 
 1 Book ix. chap. xiii. 
 
192 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 They made great haste, therefore, too much haste, perhaps, 
 not to make their eagerness, if not suspected, at least suspicious ; 
 but however small the delay, was there not a risk of all being 
 lost ? The sick might recover, as, in fact, they almost all did ; 
 the public panic, after having been increasing for about a week, 
 might subside. It did not seem good, therefore, to go after the 
 9th of March, six days after the session. It was when uneasy 
 feelings were at their greatest height, several prelates, wrongfully 
 accused, perhaps, of collusion with them, but who, nevertheless, 
 were afterwards among their friends, had set off in all haste. 
 The legates had caused an inquest to be held on the sanitary 
 condition of the city. The result was the certification of a dan- 
 gerous disease being present ; but the report had been drawn up 
 by two physicians, both of whom were devoted to the pope, 1 and 
 those belonging to the city had refused to sign it. They pur- 
 sued their purpose. Just as they had decided, in theological 
 questions, so many points that were manifestly uncertain, they 
 now pronounced, and that too in the strongest terms, 2 that it was 
 dangerous to remain any longer in Trent. Then it was that the 
 legates made known the bull, kept two years secret, authorizing 
 them to transfer the council to another place, and the assembly 
 adjourned to the following day, when they were to fix what that 
 place should be. 
 
 It was not without difficulty that that vote had been obtained. 
 The imperialists had said that they were not to be duped ; and 
 though there might have been some of them, as is likely, who 
 did not at bottom feel very comfortable, the dread of the emperor 
 prevailed far more with them than that of the plague. " Let us 
 wait at least a few days longer, they had said. Let us allow the 
 most timid, if necessary, to go to Verona or to Venice. If the disease 
 disappears, they will return ; if it shall continue, we can act ac- 
 cordingly ; but let it not be said that we fled at the first shadow of 
 danger." Why did they speak of a shadow? Nothing was more 
 real, in the eyes of the legates and of the pope, than the danger with 
 which they had menaced themselves with their terrible articles. 
 
 Meanwhile the panic was increasing. Word came that the 
 towns in the neighbourhood, in serious alarm, already talked of 
 shutting their gates on everything coming from Trent, and the 
 decision that they had taken, by accrediting the rumours that 
 
 1 Jerome Frascator. physician to the council, and Baldnino Balduini, physician to the 
 premier legate. 
 
 '- De hujusmodi morbo ita manifeste et notarie constat, ut prselati in hac civitate sine 
 vitue diserimine commorari, et in ea idcireo minime rctincri possint et debcant. 
 
LEGATES AND PAPAL PARTY LEAVE TRENT. 193 
 
 were afloat, risked the immediate declaration of such a measure. 
 On the day following, the imperialists were no less opposed, the 
 others no less docile. The legates remarked that they could not 
 pass into the territories of any prince without having first asked 
 and obtained his permission ; that thus, looking to the urgency 
 of the case, the place for resuming their sittings must be selected 
 from the Papal States. That place had been already chosen. It 
 was Bologna. All the prelates that had voted for the translation 
 voted for that city. Finally, on the 11th of March, a public- 
 session was held. The decree of translation was read. Thirty- 
 eight prelates approved, and fourteen protested. 
 
 The legates left Trent on the 12th, and were followed by all 
 that remained of the papal party. The rest refused to leave. 
 And yet it was said in the bull of 1545 that on the translation 
 being once decided on by the legates all the prelates should be 
 bound to follow them, and that " even under ecclesiastical cen- 
 sures and penalties," even " under the pains of perjury," even, 
 in fine, " under pain of incurring God's indignation, and that of 
 the blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul." 1 What then was thought 
 of these menaces by those who persisted in remaining? The 
 majority had pronounced the decision ; the legates acted in virtue 
 of powers regularly exercised. The decision may have been a. 
 bad one, but it was perfectly legal. What right then had four- 
 teen bishops to pretend to exemption from it ? Did they not, 
 by acting thus with respect to one of the decisions of the as- 
 sembly, virtually give their sanction to others doing the like by 
 whatever did not meet their views ? And yet it is not unlikely 
 that, once returned to their dioceses, those same bishops made 
 no more scruple than others in commanding obedience in the 
 name of that very pope whom they had braved, and of that very 
 council which they had mocked. Thus it is, thus has it ever 
 been with the Church of Pome. The most refractory doctor as 
 respects the Church, the most refractory bishop as respects the 
 pope, the most refractory parish priest as respects his bishop, all 
 of them, no sooner than the power of reigning is in question, 
 contrive to speak of their superiors as they would speak, and, 
 perhaps, as they would not speak of God himself. 
 
 1 Sub censuris et poenis ecclesiastic! s Sub perjurii panis. Indignationem omnipotentis 
 Dei, ac beatorum Petri et Pauli apostolcrum ejus. 
 
194 
 
 BOOK THIRD. 
 
 Two councils instead of one — The pope says nothing — All is brought to a halt — Victories 
 of Charles V. — Paul III. allies himself with France — Old dotard — Protestation — What 
 Rome has read at all times in the hearts of her friends — Fresh protests — New mask — 
 Mutual affronts — Thunder and finesse — Fourteen months already lost — The pope's death 
 universally expected and desired — The Interim — Criticisms — Resistances — Conferences re- 
 sumed — Nuncios sent into German}' — Their powers — Checks and affronts. 
 
 Death of Paul III. — Glance at his life — The conclaves — Historical Review — Tedious 
 delays— Sad heroism — Factions — Combinations — Julius III. — All difficulties return — They 
 seem to grow easy — Fresh ones appear — The pope eludes them — Second convocation of the 
 council — The bull is keenly criticised — How interpreted by Charles V. — The council opened 
 anew with fifteen bishops — Was it still-born — Political occurrences — Rupture with France 
 — Gallican inconsistencies — How redeemed by Henry II. — New causes of distrust — Will 
 the Protestants come — John Huss — Adjournments — Amyot — Parliamentary audacities. 
 
 The communion under both kinds — State of the question in the sixteenth century — 
 Discussion — Authorities — Trent and Constance — Brink ye all of it — Sophisms — True motives 
 — A safe conduct granted. 
 
 Transubstantiation — Production and adduction — Reciprocal objections — Did Luther 
 believe in transubstantiation — Physical objections — Miracle upon miracle — Are all things 
 possible with God — Axioms — Is transubstantiation a miracle like any other — This is my 
 bod// — Scriptural objections — Analysis of the narrative — Historical objections — The Apostles 
 and the New Testament — The Fathers — The idea advances but slowly — Admissions — The 
 Mass— The priest — Indiscreet questions — Theory and practice — Adoration of the host — 
 Jesus Christ whole and entire — What purpose does transubstantiation really serve — Ignoble 
 questions — Dilemma — Superstitions — Idolatry. 
 
 Episcopal jurisdiction — Origin — Objections — Historical review — How the pope became its 
 centre — The council avoids going back to principles — Concessions. 
 
 Thirteenth session — Complaints against the divines — Regulations on that head — The 
 sacrament of penance — The confession — Scriptural objections — Falsifications and sophisms — 
 Let every man examine himself — To loose is the most miraculous and the most divine of 
 powers — The more it is alleged to be necessary, the more is it objectionable — Have the Pro- 
 testants renounced what is reasonable and good in confession — What the Church ordains 
 at present is not what was recommended in primitive times — The council shuts its eyes and 
 pursues its own course — Other difficulties — In what manner is penance a sacrament — What 
 proves too much proves nothing — Was the right to bind and loose given to the priests alone 
 — Reserved cases — A conclusion drawn in passing — What there is most false and most 
 dangerous in confession — Good results, the value of which, however, must not be exaggerated 
 — Peoples — Kings — Phrases and facts — Absolution — Absolute or conditional — Logically 
 it can only be absolute — Questions addressed to a good woman — Deplorable results, to 
 which everything concurs — Inconveniences in detail — The Compendium — Admissions — 
 Conclusion. 
 
 Extreme unction — One Apostle only speaks of it — Scriptural discussion — Contradiction — 
 Difficulties arising out of the only passage that can be adduced in favour of this sacrament — 
 l'.llers and priests — Formula in common use — Reiteration — Extreme unction of little use. 
 and often dangerous. 
 
 Fresh discussions on episcopal jurisdiction — Numerous abuses — Insufficient corrections — 
 Dispensations more rare but more dear— Fourteenth Session — The affair of the safe conduct 
 taken up again — Reception of the Protestant ambassadors— Fifteenth Session — Prorogation 
 
TWO COUNCILS INSTEAD OF ONE. 195 
 
 l — The situation again becomes menacing — Fears and precautions of the pope — Arrival of 
 some Protestant doctors— All ceases and dies — War bursts out in Germany — The emperor 
 takes to flight — Suspension for two years — Involuntary Gallicanism — Peace of Passau and 
 abolition of the Interim — The council no more talked of — Rome thinks she has got rid of it. 
 
 And now, behold, we have two councils instead of one. The 
 bishops that remained at Trent did not go so far as to say that 
 they were authorized to continue the deliberations by themselves 
 alone ; but not the less did they persist in considering themselves 
 as the true council, momentarily suspended for want of a suf- 
 ficient number of members present. Those at Bologna, with 
 better reason, considered themselves as the lawful council ; but 
 no more durst they on that account do anything, well knowing 
 that there could be no means of publishing their decisions as the 
 decrees of a general council. A curious correspondence com- 
 menced between the rival assemblies. The Bologna fathers 
 intituled themselves plainly, the Holy Council of Bologna, 
 (Sancta Synodus Bononiensis ;) the Tridentine fathers durst not 
 call themselves Council of Trent : they were the Holy Council, 
 in whatever place it may be, (in quocunque sit loco.) 
 
 Strange to say, and it clearly shews how false the position of 
 both parties was, they did not anathematize one another. The 
 divines of both wrote letters upon letters, issued memorials and 
 counter-memorials, absolutely as if it were some philosophical or 
 theological dispute that had to be brought to an issue between 
 two universities. Neither party seemed to have the least idea 
 that there existed a judge. 
 
 It was because the judge was still more embarrassed than the 
 parties were, and that all were interested in not pressing him to 
 decide, the one that they might not force him to compromise 
 himself, the other, that they might not force him to condemn 
 them, in which case, unless they wei'e prepared to make a schism, 
 they would certainly have had rather to obey him than the 
 emperor. In point of law, however, he had no need to sanction 
 the translation in order to its being and remaining legal ; it was 
 enough that he did not condemn it. But he was well aware 
 that Europe expected more than this : from the moment that 
 there is an appeal from the decision of ministers, the sovereign 
 is morally bound to pronounce. The pope was so much the 
 more under this obligation, as his bull of 1545 made no mention 
 of any consent to be obtained from the assembly ; had the 
 majority voted against the translation, the legates, in virtue of 
 that bull, might still have commanded it. " Of our own move- 
 
!!»(> HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 ment," the pope had said, " of our certain knowledge, and in 
 virtue of the plenitude of the apostolical authority, we give you 
 a full and free power and faculty to transfer the council." 1 
 Thus the translation had been, in itself, an act of the papal 
 authority ; how then could they shelter themselves logically be- 
 hind the vote of the assembly, seeing that, according to the bull, 
 that had been no more than a mere formality winch might have 
 been dispensed with ? On the other hand, the bishops who 
 remained at Trent kept their health desperately well ; all dread 
 of the plague had disappeared ; and as that had been the sole 
 reason alleged for cpiitting that city, there was no longer any for 
 not returning to it. 
 
 The eighth session (which had become the ninth, on account 
 of the pro re natd session of the 11th of March) took place on 
 the clay that had been fixed, (21st April,) in one of the churches 
 of Bologna, but with only thirty-four bishops. No decree had 
 been prepared. They confined themselves to confirming that of 
 11th March, by declaring that the translation had been voted 
 for reasons " then instant, urgent, and legitimate," 2 and to fixing 
 the following session for the 2d of June. 
 
 On the 2d of June another session met, but only to be ad- 
 journed to the 15th of September. It was wished, said the de- 
 cree, "to shew farther indulgence to those who had not come." 3 
 Moreover, nothing was ready. There had been held, indeed, in 
 the interval, some congregations as sequels to those that had 
 been held at Trent, but without any voting. The Eucharist was 
 the subject that had been treated of in these. What a medley ! 
 How oddly does the Eucharist figure in this labyrinth of in- 
 trigues and deceptions ! 
 
 The 15th of September, in fine, was doomed to be no more 
 auspicious than the 2d of June. News arrived of the tragical 
 death of the Duke of Placentia, son of the pope. Universally 
 despised for his debaucheries, and hated for his cruelty, he had 
 been murdered in his own palace ; his body, dragged through 
 the streets, had been subjected to the most disgraceful outrages. 
 Nor was this all. A few hours after the murder, the governor 
 of Milan had entered the city with troops, and had taken pos- 
 session of it in the name of the emperor. In such circumstances, 
 
 1 " Mntu proprio et ex certa scientia ac de apostolicse potestntis plenitudiue, transferendi 
 concilii plenam et liheram concediimis potestatera et facultatem." 
 
 2 Ex causis tunc instantibus, ureentibu?, et lecithin's. 
 
 •■ Volens tamen cum iis qui mm venerunt etium adhuc bcniync agere. 
 
PACX III. ALLIES HIMSELF WITH FRANCE. 1!>7 
 
 how could a session be held ? Besides, as on the 2d of June, 
 nothing was ready, a fact that manifestly contradicts Pallavi- 
 cini's assertion, that the meetings had been frequent and active, 
 it was more and more evident that the members did not yet feel 
 themselves to be in a condition to vote anything. It was not 
 even thought seasonable to have a public meeting of the mem- 
 bers, or to fix a new period. The legates caused an indefinite 
 adjournment to be pronounced. 
 
 The occupation of Placentia by the imperial troops was con- 
 nected with occurrences, for a short summary of which this is the 
 proper place. 
 
 The army of the emperor and that of the elector of Saxony 
 had met on the 24th of April. The elector had been defeated 
 and taken prisoner ; Charles V. had sentenced him to death as 
 a rebel, but afterwards spared his life. The electorate had passed 
 to his cousin Maurice, a Lutheran, as we have already said ; 
 which did not prevent the assembly at Bologna from paying its 
 court to the emperor, and trying to mollify him on the subject of 
 the translation, by chanting a Te Deum in honour of his victory. 
 The landgrave of Hesse had submitted. He had been left under 
 the impression that he had only to humble himself in order to 
 obtain forgiveness, and had been retained as a prisoner. Charles 
 V. now became absolute master of Germany. 
 
 Paul III., therefore, had more reason than ever to fear him, 
 and to fortify himself against him j 1 all the more as Francis L, 
 the only man in a condition to counterbalance his influence in 
 Europe, had died. But his successor, Henry II., shewed a dis- 
 position to follow in his father's footsteps. He gave a favourable 
 reception to all the overtures sent to him by the pope ; he pro- 
 mised to give his natural daughter, Diana, then nine years old, 
 in marriage to the pope's grandson Horace Farnese ; in fine, he 
 recognised the council of Bologna, and promised to send bishops 
 there. The pope on his side was never more accommodating. 
 On various points bearing upon the collation of benefices, he 
 granted the king several things contrary to the regulations of 
 the last session. An early public specimen this of the manner 
 in which he meant to be executor of the assembly's decisions. 
 
 Meanwhile, the emperor, after having openly approved and 
 
 1 " Mendoza's correspondence with his court, during these contests, is something unheard 
 of. Nothing at all equals the tenor of those letters. They shew a profound hatred, an un- 
 utterable contempt, a bitterness which reflection strives to soften, and only makes more bit- 
 ter ; a distrust, in tine, which one would hardly expect to see the like of between the worst 
 criminals." — Ranke, History of the Popedom. 
 
198 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 encouraged the bishops that had staid at Trent, had thought 
 himself obliged to seek a reconciliation, if not with the pope, 
 whom he treated as an old dotard, at least with the Church. 
 He could think of nothing better for this end, than to establish 
 the Inquisition at Naples. A sedition arose ; the Spaniards 
 narrowly escaped been chased out of the kingdom, and the em- 
 peror had to yield. Of what consequence was the Inquisition to 
 him ? He had merely wanted to perform an act of Eoman 
 ( 'atholicism. The act was done ; Paul had to pay the cost. 
 
 The diet (1st September) had been opened at Augsburg. 
 There the emperor bitterly represented the uselessness of his 
 efforts for the pacification of Europe by means of a council ; then, 
 after having wrested from the Protestants a promise to submit to 
 it as soon as it resumed the course of its deliberations, he caused 
 a letter to be addressed to the pope by the prelates in the diet, 
 " commencing," says Pallavicini, " with a honied prayer, and 
 ending with the sting of a menacing protest." It was with pro- 
 found surprise, said the prelates, that they had heard of the 
 translation ; and they represented it in plain terms as annihilat- 
 ing the authority of the assembly. In fact, they were right, and 
 the inaction of the Bologna Fathers proved it better than any- 
 thing else could have done ; but it was nevertheless a curious 
 spectacle — that of a council becoming a nullity in the eyes of 
 the prelates of a great nation, by the mere fact of its having 
 passed into a city that belonged to the head of the Church. 
 
 It would, then, be a curious subject also for the historian to 
 trace the distrust which the most Roman Catholic sovereigns 
 have at all times shewed they have felt towards the court of 
 Rome. Charles V. and his people, in this instance, merely ex- 
 pressed, only a little more frankly than others, because they felt 
 themselves stronger, what the popes have read, or to speak more 
 correctly, what they continue to read in the hearts of all their 
 crowned friends, nothing in this respect having changed. You 
 will hear every day complaints, and cries of indignation, and of 
 scandal, against the few trammels to which the French law sub- 
 jects the relations of the Roman Church with its head ; as if 
 France, forsooth, were the only country where the pope is not 
 trusted. Distrust is more candidly expressed there, that is all. 
 Elsewhere, it is a very different thing. Governments that are 
 most Roman Catholic, are most severe as respects their bishops, 
 and the most suspicious on the side of Rome. In France, a 
 bishop may publish all that he thinks fit ; he is afterwards sub- 
 
WHAT ROME READS IN THE HEARTS OF HER FRIENDS. 199 
 
 ject, and then only for his official acts, to the harmless jurisdic- 
 tion of the council of state. In Austria, in Piedmont, in Tus- 
 cany, in several other states of Germany and Italy, he could not 
 publish a line, either as bishop, or simply as author, without 
 having submitted it beforehand to the government's censors. In 
 France, the official communications of the clergy with the pope, 
 must pass through the minister of religious worship, but there is 
 nothing to prevent the bishops from having inofficially as many 
 relations with Koine as they think proper ; in the states we 
 have just named all correspondence, even private, if not inter- 
 dicted, is at least sedulously watched. As for the receiving of 
 briefs from the popes, these governments hold themselves no less 
 entitled than others, to give or refuse leave to publish them. 
 There was a great outcry quite lately against the King of 
 Prussia for having interdicted his Eoman Catholic subjects from 
 studying theology at Eome ; yet he did nothing more than several 
 Eoman Catholic princes, even Italians, had done before. What 
 would the ultramontanists of Paris say, were the government to 
 think of taking a saint out of the breviary? The Austrian 
 government removed from it Gregory VII. Of course we do not 
 equally approve all the measures mentioned above. We do not 
 like to see a bishop subjected, in his most insignificant acts, to 
 the humiliating yoke of the police ; we merely quote facts, and 
 say, See what — under these fair shows of union and filial sub- 
 mission — are the real relations of Eoman Catholicity with its 
 chief; see what is the confidence that the pope inspires in the 
 governments which make most use of his name, on the other 
 hand, in all that ministers to their projects or their ambition. 
 
 Paul III. had, however, neglected nothing in his preparations 
 to meet the menacing attitude assumed by the emperor's pre- 
 lates. He had gone so far as to offer to proclaim him king of 
 England, and even to furnish him with troops for the conquest 
 of that kingdom, held as it was, to have been vacant since the 
 excommunication of Henry VIII. ; but it was too palpably evi- 
 dent that the wily old man thought mainly of keeping him at a 
 distance, and distracting his attention. Accordingly, the emperor 
 replied only by sending Cardinal Madrucci, the bishop of Trent, 
 to Eome, anew to solicit the return of the council to that city. 
 The cardinal, on his arrival, obtained an excellent reception from 
 the pope, but was left without any explanation. He was only 
 permitted to state to the consistory the object of his mission. 
 On the 9th of December, in presence of the cardinals, Madrucci 
 
200 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 solemnly restated his request. It was in the name of God, he 
 said, in the name of the emperor, in the name of the empire, in 
 the name of all the friends of religion, that he besought the pope 
 to send back the bishops from Bologna to Trent ; he craved, also, 
 that it might be decided whether it was to the cardinals, or to 
 the council, that the election of the new pope should belong, in 
 the event of the see becoming vacant. 1 This was plainly enough 
 to recall to the pope's recollection — what '? The eighty years of 
 his by-past life, and the account that he would soon have to give 
 to Clod ? Alas ! religious ideas had not habitually much to do 
 in all this. All that was intended, was to attack Paul III. on 
 his weak side, by giving him to understand that ere long he 
 would not be in a condition to guard his children from the wrath 
 of the emperor. But there was something which Paid III. loved 
 more than his children, more even than himself; it was the om- 
 nipotence of the Holy See. The question had grown more and 
 more into importance, in his eyes, in proportion as the emperor 
 pressed his suit, and had affronted him by what he had caused 
 his prelates to do. Placentia, even Placentia, which he had 
 kept, " as a loadstone held in his hand for the purpose of attract- 
 ing the iron soul of the pope," 2 no longer influenced him. On 
 no account would he consent to the return to Trent ; but as his 
 courage could not embolden him to avow what would have imme- 
 diately caused a schism, it was impossible to wrest an answer 
 from him by prayers, threats, anything. The cardinal set off on 
 his return to Germany, leaving the matter in the hands of Diego 
 de Mendoza, formerly ambassador to the council, and now charged 
 with the same functions at the court of the pope. A few days 
 after, Mendoza again set forth all the emperor's grievances, and 
 all his demands. Without protesting as yet, he stated that he 
 had orders to protest, however little the pope might delay grant- 
 ing satisfaction. 
 
 Then it was that Paul III., raising the mask, or, if you will, 
 changing the mask, thought fit to act a part which we have seen 
 him long preparing for ; and this was to treat the affair as that 
 of a controversy between the two assemblies. He thus with- 
 drew, as it were, from being a party in the quarrel, and assumed 
 the air of one who was influenced only by respect for the inde- 
 
 1 Several of these details, denied by Pallavieini. hare seemed to us sufficiently proved by 
 the testimonies of other authors, and particularly Hayualdus, Sleidan, and De Thou, in ac- 
 cordance with Paul Sarpi. 
 
 - Pallavicini. Book x. ch. vii 
 
THE AGENTS OF CHARLES V. AFFRONT THE POPE. 201 
 
 pendence of the council and the wish of the majority ; in fine, 
 he gained time. 
 
 His first step in this new path was to say that he could give 
 no decision without having first advised with the bishops at 
 Bologna. The question was about to stand more and more on 
 false ground, as both parties were now to quit their original 
 position. Charles V. reclaimed on the ground of what was fitting 
 and necessary, and the assembly was to reply on the ground of 
 right. 
 
 It did reply, in fact, as might have been expected, that it 
 considered itself, and could not but consider itself, the only legi- 
 timate assembly. Without absolutely rejecting the idea of a 
 return to Trent, it declared that the only way to obtain a reversal 
 of the decision it had taken was for the bishops at Trent, in the 
 first place, to submit to that decision, and to come to Bologna, 
 or, at least, to declare their readiness to come. Then, but only 
 then, it might be considered what was best to be done. 
 
 This answer in itself had nothing in it unreasonable ; but to 
 be satisfied with it one would have required to forget that it was 
 dictated by the pope, that the prelates of Bologna had no desire 
 to return to Trent, and that, in fine, there was hardly any hope 
 of the council ever being seen there again. Charles V., how- 
 ever, seemed ready to accept the question in its new terms, but 
 only, as was his custom, in order that he might decide it accord- 
 ing to his own views. Taking, therefore, the Bologna assembly 
 directly in hand as the party in fault, he ordained the two agents 
 who acted for him there, Francis Vargas and Martin Velasco, to 
 use, without delay, the powers with which they had been in- 
 vested, but the nature of which was still unknown. Conse- 
 quently, on the 26th of January 1548, they craved an audience. 
 The case was taken into consideration, and was referred by the 
 assembly to Cardinal del Monte, the only legate present, for his 
 colleague was at Eome. Del Monte caused them to be intro- 
 duced, and they presented their mandate. " Constrained to pro- 
 test, for the good of religion and of the Church, against certain 
 men calling themselves apostolic legates, and against a certain 
 assembly intituling itself Council, the emperor has named, and 
 names, for the purpose of acting on his behalf, the two personages 
 here present." 1 And not content with this insulting introduc- 
 tion, the envoys demanded that admission should be granted to 
 five witnesses and two notaries, whom they had brought with 
 
 1 All these last details are taken from Pallavicini. 
 
202 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 them in order that their protest might be minuted in due form. 
 The assembly again deliberated ; it was voted that they should 
 be put off till next day. But they insisted, and after some 
 parleying the assembly yielded the point. Only, before giving 
 them an audience, a minute was intimated to them, bearing that 
 they should not be held bound to listen to them, inasmuch as it 
 was not as the council that the emperor addressed them, but 
 as a certain unlawful assembly which surely was not that of 
 Bologna. Then Vargas, before coming to the protest, warmly 
 exhorted the assembly, as he uniformly called it, to ponder well 
 what it was about to say or do. And on his calling out, " Here 
 we are, we, the lawful procurators of the emperor!" " I too," 
 said the cardinal, " I am here, the true legate of a true and in- 
 dubitable pontiff, and here is a lawful council, lawfully trans- 
 ferred, for the glory of God and the good of the Church !" The 
 glory of God and the good of the Church, grand words these, 
 which, however, for the preceding thirty years, people had known 
 how to estimate at their proper value ; but, for all that, Del 
 Monte had incontestably the finest part to play. Those legates, 
 rendered illegitimate for having made use of powers manifestly 
 legitimate, that council, ceasing to be a council because it had 
 pronounced against the opinion of fourteen of its own members, — 
 all this reminded one rather of the rude unmannerliness of a 
 soldier than of the dignity of a prince. 
 
 With a greater show of reason and more calm, the written 
 protest, which Velasco then read, was hardly more logical. After 
 a long picture of all that Charles V. had done in order to prepare 
 for and facilitate the council, the translation was declared un- 
 reasonable, precipitate, null ; the recommendation of the assembly 
 in virtue of which it had taken place, was called deceptive, vain, 
 captious, infinitely worthy of being rejected by the pope. How, 
 then, did the pope dare, it went on to say, to give to that 
 culpable division the name of translation, to that illegitimate 
 assembly the name of council-general ? The emperor declared, 
 in fine, to the bishops, that he would thenceforth hold them 
 responsible for all the evils that might occur, and from which he 
 was about to look for the means of guaranteeing his states. 
 
 The oral reply was full of spirit ; the written one extremely 
 mild. It was published four days afterwards. It contained but 
 one sentence : — " The things alleged are manifestly in disaccord- 
 ance with the pious and Catholic intention of the most invincible 
 emperor, the holy council is convinced that they have been spoken 
 
PAUL III. AND 1IEND0ZA. 203 
 
 either without any mandate on his part, or upon a false exposi- 
 tion of the case to him." 
 
 Yet never did the emperor seem less in a way to amend his 
 doings. A week after the delivery of the Bologna protest, Men- 
 doza reproduced it at Eome, in full consistory, hefore the pope. 
 The same ideas, the same forms, except that the ambassador 
 threw himself upon his knees, an action that threw into still 
 stronger relief the incredible audaciousness of what he said. 
 " Let any one figure to himself," says Pallavicini, " the terror 
 of such auditors, met in so large a number, in the most august 
 court in the universe, at the noise of this thunder-clap, launched 
 by a Jupiter who had the lightning in his hand." 
 
 The only refuge of Paul III. now lay in the last part of the 
 course which we have said he had resolved to pursue. Some days 
 after Mendoza's protest he sent for him to come to the consistory. 
 The ambassador found him apparently more calm, and his man- 
 ner more natural than ever. The reply, written, it is said, by 
 Cardinal Pole, was read by the pope's secretary, the bishop of 
 Foligno. It was not less than five-and-twenty pages long, but, 
 from the first, it was clear what the pope wished to come to. 
 According to him, then, the whole affair had been a mistake. 
 The emperor's protest was not meant to be read except in the 
 case of his, the pope's, refusing to take cognizance of the differ- 
 ence that had arisen betwixt his majesty and the council of Bologna. 
 But he had not refused ; he was ready to do this, and had even 
 appointed four cardinals to present to him a report on that sub- 
 ject. Accordingly, he had not to reply to the protest. He only 
 regretted that the terms of it should have been so severe, but he 
 was not the less sensible of the zeal of the emperor. He was 
 happy, in particular, to see so great a prince openly recognise 
 in him the quality of sovereign judge in this affair. He ended 
 by saying that he was about to interdict both assemblies from 
 proceeding to any synodical acts, and that they should have a 
 month for submitting their reasons to him. 
 
 Upon this, although Mendoza went away declaring that he 
 had been made to say what was quite different from what he had 
 really said, and quite different from what the emperor had ex- 
 pressly charged him to say, — Paul wrote to the bishops at Trent 
 that he was ready to hear what they had to say for themselves. 
 Hitherto, he said, he had regarded the translation as good, judg- 
 ing the matter according to the public rumour ; but since that 
 point had been called in question, he was now prepared to act 
 
204 HISTORY or THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 only as an impartial judge, listening to the statements of all 
 parties, and carefully weighing the reasons pro and con. This 
 impartiality at the end of a whole year, this profound disinter- 
 estedness in an affair in which he was known to be so much in- 
 terested, this curious allegation that hitherto he had not looked 
 narrowly into it, all this, in a less serious document, would almost 
 have tempted one to ask if he was not indulging a little jocu- 
 larity. Accordingly, he received in return only an ambiguous 
 reply, in which, without contesting the character he assumed of 
 judge, any appearance of pleading before him was studiously 
 avoided. The letter of the bishops was, in short, only an urgent 
 request that he would disapprove of the translation. 
 
 Those at Bologna, also invited to plead their cause, were more 
 clear, but quite as disquieting. They had come at last to take 
 up the matter seriously. Strong in their legal position, they 
 pleaded with precision and directness. They pressed, they almost 
 summoned the pope to justify them ; but, as there was no plead- 
 ing on the other side, the case was no longer a rjrocess before 
 a judge, and Paul no longer felt himself to be a judge in the 
 sense in which he thought it of so much consequence to be one. 
 The month had for some time been run out ; less than ever had 
 he any wish to pronounce a decision. 
 
 Meanwhile, another year (1548) had come round, and it was 
 now about the close of April. The council had been interrupted 
 for fourteen months. 
 
 Germany was now connected by a mere thread with Eome, 
 and the pope still found means to negotiate with the emperor for 
 the restitution of Placentia. Charles first eluded, and then re- 
 fused. Fresh solicitations were followed by fresh refusals. Paul 
 at last spoke of excommunicating, not the emperor, he durst not 
 do that, but those who occupied the city, as if those who occupied 
 the city were not there for the emperor. At the same time he 
 was secretly laying the foundations of a league against him. 
 But the Venetians, on whom he had counted much, gave it to be 
 understood that they did not care to ally themselves with so old 
 a pope. His successor might have other views, and leave the 
 empire on their hands. The king of France, says Pallavicini, 
 was as little desirous "to embark on so worn out a vessel." 
 Thus there was neither excommunication nor war. 
 
 Charles, on his side, began to see that he could obtain nothing. 
 He contented himself, therefore, with waiting for the death of 
 the pope, an event that had long been spoken of as the only thing 
 
THE INTERIM IT PLEASES NO TARTY. 205 
 
 likely to unravel so many entanglements. But as Paul III. was 
 still almost as vigorous in body as he was in mind, it was of im- 
 portance to the pacification of Germany that so many questions 
 should not remain in suspense. Charles had not relinquished 
 the chimera of bringing back unity by means of a council. He 
 did not seem to be sensible of the absurdity involved in the pro- 
 mise wrested anew from the Protestants, to receive the decrees 
 that were to come, after they had repelled those that were already 
 published ; and though, as is most probable, he might not think 
 that that promise was ever to be realized as respected doctrines, 
 he attached to it, politically, immense importance. As long as 
 it subsisted, as long as the possibility of a reconciliation was ad- 
 mitted, or seemed to be admitted, the rending was not complete, 
 the empire might still be one whole. But that promise, it was 
 clear, once that the council was broken up, and the idea of a 
 council definitively abandoned, would be considered no more 
 binding on those who had made it. A German council would 
 not have served any good purpose. The emperor had often 
 threatened the pope with it ; but betwixt the Protestants and 
 him, it was a council-general that had been ever talked of. He 
 took it into his head, therefore, to publish a decree in which all 
 the points in litigation should be regulated provisionally ; Eoman 
 Catholics and Protestants should remain subject to it until the 
 resumption of the council. Hence the name of Interim, by which 
 that act is known in history. 
 
 There was something singular in the idea of regulating pro- 
 visionally what of all things seems to have the least of a provi- 
 sional character in it — articles of faith. But if the Interim com- 
 prised important concessions, such as the marriage of priests and 
 the communion under both kinds, there were many points, also, 
 on which Charles V. could make no concession without lending 
 a hand to the subversion of Romanism. With regard to these 
 last, then, there was concession only in the fact of their being 
 represented as only provisional ; but that of itself was still an 
 insult to the Church, an insult to the pope, for there were few of 
 them that were not of long standing as articles of faith, or that 
 a Eoman Catholic was free to regard as not definitively regu- 
 lated. 
 
 The result, accordingly, was what any one might expect: 
 nobody was satisfied. Those bishops even that were most devoted 
 to the emperor could not dissemble to themselves that he had 
 far overstept the reasonable limits of the civil power, As a 
 
206 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 prince, he had the power of allowing the Protestants to remain 
 free : to make a selection of what they were to believe and not 
 to believe, to concede some points to them while he withheld 
 others, was tantamount to setting up as pope, and without ceas- 
 ing to profess being a Roman Catholic, to do just what Henry 
 VIII. had done in ceasing to be one. Moreover, those who drew 
 up the decree had not even restrained themselves so far as ex- 
 actly to follow the canons passed at Trent ; the chapter on Jus- 
 tification, in particular, seemed as if it had been written by 
 Luther. What signified those appeals to a future council, seeing 
 the decrees of a quite recent council were treated as null and 
 void ? Did the emperor intend, then, that those very decrees 
 should be revised ? This was impossible, it was said, — it was 
 absurd, for he himself had owned the legality, and consequently 
 the infallibility of the assembly, as long as it had not quitted 
 Trent. And if Soman Catholics spoke thus in Germany, 
 under the very hand of Charles V., what was to be expected in 
 Italy? 
 
 While he alienated the Roman Catholics, what had he gained 
 among the Protestants ? Nothing, or almost nothing. Though 
 the Interim might gratify them as paving the way for a rupture 
 with the pope, they saw nothing in it, at bottom, to satisfy them. 
 What were those few concessions which the emperor had made 
 them, in comparison with what he had lacked either the will or 
 the power to concede '? The marriage of the priests did not re- 
 concile them to the supremacy of the pope ; leave to communi- 
 cate under both kinds, did not make it more easy for them to 
 believe in the mass, the seven sacraments, the invocation of 
 saints, and many other things necessarily preserved in the In- 
 terim. In fine, they knew that the Church would never recog- 
 nise in the emperor the right which he had arrogated to himself, 
 and they could not feel much obliged to him for giving them that 
 which it did not belong to him to give at all. 
 
 All eyes were now turned to Rome. A terrible explosion was 
 expected, and the emperor probably was not one of those who 
 were least disquieted. He had interfered in matters of faith ; he 
 had not even respected the lawful decisions of the council ; he 
 might be excommunicated without a single sincere and consistent 
 Roman Catholic having the means of declaring for him, and ex- 
 communication would have pushed him straight to either a humi- 
 liating retractation or to a schism. But side by side with these 
 audacities in doctrine, the Interim contained all the elements of 
 
THE INTERIM LEFT TO DESTROY ITSELF. 207 
 
 a violent rupture. The eleven articles of the Spaniards at Trent 
 had been incorporated into it, almost word for word. Episcopal 
 authority was declared in it to be of divine right ; the pope was 
 recognised in it as head of the Church, only in the character of 
 its chief magistrate, necessary for its unity, as the king is in a 
 kingdom, but not absolutely necessary and such as the Church 
 cannot exist without him — whereas, in the papal or ultramon- 
 tane system, the pope is the base, the corner-stone, the source of 
 all power. 
 
 It was the pope, nevertheless, who, notwithstanding so many 
 subjects of complaint, kept his temper best, and best understood 
 how matters were situated. Were it for us to judge him from the 
 Eoman Catholic point of view, we should say that it was his duty 
 to excommunicate the emperor ; we might find ground to charge 
 him with treason towards the Holy See, in maintaining an obsti- 
 nate silence after so many aggressions. But, politically, the 
 future was to justify him. He could see that the Interim must 
 eventually destroy itself. The best punishment he could inflict 
 on the emperor was to leave him to look on, as his own work 
 went to ruin, and to let him enjoy the renown of having laboured 
 in behalf of heretics, without having obtained anything from them 
 in return. 
 
 It was from them, in fact, that the resistance especially came. 
 The emperor having declared, in the preamble of the decree, that 
 he did not intend either to adopt himself, or to compel any one 
 to adopt the doctrines that had been modified from deference to 
 the Protestants, the Interim obliged the Eoman Catholics to 
 nothing ; it was only in theory that they could be dissatisfied 
 with it ; but as for the reformed, they either openly repulsed it, 
 or obeyed it only in matters of form and with a repugnance 
 which they did not even seek to dissemble. Frederick of Saxony, 
 although a prisoner, obstinately refused to submit to it ; many 
 towns submitted to it only under threats of war and ruin. It is 
 true that Charles V. did not insist on people declaring that they 
 were convinced of the truth of all that was taught in his decree. 
 Provided they re-established the Eoman forms, the mass, images, 
 &c, he carried his inquiries no farther ; but those forms which 
 some viewed, or affected to view as indifferent, were not the less 
 for many others an idolatry in which their conscience forbade 
 them to take any part. 
 
 Add to this the embarrassments created in the midst of Eoman 
 Catholic populations, by the reformatory decree published along 
 
208 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 with the Interim. 1 As long as nothing more was attempted than 
 the putting upon paper, out of spite for the pope, a host of re- 
 forms hitherto refused by the court of Rome, the emperor had 
 only to congratulate himself on the zeal and docility of his 
 bishops ; but speaking and doing are different things, especially 
 when one has to give an example at his own cost of the thing he 
 has been lauding. Moreover, not a single step could be taken 
 without obstacles occurring which the pope alone could remove, 
 and which could not have been overthrown, without by the same 
 blow snapping the last tie of connexion with Rome. There was 
 a prevailing conviction that all that people might attempt to 
 build must be founded on sand, unless the pope were to concur 
 in laying the foundations ; all that they sought to destroy was 
 found to rest on papal regulations, or on papal dispensations, and 
 without a rupture with the pope how could either be annulled ? 
 After many tentative efforts the emperor saw that without his 
 aid nothing could be clone. That aid he caused him to be asked 
 to grant. Of the Interim, as may be believed, not a word was 
 said; the pope was presumed to know nothing about it. It was 
 only in the carrying out of some disciplinary reforms that he was 
 besought to lend his assistance. 
 
 Happy at this return, and very sure of gaining something by 
 it, the pope was in no haste to accede to the emperor's desire. 
 This was not only, it is true, in order to enhance the value of 
 the service to be rendered ; among the reforms in which his con- 
 currence was wanted, there Avas more than one which he was by 
 no means anxious to see accomplished. Hence there arose a 
 negotiation between the emperor and Peter Bertano, bishop of 
 Fano, and nuncio at the imperial court. In fine, Paul consented ; 
 but it soon came to be seen in what sense he had put himself at 
 the service of the imperial will. 
 
 In the first place, instead of the two legates whom the emperor 
 had asked for, he contented himself with sending two nuncios. 
 This was no more, in reality, than a difference of names, but 
 sometimes there is a great deal in a name. A legate is the re- 
 presentative of the pope ; he is as it were pope himself. A 
 nuncio is no more than an envoy, an agent, an ordinary ambas- 
 sador ; in most instances he is but a simple bishop, whereas the 
 legate is always a cardinal. They were two bishops, therefore, 
 Lippomani, coadjutor of Verona, and Pighini, bishop of Feren- 
 tino, who were added to Bertano. 
 
THE NUNCIOS ILL RECEIVED IN GERMANY. 2051 
 
 They arrived in Germany with a bull in which there was 
 scarcely a word said about the reforms decreed by the emperor, 
 and the co-operation for which he had applied. The pope pre- 
 tended that he had understood nothing more to have been asked 
 of him than the means only of re-opening the Church to those 
 who should present themselves with a view to re-admission. He 
 had confined himself therefore to investing the three nuncios 
 with power to take off every kind of excommunication and cen- 
 sures, even for the offence of bigamy, said the bull ; an ingenious 
 method of accrediting the old falsehood that bigamy was one of 
 the things sanctioned by the Eeformation. For the rest the pope 
 had not confined himself to perfidious insinuations ; the bull 
 exhibited, on some other points, an alarming frankness. The 
 nuncios might grant dispensations from all obligations, taken 
 even upon oath, with heretical princes and peoples ; they could 
 absolve from all perjury committed at their expense. This, it 
 will be seen, was a wretched commencement of the work of 
 bringing back the Protestants to a spirit of respect and obedience 
 to the Church ; it was also destructive of the entire policy of 
 the emperor, by annihilating any little confidence that they still 
 might have in his promises. 
 
 Accordingly, he was more discontented than ever ; all the 
 more as the pope, in this same bull, took all the compensation in 
 his power, for the encroachments made on him by the Interim. 
 It bore among other things, that the princes whose forfeiture had 
 been pronounced, on their return to the communion of the Church, 
 should be immediately restored to the possession of their states. 
 This was assuming, in the first place, that the emperor had de- 
 prived them of their states, as heretics, whereas he had always 
 maintained that he attacked them only as rebels ; it was assum- 
 ing, in the second place, that his consent would not be required 
 in order to their being restored to their rights. 
 
 The nuncios were generally ill received. " As Pighini," says 
 Pallavicini, 1 " was pursuing his journey through Germany, he 
 could see some feeble outward manifestations of religion, 2 which 
 the emperor's victories and edicts had with much difficulty in- 
 troduced ; but the minds of the people he found more heretical 
 than ever, so much so that the masses were celebrated without 
 anybody being present. Hardly was there found any one that 
 thought of applying to the nuncios for the exercise of their 
 powers, or that received them even with ordinary politeness;" 
 
 1 Book xi. ch. ii. - Of Roman Catholicism. 
 
210 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 to which the historian artlessly adds, " It was evident that all 
 their efforts would he useless unless they were sup-ported with 
 arms." Tims the Protestants hardly gave the nuncios any 
 occasion to open the fold again for the return of the stray sheep. 
 And yet the opening had been made wide enough. The monks 
 that had renounced their orders, had only, in order to their return 
 to favour, to wear their old monkish dress under their secular 
 clothes ; and as for those that had married, the pope, without 
 absolving them by any general measure, offered to make a 
 special enactment for each, conceived in the most indulgent 
 spirit possible. 
 
 Ill received by the Protestants, the nuncios met with a yet 
 worse reception from the Roman Catholics. The amhiguousness 
 of their mission, the palpable uselessness of its results, the ani- 
 mosity kept up by the maintenance of the translation to Bologna, 
 all contributed to their being looked upon with an evil eye, and 
 the emperor, without breaking with them, no longer cared about 
 giving them anything to do. After a stay of six months spent 
 in different cities of Germany, they spoke of going away. 
 Charles V. then asked them to delegate part of their powers to 
 the bishops. After lengthened conferences a kind of decree 
 was drawn up, half imperial, half papal, in which the bull was 
 inserted without modification, but accompanied with regulations 
 to which it was considered to give the sanction of the court of 
 Rome. 
 
 The year 1549 was now drawing to a close, so that the 
 council had been asleep for nearly three years. Some Spanish 
 bishops still remained at Trent ; some Italians at Bologna. 
 These were permanent protests against and for the translation. 
 
 That death which had so long been the subject of conversa- 
 tion, and the object of men's desires in Europe, now happened at 
 last. After a pontificate of fifteen years Paul expired, on the 
 10th November, regretted by the Romans whom he had con- 
 trived to attach to himself, admired by statesmen who had 
 acknowledged in him a master, but charged with a very heavy 
 load of deeds to be answered for in the eyes of religion and of 
 history. God struck him in the quarter where his offences had 
 been greatest. After having trampled under foot all laws, and 
 all the proprieties of life, in his eagerness to load with wealth 
 and honours the children whom he should have blushed to own, 
 it was on hearing of the treason of his grandson Octavius, 
 
DEATH AND CHARACTER OF PAUL III. 211 
 
 secretly in league with the emperor, that he felt his end ap- 
 proach. In less than three days he died. Had he in his last 
 moments any re-awakenings of conscience and serious piety '? 
 Did the first gleams of eternity, as he approached it, make him 
 see at last in its true light his long course of trickery with the 
 strong, of violence with the weak, of lies to men and to God ? 
 Possibly so ; possibly likewise, and this is but too likely, pos- 
 sibly he persisted to the last in taking no blame to himself. 
 And of what, after all, shall we accuse him ? A soldier, he had 
 held his post ; a general, he had made stratagem supply the 
 want of force ; " Prince of glorious memory," says the historian 
 of the council, " he shewed himself man only in the excess of 
 his affection for his own ; in all other respects he merited, in the 
 eyes of the Church, the name of hero." 1 For him, the Church 
 was himself ; and who knows that he was not prepared to make 
 a ground of merit before God, of all the guiltiest deeds that his 
 devotedness to his own glory had led him to perpetrate '? 
 
 After all, we venture to say, a life like his is perhaps more 
 shameful in reality for the Church and the popedom than that of 
 such or such a pope, whose very name excites our horror. Great 
 crimes are in some sort more personal. Those of Alexander VI., 
 for example, pertain rather to the man than to the pope ; a Eoman 
 Catholic may execrate them as well as we, except, indeed, that 
 he must afterwards explain how infallibility con Id have resided 
 in such a man. In Paul III. we have not to do with striking 
 and isolated crimes ; his life exhibits a long tissue of immoralities, 
 that are neither murders nor incests, but for which Eoman 
 Catholicism and the popedom remain and will eternally remain 
 in part responsible. With history in our hand we might prove 
 that Paul III. was the representative, and, as it were, the per- 
 sonification of Eoman Catholicism such as it was, such as it must 
 necessarily be, in the face of the Eeformation and of the tendencies 
 developed by it. Eepugnance to convoke a council, precautions 
 taken to retain the command of it, artifices of all sorts for the pur- 
 pose of dictating its decrees or giving them a false meaning ; all 
 that he felt, all that he did or that he wished to do, another pope 
 in his place would, like him, have felt, and clone, and wished to do. 
 God has judged him ; let us say nothing. When we look at the 
 anguish he must often have suffered during the last years of his 
 life, it requires no great effort of charity to feel more compassion 
 than hatred for an old man sinking under such a load ; but the 
 
 1 Pallavicini, book si. ch. vi. 
 
212 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 more indulgent we shall be towards those who bore that load of 
 errors and abuses, the more, as we have already said elsewhere, 
 we shall feel ourselves entitled to be severe towards the Church 
 that placed it on their shoulders. 
 
 To whom was this load now to pass ? Seldom has Europe 
 ever put this question to herself with more interest and dis- 
 quietude. 
 
 All that could be said has been said already on the conclaves. 
 The most Koman Catholic historians have been forced to groan 
 over all that is vexatious, according to them, and profoundly 
 scandalous, according to others, in the manner in which these 
 meetings are held, in the intrigues by which their sittings are 
 prolonged, in that preponderance which is openly given to 
 political interests over those of religion and the faith. What is, 
 still more, what was the election of a pope but a debate among 
 the powers called to concur in it by their cardinals ? The few 
 religious formalities thrown over that heap of earthly affairs, 
 seem to have been imagined for the purpose of inviting hypocrisy 
 to that congress of all the passions. What an insult to the Holy 
 Ghost and to God, to commence by solemnly invoking the pre- 
 sence of the Holy Ghost each of those days which are forthwith 
 to be so filled up with faction and cabal ! What an insult to 
 religion, to conscience, to common sense, to proclaim the result 
 of all these long machinations as the work of God ! But no : 
 these men are so familiarized with all that is most strange, that 
 neither their reason nor their conscience is any longer revolted 
 by it. Listen again to him whom we ever find at the breach 
 whenever there is a paradox or an abuse to be defended. " God 
 himself," says he, " in not producing, till after the creation of all 
 other tilings, the greatest and most perfect being that he has 
 placed upon the earth, has desired to teach us that slowness, in 
 important works, is no proof that they are less the result of his 
 will, but, on the contrary, the most expressive seal of that very 
 will." Of what then do we complain? The longer a conclave 
 has lasted, the more intrigues it has had, the more the chances 
 that the person elected is the elected of God. 
 
 The internal history of conclaves, accordingly, would make 
 one of the most interesting, but also, alas ! one of the most me- 
 lancholy books that could be composed. This very word con- 
 clave, which should signify shut, shut with a key, and which is 
 sought to be justified by an unheard of superfluity of gates and 
 sentinels, — is at once a lie. In spite of the oath of secrecy and 
 
1NTEKNAL HISTORY OF THE CONCLAVES. 213 
 
 that triple guard, it is a matter of public notoriety that letters 
 and emissaries pass and repass almost without any difficulty. 
 That loaf, that piece of meat, brought for such or such a cardinal, 
 may be found, if you open it up, to contain the note in writing 
 which is perhaps to decide the election. All this is known and 
 seen. Nobody is deceived, but everybody is willing to be so, 
 because everybody has need of this, in order to deceive in his 
 turn. Here, moreover, as everywhere else, we must distinguish 
 between persons and things. The pope being a personal sove- 
 reign, and still more, a sovereign called to meddle more or less 
 in the affairs of all the others, it is natural and inevitable that 
 politics should share in his election. Although the cardinals 
 were to try to banish them, they would find they could not. As 
 long as the popedom shall be what it is — and how shall it ever 
 be anything else ? — a conclave must be an afflicting spectacle to 
 all the friends of religion, to whatever communion they may 
 belong. Perhaps there never was one in which the cardinals 
 did not groan over such a state of things, but no more has there 
 hardly ever been one in which the great majority have not ac- 
 cepted, without scruple, the consequences of the part that each 
 has had to act, and have not appeared more happy than pained 
 at having to move about for days, and weeks, and months, in 
 that atmosphere of intrigiies. Weeks, months ! Were it a mat- 
 ter of ancient history, should we believe it ? Can we figure what 
 forty or fifty men, condemned to remain shut up together until 
 they shall have made choice of one of them, may have to say to 
 each other, to calculate, to combine, during fifty, sixty, or seventy 
 days ? It bewilders one. It is almost heroism. 
 
 Et was during no less than seventy-one days, (from 28th 
 November 1549, to 7th February 1550,) that the cardinals re- 
 mained in conclave, employed in giving a successor to Paul III. 
 And yet, to all ordinary motives for hastening the election, there 
 was added this time, one altogether new, and withal very 
 pressing. The year 1550 had commenced. A solemn jubilee 
 had been published ; it was proposed to have it opened on the 
 24th of December, with certain ceremonies which the pope alone 
 could perform. The city was chokefull of pilgrims. Every even- 
 ing an immense crowd assembled round the conclave to learn 
 the result of the voting of that day ; every night they returned 
 discontented, angry, cursing the cardinals and the conclave, as 
 if there was not among them the man whose feet they were ready 
 to kiss the moment that he should be pope. 
 
214 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 The cause lay in the fact, that few conclaves had ever been 
 so strongly divided. Three factions, as usual — the Imperial, the 
 French, and the Italian, divided the assembly. The Italian 
 wished to have one of the creatures of Paul III. elected. Car- 
 dinal Farnese, the head of that faction, was too young as yet 
 seriously to think of the tiara ; but it was of consequence to him 
 to be able to reckon on the protection of a future pope for his 
 family and for himself. This faction, however, did not include 
 all the Italian cardinals. The aggTandizement of the Farneses 
 had procured them enemies ; a pope who, owing his greatness to 
 them, should be expected to place it at their service, was not 
 thought to be desirable. The French favoured Cardinal Sal- 
 viati, the imperialists Cardinal Pole. A candidate had therefore 
 to be looked for who should unite the suffrages of two out of the 
 three factions, and such was to be found in the late president of 
 the council, Cardinal Del Monte. The Farneses had seen him 
 entirely devoted to Paul III. ; the French had seen him engaged 
 in conflict with the emperor. The majority had been led to 
 vote for him — still that was not enough. Former custom had 
 not permitted the elevation to the papal throne of a cardinal 
 whom the emperor had formally declared beforehand that he did 
 not desire to have as pope. Thus the previous consent of Charles 
 V. was requisite, and Del Monte, the principal author of the 
 translation of the council, seemed less likely than any of them 
 ever to obtain it. Cosmo, Duke of Florence, negotiated for him, 
 and on the 7th of February he was pope. 
 
 Now, among the engagements discussed in the conclave, and 
 to which each of the cardinals, according to usage, had promised 
 to submit in the event of his election, the imperial party had 
 caused the insertion of one bearing that the council was to be 
 continued. In consequence of this, Julius III. was hardly in- 
 stalled, when an ambassador extraordinary, Louis d'Avila, 
 arrived in Rome, bringing along with the emperor's official 
 compliments, the pressing request that he would take into con- 
 sideration the performance of his promise. Julius III. replied 
 that he was ready ; he had but one condition to interpose, — it 
 was that the council, said he, should serve for the ruin of heresy, 
 not for the demolition of the authority of the Holy See. This 
 was at once almost tantamount to a refusal. On such a condi- 
 tion as that no pope would ever have felt repugnant at the hold- 
 ing of a council. Besides, who could guarantee it to him ? Could 
 the emperor himself prevent the most delicate points being at 
 
DEL MONTE REIGNS AS JULIUS III. 215 
 
 any moment touched upon ? What was in any case clear, was 
 that Julius reserved to himself the power of regulating, as his 
 predecessor had done, the rights and the competence of the 
 council. To the old motives that actuated Paid III., and which 
 still subsisted, were added those of the new pope. He who had 
 pertinaciously remained at Bologna until the death of Paul III. 
 could not well yield, as a sovereign, without condemning his own 
 conduct as a minister. 
 
 He yielded, nevertheless. The solicitations addressed to him 
 were too warm, and the expectation too general ; necessity proved 
 an overmatch for wounded vanity. Perhaps it cost him less 
 than one might be disposed to think. Since his elevation to the 
 popedom he was no longer the same man. Although he had 
 always loved the pleasures of life, he had contrived, till then, to 
 give the precedence to business ; but now that he was pope, he 
 devoted himself to them so entirely, that his councillors found it 
 difficult to wrest a few hours from him for the most pressing in- 
 terests. As little disposed as any one could be to surrender any 
 of the prerogatives of the popedom, he considered them only as, 
 in some sort, a deposit to be transmitted intact to his successors ; 
 they were not to him the object of that deep felt worship to 
 which so many other popes had been, soul and body, devoted, 
 and of which he himself had till now been the inflexible minis- 
 ter. What still farther contributed to smooth away difficulties, 
 was that he had only to apply to his own case the old policy of 
 Paul III. We have seen, in fact, that the business remained 
 under the form of a suit at law between the emperor and the 
 Bologna assembly, a suit that was to be brought to an issue before 
 the pope. The representative of the assembly having become 
 pope himself, he could not be both judge and party. The matter 
 dropt accordingly ; all that he had to do was to call the council 
 without saying a word about what had passed. 
 
 All this, it may well be thought, took infinitely more time 
 than from our rapid narrative one might suppose. It was not 
 until after the lapse of six months that the parties began to un- 
 derstand each other. 
 
 The consent of the king of France, however, had yet to be ob- 
 tained. The French had never liked the selection of Trent for 
 the council ; we have seen that they thought it at once too 
 Italian and too German, albeit that it was impossible, as we 
 have also seen, to find a city not more German, or more Italian. 
 
216 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 It was from antipathy to the emperor that Henry II. had ap- 
 peared to approve the translation to Bologna ; thither he had 
 sent an ambassador, hut very few of his bishops. The view now 
 pressed on him was, that by refusing- to send them to Trent, he 
 would thenceforward be the sole author of the impossibility of 
 the council. He was nattered with the idea of being- arbiter, in 
 case of need, between the emperor and the pope ; and he was 
 gained over at last by being reminded of the character of " pro- 
 tector of the Holy See," in which so many of his predecessors 
 had gloried. The promise had also to be made to him, in order 
 that he might promise it in his turn to his parliament and bishops,, 
 that no encroachment should be made on the liberties of the 
 ( rallican Church. A very wise promise, but a very odd one also. 
 How could the pope logically say what the assembly would or 
 would not do ? Was not this tantamount to the avowal, that 
 he was preparing to allow it to do nothing without his leave ? 
 
 This point gained, there was much else to regulate. First, 
 there was the eternal question of the submission of the Protest- 
 ants to the decrees of the council, a question now more compli- 
 cated than ever, since the council had decided things to which 
 they neither would nor conld submit. Accordingly, at the diet, 
 when the emperor announced to them the resumption of the 
 council, they with one voice said that, first of all, there ought to 
 be a declaration that all that had been done at Trent was null. 
 To the pope's great displeasure Charles did not receive this pro- 
 posal with the indignation to be expected from a true Catholic. 
 He replied to the Protestants that it would be for the council to 
 examine the question ; the pope could not obtain from him an 
 explicit eng-agement for the maintenance of what had been done. 
 And as there was no doubt that the assembly, were it to deli- 
 berate under the same conditions as before, would not hasten t<> 
 ratify the whole, the Protestants craved, as before, that their 
 divines should be admitted, that the pope should not preside 
 either directly or indirectly ; that he should begin, in fine, by 
 absolving all the bishops from their oath of fidelity to him ; con- 
 ditions always renewed, always inacceptable, but which the em- 
 peror did not reject with so much warmth as the pope might 
 desire. 
 
 Julius took the course which we have ever seen taken by the 
 popes on such an occasion ; he went straight on. In the bull of 
 convocation, (November 1550,) he assumed as admitted and in- 
 contestable, that the new council was to be a continuation of the 
 
BULL OF CONVOCATION OF JULIUS III. 2 1 7 
 
 old ; x at the same time he started from the fact, that a council- 
 general held without an acknowledgment of his authority, would 
 not be a council. 2 The emperor had begged that this piece 
 might be communicated to him before being published. The 
 pope sent it to him, but dated and sealed, not wishing to appear 
 as consulting him about its composition. Charles made a vain 
 attempt to prevail on him to alter it. He replied, with much 
 reason, that a bull with nothing in it to startle the Protestants, 
 would necessarily be a lie. The ambassador requested that one 
 expression might at least be altered — that in which it was said 
 that the pope sought not only to preside in the council, but to 
 direct it, an assertion which Roman Catholics even might con- 
 sider as exaggerated. Julius replied, in plain words, that if 
 certain Catholics had forgot that truth, he did no more than his 
 duty in reminding them of it ; and to cut short all such demands, 
 he ordered the publication of the bull. 
 
 It was read accordingly in the diet, and immediately produced 
 the effect that had been dreaded. Consistent and sincere Eoman 
 Catholics were very well pleased with the frankness shewn by 
 the pope ; but all the emperor's party thought it imprudent and 
 ill-timed. The Protestants, on their side, repeated for the hun- 
 dredth time, that this was not the council to which they had pro- 
 mised to submit. The emperor once more intervened ; he pro- 
 mised solemnly, to both parties, that all should pass to the satis- 
 faction of Germany. But something more than words was 
 wanted. He had to give a precise expression to his promises, 
 and to allow them to be minuted ; accordingly, the decree of the 
 diet (13th February 1551) was almost point for point, the 
 counterpart of the bull that it was expected to homologate. The 
 pope had spoken of the continuation of the council ; the emperor 
 declared, by the medium of the diet, that everybody should be 
 free to propose, according to the dictates of his own conscience, 
 what he should believe likely to promote the good of the Church, 
 It might be proposed, therefore, that all should be recommenced. 
 The pope had spoken of directing the council ; the emperor 
 affirmed that he would take care that all things should be done 
 according to law and order. Now, many people thought, that 
 according to law and order implied either the cessation, or at 
 least a great diminution of the pope's influence. The pope had 
 
 1 Decernimus et declararaus — ipsius concilii continuation! et prosecutii'iii — incumboro 
 veliut. 
 a >i os ad quoa spectat generalia consilia indicere et dirigere. 
 
218 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 spoken of setting forth the doctrine of the Church ; the emperor an- 
 nounced a pious and free council, at which all the questions should 
 be decided in a Christian manner, according to Scripture and the 
 Fathers. In a word, the edict professed to he no more than a com- 
 mentary on the bull, but the commentary carried away the text. 
 
 Julius dissembled, officially at least, for in conversation he 
 always expressed himself with a frankness that quite bewildered 
 the politicians. He was a wit. He never met with a check 
 for which he did not console himself with some sufficiently biting 
 sarcasm, and he was no more put out of sorts by the emperor 
 than by any one else. 
 
 The re-opening was fixed for the 1st of May. One sole legate, 
 Marcellus Crescentio, cardinal of St. Marcellus, was charged to 
 preside ; two prelates, Sebastian Pighini, archbishop of Manfre- 
 donia, and Lippomani, bishop of Verona, were given him as co- 
 adjutors. Crescentio, if we are to believe the bull of legation, was 
 a zealous, prudent, and pious man ; but if we are to believe the 
 ambassador Vargas, 1 he was a man full of pride and effrontery, 
 who treated the bishops as if they were his footmen, and flew 
 into a passion the moment he met with any contradiction. We 
 shall see which of these two portraits most agreed with facts 
 
 The council opened on the day fixed, but with only fifteen 
 bishops. Notwithstanding this small number, from the very first 
 meeting held the evening before, " God permitted that there 
 should reign in that new assembly more liberty than concord." 2 
 The discussion bore principally on the time to be fixed for the 
 next session. The president wanted a delay of four months. 
 The majority were opposed to this, — and yielded. A first suc- 
 cess this to the pope. In this, at least, it is impossible to deny 
 that the new council was the continuation of the old. 
 
 In this session, (the eleventh dating from the commencement,) 
 all that was done was to declare the council open, and to adjourn 
 to the 1st of September. 
 
 New complications had now arisen, so that on the very day of 
 the opening it was doubtful that the council could live. 
 
 The sole result of the reconciliation of Octavius Farnese with 
 the emperor was its having hastened the death of Paul III. 
 Threatened with seeing his city of Parma occupied as Placentia 
 had been with the imperial troops, the duke put himself under the 
 protection of France, and received a French garrison. He had 
 previously asked the pope to continue to assist him against the 
 
 1 Letter of 26th November 1551. - Fa'lavidni, book xi. ch. xiv. 
 
POLITICAL OCCURRENCES FRANCE AND THE POPE. 219 
 
 emperor ; but whether from a dread of irritating the latter, or 
 from antipathy to the Farneses, of whom he was beginning to 
 be tired, Julius had replied that he must himself provide for the 
 safety of his city. It did not appear, however, that the pope 
 meant by this to sanction his putting himself under the protec- 
 tion of another prince ; perhaps, too, as some believed, he was 
 not really angry at it, but only durst not venture to share the 
 responsibility of a proceeding so likely to irritate the emperor. 
 The latter flattered him, besides, by representing that the con- 
 duct of the young duke was an outrage on the Holy See, from 
 which he held his city and his title. Strange assertion in the 
 mouth of the man who had dared to seize Placentia as belonging 
 to the empire, and said not a word about restoring it ! None 
 ventured to expose this contradiction. Julius launched a mani- 
 festo against Octavius, summoned him personally to Rome, and 
 declared that he would hand over to the emperor the task of 
 punishing him if he did not submit. 
 
 It was now the king's part to be angry. Is it the case, as 
 some will have it, that the pope's true object must have been to 
 set him at enmity with Charles V. in order to find a pretext for 
 breaking up the council? We cannot think that the Roman 
 court would have voluntarily purchased this result at the cost of 
 a war in Italy, especially at a moment when the goodwill of the 
 emperor permitted the hope that the assembly would not be dis- 
 posed to attempt too much. Be that as it may, war erelong 
 seemed inevitable. Julius remonstrated with Henry II. that it 
 was not allowable for him to undertake the defence of a vassal 
 without the sanction of his suzerain ; Henry II. dropt the ques- 
 tion of right, and asked him if the emperor, then, had laid him 
 under so many obligations that he could not tolerate any barrier 
 in the way of the encroachments of the empire in Italy. The 
 quarrel waxed fierce. Henry threatened to keep Parma ; the 
 pope to excommunicate Henry. " If he takes Parma from me," 
 he would say, " I, yes I, will take France from him." And the 
 emperor forbore to interfere, so that a quarrel between the king 
 and him rapidly took the form of a quarrel betwixt France and 
 the pope. 
 
 Erelong Henry kept no measures. The prelates of the king- 
 dom had orders to prepare for a national council ; those even who 
 were at Trent or at Rome were to return immediately to France. 
 Upon this the pope became a little more tractable. Yet he had 
 right on his side ; but what is right in politics ? And what was 
 
220 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 all this but politics under a slight varnish of religion ? Ascanius 
 della Cornia, his nephew, was despatched to the king. Henry 
 gave him a tolerably good reception, and matters were discussed 
 at first without excessive bitterness, but without coming to an 
 understanding. Anon the bitterness reappeared; and the king 
 ended at last by causing a protest on his part against the council 
 itself to be intimated to the pope. " This could not," he said, 
 " be a council-general, seeing the ill-will of the pope towards 
 France was about to prevent that country's taking a part in it." 
 In this, with all respect for the chivalrous Henry II., there was 
 neither loyalty nor logic. Was the pope then bound to permit, 
 without even reclaiming, a foreign prince to occupy one of the 
 cities in his domain ? Next, in so far as a nation is Roman 
 Catholic, and calls itself so, how admit that its refusal to take 
 part in a council-general can suffice to make it a particular 
 council? The parliament, on being consulted by the king, 
 went, however, so far as to declare that a nation is always free 
 to accept or to reject the canons of a council, and even to make 
 a selection from them, accepting some and rejecting others. It 
 is easy to prove, as was excellently done in the parliament, that 
 this liberty existed in the first ages ; but it is clear, also, that 
 this was before the constitution of the Roman Catholic unity. 
 What would the parliament even have said had some small 
 nation, some Swiss canton, that of Zug, for example, with the 
 eight or ten thousand inhabitants which it then had, declared 
 itself entitled to reject a council that had been admitted by the 
 rest of Europe? Now, the canton of Zug was a sovereign 
 .state. What France wanted to do Zug had the right to do also ; 
 but, like France, it could do so only on the condition of break- 
 ing, in fact, that unity which people knew so well how to employ 
 as a weapon in combating those who dared frankly to deny it. 
 
 As with Charles V., in fact, it was at the expense of the Pro- 
 testants that Henry II. redeemed his irreverent conduct towards 
 the Holy See. We have seen how the emperor, when his con- 
 tentions with Paul III. were at the very worst, wished to esta- 
 blish the Inquisition at Naples ; two years afterwards, when the 
 debates on the translation of the council ran highest, he actually 
 established it in the Netherlands. In France, it was by the 
 light of the fires at which the reformed were burnt, that Henry 
 II. may be said to have written his anti-papal protests ; it was 
 while providing those fires with victims that the parliament ex- 
 culpated itself from having violated the Church's unity, and by 
 
PROTEST OF HENRY II. HOW PARRIED. 221 
 
 its bold procedure furnished weapons for the Church's enemies. 
 A century and a half later we shall find that it was still by 
 punishments that Lewis XIV. desired to purchase forgiveness 
 for his Gallican temerities. Alas, how does the history of hu- 
 manity seem to be made up of blood and inconsistencies ! 
 
 Null and baseless in point of reason as it was, still the protest 
 of the king of France, together with the absence of his bishops, 
 struck a rude blow at the future authority of the council. That 
 blow Charles V. did his best to parry. He sent off to Trent all 
 the German and Spanish bishops he could muster ; he even saw 
 to the electors of Cologne, of Mayence, and of Treves, proceeding 
 thither, conceiving that their high rank and princely magnificence 
 would powerfully contribute to secure the credit of the assembly. 
 At the same time he had himself represented in it by three 
 ambassadors, one for the empire, another for Spain, and one for 
 Austria and his hereditary estates. But in proportion as his 
 ardour augmented that of the papal party was perceived to de- 
 cline. His history, already a long one, sufficiently warrants the 
 suspicion that he had some secret objects in view. Why so many 
 Germans in 1551 when there had been none in 1545 '? Distrust 
 was daily on the increase. 
 
 He had, also, put himself to a great deal of trouble in order 
 to oblige the Protestants to take part in the council by sending 
 their deputies to it. Julius III. had made no positive promise 
 that they would be received ; he had even said, in language 
 more picturesque than dignified, that he had no wish to fight 
 with a cat in a cage. There was nothing very attractive, it must 
 be allowed, in the prospective arrival in full council, with the 
 Bible under their arms, of men, everything said by whom must 
 inevitably tend, with whatever mildness they might temper their 
 expressions, to deny all the rights, and to demolish all the pre- 
 tensions, of the assembly and the pope. The political protests 
 had been disposed of; the religious protests it was of importance 
 that they should hear at a distance only, in order that they might 
 at least have the appearance of persons that heard them not, and 
 therefore might be excused for not replying to them. The Pro- 
 testants, on their side, made very little account of the pretended 
 favour intended to be done to them. They saw plainly enough 
 that there was no intention of giving them any substantial in- 
 fluence in the votings of the assembly ; they asked themselves if 
 their presence, after having served no purpose, perhaps, but that 
 of irritating their judges, and preventing all concession, would 
 
222 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 not be interpreted as implying acquiescence. Finally, they 
 behoved certainly not altogether to leave out of reckoning that 
 John Huss had been burnt at the council of Constance, notwith- 
 standing the safe-conduct of the Emperor Sigismond. The Fathers 
 of Trent were asked to begin by giving such a safe-conduct 
 themselves, in the name of the council and of the pope, to the 
 Protestant doctors who should be chosen for the purpose of 
 attending. 
 
 At Trent, meanwhile, nothing had been clone ; hardly had it 
 been proposed to do anything. The four months had been spent 
 in waiting for, receiving, and talking over news ; in the few 
 congregations that had met, the documents bequeathed by the 
 Council of Bologna had been put into order. The session took 
 place on the 1st of September. All that was done was to adjourn 
 to the 11th of October, intimating at the same time that the 
 chief subject to be treated was the eucharist. 
 
 It was on the 1st of September, also, that the ambassadors 
 had their first official audience. The Count de Montfort, who 
 appeared for the empire, spoke of the council and the pope in 
 the most flattering terms ; none could have imagined, to hear 
 him, that there could ever have been the slightest misunder- 
 standing between the emperor and the Court of Home. The 
 French Ambassador, Amyot, the translator of Plutarch, pro- 
 ceeded in quite another tone. The letters accrediting him were 
 addressed, " To the most holy Fathers in Christ of the assembly 
 of Trent." Assembly not council ; this was a revival of the late 
 quarrel about Bologna, now about to recommence with the king 
 instead of continuing with the emperor. Before opening the 
 letter it was asked whether, witli that address upon it, it could 
 fitly be opened? After some deliberation it was opened, but 
 with the declaration that this was clone from respect for the king 
 of France, and without anywise admitting the insulting title he 
 had given to the council ; a title, it was added, which his majesty 
 had surely not adopted in an ill sense. It was also from respect, 
 as the letter ran, but only from respect, and without holding 
 himself anywise bound to do so, that the king wished to explain 
 to the assembly why he had not sent his bishops. He then 
 related, but in moderate terms, his quarrel with the pope, a 
 quarrel which at that moment took the shape of skirmishes 
 between the garrison of Parma and the pontifical army. He 
 ended by asking the bishops to receive his letter, as that not of 
 an enemy, but of the eldest son of the Church, full of respect 
 
PARLIAMENTARY AUDACITIES THE EUCHARIST. 223 
 
 for the Holy See, although unfortunately at war with him who 
 occupied it, as ready, in fine, to submit to all the assembly's de- 
 crees, provided they were made legitimately and legally. 
 
 Great was the buzz of voices on hearing this, but it rose to 
 a tumult when Amyot declared that he was commissioned to 
 repeat, as a complement to the letter, the protest already made 
 at Rome in the name of Henry II. That protest said nothing 
 at bottom that was not already in the writing, and that had not 
 been seen by everybody ; but with the letter, which, from be- 
 ginning to end, was calm and polite, none could seem to be 
 offended ; whereas how could any one dissemble with respect to 
 the protest, which was equally clear and animated, and was 
 made still more so by the incisive tone of the ambassador ? The 
 example set by Paul III. with respect to the ambassador Mendoza 
 was followed, and a declaration made to the effect, that as no- 
 thing guaranteed the authenticity of the insulting commentary 
 added by Amyot, no regard should be paid to it ; that they 
 should keep to the letter as the only authentic document. 
 
 Amyot's words, notwithstanding, were not long of receiving a 
 most striking confirmation in France, and one that at all times 
 most sensibly affected the popes. A royal edict prohibited the 
 remittance to Rome of any money, on any account whatsoever. 
 The verification of this measure in the parliament gave occasion 
 for the boldest speeches, so that a meeting of Protestants could 
 not have expressed themselves with more severity on the extor- 
 tions of the Court of Rome. " Who shall prevent us," said the 
 procurator-general, " from dispensing with sending sums of 
 money to the pope ? Could these do anything towards assuring 
 men's consciences ? Not only did they not justify matters be- 
 fore God, but it is long since they have ceased even to colour 
 matters in the eyes of men." The people whom they were 
 burning said nothing worse of them. 
 
 It was in the midst of this fierce agitation, then, that the 
 council proceeded to dogmatize on the eucharist. 
 
 Immediately after the twelfth session, the members were em- 
 ployed in collecting the articles which the divines would have 
 to examine. Transubstantiation naturally found a place in the 
 first line, as the foundation of Roman doctrine in these matters. 
 There were nine other articles, of which one only was of import - 
 ance, that of communion under both kinds. 
 
 First of all, let us say a word on this last. 
 
224 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 There was some exaggeration in the importance attached to 
 it by the Protestants. The more you spiritualize the holy 
 supper, the easier, it would seem, you ought to find it to he 
 accommodating as to the manner of receiving it. The contrary 
 proved to be the case. Wherever the Reformation had appeared 
 there was not a more exciting question than that about restoring 
 the cup to the people. 
 
 It was because neither was there any question in which more 
 audacious violence had been done to the plain letter of Scripture 
 by the Church of Rome. In spite of the few passages in which 
 bread is spoken of without wine^ being mentioned, it is clear 
 that after having read in the Gospels, and in St. Paul, the de- 
 tailed narrative of the institution of the supper, 2 nobody woidd 
 suppose that any one could have dreamt of suppressing one of 
 the two elements. Protestants, it is true, do not regard wine as 
 indispensable to the validity of the act. Nowhere have they 
 refused the supper to persons who absolutely cannot drink wine ; 
 their synod at Poitiers, in 1560, has declared this. 3 Nowhere, 
 any more, have they affirmed that a country without wine and 
 without the possibility of having it, ought to be deprived of the 
 supper. But as for taking the cup from all, always and every- 
 where, if that is not the most untoward of the alterations to 
 which Apostolical Christianity has been subjected, it is at least 
 the most palpable, and that which we need feel least surprised 
 to see most warmly resented by all who were beginning to open 
 their eyes to the errors of the Church. Then, it the Protestants 
 did exaggerate the importance of the cup, they had been justiiied 
 in this by two popes, centuries before. Leo the Great, in one of 
 his discourses, accuses the Manichajans of sacrilege, because they 
 would communicate without wine. Gelasius I., in one of his 
 decrees, expresses himself still more forcibly. " The division of 
 one sole and the same mystery,'' says he in speaking of the 
 supper, " cannot take place without great sacrilege." 4 Bellar- 
 mine maintains, it is true, that Gelasius addressed himself to 
 priests only ; but, as Baronius admits, there is not in the whole 
 piece a single word that permits that supposition. 
 
 As for demonstrating historically that the communion under 
 both kinds long prevailed, that would be useless ; it has never 
 
 1 In Acts ii. and xx. The supper in these two passages is called the breaking of bread; 
 but it is spoken of there only incidentally, without any detail, and wherever there are de- 
 tails, there the wine occurs 
 
 - Matthew xxvi. ; Mark xiv. ; Luke xxii. : 1 Cor. xi. 3 Discipline, ch. xii. art. 7. 
 
 4 Divisio unius cjusdemque mysterii sub grandi sacrilegio non potest provenire. 
 
HISTORICAL PROGRESS— THE CHURCH S INCOMPETENCY. 2zO 
 
 been denied. Only people are mistaken in limiting this long 
 time to three or fonr centuries. " Until the commencement of 
 the twelfth," says Mabillon in his treatise In ordinem Romanian, 
 " the communion under both kinds was invariably maintained 
 by the Church." l It is curious to contrast this positive declara- 
 tion of a Roman Catholic as candid as he was learned, with the 
 manner in which two councils have admitted the fact. At 
 Constance, in voting the communion under one kind : " It is 
 true," it is added, " that in the primitive Church, the sacrament 
 was received under both kinds." 2 Then comes another council, 
 and this admission, incomplete as it is, still appears too candid : 
 " At the commencement of the Christian religion," the Tridentine 
 Fathers proceed to say, " the practice of the communion under 
 both kinds teas not rare." 3 See how the truth, even when 
 purely historical, makes progress in the successive decisions of 
 the Church. Why should not a third council declare that it 
 was very rare t A fourth, that it was quite unknown ? There 
 would be less distance between these last assertions and that of 
 Trent, than between that of Trent and the actual fact, clearer 
 than day, that the Church existed for ages without such a thing 
 as communicating without wine being dreamt of, and, above all, 
 without people having the idea that the Church could have 
 made it a law. 4 
 
 This last, in fact, is the most serious point in the question. 
 The Christian who may be most disposed to allow the Church 
 all the rights she arrogates to herself, might still on reflection 
 doubt that she could have this. When Jesus Christ had said, 
 " Drink ye all of it," when twenty or thirty generations of 
 Christians, when the fathers, when the councils have been 
 unanimous for ages, in translating this word all by everybody, 
 was it still a matter that could reasonably be changed ? The 
 Church, according to this, might have taken away, had she so 
 desired, not the wine only, but the bread also. She might have 
 still more plausibly done so, seeing that Jesus Christ simply 
 
 1 Ante annum 1120, communio sub utraque specie ab ecclesia immutabiliter retinebatur 
 — Sess. xiii. 
 
 2 Licet in primitiva Ecclesia hujusmodi saeramentum reciperetur a fldelibus sub utraque 
 specie. 
 
 3 Licet ab initio Christianas religionis non infrequens utriusque speciei usus fuisset — 
 Sess. xxi. 
 
 * Angelo Manvique, in his Annates des Citeaux, speaks of several ancient public chalices 
 preserved down to his time in various churches. On that of the Cathedral of Rheims, the 
 gift, according to tradition, of St. Remi, the following line was engraved : — 
 
 " Hauriat hinc populus vitam de sanguine sacro." 
 " Hence let the people drink life from the sacred blood." 
 
 P 
 
226 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 said, " Take, eat ;" it might at least have been alleged that 
 the word all does not occur in the phrase. Might it not be said 
 that the Saviour wished to prevent the very thing which has 
 happened? With the bread he says "Eat," with the wine, 
 " Drink ye all!" This word accordingly has ever given peculiar 
 annoyance to the defenders of the Roman practice. Mark how 
 Bossuet gets rid of it. Nothing, says he, more clear than this 
 passage ; but no more is there anything more clear than the 
 order given to the Jews to eat the passover in a standing posi- 
 tion. Did they observe that command? No. Jesus Christ 
 himself violated it. If then the Jewish Church could change 
 something in its passover, why should not Ave also have modified 
 something in ours? 1 A sophism this, a pure sophism; and 
 bad must the cause indeed be when we find Bossuet reduced to 
 this. The Jews did not eat standing, agreed ; but when they 
 read in their law the positive command to do so, where do we 
 see that they were allowed themselves to give the force of a law 
 to the practice of remaining seated ? It is one thing to neglect 
 a precept, because thought to be of small importance, and 
 another thing to decree the contrary. Had Christians begun 
 of themselves, from negligence, to communicate only with bread, 
 the Church would have been none the better authorized to re- 
 fuse the wine to those who might ask for it. In fine, what pro- 
 portion could there be between an act so purely accessory as that 
 of eating in a standing or sitting position, and an act positively 
 pointed out, in the institution, as a half of the sacrament ? 
 
 Wherefore, then, has the Roman Church shewn so much per- 
 severance in extending, and so much obstinacy in maintaining, 
 a practice apparently so indifferent as that of withholding the 
 cup ? Controversialists have seen nothing in this but infatua- 
 tion, a false sense of shame at the idea of retracting the ostenta- 
 tion of omnipotence. This last motive has not, doubtless, been 
 without its influence. To say no precisely where Jesus Christ 
 has said ?/es, might be at certain epochs a powerful means of 
 making an impression on men's minds, by exhibiting the autho- 
 rity of the Church as equal if not superior to that of its founder. 
 But there has been another reason besides these. A matter of 
 indifference as it is in a dogmatical point of view, the taking 
 away of the cup is of immense importance in a sacerdotal point of 
 view. It forms the most continuous and the most sacred of the 
 barriers that have been raised by the Roman Church betwixt 
 
 1 Variations, book viii. 
 
rome's reasons for refusing the cup. 227 
 
 the flock and the pastors ; it has given occasion for a privilege 
 which has the double advantage of not being burdensome to the 
 people, and yet of being exercised daily before the eyes of all, 
 and in the midst of the performance of one of the most solemn 
 of all acts. Add to this, that nothing had been neglected that 
 could enhance its value. After the wine had been taken from 
 the people, it was still conceded for two centuries as a very great 
 favour, to those who received the communion from the hands of 
 the pope. Towards the close of the fourteenth century, 1 this 
 last vestige disappeared ; we see no longer any one but the king 
 of France, who in his quality of Most Christian King, and of 
 eldest son of the Church, still communicated under both kinds, 
 but only on the day of his consecration and in the article of 
 death. Thus an honour which the most powerful of the mon- 
 archs of Europe obtained only as a favour twice in his life, the 
 most petty village priest enjoys every day, as a right inherent 
 in the priesthood. How can we be surprised after this to find 
 so much repugnance to concession on this article, even although 
 dogmatic infallibility had no direct interest in it. 
 
 The Protestants, on their side, had not ceased to make it one 
 of the primary conditions of their return to the Roman Church. 
 The emperor felt that were this point once to be decided in the 
 Eoman sense, all hope must be abandoned either of gaining the 
 Lutherans, or of preventing their protesting formally against the 
 council. His ambassadors, accordingly, insisted that there should 
 be no discussion of its merits. The presidents wrote about it to 
 the pope. He replied that the omission of a point of such im- 
 portance was not to be thought of; all he permitted was that it 
 should be put off for three months. To what purpose ? After 
 the manner in which it had been already treated in the prepara- 
 tory meetings, the Protestants could not imagine that there ever 
 would be a vote in their favour upon it. There had been a talk 
 of conceding the cup to them, biit on condition that they should 
 declare that they did not regard it as necessary, the body of 
 Christ being entire under each species. An illusory concession 
 which came, in fact, too late, as we shall see, and which no Pro- 
 testant ever accepted with that qualification. 
 
 On this occasion was resumed the delicate question of their 
 coming to the council. Neither pope, nor assembly, neither the 
 Protestants themselves nor any one in Europe, looked for any 
 good from their coming. The emperor always pressed it. He 
 
 1 See Mabillori, same treatise. 
 
228 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 had directed that a safe-conduct should be asked for them, to 
 winch he was to add one from himself, so as to remove any appre- 
 hension that their deputies might feel with respect to their per- 
 sonal safety. The assembly hesitated. Besides the repugnance 
 felt by its members to facilitate the access of heretics to Trent, 
 they doubted how far they were competent to give a safe-con- 
 duct ; apprehending, not without reason, that such an act of 
 sovereignty might be regarded as an invasion of the papal autho- 
 rity. At last the idea was entertained, at the suggestion of the 
 pope himself, of drawing up one in which the Protestants should 
 not be named. They were comprised under the title of " Eccle- 
 siastics and seculars from all Germany," to whom the council 
 guaranteed, "as far as it was in its power," liberty and security. 
 With this as far as it ivas in their power, 1 the pope's authority 
 remained intact, but the safe-conduct was no longer a safe-con- 
 duct. The pope was left free to cause the deputies to be seized ; 
 and who could feel sure that the emperor would feel disposed to 
 defend them ? 
 
 Transubstantiation had been voted without a debate. No 
 voice had been raised against it. It is easier sometimes for 
 people to agree in what is altogether false or absurd, than in 
 what is only partially so. 
 
 The agreement among the divines did not, however, go beyond 
 what was required in order to the anathematizing, in the gross, 
 of the adversaries of transubstantiation. After having called it 
 a mystery, it was found impossible to resist the fancy to have it 
 explained. Some prelates, more ignorant or more wise, had 
 begged that the council would keep to the anathemas ; but the 
 majority thought themselves able enough to draw up, in the 
 sixth session, a doctrinal decree. Hardly had it commenced when 
 a keen dispute arose between the Dominicans and the Fran- 
 ciscans. According to the one, the Saviour's body is made pre- 
 sent in the eucharist in the way of production, that is to say, 
 without quitting heaven, it is reproduced in the wafer; accord- 
 ing to the others, it is produced by adduction, that is to say, it 
 really arrives from heaven to take the place of the substance of 
 the bread. In the former case, consequently, the bread subsists, 
 but is changed ; in the latter it is annihilated, and replaced by 
 another substance. 
 
 Both might well have been asked what they knew of the mat- 
 
 >• CJuautum ad ipsum sanctum synodum spectat. 
 
THANSUP.STANTIATION AS HELD DY LUTHER. 229 
 
 ter, what they could ever hope to know of it, and, above all, 
 what possible interest either faith or piety could have in such 
 details. Believers, forsooth, were greatly distressed to know 
 whether it was by production or by adduction that they had 
 Christ's body administered to them ! It is true, that if the miracle 
 be once admitted, it is by production that one may best try to 
 explain it ; but in that case you challenge against the miracle in 
 itself, one of the strongest objections that it can encounter. What 
 becomes of the identity and the unity of the body produced in 
 several different places simultaneously ? This was asked by the 
 Franciscans ; but revenge was taken on their adduction. No- 
 thing in nature, said the Dominicans, is annihilated. If the 
 eucharistic bread is not changed, but only replaced, what, then, 
 becomes of it ? And so both were right and both wrong, the 
 inevitable result when people are such fools as to contend in the 
 dark, without anything really to contend about. 
 
 Some things are prevented by their very strangeness from 
 being attacked so vigorously as they seem to require. Transub- 
 stantiation is one of these. In the eyes of all who do not believe 
 it, no greater or more inconceivable error ever entered the mind 
 of man. But having once resolved to keep our temper, and to 
 respect honest convictions, we naturally recoil from a contest in 
 which the insulting words, dishonesty, silliness, and so forth, are 
 so apt to drop from our pen. Shall this be a reason for our say- 
 ing nothing ? No ; while we abstain from insult, we shall speak 
 out everything. 
 
 First of all, be it well understood that we speak of transub- 
 stantiation Boman, material, absolute, such, in fine, as was de- 
 creed by the council. Many believe to this day that Luther 
 admitted it ; and these, if there be any among our readers, have 
 perhaps asked themselves, why, from respect for Luther, we do 
 not leave this point in the shade ? Our respect for Luther and 
 for his disciples never shall make us shut our mouth where we 
 think he has erred ; but here, the more narrowly we have looked 
 into the matter, the more have we become convinced that in 
 attacking the gross materialism of the Roman supper, we should 
 be rather for Luther than against him. He has admitted the 
 word, and this is vexatious. As for the thing, he so spiritualized 
 it that the word in his mouth, especially towards the close of his 
 life, became a complete contradiction. Accordingly, after the 
 sixteenth century, and when the first heat of the controversy had 
 passed, Lutheranism and Calvinism have generally considered 
 
230 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 themselves as agreed on this point, and very few Lutherans in our 
 times would refuse to subscribe to all that we are about to say. 
 
 We shall not insist on physical objections. That body enclosed 
 entire within a space some thousand times less than its natural 
 size, and produced or adduced, as you will, in a hundred thou- 
 sand places at once without ceasing 1 to be the same ; that wafer 
 which becomes flesh, true flesh, without any change whatever 
 being wrought in its colour, in its form, and in its taste ; that 
 wine which becomes blood, true blood, while it preserves all the 
 qualities of wine, — in all this there is abundant scope for sneers 
 at improbabilities, if we chose to indulge them. And as if this 
 were not enough of a miracle, so utterly unheard of, the Eoman 
 Catechism tells us of a second, not so ordinarily spoken of, but 
 which must certainly be admitted if we admit the first. " The 
 bread becoming flesh," it says, " and the wine becoming blood, 
 by a farther miracle they preserve their appearance and their 
 taste." Thus, the thing is still more mysterious and wonderful 
 than if the wafer had visibly become flesh, and the wine visibly 
 become blood. You would in that case have had but one miracle, 
 but now you have two. Great and glorious act, assuredly, of the 
 power and the wisdom of God ! He performs a miracle, and 
 immediately behold a second miracle for the purpose of conceal- 
 ing the first. 1 
 
 We are not in the least surprised, says Bossuet, 2 at the diffi- 
 culties that arise from the senses. " The other mysteries of reli- 
 gion have accustomed us to subject our understandings to the 
 obedience of the faith." It is no more difficult for the Son of 
 God, he elsewhere says, to make his body be present in the 
 eucharist by saying, This is my body, than to make a sick man 
 whole by saying, Be thou whole. In fine, according to the 
 Catechism, " If the bread and the wine which we take at our 
 meals, change, by the sole force of nature, into flesh and blood, 
 why should the bread and the wine of the supper not become 
 changed by the force of the sacrament, into the body and the 
 blood of Jesus Christ?" 3 Answers which all amount to this: 
 " Speak not of improbabilities, all things are possible to God." 
 
 No, all things are not possible to God. There are things 
 
 1 AVe may add that all other miracles as sensible proofs of divine power tend to weaken 
 temptations to unbelief, whereas this, by deceiving the senses, presents a perpetual tempta- 
 tion to unbelief. Now, " God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.'' 
 — Tr. 
 
 - Treatise on the Eucharist. 
 
 3 Exposition of the Catholic Faith, ch. x. 
 
THINGS AROVE REASON AND CONTRARY TO REASON. 231 
 
 which he cannot do ; there are things, if you prefer the expres- 
 sion, which he could not desire to do without ceasing to be rea- 
 sonable and wise, without ceasing to be God. Can he make a 
 thing to be and not to be ? That an event that is past should 
 not have been? Can he create a square which is round, or a 
 circle of which the radii are not all equal ? " You are obliged 
 to suppose," replies Bossuet, "that it is impossible to God to 
 make one body to be at the same time in different places ; but 
 this is what you have not even attempted to prove by any pas- 
 sage of Scripture." The Scriptures have never said, in so far as 
 we are aware, that a part is less than its whole, or that a straight 
 line is the shortest that can be drawn from one point to another ; 
 but are we any the less sure of the thing on that account, less 
 ready to repel, as insulting to God, the idea that he could ever 
 have commanded us to believe the contrary ? 
 
 Well, then, we defy any one to shew us that these impossibili- 
 ties differ from that of transubstantiation. Keason can no bet- 
 ter accommodate itself to the presence of one body in two different 
 places, than to a square being not a square, to a circle which 
 shall not be round, to an event which is past and which never- 
 theless is yet to come. 
 
 Shall we be told that reason has nothing to do here ? Take 
 care. That which is only above reason may, in fact, give rea- 
 son nothing to exercise itself upon ; but never can you deprive 
 reason of the right to reject what is contrary to it. The making 
 whole of a sick person, the resurrection of a dead person, are no 
 doubt miracles that astonish us ; but when attacked by the infidel, 
 it is on the ground of improbability, 1 not of impossibility ; he is 
 compelled to acknowledge that if God willed them, they might 
 have happened, and must have happened. Transubstantiation 
 is a different thing. You cannot attack it without your argu- 
 ments falling full on its very possibility ; you cannot charge it 
 with improbability without at the same time charging it with 
 absurdity. This important distinction betwixt what is above 
 reason and what is contrary to reason, Bossuet admits ; he con- 
 tests only the right of applying it. "Thus," says he, "every 
 time that a man shall object that a point of faith is not only 
 above reason, but directly contrary to reason, must we enter 
 with him into this inquiry?" Eefuse, if you will; but in that 
 case, abandon the discussion. All your arguments are null 
 before hand. A thing that is contrary to reason cannot be proved ; 
 
 1 Unlikelihood would perhaps be a better word here than improbability. — Tr, 
 
232 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TKENT. 
 
 how, then, could you prove it as long as you shall not have 
 shewn that it is not so? Roman controversialists are the first to 
 follow this course, when it does not run against them. When, 
 for example, they would prove the credibility of miracles, they set 
 about it just as if they were Protestants ; they prove, first of all, 
 that reason can admit them. Why refuse to do as much when 
 they have to do with transubstantiation '? Is this not an admis- 
 sion that they would not succeed? In fact, you have only to 
 ask those who believe in it. Force them to analyze what they 
 experience in thinking of it, and they will tell you that they do 
 not believe in it in the same manner that they believe in the 
 mhacles of Scripture. The latter, as soon as you are convinced 
 of the authenticity of the book that records them, you believe 
 without effort; they are only acts, exceptional, no doubt, but 
 quite natural and simple, of God's power. But the former you 
 come to believe, or to persuade yourself that you believe, only by 
 putting a force upon yourself, by trampling upon your reason, in 
 line, by infatuating yourself. The mind acquiesces in the miracles 
 of Scripture; but here, it can only withdraw from exercising- 
 itself and be silent. The moment we have to do, not with a 
 momentary suspension of the law of nature, but with the reversal 
 of an axiom, all acquiescence is impossible. We shall have occa- 
 sion to return to these considerations in Book IV. in speaking of 
 the Mass. 
 
 Even were it but a simple miracle, it would always remain to 
 be proved that this miracle really happened. 
 
 T/ris is my body, said Jesus Christ ; and this, according to the 
 Roman Church, is the foundation of its doctrine. On which we 
 might first of all object, — 
 
 That Jesus Christ was there, in flesh, in bones, still a com- 
 plete man ; and that the idea of a man holding his own body in 
 his hands is a monstrous oddity ; 
 
 That in saying, " This is my body which is broken for you" 
 lie would have expressed, had it been really his body, a fact that 
 was not correct ; since it was on the evening before his death, 
 and his body as yet was nowise broken ; x 
 
 That after having called the wine his blood, he called it this 
 fruit of the vine ; 
 
 That if the words of St. Luke, " this cup is the New Testa- 
 ment in my blood," evidently make the cup, not a testament, 
 
 1 The Vulgate accordingly makes it shall he broken 'frangetun, while the Greek verb is iu 
 the present tense. 
 
TRANSUBSTANTIATION CONTRARY TO SCRIPTURE. 233 
 
 but the symbol of a testament, there is no reason for the preced- 
 ing phrase not being figurative also, and for the wine not being 
 the symbol of the blood, the bread that of the body ; 
 
 That Jesus Christ often used expressions not less figurative, 
 I am the door, I am the vine, I am the way ; 
 
 In fine, that if he said (John vi.), " The bread that I will give 
 is my flesh," and " he that eateth me, even he shall live by me," 
 in the same chapter we read also, " the flesh profiteth nothing ; 
 the words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are 
 life." Suppose that a man holding bread, and employed further 
 in breaking it into twelve parts, were to say, " This is my body 
 which is broken for you," to what would you apply the word 
 this ? Evidently to the whole bread, for it is the whole bread 
 that is broken, not the separate pieces. Thus, in order to our 
 being able to understand the first four words, this is my body, in 
 their literal meaning, we must leave out of view those that follow, 
 at least they must be taken in a figurative sense, for there is 
 evidently a figure in calling that broken which is not so. After 
 this, what ground can we have for denying that the whole phrase 
 is figurative ? 
 
 Without going beyond the narrative of the institution, we 
 shoiild still find there more than one detail positively contrary to 
 the literal sense of the four words on which Eomanists would 
 fain concentrate the debate. And what, would the reader know, 
 has the Catechism, which had seen them before we did, done with 
 these details ? The pains it takes to attenuate them, is the best 
 proof of the annoyance they must have given. "Jesus," says 
 St. Matthew, " having taken the bread and given thanks." This 
 to give thanks, (to bless God, for that is the Greek,) is first 
 changed into Messing, consecrating the bread, a change previ- 
 ously made, but with more reserve, in the decree of the council, 
 where it is merely said, " After the benediction of the bread 
 and the wine." 1 Here then is the consecration, but as the words 
 reputed to be consecratory, this is my body, do not, nevertheless, 
 occur in the narrative, until a line or two lower down, the Cate- 
 chism takes care to bring the two ideas into closer connexion. 
 This, it says, is as if the Evangelist had made it run thus : — 
 " Having taken the bread, Jesus blessed it, saying, This is my 
 body." So here we have the mass discovered. 2 Notwithstand- 
 
 1 Post panis vinique benedictionem. 
 
 2 Yet the Roman Catholic doctors did not light upon it so cleverly as one might suppose. 
 Transubstantiation was taught long before it was thousrht possible to indicate the precise 
 
234 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRF.NT. 
 
 ing this, however, the canon of the mass has taken a farther pre- 
 caution. " Take and eat," says the priest, " for this is my body." 1 
 "This for, however," adds the Catechism, " is not necessary to 
 the validity of the sacrament." Why, then, put it there, when 
 none of the Evangelists has done so ? Had the sacred authors 
 attached the smallest importance to the order and the regularity 
 of these details, if, in particular, they had seen in the words, 
 This is my body, the consecration of the bread, the signal of its 
 being changed into flesh, — how can we conceive that they should 
 all have fallen into the incredible inadvertence of not introducing 
 them until after the fact of the distribution of the bread ? " He 
 brake it, and divided it among them, and said, Take, eat." Then 
 follows, as a mere explanation, " This is my body." With an 
 historian believing in transubstantiation, and believing it to be 
 effected by those four last words, it would not be an inadvert- 
 ence, but folly, to introduce them only at the end. Where should 
 we find a Roman Catholic, who being asked to say over the mass, 
 would put the consecration after the distribution ? And if it be 
 at all admitted that some ignorant clown, knowing nothing of 
 the matter, might make such a blunder, who will admit that four 
 or five doctors, writing coolly and calmly, could all have fallen 
 into the same error, or rather into the same absurdity ? 
 
 And now, let us leave the details. It is a history we are 
 writing ; let us see what history says on the subject. 
 
 To begin with that of the Apostles, taken from the Acts and 
 the Epistles, we might ask any man of good faith, if he could 
 come away from the perusal of it with the idea that the com- 
 munion was at that time what Rome has made it since. Some 
 expressions might be cited, more or less copied from those used 
 by Jesus Christ ; but others would have to be adduced also, 
 which, as they can only be taken literally, must necessarily out- 
 weigh the others. We may say and demonstrate, that all that 
 can be found in favour of transubstantiation are figurative ; but 
 
 moment when the miracle took place. Innocent III. iDe sacrificio Missa?) admits, that in 
 order to be able to say with truth, "This is my body," Jesus must have effected the change 
 which they announce some time before. But if they were no more in his mouth than the 
 announcement of something already done, how could they have in the mouth of the priest 
 the power of operating that very thing '! Innocent, accordingly, attributed the sacramental 
 consecration, not to these words, but to the prayer made by the priest before pronouncing 
 them. This was more reasonable, but it was vague. More precision was wanted, and people 
 kept to the words, This is my body. Innocent's opinion, however, was not abandoned ; 
 shortly before the council, it re-occurs in Biel and Catharini. Thus it is hardly three cen- 
 turies since the consecrating virtue was definitely attributed to those four words. This is one 
 more of those things which the greater number of Roman Catholics, and even of their priests, 
 are far from suspecting. 
 
 1 Hoc enim est corpus meum. 
 
THE EUCHARIST A REPAST ST. PAUL'S VIEW OF IT. 225 
 
 with respect to all that are opposed to it, it is impossible to de- 
 part from their plain and obvious meaning. In short, all that 
 Rome adduces might have been perfectly well spoken by men 
 who did not believe in transubstantiation ; what is opposed to it 
 could not have been said by men who believed in it. What 
 shall we make, for example, of those passages in which the 
 supper is called simply "The breaking of bread?" What, in 
 particular, of that famous chapter, in which St. Paul repeats, not 
 as an historian, but with a positively practical purpose in view, 
 the detailed narrative of the evangelists? Is not the eucharist 
 formally represented there as a repast taken in common ? The 
 Apostle complains of certain abuses that had crept into meetings 
 of that kind. He recalls, on this occasion, the institution of the 
 supper ; he desires that the repast should be more fraternal, more 
 serious, more Christian ; he threatens and condemns those who 
 should take part in it unworthily ; but as respects the repast itself, 
 he says not a word from which one might conjecture that he 
 thought the custom extraordinary or bad. With transubstantia- 
 tion is this admissible ? Much more, in deducing consequences 
 from the fact of the supper's having been instituted by Jesus 
 Christ, and from his having called the bread his body, what does 
 he say ? Now was the time, if ever, for him to state positively, 
 " Christ is there ; it is his body ; it is he himself;" and this would 
 have been at once the strongest and the simplest of motives to 
 urge in recommending respect. Instead of this, what says the 
 Apostle ? " But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of 
 that bread, and drink of that cup ; for he that eateth and drink- 
 eth unworthily, eateth and drinketh his own condemnation, not 
 discerning the Lord's body." The Roman Catechism hastens to 
 translate these words thus, " Not discerning, under the bread 
 and wine, the Lord's body which is concealed in them." 1 And 
 the reason for this is, " That if, as the heretics say, there be 
 nothing to be venerated in this sacrament but the memorial and 
 the sign of Christ's passion, what need for so warmly exhorting 
 believers to examine themselves ?" What ! because of Christ's 
 not being corporeally present, there would be less need for being 
 well prepared for the communion ? These words of St. Paul, 
 viewed more closely, are quite as contrary as the rest to the idea 
 of the real presence. In fact, the communicant either believes 
 in it, or he does not believe in it. If he believes in it, whether 
 he examine himself or not, he discerns the body concealed under 
 
 1 Corpus Domini, quod in Eucharistia occulte latet, ab alio ciborum genere non distinguit. 
 
236 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 the bread; if he does not believe in it, it is not by examining 
 himself that he will come to believe in it. In both cases there 
 is no connexion between the counsel given, and the consequence 
 indicated. This discernment of the Lord's body, then, can only 
 be what arises from self-examination ; that is to say, from the 
 right dispositions taken altogether, which ought to be brought 
 to the act, and from a profound sense of its sacredness. 
 
 After this, although transubstantiation were proved to us to 
 have been established from the close of the first century, or from 
 the commencement of the second, still we should be entitled at 
 once to deny that it can be traced to the Apostles. 
 
 But there is nothing of the kind to be found in history. Only 
 let us acknowledge that the Church's ideas on the siibject of the 
 supper, speedily began to be modified. As the increase in the 
 number of Christians no longer admitted of their partaking of a 
 repast in common, it had become necessary to conduct it with 
 more solemn forms; and with these new forms there crept in a 
 tendency to regard the substance also under an aspect more or 
 less new. Jewish or pagan reminiscences, the mystery with 
 which the early Christians were often compelled to surround 
 themselves, the excitement caused by a sense of clanger, the need 
 of a protection from on high ever more present and more sensibly 
 felt, everything, in fine, had concurred to enhance the eucharist 
 in proportion to the miracles of grace that were expected from it 
 every day. That bread, that wine, people could no longer make 
 lip their minds, in some sort, to look upon as no more than bread 
 and wine ; they attached themselves more and more closely to 
 those passages of Scripture which seemed to make them some- 
 thing else ; they advanced by long strides towards transubstan- 
 tiation ; and yet ages were destined to elapse before they durst 
 venture to make it an article of faith. 
 
 "Why so long of coming to the birth ? Because even amid the 
 general tendencies, people were often thrown back against their 
 will upon the precise statements of the Bible and the plain con- 
 clusions of reason. What we said above of Scripture, we may 
 now say of the Fathers : to whatever they have written that 
 seems to favour the doctrine of the real presence, we may oppose 
 things which they manifestly would not have said, had they be- 
 lieved in it. 
 
 See Justin, first, in his famous apology : " On the day of the 
 sun we meet. The Scriptures are read, and then an elder ex- 
 horts the people to follow such beautiful examples. We rise, 
 
TR AN SUBSTANTIATION NOT HELD BY THE FATHERS. 237 
 
 we pray anew ; water, bread, and wine are set down. The priest 
 (presbyter) gives thanks, and those present reply, Amen. A 
 part of the consecrated things are distributed, and the deacons 
 take the rest to the absent." Were the real presence, were tran- 
 substantiation here, it might be said that the Protestants believe 
 in it, for it is precisely, with hardly any exception, a representa- 
 tion of their meetings. 
 
 Read Tertullian: 1 "Jesus Christ having taken bread, and 
 having distributed it among his disciples, made it his body, 
 saying, This is my body, that is to say, the figure of my body." 
 Besides these last words, note, that as in the narratives of the 
 Evangelists, the consecration follows the distribution. 
 
 Read Origen: 2 "If Christ, as the Marcionites maintain, had 
 neither flesh nor blood, of what body and of what blood were 
 that bread and that wine the signs and images t" Elsewhere 3 he 
 calls the bread of the eucharist a figurative body. At this pas- 
 sage and at two or three others of this kind, " Origen was a 
 heretic," replies Cardinal Duperron. Heretic if you will ; but 
 all his heresies have been adopted by Epiphanius, by Augustine, 
 by Jerome, and never, in so far as we know, have these words 
 been made a charge against him. 
 
 Read Ephrem : 4 " Taking bread in his hands he gives thanks, 
 and breaks it in figure of his immaculate body." 
 
 Read Macarius: 5 "Bread and wine are offered, being the 
 figure of the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. They who par- 
 ticipate in this visible bread, eat spiritually the flesh of the 
 Lord." 
 
 Read Theodoret: 6 "The Lord has honoured these visible 
 signs with the name of his body and his blood, not in changing 
 their nature, but in adding grace to nature." 
 
 Read Vigilius : 7 " When Christ's flesh was on the earth, it was 
 not in heaven ; and now that it is in heaven, it is not on the 
 earth." 
 
 Read Chrysostom, 8 and this passage is all the more remarkable 
 against the real presence, as the first words seem to lead to it : 
 
 1 Against Marcion, book iii. — Acceptum panem et disti'ibutum discipulis corpus suum 
 fecit, dicendo hoc est corpus meum, id est figura corporis mei. Duperron, in quoting this 
 passage, changes id est into scilicet, and makes Tertullian say : "This, to wit, the figure of 
 my body,' is my body." Bellarmine (Eucharist xx.) is not content with twisting the mean- 
 ing, but mutilates the phrase. He suppresses altogether id est figura. These falsifications 
 shew plainly enough how clear this passage has appeared, and how embarrassing. 
 
 - Against the Marcionites. 3 Commentary on St. Matthew. 
 
 * Against the curious inquirers into the body of Christ. 5 Homily xxvii. 
 
 6 First Dialogue against the Eutychians. 7 Against Eutycf.ius, book .v. 
 
 8 Letter to Caesarius. 
 
238 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 " Before the bread is consecrated it is called bread ; but when 
 divine grace has sanctified it through the intervention of the 
 priest, then it no longer bears the name of bread ; it becomes 
 worthy of being called the Lord's body, although the nature of 
 bread remains in it. 1 ' 
 
 Finally, read St. Augustine. That one among the Fathers 
 who has furnished the most arms to the partisans of the real 
 presence, is the one also who, when he reasons and speaks with- 
 out figures, furnishes us with the most against that same opinion. 
 Listen to him in one of Ids treatises: 1 "The Lord had no diffi- 
 culty in saying, This is my body, when he gave the sign of his 
 body." Listen to him in an epistle: 2 "This sacrifice (of the 
 eucharist) is a thanksgiving and a commemoration of the blood 
 of Christ which he offered for us." Listen to him in another 
 epistle: 3 "Had the sacraments no resemblance to the things 
 whereof they are the sacraments, they would not be sacraments. 
 But, in consequence of that resemblance, they take most fre- 
 quently the name of the things themselves." And what, then, does 
 he give as an example ? Why, the bread and the wine of the 
 eucharist. Hear him, finally, in one of his works, in which we 
 may feel most assured of having his veritable sentiments, his 
 Christian Doctrine : " If a commandment forbids anything that 
 is shameful or criminal, or recommends what is useful and good, 
 that command is not figurative ; but if he commands a bad thing 
 or forbids a good thing, it must not be taken literally." And 
 what does he give as an instance ? Why, still the eucharist. 
 " If ye eat not," saith the Saviour, " the flesh of the Son of Man, 
 and drink not his blood, ye have no life in you." It looks as if in 
 these words he commanded a crime ; it is a figure, then, by which 
 we are recommended to communicate in our Saviour's passion, 
 by engraving in our memory, in a manner at once affecting and 
 useful, the killing and crucifying of his body for us. 4 What, 
 
 1 Against Adimant, ch. xii. 
 
 2 To the Deacon Peter, on the Faith. (This book has been attributed also to Fulgentius, 
 the disciple of St. Augustine.) In i-to saerincio gratiarum actio atque commeinoratio est 
 caruis Christi, quam pro nobis obtulit. 
 
 a To Boniface. Si sacramenta quandam similitudinem harura rerum quarum sacramenta 
 sunt non haberent, orunino sacramenta non essent. Ex hac autem similitudine plerumque 
 etiam ipsarum nomina accipiunt. Mark the expression : Quarum sacramenta sunt, of which 
 they are the sacraments ; as if he had said, Of which they are the sacred emblems. 
 
 4 Si prseceptiva locutio est ant flagitium aut facinus vetans, aut utilitatem, aut beneficen- 
 tiam jubens, non est figurata. Si autem flagitium aut facinus videtur jubcre, aut utilitatem 
 aut beneficentiam vetare, figurata est. " Nisi manducaveritis," inquit, " carnem filii hominis," 
 &c. Facinus vel flagitium videtur jubere ; figura est ergo, preecipiens passioni dominicae 
 communicandum, et suaviter atque utiliter recundendum in memoria quod pro nobis caro 
 ejus crucifixa et vulnerata sit. (l)e Doetr. Chr. iii. 16.) 
 
ROME ANATHEMATIZES HER OWN HISTORIANS. 239 
 
 after this, and we have far from quoted all that has been col- 
 lected of an analogous kind, from the writings of that Father, — 
 what, we say, become of those passages in which Augustine, re- 
 producing, without comment, the figure employed by Jesus 
 Christ, appears to teach the real presence. 1 And what a lament- 
 able courage must the Fathers of Trent have had when they 
 ventured to say, " All our ancestors . . . have taught thus in 
 the most open manner. . . . And since these words of the Saviour 
 present this proper and most evident meaning, according to which 
 they were understood by the Fathers, it is assuredly a most hein- 
 ous crime, that these words, against the universal sentiment of 
 the Church, should be twisted by certain quibbling and depraved 
 persons, into certain fictitious and imaginary figures ; the Church, 
 accordingly, has always detested as satanical these explanations 
 imagined by impious men." 2 
 
 Among these impious men, as the crowning of the work, there 
 ought to have been ranged all the Eoman Catholic historians 
 who have been candid enough to relate the origin and progress 
 of this idea, which one would believe, looking to the decree, 
 could have had no other commencement but that of Christianity 
 itself. Through whom do we know, if not through them, and 
 in particular through one of the most devoted champions of 
 Rome, Bellarmine, that it was Paschasius Eathbert, abbot of 
 Corbie, in the ninth century, who first positively taught the real 
 presence? Through whom do we know, if not through them, 
 that though his opinion may already have been that, as is 
 possible, of the majority of doctors, still it met with quite a 
 sufficient amount of opposition to prove that it was not an ad- 
 mitted doctrine? Eathbert himself, in a letter to Frudegard, 
 admits that many accused him of having exaggerated the mean- 
 ing of the words of Jesus Christ. Does he say that they were, 
 
 1 At Geneva, too, in this manner, and in the Reformed Church of France, it would appear 
 to be taught, for one of the liturgical hymns contains these verses : — 
 
 Sa chair sacive est le seul aliment His sacred flesh supplies the only food 
 
 Qui donne a l'ame un vrai contentement. That fills the hungry soul with real good. 
 Son divin sang, qu'il offre pour breuvage, His blood, whence he our beverage supplies, 
 Nous a des cieux merite l'heritage . . . Has merited our kingdom in the skies. . . . 
 Mais qui pourrait ainsi manger et boire But who the body and the blood could think 
 Le corps saciv, le sang du roi de gloire ? Of glory's king to feed upon and drink ? 
 C'est le Chretien qui, &c. It is the Christian who, &c. 
 
 2 Ita enim majores nostri omnes . . . apertissime professi sunt. Quae verba . . . quum pro- 
 priam illam et apertissimam significationem prae se ferant, secundum quam a Patribus 
 intellecta sunt, itdignissimum sane flagitium est ea a quibusdam contentiosis et pravis 
 hominibus ad fictitios et imaginarios tropos converti, contra universum Ecclesiae sensum ; 
 quae haec ab impiis hominibus excogitata commenta, velut satanica detestata est, semper 
 agnoscens, &c. 
 
240 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TKENT. 
 
 therefore, heretics ? Does he attack them in the name of the 
 Church ? Not at all. Had he done so we should only have 
 had to adduce the names of those who, either during his lifetime 
 or afterwards, impugned his doctrine, 1 and to ask if so many 
 eminent personages, abbots, bishops, archbishops, could have 
 dreamt of impugning what they regarded as sanctioned by the 
 Church. Thus, whatever date may be assigned to the first com- 
 mencement of transubstantiation, it remains demonstrated that 
 in the ninth or tenth centuries people wrote freely for and against 
 it. It was an opinion, not an article of faith. 
 
 Finally, in 1059, under Nicolas II., it was adopted at Eome, 
 but at a private council, and not very clearly. In 1215, under 
 Innocent, it was definitively voted at the council of Lateran, 
 and took the name which has since been given to it. 
 
 All opposition was now, no doubt, to be at an end. But no. 
 Between the council of Lateran and that of Trent we find doctors 
 who, even while declaring their belief in it, admit that they do 
 not see it in the Scriptures. First there is Dims Scotus ; he 
 knows not, he says, 2 any Scriptural declaration which, by itself, 
 and without the determination of the Church, can oblige one to 
 admit it. Then we have Cardinal D'Ailly. 3 " This opinion," 
 says he, " that the substance of the bread always remains, is not 
 repugnant either to reason or to Scripture. It is even easier of 
 comprehension, and more rational, if it could accord with the 
 determination of the Church.'' Then Gabriel Biel, in his lessons 
 on the mass: — " We do not find in the Bible 4 in what manner 
 Christ's body is there. That is proved by the authority of the 
 < Ihurch and of the saints, for by reasons it cannot be proved. But 
 why should the Church and the saints have determined so diffi- 
 cult a meaning, seeing the Scriptures might be expounded on this 
 article hi a manner much more easy to be understood? The Church 
 lias so determined." See again, shortly before the council of Trent, 
 two great doctors that entertained the same view. The one is 
 Cardinal Cajetan •? — ' L That which the Gospel has not explained 
 expressly, to wit, the manner in which the bread is changed 
 into the body of Christ, we have received from the Church." The 
 other is Bishop Fischer : 6 — " Here (in the narrative of the insti- 
 tution of the supper) there is not a word by which one might 
 
 1 Araalaire. Archbishop of Treves ; Heribald, Bishop of Auxerre ; Raban. Archbishop of 
 Mayence; Waldfrid, Abbot of Saint Gall; Loup, Abbot of Ferrieres ; Bertram, Monk of 
 Corbie. &c. 
 
 - Commentary on Book IV. of Sentences. 3 Ibid. 
 
 * Non iuvenitur in canone Bibliaj. 5 <-Jue-tion lxxv. 
 
 « Against the Captivity of Babylon, eh. x 
 
THE MASS AND THE SUPPER. 241 
 
 prove the true presence of the body and the blood of Jesus 
 Christ. One cannot prove that, then, by any Scripture." And 
 although the council affected to rest on Scripture alone, although 
 it has declared the meaning to be clear, evident, incontestable, 
 which it has given to the words this is my body, lo, here we find 
 Cardinal Bellarmine returning, forty years afterwards, almost to 
 the same thesis : — For him, says he, 1 he believes, like the 
 council, that transubstantiation may be proved by Scripture, 
 but it may, nevertheless, be doubted whether it be so, since very 
 learned and very ingenious men have been of a contrary opinion. 
 
 What more could we ask than these admissions? What could 
 we find more positively corroborative of what we have said, 
 under the scriptural point of view, against transubstantiation ? 
 Say, if you will, that these authors were wrong in not clearly 
 seeing it in Scripture ; the mere fact that they, good Eoman 
 Catholics, have admitted that they had not seen it there, will 
 ever prove that it is not clearly there ; and we should then ask 
 if it be admissible that a dogma which was to be in relation to 
 worship that which the existence of God is to faith, that is to 
 say, the centre and foundation of all the rest, should not have 
 been distinctly announced, distinctly alluded to, in a single pas- 
 sage of the holy books. 
 
 Now, then, all that we have said of it we might repeat, did 
 we so choose, in speaking of all the dogmas and all the practices 
 of which it is the source. 
 
 We should ask first, not if the mass is in Scripture — for that 
 would be almost a jest — but whether the supper holds a place 
 there which can in any way be compared with that now held by 
 the mass at the present day in the Roman Church? We may 
 be allowed, on this matter, to make an observation which Pro- 
 testants themselves may deem too bold, but to which a man of 
 calm and sound mind will not, we think, be able to refuse his 
 assent. 
 
 This observation is that the supper — by which we mean, of 
 course, the materiel of the supper — has not in Scripture the 
 importance that Christians have generally given to it. We 
 would not, assuredly, be understood to mean by that, that it can 
 ever be surrounded with too much respect, or that one can pre- 
 pare himself for it too carefully ; it is the holiest of the accesso- 
 ries, but still an accessory, since it may be dispensed with. 
 Observe, that St. John, the most spiritual of the four evangelists, 
 
 1 On the Eucharist, bock iii. ch. 25. 
 
242 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 lias omitted recording- it. The greater number of the Epistles do 
 not mention it. The fact that the first Christians communicated 
 at all their meetings, far from contradicting us 7 favours our view, 
 if it proves, which we admit without difficulty, that the first 
 Christians always and everywhere obeyed the command, — " Do 
 this in remembrance of me." It proves also, looking to the 
 simple manner in which they observed it, and the daily partici- 
 pation in it by one and all, that they were very far from seeing 
 in the supper the foundation and the essential part of worship. 
 The augmentation of its solemn accompaniments is what we 
 quite approve ; but if one cannot say that this is contrary to the 
 ideas of the primitive Church, no more can one say that it was 
 in conformity with its usages. 
 
 What, consequently, shall we say of the transformation that 
 has taken place in the supper becoming the mass ? The mass 
 is the abstract, the centre, and, for many, the whole of religion 
 and of worship. In like manner as Christ is thought to be in- 
 carnated in the Avafer, Christianity is viewed as, in some sort, 
 incarnated in the mass. The mass, always and everywhere the 
 mass. The mass on all occasions ; the mass for all objects. 
 From Eome down to the merest hamlet, not a temple where 
 the general plan, or the details of the edifice, where all, in fine, 
 does not announce the mass, is not made for the mass, and does 
 not exclude, at the first glance, every other idea but that of the 
 mass. The mass, accordingly, is the first thing that a Roman 
 Catholic, if he begins to open his eyes, is astonished at not find- 
 ing in the Bible. Judging of it by the importance that he has 
 been taught to attach to it, he might expect to meet with it at 
 every page. In vain will it be attempted, after that, to shew it 
 to him in its germ in the narrative of the supper, in some isolated 
 passages. If still too little versed in theology and history to 
 reply from the grounds of either, it will always be enough for 
 him to say that what occupies so large a space in his creed, in 
 his worship, behoves to occupy, in the picture left us of the 
 early years of the Church, sufficient space at least not to escape 
 his notice on a first reading. 
 
 Assuredly a priest who believes in the real presence may boast 
 of possessing 1 the greatest and most miraculous of the powers 
 with which a creature, man or angel, was ever invested. " We 
 confess that the priest is greater than Mary herself, the mother 
 of God. She g-ave birth to ( Jhrist but once ; but the priest 
 creates him when he pleases, and as often as he pleases." Such 
 
a priest's belief in transubstantiation. 243 
 
 is the tenor of a form of abjuration imposed at the commence- 
 ment of the last century on the peasants of Hungary. Although 
 the authenticity of this has been disputed, these lines, extraor- 
 dinary as they are to reasonable Eoman Catholics, are not the 
 less, if we admit the real presence, rigorously true. What Mary, 
 blessed among all women, viewed as the most glorious and sacred 
 of favours, there are three or four hundred thousand priests 
 throughout the world to whom it is a thing of daily and very 
 simple occurrence. And when one thinks that the most impure 
 and criminal of men may, in a few seconds, with a few hastily 
 uttered words, perform, when he pleases, this prodigy of pro- 
 digies, 1 your head swims, in truth, in the view of such an abyss of 
 inconsistencies and pride. All that Egypt or India ever ima- 
 gined in the way of fabulous monstrosity for the elevation of 
 their priests above the ordinary level of humanity, has been out- 
 done by Rome in teaching transubstantiation. Did not the num- 
 ber of the priests and the frequency of the masses attenuate the 
 importance attached to it, — were, for example, one sole priest in 
 the world thought to perform it, he would be almost a god. 
 
 A priest, who believes in the real presence, we have said. Do 
 we mean to hint that all do not believe in it '? When Luther, 
 at that time a fervent Koman Catholic, went on his journey into 
 Italy, nothing more profoundly shocked him than to see priests 
 laughing in secret at their public performances. " Bread thou 
 art, and bread thou shalt remain," 2 they would say in the mass, 
 instead of the sacramental words. Are there still any such 
 priests? We know not, and it is not for us to inquire. We 
 could not even approve of people saying, as is sometimes done, 
 that a priest cannot believe in the mass ; all we say is, and this 
 at least is true, that it must be more difficult for him to believe 
 it than any one else. That wafer which the people contemplate 
 at a distance, and always under the influence of a certain charm, 
 he sees close at hand, he touches it, he breaks it, he eats it every 
 day ; every day he must admit, while apart, that such as it was 
 
 1 Let us not forget that this power, if it exists at all, is necessarily unlimited. All the wine 
 that may be contained in a cellar, all the bread that may be found in a baker's shop, the 
 priest may by a few words transubstantiate into the body and the blood of Christ. Conse- 
 crare potest multos cophinos panis et vini dolium, si preesentia ista haberet, says Cardinal 
 Tolet, (De Instructione Sacerdotum, lib. ii.) Llorente relates that a priest amused himself 
 one day by consecrating in passing all the bread exposed for sale in a market. He was pun- 
 ished, and passed for a person who had lost his mind ; but not the less was the bread regarded 
 as transubstantiated. Nobody dared to touch it. Priests came to take it away, and nobody- 
 knowing what to do with it, it was burnt. When a doctrine can lead to such enormous absur- 
 dities, is it not doing it too much honour to combat it with reasons ? 
 
 i Panis es, et panis manebis. 
 
'2A± HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 before consecration the same it lias every appearance of being 
 after. That wine which he alone has the right to drink he finds 
 possessing at the altar the same taste and the same properties 
 as at his ordinary meals. Those words which are thought to 
 work the miracle — where shall we find the priest, however 
 pious, who cannot recollect many occasions on which he has pro- 
 nounced them without seriously pondering them, perhaps with- 
 out thinking of them at all, perhaps with his mind full of bad 
 thoughts? And shall we be told that such a man never can 
 doubt the virtue of such an operation ! Never feel the slightest 
 difficulty at the thought of a result so enormously out of propor- 
 tion to the means ! Charity commands us to believe this ; but 
 the more we think of it the more does reason refuse. 
 
 At Trent, too, before proceeding to decree transubstantiation, 
 the council had been led to examine whether practice corre- 
 sponded with theory on this point, and the existence of strange 
 disorders had to be admitted. Besides the small degree of 
 seriousness with which many priests set themselves to perform 
 this dread act, there Avere few churches in which custom did not 
 give its sanction to superstitions or abuses more or less contrary 
 to the awfulness of the sacrament. These abuses, condemned 
 afterwards by the council, have generally disappeared ; but even 
 at this day the forms are far indeed from being always worthy 
 of the essence. Nothing more pompous, no doubt, than a grand 
 mass at Rome, at Milan, at Vienna, at Paris ; did God descend 
 in visible form on this earth, hardly could he be received with 
 greater splendour. But for one of these grand spectacle masses, 
 how many thousands are said in which the greatness of the 
 mystery vanishes under the paltriness of the forms ! Shall we 
 be told that the cup used by the Saviour was very probably 
 neither of gold nor silver ? True, and it were misapplied rail- 
 lery, indeed, were we to attack the tin vessels of the poor village 
 priest ; but it is not of anything paltry in that way that we 
 mean to speak. Xo. Look to that cathedral in which so many 
 marvels have been displayed at Christmas or Easter ; look to 
 that St. Peter's at Rome where you seem to have witnessed the 
 ponips of heaven, then return on the following morning. The 
 tapers have been put out, the hangings have been removed. 
 Xo one is at the high altar. In passing before a small chapel 
 you hear a few words murmured. You see there, in the corner, 
 an altar for a priest, and a boy who at certain moments repeats 
 with the utmost rapidity of which his lips are capable some 
 
ADORATION' OF THE HOST. 245 
 
 Latin words which he blunders. The priest takes no notice of 
 this. He also has his lesson to recite, and that lesson he finds 
 rather long ; he may have recited it these twenty, these thirty 
 years, perhaps for half a century. At last he says his last Amen. 
 He walks off to other business, and the boy to school. And this 
 that you have been witnessing is the mass ! It was, if we are 
 to believe the Roman Church, the most awful, the most pro- 
 foundly sacred act that could take place in the world ! Ah ! 
 Protestants can well afford to profess their disbelief in the real 
 presence, and to avoid celebrating the communion with pomp 
 and shew; the bread and the wine of the supper, without ceasing 
 to be bread and wine in their eyes, meet with a very different 
 respect in their Churches from that which the wafer — the body 
 of the Saviour — daily meets with in those of the Roman Catholics. 
 Do men hope to compensate by the adoration of the wafer for 
 the irreverence with which it is so often treated in so many 
 masses said with precipitation or mechanically ? Adoration 
 being regarded as one of the consequences of the real presence, 
 it too was one of the points admitted without difficulty by the 
 council. And yet there was no such close connexion between 
 the two dogmas as seemed to be thought. Even were the wafer 
 incontestably the body of Jesus Christ, it may still be doubted 
 whether it be agreeable to the spirit of Christianity to adore a 
 body, be it what it may, however divine the soid to which it serves 
 or may have served as an envelope. Will it be said, that since 
 we honour the mortal remains of great men, the stronger reason 
 have we to honour those of the Son of God ? Honour them ! 
 Who denies that ? See whether, among Protestants, that bread 
 which to them is only the representation of Christ's body, be 
 not the object of the most profound respect. But between the 
 highest honours and adoration the distance is great, it is im- 
 mense. Honours prejudge nothing as to the nature of the object 
 to which they are paid ; adoration makes that object a God. 
 Can a body, then, be a God ? No. The Church itself has felt 
 this. In order to get at the deification of the wafer, it was 
 necessary that the body of Jesus Christ should have a certain 
 divinity of its own, subsisting even after the departure of the 
 divine soul with which that body had been animated. " Di- 
 vinity," says the Roman Catechism; " never deserted it even in 
 the sepulchre." Does this mean, peradventure, that after having 
 been subject to all the necessities and to all the sufferings of the 
 flesh, that body, nevertheless, would not have corrupted in the 
 
246 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 tomb had it remained there ? In that case it must he confessed 
 that the wafer hardly resembles it, seeing that like every other 
 kind of bread it can dry up and moulder away. Be that as it 
 may, the Catechism insists much on tins idea, it being the neces- 
 sary complement of the more vague decree by which the council 
 ordained the adoration of the wafer. " Not only," does it say, 
 " is the true body of Jesus Christ, to wit, all that is proper to 
 the human body, the bones, the nerves, contained in this sacra- 
 ment, but, farther, Jesus Christ whole and entire." Thus it is 
 not only a body that is there under this morsel of paste, there 
 is himself, the Saviour, living, thinking, acting, such, in a word, 
 as he was on the day of the supper. It must be admitted that 
 the pagans shewed more respect for their gods. The man who 
 would have ventured to say that Jupiter was whole and entire 
 in one of his statues, would have risked passing for a madman 
 or an impious wretch. 
 
 The Church acknowledged, however, that one might in all 
 places address the Saviour in prayer. Will he hear you when 
 on your knees before the wafer better than elsewhere ? No ; for 
 lie is everywhere. One does not see what the material presence 
 can add to that of a being already present everywhere. When 
 Ave speak of the Deity as inhabiting a temple, we know well that 
 it is a figure ; what is the wafer in this sense but a temple, and 
 how could a divine being be any more enclosed in it than in any 
 temple whatever? This would lead us to a final objection. 
 What purpose is really served by transubstantiation and its con- 
 sequences ? Docs it augment the priest's respect for the supper '? 
 No : we defy any man to find in any Protestant Church any- 
 thing comparable to the perfunctory character of common masses. 
 Does it augment the awe felt by simple believers ? No : the 
 piety of the two parties being equal, the Protestant communicant 
 is no less deeply affected than the Eoman communicant. Does it 
 enhance the dignity of the priesthood in the eyes of the people? 
 Xo : we have already remarked, that the frequency of the 
 miracle, and the numerousness of the priests, have made it quite 
 a, common affair. Is the real presence necessary for the interior 
 effect of the sacrament ? The Church, to preserve her con- 
 sistency, has been obliged to maintain this. " The host," says 
 the Catechism, " does not change into our substance, like bread 
 and wine." What then becomes of it ? This question naturally 
 suggests itself; and hence angry disputes, of which we could 
 not give even an idea without soiling this page with the most 
 
THE WORSHIPPED WAFER BECOMES A GOD. 247 
 
 ignoble details. Innocent III., in his Treatise on the Mass, 1 
 passes them complacently under review. He inquires what 
 would become of the wafer if eaten by an animal, a mouse, for 
 example, Arc. <vc. After having sunk as low as would appear to be 
 possible, " there are other questions, to be sure," he says, " but 
 in these matters it is better not to be too much inquisitive than 
 to be inquisitive about too much." And, to say the truth, he 
 rightly considered himself as very reserved in comparison with 
 many others, for there is no extravagance that has not been said 
 or written on this subject. Eeturning simply then to our first 
 question, " Is the real presence necessary for the interior effect 
 of the sacrament?" the following is the answer we would give 
 to those who should affirm it : — Several persons equally pious, 
 equally well prepared, communicate together. Among the wafers 
 which the priest is about to give them there is one which, from 
 some oversight, has not been consecrated. Christ is not there ; 
 it is mere bread. Will he who shall receive it have communi- 
 cated ? If you say no, you insult common sense. If you say 
 yes, what purpose is served by transubstantiation ? 
 
 Although it tended, which we have denied, to augment men's 
 respect for the supper, for the priesthood, and for religion in 
 general, still it must be seen whether this advantage be not 
 more than counterbalanced by the superstitions that flow from 
 it. The mere adoration of the wafer, disengaged though it were 
 from all idolatrous accompaniments, is at once an immense step 
 in that pious materialism over which enlightened Komanists are 
 the first to groan. The worshipped wafer, we have said, be- 
 comes thereby a god ; a god less gross, if you will, than a statue 
 of wood or stone would be, but nevertheless a material and 
 visible god. Now, though there may be some apparent ad- 
 vantage in fixing the eyes and the mind of rude populations on 
 a visible god, not the less is it a breach of the spirituality of the 
 Christian religion. Instead of making efforts to raise mankind 
 to the lofty standard of Christian ideas, the Roman Church has 
 found it more easy, and, above all, more advantageous to bring 
 Christianity down to their level. The adoration of the wafer 
 ere long ceased to be limited to the time of mass. The deified 
 bread remains exposed upon the altar. Ceremonies, festivals, 
 processions are got up in its honour. It is at the sound of cannon 
 that it leaves the temples, and at the sound of cannon that it re- 
 enters them. An eminently spiritual religion has fixed itself and 
 
 1 Book jy. 
 
248 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 been incarnated in the most material part of an act instituted as 
 a simple memorial. 
 
 Whilst one party among- the divines and bishops thus fixed 
 for eve]', reserving- the correction of some abuses in detail, the 
 greatest and the most intolerable of the Roman abuses, — others 
 had resumed the questions of discipline, and specially, that of 
 episcopal jurisdiction. Their object was to settle its limits, and 
 still more, although the bishops took care not to announce this, 
 to put an end to encroachments on the part of the jurisdiction of 
 the pope. 
 
 " Dare any of you, having a matter against another," says St. 
 Paul, 1 " go to law before the unpist and not before the saints, 
 (the members of the Church?) ... If then ye have judgments 
 of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least 
 esteemed in the Church." Such was the first foundation of 
 episcopal jurisdiction. It is hardly necessary to remark : — 
 
 1st, That St. Paul speaks here of arbiters, and not at all of 
 judges or of regular courts. 
 
 2d, That the only reason he gives is, that civil judges are 
 pagans. Then, Christianity once established, and the courts of 
 justice having become Christian, the recommendation fell to the 
 ground. 
 
 3d, That he speaks of the Church, of the members of the 
 Church, even " the least esteemed," says he, and nowise of pas- 
 tors in particular. 
 
 The faithful, nevertheless, were led, particularly during the 
 persecutions, to give a regular shape to this part of the Church's 
 internal administration ; the bishop naturally found himself at 
 the head of it. When Christianity became the religion of the 
 empire, the ecclesiastical courts had acquired too much consis- 
 tency for their sudden abolition not to risk being an outrage to 
 religion and the clergy. They found a place accordingly in the 
 general administration of justice ; episcopal sentences became 
 ( >bligatory like those of other judges. Anon privileges were be- 
 stowed on these courts. Even so early as under Constantine, if 
 one of the parties chose, a suit might be transferred from the civil 
 judge before whom it had commenced, to the bishop's court. 
 Notwithstanding the less favourable arrangements of other 
 emperors, these privileges always went on increasing. The 
 bishops drew at last into their courts everything that touched, 
 
 1 1 Cor. vj. 
 
BISHOPS' COURTS THEIR ENCROACHMENTS. 249 
 
 more or less remotely, on religion and the Church ; testaments, 
 because the Church was deemed to he the guardian of orphans 
 and widows ; contracts of marriage, because marriage was a 
 religious act ; engagements of all sorts, under the pretext that 
 the oath, a religious act, formed a part of them. Finally, all 
 the power which princes and peoples had originally conceded to 
 the episcopate only from respect for religion, and without the 
 episcopate arrogating to itself any part of it as a right, was by 
 a gradual advance in boldness declared to be independent of the 
 civil authority. It was from God, from God alone, and directly 
 from Gocl, that the bishops maintained they held it. 
 
 At the same time, as isolated bishops had had no great success 
 in imposing this doctrine on princes, they had been compelled, 
 in this as in everything else, to close their ranks around the pope ; 
 they had been forced to recognise in him the chief of this vast 
 judiciary body, pretending to have been instituted by Him of 
 whom the pope claimed to be the representative on earth. But 
 Rome gives nothing, even to her own servants, without making 
 them pay for it. Availing herself, therefore, of the need which 
 the bishops had of her, in resisting the civil authority, ere long 
 she considered them in their character of judges, only as insti- 
 tuted by her. It was to the pope, to the pope alone, that God 
 had given jurisdiction ; the bishops were only his mandatories, 
 as the civil judges are those of their prince. But while, in a 
 well regulated state, the prince never intervenes in the adminis- 
 tration of justice, the practice of carrying causes by appeal to 
 Rome, adroitly encouraged by the popes, had become universal. 
 The bishop saw all important causes taken away from him. 
 When he began to attend to a process before him, he was never 
 sure of its being left in his hands. His very priests might slip 
 from his grasp, not only for breaches of discipline, but even for 
 misdemeanours and crimes. Papal jurisdiction, it will be seen, 
 had poached largely on the domains of episcopal usurpation. 
 
 No man in the council had shewn any wish to trace things to 
 their source, and to ask himself, putting abuses out of the 
 question, what was the foundation of the assumed right from 
 which they flowed. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction might have had, 
 amid the disorders of the Middle Ages, more than one happy 
 effect; but services rendered, however disinterested they may 
 have been deemed, which assuredly they were not, never could 
 create a positive right. Accordingly, long before the Reforma- 
 tion, and without at all trenching on the domain of doctrine, 
 
250 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 more than one author, to the great satisfaction of the civil princes, 
 had set himself to weigh the titles of the episcopate, and had 
 found them very much wanting. On going hack, what was there 
 found? Either the concessions made hy princes, or nothing; 
 nothing but the Scripture, that is, four lines of St. Paul, which, 
 as we have seen, said rather quite the contrary of what the 
 Church had found in them. 1 In 1551, after so many works on 
 public law, in the face of Charles V. and the Parliament of Paris, 
 the question could no longer be one of law ; it was necessary for 
 the Church to keep to the utmost to fact, and to preserve as 
 much of that as possible, considering it still fortunate that the 
 princes did not speak of resuming everything. At the head of 
 the decree, accordingly, there was no declaration of principles. 
 Such being the case, what are we to regard as the Church's doc- 
 trine on this point ? Is ecclesiastical jurisdiction of divine 
 right? On the side of the council, the faithful have been left 
 free to believe it to be so, or not ; on the side of Rome, it is 
 long now since no such liberty has been allowed. From the 
 time of Gregory VII., the popes have plainly set themselves up 
 as judges of the Christian world. Boniface VIII., in particular, 
 had so formally decreed this, that one does not see how it can 
 fail to be a point of faith with all who admit the pope's infalli- 
 bility. 
 
 Thus constantly in danger of coming into collision with either 
 the rights of the pope or those of the princes, the council could 
 decide nothing of importance. Besides, view in what manner 
 you please, in theory, the jurisdiction of bishops, it would have 
 been unreasonable not to admit the superiority of that of the 
 pope. And so the main source of the abuses complained of, the 
 appellate jurisdiction of Rome, behoved still to exist. That 
 being assumed, what restrictions were there to be imposed upon 
 it ? The independent bishops demanded that before appealing, 
 the parties should be compelled to wait until sentence should be 
 pronounced ; they desired, also, that appeals should be taken 
 from the bishop to the pope, only by passing through the inter- 
 mediate jurisdiction of the metropolitan. These reclamations, 
 however moderately made, found little echo in the majority of 
 the assembly. The Italian bishops were the first to suffer from 
 the papal power ; but they were the first also to profit by it, and 
 the most interested in maintaining it. The permission, accord- 
 
 1 We have seen already (in Book First) what is to be thought of the famous passage, 
 " If ary one hear not the Church." 
 
SUBJECTION OF THE STATE TO THE CHURCH. 251 
 
 ingly, of appealing from the bishop to the pope was suffered to 
 subsist, without passing through the metropolitan's court ; the 
 council contented itself with pointing out certain classes of causes 
 in which the appeal should not suspend procedure, and could not 
 be admitted until after the bishop had pronounced sentence. 
 
 Some small concession had also to be made on the article of 
 ecclesiastical degradations. A priest, as a general principle, 
 could be tried only by the Church ; but as it was an established 
 rule that the Church could not condemn to death, a priest accused 
 of a capital crime had to be handed over to the civil jurisdiction. 
 Now, in order to that, he had to be degraded ; and the endless 
 formalities with which the Church had encumbered that act, had 
 but the effect at last of allowing many crimes to go unpunished. 
 For the degradation of a bishop, thirteen were recpiired ; for that 
 of a priest, six ; for a mere deacon, three. Everywhere, and 
 under all the formalities, might be traced the grand outlines of 
 that immense scheme, put together with so much ability, for 
 placing the State at the mercy of the Church, even in the very 
 things in which she affected to declare her incompetency. It 
 was decided that a priest might be degraded by a single bishop, 
 assisted by a certain number of abbots, or failing these, a cer- 
 tain number of priests. 
 
 These decrees, as well as that of the eucharist, were published 
 on the 11th of October (thirteenth session). The ambiguous 
 safe-conduct which was to be transmitted to the emperor for the 
 Protestant divines, was also read. They had asked, so it was 
 said, in an appendix to the decrees, to be heard on divers points, 
 and particularly upon the communion under both kinds. On 
 that account, it was added, the council had suspended deciding 
 on those points, and sent them the safe-conduct. This was far 
 from correct. The Protestants had not asked to be heard on 
 those more than on any other points, and to say the truth, they 
 had asked for nothing ; but there must needs have been some 
 form for granting them the safe-conduct, since the emperor in- 
 sisted upon it, and this was the form that best saved the coun- 
 cil's dignity. 
 
 At this same sitting there appeared the ambassadors of the Elector 
 of Brandenburg. Much anxious expectation had been felt about 
 what might be said to the council by the envoys of a Lutheran. 
 Protestants looked for a bold speech ; Roman Catholics durst not 
 hope for more than cold respect and unmeaning compliments. 
 
Jo'J HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 Christopher Strassen, the spokesman, displeased everybody ; 
 Protestants by his snbmissiveness, Romanists by the very ex- 
 cess of a snbmissiveness which was infinitely greater than what 
 on the Elector's part could be sincere, or could even appear to 
 be so. 
 
 As for the ambassador from Henry II., he had set off imme- 
 diately after the delivery of his protest. Yet the council's reply 
 to the king's letter was read as if he had been present. That 
 reply was generally calm and dignified. The king was besought, 
 at the close, to send his prelates to Trent, and to remember his 
 title of most Christian king. If he thought offence had been 
 done to him, let him sacrifice his offended feelings to the good of 
 the Church and the peace of Europe. 
 
 The day following, on meeting again in congregation, great 
 complaints were made against the divines. In the course of the 
 last discussions, twenty times over had they thrown all into dis- 
 order by their subtleties and contentions. It had been thought 
 necessary, therefore, to fix the order in which they should speak. 
 Those from the pope were to be allowed to speak first, next those 
 from the emperor, then those from kings, electors, simple princes, 
 &c. The number of times that each should be allowed to speak, 
 and the time he was not to exceed, were also fixed. Finally, 
 there was a renewal of the order, that they should always com- 
 mence with proofs taken from Scripture. An illusory concession 
 this, as we have already said, seeing that there was always an 
 understanding, that in default of scriptural proofs, they might 
 be taken from the Fathers, and, failing the Fathers, from the 
 very accommodating arsenal of tradition. 
 
 The sacrament of Penance, with which the council was about 
 to occupy itself, is not, at the first view of it, a point on which 
 Roman Catholicism is reduced to this. " Whatsoever ye shall 
 bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven." " Whosesoever sins 
 ye remit, they are remitted unto them ; and whosesoever sins ye 
 retain, they are retained." Such are the words which it will be 
 enough, it would appear, to inscribe on all the confessionals, in 
 order to shut the mouths of all the adversaries of the Roman 
 confession. We can, therefore, reply to them only by inquiring 
 whether, in the view of those to whom they were addressed by 
 Jesus Christ, these words bore the meaning attributed to them 
 since ? 
 
 But, of a thousand persons to whom the collection of the 
 Epistles, including the Acts, should be given to peruse for the 
 
PENANCE TRICKS IN TRANSLATION. 253 
 
 first time, we ask if there would be one who, on being asked to 
 trace the primitive history of the Church, as represented in these 
 writings, would give Confession, in the Koman sense, a place in 
 it ? We ask whether those often quoted words, " Confess your 
 faults one to another" 1 far from giving any support to the Koman 
 Confession, be not rather positively contrary to it? We ask 
 whether those other words, as often quoted, " And many that be- 
 lieved came and confessed," 2 do not clearly indicate a mere act 
 of humility, without reference to any obligation, any general law ? 
 We ask if St. Paul, in his directions on the supper, could possi- 
 bly have confined himself to concluding with these words, " But 
 let a man examine himself f" 3 We ask, in fine, if it be credible 
 that among so many counsels and commands addressed to so 
 many Churches, there should not be found a single direct men- 
 tion of a thing of such daily and universal occurrence, if it ex- 
 isted then at all? 
 
 This absence of all direct and available mention we could not 
 better prove, than by shewing what the Church has been obliged 
 to cite, in order to give a faint colour of an evangelical and 
 scriptural kind to Confession. 
 
 In the first place, wherever it could be done without too much 
 violence to the context, to repent has been translated to do 
 penance^ an expression which, in common parlance, implies the 
 idea of the sacrament. Thus, in the decree that the council pro- 
 ceeded to make, this abuse of words re-occurs thrice. " Repent 
 and do penance" says Ezekiel. " Unless ye do penance ye shall 
 perish," says Jesus Christ, in St. Luke. " Do penance and be 
 baptized every one of you," says St. Peter in the Acts. In this 
 last passage, besides the play upon words, let us note a singular 
 inadvertence. The council declares that penance is a sacrament 
 for those only who have received baptism. Seeing, then, that 
 St. Peter here puts baptism after repentance or penance, he 
 cannot, according to the decree itself, refer to the sacrament of 
 penance. 
 
 But it is mainly in the Roman Catechism that we must look 
 for the efforts that have been made to keep the words of Jesus 
 Christ — "Whatsoever ye have bound," &c, from the isolation in 
 which they are left in the midst of the New Testament, by the 
 sacramental interpretation of them. First, before instituting the 
 sacrament, Jesus Christ is said to have insinuated it, when, on 
 raising Lazarus from the dead, he caused him to be unbound 
 
 1 James t. 16. - Acts xix. 18. ' 1 Cor. xi. 4 Poenitentiam agere. 
 
254 history of the council of trext. 
 
 by his disciples. "It was," says St. Augustine, quoted by the 
 Catechism, "to shew that priests have the power of unbinding." 
 Note that the passage runs thus in St. John, " Jesus saith unto 
 them, loose him and let him go;" and as the evangelist had 
 spoken of a crowd of bystanders, it cannot be affirmed that this 
 them applies exclusively to the disciples, who, moreover, were 
 nowise priests, seeing that, according to a decision of the council, 
 it was not until he was just about to leave them, that Jesus 
 Christ stamped them with that character. Priests or not priests, 
 in what science, in what branch of human study, would such an 
 abuse of words, of ideas, of deductions, be tolerated? " At what- 
 ever hour," the Catechism goes on to say, 1 "a sinner desires to 
 repent, our Lord has taught us not to reject him." Quite right ; 
 but where did he particularly teach this? "When St. Peter 
 asked 2 him how many times we must forgive sinners, and if 
 seven times were enough?" Sinners, you see how it is. St. 
 Peter received power to forgive sins. He asks for directions as 
 to the manner of doing so. What more clear ? There is but 
 one difficulty; it is that the Apostle said cpiite another thing. 
 "How oft shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?" 
 Of sins and sinners, not a word. Elsewhere the Catechism 
 quotes these words faithfully, but always with an effort to enlist 
 them into its system. "Penance," it says, "is not, like baptism, 
 a sacrament that cannot be repeated;" and the proof is that 
 Jesus Christ sets no limits to the pardon of offences : it is natu- 
 ral, then, that he sets none, he who is so infinitely good, to the 
 remission of sins by the sacrament of penance. In this manner, 
 it will be seen, there is no reason why penance, instead of being - 
 nowhere, should not be everywhere. To the very words, "let a 
 man examine himself" all is converted by the Catechism into 
 something favourable to confession. " Let a man examine him- 
 self," and if he find himself in a state of sin, let him beware of 
 communicating without having gone to confession. " Give me 
 four lines of a man's writing," said Richelieu, "and I will un- 
 dertake to find enough in them to have him hanged." " Give 
 me four lines of Scripture," the Roman Church seems to say, 
 " and I undertake to find in them all that I have taught." 
 
 Such, then, is our first objection : sacramental penance, con- 
 fession, are not in Scripture. Had we to write a theological 
 treatise, we should now set ourselves to investigate what we are 
 to understand by this power of binding and loosing, of remitting 
 
 i Part i. Art. 10. 2 Matt, xviii. 
 
THE CONFESSIONAL SILENCE OF THE APOSTLES. 255 
 
 and retaining, with which the Saviour invested his Apostles. We 
 should see whether their altogether exceptional position, the per- 
 petual aid of the Holy Ghost, the possession of other miraculous 
 gifts, not transmissible, would permit us to believe in the trans- 
 mission of this. And yet it was in reality the most miraculous 
 of them all. " Thy sins be forgiven thee," said the Saviour to 
 a paralytic, and anon the Jews were more surprised at those 
 words than at the most amazing miracles. " Who," they ex- 
 claimed, "can forgive sins but God only?" They were right. If 
 priests have not inherited the power of performing other miracles, 
 whence should they have retained the gift of performing this ? 
 In writing to Timothy two epistles on the rights, the duties, the 
 prerogatives, the functions of the minister of the Gospel, what 
 says St. Paul about this divine function ? Nothing ; nothing- 
 even which any one has been bold enough to attempt to twist 
 into such a meaning. 
 
 Accordingly, either the Apostles did not believe themselves 
 entitled to communicate this power, or, which is still more likely, 
 they were far from interpreting it in the Roman sense. When 
 St. Paul, on being assailed as a minister, sets himself to enume- 
 rate his privileges as such, 1 he says notbing, absolutely nothing 
 of this. 
 
 Premising these remarks, what most fortifies the objection 
 drawn from the silence of the Apostles, is the very importance 
 that has been given to this sacrament. The more you shall say 
 that it is necessary, the more reasonable will you make it for 
 others to think it impossible that the Apostles should never have 
 spoken of it. But, with the exception of baptism, the necessity 
 for which is deemed to be absolute, no sacrament, according to 
 the council, is so necessary as this ; and even, interpreting the 
 decree literally, it, too, is absolutely necessary. " God being 
 rich in mercy, he has granted a second remedy of life to those 
 who, after baptism, shall have delivered themselves to sin, and 
 this remedy is the sacrament of penance, whereby the benefit of 
 Christ's death is applied to those who have fallen after baptism." 
 Such is the opening of the decree. Without saying in so many 
 terms that this is the only remedy, the council speaks of it as the 
 only one, nor does it mention any other. For original sin, bap- 
 tism ; for all subsequent sins, the sacrament of penance ; no other 
 means, no other door. Would you have the proof? Go to the 
 Eoman Catechism, the avowed interpreter of the decrees of 
 
 i In various parts of his epistles, and particularly 2 Cor. x. and xi. 
 
256 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 Trent, — "It is not enough," it says, "to believe that Jesus 
 Christ has instituted Confession ; we must farther be persuaded 
 that he has commanded the practice as necessary," (as absolutely 
 necessary, says the French translation.) "In like manner," it 
 says a little farther on, " as one cannot enter into a place that is 
 shut, unless by means of him who has the keys, no more can one 
 enter into heaven, when he has shut the door against himself by 
 a mortal sin, unless the priest, to whom Jesus Christ has com- 
 mitted the keys, shall open the gate to him. Otherwise, in fact, 
 the use of the keys would be entirely null ; and could the door 
 be opened by any other means, in vain should he to whom the 
 power of the keys has been given, interdict entrance to any one." 
 Here, then, we have the power not only of loosing, but of bind- 
 ing. Impossible to enter unless the priest shall open ; impossible 
 to enter if he shall shut. Ah, what infamous treason must have 
 been that of the Apostles, if, although quite aware of such a 
 secret, they have not written it on every page of their book, and 
 have allowed so many wretched creatures to perish under the 
 delusion that heaven stands open to whosoever believes, repents, 
 and loves ! 
 
 We shall not stop to shew how far down we must come from 
 those early times, to find some citations, some facts, that begin 
 really to signify something in favour of the Roman penance. 
 Really, we say, for it is clear that we cannot accept in support of 
 Confession properly so called — obligatory, necessary, sacramental 
 Confession — what the early Fathers have" written about a free 
 and irregular confession, a simple avowal made to a priest with 
 the view of easing the conscience, obtaining of advice, and re- 
 ceiving from the mouth of his minister the assurances of God's 
 love and mercy. Such confession the Protestants have never 
 rejected. It is expressly recommended by Luther, in his Cate- 
 chism, published in 1 530. Calvin, in a letter to Fare!, 1 congra- 
 tulates himself on the faithful being in the habit of coming and 
 opening their minds to him before communicating. At the pre- 
 sent day, if that practice is not so general as one could wish, it 
 is, nevertheless, much more so than Roman Catholics believe, 
 and would be much more general still, were it not that people 
 dread the abuses that result from the Roman confession. ''The 
 pastor," says a Roman Catholic writer, 2 "is not authorized to 
 enter the house of his parishioner, and to ask him to account for 
 the tears he sees him shed. He cannot, without dread of indis- 
 
 l May 1540, -' Audin, Vk dc Calvin i Life of Calvin.) 
 
IN WHAT SENSE IS PENANCE A SACRAMENT? 257 
 
 cretion, interrogate the man who suffers, groans, murmurs, or 
 blasphemes." It would be difficult to write anything in more 
 direct contradiction to facts. In Protestant states, it is a thing 
 unheard of, and a public scandal for a door to be shut upon the 
 pastor ; is this the case in Koman Catholic states (those of course 
 in which the clergy do not reign absolutely) ? How much dis- 
 trust ! What affronts, often unjust, no doubt, yet almost unknown 
 among the Protestant clergy ! This is easily accounted for. 
 The one presents himself as a friend, the other as a master. The 
 one says that he can shut heaven ; the other does not say that he 
 can open it, but he sends you to him who alone, let people say 
 what they will, has veritably the keys thereof. 
 
 Will it be said that the Church could, for the good of souls, 
 render obligatory that which at first she was content to recom- 
 mend ? This opinion would be at once in disaccordance with that 
 which traces up to Jesus Christ the institution and the necessity 
 of the sacrament of penance, an opinion, nevertheless, held by 
 the council. But the question does not lie there. It must be 
 proved, before all, that what the Church commanded in the six- 
 teenth century is really what she recommended in the first or 
 the second. And here, as we have already said, we have what 
 is altogether impossible, what many divines, at the council, 
 begged in vain that the members would examine. How could 
 they consent to such a request '? From the very first step taken 
 in this course, the council would have found itself encompassed 
 with more elucidations on the subject than the majority could 
 desire, ay, more than even those who proposed this inquiry 
 would have liked, for hardly could they have anyhow contrived 
 after that to maintain that penance was necessary, or obligatory, 
 or even so much as a sacrament. They thought it better to shut 
 then* eyes and say, with an assurance proportioned to the little 
 truth there was in the assertion, that such had been always the 
 unanimous opinion of all the Fathers. 1 
 
 All these difficulties, however, were not got rid of. At the 
 seventh session penance had been declared a sacrament. There 
 was no need, therefore, of going back to that ; but it had still 
 to be explained how and in what sense it is a sacrament. 
 
 Now, whole ages had witnessed keen disputes in the schools 
 on the question, where exactly lay that which caused this desig- 
 nation to be given to it. The sacrament of penance evidently 
 does not lie in penance, or repentance, itself. A man who should 
 
 l Universorum Patrum consensus semper. 
 K 
 
258 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 repent of his sins, but without having- had recourse to Confession, 
 would not pass for having- received it. Is it in the confession 
 of sins ? No ; for absolution must follow. It is in absolution 
 then ? No more in that than the other ; confession must have 
 preceded it. The only conclusion, yon think, must be that it 
 lies in the union of these two things. You will be told that 
 a sacrament is a sign, and that there must be something material 
 and actual in it in order to its being so. In baptism we have 
 water ; in the supper bread and wine ; in penance what shall it 
 be ? And so you are forced to make it reside in the very words 
 of absolution pronounced by the priest. This was what the 
 council did. 1 We shall see ere long to what it leads. 
 
 But there was another difficulty. The third canon anathema- 
 tizes whosoever shall deny that Jesus Christ established the sacra- 
 ment of penance by these words : — " Whosesoever sins ye remit, 
 whosesoever sins ye retain," &c. Now, it was observed that they 
 had often been understood as applying not to this sacrament in 
 particular, not even to repentance in general, but to all the means 
 by which the remission of sins may be obtained, and in which the 
 priest may be called to intervene. Those words, in fact, however 
 little they may bear the meaning that has been given to them, 
 have necessarily a far wider signification, which they knew not 
 how to suppress. Confession is not mentioned in them. Not a 
 word is said as to any previous formality, or any condition what- 
 ever to be fulfilled by the person whose sins are to be forgiven. 
 Therefore, if the right exist at all it is absolute. Wherever the 
 priest shall see sentiments, circumstances, what you will, in fine, 
 seeming to him to call for absolution, on him alone will depend 
 the granting of it ; he could, in a word, condemn or absolve, 
 without being subject to any rule but his own good pleasure, 
 whomsoever he happens to meet. The Eoman Church has 
 thought to be prudent in not recognising in him the unlimited 
 possession of this power, but in this has only brought upon her- 
 self a serious objection. What proves too much proves nothing.. 
 Let us repeat, if the priest have the power to bind and loose, and 
 if that power be founded on the words quoted, it is not limited 
 to Confession ; it is indefinite. This objection, it may well be 
 thought, was not listened to. 
 
 Yet another difficulty meets us, still under the Eoman point 
 of view. The tenth canon anathematizes those who shall say 
 
 1 Docet sancta synodus sacramenti poenitentire formam, in qua praeipui ipsius via sita est, 
 in illls ininistri verbis positaw esse : Ego te absolvo. 
 
DIVERSITIES OF OPINION ON PENANCE. 259 
 
 that the right of binding and loosing has not been given to the 
 priests alone. Now, some of the divines remonstrated that this 
 was a matter of discipline, not of faith. " In the primitive 
 times," they said, " we see the sacerdotal functions discharged, 
 in more than one rising church, by men who evidently were not 
 priests in the modern sense of the word." If they baptized, if 
 they administered the supper, there is nothing to prove that they 
 did not confess, and it is to this that we may reasonably refer 
 the exhortation given by St. James, — " Confess your sins one 
 to another." The objectors, accordingly, drew this conclusion, 
 not that the Church had done wrong in depriving the laity of 
 Confession, but that, since this was a matter of discipline, and 
 not of faith, it ought not to be made the subject of an anathema. 
 Thus the divines, as well as others, went wrong in tracing Con- 
 fession to the earliest times of the Church ; but they were right 
 in saying that it had not always been exclusively in the hands 
 of the priests, and that an act that was tolerated by the Apostles 
 could not be condemned as contrary to the faith. But they were 
 not listened to. 
 
 Others remonstrated also, in the same point of view, against 
 the dogmatical condemnation of the idea that a mere priest can 
 absolve from every kind of sins. They did not deny the pro- 
 priety of reserving certain cases to the bishops and the pope ; 
 but still they thought that this distinction, omitted by Jesus 
 Christ in the institution of the sacrament, could not thenceforth 
 be more than an affair of discipline, not of divine right or of 
 faith. No attention was paid to them. 
 
 Setting aside the value of these details as precious examples 
 of the diversities of opinion then to be found in the Church, on 
 so many things that are taught in our day as matters that have 
 been settled from the earliest antiquity, they would still be 
 valuable as corroborative of what we have said elsewhere on the 
 medley the council had made of discipline and faith. Among 
 the fifteen anathemas of the decree on penance we have seen 
 three at least that bear on objects manifestly disciplinary. From 
 these, consequently, a Eoman Catholic is entitled to withhold 
 the respect due to what is infallible ; but it is evident, on the 
 other hand, that the council did not so understand it, and that 
 its infallibility, in its own eyes, was quite as much engaged on 
 these as on other points. If they are incorrect, what becomes of 
 the authority of all the rest ? 
 
 It is not what is most false and dangerous in the Eomanistdoc- 
 
260 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 trine of Confession that lias subjected it to most assaults. It has 
 become too much a habit, especially among those Roman Catholics 
 who reject it, to consider it as only a yoke imposed by the clergy 
 on the people. It is a yoke, no doubt, and we deem those to be 
 fully in the right who throw it off; but if you attack it only as a 
 yoke, you are greatly in risk of finding yourself on bad ground. 
 To all you may have to say on the inconveniences of a spiritual 
 superintendence, which so easily degenerates into espionage and 
 tyranny, numerous instances will be adduced in reply, in which 
 its influence has been beneficial, nay, it will even be said, neces- 
 sary. Crimes abandoned or expiated, restitutions, reconcilia- 
 tions, divers returns to religion and virtue, — such are happily 
 not unfrequent facts in the history of Confession. 
 
 Now, the more unjust it would be to deny these facts, the 
 more should we err in accepting them as arguments. 
 
 First of all, let us beware of allowing their value to be ex- 
 aggerated. Are the Roman Catholic, on the whole, more moral 
 than the Protestant populations of Christendom '? Nobody, to our 
 knowledge, has yet maintained this ; nobody, at least, who has 
 seen with his own eyes and judged fairly. Much more, the 
 most Roman Catholic countries are those which can least bear 
 the comparison. What do we find contributed most to shake 
 Luther's faith as a Romanist ? His journey to Italy ; still more 
 his residence at Rome. And yet he did not come from a country 
 of saints and angels. Germany, too, had its vices ; the German 
 clergy had their turpitudes ; but all that was little, it was almost 
 nothing compared with what Luther had to witness in the ancient 
 seat of the popes. Thirty years afterwards, he could never say 
 enough of the painful surprise with which it had overwhelmed 
 him. " For a hundred thousand florins," he would say to his 
 friends, " I would not have missed the sight of Rome. I might 
 dread being too severe ; but you see I am cool. Never could I 
 say too much about it.'' " The nearer people live to the capital 
 of Christendom," writes Macchiavel, 1 " the less will you find in 
 them of a Christian spirit. We Italians have chiefly the Church 
 — the priests, to thank for having become profligate and ungodly 
 wretches." Macchiavel did not go there from the sanctity of a 
 monastery. But let us dismiss words — they may be somewhat too 
 strong — and keep to the fact, universally admitted at that epoch, 
 that nowhere was there less morality than in Italy. 2 Has that 
 
 1 Dissertation on Livy. 
 
 - We kno.v what was the ordinary theme of Savonarola's preachings and predictions. 
 
VALUE OF THE CONFESSIONAL EXAGGERATED. 2G1 
 
 fact undergone a change ? The inquiry is too delicate for us to 
 pursue it. But to those who may reproach us for having merely 
 pointed to it, we would say, were you to draw up a general table 
 of Christian nations, placing them in the order of their morals, 
 would the Roman Catholic he at the beginning or at the end? Had 
 you to put clown in such a table the Roman Catholic people alone, 
 where would you place those who attended Confession most? 
 Hear what Lamennais said, at an epoch when he thought him- 
 self more Roman Catholic than any one else. He speaks of 
 Spain ; and mark well whether it be of Spain only that he could 
 speak thus : — " People indulge in all violations of the (moral) 
 precepts, taking refuge under the shelter of religious worship. 
 The compensation which some consciences dream of establishing 
 between such or such a crime and such or such an act of devo- 
 tion, their unreasoning {naive) security in habits of vice, the 
 strange motives of that security, those souls, full of hell, and at 
 ease before the altar, all this produces amazement and consterna- 
 tion." ■" Behold," says the author, " the great misfortune of 
 Catholicism in Spain !" Misfortune of Christianity, we admit ; 
 but why say misfortune of Catholicism? Do we see it com- 
 plained of, or groaned over? Do the clergy in those lands seem 
 in the least to conceive that there can be any other Catholicism 
 than their own ? Has Rome ceased to regard their inhabitants 
 as her most devoted children ? We do not say that she approves 
 of such a state of degradation ; but this state of things is pro- 
 foundly associated with all the methods she employs for being and 
 remaining mistress of men's souls. 
 
 What we have said of nations we might say of kings. Look 
 at your sovereigns who have confessors, have they been, are they 
 now, generally more moral, more honourable, than Protestants? 
 ISTo one, we think, can any more maintain this. A few princes 
 will be cited, whom Confession may probably have made better 
 than they would otherwise have been ; many might be cited for 
 whom it was nothing but a pillow for lulling the conscience 
 asleep amid immoralities, and sometimes amid crimes. More 
 than one has been seen to become an object of pity from excess 
 of docility ; very few, who with ardent passions, found in Confes- 
 sion a veritable restraint on their indulgence. 
 
 "Were Confession abolished," says the Roman Catechism, 
 " not only would the world overflow with an infinity of secret 
 crimes, but men would cease to feel ashamed to commit them 
 openly, or to indulge in the most shameful disorders." Before 
 
262 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 the Reformation, this might have been dreaded ; since the Re- 
 formation, the statement is false. Everywhere, from its earliest 
 progress, we see it harbinger a moral regeneration, which its 
 greatest enemies owned and admired. In France, the preachers 
 of the sixteenth century never ceased to put Romanists to the 
 blush, by displaying the austere virtue of the Huguenots. Under 
 Calvin, Geneva became a new Sparta. 1 Beza, the Roman 
 Catholic, was a debauchee ; Beza, the Protestant, a Cato. 
 Henry IV. of France, as a Protestant, was a debauchee ; as a 
 Roman Catholic, he remained a debauchee still. Pass the sea ; 
 go into England, into Scotland. Do you laugh at the Puritans? 
 They have at times been ridiculous, but it is easier to laugh at 
 them than to shew wherein they were not, in point of morals, 
 the gravest and most irreproachable of men. Pass the ocean. 
 The Old world has begun to people the New. From Spain, 
 with her colonists, there went out troops of confessors; from 
 England, the Bible. And now what find you in those regions? 
 The Spanish colonies became sinks of vice ; the English were 
 the reproduction of Scotland in the seventeenth century ; you 
 behold purity of morals, seriousness of manners, civilisation 
 resulting from piety ; you have Penn, you have Washington. 
 Such has been the secpiel, instead of the frightful dissolution pre- 
 dicted of the fall of Confession. 
 
 Quite assured, therefore, as to its pretended moral necessity, 
 we need not refute at any great length what has been said of its 
 religious necessity. " Without this salutary institution," says 
 Chateaubriand, 2 " the guilty would sink into despair. Into what 
 breast shall he discharge the burthen that oppresses his heart ? 
 Shall it be into that of a friend ? Ah, who can reckon safely 
 on the friendship of men ? Shall he fly to the desert for a confi- 
 dant ? The deserts ever resound, to the criminal's ears, with the 
 noise of those trumpets which the parricide Nero thought he heard 
 around his mother's tomb." Fine phrases, but mere phrases. 
 We detect a sophism at once in his speaking of great crimes, 
 when we have to do only with sins of daily occurrence. Even 
 on that ground, is the author not mistaken? Men without re- 
 
 i Unable to deny this, some writers have shifted their ground, and set themselves to de- 
 claim against Calvin's despotism. His last biographer, Audin, adduces as an act of tyranny 
 the ordinance of 1561, that "No one shall remain confined to bed for three days, without 
 letting the pastor know, in order that he may receive admonitions and consolations from 
 him ;" which the pope prescribed in 1S45 to the physicians throughout his states, that they 
 should cea c e to attend every sick person who, on their third visit, shall be found not to have 
 made confession to a priest. 
 
 2 Genie du Christianume, Kre nartie. 
 
IS ABSOLUTION ABSOLUTE OR CONDITIONAL? 263 
 
 ligion hardly know anything of such despair : and did they ex- 
 perience it, it is not to the confessional they would go in search 
 of consolation. Eeligious men might go perhaps ; but who will 
 say that they might not lay hold, of themselves, without a con- 
 fessor, without formal confession, still more without absolution, 
 of those promises of grace with which the Gospel abounds? 
 Would such an advocate of Confession be so good as adduce, 
 we shall not even say a single Protestant, but a single enlight- 
 ened Eoman Catholic, a Christian, though not availing himself 
 of the confessional, who ever fell into this alleged despair? At 
 the very most, we shall be told of some who, from indolence, 
 from weakness of the moral sense, may have sighed for the 
 peace that absolution gives ; a mendacious peace which nothing 
 but a deplorable forgetfulness of the first notions of the Gospel, 
 could lead any one to view as an argument in favour of Confes- 
 sion. 
 
 All that we have been considering, in fact, however eagerly it 
 has been sought, especially in our own days, to make it the prin- 
 cipal, is not, and cannot be more than an accessory. No happy 
 results that the Romish Confession might have, can bar our right 
 to say, Let us go to the bottom of the matter, and see what it is. 
 This we proceed to do. 
 
 I have committed a fault. I am about to confess. The priest 
 asks me some questions, gives me some advices, imposes on me a 
 certain penance, and absolves me. I ask myself how both he 
 and I stand with regard to all this? 
 
 I absolve thee, 1 he has said. Is this declaration absolute, or 
 is it conditional? 
 
 If absolute, if at the instant those words passed from his 
 mouth, they were necessarily ratified in heaven, — I say to myself, 
 I may have deceived him with false semblances of repentance, 
 yet those words have been not the less pronounced, and God 
 must have ratified a pardon which has been stolen. 
 
 If conditional, if God confirms the absolution only in the case 
 of his seeing in me sentiments worthy of grace, — this is reason- 
 able ; but what then becomes of the authority of the priest ? He 
 has not really absolved me ; he has neither loosed nor bound. 
 All is but a mere promise, that if I fulfil the necessary conditions, 
 God will absolve me. May not the first that comes tell me as 
 
 1 Here, perhaps, may be the proper place to remind the reader, that until the definitive 
 •erection of penance into a sacrament, that is, until ahout the twelfth century, the priest djii 
 nut say, I abjstiloc Vice, but God absolves Uice, li n r as do tsss rash, but mojie humble. 
 
Zb4 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 much ? May not I myself say as much to any sinner who mar 
 consult me on the state of his soul ? 
 
 In this last case, consequently, the priest is only an adviser. 
 He helps you in self-examination • he gives you directions, which 
 may be excellent, on the means of being absolved • but he does 
 not absolve you. You are thus compelled, if you hold to leaving 
 him anything to do at all, to return to the other alternative, that 
 is to say, to leave him too much, far too much, enormously too 
 much ; you are compelled to admit that once absolved at the con- 
 fessional, the greatest villain stands also absolved before God. 
 
 And this incredible system, which nobody on earth, it seems, 
 would dare to maintain in its naked reality, is the only one. 
 nevertheless, to which the usag-e of Confession can lead, in prac- 
 tice, unless you make a halt on the way. Eead the decree of 
 the council ; is there any indication there that the absolution 
 pronounced by the priest, may possibly not be ratified in heaven? 
 No. To say that, in any way, would be to overturn the whole 
 structure. The penitent is, no doubt, told beforehand that he 
 ought not to be silent on any sin, and that he is held bound to 
 perform the penance imposed ; but here we find precisely what 
 authorizes him to believe that after a sincere confession, and the 
 exact performance of the penance imposed, the absolution is ne- 
 cessarily valid. Take hold now of that idea, analyze it, and see 
 to what you are led. A pious woman was asked one day, what 
 penalty the priest had imposed at the confessional whence she 
 had just returned. Five Paters and five Ave Marias, she re- 
 plied. And if you should not say them? My sins will not be 
 forgiven. And if you say them ill, without attention, with 
 weariness and disgust ? No more will they be forgiven in that 
 case. Therefore you have not received absolution? Certainly .: 
 but I must work for it. The priest has not then given you any- 
 thing? He gave me absolution. Nay, for you still have your 
 sins ; and you will continue to have them until your penance be 
 performed, and you will keep them too unless you perform it in 
 a proper way. Again we ask, what has the priest given you ? 
 Either a definitive absolution which you are conscious that you 
 have not received, or a mere promise of absolution, which any 
 other man might have given you. And the poor woman was 
 confounded at seeing no middle point betwixt this reducing of 
 the priest to the level of mere believers, and that exorbitant 
 power with which her conscience forbade her to believe him to 
 be invested. Hitherto, however, it was betwixt these two ex- 
 
DEPLORABLE RESULTS INEVITABLE. 26") 
 
 tremes that she had found, or thought to find repose ; it is also in 
 this cloudy middle that most Romanists find, or think to find, 
 theirs. Absolution is not, in their eyes, either a sovereign par- 
 don, or a mere promise ; but let us add, those who have been led 
 to comprehend that it must necessarily be either the one or the 
 other, cannot but reject Confession. 
 
 But unhappily there are many who do not look narrowly 
 enough into the matter to stop in their course, so as to rest on 
 this false middle ground, where there is room at least for a little 
 conscience and piety. They will not go so far as to tell you 
 directly, that once absolved by the priest, it matters not how, 
 they believe themselves pure from all sin ; but though they say 
 it not, though, strictly speaking, they may not positively think 
 it, that fatal error is not the less the natural, the direct, and, it 
 must be said, the perfectly logical consequence of the system that 
 has been imposed on them. What is Confession in those coun- 
 tries into which a little true Christianity, and a little good sense, 
 have not by some means or other penetrated? Did paganism, 
 with its impure priests and cheap expiations, ever present any- 
 thing so unheard of as the brigand who goes from the confessional 
 to his place of ambuscade, tasting all the tranquillity of virtue 
 between the crime he has committed, and that which he medi- 
 tates committing? And why should he not be tranquil? Of his 
 past crimes he is absolved ; only let him take care not to be killed 
 before he has murmured a few prayers imposed on him as pen- 
 ance. Of his future crimes he knows he can be acquitted at the 
 same cost. He never dreams of repentance ; still less of amend- 
 ment of life. Shall we be challenged to cite a book, or a priest, 
 that has taught this? True, these are not things that are writ- 
 ten or said. But we, in our turn, defy any one to produce a 
 book, or a priest, able enough to refute that brigand so as to de- 
 prive him of his frightful security, without a deep breach on the 
 very doctrine of Confession, the right of absolution, and all their 
 consequences. Everything, to the very title of sacrament, be- 
 stowed on penance, concurs to produce these deplorable results. 
 When the priest has said, "I baptize thee," the infant is bap- 
 tized. When he has said in the mass, " This is my body," the 
 wafer is changed, infallibly changed into flesh. When he has 
 said, " I absolve thee," how can it be, if penance be a sacrament, 
 if these words be pronounced with the same authority as the 
 others, how can it be that there should not be absolution ? To 
 refute the brigand who deems himself absolved, well and duly 
 
2G6 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 absolved, you must begin by telling him that absolution, in 
 itself, signifies nothing. 
 
 And what might not one have to say on a thousand incon- 
 veniences in detail, on a thousand errors more or less serious, all 
 of which, it is true, Rome does not preach, and several of which 
 she disowns, but in which one might prove to her that, alike in 
 fact and theory, there is nothing but the consequences of her 
 doctrine ; on the mischief done to piety in favouring, by the 
 imposition of penalties, the idea that man can pay his debts to 
 divine justice, while the very contrary idea lies at the foundation 
 of all the teachings of Christianity; on the ridiculous lightness 
 of those penalties, seeing that in most cases they are nothing 
 more than the repeating of a few prayers ; on the risk of trans- 
 forming prayer into a task, whereas it is uniformly represented 
 to us in Scripture as a privilege and a happiness ; on the incon- 
 venience, in fine, of concentrating within this narrow and puerile 
 circle all the good feelings wherewith the sinner may or might 
 be animated ! " I often confessed myself to Dr. Staupitz," says 
 Luther, " not on carnal matters, but on what makes the essence 
 of the question. Like all other confessors he replied, I don't 
 understand you." Eead the Compendium, that gospel of the 
 confessors, and say whether it is not always the same. Speak 
 to them of all sorts of abominations, they will confound you by 
 the knowledge they shew in these foul matters ; speak to them, 
 like Luther to Staupitz, who nevertheless was a fine character, 
 of your soul, of its wants, of its thirst for life and grace, " I 
 don't understand you," they will say. If they did understand 
 yon, would they be Romanists ? And if there be some who could 
 understand you — for, thank God, there are such — ask these last 
 if they seriously believe in the power of opening and shutting 
 heaven. 
 
 And if to corroborate all this, we now require some admissions 
 of the same kind with those we should expect from such priests, 
 know you where we should look for them ? 
 
 First of all, in Bossuet •} "It is Jesus Christ," says he, "it is 
 that invisible pontiff who absolves the penitent inwardly, whilst 
 the priest exercises the outward ministry." And should this in- 
 visible pontiff, who reads what is passing in the penitent's heart, 
 see something quite different there from what the priest thinks 
 that he sees, will he equally absolve him ? You would not dare 
 to affirm it. This comes then to saying that the penitent is never 
 
 1 Exposition of the Catholic Faith. 
 
EXTREME UNCTION ITS ORIGIN. 267 
 
 sure of the absolution received, and to believe in that pardon he 
 must feel the dispositions required for obtaining it. Thus he 
 will either believe in it blindly, or he will not really believe in 
 it at all. 
 
 To whom shall we go next ? To a pope ; to Innocent III. 1 
 " As the Church," he says, " may sometimes err with respect to 
 persons, it may happen that such an one who shall have been 
 loosed in the eyes of the Church, may be bound before God, and 
 that he whom the Church shall have bound, may be loosed when 
 he shall appear before him who knoweth all things." Do 
 we say more than this? And if this be so, what signifies 
 absolution ? 
 
 Finally, on one of the very banners of Eome — the banner that 
 Luther first seized and tore to shreds, we read further the tacit 
 condemnation of this system. The formula of the Indulgences 
 of 1517 ran thus : — " May our Lord Jesus Christ have pity upon 
 thee and absolve thee by the merits of his most holy passion ! 
 and I, in virtue of the Apostolic power that has been confided 
 to me, absolve thee from, &c." If the first phrase signify any- 
 thing, what means the second ? If you must begin by sending 
 me to Christ, what need have I of you ? Who shall hinder my 
 going to him myself? What is it that you can secure for me? 
 
 On the whole some happy results may, in human affairs, make 
 us pass over many inconveniences ; but when the things of 
 religion are at stake, and where the inconveniences go at once 
 to sap fundamental principles, to approve, to tolerate — whatever 
 honesty of intention there may be, involves the application of 
 that odious tenet, that the end justifies the means. 
 
 Extreme unction, which was next considered, does not present 
 the same clangers. It has, we must own, all the outward guise 
 of a sacrament, and, which is of moment, an Apostle speaks of 
 it. What then are we to think of it ? 
 
 First, if one Apostle speaks, the rest do not ; and this silence, 
 which might astonish us even had it been no more than a cere- 
 mony in general use, is incomprehensible on the supposition of 
 its having been a Christian sacrament. 
 
 In the second place, does St. James speak of it as if it were 
 a sacrament ? Put the theological question out of view ; let us 
 look to common sense, and that the plainest. It is incidentally, 
 in three lines, in the midst of a series of counsels, 2 that the 
 
 1 Epistle il 2 James v. ] i, 15. 
 
2G8 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 Apostle speaks of anointing the sick. But for the teaching of 
 the Church, who could suppose that this practice had, in the 
 mind of St. James, the importance of a sacrament, the rank of 
 baptism and the supper? 
 
 Only one Apostle mentions it. Two words in St. Mark, how- 
 ever, have been laid hold of, " They anointed with oil many that 
 were sick." l Here, according to the council, the sacrament was 
 insinuated. We have already seen this forcing of a text at 
 another place. Without dwelling on the strange idea of a legis- 
 lator insinuating, let us remark, that the words refer to sick per- 
 sons and cures, not at all to spiritual aids procured or figured by 
 anointing. " They anointed with oil many that were sick, and 
 healed them.'" 2 The healing of the sick is in St. James likewise 
 the first of the indicated results. After the anointing he says, 
 " the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise 
 him up." Although the Apostle did not certainly mean to say 
 that the cure was certain provided the prayer was fervent, the 
 idea of healing, thus put in the first line, is a circumstance not 
 to be neglected. The extreme unction of the Eoman Church, a 
 sacrament, a ceremony altogether spiritual in its meaning and 
 effects, hence cannot be that anointing, partly curative, partly 
 miraculous, mentioned by St. Mark and St. James. This is the 
 opinion of Cardinal Cajetan. " Neither the words," says he, 
 " nor the results announced here, indicate the sacramental 
 unction of extreme unction." 3 So true is it that the Eoman 
 Catechism has been obliged to explain why, being the same, 
 it has not, nevertheless, the cure of the sick for its result. " If 
 all sick persons do not experience its virtue in this respect, we 
 must think that this arises, not from the sacrament having lost 
 its vigour, but from a want of faith in those who receive or those 
 who administer it." Is it meant by this that if it were always 
 received and administered with sufficient faith, nobody would 
 any longer die ? That would be rather too strong an explana- 
 tion. It may be remarked, too, that it would be in contradiction 
 to what the Church teaches on the power of the priest being 
 independent of his private dispositions. Here we have a sacra- 
 ment which fails in one of its effects, it is said, because of the 
 want of faith in those who administer it. Who, after this, will 
 warrant us that the priest's want of faith may not make baptism 
 
 1 Mark vi. 13. " See Marginal addition. 
 
 3 Nee ex verbis nee ex'effectis, verba hrec loquantur de sacramental) unetione extremae 
 unctionis. — He i< in the right, liut if extreme unction does not come from this, where 
 t'.ieu dues he make it come from '! 
 
INCONSISTENCIES OF EXTREME UNCTION. 269 
 
 fail, transubstantiation fail, absolution fail, all the sacraments, in 
 fine, prove abortive ? 
 
 Nor is this the only difficulty ; and what is remarkable, they 
 all spring from the same text in St. James, the only positive 
 passage that can be adduced in favour of extreme unction. 
 
 First, " If any one is sick," says the Apostle, " let him call 
 for the elders of the Church." Are those elders the pastors '? 
 There is nothing to prove this. Were the pastors in St. James's 
 time priests in the Roman sense of the term '? Consequently, is 
 it to the priests alone that this sacrament of divine right belongs? 
 The council says yes ; but beyond its own affirmation it neither 
 gives nor can give any proof of this. The Presbyteri of St. 
 James are, according to the decree, priests duly ordained by the 
 bishop, — and anathema to all who believe it not. 
 
 The Apostle having said, " Let them pray," it has been 
 thought necessary to give the form of a prayer to the sacra- 
 mental words that accompany the anointing, and hence a fresh 
 difficulty. In all the other sacraments, in virtue of the power 
 supposed to reside in him, the priest affirms and gives ; in this 
 he affirms nothing, he gives nothing. " By this holy anointing- 
 may God forgive thee all that thou hast done, be it ... or be 
 it . . . &c." The priest therefore exercises in reality no power. 
 He prays for the sick man, and does not warrant the success of 
 his prayer. This is more wise ; but if in the sacrament of 
 penance also he were to confine himself to saying, " May God 
 forgive thee," would it still be a sacrament ? In what sense, 
 then, can extreme unction be one ? This certainly required 
 explanation. It is an optative sacrament, shall it be said, and 
 the others are collative. This carries you far indeed ! Nor is 
 this all. Before receiving it you must have confessed. That 
 same priest who has said to you i" absolve thee, behold him 
 now praying to God to absolve you. Of what avail was his 
 first pardon ? In fine, as this sacrament is administered in 
 several anointings, at each of which the formula is repeated, it 
 was only by subtleties that it could be explained how the sacra- 
 ment remains one, how it is not complete from the first utterance 
 of the formula, how, in the view of an object so purely spiritual, 
 two anointings should be of more avail than one, and three more 
 than two. The same difficulty re-appears, but much more 
 seriously, in the sacrament of Orders, one also according to the 
 council, although administered in seven successive acts. All 
 this in itself is of no great importance ; but it is well to shew 
 
270 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 how the Roman theory of the sacraments, so plain and so one at 
 a first look, should involve, even for a Romanist, so many diffi- 
 culties and embarrassments. 
 
 On the whole, then, although we cannot charge it as a crime 
 against the Roman Church that it has maintained extreme 
 unction, viewed merely as a ceremony known to the primitive 
 Church, we are of opinion that that ceremony was not originally 
 either recommended or interpreted in such a manner as that 
 Protestants behoved to retain it, if they saw inconveniences 
 arising from it. 
 
 Now, of these there are two. It is of little use — it is often 
 dangerous. 
 
 It is of little use, for one cannot attribute to it any effect 
 which shall not have been already more or less produced or 
 figured by another sacrament. What will it add to the graces 
 which the sick person has already been enabled to receive by 
 means of penance or the communion? "A sacrament," says 
 Chateaubriand, " opened to this righteous person the gates of 
 this world ; a sacrament is about to close them. The liberating 
 sacrament breaks by degrees the ties of the believer. Already 
 he seems to hear the concerts sung by the seraphim. Already 
 he is prepared to fly towards those regions whither he is invited 
 by that divine hope which is the daughter of virtue and of death. 
 He dies at last, and no one has heard his last sigh — so sweetly 
 has this Christian passed away." But how would this Christian, 
 " this righteous person," so full of resignation and hope, have 
 " passed away" with less tranquillity had he failed to receive 
 the unction, had you repeated to him, not the formida five times 
 over, but one only of those admirable exhortations with which 
 the Gospel is full ? Go, poet, go ! the most affecting pictures in 
 the world can never supply the place of the smallest amount of 
 conclusive reasoning. 
 
 Extreme unction is often dangerous, is our second objection. 
 This, first, because people easily glide into attributing to it 
 virtues which it has not and never can have. At so solemn a 
 moment as a man's last dying struggle, the mind is hardly in a 
 state to calculate the true bearing of an act, the meaning of 
 which is so tar from clear even in the decrees and the treatises 
 in which it has been attempted to elucidate it. Instead of going 
 to the sense, people cleave to the sign. It has been made a sort 
 of charm ; the commonalty, if they want to know whether a 
 man has died a Christian, ask no more than whether he has 
 
EPISCOPAL COMPLAINTS AND REMEDIES. 271 
 
 received extreme unction. 1 And what still further tends to 
 foster such erroneous ideas is, that it is administered every day 
 to sick persons who are incapable of thinking, seeing, or even of 
 feeling. In all cases of that sort, if we do not consider it as 
 useless, we are compelled to recognise in it an action entirely 
 independent of the sentiments of the person who receives it. 
 The body is all but a corpse, and lo, a few drops of oil poured 
 on members already devoted to the worms, are nevertheless to 
 influence the soul's eternal destiny ! 
 
 In the first century, among men whose lives were but a long 
 and laborious preparation for death, we can conceive that this 
 error was less to be dreaded ; but since extreme unction was 
 neither instituted by Jesus Christ, nor recommended after his 
 departure as a sacrament behoved to have been, — it might and 
 ought to have disappeared among those who have seen more 
 dangers than good results attending it. 
 
 While one of the congregations was employed in elaborating 
 the dogmatical decrees, the other had resumed in detail some 
 points relative to episcopal jurisdiction. 
 
 Each new point gave rise to new complaints, most of which 
 were so evidently legitimate, that there was no means of escape 
 from making some concessions. Thus some bishops having 
 complained that a priest suspended or interdicted, even for im- 
 moral conduct or notorious scandal, could procure his rehabilita- 
 tion by the pope, the legate allowed it to be decided that such 
 rehabilitations should not take place ; exacting only that the 
 pope should not be named in the decree. Sarpi will have it that 
 this was only that he might remain free from its obligation ; but 
 as that kind of dispensations emanated entirely from him, this 
 omission of his name could not have that effect. All that was 
 wished, then, was to avoid addressing him too directly, on what 
 was felt to be a serious reproach. The same precaution was 
 taken in another decree, relative to what were called conserva- 
 tory expenses. A man accused before the bishop might purchase 
 at Rome permission to choose a judge, and that judge in most 
 cases never acted, but confined himself to sheltering the accused 
 from the episcopal jurisdiction. The thing was prohibited ; but 
 universities, colleges, hospitals, and convents were excepted from 
 
 1 It is -with the view of avoiding this evil (ecueil) that some Protestant Churches interdict 
 themselves from giving the supper itself to the dying. The precaution is perhaps exaggerated, 
 but it springs from a principle which cannot be too much borne in mind. 
 
272 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 the prohibition, and this considerably reduced the application of it. 
 It is true that the council had hardly the power of touching the 
 ancient privileges of those corporations,— the popes themselves 
 durst not, and those privileges, besides, were often the safeguards 
 of necessary liberties. Everywhere the evil was found bound up 
 with what had in the first instance been a good, and the council 
 was incessantly in the position of an operator who is stopped at 
 every incision he makes, by the cries of the patient or the dread 
 of wounding a healthy part. 
 
 They had the courage, nevertheless, to take up anew two de- 
 crees of the sixth and the seventh sessions, for the. purpose of 
 giving precision to their meaning, and making their regulations 
 more severe. In this last we have seen what the council had done 
 in the way of restraining, as much as in it lay, — unions of bene- 
 fices ; it was added that the union could not take place, in any 
 instance, where the benefices lay in different dioceses. In the 
 sixth, bishops had been prohibited from ordaining priests in any 
 diocese but their own ; but ambulatory l bishops were free to 
 establish themselves in monasteries, and there, in spite of the 
 diocesan, they ordained whom they choose, that is to say, in most 
 cases, all that were least worthy of the priesthood. 2 The pope 
 levied a tribute on these ordinations. They were forbidden, but 
 the facility with which Rome- had tolerated, while regulating for 
 her own advantage, such a violation of quite a recent decree, 
 sufficiently shewed how little good faith was to be expected from 
 her in the execution of all that did not suit her views. " As for 
 the disciplinary decrees published in this session," wrote the 
 bishop of Astorga to Cardinal Granville, the emperor's minister, 
 " they are not of a nature to cause scandals to cease. What we 
 do here is not what we wish to do, but what we are allowed to 
 do." " A pretty reformation, forsooth," exclaimed the Bishop of 
 Verdun one day ; on which the legate told him he was an im- 
 pertinent fellow, a blockhead, a raw youth. " For my part," 
 wrote Vargas, " of all these reforming decrees, I have but one 
 word to say, — they are useless; they are unfortunate for us; 
 but the court of Rome will well know how to turn them to good 
 account." In fact, it was already said all over Europe, that the 
 only result of the efforts of the assembly to make dispensations 
 more rare, had been to cause a rise in the price of them. And 
 
 1 Fere vagabundi. Second canon. 
 
 - Minus idonei, et rudes, ac ignavi, et qui a suo episcopo tanquam inhabiles et indigni 
 
 rejecti t'uerant. Second canon. 
 
PROTESTANT ENVOYS AND T1IEI1? DEMANDS. 2 t A 
 
 this was true. The papal chancery openly rested on the coun- 
 cil's prohibitions as a ground for enhancing the payment of the 
 violations it authorized. 
 
 The session (the fourteenth) was held on the 25th November 
 1551. Nothing of importance was done. The dogmatical 
 decrees (penance and extreme unction) were voted at once ; the 
 disciplinary regulations gave occasion for repeating that they 
 were accepted only as an instalment, and that much yet remained 
 to be done. It became known next day that the legate had for- 
 bidden the printing of the acts of this session ; but, as might 
 have been foreseen, copies were taken and sent away in all direc- 
 tions, and these were printed, read, and criticised with more 
 eagerness than ever. 
 
 A few days before the sitting, the Duke of Wurtemberg's 
 envoys had arrived at Trent. According to custom, every am- 
 bassador, before having an official audience, communicated his 
 instructions to the president of the council. Those of the Elector 
 of Brandenburg had yielded on this point, but the duke's had 
 come with orders to accept neither de jure nor de facto the pre- 
 sidency of the pope or of his representatives. Tt was Cardinal 
 Madrucci, bishop of Trent, who acted as intermediate between 
 them and the assembly. They first resumed the subject of the 
 free-conduct. A more explicit one had to be given, or their 
 divines would not come. Now, nothing could have been more 
 agreeable to the legate, and almost the totality of the council, 
 than to find those hindrances thus raised in a question of form, 
 which they durst no more raise on the ground of principle. The 
 legate and the nuncios replied, accordingly, that it did not be- 
 come the dignity of the council to grant a safe-conduct anew ; 
 that this would be to admit the insufficiency of that first issued, 
 and the bad faith they were accused of having shewn in it. The 
 same difficulties occurred on the arrival of the deputies from 
 Strasbourg and other Protestant cities, which, as well as the 
 princes, had been compelled by the emperor to have themselves 
 represented at the council ; and when they joined in a demand 
 that in conformity with the promises of Charles V., they should 
 be allowed at least to present to the council an exposition of 
 their faith, the legate declared that neither he nor his colleagues, 
 neither the assembly nor the pope, could ever consent to such a 
 thing. 
 
 Finally, there arrived the envoys from the Elector of Saxony, 
 and as their master, daily more and more powerful, shewed him- 
 
 s 
 
274 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRF.NT. 
 
 self little disposed to suffer their not being received, some means 
 had to he fallen upon for doing' so. It was decided that the 
 Protestant ambassadors should all he received on the same day, 
 but not, however, at a public sitting. It was to be, therefore, 
 at a general congregation, and in the legate's palace. 
 
 At this very sitting other questions had to be resolved. What 
 place should be given to the ambassadors '? As heretics they 
 should get to their knees, or at best remain standing and un- 
 covered, an indignity which could not be asked of them, and still 
 less imposed upon them. It was decided, therefore, that they 
 should have seats, and even honourable ones ; but, " from charity 
 and compassion," say the minutes, and without any derogation 
 from the rights of the assembly. The conferences had lasted 
 two months. 
 
 That sitting was held at last on the 24th of January. Leonard 
 Badehorn, the Saxon ambassador, saluted the bishops by the 
 title of Most Reverend Fathers and Lords. His speech was 
 calm, his demands exorbitant; but it was plain that had they 
 been less moderate they would have been insincere, and he 
 ought rather to have been commended for having prevented 
 beforehand all equivocation. He insisted, before all, that the 
 pope should be declared inferior to the council ; in the second 
 place, that all the decrees should be reviewed, and that they 
 should wait for the Protestant divines before setting to work ; 
 in fine, that these should have a deliberative voice, and that they 
 should begin by drawing up the safe-conduct in such a way as 
 to free them from all apprehension. He was patiently listened 
 to, and the reply was that the assembly would take his speech 
 into deliberation. 
 
 One of those points had been settled beforehand: this was 
 that the deliberations should be suspended until the arrival of 
 the Protestant divines. The following day, accordingly, the 
 25th of January 1552, a session (the fifteenth) was held, but 
 only to declare that the council would wait for them until the 
 19th of March. It had been agreed also that a second safe- 
 conduct should be given, and it was read at that same sitting. 
 Although conceived in the most precise terms, the compulsory 
 omission of the name of the pope, whom the council could in no way 
 whatsoever make a party to it, prevented its signifying anything 
 more than the preceding one. The ambassadors at first refused 
 it ; then, at the instance of the Count de Montfort, premier ambas- 
 sador of Charles V., thev consented to send it to their masters. 
 
THE POPE'S FEARS CREATION OF FOURTEEN CARDINALS. 275 
 
 The decree of prorogation bore that the council had discussed 
 the articles hearing on the mass and the sacrament of Orders, as 
 well as the points previously adjourned ; that they were about to 
 proceed to treat of the saci'ament of marriage, and that the whole 
 would be published together at the next session. Several of 
 these details were far from exact. The decree seems to say that 
 the mass and orders were ready, and this was far from being the 
 case. There had as yet been only a few preparatory discussions ; 
 orders, in particular, had hardly been touched upon. The council 
 wished to shew that their discussions were not stopped by other 
 discussions elsewhere ; forgetting that Europe had known, from 
 day to day, how the business stood. It was probably, too, for 
 the purpose of veiling these blanks, that the session was cele- 
 brated with more than ordinary pomp. With the crowd of am- 
 bassadors present, this, it is true, seemed natural. They might 
 have thought they were attending a new birth of the council, 
 whereas it was its funeral. 
 
 In fact, it was about to come to an end. 
 
 The legate and the Italians began to perceive a disquieting 
 intimacy between the Protestant ambassadors and those of the 
 emperor, an intimacy shared, to a certain point, by several of 
 the German prelates. As much divided as ever upon dogmatical 
 questions, they had only to come upon the chapter of the pope 
 and the court of Eome, to find themselves almost at one. The 
 Protestants were delighted to hear Eoman Catholics admit the 
 scandals of an organization to which they attributed all the woes 
 of the Church and Europe ; the imperialists, on their side, seemed 
 to feel no repugnance at having them for auxiliaries in the abase- 
 ment of the pope. The latter, at the Christmas holidays, had 
 created fourteen cardinals, all Italians, at a stroke, betraying 
 sufficiently his fears by such eagerness to reinforce his party. 
 At the same time he turned his regards to Henry II. of France. 
 His secret negotiators represented him to that prince as ready to 
 break with the emperor, and even, in the event of war, to declare 
 for France. In fine, he wearied for nothing so much as to see 
 taken away from both the most dangerous instrument they could 
 bring into play against him — the council. He sent orders, 
 accordingly, to the legate so to arrange matters that all might 
 be brought to a close in two sessions, or at most, three ; but as 
 the council had promised to wait for the Protestants, they had 
 either to do nothing, or next to nothing. Although it had been 
 decreed that there should be no interruption of the discussions, 
 
27(5 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 it was felt that they could not well do anything until they had 
 waited for them for a certain time. 
 
 It would appear, moreover, that the hope had always been 
 cherished that they would not come, for, we find that, on their 
 arrival, everything was changed. And yet they were hut six 
 doctors, two from Strasbourg, and two from Wurtemberg. In- 
 stead of a new life, there now followed death. Legate, nuncios, 
 and bishops, would no longer do anything ; those whose ardour 
 it had been found most difficult to restrain when it was proposed 
 to close at the end of some weeks, were the very persons that 
 now shewed most reluctance to do anything. The horizon, it is 
 true, had again begun to lower. A general league of the Pro- 
 testants against the emperor was spoken of; the Elect ors of 
 Cologne and Mayence had left Trent to be ready for any emer- 
 gency. On the 19th of March, instead of a session, a congrega- 
 tion only was held, and an adjournment made to the 1st of May. 
 At thus sitting the Protestants were neither heard nor admitted, 
 and, several days afterwards, nothing was yet said either about 
 admitting them or resuming business. No one could foresee how 
 matters were to end. The legate was intently occupied about 
 this. He Avas not long of furnishing in his own person a pretext 
 for new delays. Devoured with anxiety, worn out with watch- 
 ing and with the impetuosity of his character, lie suddenly lost 
 his reason. A black dog, he said, was always pursuing him, 
 and staring at him with flaming' eyes. The Protestants wanted 
 one of the nuncios to take his place, but the pope was referred 
 to. His reply was waited for, but never came. 
 
 All at once news arrived that a Protestant army was besieging 
 Augsburg. The Elector of Saxony had declared himself against 
 the emperor, and having given the signal, had found all the Pro- 
 testant princes ready to march under his banner. After having 
 spent the winter in ably preparing his alliances and his forces, 
 he had issued his manifesto. As a Protestant he declared that he 
 had no account to render either to the emperor or to the council ; 
 as a prince he called upon all the princes of the empire, Roman 
 Catholic and Protestant, to throw off the yoke of Charles V., 
 and this new course he briskly began by besieging Augs- 
 burg, the city of the diets. In three days the city was his. 
 Straightway he fiies to Inspruck. There he enters by one gate 
 a few hours after Charles V. had gone out by another, and he 
 who a few days before might have thought himself master of 
 Europe, flies, almost alone, into the heart of Carmthia. 
 
MAURICE S SUCCESSES THE INTERIM ABOLISHED. 2i ( 
 
 At the first noise of this eruption a great many of the bishops 
 fled to Verona, and the nuncios asked the pope for authority to 
 suspend the council. Julius did not wait to be asked. He had 
 made a treaty with Henry II. ; he felt himself no longer bound 
 to any forbearance towards the emperor. He gave orders, how- 
 ever, for the suspension to be voted, and a large majority having 
 given their voices in favour of that measure, a session was held 
 on the 28th of April, at which the council was declared suspended 
 for two years, and longer if necessary. It was added, that in 
 the meantime all the decrees already made should be religiously 
 observed ; but this article, inserted probably without reflection, 
 for the nuncios could have no thought of offending the pope, was 
 looked upon with a very evil eye at Eome. The last decrees 
 had not yet received the papal sanction ; to ordain their observ- 
 ance was to say that they did not require that sanction. And 
 what put the omission in still stronger relief, was that the pope's 
 intervention, forgotten at this place, was mentioned further up, 
 in the article on the future resumption of the council. It seemed, 
 accordingly, to be thought necessary to the legitimacy of the 
 council, but superfluous as respected the validity of its decrees. 
 Here there was Gallicanism without its being intended. 
 
 Maurice had known how to conquer ; but he was either unable 
 or unwilling to draw from his victory all the advantages it 
 seemed to offer him. Perhaps he felt reluctant to reduce to ex- 
 tremity the man to whom he had owed his greatness ; besides, 
 if all the acts of imperial injustice were to be remedied, he be- 
 hoved to begin by giviDg back the electorship to the man who 
 had been despoiled of it five years before. This proved the sal- 
 vation of Charles V. The greater he had been seen to be, the 
 more stupefaction had his fall produced. Abandoned by several 
 of his allies, feebly defended by his few remaining friends, and 
 particularly by his brother and his nephew, confounded himself 
 by so sudden a catastrophe, he did not hesitate to humble himself 
 before his own vassal. He sued for peace, and within four 
 months from the commencement of hostilities it was concluded. 1 
 Liberty of conscience was restored to Germany, and the Interim, 
 which had served only to put everybody in a false position, was 
 abolished. This liberty of conscience did not, however, imply 
 that the emperor was obliged to tolerate Protestantism in his 
 own states ; all that he was bound to was to leave the princes 
 free to act in this matter, each for himself, as he might think fit. 
 
 i Peace of Passau, August 1552. 
 
278 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 After having had the suspension of the council decreed, the 
 pope had at first thought of making some compensation to those 
 who had felt aggrieved by that step. He had, accordingly, 
 nominated a commission, charged with the task of submitting to 
 him those projects of internal reform with which the council had 
 not found time to occupy itself. The news of this was coldly 
 received. People did not doubt that the reforms decreed by the 
 pope would be better executed than those of the council, and in 
 this respect nothing was lost ; but it was doubted whether any 
 would be decreed at all, and it was thought time enough to be 
 glad when they really appeared. Had he not, at the beginning 
 of his reign, named a commission also — what had been the result ? 
 He seemed, however, on this occasion, to attach much interest 
 to it. He composed it of the most eminent personages ; he saw 
 also to its being numerous. This was, he would say, that it 
 might have the utmost possible authority, and keep people from 
 regretting the absence of the council ; but the grumblers said 
 it was in order that it might not proceed so quickly to work. 
 Whether that was the pope's intention or not, the event justified 
 them. The commission met some five or six times, completed 
 nothing that it had begun, and was soon no more spoken of. 
 
 Nor was the council any more spoken of either ; never for 
 nearly forty years had princes or their subjects seemed to make 
 less account of it. Now that the Interim was abolished, not only 
 had the emperor no need of a council, but he could no longer 
 desire to see the publication of decrees that his vassals would 
 repel with impunity before his very eyes. The Protestants had 
 lost all desire of appealing to a council ; the Poman Catholics, 
 even on their own account, were much more afraid of the con- 
 tentions that preceded the decrees than gratified at the prospect, 
 then so doubtful, of the unity and the authority that were after- 
 wards to result from them. And Pome, Pome which for forty years 
 had never ceased to tremble alike at the wishes of the former 
 and the recriminations of the latter. Pome could believe that she 
 had gained her suit both against her enemies and against her 
 friends. 
 
 She was mistaken. We are hut at the middle of our task. 
 
279 
 
 BOOK FOURTH. 
 
 Ten years' interruption — Resumption of conferences — Death of Julius III. — Marcellus II. — 
 His views — He reigns only one-and-twenty days — Paul IV. — His character — His incoherent 
 projects — Manoeuvres — The States of the Church invaded — Violent acts of the pope — His 
 deliverance — What he meant to make of the council — His pretensions with respect to kings 
 and kingdoms — Ferdinand resumes the offensive — The Reformation spreads in all directions 
 — The Inquisition — Servetus and Roman Catholic historians — Pius IV. — New tactics — 
 Delays on the part of Rome and impatience of France — Attempts to create a diversion- 
 Geneva and its history — David before Goliath — The charity of St. Francis de Sales — Shows 
 and appearances, infinite jjrotraction of business and disguising of real intentions — Plan of 
 a European confederation against the Protestants — The project miscarries — A new council is 
 desired, and not the continuation of the old — It is proposed that one should be held in 
 France — The pope is compelled to hasten matters — Third convocation of the council — Dif- 
 ficulties eluded — Of the unity of the Council of Trent — The bull satisfies no one — The six 
 legates — Meeting of the States at Orleans — Bold demands — Catherine de Medicis and the 
 Reformation. 
 
 Colloquy of Poissy — The Chancellor de l'Hdpital — Did he attack the pope alone — The 
 Protestants have the ball at their feet — Beza and the Cardinal de Lorraine — Lainez — The 
 praises he receives — What Gallicanism is in the eyes of the popes — Philip II. — The sympa- 
 thies he could reckon upon in France — The true country of a priest's affections — The col- 
 loquy concludes that the cup should be conceded to the laity — The pope consults the car- 
 dinals — Their unanimous refusal — The matter referred to the council. 
 
 Bad feeling on the part of t£e court of France — Re-opening of the council — Ambiguous 
 decree — False reasoning — Precautions taken — Proponentibus legatis — Question about for- 
 bidden books — Historical review — Gelasius, Leo X., Paul IV. — Embarrassment and puerilities 
 — A monstrous liberty — Absolute enslavement — An illusory appeal made to the Protestants — 
 Eighteenth session — The safe-conduct and the Inquisition — Spanish Gallicanism — The ques- 
 tion of residence taken up anew — It becomes complicated and envenomed — Voting upon it 
 — Reference to the pope — Murmurs — Pius IV. dreads pronouncing upon it — Momentary 
 calm — Several questions of detail examined — Abuses pointed out — These none durst touch 
 without the consent of the pope — His evasive, reply on the que tion of the Divine right — 
 Nineteenth session — No result — Pius IV. conceives a dislike for the council — Would fain 
 dismiss it or have it entirely under his hand — Jealousies among the members — The pope's 
 pensionaries — Offers of money to the king of France — Arrival of the French ambassadors — 
 Satirical harangue — Dissimulation — Another session without result — It is decided that the 
 questiou of the communion in both kinds should come on, but by giving it a false turn — 
 Twenty demands made by the emperor's ambassador — All becomes complicated anew — the 
 pope blames the legates — He takes up arms — Imminent ruptures — How all things resume 
 their former place — Digression — What the pope was in the eyes of the princes — Their motives 
 for maintaining and sparing him — Pius IV. has again the upper hand — Visconti's mission — 
 Success and punishment. 
 
 Is the suppression of the wine in the supper ordained in Scripture or only commanded — 
 Neither the one nor the other — Puerile motives — It must be acknowledged — Throughout and 
 always the same ; throughout and always entire — Analysis — Divers risks encountered — Of 
 what is the lay person deprived — This question eluded — The question of the concession of 
 the cup resumed — The council seems less liberal than the pope — Urgent demands of the 
 ambassadors — Tergiversations of the legates — Twenty-first session — Unexpected debates — 
 Several points left undecided — Judgments passed by parties beyond the council — General 
 
280 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 disappointment — Inconsistencies commented upon — " Tliey do only what they have a mind 
 to" — Neutrality of the kins of Spain — Advantage which Pius IV. derives from it — The sup- 
 per viewed as a sacrifice — The appearance of continuing the old council again avoided. 
 
 The mass — Definitions and principles — A first and a wide breach — Can there be any parity 
 between the mass and Jesus Christ's sacrifice — In remembrance of me — Offered once — What 
 we ask of every sincere Roman Catholic — Priests ! priests ! — How people come to believe 
 everything — Proofs given in the decree — To admit that the mass is not iucontestably in the 
 Bible amounts to the admission that it is not there at all — Serious difficulty — To finish as 
 speedily as possible — recriminations. 
 
 The pope's new precautions — A desire is felt to finish before the arrival of the French — 
 '" It is thus that the king and the world are deceived" — Splitting of parties — The small matters 
 — Fathers, what is it that I am to teach — Three opinions on the question of the cup — Con- 
 ditions laid down — Majority against the concession — Project of referring it to the Pope — 
 Frictions of oil — Sundry wise regulations — Absolute prohibition of receiving payment for 
 masses — Doctrinal canons — Do this — Long debates — Masses for temporal wants — Masses in 
 honour of the saints — Private masses — A little water in the wine — Worship in Latin — Scrip- 
 tural objections — Historical objections — True motives — Mysticism — Twenty-second session 
 — Minorities — Submission and silence. 
 
 Ten years were destined to elapse before the third and last 
 convocation of the council ; and all that we shall have to notice 
 in the course of that period, will be comprised in the events 
 which, in our apprehension, led from the council of Julius III. 
 to that of Pius IV. 
 
 It is not until the diet of Augsburg in 1555, three years after 
 the suspension of the council's sittings, that we come again upon 
 any serious traces of what had long been, as it were, the fixed 
 idea of Europe. Little regard was paid to it. Ferdinand, who, 
 as king of the Romans, presided in the emperor's name, and 
 knew how little inclination his brother at this time felt for it, 
 plainly said that it was not to be dreamt of; that there was no 
 room to expect its proving more auspicious than before; that if 
 people would have something really done, they should endea- 
 vour, as a last resource, to bring about a conference betwixt the 
 doctors of the two parties. 
 
 This idea was neither a new nor a happy one ; accordingly, it 
 was ill received in Germany, and still worse in Italy. Cardinal 
 Morone was instantly despatched from Rome, with orders to 
 oppose any such course to the utmost ; and he was to do his best, 
 also, to press on the Protestants of Germany the example of 
 England, which had returned to the unity of the Roman Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 This apparent submission of England, the jointresultof the pope's 
 skilful management, and of Queen Mary's rigorous proceedings, 
 had been felt by Julius to be a grateful compensation for many 
 painful disappointments, but he was doomed to a short enjoyment 
 
MARCELLUS II. HIS CHARACTER AND VIEWS. 281 
 
 of it. Scarcely had Morone reached Augsburg, when he had to 
 leave it again, in order to take part in a new election of a pope. 
 Julius had died. (23d March, 1555.) 
 
 The conclave did not sit long ; indeed, it rose so soon, that 
 Cardinal Morone and the Cardinal of Augsburg, although they 
 had made all haste, found the election over. This was not the 
 first time that complaints were made of the law which fixes the 
 opening of the conclave for business for the tenth day following 
 the pope's decease. On most occasions that term is deferred, but 
 there being no obligation to that effect, the election is altogether 
 in the hands of the cardinals that happen to be then at Home. 
 
 This time they made a happy choice. Marcellus Cervini, 
 Cardinal of Santa Croce, whom we saAV appear as legate at the 
 first opening of the council, was a man of serious character and 
 pure morals, no bigot, profoundly devoted to the papal cause, 
 but at the same time sincerely desirous of all such internal re- 
 forms as should not compromise that cause. In this tribute to 
 his worth, we rest, we confess, rather on the intentions he 
 manifested as pope, than on what little we know of his previous 
 opinions ; and although he showed in the council that he was 
 sensibly less of a papist than his colleague, Cardinal del Monte, 
 who died pope, we cannot suppress our conviction that had he 
 given any previous hint of what his severity and projects were 
 to be, he never would have ascended the papal throne. Much 
 was thought to be already implied in his retaining his baptismal 
 name Marcellus, contrary to a practice which the popes had fol- 
 lowed for ages, of changing theirs as soon as they put the tiara 
 upon their head. Adrian VI. thirty-three years before, had also 
 retained his, but only at the suggestion of his pupil, Charles V. 
 who had observed to him that all the Adrians had been good 
 popes. Now, it was at his own instance that Marcellus Cervini 
 remained Marcellus ; and this fact, though it might not have all 
 the importance some attached to it, proved at least that he was 
 a man who was himself ready to shake off, and who could allow 
 others to shake off, whatever might appear to him non-essential. 
 Besides, as Luther had written some very severe and well-known 
 comments on those changes of name, 1 it was quite possible that 
 people might ask if there was not here a triumph yielded to the 
 Reformer, and if this first concession might not harbinger others 
 that were to follow. Be this as it may, hardly was Marcellus 
 
 1 On Genesis xxiv. 3. 
 
282 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 elected, when he openly announced it as his intention to continue 
 the council. Notwithstanding his having had so near a view of 
 the perils threatened by such meetings to the Holy See, he knew, 
 he said, an easy method of ridding them of all that was formid- 
 able ; this was that the Holy See should leave them nothing to 
 criticise in the Church's administration and discipline. Never 
 was there a greater mistake, inasmuch as a council with no abuses 
 in discipline to occupy its attention, would run a greater risk 
 than any other, of touching on points that, for very different 
 reasons, could ill bear handling. But it was the mistake of a 
 man who meant well. It is painful to have to add, for Pallavi- 
 cini's denials are not sufficient in our opinion to weaken what 
 has been related by Sarpi and De Thou, that he gave no little 
 thought to astrology, and consulted the planets fully as much as 
 the Scriptures. This weakness, however, was even then more 
 general than one would believe. Paul III., with all his genius, 
 had not been exempt from it. " Never," says Ranke, " would 
 he open any important meeting of the Sacred College ; never 
 would he set out on a journey, without consulting the constella- 
 tions. An alliance with France met with several delays, because 
 he had not found a conformity between the birth of the king and 
 his own." This is ridiculous ; what follows is odious. While 
 sorcery had thus its adepts, even on the pontifical throne, obscure 
 sorcerers were not the less persecuted and burnt. 
 
 Elected on the 9th of April, Marcellus died on the 30th, and 
 all his projects ended with his life. The short lifetime of the 
 popes is not one of the least defects of the Roman constitution. 
 Bad popes have always time enough for doing mischief; while 
 good popes have rarely time to do good. Few not far advanced 
 in life have attained the popedom ; and if it be very natural, on 
 the one hand, that the Church's chief should be a man venerable 
 on account of his years, it has this result, on the other, that the 
 tiara almost always graces either a head that is weak and null, 
 or one. rather obstinate than strong. 
 
 This last was now to be the case. Paul IV., 1 elected on the 4th 
 of May, was a severe man also, and full of good intentions. The 
 day that Paul III. had proclaimed his son Duke of Parma, one 
 of the cardinals had dared to absent himself from the consistory, 
 and had openly made a pilgrimage to the principal churches of 
 Rome, as if to ask pardon of God for the grievous scandal that 
 
 1 Peter Oaraffa. 
 
VIOLENCE AND ECCENTRICITY OF PAUL IV. 283 
 
 had been committed. That cardinal was Peter Caraffa ; he was 
 the future Paul IV. All the good sentiments with which he had 
 been animated, he preserved, but they were ill seconded by his 
 temper, which was that of a surly, morose, and obstinate old 
 man. Scarcely had a month elapsed since his election, when 
 this became so evident, that the first personages in Eome ad- 
 dressed him only with fear and trembling. If he desired that 
 there should be reforms, it was only provided none should ask 
 for them. Never did papal omnipotence reproduce itself in a 
 stranger medley of weakness and vigour, of greatness and child- 
 ishness. Simple in his own person, he surrounded himself with 
 a pomp that had never been equalled ; with the utmost contempt 
 for brute force, he committed affairs of the utmost delicacy to his 
 nephew Charles Caraffa, one of the greatest fighting men in 
 Italy, whose helmet he had lost no time in converting into a 
 cardinal's hat. After discoursing, in a pompous strain, on the 
 absolute and divine authority with which he considered himself 
 invested, it was only like an angry child, stamping with passion, 
 that he spoke of compelling kings to humble themselves before 
 his throne. He wished well, but all the good that did not ema- 
 nate from himself he viewed beforehand as mischievous and 
 criminal. As for the council, it will be recollected that it was 
 he who said that he could not understand how sixty bishops, in 
 a petty town among the mountains, should know more than the 
 pope and the clever folks at Rome. 
 
 These clever folks he on one occasion deigned to consult, but 
 in a singular enough manner. He had entertained the idea of 
 commencing his reforms with the rooting out of Simony, or the 
 traffic in spiritual favours. Such a commencement it will be 
 seen at once, had its inconveniences. Not that Simony was not 
 widely prevalent and highly mischievous, but being an evil very 
 difficult to be laid hold of, from the diversity of forms which it 
 assumed, and its almost countless ramifications, it would have 
 been better to proceed first against abuses more positive, and 
 easier both to be defined and to be reached. A commission, ac- 
 cordingly, was appointed. Always in extremes, the pope made 
 it consist of a hundred and fifty members, of whom twenty-four 
 were cardinals, and twenty-five bishops ; in all, more than double 
 the number of doctors that had yet appeared at Trent. Never- 
 theless, in speaking of it, he took care to add that he, the vicar 
 of Jesus Christ, knew perfectly what was to be done ; although, 
 therefore, he held this sort of council, it was nowise with the in- 
 
284 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 tention of following any opinion not entirely conformable with 
 his own. 1 
 
 Great, accordingly, was his anger, when from the very bosom 
 of that assembly which owed its existence entirely to him, there 
 issued certain observations on the necessity for a general council. 
 Cardinal du Bellai, dean of the sacred college, endeavoured to 
 appease his wrath, by saying that if a council were desirable, it 
 was not that it might dictate to him the measures necessary to 
 be taken, lint to inquire about the means of executing them. 
 On this he exclaimed, that if a council there must be, he would 
 hold it, but at Home ; that he would rather die than see it again 
 met at Trent, in the midst of the Lutherans. Then, taking up 
 seriously what had been at first in his mouth only one of the 
 sallies that people had become accustomed to, he caused it to be 
 intimated to all the princes of ( 1 hristendom, as quite settled, that 
 he was about to hold a council at Rome. In a few days this be- 
 came his favourite idea. He spoke of it to everybody, particu- 
 larly to the ambassadors of the various courts ; but warning them 
 at the same time not to forget to tell their masters, that on the 
 council being once formally opened, if the bishops from beyond 
 Italy did not appear, their presence would be dispensed with. As 
 for the emperor, and the consent and concurrence of the em- 
 peror, not a word must be said. "The emperor!" he would 
 say, "why, he is a heretic.'' 
 
 All at once he learned that this dreadful heretic had just 
 agreed to a truce of five years with Henry II. of France, where- 
 upon he, the very man who had so often said that a pope had 
 only to will a thing in order to have the power of doing it, dis- 
 missed at once the contempt he had shewn for oblicpie methods 
 of effecting bis purposes. Two legates were despatched, one to 
 Germany, another to France, for the purpose, say their instruc- 
 tions, of entering into some arrangements with the two courts 
 
 1 " The infallibility presupposed as residing in the pope, is not meant as implying that he is 
 aided by God's Spirit in having the necessary illumination for deciding all questions, but it 
 consists in this, that all the questions in which he feels himself sufficiently assisted with the 
 light required forjudging them, he decides, but with respect to others in which he does not 
 feel himself sufficiently assisted with light, he remits to the council.'' — Duperron. Here we 
 have another theory ! Were the infallibility fully and frankly admitted, which Romanists 
 fain would maintain, would there be any such seeking for refinements ? The statement is 
 ingenious, but we have not written a page, and will not have to write one, in which it is not 
 contradicted by facts. Few popes, indeed, have professed the doctrine of their infallibility 
 so very bluntly as Paul IV. ; but no more is there any one who has ever remitted a question 
 to a council with the avowal, that it was out of bis power to resolve it. What right, more- 
 over, could they, after such an avowal, pretend to the power of conlirming the council's de- 
 crees ? After having declared that you are unable of yourself to try a question, how could 
 vou decide infallibly that it has been rightly tried and determined bv others. 
 
ALVA OCCUPIES THE STATES OF THE CHURCH. 285 
 
 about the holding of the council. One of the two, however, 
 Cardinal Rebiba, whose mission was to Germany, was enjoined 
 to travel as slowly as possible, while the other, Cardinal Caraffa, 
 was to use the utmost expedition, their real object, as the reader 
 must have perceived, having been to bring about a rupture of 
 the truce. In fact, before Rebiba had accomplished his journey, 
 Caraffa had seen and gained over the king of France. But the 
 truce had been ratified by the oaths of the parties. What of 
 that ? the pope had anticipated its being so, and was prepared 
 to annul their oaths. But — here there was an objection of 
 greater delicacy — the pope was a greybeard of eighty-three. 
 What warranty could he offer ? Neither had this escaped him. 
 He engaged to create, from among the most devoted partisans 
 of France, enough of cardinals to secure the election after him- 
 self of a pope who should be hostile to the emperor. The nego- 
 tiation succeeded ; the truce was broken. " Seated for whole 
 hours at the table, drinking that black volcanic wine which is 
 still called Mangiaguerra, he broke out with impetuous eloquence 
 against those schismatics, those heretics, those accursed of God, 
 that seed of the Jews and the Moors, that refuse of the world, 
 in fine, as he called the Spaniards. But he took comfort, he 
 would say, from those words of Scripture, ' Thou shalt tread 
 upon the lion and the adder : the young lion and the dragon 
 shalt thou trample under feet.' He saw the moment at hand 
 when Charles and his son would be punished for their sins, and 
 when he, Paul IV., should deliver Italy out of their hands." 1 
 
 Had he any hope then of remaining at peace after France and 
 Cermany had recommenced tearing each other to pieces ? Yet 
 he had at his gates a man sufficiently accustomed to inspire 
 dread, the Duke of Alva, who now held Naples in the name of 
 the emperor. After some parleying, which only brought out 
 more strongly the growing eccentricity of the old pope, the duke 
 opened the campaign, and ere the close of the year, (1566,) 
 almost without having struck a blow, his troops had occupied 
 the entire State of the Church. He would restore it, he said, to 
 the pope that was to be. Yet he did not attempt to take Rome, 
 and even had he made the attempt, it is doiibtful how far he 
 would have succeeded, for in fortifying that city Paul had found 
 all the energy of a young man, and all the skill of a general ; 
 possibly, too, there was no real desire to push matters to that 
 extremity. Charles V. had by this time abdicated his throne. 
 
 1 Ranke, History of the Popedom. 
 
286 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 His brother Ferdinand, who succeeded him in the empire, was 
 too pacific ; his brother Philip, who succeeded him in Spain, too 
 devout. He was the very Philip whom we shall find ere long 
 seriously questioning with himself whether he should not cause 
 the body of his father, Charles V., to be disinterred and burnt 
 as that of a heretic. As for that, setting aside the atrocity of 
 causing his father's body to be burnt, and supposing that it can 
 ever be right to burn any one, it would only have been justice. 
 We have had opportunities of seeing, almost at every page, what 
 sort of Catholic Charles V. had been. 
 
 Be this as it might, none in the rest of Europe eoulcl doubt 
 that Paul was blockaded in his capital, and menaced with a siege. 
 Never did pope at the very acme of his power and glory, issue 
 his directions or his commands with more unflinching courage. 
 Even in Pome itself the more the danger increased, the better 
 he contrived to make himself obeyed. The cardinals that 
 opposed his views lay imprisoned in the castle of St. Angelo ; 
 and as all opposition was in his eyes not only revolt but heresy, 
 he talked of delivering several of them to the Inouisition. At 
 the first murmur of discontent the highest dignitaries were cash- 
 iered as if mere clerks. Legates employed at the remotest dis- 
 tances trembled at the thought of offending him as much as the 
 cardinals of his household ; nations and kings asked themselves 
 who then was this man that he should thus use persons who had 
 always been seen surrounded with tokens of deference, prelates 
 but lately his ecpials, and any of whom, in the course of a few 
 days, might occupy his throne. But the incoherence of his 
 orders, the feverish violence of his threats, and the odd forms he 
 employed, shewed plainly enough that the pope was neither a 
 Gregory YIL, nor an Innocent IIP, but a poor old creature 
 whose head had been turned on mounting St. Peter's throne. 
 
 In the first months of the year 1567, his affairs seemed to take 
 a more favourable turn. " The Duke of Alva hesitated, paused 
 at every step, fought worshipping," says John von Midler. 1 
 The Duke of Guise passed into Italy with a sufficient force to 
 keep the Spaniards in check. But Paul had imagined that the 
 French would march straight to Naples ; there was no getting 
 him to understand that this would be contrary to all the rules of 
 good tactics, and that what an army has first to look to is to 
 secure itself against being attacked in its rear. It was found 
 necessary to humour him, but in proportion as the French went 
 
 1 History of Switzerland, book x. 
 
 
 
THE POPE'S NEW IDEA OF THE COUNCIL. 287 
 
 down into Italy, the Spaniards went up to Rome. Every step 
 towards bringing him succour threatened to prove his ruin. At 
 last the news of the loss of the battle of St. Quentin reached the 
 French, and a disaster so deplorable to France, and which 
 seemed to place the pope in the absolute power of his enemies, 
 proved, on the contrary, his salvation. The Duke of Guise 
 having returned to France, the Duke of Alva returned to Naples, 
 and soon began to speak about peace. The vanquished now 
 dictated terms to the victor, and Alva went himself to Rome to 
 seek absolution from the censures he had incurred. This was 
 about the end of September 1557. 
 
 Not a moment of peace could the Church and Europe enjoy 
 that the grand affair of the council did not occupy all men's 
 thoughts afresh ; but the pope, with the usual originality of his 
 views, had given a singularly new face to it. That which the 
 monarchs of Christendom had hitherto made a bugbear for over- 
 awing the Court of Rome, he made bold to use as a bugbear for 
 overawing those monarchs. He spoke of nothing less than of 
 procuring the trial and condemnation by the future council of 
 all who had profited by the disorders in the Church, or had in- 
 troduced new disorders into it, of all who had anyhow interfered 
 in Church affairs, of all, in fine, who had favoured pr tolerated 
 the Reformation ; and although none could see well how he 
 should set about executing such condemnations, such a threat 
 produced some alarm. Was it, as some said, a mere trick meant 
 to deter princes from having any wish to see the council again at 
 work ? We think not. There is nothing improbable in a man 
 of his impetuous imagination, and with such preposterous ideas 
 of the rights and position of a pope, seriously intending to make 
 the council a court of Justice for the trial of kings. The latter, 
 meanwhile continued as actively as ever to imbrue their hands 
 in the blood of the so-called heretics. Philip II. proceeded with 
 the consolidation of the Inquisition in Spain, and went along 
 with his court, very devoutly, to inhale the smoke of the fires at 
 which its victims were burnt. Henry, or his parliament rather, 
 rejected the Inquisition, but he took care to prove by the number 
 and the cruelty of the punishments inflicted on the Reformed, 
 that the Church of Rome should be no loser on that account. 
 
 Nor did this testy pontiff lay claim only to the right of trying 
 kings, or causing them to be tried. Their kingdoms, the empire 
 itself, were but the gifts of the Holy See ; and this old dictum, 
 which one might suppose to have been forgotten, was openly 
 
288 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 avowed anew in his words and deeds. Henry YIIL had 
 erected Ireland into a kingdom. Paul IV. pronounced the 
 erection null ; to the pope alone it belonged to erect a province 
 into a kingdom, as well as to reduce a kingdom to the state of a 
 mere province. If Queen Mary was to he Queen of Ireland, it 
 behoved to be through him. Mary made the request, and the 
 pope granted it. Charles Y. having abdicated, the empire 
 passed to Ferdinand, whereupon a furious manifesto was dis- 
 charged from Rome. ' " The pope alone," says Sarpi, " has the 
 right of appointing the emperor." And though the popes had 
 been willing to yield that right to the electors, it was in the case 
 of vacancy by death only, not in that of abdication. The elec- 
 tion which had taken place, was accordingly null, and the pope 
 was to give the empire to whomsoever he should think best. 
 He engaged himself to nothing; nevertheless if Ferdinand would 
 at once make an acknowledgment that he had not been legiti- 
 mately elected, and that he had erred in allowing himself to be 
 elected, the choice might fall upon him. 
 
 Though Ferdinand might have been in the humour to yield, 
 the electors would not have allowed him, and rather than that, 
 would have nominated another emperor. The death of Charles 
 V. ('21st September 1558) seemed at first to have simplified the 
 question ; but Paul was not the man to avail himself of a back 
 door, however wide and however honourable for him to use it. 
 Null he insisted the election had been, and null it must remain, 
 as long as the right claimed by the pope should not be formally 
 acknowledged. 
 
 "I have often heard it asked," says He Maistre, "by what 
 right the popes deposed the emperors ? It is easy to reply, By 
 the right on which all legitimate authority reposes, possession on 
 the one hand, and assent on the other." 
 
 This possession, one knows however, besides being very far 
 from dating from the first centuries, was never left uncontested; 
 that assent was never universal or free. Even were it otherwise, 
 the above reasoning would still be a mere play upon words. 
 Incontested possession proves human legitimacy ; but, when 
 asked by what right popes disposed of thrones, it is clear that 
 what is meant by the question, is by what divine right they did 
 so. And this question is all the more pertinent, inasmuch as 
 the popes themselves, in exercising that right, have always 
 maintained that they exercised it in the name of God. 
 
 The council was then made the ground for resuming' the offen- 
 
PAUL IV. DISAPPOINTED AND ANGRY. 289 
 
 sive. Ferdinand spoke of it in full diet, in the same sense that 
 his brother had done, and as a dyke to oppose to the encroach- 
 ments of Rome. Much more than this, without saying' absolutely 
 that the decrees already published should be quashed, the Pro- 
 testants were allowed to throw out the idea that what was now 
 to be thought of, was quite a new council, summoned and regu- 
 lated on quite a new .system, such, in a word, as they might offer 
 to submit to. Parties, however, could not come to any such 
 mutual understanding as should lead to a definite conclusion ; 
 but, shortly afterwards (April 1559), France and Spain having 
 made peace, one of the articles of the treaty bore that the two 
 monarchs should co-operate towards the resumption of the council. 
 Although less threatening to the pope than the resolutions that 
 had nearly emanated from the diet, this accord in such a quarter 
 was not the less a severe check. Paul saw that he was over- 
 matched, and sank under a surcharge of chagrin and resentment. 
 Germany had completely broken with him, and coolly waited 
 for his death. England, delivered from Mary, had declared itself 
 Protestant, not on this occasion at the command of a prince, but 
 with an all but universal enthusiasm. France might any day 
 do the same, and indeed was more ripe for the Reformation than 
 had at first been the case with more than one of the countries 
 that afterwards became Protestant. Italy, Italy itself was pro- 
 foundly shaken in its attachment to Rome ; there was not a town 
 in it where there did not exist, more or less known, more or 
 less concealed, a knot of Calvinists which might become, at the 
 first shock, the centre of an Anti-Roman Church. In this 
 extremity Paul clung to the Inquisition, as to the sole and last 
 remaining plank of safety for the Church and for himself. In 
 public and in private, in his discourses and in his letters, every- 
 where, in short, he could speak of nothing else. The ambassa- 
 dors placed daily before his eyes a list of the executions ordered 
 by their masters ; the only balm that could now be poured on 
 his deeply wounded pride. Never had Europe been covered with 
 so frightful a network of persecutions and tortures, and as the 
 tyrant of old ordered the bodies of his slaves to be opened that 
 he might warm his feet in their reeking bowels, the fires at 
 which the Protestants were consumed, seemed to burn afar only 
 to keep up a little heat and life in the ice-cold limbs of the 
 miserable greybeard. At last he died ; and his last looks were 
 still turned to the schedules of the executions ; and the last 
 words he uttered were a recommendation of the Inquisition, as a 
 
 T 
 
2!)L> HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 father, at the point of death, would recommend his daughter to 
 his friends. 
 
 Yet in the midst of that frightful period which had commenced 
 long before the time of Paul IV., and was to last till long after, 
 among the thirty or forty thousand victims delivered or promised 
 to the Roman flames, there was one that escaped, one destined 
 to he burnt at Geneva instead of Lyons, Paris, Brussells, Madrid. 
 or Vienna, wherever, in fine, Rome might have him in her 
 power ; a victim, moreover, whose punishment might have ap- 
 peared, we do not say just, but certainly more just than all the 
 rest, to such a pitch had the man carried his foolhardiness. 
 And, behold, how the historians of Rome exclaim from age to 
 age against the author of the death of Servetus ! Would to God 
 that the Reformation could snatch from its annals that sad page 
 of intolerance and horror ! But if those who reproach her with 
 it would begin by first tearing all pages of the same kind from 
 their own, how many, we should like to know, would be left ? 
 
 After entering the conclave amid the yells and hootings of the 
 mobs that were mutilating and dragging through the city the 
 abhorred statue of Paid IV., the cardinals were sensible that 
 another such reign would, both at home and abroad, prove the 
 ruin of the popedom. They found no great difficulty, accord- 
 ingly, in coming to a general understanding as to the engage- 
 ments to be taken before proceeding to the election, and, as in 
 preceding conclaves, among these the calling of a council held a 
 chief place. 
 
 Notwithstanding this unanimity in preliminary proceedings, 
 they required more than three months before they could come to 
 agree about the pope they were to elect. At last, on Christmas 
 night (1559), the votes all fell on John de Medicis, who took 
 the name of Pius IV. 
 
 With more decency of outward manners and a calmer mind, 
 the new pope but too closely resembled, at bottom, his deplorable 
 predecessor. If from the very commencement of his reign, he 
 shewed a disposition, for he had promised as much before his 
 election, to recognise Ferdinand as legitimate emperor, he nearly 
 spoilt all by demanding compliments conceived in terms that 
 would have sanctioned by implication all the pretensions of 
 Paul. After lengthened conferences, the ambassador, Scipio 
 d'Arco, consented to depart a little from the letter of his instruc- 
 tions. A formula was drawn up, which, without giving too much 
 offence to the emperor, should not wound the pride of the pope. 
 
PIUS IV. RELIGIOUS AGITATION' IX FRANCE. 291 
 
 Ferdinand blamed his ambassador, but did not think proper to 
 go the length of an official disavowal of what he had done. 
 
 As for the council, Pius had promised that also, and he did 
 not make bold to say, as Paul IV. had done, that a pope could 
 not suppose himself bound by the promises of a cardinal ; but the 
 more he looked at the matter, the more he saw difficulties and 
 dangers attending it. Still he was sensible that in manifesting 
 opposition to it, besides proving false to his promise, he would 
 escape those difficulties only to draw on others, and those dan- 
 gers only to incur possibly greater. The more, then, thought he, 
 that he should pretend to enter into the views of the secular 
 princes, the better placed he should be afterwards for shewing 
 the inconveniences that would result from them. At last he 
 clearly saw that the question must come to an issue at one time 
 or another, and he had sufficient confidence in himself not to de- 
 sire at any price to bequeath the hazards of the contest to another. 
 Accordingly, Count d'Arco was agreeably surprised when, at his 
 second audience, the pope spoke of the council as of a very 
 simple affair, and one on which his mind was fully made up. 
 
 Meanwhile, month after month passed, the pope renewed his 
 promise on every occasion, and yet made it little a matter cf 
 conscience to execute it. In France, where, right or wrong, the 
 council was viewed mainly as the grand cure for heresies, the 
 daily advances achieved by the Reformation made the Roman 
 Catholics fret at the tardy procedure of Pius IV. " The confla- 
 gration is at Paris," said John de Montlac, bishop of Valence ; 
 " we have the waters of the Seine, and wait for those of the 
 Tiber !" The idea of a national council, so often put forward, 
 abandoned, taken up agahi, and again abandoned, came in the 
 end to captivate men of all characters ; and before coming to any 
 common understanding as to the forms to be adopted, the open- 
 ing of it was fixed, happen what might, for the 20th of January 
 1561. Henry II. was dead. His widow, Catherine de Medicis, 
 now governed in the name of Francis II. 
 
 Although no offence had been meant to the pope, no small 
 uneasiness was felt as to how he would view the matter. In 
 point of fact, he took it so ill, that unless there was to be an 
 entire rupture with him, which, as matters stood, and in the 
 face of the Reformation, would have been madness, it was soon 
 seen to be impossible to persist in it. What shocked him almost 
 as much as the convocation of the national council, was the 
 amnesty granted to the Protestants who had taken up arms in 
 
292 HISTORY OF THE council OF tkent. 
 
 Langriedoc and Poitou. "Who, then, is your king," said lie to 
 the French ambassador, " that he should take upon himself to 
 pardon sins committed against God? Can any one be surprised 
 if the wrath of God press heavily on a country where the autho- 
 rity of the Holy See, and of the sacred canons, is trampled under 
 feet?" Philip II. at the same time besought the queen regent 
 to recall the unlucky convocation, or at least to let it pass with- 
 out effect. She yielded the point. The idea seemed to be aban- 
 doned ; but this very condescension gave Roman Catholic France 
 the right to insist on the pope no longer keeping her waiting 
 for the remedy to which she looked for her salvation. 
 
 Had he come to see that a council would be of no use in 
 opposing the progress of the Reformation, or was he still in- 
 fluenced by nothing but antipathy and distrust? We cannot 
 say; but, notwithstanding all this urgency, he made no greater 
 haste. "The French fret with impatience," he would say; 
 " well, then, let them begin by seizing Geneva, seeing it is the 
 focus of the contagion ?" And forthwith his nuncios were charged 
 to propose that undertaking simultaneously to the King of France 
 and the Puke of Savoy. 
 
 How happened it, in fact, that Geneva still stood erect ? It had 
 now for thirty years openly declared for the Reformation, and 
 Lad audaciously offered an asylum to all the proscribed. France 
 was inundated with its missionaries and its books. Without ar- 
 rogating to itself any supremacy as a matter of right, it had not 
 the less become, in point of fact, the metropolis and the Rome 
 of all the Protestantism of the West. It was, without contra- 
 diction, a spectacle unparalleled in history, to see a republic of 
 twenty-five thousand souls, braving with impunity at one and the 
 same time, several states, anyone of which, it might be thought, 
 could have destroyed it with a breath. The preservation of 
 Geneva, in the Kith century, is in itself a more extraordinary 
 fact than the successive conquest of Italy and of Europe by the 
 Roman republic, which also was a small city when it began its 
 career ; and when it vaunts its having been guarded by Provi- 
 dence, its greatest enemies cannot deny that it has a thousand 
 reasons for believing it. 
 
 As little can they deny the invincible confidence it reposed in 
 the goodness of its cause, and in the protection of God. " It was 
 David before Goliath," says its old chronicler, Roset ; "but 
 before a Goliath all the more formidable, in that he made 
 "■old to flash in his hand as well as steel." In 1559, Alardi, 
 
MARVELLOUS PRESERVATION OF GENEVA. 29M 
 
 bishop of Mondovi, came to Geneva, commissioned by Emmanuel- 
 Philibert, Duke of Savoy, who had recently mounted the throne, 
 and now would fain try whether words might not succeed better 
 than arms. Alardi was allowed to appear before the council of 
 the city. "What a life!" said he. "What, always on the 
 watch ! Not a man in this city which I once knew so flourish- 
 ing, Avho now can call two thousand crowns his own. Ah ! 
 how much otherwise would it be, had you the support of the 
 flower of chivalry, the most magnificent prince of the age!" 
 "The prince is great," replied the Geneva gentlemen, "but 
 God is greater still." And so the bishop went as he came. 
 " Thanks to the intrigues of a man called Calvin," says a Savoy 
 chronicler. 
 
 This time, accordingly, at the voice of Pius IV., it was with 
 the sword that Goliath was to come to the attack. " The ser- 
 pent," wrote the pontiff, "must be strangled in its nest. Do 
 you require money? You are authorized to raise, for the holy 
 war, tithes from your clergy. I for one have taken the initia- 
 tive, by getting ready my men at arms, and twenty thousand 
 crowns." 1 Of the three states then invited to the ruin of 
 Geneva, there was not one that had not long cast an angry and 
 covetous eye upon it. The dukes of Savoy had never ceased to 
 claim it back as a part of their heritage ; Spain would have been 
 too happy to unite it with its possessions in Franche-Comte ; 
 France viewed it as an important post between Savoy and the 
 possessions of Spain. Nothing more easy than for the three to 
 unite for the purpose of taking it ; but then, to whom was it 
 afterwards to be given ? That question which had saved it 
 hitherto, was to save it once more. The pope had succeeded 
 only in raising one rampart more around that retreat which he 
 pointed out to the hatred and the cupidity of its crowned neigh- 
 bours. Collectively invited to this holy war, the three princes 
 came to consider themselves bound by a sort of offensive treaty, 
 by which each forfeited in some sort the right to proceed to the 
 attack alone ; he could not take Geneva, without reclamations 
 on the part of the other two. And Geneva was destined to sur- 
 vive ; and it was to be in vain, ever in vain, that the pope and 
 his satellites were to press to its downfal ; in vain was Dubartas 
 to express his amazement at the sovereigns allowing it to live 
 on ; like those peasants, we find him say, 
 
 1 J. von Miiller, Hist of Switzerland, 1. x. 
 
204 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 "... whose useless hands 
 
 Leave on the apple-tree some withered branch, 
 Where, during winter, may survive till spring 
 The noxious caterpillar's brood secure ; 
 
 in vain was St. Francis de Sales, the titular bishop of the re- 
 bellious city, indignant at seeing it comprised in the treaty of 
 peace between Henry IV. and the duke, to exclaim that " it is a 
 scandalous blot on that happy peace, which the impious ought 
 not to be allowed to enjoy;" 1 in vain was he to exclaim, on 
 another occasion, " Geneva is to the devils what Rome is to the 
 angels. All Catholics, especially the pope and the secular 
 princes, ought to devote themselves wholly, either to the con- 
 version or the destruction of that Babylon;" 2 the lowly Babylon 
 was to live on ; and if one day it is to perish, it will be because 
 it has accomplished its task. The miracle of its life shall have 
 lasted long- enough for it to carry with it to the tomb, the 
 thought that its death is not God's doing, but man's. 
 
 Thus the pope's appeal had been without effect ; nor did he 
 conceal his chagrin. Since it was neither from humanity nor 
 toleration that the three sovereigns respected the independence 
 of Geneva, the court of Borne had reason to consider it far from 
 honourable in Bom an Catholic princes, to dare giving thus far 
 the precedence to politics over religion, and to the interests of 
 their glory over those of their faith, but in order to be consist- 
 ent, the pope himself ought to have had less the air of doing the 
 same thing, and of speaking of Geneva only to escape from hav- 
 ing anything to say about Trent. " The further we proceed," 
 wrote the queen regent 3 on this occasion, " the more does it ap- 
 pear that nothing is done towards the calling of the council, ex- 
 cept in the way of dissembling and mere show, and with infinite 
 delays and disguises." 
 
 Renouncing, then, all hope of making a diversion, the pope 
 called to him all the ambassadors then present in Bome. He 
 told them to announce to their respective courts, that the bull 
 for the convocation would shortly appear, adding, that after hav- 
 ing passed a great many cities under review, he had found none 
 so suitable as Trent. But, if lie, on his part, was to engage to 
 summon the council, the princes were to engage, on theirs, to 
 cause its decisions to be observed. Why not proceed at once 
 to form a kind of armed confederation, ready to act at a moment's 
 notice, against whatever party, prince or people, should re- 
 
 1 Letter to Clement VIII. 2 Mem. ir addressed to the pope. 
 
 ;( Letter to the embassador of France at Rome. 
 
A NEW COUNCIL, OR THE OLD CONTINUED? 295 
 
 fuse to obey? A very simple idea, no doubt, and eminently 
 Roman Catholic, but, withal, manifestly impracticable ; a useless 
 subject for new conferences and new delays. 
 
 Not only was no attention paid to this, but the choice of the 
 place raised more objections than ever. Philip II. was the only 
 prince that declared himself satisfied with it ; still he required, 
 as if in return for an act of great condescension, permission to 
 levy a subsidy on the clergy of Spain. The court of France ob- 
 jected, as it had always done, that Trent was too much under 
 the hand of the emperor ; the emperor that it was too much 
 under the hand of the pope, if not in reality, at least in appear- 
 ance ; and that this would be enough to make the Protestants 
 revolt against all that might be done there. 
 
 Both courts, moreover, agreed in saying that there must be a 
 new council, not the resumption and winding up of the old. 
 This was more serious, and went to upset all. The pope, ac- 
 cordingly, hesitated not to reply that he should consider himself 
 as a traitor to the Church, a traitor to the Holy See, were he to allow 
 the questioning of a single point of faith of those that had been 
 previously decided. He was right. On the part of Roman Catholic 
 princes it would have been preposterous and criminal ; but we 
 have already shewn how much meaning there was in the fact. 
 Fourteen years only had elapsed since the publication of the first 
 decrees, when lo ! Roman Catholics appear, who, without reject- 
 ing these themselves, yet propose that they shall be held as 
 never having been passed. "Who after this will maintain that 
 the dogma of the Church's infallibility was then admitted in the 
 same sense and in the same manner as it has been since ? 
 
 Meanwhile, the idea of a national council recovered favour in 
 France, At a great meeting of the royal council held at Fon- 
 tainebleau (August 21), the bishop of A r alence repeated his former 
 advice, and urged it strongly; Charles de Marillac, archbishop 
 of Vienne (in Dauphiny), spoke warmly in the same sense. The 
 Protestants were for this council ; not that they looked for any 
 good directly from it, or that they were disposed to submit to it, 
 but in the conviction that it would lead to a rupture with Rome, 
 and, by that alone, would prove a great step towards them. 
 Coligny, their organ in the council, confined himself accordingly 
 to an exposition of their petitions and complaints. His language 
 was that of a serious man and a submissive subject ; but the 
 simplicity of his words only placed in stronger relief the immen- 
 sity of the resources which his party was beginning to have at 
 
29G HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 its disposition. The Duke of Guise, and the Cardinal of Lor- 
 raine, acting as the organs of extreme Roman Catholicism, re- 
 plied only by soliciting more and more rigorous measures. Why, 
 said they, have a council in France? Wherefore even a council - 
 general ? Could there be a doubt that the Protestant opinions- 
 were heresies, long ago condemned by the Church ? There was 
 truth in what they said. In a dogmatical point of view, any 
 council whatever could not fail to prove useless. The Roman 
 ( 'atholics knew well that they would condemn ; the Protestants 
 that they would be condemned. On these representations a 
 middle course was adopted. It was resolved that the bishops of 
 the kingdom should be convened, not as a council, but to deli- 
 berate whether it would be proper to hold one. 
 
 This pretended preparatory assembly so much resembled that 
 which had apparently been abandoned, that in so far as the pope 
 was concerned, it was almost all the same ; and it having been 
 proposed that it should meet on the 20th of January, he saw that 
 his bull must absolutely appear before that date. Pallavicini 
 tries to assign the least influence possible to fear on this deter- 
 mination of the pope ; but the details which he himself relates, 
 leave no doubt on this head. Other details may be seen, not 
 only in Sarpi and De Thou, but also in a collection of pieces 
 belonging to that period, 1 published at Gotha, a century ago, 
 and which throws a very valuable light on several parts of the 
 history of the council of Trent. It is there we found, in a letter 
 from Cardinal Borromeo to Cardinal Hosius, bishop of Warmia. 
 among other admissions, the following : " Considering what 
 scandal it would be for all Christendom, his Holiness has re- 
 solved to prevent this national council by the celebration of a 
 general and oecumenical council." 2 This alleged universal scan- 
 dal would hardly have scandalized, at that moment, more than 
 the court of Rome, and who could foresee at what point the con- 
 tagion would stop? 
 
 The question now was how the bull should be worded. A 
 commission was appointed for this task. Among so many con- 
 flicting intei'ests and susceptibilities, the arrangement of a piece 
 of writing which should give these the least possible offence, was 
 no small affair, and what was most of all requisite, was to fall 
 on some mode of evading the question of the continuation of the 
 
 1 Tabularium Ex'lesise Rornanse, by Solomon Cyjnianus 
 
 - Considerans Sua Sanctitas quanti id scandal] imivevso populo christiano esset. decrevu 
 cel^biuJioue uninirsalis cKcuuitnicique concilii uatioaale illud prseveiare. 
 
TRENT AGAIN SELECTED, AND WHY ? 207 
 
 council. After many attempts this was accomplished, but not 
 without some strange shifts and fetches. Pallavicini, according 
 to custom, denies the fact in the lump, and then admits it in 
 detail. After a hrief analysis of the bull, " In this manner," says 
 he, " the odious term continuation was thrown out, but its equi- 
 valent was put in." The equivalent is there without doubt, and 
 the sequel sufficiently proved that the pope quite intended to put 
 it there ; but yet it presents a curious triumph of skill, for we 
 have a bull several pages in length, after the reading of which, 
 supposing that its history were lost, one might ask whether it 
 related to a council that was to be continued or to one that was 
 to be commenced anew. 
 
 As to the question of the place, it having necessarily to be 
 settled, care was taken to give the principal parties opposed to it, 
 to understand beforehand, that the choice made was provisional 
 only, and that the assembly once met at Trent, there was nothing 
 to hinder its being transferred elsewhere. In reality the pope's 
 choice had been fixed invincibly. In the new aspect which the 
 affair now assumed, he could no longer desire to see a translation 
 even to Bologna, or to Eome itself, for that would have made 
 the connexion which it was necessary that he should succeed in 
 establishing between the old sessions and the new, more and more 
 difficult, if not impossible. It was only at Trent that one could 
 thenceforth have the continuation and the close of the council of 
 Trent, and this, indeed, must have been long felt to be the case. 
 The translation of the sittings to Bologna, which had been so 
 ardently desired, and so eagerly pleaded for, must, as any one 
 may perceive, have had a most untoward influence, in all future 
 time, on the authority of the council. If the decrees had been 
 issued, some from Trent, others from Bologna or elsewhere, they 
 might indeed, legally, have had the same weight, but collectively 
 they would not have had that imposing unity with which the 
 council of Trent has been invested in the eyes of those who are 
 ignorant of its history. Will the common herd ever think of 
 inquiring whether ten years elapsed between the decree on the 
 eucharist and that on the mass, two decrees so closely related to 
 each other ? Will they ever know that of the seventy bishops 
 who voted the former of these decrees, four or five only concurred 
 in drawing up the latter ? Both pass as The Council of Trent, 
 and no further inquiry is made. 
 
 Yet this bull, so painfully elaborated with the view of content- 
 ing everybody, contented none. The secular princes persisted, 
 
298 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TliFNT. 
 
 each for himself, in making no account of the difficulties with 
 which the pope was beset. The emperor ami the court of France 
 even went so far as to call for another hull, in which the council 
 to he summoned should he one entirely new ; the king of Spain 
 complained, on the contrary, that the pope had not had the cour- 
 age clearly to announce the continuation of the other ; the Pro- 
 testants, in fine, had been saying over and over again that they 
 wanted neither the old nor a new of the same kind as the old. 
 Hence conferences without end, which it were useless to detail. 
 The bull had appeared on the 29th of November ; it appointed 
 Easterday 1561 for the opening. Easter had arrived, and parties 
 were as far from a common understanding as they had been at 
 Christinas. 
 
 The pope, nevertheless, had nominated his legates ; these 
 being at first but two, Hercules of Gonzaga, commonly called 
 bishop of Mantua, and Cardinal Du Puy of Nice. Four others 
 were appointed afterwards : these were Cardinals Hosius, Seri- 
 pandi, Simonetta, and Altemps, the last being the pope's nephew. 
 The Cardinal of Mantua was to preside. 
 
 On their arrival at Trent two days after Easter, nine bishops 
 only were found there, and all of these Italians. Leaving these 
 to hold some preparatory conferences with shut doors, let us see 
 what was passing elsewhere. 
 
 Francis II. had died on the 2d of December, and had been 
 succeeded by his brother Charles IX., under the regency of his 
 mother and of Anthony of Bourbon, king of Navarre. A meeting 
 of the States -general, held shortly afterwards at Orleans, had 
 served only to throw light on the divisions in the Roman Catholic 
 party. The nobility and the tiers-etat had declaimed against 
 the clergy ; the clergy had found they could not attack the Pro- 
 testants without attacking those who, without being Protestants, 
 yet scrupled little to agree with them in many things. Now, 
 these half Protestants were daily becoming more numerous. The 
 States of Orleans had almost unanimously voted resolutions, which 
 were, it is true, either left unexecuted or were marred in the 
 execution, yet the boldness of which is a curious symptom of the 
 progress that had been made, unintentionally, in the ways of the 
 Reformation. The meeting had petitioned for the election of 
 bishops by the clergy, with the intervention of a certain number 
 of the nobility and of electors from the tiers-etat; that the obli- 
 gation to residence should be absolute ; that censures should be 
 pronounced for public scandals ; that monastic vows should not 
 
DEMANDS OF THE QUEEN REGENT OF FRANCE. 299 
 
 he received at any age under five-and-twenty for men, and twenty 
 for women, &c. As for questions of doctrine or bearing upon doc- 
 trine, a letter from the queen regent, addressed to the pope in 1 561 , 
 sufficiently proves how nearly the two parties, notwithstanding 
 their growing animosities, had really ccme to a common under- 
 standing. In that letter Catherine required, most of all, the supper 
 in both kinds, and the celebration of worship in the vulgar tongue. 
 The mass would be preserved, but without the adoration of the 
 host, which amounted almost to an abandonment of transubstan- 
 tiation. The worship of images was to be renounced, as having 
 been unknown in the early times of the Church, and forbidden 
 by God in the second commandment. Baptism was to be re- 
 stored to its ancient simplicity. All ceremonies, the apostolic 
 origin of which should not be sufficiently demonstrated, were to 
 be abolished. In fine, as the regent concluded with an intima- 
 tion to the pope of the calling of the colloquy of Poissy, which 
 it was well known would amount in his eyes to an invasion of 
 his rights, that letter, notwithstanding the polite terras in which 
 it was couched, was very nearly tantamount to a denial of the 
 Roman siq)rernaey. We cannot know how far it exactly repre- 
 sented the queen's own sentiments, but such a document evidently 
 did not emanate either from a mind or heart very deeply Roman 
 Catholic. The more we study the history of those times, the 
 more we become convinced that had Reformation ideas been 
 allowed to ferment for eight or ten years longer without any in- 
 termingling of politics, and without being compromised by the 
 grandees, with their rivalries and their intrigues, France would 
 have been lost to Rome. Catherine de Medicis may have wished 
 the St. Bartholomew massacre out of hatred to the Reformed ; 
 but after having written such a letter, she could not have wished 
 it from hatred to the Reformation. 
 
 The famous colloquy of Poissy has had no lack of authors to 
 relate its proceedings ; we confine ourselves to those parts only 
 that bear on the history we have in hand. 
 
 In spite of the pope, but with the advice of the bishops, it had 
 been convoked ; in spite both of the pope and the bishops the 
 court had required the attendance of the Protestants. At the 
 very first sitting the Chancellor de l'Hopital appeared as the 
 organ of Gallican sentiments, and announced these with a frank- 
 ness, the very echoes of which alarmed and seemed to confound 
 Rome. The chancellor commenced by stating as a principle 
 
300 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 what the popes had never ceased to regard as a heresy, or at 
 least as a dangerous and culpable error, that in default of a 
 general council, it was at once the right and the duty of all 
 secular princes, each for himself, to apply a remedy to the 
 Church's wants and defects. " And were there," said he, " at 
 this very hour a general council met, would that be a reason for 
 renouncing the present meeting, or any other such as the king 
 might appoint for the same object ? No. A majority of the 
 council-general would be made up of strangers to France, and 
 hence incapable of rightly appreciating the wishes and the wants 
 of the kingdom. Have Ave not seen in the reign of Charle- 
 magne, several councils met at the same time '? Have we not 
 seen a council-general, that of Rimini, where Arianism tri- 
 umphed, condemned in France by a synod presided over by 
 Hilary of Poitiers'? And it was the doctrine of the latter of 
 these synods which, in spite of the council-general, became that 
 of the Church." 
 
 Did the chancellor honestly suppose that he attacked only the 
 pope ? Assuredly the Protestants could not have said anything 
 stronger against the Roman Church itself; in our general re- 
 marks on infallibility we have quoted this same fact. If it be 
 admitted — and how can it be denied? — that the colloquy of 
 Poitiers was in the right as opposed to the council of Rimini, 
 the first colloquy that meets may hope to be justified in opposing 
 the council of Trent. 
 
 After such a speech from the chancellor, the Protestants had 
 the ball at their feet, and they will always have the advantage 
 in contending witli the (J-allicans, however little they may press 
 them. Accordingly, notwithstanding the efforts of the prelates, 
 of the queen, and of the chancellor himself, to make them appear 
 only in the character of accused persons, the simple recital of 
 their faith and of their grievances gave them that of accusers 
 and judges. It was in vain that Beza, 1 who spoke for them, 
 softened the terms he used ; it was not in his power to prevent 
 all that he said from having a fearfully telling effect. Did la- 
 speak of the persecutions inflicted on his brethren? It was their 
 blood which as he spoke cried aloud against the authors of so much 
 carnage, and the victim is always eloquent when it speaks in pre- 
 sence of its butchers. Did he say nothing of those frightful scenes? 
 This only gave him the air of pardoning them, only made him 
 
 1 They consisted of fourteen ministers. On the side of the Roman Catholics there were 
 rive cardinals, forty bishops, and a sjore of doctors. 
 
COLLOQUY OF POISSY — GALLICANISM. ;i01 
 
 all tlie more eloquent. Did he attack the clergy? He then 
 said scarcely more than had been said at the states met at 
 Orleans, and that Cardinal Ferrara, who represented the pope 
 at the colloqtiy, was the son of Lucretia Borgia. Did he give 
 an exposition of his doctrine ? It was mingled throughout with 
 matter in which he felt he had the support of two-thirds of 
 the court and of the parliament. He was listened to accord- 
 ingly with a degree of attention as flattering to him as it was 
 calculated to unnerve the prelates. " I could well have wished," 
 said the Cardinal of Lorraine to his intimate friends, " either 
 that this man had been dumb, or that we had been cleaf !" But 
 Beza had spoken ; the audience had not been deaf; a reply was 
 necessary. The cardinal, to the great annoyance of many of 
 the prelates, who thought it would detract from his dignity, had 
 declared that he would undertake the task ; but to avoid the 
 inconsistency of him, a cardinal and a prince, disputing with a 
 heretic of no note, he did what many champions of Bomanif-ni 
 do to this day, he laid down, ex professo, with great plausibility 
 certain theories and certain facts, and sneered at objections, as 
 if a single unresolved objection were not sufficient to subvert the 
 finest and best constructed theory. On this we have said enough 
 elsewhere ; in presence of the smallest error on any point what- 
 soever, what becomes of the most magnificent exposition of the 
 Eoman system on the Church's authority and infallibility? The 
 cardinal struck beside the point ; theories never can refute facts. 
 Compelled, besides, to retain his footing on the slippery ground 
 of Gallican ideas, he was perpetually hazarding the introduction 
 of questions of the utmost delicacy. How maintain in one breath 
 the authority of the pope and those liberties which the pope had 
 never acknowledged ? How speak in the name of the universal 
 Church, when a right had been assumed to control the decrees 
 of a general council ? How press the necessity for there being 
 a chief in the Church, when all the world knew that that meet- 
 ing had been called in the face of his disapproval ? And all 
 that we say of the famous colloquy of Foissy may be said of the 
 famous assembly of the clergy under Lewis XIV. Like the 
 cardinal of Lorraine in 1561, Bossuet in 1682, required more 
 talent and tact to avoid the appearance of demolishing Borne, 
 than he had ever shewn in attacking Geneva. 
 
 But at Foissy there was a man to whom Gallieanism was 
 hardly less odious than the Reformation. This was the irascible 
 Lainez, soon afterwards general of the Jesuits, and at that time 
 
302 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 attached to the cardinal of Ferrara, the pope's legate at the 
 court of Charles IX. To the calling of the colloquy none had 
 been more bitterly opposed than Lainez. He groaned in spirit 
 while attending its sittings, and even the utter defeat of the 
 Calvinist doctors could not have made him digest the affront of 
 an assembly having been held without the pope, and in spite of 
 the pope. At last he made an impassioned speech, but it was 
 directed against the queen and the court still mure than against 
 Beza. The Protestants escaped with merely having to hear 
 themselves called foxes, serpents, and apes ; the court was cen- 
 sured at great length, and point by point, for having made a 
 breach in the Church by meddling with matters in which it had 
 no concern. This was heard in silence. What, indeed, could 
 have been said in reply without producing an open rupture ? 
 The court had further to submit to hear the praises lavished by 
 Pius IV. on his fervid champion, while lie threatened to ex- 
 communicate the chancellor, and almost openly undertook the 
 defence of one Tanquerel, who had been condemned by the par- 
 liament for having maintained that the pope might deprive of 
 their dominions princes that should rebel against the papal 
 authority. In short, it must be admitted that the Eoman unity, 
 of which so terrible an argument has since been made, could not 
 have much impressed the anti-Eomanists of that period. Even 
 although the tentative proceedings at Trent had not demon- 
 strated how little reality there was in it, even in matters of faith, 
 what importance could have been attached to it by people so 
 entirely disagreed with respect to the constitution, the seat, the 
 very essence of that power which was said to be charged with 
 the establishment and preservation of this boasted unity ? Could 
 that very disagreement lie viewed as a thing beyond the sphere 
 of matters of faith? Here Ave find again, only exhibited in 
 action, all the arguments of our first book. On all occasions on 
 which the popes have thought they might call, or allow others 
 to call, Gallicanism a heresy, they have done it ; on all occasions 
 when it has suited them to excite any hatred against France or 
 the French, it has been as heretics that they have denounced 
 them to fanatical nations. In Italy, in Spain, in the Spanish 
 and Portuguese colonies, heretic and Frenchman have been 
 synonymous terms. Some of the heroes of St. Bartholomew 
 went and settled in America. Smeared as they were with Pro- 
 testant blood, what were they in the eyes of the ultramontanists 
 of the Xew World? Why. nothing but heretics. Philip V. 
 
INTRIGUES OF PHILIP II. IN FRANCE. 303 
 
 mounted the Spanish throne. He had taken part in the dra- 
 gonnades against the French Reformed ; he appears in Spain 
 under the auspices of the monarch who commanded those dra- 
 goonings and who believed himself the most zealous Roman 
 Catholic in Europe, the Church's first-born, a second Theodosius, 
 in fine, as was said of him by Bossuet. For all that he was but 
 a heretic in the eyes of his new subjects. He goes to Naples, 
 and lo ! the blood of St. Januarius refuses to liquefy, because, 
 say the priests, the miracle cannot take place where a heretic 
 reigns. Even in the wars of our own age, down to 1823, when 
 official France was more Roman Catholic than ever, but still 
 Gallican, it was on a sentiment of religious horror still more 
 than of national independence, that Spain rested her resistance 
 to French intervention. 
 
 To return to the colloquy, it was in Spain also that the 
 government and the clergy were most agreed in blaming its 
 authors. Nor did Philip confine himself to censure. He was 
 deeply interested in the divisions that distracted France, and 
 had long desired to interfere in them. Hence that fatal inter- 
 vention which was to end in the follies and the horrors of the 
 League. He began by complaining of the dangers which, as he 
 alleged, threatened his own states, from the vicinity of a king- 
 dom where so little regard was shewn to the interests of the 
 faith ; he should take good care that after having been at such 
 pains to root out the last remains of heresy from Spain he should 
 not be compelled to see it flourishing at his own gates. He 
 gave no farther explanation, but enough was known to make 
 his meaning sufficiently understood. Two months previous to 
 the colloquy there had been seized at Orleans a sort of petition 
 presented to him by the clergy of France, and that document, 
 notwithstanding the ambiguity of its terms, pointed clearly 
 enough to the necessity for an armed intervention. Although 
 the clergy, as a body, were not guilty of complicity, so many 
 persons were found compromised by it that the government felt 
 it necessary to put a stop to further investigation ; it was fain 
 to wink at what it had not the power to punish. Philip IT., 
 accordingly, was assured of powerful sympathies ; of this suffi- 
 cient proofs appeared in the course of time. With the Romish 
 clergy the interests of the Church and of Rome have necessarily 
 the precedence of those of their native country. It is only at 
 the expense of his consistency, and at the hazard of seeing him- 
 self placed in the falsest positions, that a priest can be a good 
 
304: HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TEENT. 
 
 Frenchman, a good German, and, in general, a good citizen. 
 Be this happy inconsistency frequent or rare, that is a delicate 
 question which we are not called to examine ; the answer to it, 
 moreover, must vary greatly, according to times and places. 
 There are priests, thank God, who are also good citizens, as 
 there are priests also who are tolerant ; but just as these last are 
 not and cannot he so without disobedience to their Church, so 
 also, the only consistent and finished priest is he who has no 
 country hut Rome and no sovereign but the pope. 
 
 The bishops at the colloquy, meanwhile, were fain to grant 
 something, or, if not inclined to do so, felt at least that it would 
 seem strange to have called the Protestants together, all whose 
 opinions, he it remembered, they perfectly knew, without making 
 any concession to them. The supper in both kinds had the 
 double advantage of not being a point of doctrine and of excit- 
 ing the greatest interest. The council had not decided the 
 question; in consenting to its adjournment it had given room to 
 believe that it was not irrevocably decided in the Roman sense. 
 It was resolved, therefore, that the pope should be asked to yield 
 on that point. Some of the bishops even thought that it was 
 competent for the king to regulate the matter by an edict ; but 
 it was deemed more prudent not to commit themselves to so 
 mischievous a step. 
 
 The pope replied that that request had been already made to 
 him by the emperor, that, personally, he would have found no 
 great difficulty in consenting to it, but that the cardinals had 
 almost with one mind advised him to reject it. Notwithstand- 
 ing, out of regard for France, he would consult them once more. 
 
 A consistory was held accordingly, (10th November,) and not 
 only was the request refused, but it was made the occasion of 
 the severest recriminations against the country from which it 
 had come. All that the pope thought the cardinals said. Court, 
 parliament, and bishops, were openly accused of heresy. The 
 ( 'ardinal della Queva, who had nearly been elected pope, ven- 
 tured to say that if ever the pope consented to such a request 
 lie himself would go and supplicate for mercy on the steps of 
 St. Peter's, thus intimating that even the pope would in his eyes 
 lie a heretic were he to have a hand in such things. The Car- 
 dinal of St. Angelo added, that because the French were sick, 
 that was no reason for giving them, under the guise of medicine, 
 :\ cupful of poison. And when the ambassador from France 
 asked him if the bishops of the first ages had then been poisoners, 
 
FIRST SESSION FIXED FOR 18tII JANUARY. 30.0 
 
 seeing they gave the cup to all, another replied that the cup 
 would really have been poisoned, for whoever should partake of 
 it in the belief that it was necessary, since this was to deny, 
 against the opinion of the Church, that the entire body of the 
 Saviour was in the bread. 
 
 Notwithstanding this unanimity, the pope hesitated ; he pon- 
 dered with alarm the consequences that might possibly follow 
 his refusal. First, he would fain have had the ambassador with- 
 draw his request ; but that minister having replied that this was 
 beyond his power, he then thought of applying for advice to the 
 council. Not, said he, that he did not believe himself fully 
 competent to pronounce on the question, but since the council 
 was about to open, wiry should he withdraw from its cognizance 
 a matter so closely allied to the questions which it would have to 
 study? Pius promised, moreover, to take steps for its beinii; 
 among the first points to be submitted to examination. 
 
 Notwithstanding this, the court of France was less disposed than 
 ever either to send its bishops or to acknowledge a council in 
 which they should not have had a place. By dint of chicanery 
 and ill-nature it had come at last to put legal right, one might 
 almost say reason, on the side of the court of Rome, seeing that for 
 a year the pope had been doing his best to bring the council into 
 a state which might authorize its being opened. Whatever were 
 in reality his feelings and his fears, he could no longer be re- 
 proached either with negligence or tergiversations. The sending 
 of six legates from Rome sufficiently shewed that he had no 
 longer any wish to draw back. In consequence of the pains he 
 had taken, near a hundred bishops were at Trent, that is to say, 
 a third more than had appeared at any of the old sessions. In 
 this number there were, no doubt, many Italians ; but it was no 
 longer the pope's fault if those belonging to other countries per- 
 sisted in refusing to come. He thought, therefore, that after 
 waiting for eight months, he might safely undertake the respon- 
 sibility of opening it, and it was decided accordingly that the 
 first session should take place on the 18th January 1562. 
 
 The drawing up of the decree for the opening proved a still 
 more thorny affair than that of its convocation had been. Could 
 the meeting evade explaining its real character ? Surely it must 
 present itself to the world either as a new council or as a con- 
 tinuation of the old. The Spanish bishops were strongly in 
 favour of the second alternative ; nay, several threatened to with- 
 
 u 
 
306 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 draw were there any concession, or appearance of concession, on 
 that point. The Italians were no less unwilling to yield; hut 
 they were as much aware as the pope was that any explicit 
 statement would call forth the most dangerous protests from 
 Germany and France. Means were still found, accordingly, for 
 leaving the matter undecided. Nothing is impossible in diplo- 
 macy ; hut it was a sorry commencement to have too little 
 courage for saying what all were unanimous in thinking. " Is 
 it your pleasure that the holy council of Trent, oecumenical and 
 general, he celebrated, commencing from this day, all suspension 
 being removed, according to the form and tenor of our holy 
 father the pope's letters, and that there shall he brought under 
 discussion, proper order being observed, what shall seem expe- 
 dient as a remedy for present evils'^' &c. Thus, all suspension 
 being removed, which assumes, it is true, a convocation anterior 
 to the present ; but it is not said that that convocation had pro- 
 duced anything. Eeference is made to the bull, but that Ave 
 have seen said nothing more precise. All this, humanly speak- 
 ing, is very excusable. To have done otherwise would have 
 been to subvert all. But this mendacious decree is not the less 
 associated with those who, we arc told, were holy and infallihle 
 persons ; the council not the less gives itself, in that as well as 
 in the other decrees, the titles of holy, oecumenical, and legiti- 
 mately assembled, with the assistance of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 The opening then took place. A hundred and ten prelates in 
 full costume, accompanied by their officers, their priests, and 
 their doctors, solemnly took possession of the cathedral, amid the 
 sound of artillery and of steeple bells, and between two lines of 
 soldiers. Xo ambassador had as yet arrived : a circumstance 
 that greatly disappointed Pallavicini. "It looked," 1 says he, "as 
 if the theatre on which such fine things were passing, had not 
 all the splendour that it required, as long as the representatives 
 of the kings did not figure there." But from cpiite a different 
 cause than a defect in external splendour, there still prevailed, in 
 fact, a painful sense of isolation and weakness. The number 
 was above a hundred ; but better had there been only fifty, had 
 there been among these only a dozen of French and Germans. 
 Yet with all these reasons for humility and fear, the opening ser- 
 mon displayed as much hardihood as ever. Gaspard del Fosso, 
 archbishop of Beggio, had chosen for his subject the authority of 
 the Church and the power of councils. The bishops had the 
 
 i Book xv. eh. xvi. 
 
ORIGIN OF THE PROPONENTIBUS DISPUTE. 307 
 
 satisfaction of hearing it declared, as in the too famous sermon 
 of Mnsso, that the Holy Spirit was about to speak by their 
 mouth. And as for the Church's authority, " Is it not it," said 
 he, among other reasons, " that substituted the Lord's clay for 
 the Sabbath, which was instituted by God himself? Did it not 
 abolish circumcision, also instituted by God'?" Whence it must 
 be concluded, little room as there was for such reasoning, not 
 that the Church is equal to the Word of God, but that it is much 
 superior. If this were the place to reply, we might observe fur- 
 ther, that the Sabbath and circumcision were practices, not doc- 
 trines ; that these practices have been not abolished, but re- 
 placed, the one by the Lord's day, the other by baptism ; that 
 this substitution was the work of the Apostles ; that, were it 
 even the Church's doing, the right of modifying practices by no 
 means draws along with it that of teaching (new) doctrines. 
 Did the abolition of the Sabbath, and of circumcision, date as so 
 many Eomanist ideas do, from the tenth, nay, the twelfth cen- 
 tury, should we be bound to subscribe to it ? How prove the 
 authority of the Church by decisions which we should be autho- 
 rized to reject, did they emanate only from the Church ? The 
 argument, nevertheless, is in great favour, down to our own days 
 even, in the writings of Eomanist controversialists. 
 
 A single word which had found its way into the decree, was 
 destined afterwards to excite stormy discussions. 
 
 The bishops that had arrived first at Trent, had for several 
 months enjoyed opportunities of visiting each other, and hav- 
 ing a mutual interchange of ideas. From such strictly pri- 
 vate deliberations, there issued certain projected decrees, pre- 
 pared for being submitted to the council when fully constituted, 
 but not all equally accordant with the views of the pope. 
 The legates were not much put about in having them re- 
 jected ; but it was of consequence further, that they should not 
 even be brought under deliberation ; and of still more conse- 
 quence that even as respected decrees perfectly innocuous, a 
 check should be put at once to the perilous course of entertain- 
 ing individual or collective propositions. Nevertheless, to have 
 it decreed that the legates alone should have the right of intro- 
 ducing subjects for discussion, was impossible ; all but the 
 Italians would have protested, and the Italians themselves would 
 not all have subscribed it. An attempt was made, accordingly, 
 to have inserted in the decree for the opening, at least the germ 
 of the right which it was anticipated would be so necessary. 
 
808 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OK TRENT. 
 
 The decrees had hitherto run simply thus, " The holy council, 
 the legates of the apostolic see presiding." This was already a 
 great deal ; time was when we have seen what pains were taken 
 to elude the question of this presidency being- honorary merely, 
 or of divine right ; indispensable, or not indispensable, to the 
 council's legitimacy. This time, it was no more presiding, but 
 " proposing and presiding." 1 The terms did not thereby say that 
 it was for them alone to propose, but they might thus be inter- 
 preted ; and we shall see ere long that they were placed there 
 solely with that view. Was this, too, a piece of diplomacy ? We 
 are of opinion that even among diplomatists, it would stand a 
 great chance of being called something very different. The 
 bishop of Grenada, and three other Spaniards, said as much in 
 the face of the legates. 
 
 This right of proposing did not fail to create embarrassment. 
 As the resumption of the plan of procedure in 1551 was not, for 
 the moment, to be dreamt of, seeing that that would have been 
 to cut short, in fact, the question as to the continuation, the 
 grand affair was to find out some subject altogether new, strictly 
 associated with nothing else, and which might figure equally 
 well at the beginning, middle, or end of a council. The legates 
 proposed then to inquire what should be done with respect to 
 hooks forbidden, or to be forbidden ; a vague question, which 
 could only lead, as happened in fact, to an insignificant decree. 
 What could the assembly be asked to do ? Not surely itself to 
 draw up a catalogue of the books to be condemned ? That was 
 impracticable ; at the most it could appoint a committee to do 
 so. Not to fix the rules according to which they should be con- 
 demned; for it was clear that every book that contradicted the 
 decisions of the Church, and especially those of the council itself, 
 was, from that alone, of a nature to be interdicted. Not to de- 
 cree that the pope and bishops should have an eye directed to all 
 works that might be published ; for their attention had long been 
 thus directed, and the Inquisition, moreover, left them nothing 
 to do. Thus what was presented to the council, became a sub- 
 ject of conversation rather than of discussion ; and more than one 
 bishop thought it strange that an assembly so numerous, brought 
 together with so much difficulty, and opened so tardily, should 
 be asked to spend its time in any such manner. 
 
 The prohibition of certain books began, like all abuses, with 
 measures at once wise and legitimate. It is evident that a pas- 
 
 1 Proponentibus Stdis apostolicse legatis, et prceeidentibus. 
 
THE INDEX HISTORICAL REVIEW. 309 
 
 tor does no more than his duty in pointing out to his flock such 
 writings as appear to him dangerous ; hut it is also evident that 
 his right cannot go so far as to interdict them otherwise, than by 
 an appeal to the conscience of the readers. Such was the inter- 
 diction which for a long period was alone in use. Towards the 
 year 500, we see Pope Gelasius publish a first general index of 
 heretical books, or books reputed to be heretical ; but he merely 
 gave a list of them. The faithful were to know that the Church 
 condemned them ; that was all. By little and little we find 
 threats appear, but still nothing very offensive in these ; it was 
 merely observed, that he who reads a heretical book, knowing it 
 to be heretical, commits the sin of one who voluntarily exposes 
 himself to a temptation. Towards the twelfth century, the cus- 
 tom was introduced of anathematizing at one blow the heretic 
 and his works ; the interdiction is then more severe ; still it is 
 only an interdiction. Finally, it becomes more and more severe, 
 and by little and little excommunication is brought in to sanction 
 it. Thus, in excommunicating Luther, Leo X. pronounces the 
 same penal sentence against those who should read his books. 
 At the epoch of the council, it was the ordinary form of that sort 
 of condemnations. 
 
 Paul IV., whose violent proceedings we have related, had par- 
 ticularly distinguished himself in this desperate warfare between 
 Roman Catholicism and liberty. A vast index, drawn up under 
 his eye by the Inquisition of the Roman States, has come down 
 to us as a curious monument of the papal despotism, or, if you 
 will, dotage. As little disposed to respect his predecessors as 
 the secular princes, and without disquieting himself about the 
 breach thus made in his own claims to infallibility, Paul con- 
 demns without ceremony works printed in Italy, at Rome itself, 
 under the eyes and with the approbation of the popes ; for ex- 
 ample, the Annotations of Erasmus on the New Testament, ap- 
 proved by Leo X. in 1518. According to Pallavicini, nothing 
 more simple : "Is it to be supposed that the pope, in signing a 
 brief of that nature, can always examine writings personally, or 
 by very capable persons ? Why should not time make one distin- 
 guish, upon a second reading, what had not been perceived at 
 the first'?" 1 All well; but then we would add, why may not 
 time enable him to perceive, on a third reading, the contrary of 
 what he believed he had seen at the second? With this reason- 
 ing, just as it is in itself, the pope is in the same condition of 
 
 1 Book xv. ch. xviii. 
 

 310 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 self-correction and of error, as the first doctor you meet ; there 
 may always be an appeal from the pope who is ill-informed, to 
 the pope who is Letter informed. It is Gallican, but hardly 
 orthodox reasoning. Be that as it may, Paul IV. did not look 
 so narrowly into it ; he went straight forward — so much the worse 
 for those who stood in his way, though popes like himself. 
 Among the condemned authors, his Index signals out, not only 
 heretics properly so called, but all who had raised the smallest 
 doubt on the rights and pretensions of Rome. Had he not called 
 heretics, in full consistory, those who had wished to remind him 
 of the promise he had given in conclave, not to appoint more 
 than four cardinals at once '? There was heresy, according to 
 him, in thinking that the pope could be bound, even by an oath; 
 in what an abyss of heresy were not those then plunged, in his 
 eyes, who dared to speak of placing any other limits on that 
 power, a power more absolute than that of God himself, for 
 none has ever said that God was not bound by his promises, or 
 could have the thought of violating them? Further, in that 
 same Index, all the works published, or that might be published 
 by sixty printers mentioned by name, and, generally, all books 
 that should issue from the presses of a printer guilty of having 
 once printed a heretical book, were anathematized in the lump. 
 In a word, there was not perhaps a single man in Europe that 
 could read, who did not find himself caught, in one way or 
 another, in that decree's anathemas ; and the only penalty indi- 
 cated for all these cases, however different, was excommunica- 
 tion. Were we wrong in speaking of dotage ? 
 
 This decree, accordingly, had been very much criticised even 
 at Rome. Sensible persons thought this deluge of excommuni- 
 cations much less fitted to keep the population of Christendom 
 in awe than to familiarize them with a punishment which is felt 
 to be nothing the moment it ceases to be the most terrible of all. 
 Tims the council was led at the very first to occupy itself with 
 the measures of Paul IV. The members were agreed in blaming 
 their severity, but they knew not how to meddle with them. Of 
 all the books condemned by that pope, there was not one which 
 an assembly of bishops could consider as altogether blameless ; 
 and if there was a certain number which they would have pre- 
 ferred not seeing anathematized, there was none, nevertheless, 
 which they could venture to rescue from the curse pronounced 
 on them. Is it not better, then, said Peter Contarini, bishop of 
 Baffa, is it not better to forbid a thousand works which do not 
 
SLUR ON THE COUNCIL'S DIGNITY. 311 
 
 deserve it, than to permit the reading of one that does ? " Ah !" 
 he added, with great simplicity, " are hooks so rare, then, that 
 we should he so much alarmed about interdicting a few too 
 many !" Pallavicini is inclined to think this opinion singular. 
 Let us be thankful he says nothing worse, for it is rare to find 
 him not admiring the things he relates in proportion as they are 
 strange. But if this opinion be singular, what other term shall 
 we apply to that of the historian himself in admitting that Paul 
 went too far, yet persisting in ascribing to the Church on this 
 point a power without limits and without control '? And if we 
 mention here the light in which he viewed this matter, it is not 
 because he supported it. Of what consequence is that to us ? It 
 is because it has never ceased, and never can cease to be that of 
 the Roman Church. It is not fifteen years since there fell from 
 the pretended chair of St. Peter, those words which so many 
 persons would now fain obliterate from men's memories, — " The 
 liberty of the press is a monstrous liberty, which can never be 
 held in sufficient horror." 1 
 
 In consenting to the revision of the Index, the pope had first 
 taken care that no prejudice should be done to his rights. Consi- 
 dering the prohibitions that emanated from Paul IV. as still in 
 force, he had sent to the bishops of the council permission to read 
 the books which that pope had noted as heretical. This was gene- 
 rally deemed a slur on the council's dignity. People wondered 
 very reasonably at its being assumed that bishops legitimately 
 assembled for fixing the Church's faith and discipline, should 
 further require the pope's special permission to read the books 
 they might have to condemn. Under polite and gracious forms 
 it amounted to the most slavish subjection that the Holy See had 
 as yet imposed on any council. 
 
 We have seen the difficulties started under Julius III. about 
 the attendance of the Protestants. As this question could not 
 fail to be resumed, the legates had fancied that they could find, in 
 the affair of the Index, the means of depriving it of all that was 
 most embarrassing. They proposed, therefore, that they should 
 be called, not as divines and representatives of the Reformation, 
 but as authors interested in the framing of the catalogue, and 
 who had a claim to be heard before being condemned. 
 
 Nothing could be more illusory, if indeed we can call that 
 illusory which is too clear to deceive anybody. Protestant writ- 
 ings were too openly heretical to make the asking of explana- 
 1 See ante, p. 111. 
 
312 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 fcions from their authors anything more than an idle ceremony. 
 These Protestants, therefore, would not come ; hut this heing- just 
 what was wanted, the application for a safe-conduct, when made 
 anew by the emperor, met on this occasion with no difficulty. 
 Only two bishops desired that this curious condition should be 
 put into it, that the heretics should come, not to dispute, but to 
 be converted. 
 
 Accordingly, never yet had there been so meaningless a decree 
 as that read on the 26th of February. Many prelates were 
 ashamed of it ; they even asked themselves whether the title of 
 decree could be given to the mere announcement that a commis- 
 sion had been appointed, and that it would receive with pleasure 
 those who might think that they had explanations to give. 
 Moreover, however insignificant the result of the deliberations, 
 these had been very long, and it was only with much ado that it 
 had been found possible to have the decree ready on the appointed 
 day. All the members wished to speak ; all wished to give token 
 of their presence on that theatre which most of them, mere 
 priests at the time of the old sessions, had hitherto only hailed 
 from a distance. When they came to the discussion of the text, 
 the legates were obliged to lay it down as a rule, that it should 
 be passed before the meeting rose, even although they should 
 devote the whole night to it. It was the best way to have done 
 with it ; but, at the same time, it did not flatter the assembly 
 with much prospect of independence. 
 
 That safe-conduct, too, which to all appearance was to be of 
 use to nobody, cost many clays' labour. The Spaniards exclaimed 
 against the abuse that might be made of it in escaping from the 
 rigours of the Inquisition. An accused person might ask leave 
 to get out of prison for the purpose of justifying himself before 
 the council. Was he to obtain this leave, then, at the risk of 
 seeing him go, not to Trent, but to Geneva? They came to an 
 understanding about it at last, thanks to a word furtively 
 introduced at the end of the safe-conduct. What an infernal 
 mockery ! See, in the first place, in the decree, the most press- 
 ing invitations. It is by the bowels of the divine mercy, 1 that 
 the council exhorts the heretics to come to Trent, to open their 
 hearts, to throw themselves into the arms of that tender mother 
 who is burning with a desire to pardon them. 2 Next, see in the 
 
 1 Per viscera misericonline Dei. 
 
 '- Ail tarn piam et salutarem matris sure admonitionem excitentur et convertantur : 
 oinnitjus euira caritatis officiis sunntu. svnudus eos ut iuvitat, ita complectitur. 
 
THE INQUISITION SPANISH DEMI-GALLIC ANISM. 313 
 
 safe-conduct itself, four large pages filled with the most minute 
 securities ; only the heretics of Germany alone are as yet spoken 
 of. See, at last, a final paragraph in which these securities are 
 extended to all persons of any other kingdom, nation, city, 
 province whatsoever, " where doctrines opposed to those of the 
 Church are professed." What more would you have ? Wait. At 
 the side of these words, " are professed" with impunity was slipt 
 in. Thus the Inquisition was saved. Wherever a man was not 
 a heretic with impunity, the safe-conduct was null. Accordingly, 
 one does not see that this charitable appeal snatched a single 
 victim from the pitiless tribunal. 
 
 The heart shudders at the thought of the frightful militia to 
 which, among the millions of Christians, the execution of the 
 decrees of Trent was committed. They were not yet written at 
 Trent, when they were engraved with burning pincers, in the 
 heart of Spain, on bodies already devoted to the flames. And 
 Rome applauded ; and the pope repeated that Philip was, in fact, 
 the most catholic king, the most pious and the most orthodox of 
 monarchs, the only one who remained what all ought to have been. 
 
 Meanwhile those same Spaniards, who were so zealous in behalf 
 of an institution so clear to the pope, ceased not to cause much 
 uneasiness on other points. There was not a meeting at which 
 they did not make efforts to bring back the famous question of 
 residence and of divine right. The more ultramontane they were 
 in their dogmas, the more did they embolden themselves not to 
 be so in their ideas on the dignity of the episcopate, the part 
 assigned to the bishops in the Church, and the nature and extent 
 of the pope's supremacy. A most instructive history might be 
 written of that clemi-gallicanism, to which historians have not 
 yet given a name, and which is so liberal and bold on the one 
 side, and so profoundly despotic and persecuting on the other. 
 We shall yet have to notice many of its peculiar traits, nor can 
 it be thought uninteresting to find in the depths of Spain, in the 
 midst of the sixteenth century, so many auxiliaries against the 
 pope, and consequently against Eoman Catholicism, without 
 their suspecting it, for it is not with impunity that a keystone of 
 the vault can be shaken. 
 
 An attempt, therefore, had to be made to satisfy them, by 
 proposing, among other subjects which we need not detail, a 
 new examination of the methods by which residence might be 
 made more general. Cardinal Simonetta, one of the legates and 
 head of the ultra-papal party, and of what a Frenchman would 
 
314 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TREKT. 
 
 call " of the extreme right," was averse to this commencement of 
 concession ; the Cardinal of Mantua, premier legate, and head 
 of the moderate ultramontanes, and, if you will, of the left centre, 
 bad positively desired it. Notwithstanding their united efforts 
 to concentrate the discussion on a peaceable examination of 
 methods, it fell immediately on what they had wished to keep 
 off, and thus the question became as complex and as irritating 
 as ever. 
 
 We shall not return to what we have already said upon it. 
 Eleven sittings were devoted to it. Hot words and the com- 
 mencements of tumults often occurred. From the time of the 
 old debates things had undergone no change ; the same prin- 
 ciples, the same interests, the same passions, all were there. 
 Some were as obstinate as ever in affirming that on residence 
 being once declared to be of divine right, it would be universally 
 practised; others, as obstinate as ever, maintained that matters 
 would be no better, and that, besides, in all things good results 
 do not always prove the truth of the principle. In this they 
 were not wrong. The question was not which of the two sys- 
 tems did most good or most harm, but which of the two was 
 true ? Is it by the authority of the pope, or by that of God, that 
 a bishop is bound to reside in his church ? 
 
 There was nothing then, it would appear, but that on the 
 question having been once sufficiently debated, they should take 
 the votes. Is nut the majority of a council necessarily in the 
 right ? But the papal faction ardently desired that there should 
 be no voting ; and even among the partisans of the divine right 
 there were several who dreaded, for the honour of the council, 
 a voting in which it could be seen beforehand that the members 
 would be far from unanimous. The legates themselves were 
 not agreed. Three wished that the voting should proceed ; two 
 were opposed to this. 1 Now, they had orders from the pope 
 always to act in concert ; but as it was necessary that they 
 should come to the point, the Cardinal of Mantua, as president, 
 decided that the vote should be taken. 
 
 This was done accordingly. Historians differ as to the num- 
 ber of the voters and the repartition of the votes. Let us keep 
 therefore to Massarelli, secretary to the council, cited by Palla- 
 vicini as the only correct authority on this point. According to 
 him there were an hundred and thirty voters ; for declaring the 
 divine right, sixty-six ; against, seventy-one ; papal majority, 
 
 i As vet thev were on'v five in number. 
 
DIVISION ON THE DIVINE RIGHT. 315 
 
 five. But, always according to Massarelli, among the seventy- 
 one votes counted as opposed to the declaration, there were 
 thirty-seven only who were so absolutely ; of the other thirty- 
 four prelates, some answered, " yes, provided the pope be first 
 consulted," and others, " no, if the pope has not been first con- 
 sulted," which sufficiently shews that they were at bottom for 
 the affirmative, and that it was from respect for the pope that 
 they did not join the ayes. 
 
 There was in reality then a considerable majority in favour of 
 the divine right. The sitting had been long and stormy ; the 
 assembly was dismissed without being asked what it meant 
 should be the result of this voting, and as an escape from this 
 difficulty, the legates interpreted it in the sense of a reference to 
 the pope, although such reference had been positively voted by 
 only thirty-four members, being just a fourth of the council. 
 Accordingly they wished to say nothing about it ; but it came 
 out that one of the Cardinal of Mantua's secretaries had set out 
 for Eome, and the Spaniards bitterly complained of it at the 
 following congregation. " Are we a council," said they, " or 
 merely the pope's counsellors? Better to have frankly said 
 that no council is wanted than to call us together only to make 
 us slaves." And these complaints, repeated from day to day, 
 were all the more disquieting in that they were uttered by those 
 who were most zealous in behalf of discipline and the faith. 
 "His holiness," wrote the ambassador of France at Borne, 1 " is 
 much hindered at present on account of the complaints made by 
 these prelates that the affairs of the said council are sent thither 
 and consulted upon here, saying that this is a violation of its 
 liberty." 
 
 AVhat still more hindered his holiness than the irregularity of 
 the reference, was the reference itself. A letter from the Floren- 
 tine ambassador to Duke Cosmo, gives an excellent picture of 
 the position of affairs. According to him, after the evident majo- 
 rity obtained by the principle of divine right, Bins IV. was 
 morally bound to pronounce in that sense ; but, on the other 
 hand, although his convictions or his interests had not been to 
 the contrary, still he ought to have felt repugnant at erecting 
 into an article of faith what had been so warmly combated by 
 thirty or forty of the most Catholic prelates. But looking at the 
 matter in a merely human point of view, would it not have been 
 a kind of treason towards those men, to whom so much was due, 
 
 1 Letter to Charles IX., 6th May, 1562. 
 
316 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 seeing- that it was through them that the legates led the council ? 
 Hence, had he refused there would have been an almost uni- 
 versal discontent in Spain, Germany, and France ; had he agreed, 
 an almost universal discontent in Italy, a discontent more respect- 
 ful, perhaps, but in some respects more dangerous. We shall 
 see, accordingly, that he took good care not to pronounce either 
 way. 
 
 At Trent, the excess of the evil had ended at last in procuring 
 a remedy. The violence of the scenes that had occurred pro- 
 duced a general impression that it would not require much of 
 the same sort of thing to bring the council to a close amid the 
 contempt of Roman Catholics and the laughter of Protestants. 
 Some serious men of both parties in the council came to a mutual 
 understanding not to give such scandal to the Church, or such 
 satisfaction to her enemies. By a tacit agreement there was a 
 mutual abstinence from all allusion to those debates, and thus 
 six peaceful sittings could be devoted to the other points that 
 had been proposed. 
 
 These formed an odd medley of all sorts of questions. It was 
 evident that the legates had jumbled together everything they 
 had thought capable of being examined without touching on 
 the article of the continuation. The council had to consider 
 ordinations, parochial cure of soids, dismissals on the ground of 
 incapacity or immorality, collections for hospitals, clandestine 
 marriages, &c. ; all matters on which there was, in fact, much 
 to be said and much to be regulated, but which one would not 
 have expected to see all huddled together. 
 
 Here, as elsewhere, among the abuses marked for correction, 
 there were some which at the present day we should think 
 fabulous. Thus, for example, one might purchase from the pope 
 the monopoly of collections for such or such an hospital ; upon 
 which, on payment of a fixed yearly sum to that establishment, 
 the purchaser went to collect by begging wherever he chose, and 
 to what extent he chose. These privileges, ordinarily highly 
 lucrative, passed from hand to hand, like shares in a trading 
 concern at the present day ; often the actual working of the 
 speculation fell to the second or the third hand, and still all the 
 parties interested had a profit. Accordingly, there was no kind 
 of artifice or fraud that the subaltern agents would not call to 
 their aid. Promises of indulgences, prophecies, miracles, every- 
 thing was good when it was money that was to be got. 
 
 Although there was but one voice at Trent in denouncing this 
 
QUESTION OF DIVINE RIGHT STILE UNDECIDED. 317 
 
 scandal, the council dared not attack it. How could it annul 
 acts, authentically emanating from Rome? Here, then, as in the 
 affair of the Index, the consent of the pope had to be obtained, 
 and upon that new complaints arose that the council was rather 
 at Rome than at Trent. It was asked whether, then, it was for 
 the purpose of habituating it to obedience that the legates had 
 presented subjects of this sort to begin with ? In fact, as the 
 greater number of the points indicated lay within the domain of 
 the pope's administrative authority, the boldest of the bishops 
 were compelled to feel that they could not touch them without 
 his sanction. 
 
 Meanwhile those few peaceable sittings, signalized by very 
 wise decisions, did not prevent the question of divine right from 
 remaining suspended, as menacingly as ever, over the head of 
 the pope and of the legates. When we say the legates, we are 
 not quite correct : the Cardinal of Mantua, their president, held 
 the opinion of the Spaniards. But Cardinal Simonetta, who 
 enjoyed the pope's secret confidence, corresponded directly with 
 Rome, held the strings of all the intrigues that were on foot, and 
 exercised, in fact, all the rights of the presidence. The reference 
 to the pope was his work ; but the pope, ostensibly at least, did 
 not thank him for it. An answer was required, and we have 
 seen how difficult it was to give one. After much thought the 
 pope communicated to the college of cardinals the evasive letter 
 which he had resolved to write to Trent, on which all approved 
 of his pronouncing no decision. He confined himself to protest- 
 ing, on the one hand, that the council was free, and that he had 
 no intention of anywise hampering it, — while, at the same time, 
 he powerfully reminded them, on the other, that he was the sole 
 legitimate chief of the assembly, and that it never could feel a 
 high enough regard for him. 
 
 This reply, read to the cardinals on the 9th of May, could not 
 reach Trent before the session which was fixed for the 14th. 
 The legates were impatiently waiting for it, as likely to lighten 
 the weight of responsibility under which they felt themselves 
 tottering ; afterwards they ought to have felt thankful that they 
 had not received it in time, for it would have authorized a defini- 
 tive voting, and the divine right would infallibly have carried 
 the day. They were enabled, accordingly, to succeed in having 
 nothing more said about it in that session, but only by consenting 
 that no more should the decrees on which they had agreed, be pub- 
 lished. In this manner the question had of necessity to lie over. 
 
318 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 The public sitting 1 , therefore, went off in ceremonies. Audience 
 was given to some ambassadors who had recently arrived ; there 
 was, as usual, the mass of the Holy Spirit, a sermon, pomps of 
 all sorts ; but what was read was only a decree a few lines in 
 length, by which the session was prorogued to the 4tli of June, 
 and that, it was said, "for just and honourable reasons." 1 
 Honourable for whom ? Not assuredly for the council which 
 had never yet been so openly led by the pope ; or for the pope 
 who saw himself morally vanquished ; or for the authority of the 
 Church, for it was a very strange spectacle to see so much con- 
 tention upon a point which ought to have been settled for ages, 
 and which is not settled to this day. 
 
 Quarrels of such fierceness were not long of throwing Pius 
 IV. into the old papal track. Like Paul III. and Julius III., 
 he had conceived an aversion for the council. If he did not yet 
 speak openly of dissolving it, he allowed others to speak of this ; 
 his counsellors, who had never approved of the convocation, even 
 at the time when he shewed some eagerness in labouring at it, 
 now saw nothing at Trent but a seditious and rebel assembly. 
 
 Regrets, accordingly, began to be felt at there having been no 
 announcement, from the very first, of the continuation of the 
 old council, as that would probably have led, thanks to the 
 simultaneous protests of the emperor and the king of France, to 
 the breaking up of the Assembly. And this was all the more 
 regretted, inasmuch as had they begun with that, they might 
 have been sure of having it voted by an imposing majority, 
 whereas, after the contention about the divine right, in which 
 the opposite parties had become so strongly marked, there was 
 reason to apprehend a dangerous nearness to an equality of votes. 
 Nevertheless, the pope was resolved to run the risk. " The great 
 distrust often shewn by his holiness for the prelates, and for the 
 greater number of the articles that have been proposed hitherto, 
 leads many to presume that his holiness desires to find means 
 for abridging or interrupting the said council, and this conjec- 
 ture is thought to be strongly supported by a despatch, sent off 
 a week ago, for the continuation to be declared." 2 The legates, 
 therefore, must have had orders to that effect. For the rest, it 
 depended neither on them nor the pope that that question should 
 remain any longer undecided. Besides that it would no longer 
 have been easy to find subjects once more of so neutral a descrip- 
 
 1 Justis nonnullis ac honestis rausis. 
 
 2 The aii)ba-s.iuor of Fr-ine^to Rome, (De Rise). Letter of 15th June 1562. 
 
DISPARITY AMONG THE PRELATES. 319 
 
 tion as that they should not have seemed to establish a bond 
 between the old sessions and the new, the approaching arrival of 
 the French ambassadors was sure to provoke explanations, and 
 it was known that they would themselves begin with asking 
 them. The bishop of Paris, Du Bellai, who had arrived a few 
 days before, spoke and acted already with an audacity little 
 fitted to re-assure the pope as to the dispositions of his country's 
 bishops. One day that Verallo, bishop of Capaccio, contradicted 
 him in a congregation : " How many souls have you to guide '?" 
 said Du Bellai, " Five hundred," replied the Italian. "And 
 I," responded the Frenchman, "have five hundred thousand." 
 Nor was this the first time that the Italian prelates had heard 
 themselves twitted with the petty size of their dioceses. The 
 bishop of Paris glorying in his half million of burgesses, was a 
 small enough lord by the side of certain of the German prelates. 
 What a distance then betwixt the latter and those of Italy ; be- 
 tween Verallo, for instance, and his five hundred souls, and the 
 bishop of Wurzburg, who had for his vassals no fewer than 
 thirteen counts, five barons, and three hundred and fifty knights, 
 — almost as many, in fact, altogether as Verallo's whole flock ! 
 Those haughty prelates, accordingly, resigned themselves with a 
 bad grace to sitting on the council benches as the equals of these 
 poor mitred priests, thirty or forty of whom had not wherewithal 
 to live when absent from home, and enjoyed a small pension 
 from the pope. Pius IV. had the honesty to complain of the 
 three thousand crowns a month which it cost him to have them 
 at the council ; often, in conversing with the ambassadors, he 
 had candidly reminded them of this sacrifice as a proof of his 
 goodwill. Perhaps there was less naivete in it than policy, and 
 that in paying these pensions in open light of day, he hoped to 
 have a little less the air of one who bought votes. 
 
 Fain, too, would he have had it in his power, even though 
 it had cost him double or triple the amount, to buy those of the 
 French bishops, now expected from day to day, and who could 
 not fail so far to augment the anti-papal faction. Not being 
 able to address them, he addressed himself to the king. He 
 offered him secretly a hundred thousand crowns as a pure gift, 
 if his prelates would not insist on the votes being taken anew 
 on the divine right ; he then offered him a hundred thousand 
 more, under the form of a loan, on condition that the whole was 
 to be applied to the levying of troops against the Protestants. 
 He demanded, moreover, that these troops should be placed 
 
320 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 under the orders of his legate, that all the edicts in favour of 
 the Protestants should be repealed, that the chancellor should 
 be dismissed ; in fine, that they should not lay down arms until 
 after the entire submission of the rebels. This was a good 
 deal to expect for two hundred thousand, and even for three 
 hundred thousand crowns, if Pallavicini gives the right sum, 
 although the correspondences speak of two hundred only. 
 
 While these things were doing the French Ambassadors arrived. 
 Louis de Saint Gelais, sieur de Lansac, chief ambassador, had 
 for his colleagues Arnaud du Ferrier, president of the Parliament 
 of Paris, and Guy du Faur de Pihrac, of that of Toulouse. This 
 last, who was charged with the delivery of the speech, acquitted 
 himself like a man of spirit. One would have said, to hear him 
 speak, that past and present embarrassments were alike unknown 
 to him. He seemed to come before an assembly that had no 
 antecedents, good or bad, no divisions of any sort, no aspirations 
 but such as arose from a love of religion and the Church. " It 
 is a great evil to wish to change everything ; it is a great evil 
 also to wish to preserve everything in spite of time and men. 
 There have been councils that were far from free ; some, indeed, 
 have been completely enslaved, witness that which terminated 
 ten years ago, and at which several of yen had the disagreeable 
 task of being present ; but as for you, you who are a council 
 quite new, entirely free, assured of the protection and concur- 
 rence of all the princes of CJiristendom, who would suspect you 
 of not listening in all things to the voice of your conscience, and 
 of receiving besides from heaven the inspirations which you will 
 present to us as those of the Holy Ghost?" 1 Such was the sub- 
 stance and the tone of his harangue. It was nothing but a long 
 and severe satire on the council, on the pope, on all that had 
 been done, on all that they were in course of doing. 
 
 An answer had to be made ; and, according to custom, had to 
 be given at the next session. Some bishops wished it to be strong 
 and smart. The Spaniards and their ambassador, who never 
 ceased asking to have the continuation distinctly declared, said 
 that that was the only reply to make ; but, with the exception 
 of that point, they were very nearly thinking all that Pibrac had 
 said. Others remarked, not without reason, that if an attempt 
 were made to refute some of his sarcasms, they would need to 
 be all refuted, a course that would lead them far beyond the 
 limits of good policy and prudence. Pibrac, besides, before de- 
 
 1 Quoted by Flias Dapin. 
 
COMMUNION UNDER BOTH KINDS. 321 
 
 livering a copy of his speech, had very much softened it, and 
 the council was presumed to have heard only what it had re- 
 ceived in writing. The answer therefore, drawn up in the most 
 general terms possible, bore " That the council had never 
 doubted the good dispositions of the king of France ; that it 
 had no reason consequently to take in ill part the observations 
 presented in his name ; in fine, that the council intended in good 
 earnest to be free and to remain free, from whatever quarter 
 attempts to enslave it might come." This last stroke was not 
 ill imagined, as giving it to be understood that, failing the pope's 
 doing so, there were plenty of others who aimed hardly less at the 
 enslaving of the assembly. Those princes who exclaimed most 
 against the influence of the pope were precisely those who had 
 most desire to substitute their own in its place ; it was thought 
 bad that the Holy Ghost should come from Rome, and unheard 
 of efforts were at the same time made to make him come from 
 Madrid, Paris, Vienna, Augsburg. The council could not have 
 shaken off the yoke of one master without falling under that of 
 another. 
 
 In the midst of these distracting influences, the session of the 
 4th of June could only be a repetition of that of the 14th of 
 May. There were neither decrees of faith nor of discipline, but 
 an adjournment until the 16th of July, nay, in order that a third 
 blank session might not be held, it was put down in the decree 
 that in the event of this last term being put off, this should be 
 done by a simple resolution past at a congregation. Thirty-six 
 bishops craved that the promise of a decree on residence should 
 be inserted, which would have implied an engagement to vote 
 on the divine right ; but the majority were opposed to any such 
 engagement. 
 
 Then it was that the legates decided at last on allowing the 
 question of the communion under both kinds to come on. Be- 
 sides that the French and the German ambassadors had never 
 ceased to beg that the council would take it up, there remained 
 but one means of escape from the voting which they did not 
 like to promise, and that was to divert attention, and concentrate 
 disputation on a point of sufficient importance to throw every- 
 thing else for the moment into the shade. 
 
 The legates, accordingly, drew up a certain number of articles 
 which embraced the whole subject. Such was the ordinary 
 course, but on this occasion it had the inconvenience of bringing 
 many things into question against the desire of the emperor and 
 
 x 
 
.,'J-J HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 the king of France. What these, in fact, had asked was not a 
 dogmatical decision on the nature and validity of the communion 
 without wine, but the purely disciplinary authorization to grant 
 the wine to those populations which should require it. This 
 last point being the only one on which the Church could make 
 any concession, there was no need for taking up the others, at 
 least for the moment. 
 
 And not only was the question not sufficiently restricted, but 
 it was mis-stated. The first article ran thus : — " Is every Chris- 
 tian obliged by divine right to communicate under both kinds?" 
 Here we at once see a wrong turn given to it. The Protestants, 
 as we have seen, did not say that the wine was absolutely neces- 
 sary ; they asked why, and by what right the Church of Rome 
 had taken it from the people, especially after having allowed it 
 to them for many centuries ? " Is anything less received under 
 one kind than under both ?" it is said in another article. 
 Another mis-statement of the question. There was no need of 
 inquiring whether Jesus Christ could have simplified the com- 
 munion and employed in it bread only, but after he had once 
 thought fit to use both bread and wine, could the faithful be 
 obliged to be content with only one' of the two? 
 
 It is true that to these two questions there was added a third, 
 more in accordance with the demand that had been made. " Do 
 the reasons that have led the Church to deprive the laity of the 
 cup interdict her from ever conceding it to any one?" These 
 words seemed to hint the possibility of concession ; but as the 
 two preceding points could not fail to be decided in an altogether 
 Roman Catholic sense, it was evident that a disciplinary conces- 
 sion, preceded by two dogmatical condemnations, would not bring 
 hack a single Protestant, and could nowise satisfy those princes who 
 were flattering themselves with the idea of bringing them back. 
 
 The emperor's ambassadors, accordingly, who had for some- 
 time shewed themselves more tractable, with the view of having 
 the subject taken up, all at once ceased to lay any constraint on 
 then - feelings. The day following that on which the questions 
 were put into shape they craved an audience of the legates, and 
 this in order that they might lay before them a fuller and 
 bolder plan of reformation than any that had yet been proposed. 
 They asked : — 
 
 That the pope should reform both himself and his court ; 
 
 That all the bishops, without exception, should be compelled 
 to residence ; 
 
BOLD PROPOSITIONS THE LEGATES DISMAYED. 82:5 
 
 That plurality of offices should he definitively abolished ; 
 
 That all the monastic orders should be reformed, in the spirit 
 of their first institution ; 
 
 That the breviary and the missals should have everything 
 taken out of them that is not to be found in Holy Scripture ; 
 
 That a certain number of the prayers, if not all, should be in 
 the vulgar tongue ; 
 
 That the priests should be allowed to marry, at least in some 
 nations ; 
 
 That the revenues of benefices without cure of souls, should 
 be applied to the augmentation of small livings ; 
 
 That excommunication should be reserved for a certain num- 
 ber of great sins and great scandals ; 
 
 That ecclesiastical laws should not be regarded as equal to 
 the laws of God ; 
 
 And many things besides. In fine, to pour a little balm on 
 so many wounds, the twentieth and last article required that the 
 council should abstain from treating all questions of no use and 
 great delicacy, and that, in particular, of the Divine right. A 
 feeble concession in reality, for the council had only to concede 
 two or three of the above points in order to the papal authority 
 being greatly shaken, more so perhaps than it could have been 
 by that vain statement of principles on the essence of Episcopal 
 rights. 
 
 Never yet had circumstances appeared more critical ; the 
 legates were now at Trent at best but soldiers, thrown into an 
 untenable post which they could no longer think of keeping, but 
 must abandon with the least delay and dishonour possible. To 
 the annoyances they met with on the side of the ambassadors 
 and the assembly there had been added for some time past that 
 of having unceasingly to justify themselves to the pope. Soured 
 by the defeats he had had, Pius IV. could not understand how 
 matters should go any otherwise than under his predecessors, who 
 always held the mastery, and directed not only the votes but 
 even the debates of the assembly. He laid the blame on his 
 legates. Armed with one right more, that of themselves propos- 
 ing all the subjects that were to be treated, why should they 
 have allowed that untoward question of the Divine right to be 
 resumed ? Simonetta threw the blame on the Cardinal of Mantua. 
 The latter, although a partisan of the Divine right, had clone his 
 best to prevent its being discussed, but had not thought it com- 
 petent for him to interpose authoritatively. To avail themselves 
 
324 HISTORY 0F THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 at the very opening of the council of the more than doubtful 
 right conferred on the legates by the clause proponentibus legatis 
 
 would have provoked an explanation, after which it would have 
 been evident that the majority had nowise intended to confer it 
 upon them. The Cardinal of Mantua offered to resign; this 
 offer the pope dared not accept, for it would have been a public 
 avowal of his chagrin and his fears, and, besides, who was there 
 to put in his place? He was a general favourite, and none but 
 he could hope to maintain some measure of unity and of harmony 
 in the council. 
 
 ( )n the reading of the twenty articles the presidents saw at 
 once the imminence of the danger, and could think of nothing 
 but the common safety. The ambassadors received for answer 
 that the question of the cup would probably suffice for the as- 
 sembly's occupation until the next session; but this was no more 
 than a mouth gained at most, and then how were the twenty 
 articles to be got rid off? The legates, therefore, wrote a despair- 
 ing letter to the pope, telling him that they had exhausted all 
 their expedients, and that the only chance of safety lay in dis- 
 solving the council. 
 
 The pope thought of this. In default of votes in the assembly 
 he was in course of procuring seven thousand good troops, and 
 spoke of nothing less than placing himself at the head of his 
 European confederation against the Protestants. But it is little 
 likely that he believed in the success of that project, for he 
 knew too well the position of all the secular princes. In fact, 
 there were only the king of Spain and himself that were in a 
 position to unite openly for the extirpation of heresy. All the 
 rest had appearances to preserve ; several of them, even had 
 the}- been free from all trammels, would not have liked the pope 
 for a chief, and even Philip himself, eager as he was to offer his 
 arm to the clergy of France, was no more disposed than any 
 other to be the soldier of Pius IV. Nations and kings were 
 accustoming themselves more and more every day to dissociate 
 the popedom from the Church and the interests of religion from 
 those of Rome; nations and kings shewed themselves more and 
 more disposed every day to do without the pope. The opposi- 
 tion of the Spanish prelates, men so far removed, at the same 
 time, from all suspicion of heresy, so fiercely opposed to the 
 heretics, so profoundly devoted to the Poman articles of faith, 
 contributed more than anything else to open men's eyes and de- 
 tach their hearts. 
 
UNIQUE POSITION OF THE POPEDOM. 32") 
 
 How was the break in the chain repaired? How at least 
 could interests so various be brought to move again in parallel 
 lines ? This is a problem which we find re-occurring at every 
 step in the history of the Church. Let us study it for a moment, 
 not in a general and abstract way, but in the facts which were, 
 at this epoch, once more about to lead to a solution of it. We 
 could not find a better opportunity. 
 
 First, then, the very weakness of the pope was about to prove, 
 although it was in spite of himself, one of the causes of his 
 strength. Suppose him to have been in a condition to put in 
 motion an army, not of seven thousand but of an hundred thou- 
 sand men. He might have dispensed with the services of the 
 princes ; might have proclaimed war on whomsoever he pleased ; 
 might have openly declared that he would not have the council ; 
 he might not only have asked, he might have insisted on a general 
 union for the extirpation of heresy. He would thus have ranked 
 with powers of the first order, but he would also have been sub- 
 ject, like them, to all the chances of arms ; like them he would 
 liave had to risk all on a single chance. In a word, he might 
 disdain oblique methods and advance straight to his object, but 
 might fall and perish before reaching it. 
 
 More feeble than others, he was patient; and in politics it is the 
 patient who are the truly able and the really strong. As it was 
 not with seven or eight thousand men that Pius IV. could march 
 against the emperor or the king of France and demand satisfac- 
 tion, he had of necessity to affect not to notice their insults. In 
 private he might call them heretics, excommunicate them in 
 thought and intention, bitterly complain of the twenty articles, 
 and curse that insolent Count de Lansac, who had said that the 
 Holy Ghost came to Trent in a courier's portmanteau, and who, 
 quite lately, at a grand entertainment before the bishops, had 
 dared to cry out that they should soon bring the matter to an 
 end by chasing the idol out of Eome ; but in public and in his 
 diplomatic relations, if Pius had not the lustre of an idol he had 
 at least its impassibility. It was by devouring affronts in silence 
 that he took from the princes all desire to offer him more, or 
 even to persist in those already offered. 
 
 Along with this temporal weakness, which thus appears to us 
 at the most critical conjunctures one of the ramparts of the pope- 
 dom, Eome had her moral force, her slow but resistless ascen- 
 dency over the determinations of the princes. Her moral force, 
 we say ; if we do not place it here, either in the first or the second 
 
326 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 line, it is of set purpose, and history, Ave think, fully sanctions 
 this. The pope, in reality, has never been thought the indis- 
 pensable head of the Koman Catholic unity ; the very clergy, 
 when their own interests, or those of the princes, have placed 
 them momentarily out of harmony with the Holy See, seem not 
 to have quailed at the idea of being left without a supreme head. 
 Have we not had a proof of this without going beyond the 
 council? Have the bishops, German, French, Spanish, many of 
 the Italians even, looked like persons who were convinced that 
 they could not do without the Holy See ? Philip IT. -was as much 
 pope in his own dominions as Henry VIII. had ever been in his. 
 The more deeply Ave study the history of the popes the more 
 shall we become convinced that their hierarchical authority was, 
 in itself, only one of the smallest elements of their influence 
 even 0A r er the nations, for it was by the religious orders far more 
 than by the bishops that the popedom attached the people to 
 itself. The indispensable necessity of the Holy See, the abso- 
 lute illegitimacy of all that does not flow from it, are, like infal- 
 libility, quite modera ideas. At the time of the council the 
 facts only were in existence ; we have already had proofs, and 
 Ave shall ha\ r e better proofs still in relating the discussions on the 
 sacrament of orders, that the right never had been admitted. 
 
 Thus what Ave have called the moral force of the popes, was 
 the weight Avhich they could throw into the scale Avhen the bal- 
 ance of power in Europe Avas destroyed, or threatened with being 
 destroyed The pope, by himself, was of small account, but the 
 pope could do a great deal for his friends. The princes did not 
 like him ; hut there Avas not one of them who did not, with an 
 eye to others, wish to be on good terms with him. The friend- 
 ship of the court of Rome, accordingly, was in some sort always 
 offered to the highest bidder. From time to time we see one of 
 the competitors for it get impatient, lose temper, and not even 
 abstain from threats — Avitness the sack of Rome in 1527 ; but, 
 anon, the tempest subsides; the pope, for want of poAver to take 
 revenge, pardons, and affairs assume their regular course. 
 
 Finally, Rome Avas a market which the princes had an in- 
 terest in leaving open, a temple from which it could not be for 
 their advantage that the sellers could be thrust out. There was 
 a multitude of things which they durst not A r enture to take them- 
 selves, or to cause to be given to them by their bishops, and 
 which could always be asked from the pope, either for money, 
 or for this or that concession. The court of Rome has been 
 
POLTTTCAL USES OF THE POPEDOM. ?>27 
 
 praised for having preferred the loss of England to consenting 
 to the divorce of Henry VIII. Were this true, — and we have 
 elsewhere shewn it was not so, — if Rome condemned that divorce, 
 how many others had she permitted or pronounced, though quite 
 as little justified in reason or morality? Even Innocent III., 
 after having shewn towards Philip Augustus a rigour not want- 
 ing in nobleness, legitimized, by a solemn brief, children born 
 of a marriage which he had solemnly declared to be adulterous 
 and null. People speak of the usurpations that Rome has pre- 
 vented ; how many has she not sanctioned and commanded '? 
 And as for oaths ! Who was there to dispense from them, once 
 that there should be no pope ? When Regulus set out on his 
 return to Carthage, he repulsed with scorn the pontiff who offered 
 to loose him from his promise ; but the pontiff of nominal Chris- 
 tendom had accustomed its princes to less scrupulosity. In 1215, 
 Innocent III. caused it to be decreed, at the council of Lateran, 
 that " oaths contrary to the interest of the Church and to the 
 precepts of the holy fathers, are not oaths but perjuries." Armed, 
 consequently, with the power of annulling them, shall we find 
 that the popes have confined themselves, at least, to the terms 
 of that decree ? No ; the right becomes absolute ; all oaths 
 come within their domain. The most dishonest princes may ask 
 everything, may hope to obtain everything ; nay, and of this our 
 history has furnished more than one example, it is Rome that 
 takes the lead, that counsels perjury, that offers absolution for it 
 beforehand. 
 
 But these are perhaps mere individual instances of bad faith 
 or weakness. No ; Whatever the popes may have done, they 
 have ever kept within what their doctors have openly declared 
 they had the right to do, and what their own laws, on becoming 
 the laws of the Church, had settled in their favour. Listen to 
 Bellarmine : " If the pope falls into an error, so as that he should 
 come to command vices and interdict virtues, the Church, unless 
 it would sin against conscience, would be obliged to believe that 
 vices are good and virtues bad." 1 Listen to Gregory IX. : 2 " Of 
 nothing the pope may make something. He may render valid a 
 sentence which is null, because, in the things that he desires, his 
 will takes the place of reason. He can dispense with right; he 
 can make injustice to become justice." Is it not clear, after this, 
 that there are reasons for all sovereigns, though at times they 
 may suffer from it, being interested in retaining in the service of 
 
 1 On the Koman Pontiff, book iv. ch. v. - Decretals, book vii 
 
»)2S HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 their passions such a man, or, to speak more correctly, such a 
 god as this ? 
 
 It not seldom happened, in fine, that they felt their need of 
 the pope against the clergy themselves. He alone could effec- 
 tually check pretensions contrary to the royal authority and to 
 the internal peace of states; he alone could grant authority to 
 levy certain imposts on the wealth of the Church, that perpe- 
 tual object of coveting on the part of the princes. It was with 
 him, in this respect, as with those usurers who are cursed in 
 whispers, and often openly despised, hut who yet are tolerated, 
 because it is never certain that it may not he found necessary to 
 have recourse to them. 
 
 Even heretics have at times had occasion to apply to the pope, 
 and have not always been repulsed ; it has sufficed that Rome. 
 in its turn, has had occasion for their services. Have we not 
 heard Gregory XVI. preach submission to the yoke of Russia as 
 the duty of the bishops of Poland ? This was in 1 H?>2. Threatened 
 with having his states occupied by the Austrians on the one- 
 hand, and the French on the other, he had secretly accepted the 
 offer of a Russian army prepared to defend him from both, and 
 the brief to the bishops of Poland, as has been discovered since, 
 was the payment fixed by Russia. It was published, accord- 
 ingly, and Europe for some days could not believe it, so utterly 
 incredible did it seem that a pope could have treated in such a 
 manner a Roman Catholic and oppressed people. It might have 
 seemed doubtful, in fact, whether it were from St. Petersburg or 
 Rome that the document came. From the very first lines the 
 emperor is recognised in it as the legitimate sovereign and the 
 sole sovereign of Poland. As for the nation, it is held to have 
 no existence ; and the defenders of nationality are called lying 
 •prophets, whose nuschievousness and perfidy ought, in fine, to be 
 fully exposed. And so it proceeds. The conclusion is, that there 
 must be absolute submission ; all resistance is denounced as a 
 crime. Nor is this all. Hitherto the official newspaper of the 
 Roman States had sensibly inclined towards Poland ; but no 
 sooner was the cause losr, and the brief published, than tin- 
 Polish rebels become no better than brigands. One would fain 
 hope that the heart of the pope bled at this, and continued to 
 bleed to his dying day; but the more you would excuse him by 
 saying how much it cost him to hold such language, the more 
 shall we be warranted to say that there is nothing that may not 
 !»■ bought at Rome. If the popedom has sometimes, when its 
 
VINTIMILLI SET OVER THE LEGATES. 329 
 
 interests seemed to require it, undertaken the cause of subjects 
 against kings, what king can be adduced who, in keeping on 
 good terms with it, has not found it always ready to come to the 
 aid of his despotism, and to sanction it in the name of heaven ? 
 
 Armed with all the resources of a position so unique in the 
 annals of the world, Pius IV. had reason, accordingly, not to be 
 alarmed beyond measure at the storms which seemed to be 
 brewing at Trent. He knew that divers winds might yet blow, 
 before the tempest should come decidedly to burst at Eome. 
 
 He saw well that the accord among the princes was a factitious 
 accord, and would be dissolved in a few days. 
 
 The accord among the bishops he still had more than one re- 
 maining means of breaking. Several of them were already 
 trembling all over at their boldness ; thirty of those who had 
 voted for the divine right, hastened to write to him, as if to beg 
 pardon for having obeyed the dictates of their conscience ; he 
 could already see that he should have one day cause to congratu- 
 late himself on having had so many adversaries, seeing that there 
 were so many persons who had, from a regard to their own in- 
 terests, to expiate their offence by future docility. As for those 
 of the legates who had appeared to believe themselves free to be 
 not entirely his agents, he had only to frown, and all idea of 
 independence on their part was dismissed. After having hesi- 
 tated about giving them two or three new colleagues, more de- 
 voted and sure, he settled it in his mind that he Avoiilcl have at 
 the council a secret agent, whose activity should be directed both 
 to the presidents and to the members, and by whose means he 
 should be kept informed of the smallest incidents that Qccurred. 
 Nor had he far to look for such a person. Visconti, bishop of 
 Vmtimilli, was eminently fitted for the post. An old diplomatist, 
 a man of talent, one who had all along been devoted to the papal 
 cause, he did not even need to ; have his zeal stimulated by the 
 prospect of a cardinal's hat, which, however, the pontiff took 
 care to promise him ; but as he had to do with men less zealous 
 and less disinterested than himself, his confidential powers were 
 almost unlimited. 
 
 Erelong, without having ceased to be, officially, a simple mem 
 ber of the council, he found himself its soul and centre. He con- 
 trived to attach, by thanks and promises, all the bishops who 
 had sustained the cause of the pope, or who had merely not 
 shewn themselves too much opposed to it ; three Spanish bishops, 
 who had not invariably made common cause with their fellow- 
 
330 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 countrymen, were the special objects of his attentions. Those 
 who would have most stoutly resisted injunctions or threats 
 coming directly from Rome, were seen to become gradually more 
 and more pliable under the uninterrupted watching and atten- 
 tion of Visconti, who, without advertising his powers, did not 
 conceal them. The most ardent would now think twice before 
 allowing a word to escape them which might ruin them in the 
 good opinion of the pope, and the thought would ever recur that, 
 after all, there would ever be more to gain with him than with 
 the kings. Thanks to the question of the communion in both 
 kinds, which seemed to absorb the whole time of the assembly, 
 these changes took place gradually, in the shade, and were only 
 all the more sure. The month of June was spent in part in lis- 
 tening to the opinions of the divines. The debate not having 
 yet commenced among the bishops, Visconti's insinuations were 
 not weakened in their effects by any new excitement. So that 
 able agent was left to the undisturbed admiration of the progress 
 of his operations ; and the legates to call him their saviour ; and 
 the pope to overwhelm him with daily eulogiums ; and the 
 council to return gradually into the pope's leading strings. And 
 the man who at Rome received Visconti's correspondence, the 
 man from whom Visconti himself took his orders for this vast 
 work of corruption and intrigues, Rome placed upon her altars 
 by creating him a saint ! He was the pope's nephew; he was 
 the man that was erelong to be called Saint Charles Borromeo. 
 But God did not permit that wdien that work was accomplished, 
 Rome should destroy or conceal for ever the shameful materials. 
 Those lgtters are now before us j 1 and in them we have found 
 all the strangest and most scandalous information that has come 
 to our knowledge with respect to the last twenty months and the 
 close of the council. 
 
 Of one mind in declaring, as the council of Constance had 
 done, that the wine in the supper is not necessary to the laity, 
 the divines were far enough from being agreed upon either the 
 dogmatical grounds, or the disciplinary grounds, of that sup- 
 pression. 
 
 And first, as for the dogmatical grounds, some maintained that 
 it is ordained in Scripture ; others, that it is only permitted 
 there. As for us, we have already said, among other observa- 
 
 1 They have been published at Amsterdam by a French priest, Aymon, who became a 
 Protestant after a lon« residence at Rome. 
 
THE COMMUNION UNDER BOTH KINDS. 331 
 
 tions, that any one who was a stranger to this dispute, would find 
 it no more permitted there than ordained, and would never sus- 
 pect that the ordaining of it, nor, except in the case of the im- 
 possibility of doing otherwise, the permission of it could have 
 been dreamt of. After having read in the institution of the 
 supper the words, " Drink ye all of it," he would never set 
 about searching whether Jesus Christ or his Apostles, in dis- 
 courses where the subject is not specially in question, have some- 
 times omitted making mention of the wine ; he would see that 
 when a law has to be executed, and the text of that law is any- 
 where put down entire, we must not look for it where it is 
 merely recalled and partially quoted. It is true that one of the 
 council's divines, D'Andrada, a Portuguese, in discussing the 
 text itself, contrived to start a distinction in it betwixt the laity 
 and the priests. At the commencement of the act, related by the 
 evangelists, he said, the Apostles were not yet more than laymen ; 
 Jesus Christ, accordingly, did not give them the bread. But 
 after he had once said, — " Do this in remembrance of me, they 
 became priests, seeing that by these words they received the 
 right to celebrate mass. And then they received the wine." 
 An explanation this which is not only absurd, but further it is 
 contrary to the usual practice of the Roman Church, seeing that 
 the officiating priest alone participates in the wine, and that 
 another priest receiving the communion from his hands, receives 
 no more than the laity do. 
 
 In the decree, the council got out of the affair by means of a 
 clever enough shift. " He who said, Except ye eat the flesh of 
 the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you, is 
 the same who said, If any man eat of this bread he shall live for 
 ever. He who said, He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my 
 blood, dwellelh in me and I in him, is the same who said, The 
 bread that I will give is my flesh." All which proves pretty 
 clearly what was not contested, to wit, that both species are not 
 rigorously and materially necessary, but does nowise prove that 
 the Church has had the right to withdraw one of them, and 
 to refuse it even to those who ask it. 
 
 The council therefore confined itself, in this first part of the 
 decree, to establishing that Jesus Christ had not represented the 
 two species as absolutely necessary. It dared not affirm that 
 there existed any doctrinal motive for maintaining the depriva- 
 tion in question. 
 
 As for disciplinary motives, we have indicated one of these 
 
■ >,>Z HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 already : the enhancement, by a privilege so unique and divine, 
 of the ambitious greatness of the priesthood. This motive was 
 the greatest, the first, one may say, the only one ; beyond that, 
 nothing but the most wretched pleas have been urged. In the 
 decree, however, it durst not be mentioned. The Protestants 
 were not the only persons that murmured at the barriers thus 
 audaciously raised between the people and the clergy ; this was 
 already the most tottering of them all, and to have restored it 
 under this form, would have stimulated Europe to give the final 
 blow to its existence. Other grounds had to be sought, there- 
 fore, those especially suggested by the real or imaginary incon- 
 veniences of the opposite practice, in order to give a shadow of 
 necessity to the denial of the cup. Down to Luther's time, 
 people had at times amused themselves with the caricature of a 
 rude multitude rushing to cups full of wine ; since Luther's 
 time, since there might be seen in Germany, England, Switzer- 
 land, as there may be seen at the present, communions in which 
 thousands of communicants have merely wet their lips at the 
 common cup, — it has been found impossible to persist in such 
 old fables of drunkenness and scandal, as certain parish priests, 
 we are told, contrive still to introduce into their pulpit addresses, 
 but which they would rather avoid repeating, except to the igno- 
 rant and simple. It was in the minutest details, therefore, that 
 reasons had to be sought for. With whatever respect the faith- 
 ful may take the cup into their hands, or merely touch it with 
 their lips, how make sure against the horrible impropriety of 
 letting fall a drop of Christ's blood, perhaps even upsetting the 
 cup ? And if that drop should fall on the profane hand of a 
 layman ? if it were to remain attached to one of the hairs of his 
 beard, or the lining of his coat? All these and many other 
 reasons were urged in full council, and it clearly followed, accord- 
 ing to the speakers, that the Church had done well in taking 
 away the cup ; but what followed still more clearly was, either 
 that the Christians of primitive times were little scrupulous as 
 to acts of sacrilege, seeing that they risked, from mere wanton- 
 ness, committing so many, — or that this wine was in their eyes 
 wine, very sacred, no doubt, considering what it figured, but 
 not so as that there would be the smallest harm in spilling 
 and profaning a drop of it involuntarily. Thus, although the 
 council had decided on making not only canons, but chapters 
 of doctrine susceptible of every kind of development, here it 
 deemed it more prudent to enter into no detail, and to declare 
 
NO REASONS IN THE DECREE, AND WHY t 666 
 
 simply that the Church had heen " moved by grave and just 
 motives." 1 
 
 Much had been said, also, in those deliberations, about the 
 danger of leading people to believe that there was a more com- 
 plete communion under both kinds than under one, an idea con- 
 trary to the Church's teaching ; especially since the council of 
 Constance, where it had been decreed that the Saviour was fully 
 and entirely present under each kind. This last opinion, too, 
 formed the subject of a chapter. Nobody contradicted it ; but 
 little as they had dived into its depths, how many objections did 
 the council proceed to start ! And how prudent was it to omit all 
 explanation — all argument. " Although our Redeemer, in that 
 last supper, instituted and handed down to his Apostles this 
 sacrament in two kinds, yet it must be confessed that Jesus 
 Christ, whole and entire, and a true sacrament, are taken under 
 either kind only." 2 Such is the whole. It must be confessed. 
 Reasons there are none. And yet we are still, let us remember, 
 in a chapter that treats of doctrine, that is to say, one of those 
 in which, when the council had reasons to produce, it gave them. 
 It felt itself in presence of one of those difficulties which grow 
 larger under examination, and where the bottom deepens in pro- 
 portion as the eye penetrates into the abyss. Multiplied by this 
 fresh surcharge, all the objections directed against the real pre- 
 sence form so menacing a host that it is not given to all men to 
 contemplate them without trepidation. Let us contemplate a 
 priest engaged in saying mass. You see him put the wafer to 
 his mouth, and you are told, " Tt is the body of Jesus Christ. 
 He is there whole and entire under the bread." A few moments 
 afterwards the priest drinks. " It is the blood of Jesus Christ," 
 it is added; "it is his body also, his body whole and entire." — 
 Twice entire ? Yes. The priest then has eaten it twice ? No. 
 He has eaten and drunk nothing more than those of the faithful 
 to whom he has given the host. But it is spiritually, no doubt, 
 that he has eaten and drunk no more than they? Spiritually 
 and materially. These two bodies were the same. Those thousand, 
 those two thousand bodies which you have seen him distribute, 
 were also the same, always the same, and always whole and entire 
 — whole and entire under each kind, whole and entire under each 
 fraction of the kind, for this also is the teaching of the Church, 
 
 1 Gravibus et j ustis eausis adducta. 
 
 2 Quamvis redemptor noster in suprema ilia coena, hoc sacramentum in duabus speciebus 
 instituerit et apostolis tradiderit, tamen fatendum esse, etiam sub altera tantum specie totum 
 atque integrum Christum, verumque sacramentum sumi. 
 
.'53J: HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 although the council liked better not to say it. This new absurdity 
 has not even the merit of being based, like the real presence, on 
 the words of the institution, " This is my body, said Christ, which 
 is broken for you." If it be everywhere and always entire, what 
 is made of these last words ? We admit that one can hardly stop 
 there. If the wafer is the body of Christ, it would be a hideous 
 and horrible thing to say that it is broken, reduced to pieces, and 
 then eaten member after member. It is clear that the sole way 
 of escape from this abominable consequence, was to declare it 
 always entire. Thus, let an infidel set himself to pound a 
 consecrated wafer, and the Saviour will be present as many times 
 as there are particles in that white dust. Without going so far, 
 make as many suppositions as you please : if they be not all false, 
 if the very principle of them be not absurd, — they will neces- 
 sarily be all true. A consecrated wafer falls and breaks in two. 
 You had but one body of the Saviour — you gather up two. The 
 Church prescribes your swallowing the whole wafer. When be- 
 tween your teeth you divide it, only one body was given to you ; 
 yon swallow two. One has a vase full of consecrated wafers. 
 There are twenty ; twenty bodies of Christ. This vase gets a 
 slight shake ; some of the wafers are broken ; and, behold, the 
 body is there not twenty, but thirty times. Another shake, and 
 it will be there forty times ; another . . . Enough, enough ! Your 
 heart bleeds to find, thanks to the doctors of Borne, so sacrilegi- 
 ous a resemblance between Christ's supper and the tricks of a 
 juggler. "Pastors," says the Roman Catechism, "ought to be 
 very reserved in explaining how the body of Jesus is whole and 
 entire under the smallest part of the kinds." Yes, indeed, let 
 them be very reserved in explaining it ; let them be so above all 
 in thinking of it, for did they set themselves to deduce conse- 
 quences from it, they would quickly find that they could no 
 longer believe it. 1 
 
 Another difficulty which it is not easy to avoid, and about 
 which the divines long disputed, is found in the question whether 
 there be more spiritual benefits to be had under both kinds than 
 under one only. On the one hand, it is very difficult to main- 
 tain that two things of equal value do not comprise, when com- 
 bined, more than each does separately ; on the other hand, the 
 priest would give great offence were he to avow that there are 
 
 1 The author elsewhere shrewdly suggests (Rook III.) that the doctrine of our Lord's entire 
 presence in the host or wafer, 1 e;ame necessary in order to the justifying of divine adora- 
 tion being paid to that material object. — Tn. 
 
THE SPANIARDS RESIST ALL CONCESSION. 66,) 
 
 spiritual benefits of which he knowingly deprives you, means of 
 salvation which he refuses you, he, the very man who is charged 
 with the concerns of your salvation. To cut the matter short, 
 it was proposed that it should be merely said that he that com- 
 municates, it matters not how, receives Jesus Christ, the fountain 
 of all spiritual benefits ; but it remained still undecided whether 
 this fountain be more or less abundant, according as the Supper 
 has been taken under one kind or under both. At that point 
 they stopt ; some bishops begged in vain that the matter might 
 be better explained. It was voted that the communion by bread 
 alone does not deprive the believer " of any grace necessary for 
 salvation." It was acknowledged, then, that he was deprived of 
 something ; consequently the council overstepped not the natural 
 and legitimate rights of the Church, which cannot be supposed 
 to go so far as the refusal to the people of any one whatever of 
 the spiritual favours offered by religion, but those even which 
 had been arrogated in a previous chapter, where it had been said 
 that the Church could alter what does not affect the substance of 
 the sacrament. 1 If the withdrawal of the cup deprives us of any 
 spiritual benefit whatever, even though not indispensable, not 
 necessary to salvation, — the substance of the sacrament cannot 
 be considered as intact, since its effects are not strictly the same. 
 
 Satisfied with this unanimity, which was obtained, however, 
 only by leaving all that was most difficult in the shade, the 
 legates seemed more and more disposed to give way in the affair 
 of the cup. Doctrine was safe ; discipline, therefore, might shew 
 an accommodating spirit. On this occasion it was from the body 
 of the clergy that opposition was to arise. 
 
 The pope had guessed aright that the bishops would not long 
 remain united ; and the issue proved that he had acted prudently 
 in trusting to their natural antipathies, while blunt opposition 
 would only have had the effect of keeping them agreed. 
 
 No sooner were the first w T ords uttered in favour of conced- 
 ing the cup, than the Spaniards exclaimed, as if the proposi- 
 tion were not only inopportune, but absurd. They laid hold 
 of all those decrees which had been made for the very purpose 
 of facilitating that concession, by keeping the point of doctrine 
 intact, for the purpose of combating it ; and, viewed in that 
 light, their arguments were not amiss. "Is it logical," they 
 said, " that just as we have proclaimed the real presence under 
 each species, we should concede what is demanded by those 
 
 1 Salva il'.orum substantia. 
 
336 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 who do not believe that dogma ? The generality of the faith- 
 ful will look to the fact, not to words. They will not com- 
 prehend how an act added to the supper, cannot add anything to 
 it ; they will conclude that hitherto they have had only the half 
 of the sacrament given to them." Xcxt, drawn perforce into 
 considerations which the papal party durst hardly hint at, " The 
 suppression of the cup," said they, " passes for being a law of the 
 Church, not a law of Clod. Be it so. You may repeal it then 
 without touching anything that is essential. Grant that also. 
 But there are many other things besides, that are not God's laws, 
 and on which, nevertheless, you could not make concessions with- 
 out trenching deeply on the Church. The celibacy of the priest- 
 hood, the worship of images, the invocation of saints — these, too, 
 are things that have been established, not by Jesus Christ, but 
 by it. After conceding the cup, what ground will there be for 
 refusing to reform the rest ?" 
 
 None, in fact ; but there was both courage and candour in 
 avowing thus openly how this whole dispute was about a small 
 matter. It is true that this small matter was much in the eyes 
 of the Spanish bishops. None believed more than they in the 
 omnipotence of the Church ; and it was chiefly on that account 
 that they believed much less than others in that of the Holy See. 
 They reneAved at all the sessions their old demand, to have added 
 to the council's titles that of representative of the universal 
 Church, and the famous proponentibus legatis always drew from 
 them warmer and warmer reclamations. 
 
 Although it was evident that it was from no desire to pay 
 court to the pope, that they thus came in aid of the secret wishes 
 of the papal party, which lent itself only from compulsion to the 
 concession of the cup, it could not fail to put matters on a better 
 footing between them and the Italians. For the first time the 
 assembly was found less liberal than the legates, and a large 
 majority ranged themselves against the concession. In Germany 
 it was said that this result had been foreseen, and that never 
 would the pope have allowed the proposition to be made had he 
 not been sure of its rejection. 
 
 It was a point, nevertheless, on which it was not enough for 
 him to have a mere numerical majority. The ambassadors of 
 France and the Empire, ever united in soliciting the cup, were 
 joined by Baumgartner, the Bavarian ambassador, an eloquent 
 and active man, almost a Lutheran in principle, and altogether 
 a Lutheran in hardihood. From his first audience (27th June), 
 
EMBARRASSMENT OF THE LEGATES. 66 i 
 
 he had demanded the concession, and that not as a favour, or as 
 a thing that might continue to be refused, but as the object of a 
 desire so universally felt, that it were imprudence and madness 
 to disappoint it. The other ambassadors then returned to the 
 charge; first, those of the emperor, in a memorial on the accusa- 
 tion of heresy which some prelates had not spared them ; next, 
 those of the king of France, in a paper in which the question of 
 the cup was resumed in detail, with great force and perspicuity, 
 and not without such bold expressions as were worthy of the dis- 
 courses of Pibrac. " Instead of shewing so much zeal for human 
 commandments," said they, " why is there not a little more 
 shown for those of God, and a reformation of abuses seriously set 
 about !" Accordingly, " These gentlemen would absolutely 
 make themselves Lutherans with the permission of the council," 
 said Doctor Foriero. 
 
 Instead of making the legates determine to propose the con- 
 cession, these urgent calls decided their change of opinion. They 
 saw clearly that, this point once obtained, farther demands would 
 follow ; Lansac, a little too frank for treating with Italians, left 
 them no room for doubt on that head. But as they could neither 
 all at once retract their promise, nor openly make the wish of 
 the majority a pretext for doing so, after having made so little 
 account of it on other occasions, they told the ambassadors that 
 the session was too near its close ; that with so few days before 
 them they could not undertake to modify the opinions of the as- 
 sembly, and that, consequently, the surest course was to postpone 
 the question to another session. The ambassadors begged that 
 the sittings might rather be prolonged for some days, but this 
 they could not obtain. Meanwhile, the drafting of the decrees 
 proved so laborious, that the legates had more than once reason 
 to apprehend that they would, not be ready by the 16th of July, 
 the day that had been fixed. On the evening of the 15th, the 
 deliberations were still going on, and the meeting rose even before 
 the members had come to a definite understanding. 
 
 The next day, in fact, as the members were entering the 
 cathedral, and when mass was about to commence, the bishops 
 were extremely surprised to hear that the legates meant to pro- 
 pose to them that the first chapter should be drawn up anew. It 
 was then discovered that two of the pope's divines, Salmeron 
 and Torres, after having precedently maintained, but without 
 success, that the command to communicate under both kinds, 
 should be held applicable to priests alone, had returned to the 
 
338 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 charge before cardinals Hosius and Madrucci, the one a legate, 
 the other bishop of Trent; that by their means they had gained 
 the legates, and that their opinion was about to pass, saving ap- 
 probation, into the decree which had been thought to be fixed 
 the preceding evening. "Although this revised draft," says 
 Pallavicini, "was welcomed by a large number, it was rejected 
 by a majority, particularly the bishop of Modena, and the arch- 
 bishop of Granada. The latter, who was well acquainted with 
 the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, hastily sent for the summa 
 theologies of that author, and there found the passage where the 
 holy doctor extends the words of Jesus Christ in the supper, even 
 to the laity, because he makes use of them to prove that all the 
 faithful are obliged to receive the eucharist." Upon this there 
 arose a great deal of discussion, and the new draft was with- 
 drawn. 
 
 This point, accordingly, has remained undecided ; and in sup- 
 port of what we have said above, that there were many besides, 
 the omission of which may be thought strange, we might simply 
 transcribe what Pallavicini reports of the objections raised by 
 those same divines against all the chapters of the decree. In the 
 first, as we have seen, they had complained that the council had 
 avoided saying whether Jesus Christ, in the supper, meant to ad- 
 dress himself to priests alone. They wished, moreover, that 
 before taking, at the sixth chapter of St. John, the six passages 
 adduced for establishing the communion under one kind, they 
 should begin by declaring that it is of the sacramental, and not 
 of the spiritual communion, as many doctors have thought, and 
 as the Protestants teach, that our Lord speaks in that chapter. 
 Farther on, they found the Church's authority too feebly esta- 
 blished by these words of St. Paul, "Let a man so account of us 
 as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of 
 God." Farther still, in the article concerning the non-necessity 
 of the eucharist for children, this, according to them, was not de- 
 monstrated by its being said, that children having received grace 
 by baptism, and not being in a capacity to have lost it, had no 
 need of receiving it anew. It might be replied, they said, that 
 it could not but be profitable to them to have it augmented. 
 And they concluded that all these articles had great need of 
 being revised. What did they obtain of all they wanted '? Why, 
 only a new uncertainty. In reporting the above passage from 
 St. Paul, there had been put down first, " As St. Paul has clearly 
 testified in these words." After their remarks on the insufficiencv 
 
PITIFUL RESULTS OF THE TWENTY-FIRST SESSION. Od» 
 
 of that passage, this was thought more than durst be ventured 
 on, and the sentence was made to run, " As St. Paul appears to 
 have clearly testified." 1 It was incontestable wiser to do so ; 
 and the decree, in short, is less remote from the truth than it 
 would have been by becoming more positive ; but, finally, with- 
 out our stopping either to approve or to impugn what the two 
 doctors wanted to place there, let us confine ourselves to noting 
 Avith them what is not decided, and what it might, nevertheless, 
 have seemed impossible that a council, treating the subject in all 
 its depth, should have dared not to decide. 
 
 These obscurities and these blanks found meanwhile beyond 
 the council critics who were more disposed than ever to take 
 them up and deduce from them, as militating against the pre- 
 tended inspiration of that body, all the unfavourable consequences 
 which its timidity and irresolution in dealing with certain points 
 have seemed to us to suggest. This convocation at Trent had 
 never before excited so much interest and curiosity in Europe, 
 except perhaps at the time of its first being assembled. There 
 were now nearly two hundred bishops present. In Eoman 
 Catholic countries it began to be looked upon as a general 
 council. Although this was still a fiction, seeing that several 
 countries were not at all, or scarcely at all represented in it, the 
 fiction began to be justified by the augmentation of the total 
 number present. The attention of Europe, accordingly, had 
 increased in proportion ; four 2 sessions also had been held merely 
 pro forma, and had thus helped to turn men's regards by an- 
 ticipation to what was to be done in the fifth. It is a curious 
 circumstance connected with the council of Trent, that out of 
 twenty-five sessions fourteen had no result. 
 
 After having been looked forward to with such feelings, the 
 decrees of the twenty-first, which had now been held, could not 
 but appear pitiful enough. For to Avhat, in fact, did they 
 amount ? Nine disciplinary decrees, 3 some of wdiich we have 
 acknowledged were very wise, but which bore only on details, 
 and nowise responded to the desires which we have seen were 
 strongly felt in all parts of Europe ; four doctrinal articles, 
 more important, certainly, yet in which the council had hardly 
 done more than repeat the well-known decisions of Constance 
 and Florence. Instead of giving more completeness and clear- 
 
 1 Non obscure visus est innuisse. 
 
 - 18'h January, 26th February, 14th May, 4th June 1562. 
 
 s Those that had been prepared for the 19th session. 
 
3-40 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 ness to those older deliverances of doctrine now no longer suffi- 
 cient, since the Reformation, for the guidance of the Romanist 
 doctors in the anti-Protestant controversy, one might have 
 thought it had been the council's object to reproduce them as 
 vaguely as possible. The Protestants said, as is sufficiently 
 demonstrated by the history of the debates, that briefness had 
 been adopted only because the council durst not venture upon 
 great length ; the Roman Catholics who - could not admit, or at 
 least could not allow it to be seen that they admitted a similar 
 motive, complained, nevertheless, and in some countries quite 
 openly, of being condemned by the council's authority to remain 
 ignorant of so many things. Our preceding observations, in fact, 
 might furnish three or four very simple questions to which a 
 priest, when interrogated by one of the faithful to whom he is 
 about to give the communion, cannot, if he would hold to the 
 decree, absolutely reply. Is it by divine right that the priest 
 alone communicates under both kinds ? Is it the supper that is 
 spoken of in the sixth chapter of St. John ? What are the faith- 
 ful made to forego by the refusal of the cup ? To all this, if the 
 priest declines giving any reply but such as he is sure is the 
 right one, he must give none at all, for the council has given 
 none. 
 
 Finally, there were in the form of the decree inconsistencies 
 which were not allowed to pass without remark. 
 
 Thus in the second canon an anathema is pronounced on who- 
 soever shall affirm that the Church had no justifiable motives for 
 giving the bread only to the laity. Now the anathema not being 
 usually pronounced except in questions of faith and of divine 
 right, it could not regularly figure in an article where " justi- 
 fiable motives" were spoken of, that is to say, where the point 
 of view from which the question was contemplated was that of 
 human right. Had the council begun by declaring, as Salmeron 
 desired, that the depriving the laity of the cup had been or- 
 dained by God, then, but then only, could there be room for the 
 anathema. 
 
 The same remark applied to the article where it is said that 
 the supper is not necessary to children. The idea, in our view, 
 is quite correct ; but as the Church had long taught or tolerated 
 the contrary, it was evidently not a case for the application of 
 the anathema. Nine passages were found in St. Augustine 
 where he has declared in favour of the custom of giving the 
 supper to children ; there are even two in which he compares 
 
DISCIPLINARY DECREES THEIR INSUFFICIENCY. 341 
 
 the necessity of the eucharist with that of baptism, resting, 
 which is more, on a letter of Pope Innocent L If this do not 
 prove that he viewed the obligation of communicating at every 
 period of life, as obligatory in point of doctrine, it proves at least 
 that he was far from anathematizing those who took that view 
 of it. 
 
 As for disciplinary decrees, nothing conld be said of them 
 beyond the council, that had not been said already within it. 
 Besides their general insufficiency, people remarked the return 
 to the old subterfuge of giving to the bishops, for the sake of 
 maintaining intact the rights of the pope, the title of delegates 
 of the Holy See ; and that while there was accorded to them 
 also, as if by favour, rights which ought never to have been 
 taken from them, there was given to them one manifestly 
 usurped from the civil power, that of imposing subsidies for the 
 keeping up of churches too poor in land or in other sources of 
 income. " We can well see," wrote Lansac on the 19th of July, 
 " that these folks will hear of nothing prejudicial to the profit 
 and authority of the Court of Eome ; and, what is more, the 
 pope finds himself so entirely master of this council, having the 
 greater number of voices at his discretion, that many of his 
 pensionaries, notwithstanding the remonstrances the emperor's 
 ambassadors and we may make about anything, do just as they 
 please with respect to it." 
 
 Of this a very striking proof was ere long to be given. 
 
 Although a special decree had kept the concession of the cup 
 among the points that were to be examined at the earliest, it 
 was remarked that not a word was said about it in the pro- 
 gramme of the following session. 
 
 On the other hand, the king of Spain had written to his 
 bishops, according to all appearance at the pope's solicitation, 
 that they should allow the question of residence to drop. He 
 commended them for their zeal in the affair of the divine right, 
 but exhorted them at the same time to abstain from all fresh 
 attempts to get a decree passed in conformity with their views, 
 and, in particular, from all protestation against what should be 
 done. 
 
 Once assured of the neutrality of the king of Spain, Pius IV. 
 began to make open enough efforts to have the whole question 
 of residence referred to himself, and not only that, but the ques- 
 tion of the cup also. In sending an order to the legates thence- 
 forward to give this turn to all their endeavours, he authorized 
 
342 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 them to give both the ambassadors and the independent bishops 
 the assurance of a speedy and serious reform in the entire organi- 
 zation of his court ; a compensation a hundred times promised, a 
 hundred times eluded, and the promise of which could seduce 
 only those who were seduced already. 
 
 In the meantime the programme had been accepted. The sub- 
 ject now to be considered was the eucharist, not as a sacrament 
 but as a sacrifice. In other terms then, it was the question of 
 the mass, with its preliminaries, its accessories, and its con- 
 sequences. The thirteen points proposed for discussion were 
 those that had been prepared under Julius II. shortly before the 
 second dissolution of the council. The council A^entured accord- 
 ingly, after five sessions, on accepting the heritage of sixteen 
 anterior sessions. That which had just taken place served only 
 to prepare the way. The communion under both kinds had 
 been spoken of at it, but without in any way recalling the decree 
 of 1551 on transubstantiation. Even in resuming the considera- 
 tion of the thirteen articles prepared ten years before, care was 
 still taken to avoid throwing too visible a bridge of connection 
 between the two councils. It was not until the session following, 
 about a year after, that the old order was openly resumed, and 
 tlte continuation frankly decided upon — if one can call frankness 
 what appears only after so long, so persevering, so imperturbable 
 a course of dissimulation. 
 
 Our preceding remarks on the supper enable us to dispense 
 with long details in speaking of the practical errors with which 
 the Roman Church has surrounded it in the mass. We shall 
 confine ourselves to some of the chief of these. 
 
 The communion, in our view, is the commemoration of Jesus 
 Christ's sacrifice. 
 
 The mass, according to the Roman Church, is that sacrifice 
 itself renewed, reproduced, by a mysterious act of God's power 
 and the Saviour's goodness, as often as a priest pronounces the 
 sacramental words over the wafer. The consecrated wafer is 
 not only the body of Jesus Christ, it is Jesus Christ upon the 
 cross, Jesus Christ dying for us. 
 
 Among the objections started by this doctrine there are several 
 to which no reply is ordinarily made but as in regard to tran- 
 substantiation, by saying that it is a mystery, and that there is 
 nothing impossible to God. Here, then, as in the case of the 
 real presence, let us carefully distinguish that Avhich is contrary 
 
DOES THE MASS REPRODUCE THE SUPPER ? 3415 
 
 to reason from that which is simply above reason. However 
 great improbabilities may be, let us set them aside and look only 
 to the impossibilities. 
 
 Now, among the latter kind of difficulties, there is one about 
 which, in so far as we are aware, not much has been said hither- 
 to, although it enters, we apprehend, into the very essence of 
 the subject. 
 
 The mass, you say, is the renewal of Jesus Christ's sacrifice ; 
 it has all the meaning and all the value of that sacrifice. You 
 do not, however, go so far as to say that it includes also, for the 
 Saviour, the renewal of the sufferings on Calvary ; to you it 
 would seem absurd and impious to condemn to tortures renewed 
 indefinitely Him who spoke of his death as his return to a state 
 of endless peace and endless happiness. 
 
 Well, then, this restriction, which you cannot but admit, 
 makes a huge breach at once in the system which you hope by 
 it to render less shocking. In the Scriptures, in the Fathers, 
 in all Christian authors everywhere, the Saviour's sufferings are 
 represented to us as one of the essential elements of his sacrifice. 
 The Church has at all times condemned as a heresy the opinion 
 that, owing to his Divine nature preventing it, He did not suffer 
 on the cross ; it was seen that any such idea would shake the 
 whole theory of man's redemption from its foundation. The 
 Roman Catechism, though it habitually overstrains everything, 
 not excepting the truth itself, goes so far as to say that " the 
 particular complexion of Jesus Christ's body, as formed by the 
 Holy Ghost, and consequently more perfect and more delicate 
 than are other men's bodies, rendered him more sensible to all 
 these torments ?" The Catechism knows nothing of this, and 
 had much better have said nothing about it ; but, in fine, nothing 
 could better prove the importance attached to Christ's sufferings, 
 viewed in relation to the object which He proposed to himself in 
 suffering. 
 
 Assuming this, in what sense then is the mass the reproduction 
 of the sacrifice accomplished on Calvary? Between a sacrifice 
 in which the victim does not suffer at all and a sacrifice the 
 value of which arose more or less from the victim's sufferings, 
 can there be any parity ? Parity in point of results — all well ; 
 God, in his mercy, is certainly free to make the one as efficacious 
 as the other. But from the moment that Christ, on the altar, 
 is no longer a sufferer, He is no longer, viewed as a victim, the 
 same that He was on the cross. There is wanting, then, in the 
 
.'544 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 mass, one of the fundamental parts of the sacrifice which it is 
 held to reproduce. Henceforth, as respects that part at least, 
 it is only its image, not its reproduction. 
 
 We have already made an analogous observation. In the 
 supper, — " tills is myhody which is broken for you," said Christ. 
 Tn the mass it is entire under every fraction of the wafer. " A 
 dispute about words," shall we be told ? A dispute about words, 
 if you will ; but are we not engag'ed in a question about words ? 
 The debate, in the end, runs altogether on the word is. Take 
 away that word, and what becomes of transubstantiation ? Who. 
 looking at the whole of the rest of the New Testament, would 
 ever have thought of seeking to establish it, and would ever 
 have had the idea of it? Thus we have here another point in 
 which the mass is not the supper. Tn the one the body is broken. 
 in the other we are taught that it is not broken. 
 
 Do we find identity at least in the rest? EA^en should we 
 consent to forget all that we have said against transubstantiation. 
 we cannot avoid reading, in the institution itself of the supper, 
 " Do this 272 remembrance of me," — an expression singularly in- 
 appropriate if it was not a memorial that was meant, and which 
 the Apostles have nowhere commented upon, in so far as we are 
 aware, in such a manner as to shew that they understood it other- 
 wise. We would further call to mind, that according to St. 
 Paul, " we are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus 
 Christ once for all." 1 Who can figure to himself a doctor in 
 the Church believing in the mass, in the renewal of Jesus Christ's 
 sacrifice, and saying, without explanation, without restriction. 
 without adding a single word to prevent the error which he risks 
 teaching, that the oblation was offered once. And where do we 
 find this assertion? Why, at the close of a piece in which 
 sacrifices are expressly treated of, where the Old Testament dis- 
 pensation, with its daily sacrifices, is confronted with the New. 
 tv The old law having a shadow of good things to come, can 
 never, with those sacrifices which they offered year by year con- 
 tinually, make the comers thereunto perfect ; for then they would 
 not have ceased to be offered. But Christ, when he cometh into 
 the world, saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not, but 
 a body hast thou prepared me." And, in fine, by way of con- 
 clusion, " We are sanctified through the offering of the body 
 of Jesus Christ once for all ?" Thus the antithesis is as clear and 
 as formal as possible. There we see sacrifices offered year by 
 
 i Heb. x 10. 
 
CAN THE MASS BE FOUND IN THE BIBLE ? 34;") 
 
 year, daily, because they could not render those who offered them 
 perfect, and thus it was what had constantly to be recommenced ; 
 here, one only sacrifice, because one that is sufficient to sanctify 
 for ever those who shall accept its efficacy. Mark what the 
 Apostle further says, " And every priest standeth daily minis- 
 tering, and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can 
 never take away sins, but this man, after he had offered one 
 sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God." 
 And at another place, 1 " Nor yet that he should offer himself 
 often." 
 
 This last expression, — who could imagine it ? — although the 
 meaning be so clearly determined by so many analogous pas- 
 sages, some have been bold enough to enlist in support of the 
 mass. It has been said that, in point of fact, Jesus Christ does 
 not himself often make an offering of himself, but that these 
 words assume that he has given to others the right and the duty 
 of offering him. 
 
 We are truly weary of recurring so often to the same argu- 
 mentation ; but how is it possible not to feel constrained to say 
 here, with greater urgency than ever, to the ignorant, to the 
 learned, to great and small, to every one that is or fancies him- 
 self to be a Roman Catholic : — 
 
 Let us see. With your hand upon your conscience, answer. 
 Supposing you were alone in the world, and were to find a Bible, 
 were you to read it over a hundred times, nay, a thousand times, 
 were you to live a hundred years, and that those hundred years 
 were all consecrated to the study of that Bible — would you ever 
 come to the mass? And granting even, by some impossibility, 
 that taking the words this is my body in their literal meaning, 
 you were to arrive at the idea of transubstantiation, would you 
 ever advance to that of a daily renewal of the sacrifice ? 
 
 Nor let it be said that in proposing this test we transfer the ques- 
 tion to our own domain, that of individual and free inquiry. We 
 might reply to this objection at once, by saying that the Council 
 of Trent, on this point, made an appeal to inquiry, since, as we 
 shall see ere long, it devoted a long chapter to an exposition of 
 the Scriptural proofs of the mass. But what we ask for at pre- 
 sent, is neither that the Roman Catholic shall set himself to in- 
 terpret, according to his own judgment, such or such a passage, 
 nor, still less, that he should construct a system for the purpose 
 of putting it in the place of that of his Church ; it is simply that 
 
 1 Heb. ix. 25. 
 
346 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 he shall ask himself whether he, the man himself, would have 
 found in the Bible what his Church teaches him on the subject 
 of the mass, if he believes that others could any more than him- 
 self have found it there, and this being first answered, whether 
 he can seriously accord to his Church the right to lay down as 
 the basis of doctrine, and as the centre of worship, what he could 
 not have had even a glimpse of in the very book which all 
 Christians own to be the first and the purest of the sources of 
 truth. Ah, ye priests of Rome, it is hard, indeed, to believe that 
 ye never put such questions as these to yourselves ! and still 
 harder is it for us to comprehend that they do not wring from 
 you some confessions! "What! this right, so dreadful, so ter- 
 rible, to offer daily on the altar no less a victim than this, this 
 privilege, which if I hold it not really from God, can be no better 
 than a sacrilegious usurpation, an abominable lie — see, the Scrip- 
 tures do not mention it expressly once ; see, the Council of Trent, 
 my supreme teacher and master, reduced to the necessity of 
 founding it on the figures of the Old Testament, on a few words 
 in the New, on imperceptible details lost in the midst of those 
 large inspired pages, where there would have been such ample 
 room for speaking of it. In the case of a purely human right, 
 that of succession to a property, for example, should I be quite 
 at my ease were I to possess it in virtue of title and arguments 
 of any such kind '? It were idle to tell me that the testator had 
 appointed persons to interpret his wishes, and that these adjudge 
 the inheritance to me. If I found no positive mention of my 
 right in his testament ; if that deed, still more, were a writing 
 of some hundred pages, full of details on a multiplicity of things 
 of far less importance, — no ! I could not but have scruples, and 
 could not but question, although to my own disadvantage, either 
 the intelligence or the impartiality of the tribunal." 
 
 Simple as this reasoning is, how does it happen that so few 
 priests make it, so few at least that are courageous enough and 
 candid enough to deduce some consequences? Possibly the very 
 exorbitance of the privilege in question helps to shelter it from 
 the attacks of conscience and of reason. The deeper the abyss, 
 the less difficult it is to shut their eyes and to interdict them- 
 selves from sounding its depths. Then, this Saviour descending 
 from heaven at the voice of a man, this God who immolates him- 
 self in a sinner's hands for sinners— there is something too great, 
 too extraordinary in it, for the imagination to yield itself to it by 
 halves. Either it is not believed at all, or it is believed with 
 
PROOFS OF THE MASS OF WHAT SORT ARE THEY? 347 
 
 the whole soul. " At Rome," says Luther, 1 " I ran like a fool 
 through all the churches. I almost regretted that my father and 
 mother were still in life, so much should I have loved to draw 
 their souls out of purgatory by means of the masses which I said 
 every day !" The immolation of the Saviour in the mass has 
 been sung by many a poet who did not believe in it any more 
 than we ; it has supplied the theme of many a burst of eloquence 
 to many an orator and many an author, who made no pretence in 
 other respects to being a Roman Catholic or even a Christian, 
 and who would have blushed at being thought to believe such or 
 such another dogma a hundred times more satisfactorily proved 
 to reason, but less confounding. How then wonder that the 
 priest, a man fashioned to believe, and interested in believing, 
 should play the fool in regard to a dogma by which even infidels 
 have sometimes allowed themselves to be carried away. 
 
 If any such poetical dream had been hitherto indulged by the 
 members of the council, they must have been most unpleasantly 
 aroused from it by listening to the doctors who had been ap- 
 pointed to elaborate the question. However convinced these 
 prelates may have been that tradition supplied a sufficient fimn- 
 dation for a dogma, more than one of them, assuredly, had never 
 expected to find the Church so rebellious and the doctors so non- 
 plussed. Not one of their scriptural arguments did not end at 
 last in the admission that the mass is nowhere in the Bible. In 
 all grave and momentous questions, the more a man has recourse 
 to small indirect proofs, the more are his opponents entitled to 
 say that the great, the direct, the veritable, are wanting. 
 
 Now, the decree on the mass adduces only four proofs. Are 
 these small or great — direct or indirect? We leave the reader 
 to judge. 
 
 I. Jesus Christ, says St. Paul, is a priest after the order of 
 Melchizedek. Melchizedek (Gen. xiv.) offered bread and wine. 
 Therefore the priesthood of Jesus Christ, and, as a consequence, 
 the Christian priesthood in general, is exercised by means of a 
 sacrifice offered under the elements of bread and wine. 
 
 II. The pascal lamb was a sacrifice. Seeing that it prefigured 
 the eucharist, the eucharist is a sacrifice also. 
 
 III. Grod, by the mouth of Malachi, saith, that one day, 
 in every place, a pure offering would be offered. The supper, 
 therefore, which, in point of fact, is celebrated everywhere, is an 
 oblation. 
 
 1 Letter to John von Sternberg. 
 
o48 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 IV. St. Paul says (1 Cor. x.) that those who have partaken of 
 the table of devils, cannot partake of the Lord's table. Now, 
 the table of devils means, in this passage, the altars of false gods. 
 The Lord's table, therefore, is also an altar, and every altar sup- 
 poses a sacrifice. The eucharist, therefore, is one. 
 
 See now, Roman Catholics, see what your Church, see what 
 three hundred bishops or doctors, Avhat the council of Trent, in 
 fact, has contrived to find in the Bible in support of the mass ; 
 see the sole foundation-stones it succeeded in laying, after the 
 efforts of a month, beneath the splendid altars, where, according 
 to that council, the Christ is immolated ! Three Old Testament 
 figures and a word — one can hardly call it a passage — a word 
 from the New. These meagre details, which, supposing that 
 the mass was formally taught elsewhere, could at most have been 
 given as references to it, — see the council adducing them as suf- 
 ficing for its establishment, and by adducing no others, admitting 
 that they are the best it could find. To lean on such passages, 
 says Du Moulin, is like warming one's self at the moon. Fur- 
 ther, it was found necessary, in order to make the case of Mel- 
 chizedek have the appearance of meaning something, to alter the 
 narrative as it stands in Genesis, — " He brought forth bread and 
 wine," say the Hebrew text and the version of the Seventy, 
 "now " or "and he was the priest of the Most High." Thus 
 the text does not say that it was as a sacrifice! - , or in view of a 
 sacrifice, that he had that bread and wine brought forth. In the 
 place of the now or and, the Vulgate has put for ; a manifest 
 falsification, admitted to be so by Cajetan. " What has been 
 put in the Vulgate," says he, " as the motive of the offering,^/' 
 he was, is not in the Hebrew as the motive, but as a separate 
 incident." 1 
 
 Did they not carry their own refutation along with them, we 
 should only, to refute them, have to transcribe the objections 
 brought against them in the council itself. Not one of these 
 citations, in fact, was allowed to pass unchallenged ; not one, 
 which is still more to the purpose, without the admission that it 
 did not suffice for the establishment of the mass, and that with- 
 out tradition, it could not be affirmed to have established it ; 
 not one, in a word, which might not have been followed with 
 the restatement of our fundamental objection, and the confes- 
 sion that for a thing of such consequence not to be clearly 
 
 1 "Quod in Vulgata editione subditur ut causa oblationis, erat enim : in Hebrreo non 
 habetur. ut causa, sed ut separata clausula." 
 
OBVIOUS AND GLARING DIFFICULTY. 349 
 
 and formally in the Bible, is tantamount to its not being there 
 at all. 
 
 There was a point, moreover, which went to the very root of 
 the doctrine, and on which there was no less disagreement than 
 on the choice of passages to be adduced for establishing the mass 
 in general. 
 
 When Jesus Christ instituted the supper, did he offer himself 
 as a sacrifice, or did he only announce the sacrifice he was about 
 to offer on the cross ? 
 
 This last alternative, the only admissible one in our opinion, 
 suggests, when contemplated from the Koman Catholic point of 
 view, an insurmountable difficult}'. It is the only admissible 
 one, we say. Suppose, in fact, that after having instituted the 
 supper, Jesus Christ had taken up a new idea, had refused to 
 suffer and to die, what value would there, then, have attached to 
 the supper? Why, none. Tt had no value, therefore, beyond 
 what it behoved to receive from the great act that was soon to 
 follow. 
 
 This being the case, the difficulty is obvious and glaring. If 
 the Saviour, in the supper, only announced his sacrifice, then the 
 supper was not a sacrifice, and the mass, the reproduction of the 
 supper, is no more a sacrifice either. 
 
 There was nothing for it then, it appears, but to adopt the 
 former alternative ; and yet, there also, there was an insurmount- 
 able embarrassment. If the Savionr offered himself in the supper 
 itself, if there were on the Thursday a real and true sacrifice, the 
 redemption, then, was accomplished before the sacrifice of the 
 cross, which is contrary to all that is taught by Scripture and by 
 the Church. The council would have slmddered at the mere 
 enunciation of this idea, and yet it approached it very nearly in 
 decreeing transubstantiation. 
 
 The only method of escaping from the annoyance of a dis- 
 puted voting, as well as from the inconvenience of exhibiting as 
 proofs what were felt to be no better, at best, than weak pre- 
 sumptions, — was to abandon altogether the drawing up of the 
 chapters on doctrine, and notwithstanding all that had previously 
 been said about this strange way of getting rid of an embarrass- 
 ment, more than one prelate inclined to this course. An error 
 had been committed, they said, in habituating heretics to ask 
 reasons instead of simply receiving decrees. What had been 
 gained, in the old council, by drawing up, before passing to the 
 canons, chapters so carefully, so minutely worded? Facilities 
 
350 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 had been given for attacks, and the points to he defended had 
 been multiplied. In the ease in hand, it might happen that 
 whether from want of time, or from their being unable to lind in 
 the Scriptures texts clear enough and precise enough, the objec- 
 tions of the innovators might remain unanswered. 1 Are we, it 
 was said, in fine, advocates or judges? Judges, assuredly ; but 
 it would have been wiser surely not to have delayed making this 
 appeal so openly till the very day when the council felt most 
 embarrassed about the judgment it was to pronounce. 
 
 These same prelates gave it to be understood that it was of 
 consequence to bring, not the labours of that session only, but 
 the council itself to as early a close as possible. Others replied, 
 that the grand affair was not so much to come to a prompt, as to 
 come to a good termination ; that, as for omitting the chapters 
 on doctrine, after spending a month in deliberations with the 
 avowed intention of having such chapters, this would be to cover 
 themselves with ridicule and disgrace. Some of the most out- 
 spoken went so far as to say that, apparently, nothing better was 
 wanted than to deprive the council of all consideration, as a pre- 
 text for eluding the observance of the disciplinary decrees which 
 had been voted with secret reluctance. Nor was it for the first 
 time that this reproach was addressed to the papal party. Not 
 surely that the Italian bishops had said, k 'Let us cry down the 
 council." They held as much as others, and more than others, 
 to the maintenance of its moral authority, as long as it should be 
 absolutely submissive to the pope ; but it was plainly enough 
 seen, that from the moment they had to choose between the two 
 powers, their choice would not be doubtful, and there was no 
 calumny in the thought that they would in that case be little 
 scrupulous as to the means of humbling the assembly. As for 
 us, we are of opinion that all parties might take this reproach to 
 themselves. None admitted the authority and infallibility of 
 the council, except upon the condition of its not running counter 
 to certain ideas ; none was prepared beforehand to submit to it, 
 whatever it might decide, and whatever it might do ; and we 
 have seen how small a matter at times was required in order to 
 call out protests, and threats of separation, and of war. 
 
 It was evidently in this spirit that the Spanish bishops, not- 
 withstanding the letter from their king, and just as these theo- 
 logical embarrassments were at their worst, again took up the 
 question of residence and the divine right. First they wrote a 
 
 i The Bishop of Chiozza.— Pallavicini 1. xriii. oh. i. 
 
PIUS IV. AUGMENTS HIS TROOPS. 351 
 
 letter to Philip II., begging to be excused for no longer obeying 
 him on this point. Besides, they would say, it was not an order 
 that the king had sent them. His majesty had called on them 
 to follow it only with submission to their own consciences. The 
 moment seemed to them to have arrived, they added, for finally 
 determining a question which, according to them, could not re- 
 main undetermined, without rendering all the efforts that had 
 been put forth for the regeneration of the Church, utterly use- 
 less. 
 
 Judging, accordingly, that, for the moment, any attempt to 
 bring them back must be hopeless, the legates directed their 
 views to the side of France, and the cardinal of Ferrara, nuncio 
 at the court of Charles IX., had orders to obtain from him a letter 
 of a like description with that of Philip II. It was to be ad- 
 dressed in the first instance to the French ambassadors, yet was 
 to be so framed, as that it might be shewn to the bishops of their 
 nation as they successively arrived at Trent. In this manner, 
 unless they also took it on themselves to act against the orders 
 of their prince, they would remain separated from the Spaniards ; 
 and if the two nations did not unite on that point, there would 
 be less risk of their doing so on others. 
 
 Notwithstanding these precautions, the pope had continued to 
 avail himself of other means of providing for emergencies. He 
 had been for some months insensibly augmenting his troops ; the 
 pacific insurrection of the Spanish bishops gave more activity to 
 the exertions made at Rome for levying men and horses. Pius 
 IV. had replied to the French ambassador's representations, that 
 England and the Protestants of Germany talked of coming to 
 the assistance of those of France ; and that it fell to him, in that 
 case, to provide for the safety of the council. It was further per- 
 ceived that he was making secret endeavours, like Clement VII. 
 before him, to form a league among the Italian princes, a scheme 
 which the king of Spain, always trembling for the security of his 
 kingdom of Naples, could not contemplate without great uneasi- 
 ness. Philip, accordingly, hastened to send him word that he 
 would charge himself with the defence of the council, and that 
 England or Germany would find that were they to attempt an 
 invasion of France, they would have him on the field to oppose 
 them. In fine, as a first pledge of his determination to fulfil his 
 promises, he sent a new order to his prelates to allow the ques- 
 tion that so terrified the court of Rome, to drop. 
 
 The pope had lost no time in profiting by a respite which 
 
352 HISTORY OF TIIK COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 could not last beyond a few clays ; so it was soon seen, at 
 Trent, that the legates had received an order to wind up mat- 
 ters Avith the utmost speed, and, if possible, before the arrival of 
 the French. The ambassadors of France complained of this, on 
 the 10th of August, in a memorial addressed to the legates, to 
 which the latter replied, that the council had now been open for 
 seven months, and that it was not either very respectful to ask 
 that it should be kept waiting long, nor very candid to attack its 
 authority in case of its not waiting. So far they were quite 
 right. The French prelates were evidently trifling with the 
 council ; whether their presence was desired or not, they could 
 no longer allege that anything had been neglected in the way of 
 inviting their attendance. It was they, therefore, that were in 
 the wrong ; but of this the Romish party were incapable of taking 
 advantage, by themselves maintaining a frank and honest posi- 
 tion. When the ambassadors asked whether their bishops were 
 to be waited for or not, they were referred to the assembly, and 
 then, when they attempted to address the assembly, the legates 
 declared that there ought to be no official connexion between 
 the ambassadors and the bishops, and that communications could 
 pass only through them, the legates. Next, being asked to con- 
 sult the assembly, they consulted only the pope, and the pope, 
 already consulted by the French ambassador at Rome, had said 
 that he would report the matter to the legates. " See what 
 ought never to be forgotten," wrote Lansac, " the pope sends 
 back the matter to the legates, the legates refer it to the synod ; 
 the synod is not at liberty to listen to any proposition, and thus 
 it is that the king and all men are deceived." 
 
 Such, then, was the atmosphere in which the decrees on the 
 mass were elaborated. Notwithstanding the efforts of many of 
 the bishops to concentrate the discussion on the clearest points, 
 or such as were reckoned the clearest, there was not a sitting in 
 which the disputants were not led back to the grand dispute 
 about the oblation of the Saviour in the supper. Four opinions 
 were formed. Pallavicini gives with great care and exactness 
 the names of their principal champions, the different shades of doc- 
 trine discernible amongst them, the fluctuations of the majority, 
 and so forth. He never seems to imagine that it should be 
 thought strange to see the council divided into fifteen or twenty 
 groups on so capital a question, and one which, as we have shewn, 
 could neither be set aside nor decided without great peril to the 
 entire structure of the mass. The Jesuit, Salmeron, a partisan 
 
PALLAVTCINl's SMALL MATTERS. 353 
 
 of tlie real oblation, sot so many springs in motion in order to 
 have the majority, that the bishops were obliged to complain of 
 his manoeuvres in full assembly. "Let people intrigue," said 
 they, " in disciplinary questions ; it is annoying, still these are 
 but human questions. In questions of doctrine, such doings are 
 scandalous, they are sacrilegious." Was it for the first time, 
 then, that there was occasion for this remark ? 
 
 " It was agreed," says Pallavicmi, " that nothing should be 
 put into the decree that did not meet with the assent of all ; and 
 that whatever might displease any, should be taken out of it. If 
 you would have individuals conform to what has been agreed to 
 by the greater number, then the greater number must condescend 
 to individuals, by yielding somewhat in small matters." Ever 
 the same tactics repeated. Where the Church ventures to pro- 
 nounce her opinion, there the smallest matters are important ; 
 the salvation of men's souls is involved in them. Where she is 
 forced to be silent, matters of the greatest moment are " small 
 things." The seat of authority, — a small thing. The superiority 
 of councils to the pope, — a small thing. Was the supper a true 
 sacrifice ? — a small thing. A small thing, although in the dog- 
 matic theology of Rome, it is the foundation of what is greatest. 
 The grand object, accordingly, was to say nothing that might 
 seem to decide the question, and no one can positively say, 
 according to the decree, whether the oblation of Jesus Christ by 
 himself was a propitiator?/ oblation, that is to say, a real sacrifice, 
 or a simple oblation, a sort of dedication preluding to the sacri- 
 fice of the cross. An attempt, however, was also made, by 
 means of circumlocutions more or less skilfully framed, to teach 
 a little more than the simple oblation which would have ruined 
 the real presence ; but the word propitiatory, which Salmeron 
 demanded, and which alone could remove all ambiguity, was 
 carefully left out. It appears only in the second chapter, where 
 the institution of the mass is no more spoken of, but the mass 
 itself. We should have felt much inclined to ask further what 
 would have occurred, if some village priest, entering the hall 
 where the council was met without previous notice, had put this 
 question — "Fathers, what am I to teach? — was the oblation of 
 the supper propitiatory; yes, or no?" 
 
 While these discussions were in progress, letters were received 
 from the emperor, in which he required nothing less than the 
 dismissal of the questions relative to the mass, with the excep- 
 tion of that of the cup, of which, on the contrary, he called for a 
 
 z 
 
)>") l HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 prompt and satisfactory solution. Farther delay, after so many 
 promises, was impossible. The reply, accordingly, was that the 
 
 council would set to it immediately, but with this not unreason- 
 able addition, that it neither could nor would delay the publica- 
 tion of any of the decrees that should be ready. 
 
 Meanwhile the French ambassadors were for ever insisting 
 that the session, fixed for the 17th of September, should be put 
 off for a month at least. They represented that various secondary 
 questions, which must sooner or later come before them, might 
 he studied in the mean time, and that thus the close of the 
 council would not be really delayed. But the more they urged, 
 the less willingness was there to yield to this demand. It became 
 a subject of alarm that the French might come to think them- 
 selves authorized to believe that their presence was necessary in 
 order to give validity to the decisions; moreover, there arose a 
 report that when hardly arrived, breaking abruptly the compro- 
 mise on which matters had hitherto proceeded, they were to moot 
 the scorching question of the inferiority of the pope. Although, 
 if such was in fact their intention, there were no visible means 
 of preventing them; there was a desire to make sure, by the 
 public promulgation, of all that had been decreed without them. 
 The council had in the last session reserved to itself power to 
 advance, should it judge right, the day of meeting for that which 
 was to follow. The decrees were ready about the end of August, 
 fifteen or twenty days before the term that had been fixed. The 
 session might accordingly have been held, but it was not to be 
 dreamt of that such an affront should lie offered to those who 
 were desirous, on the contrary, that the day of meeting should 
 he put off. There was time left therefore for the discussion of 
 the affair of the cup, so eagerly called for by the emperor, and as 
 the French prelates had given intimation that they did not ask 
 to l>e waited for with respect to that point, there was no longer 
 any kind of motive or pretext left for not taking it up. 
 
 For the first time, then, the matter was directly brought 
 forward. Three opinions arose, or rather had been already 
 formed. One, to refuse it absolutely ; another, to grant it, but 
 under certain conditions to be fixed by the council ; the third, to 
 refer the matter to the pope. Among the partisans of this last 
 opinion, some wanted a pure and simple reference ; others, a 
 reference with reasons, bearing that the pope might make the 
 concession asked for. The Spaniards were always for an abso- 
 lute refusal. Philip II. dreaded, not without reason, lest the 
 
CONCESSION OF THE CUP PROPOSED CONDITIONS. 355 
 
 concession of the cup to his subjects in the Netherlands, should 
 give his other subjects, if not in Spain, at least in Franche- 
 ( lomte and the Milanese, a hankering for as much ; he could 
 perceive that that step once taken, people were little likely not 
 to attempt farther advances. 
 
 The partisans of the concession, too, strongly insisted on the 
 precautions to be taken to prevent its giving encouragement to 
 other demands. They agreed, in general, on the five following 
 conditions indicated by the legates : — 
 
 I. That the principle be voted, but the application le'ft to the 
 pope, he alone being in a position to judge wbat were the 
 nations to which it was fit that the benefit should be granted. 
 
 II. That the pope, in order to his being properly informed, 
 should send legates or commissioners before hand, to all quarters 
 where this wish had been expressed. 
 
 III. That the consecrated wine should never leave the 
 churches, not even to be taken to the dying. 
 
 IV. That those to whom the cup shall be conceded, should 
 declare that they do not regard it as necessary to the validity of 
 the sacrament. 
 
 V. That they shall, in respect of all other matters, return fully 
 and sincerely to the unity of the Church. 
 
 Conditions, in a word, which it was indispensable to lay down, 
 but the two last of which made the concession go for nothing. 
 It was well known that among those who demanded it, there 
 was none so little a Protestant as to declare himself a Eoman 
 Catholic from the moment that it was granted. 
 
 For several days, and in sittings of several hours' duration, 
 each speaker in support of one opinion, was almost invariably 
 followed by one who supported another. In the end, however, 
 it was seen that a majority was against the concession. The 
 emperor's ambassadors, who had hitherto opposed the reference 
 of that question to the pope, now yielded so far as not only to 
 consent to it but even to ask it ; defeated in the council, their 
 object was to have a door at least left open for them at Rome. 
 Strengthened by their concurrence, the legates were no longer 
 afraid to press the reference, and their agents set themselves to 
 work so as to secure a majority on that side. 
 
 As they thought five or six days would be required before they 
 could be sure of such a state of the vote, they proposed the regu- 
 lating of a score of articles, some on a certain number of abuses 
 relative to the mass, others on divers points of discipline and 
 
3;">6 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TKEST. 
 
 administration. Although these last were favourable in general 
 to episcopal authority, they were complained of by many bishops. 
 These asked how long it Mas meant that the great reforms 
 were to be put off, in order to occupy themselves with such only 
 as, whenever the great ones were accomplished, would come of 
 themselves. One of them, moreover, observed that it was be- 
 neath the dignity of the council to take up a point here and 
 a point there, and to vote on a thousand things without being 
 able to say why these were taken up rather than others. u Has 
 not the order of business been all regularly laid down?" he 
 added, " Is it not with the Head and his court that reformation 
 should commence? If yon would have the planets regain their 
 lustre, begin by telling the sun to regain his." And the bishop 
 of Segovia compared the council to a physician called in to cure 
 an inveterate disease, and who, instead of having recourse to 
 real remedies, should employ mere slight frictions with oil. 
 
 Those frictions, so slight when compared with the evil to he 
 cured, were not even directed in such a manner as to leave un- 
 touched things that were beyond the competence of the council. 
 Articles viii. and ix. empowered the bishops to interfere with a 
 high hand in the management of hospitals, colleges, lay com- 
 munities, testaments, Ac. ; an authority which they did actually 
 enjoy in some countries, hut which had been always refused to 
 them in others, and notoriously in France. The superintendence 
 of hospital property by the bishops, had often had good effects ; 
 but sometimes also it had resulted only in gradually transform- 
 ing it into Church property, into benefices, and, consequently, 
 in diverting it from its proper destination. Besides, it was not 
 a question of convenience, but of justice, and the council could 
 not pretend to regulate alone what at so many points touched 
 upon civil legislation and the rights of sovereigns. These it 
 invaded also by granting the bishops the power to examine 
 notaries and to interdict them, in some cases, from the exercise 
 of their functions. In tine, it was not as bishops, hut as dele- 
 gates of the pope, that they were to exercise several of those new 
 powers, another exorbitance which further contributed to pro- 
 voke the resistance of the sovereign princes. It seemed that the 
 assembly were not fully aware of the bearing and the impro- 
 priety of those articles, for they were voted hastily and almost 
 without discussion. They brought occasion for repentance in 
 their train, for they led to the decrees of the council being re- 
 fused publication in France. 
 
REGULATIONS RELATIVE TO THE MASS. 60 i 
 
 Attached to these there were various rules bearing on the 
 moral and intellectual qualities to be required of a priest in order 
 to his elevation to the episcopacy, the conduct to be followed by 
 the clergy in civil life, the conditions required in order to the 
 legitimate possession of a benefice, &c. ' Looking at these rules 
 in detail we should hardly have aught but good to say of them ; 
 but the opposition were for ever asking what good end they 
 could serve, what sanctioned them ? and we see, in fact, that 
 the observance of several of them dated no farther back than 
 half a century, without the Church being able even to take to 
 herself the glory of having enforced them. " Begin then," the 
 Bishop of Orense said, " with a decree ordaining that these laws 
 shall be obligatory for the pope, and then only shall you have 
 done something." 
 
 Neither were there laid down in what bore on abuses relative 
 to the mass, any regulations but what were very good. People 
 were enjoined never to attend but with due respect, and in a 
 becoming dress ; never to celebrate it hastily; to remove from it 
 everything that savoured of superstition, for example, certain 
 calculations on the number and the arrangement of the wax 
 lights ; finally, and in the most formal manner, never to take 
 any pay for its celebration. " Before all," says the decree, 
 " as regards avarice, let the bishops absolutely forbid all sorts of 
 conditions and stipulations for any recompense whatsoever, and 
 all that is given for the celebration of new masses, as also those 
 demands for alms, so urgent and so unseemly, that they are 
 exactions rather than calls for charity, and all other things of 
 that sort which are not much removed from simony, or, at least, 
 filthy lucre." 1 How, after this, masses should still be paid for, 
 is what we shall not venture to explain. And it is so well 
 understood in fact that there is no disgrace whatever in making 
 them to be paid for, that the pope himself when he says mass at 
 St. Peter's publicly receives some pieces of money which are in- 
 tended to represent his stipend. 
 
 Some words now on the canons appended, according to custom, 
 to the doctrinal chapters. 
 
 In the first we find an anathema pronounced on whosoever 
 shall not think that there is in the mass a sacrifice properly and 
 truly so called. We need not recur to this point. 
 
 1 jln primis quod ad avaritiam pertinet, cujusvis generis nierceduni conditionis, pacta, et 
 quicquid pro missis novis celebrandis datur, neennn importunas atque illiberales eleemosy- 
 n;u'um exactiones potius quam postulationes. aliaque ejusmodi qua? a simoniaca labe, vel certe 
 a curpi qusestu nun longe ubsunt, omnino prohi'oeant. 
 
358 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TREXT. 
 
 In the second, anathema to whosoever shall not believe that 
 in saying these words to the Apostles, Do this in remembrance 
 of me, Jesus ( Jhrist instituted them priests, alone competent to 
 say the mass. This had, down to that date, been only an 
 opinion, sufficiently modern, seeing that at the time of the 
 council of Constance it was hardly beginning to make head. 
 " Take, eat,'" said Jesus Christ, " this is my body which is 
 broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me." Such, in 
 their whole amount, are the Saviour's words. Do this cannot 
 be separated from what goes before ; from what is indicated as 
 to be dune ; and that which is pointed out as to be done is not 
 only the breaking of the bread, it is also, and above all, seeing 
 the imperative is used, the taking of it and the eating of it. If 
 Do this be only for the priests, Take, eat, is only for them also : 
 they only then have a right to communicate. Do we at least 
 find these words in all the Evangelists ? No ; of the three win* 
 have given a narrative of the supper two omit them. How can 
 it be thought that they would have omitted them had they seen 
 in them a matter of so much importance as the instihition of the 
 priesthood? To these scriptural difficulties there is conjoined 
 another, still more serious for the Roman Catholics. The priest 
 is not only the minister of the mass, he is that also of all the 
 other sacraments, in particular of penance. Can it be said, con- 
 secpiently, that Jesus Christ made priests of men to whom for the 
 moment he gave no more than the right to say the mass ? " They 
 might then," says Du Moulin, " have chanted it while Jesus 
 Christ was as yet upon the cross or in the sepulchre ?" No doubt 
 they might have done so, had they believed what the council 
 teaches. Only it would have been somewhat difficult, on that 
 first occasion, to believe in the real presence. Can you figure 
 St. Peter or St. John under the persuasion that he had in his 
 hand or in his mouth a body which he had seen taken down 
 from the cross, and which he knew was lying in a tomb? This 
 canon, accordingly, just before the close of the session, gave rise 
 to a violent altercation. The Archbishop of Grenoble combated 
 it as contrary to the opinion of St. Denys, of St. Maximus, and 
 of St. Chrysostom, who refer the collation of the priesthood to 
 those -words pronounced by Jesus Christ after his resurrection, 
 Reeeire ye the Holy Ghost. " The Fathers," says Pallavicini, 
 " wearied with so many speeches, and with the obstinacy of one 
 man, who opposed the views of all the rest, exclaimed with one 
 voice that the council must keep to what had been decided." 
 
ANATHEMAS RELATING TO THE MASS. 359 
 
 One man — All the rest. The historian seems then to affirm that 
 the Archbishop stood alone, and yet, after having related the 
 discussion that followed, he says, " The party that supported the 
 canon became so numerous that at last there were hardly thirty 
 in the opposition." There were more than thirty then at first ; 
 and he might have added that those thirty were among the 
 members who had best studied the subject, the most habituated 
 to sober reflection, to calmness in voting, and to frankness in 
 dealing with difficulties. 
 
 In the third canon, anathema to whosoever shall maintain 
 that the mass is no more than a sacrifice of praise and thanks- 
 giving, benefits none but the person who communicates, and 
 ought not to be offered for sins, penalties, satisfactions, and other 
 needs. These last words called forth various remarks on the 
 danger of authorizing masses said on all occasions and for all 
 .sorts of needs ; but the custom had become so universal that to 
 condemn it would have been to condemn the Church, and more- 
 over, would have damaged one of the chief sources of its influence 
 and of its revenues. To have a mass said for the cure of an 
 invalid, for the return of some one on a journey, for the suc- 
 cess of an honourable or hazardous undertaking, is sometimes 
 very affecting as a manifestation of piety ; but as we are nowhere 
 told that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ had for its object, or for 
 any one of its objects, the obtaining for us of temporal favours, 
 one does not see how the mass, if it be its exact reproduction, 
 could have any object other than that of the sacrifice itself, that 
 is, the pardon of sins and the salvation of souls. Twenty-five 
 prelates were of this opinion. 
 
 In the fourth canon, anathema to whosoever shall say that the 
 sacrifice of the mass is a blasphemy against Jesus Christ's sacri- 
 fice, or that it derogates from it. This is not clear ; but if the 
 meaning be that the immolation on the altar ought not to dimi- 
 nish in the eyes of the faithful, the importance of the immolation 
 on Calvary, what is required is an impossibility. The offering 
 has been made ones, says St. Paul. The offering is made daily, 
 and an hundred thousand times a day, says the Church. How. 
 then, admit that the greatness of the act cannot be impaired by 
 such a reproduction of it ? 
 
 In the fifth, anathema to whosoever shall call the celebration 
 of masses in honour of the saints an imposture. Imposture ! No ; 
 that would be saying too little. When the inhabitants of Lystra, 
 supposing Paid to be Mercury, (Acts xiv.,) would have offered 
 
360 HISTOKY OF THE COUNCIL OF TKENT. 
 
 sacrifice to him, he rent his garments, lie turned away and was 
 horrified. "Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men 
 of like passions with yon !" Suppose him come back to this 
 earth, and that he were to hear men speak of renewing in his 
 honour — What ! The sacrifice of his Master — that immolation 
 of which he never spoke but with adoration and a\v( — and say 
 if it would not have been with far greater horror still that he 
 would have exclaimed, — "Sirs, why do ye these things'?" 
 
 In the three following canons, anathema to whosoever shall 
 condemn either the liturgy of the mass as containing errors, or 
 the ceremonies of the mass as superstitions, or the custom of 
 having masses in which the priest alone communicates. As for 
 this last point, if the mass he a sacrifice, there is nothing, in 
 fact, to prevent one man alone from offering it for others, even 
 though absent; if it be not, no man could entertain the idea of 
 celebrating it otherwise than in a congregation of the faithful, 
 assembled for the purpose of communicating. Accordingly, it is 
 not a weak argument against the mass that there is nowhere in 
 the history of the early times of the Church, any trace whatever 
 of the supper being celebrated in private by the priest, or in 
 public without those present participating. When Chateau- 
 briand puts into the mouth of one of his personages in The Mar- 
 tyrs, that he is going to celebrate the holy sacrifice for Eitdoxe, 
 he is guilty of one of the most complete anachronisms that occur 
 in that book in which so many might be pointed out. 
 
 As for the liturgy in which it is forbidden, by authority of the 
 council, to see any errors, a Roman Catholic, durst he venture, 
 would find more to reprehend than we. Made up of ancient 
 forms of prayer, it has retained some curious traces of those times 
 when people had hardly begun to enter on the paths which were 
 eventually to lead to the mass. Thus, after the consecration. 
 when the priest presents the victim to God, " Deign," says he to 
 Cod, "to cast on these things a propitious and serene regard, as 
 thou didst deign to accept the offering of Abel." Strange words 
 these to use when presenting to God the body of his Son ! 
 
 There was no idea, therefore, of this when that invocation 
 was drawn up. When the supper had ceased to be a repast 
 taken in common, it came to be an established usage to carry to 
 the church, and to place upon the communion table, a larger or 
 smaller quantity of bread, wine, and sometimes even of fruit. 
 Such was this offering, in imitation of Abel's, on which God's 
 blessing was invoked previous to part of it being set aside for 
 
THE MASS REFUTED I5Y ITS OWN LITURGY. 301 
 
 distribution at the supper ; the rest went to the poor. Such is 
 the explanation of what is added in the liturgy, — "We suppli- 
 cate thee, God ! to command that these things may be borne, 
 by thy holy angel, to thy heavenly altar." Such, further, is the 
 explanation of that phrase, — " It is by Christ, God ! that thou 
 •lost create, sanctify, vivify and bless all these good things;" for 
 it would be sufficiently absurd for any one in presenting to God, 
 under the form of bread and wine, the body and the blood of his 
 Son, to set himself simply to bless him for having given us in 
 nature, bread for our hunger and wine for our thirst. As re- 
 spects all those passages, and many others, it is only in conse- 
 quence of seeing them in the canon of the mass that people 
 have come to lose all perception of their unsuitableness there, 
 and how far they are from expressing what people, believing in 
 the real presence, could not have failed to say at the daily re- 
 newal of the sacrifice of Christ, etc. There is one, however, 
 which would have been quite too contrary to those new ideas, 
 and that has been changed. " Cause this oblation to be reckoned 
 to us, that it be reasonable, acceptable, because it is the figure of 
 the Lord's body and blood, who, on the night of his passion, took 
 bread," &c. Such is the prayer as quoted in St. Ambrose. 1 In 
 the canon of the mass let the reader mark the change, — " Deign, 
 God, to cause that this oblation be in all things blessed, 
 reckoned, &c, in order that it may become for us the body and 
 the blood of thy dear Son, who, on the night of his passion," 2 &c. 
 And such is the way in which people set themselves to write — 
 the mass ! Notwithstanding this, put that liturgy into the hands 
 of any one who does not know that it is the mass, and he will 
 hardly see it there any more than in the Gospel. 
 
 Finally, in the last canon, anathema to whosoever shall main- 
 tain that the mass ought to be celebrated in the Vulgar tongue, 
 or who shall condemn the practice of putting a little water into 
 the wine before its consecration. What foundation is there for 
 that practice ? It is possible that the wine employed by Christ 
 was, in point of fact, mingled with water ; possibly, too, it was 
 not. What know we about it ? What can we know about it ? 
 " St. Cyprian and several councils teach it," says the Roman 
 Catechism. True, but what knew they about it? And if Scrip- 
 ture speaks of nothing but wine, why speak of anything else'? 3 
 
 1 De Sacramentis iv. 5. — Quod est figura corporis et sanguinis Domini nostri. 
 
 - Ut nobis corpus et sanguis fiat dilectissimi filii tui Domini nostri. 
 
 " There seems to be among Roman Catholic divines a necessity for outrunning and tor- 
 
362 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 Nevertheless, according to that same catechism, that mixture is 
 so important that its omission must be a mortal sin. Only. 
 "Let the priests be careful to put very little water into the wine, 
 for, according to the divines, that water must change itself into 
 wine," before the whole is changed into blood! Another mir- 
 acle ! But the Romanist doctors seem not quite to trust to the 
 former. Put very little water, they say. But why ? If the 
 transformation really takes place — little or much, what does it 
 matter ? Ah ! it is because too much wine infused would greatly 
 risk not having quite the taste of pure wine, and thus the faith 
 of the priest would lie exposed to too rude a trial. 
 
 As for the other point, that of the mass in the Vulgar tongue, 
 let us stop for a moment to consider it. 
 
 Shall we begin by quoting the passage in which St. Paul 
 seems to have had a foresight of what was afterwards to be done, 
 so emphatically does he declare and repeat that he that speaks 
 in the church ought to be understood by all ? " Except ye utter 
 by the mouth words easy to be understood, how shall it be known 
 what is spoken? For ye shall speak into the air. For if I pray 
 in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding- 
 is unfruitful." 1 And this idea re-occurs two or three times in the 
 same chapter. 
 
 Shall it be said that the Apostle, in this part of his writings, 
 speaks not of tongues merely foreign, but of unknown tongues? 
 The reasons he adduces are too general to have their cogency in 
 the least lessened by this distinction. He desires, such is the 
 plain fact, that he that speaks shall be understood. 
 
 St. Paul adds, it is true, that he that has spoken in an un- 
 known tongue might still profit others by interpreting what he 
 lias said. " Xow, it will be said in reply, " the Church has 
 never refused to interpret her Latin liturgies : it is easy to pro- 
 cure translations of them." Now-a-days it is easy; the time 
 was when it was very difficult, and we all know, besides, how 
 many there are who cannot read. Even at this day do we see 
 many, especially in countries entirely Eoman Catholic, who un- 
 derstand or care about understanding the Latin offices? Most 
 frequently, moreover, nothing is heard. The use of a language 
 which is not understood has led to the habit of speaking low, 
 
 turing Scripture, even when they have no interest in doing so. Know you why the supper 
 is regarded as a repast of union and love ? Think you it is because it recalls the love of 
 God to men, our equality before Him, &c. ? Not at all. According to the Roman Catechism 
 it is because the bread is composed of many grains of wheat, and the wine of many single 
 grapes mingled and confounded. Such is the union ; such is the Church. 
 1 1 Cor. xiv. 
 
CHRISTIANITY HAS NO SACKED LANGUAGE. %(>?> 
 
 rapidly, and indistinctly; it is only by following in a book the 
 words spoken by the priest, that even one who knows Latin can 
 go along with what is said. 
 
 Although all men should be able to read, — and Roman Catholic 
 countries are far from ranking first in this respect, — although all 
 men were to compel themselves to have the book constantly in 
 their hand, the objection would remain the same. Why Latin 
 rather than the language of the country ? Why go round about 
 when there is nothing to prevent your going straightforward ? 
 You allow the French to follow the mass with a French trans- 
 lation ; if they avail themselves of the permission, it is as if they 
 heard it in French. Will it lose its virtue ? You do not say 
 that. What reason have you, then, for not granting to every- 
 body, by speaking in everybody's language, the favour you grant 
 to whosoever can use, and chooses to use, a translation? Then, 
 was not this language, which is at this day a strange unknown 
 tongue, to the great majority of the faithful, originally the Vulgar 
 tongue? Here, therefore, is a point on which you cannot call 
 in the aid of tradition. Do we find that during the first cen- 
 turies of the Church, there was ever a thought of imposing Latin 
 on the members of the Eastern Churches? Had the Eastern 
 Churches, on the other hand, ever a thought of imposing Greek 
 on anybody? And yet they had by much the stronger reasons 
 for attempting it. The Apostles wrote and preached in Greek. 
 In Greek the history and the sayings of Jesus Christ found their 
 way into the west. Were Christianity to have a sacred language, 
 it is the Greek ; the Hebrew, if you will have it so ; but the 
 Latin it is not. 
 
 But why should we speak of a sacred language ? Is not the 
 very universality of Christianity, which is regarded by every one 
 as one of its essential and distinctive characters, an argument 
 against that unity of language with which Rome would endow it? 
 It is only in countries where the institution of caste prevails, 
 among the ancient Egyptians, and among the Hindoos, that we 
 find a language specially employed for worship, and by the priests. 
 When a religion appears with the announcement, that it is to 
 belong not only to all nations, but, further, in each nation, to all 
 the individuals that compose it, when it comprises nothing which 
 ought not to be revealed to all men, — it is contradictory to its 
 very essence, to make it ever speak to men in a language that 
 they do not understand. 
 
 As for the rest, it is not by chance that Rome is here found as- 
 
364 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 sociated with Egypt and India, rather than with the altogether 
 civil organization of Roman Paganism ; no more was it by chance, 
 or from caprice, that the Reformers were so urgent for the aban- 
 donment of the Latin tongue. They were thoroughly sensible 
 that it would not depart alone; and Rome, without saying so, 
 had the same conviction. The mass in French, in German, in 
 English, is no longer the mass. The form has incorporated itself 
 with the substance, and cannot undergo a change without seri- 
 ously affecting the substance. The miracle of transubstantiation 
 is wrought by these words, Hoc est corpus menm; let the priest 
 say, This is my body, and the charm is half destroyed, even to 
 those who equally understand both. We have seen Roman 
 Catholics, in reading the mass for the first time in their own 
 tongue, experience the utmost disappointment. They saw 
 nothing bad or false in it, but no more did they see aught that 
 seemed adequate in point of grandeur to the mystery that had 
 previously fed their imagination. And it is not only with an 
 eye to doctrine that Rome persists in having a language of her 
 own. Like the taking away of the cup, it is a. barrier between 
 the clergy and the people — a barrier less impassable, it is true, 
 since a man may learn Latin, but which, besides that it is im- 
 passable for the great mass of mankind, still helps, nevertheless, 
 even as respects the literate classes, to guard the precincts of the 
 sanctuary. 
 
 Accordingly, in our own times, it is only by reasons of a more 
 or less mystical sort that its maintenance has been sought to be 
 justified. " Prayers in the Latin tongue," says Chateaubriand, 1 
 " seem to redouble the religious feelings of the multitude. In the 
 tumult of his thoughts, and of the miseries with which his life is 
 beset, man, as he pronounces words little familiar or even un- 
 known to him, seems to petition for things that he wants, and 
 yet of which he is ignorant. 2 The vagueness of these prayers 
 constitutes their charm." The vagueness of the thoughts, per- 
 haps ; never the vagueness resulting from the words being un- 
 known, unless, indeed, among the charms of prayer, we are to 
 reckon the facility of praying with words, without any effort be- 
 yond keeping one's self, well or ill. in a certain abstracted state 
 more or less resembling sleep. Pe Maistre, as usual, is still more 
 frank ; " As for the people," says he, u if they do not understand 
 
 1 Gcniedu Cliristianisme, 4ieme partie. 
 
 - The \v<ird Hallelujah, which is Hebrew, is adopter!, as it stands, in the mass, to express. 
 I'\a foreign word, joys unknown t<> this life. — Innocent III.. Treatise oh //«• Mass, ii. 53. 
 
DEGREE OF REFERENCE TO THE POPE. 36.J 
 
 the words, so much the better. There is all the more respect 
 and none the less intelligence." All the more respect! Possi- 
 bly so ; but what sort of respect ? That of a statue on its knees. 
 Is that the respect God requires from intelligent beings ? None 
 the less intelligence ! We admit that many things are said, 
 among Roman Catholics, in Latin, which would not much enrich 
 the mind ; but would they once begin to speak in such a manner as 
 to be understood, they would soon be compelled to say better 
 things and more of them. " An antique and mysterious lan- 
 guage," says Chateaubriand again, " a language which has for 
 ages ceased to undergo any change, is suited for the worship of 
 the eternal incomprehensible Being." — "You do not comprehend 
 God," he would seem to say ; " it is natural, then, that you 
 should address him in a language which you do not compre- 
 hend." Is not this, at bottom, the true meaning of all that is 
 said tons on this subject? Put away all these brilliant pictures, 
 all these poetical veils — and what do you find behind ? A chap- 
 let, a praying machine, and man himself becoming a praying 
 machine. 
 
 We have said that the affair of the cup had been suspended 
 until the majority should be found disposed to refer its deter- 
 mination to the pope. 
 
 The session drew nigh. Whatever form might be given to 
 the decree for the reference, that decree had against it, in addi- 
 tion to all who wanted the thing regulated in the council, many 
 of those who blamed the concession of the cup, and were afraid 
 that the pope might grant it. The clay before the session, the 
 legates thought thej' might gain some votes by adding that the 
 pope, with the consent and approbation of the council, should do 
 what he thought fit ; but this clause, though agreeable to the 
 pope's adversaries, was warmly opposed by the Roman party, 
 and the legates even felt themselves reproached with it as a sort 
 of treason. In the evening, not knowing how to make up their 
 minds, they sent a request to the ambassadors that they would not 
 insist on the council voting on it next clay; but the emperor's party 
 would not hear of such a thing. They said they would rather 
 break with the council than consent again to any delay whatever. 
 On the next clay, accordingly, they came to a vote ; the decree 
 passed, but thirty-eight prelates voted against it, and the same 
 minority appeared in the session. 1 
 
 As for the almost equally large minorities which we have seen 
 
 1 17th September 1562, twenty-second session. 
 
366 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 announce their opinions in the voting - of decrees concerning- the 
 faith, they were found, as usual, very much diminished in the 
 session. Of thirty bishops who had persisted in not believing 
 that the Do this involved the ordination of the Apostles, fifteen 
 at most in the public sitting voted against the canon in which 
 that opinion is erected into an article of faith. Shall we charge 
 the others with cowardice and inconsistency ? No ; the incon- 
 sistent, on the contrary, were those who were daring enough not 
 to submit immediately to the infallible voice of the majority. 
 There is no consistency in Roman Catholicism, but in submis- 
 sion and silence. 
 
 BOOK FIFTH. 
 
 All begins anew: one might suppose he had mistaken the page — Eight successive proroga- 
 tions — Opening of the debates on the sacrament of orders — Imprudent haste — Are orders a 
 sacrament ? — Calvin's opinion — In what sense were orders instituted by Jesus Christ ': — 
 Scriptural and historical discussion — Roman system — Few advantages and many inconveni- 
 ences — The seven orders — No scriptural foundation — Difficulties that cannot be resolved — 
 The council evades them — The mass the basis of the Roman priesthood — Order and the 
 orders — Grace in ordination — Endless uncertainties and obscurities. 
 
 The hierarchy — Is Episcopacy to be found in the New Testament — In what sense it is 
 legitimate — Contradictions of the Roman system — How these were removed at Trent — Tho 
 old question of the divine right changes its aspect — It becomes simplified on the one hand, 
 and complicated on the other — New efforts to leave the pope out in the discussion of it. 
 
 The popedom — Thou art Peter — St. Peter in the New Testament — History — Writings — Is 
 tradition more favourable — How the Fathers explained Thou art Peter — Whatever Peter 
 may have been, is the pope his successor — Chronological difficulties — What is required in 
 order to the testimony of the Fathers being conclusive — Irenreus — The apostolical constitu- 
 tions — The Roman element — Internal difficulties — How to link the chain — Independence of 
 the Apostles and of all the pastors established by them — The patriarchs — The right of con- 
 quest no right — Contrast between the embarrassment of the Church's doctors, and the hardi- 
 hood of the popes — Gregory XVI. in 1832 — Some facts — Nice — Carthage — Gregory I. 
 
 The pope is necessarily all, or nothing — Pangs of the Roman party — The vote is taken 
 but the discussion continues — It comes upon the ground of the authority of the council — The 
 perilous position of things becomes more and more evident — All the objections reach far- 
 ther than is thought desirable by those even who make them — The cause is committed to 
 Lainez — His speech — The Church is essentially subject — It was to Peter alone that it was 
 said, " Feed my sheep" — Absolute ultramontanism — A Roman Catholic has logically no re- 
 ply to make — Irritation increases — Complaints of the bishop of Paris — The French of that 
 time, and those of the present day. 
 
 The Cardinal of Lorraine — Precautions taken — Still the decree on the institution of bishops 
 — Urgency of the Spaniards — Rumours and factions — Men become more moderate — Ken 
 draft of the decree on residence — A return to what had been prepared in 1551 — Roman 
 Catholicism caught in the act — Point of issue— Arrival of the Cardinal of Lorraine — Ilis 
 
ALL BEGINS ANEW 
 
 3G7 
 
 speech — What were at bottom his projects— New causes of distrust — The pope's illness — 
 Should he die, who was to. elect another — The cardinals — Historical remarks — No foundation 
 for their rights. 
 
 The Cardinal of Lorraine describes the calamities of France — Du Ferrier's conclusions — 
 Ours — In what sense the Church has a horror for blood. 
 
 New fluctuations on the cardinal's part — The council falls back on the discussions on the 
 residence of bishops — A bad Frenchman, a bad Spaniard — Complaints of the extreme pro- 
 lixity of the speeches — Fabian delays — The pope sends three formulas on the institution of 
 bishops — They say too little, or too much — In partem solieitudinis — Agreement on any 
 point impossible. 
 
 Battle of Dreux — Pius IV. considers the success sained contemptible — Demands of the 
 court of France — The pope pretends to dread a revolt — He takes the affair into his own 
 hands — Offers of money — Nothing is ready — The cardinal's journey to the emperor — Dis- 
 quieting articles which Ferdinand caused to be examined — His complaints against the coun- 
 cil and the pope — The court of France sends to inquire what have become of the promised 
 reforms. 
 
 Marriage — Is it a sacrament — Scriptural and other objections — In giving it this title, has it 
 been really rendered more sacred — The Church's despotism — Objections of jurisconsults — In- 
 dissolubility of marriage — Except it be for adultery — Divorce — It may be made a law, but 
 not a dogma — Weakness of the arguments in favour of the decree — Other difficulties — Civil 
 elements of marriage — Quibbles — If marriage be a sacrament, the civil power has nothing to 
 do with it — The march of ideas — Side by side with so much strictness, unheard of dissolute- 
 ness of morals — Abuse of dispensations — Sophisms of the ultramontanists. Can a Roman 
 Catholic treat them with contempt ? 
 
 The celibate — Can we examine whether it be, in itself, more holy than marriage — Monks 
 and the monastic life — Suicide — Convents in poetry — Convents in reality — Forced vows — 
 Scruples of jurisconsults — Celibate of priests — Right and abuses — The celibate and the Re- 
 formation — The Jewish law — The Christian law — St. Peter — Ideal and realities — What the 
 clergy are where it prevails — Why the celibacy of the priests is persisted in. 
 
 Political pre-occupations — Death of the Duke of Guise — Cardinal of Mantua's letter to 
 Paul IV. — Letter from the emperor — The council has remained obnoxious to all the blows 
 then levelled at it — The pope's reply — Constantine and Theodosius — What has been made of 
 them, and what they were — Philip II. and his prelates — Tumults at Trent — Two new legate? 
 Morone at Inspruck — Negotiations — Peace in France — The pope's 01 humour — At Trent 
 weariness and disgust. 
 
 The farther we proceed the more does our task become diffi- 
 cult and repulsive. Nothing can be more miserably tiresome 
 than to find one's self on the morrow after each successive sitting, 
 placed in view of the same intrigues and the same reclamations, 
 with the same facts to note, and the same reflections to make. 
 In the more minute histories of Pallavicini and Sarpi, a careless 
 reader might often suppose that he had mistaken the page and 
 was reading over again what he had read already. Notwith- 
 standing our utmost efforts to avoid the same evil, we feel at 
 times in despair of success. Thus, with respect to the dispute 
 about the divine right of bishops — although we have spoken 
 about it so often, and shall have to speak about it again — we 
 shall, after all, have only indicated its principal phases. As for 
 
368 HISTORY <>F THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 the reclamations of the prelates, or the ambassadors, on the 
 exorbitant influence of the pope, the insufficieney of the reforms 
 that had been decreed, the giving to the legates the exclusive 
 right to make propositions, and the tortuous course of business 
 in general — we have spoken as rarely as possible, and we could 
 not have spoken less of them without renouncing the idea of 
 giving a true picture of the council. 
 
 The twenty-third session had been fixed for the 12th of 
 November. Prorogued eight times, it took place only on the 1 . r >th 
 of July in the following year. This of itself may suffice to shew 
 what a chaos of embarrassments and discussions we have to dis- 
 entangle and elucidate. 
 
 It had been decreed that the two last sacraments should he 
 brought under deliberation — those of sacred orders and mar- 
 riage; but the very next day the French ambassadors renewed 
 their protest and their demands. They represented that if the 
 council proceeded immediately to doctrinal questions, there 
 would be none, or almost none remaining when their prelates 
 should arrive ; they insisted that these divines should be waited 
 for until the end of October, and that, until then, matters relating 
 to discipline only should be taken up. That same day the impe- 
 rial ambassadors presented an analogous demand. Their master, 
 they said, had been struck, as everybody had been, with the 
 little time that had been given to disciplinary matters, though 
 from them alone was there any prospect of the return of order 
 and peace. "He would rather not." the ambassadors added. 
 " that they should enter so deeply into points of doctrine as to 
 vote on things with regard to which Koman Catholics were so 
 little agreed, and which the Church had hitherto left prudently 
 in the shade." 
 
 The legates replied that it was a settled rule, adopted since 
 the commencement of the council, to make the examination of 
 points of doctrine and that of disciplinary matters proceed abreast : 
 that they could not therefore consent to the kind of suspension 
 that was asked for ; that, nevertheless, they would so arrange 
 matters that one only of the two remaining sacraments should be 
 taken up for study — that of orders. 
 
 They had their own reasons for preferring that one of the two. 
 The deliberations on the sacrament by which men are made 
 priests, would necessarily revive the question about residence, 
 and it was of importance, if they could no longer hope to be able 
 to set it aside, that it should be decided, at least, before the 
 
QUESTIONS DISTRIBUTED AMONG THE DIVINES. 369 
 
 arrival of the reinforcement promised by France to the partisans 
 of the divine right. To provide against possible contingencies 
 the pope sent numerous reinforcements from Italy. Care was 
 taken, at the same time, to have it hinted to the French, and to 
 the Cardinal of Lorraine in particular, that after having delayed 
 so long, they had better give up altogether the idea of coming 
 at all. " Was it befitting their dignity to have anything to do 
 with a council where they could merely show themselves and no 
 more, since the whole was to be brought to a close in a few 
 weeks? They could hardly act any but a Protestant part in 
 opposing the decrees already made, a course which could only 
 have the ultimate effect of shaking, with the authority of the 
 council, that of the whole Church, in France as well as else- 
 where." — Nor were such representations unreasonable. 
 
 Instead of, as had been hitherto done, handing over all the 
 questions collectively to all the divines, the latter were divided 
 into six classes, and to each of these there was assigned a special 
 dejiartment. Moreover, among other regulations, it was agreed 
 that no speech should exceed half an hour. It was not the first 
 time that an attempt was now made to restrain the prolixity of 
 the doctors ; but none of the rules intended for that purpose had 
 lasted beyond a few days. In the absence of any precise rules 
 the council was often observed to show its impatience by mur- 
 murs, talking among the members, shuffling of the feet, &c. ; 
 practices all of which are common enough in political assem- 
 blages, but which many will be not a little surprised to find pre- 
 vailing at the Council of Trent. 
 
 These arrangements, accordingly, were very wise, but the 
 time for their introduction was ill-chosen. Promises had been 
 made of slow procedure, especially with regard to doctrinal arti- 
 cles, yet steps were now taken for proceeding faster than ever. 
 The court of Rome had ceased, or believed that it had ceased, to 
 have any further grounds for alarm. It allowed itself to run 
 into that state of impatience which the calmest and the ablest 
 cannot but experience when some great task is approaching its 
 close, and to this we must ascribe those imprudences which at 
 any other time it would have avoided. 
 
 II. The point at issue, in the first question, was to determine 
 " whether orders be or be not a true sacrament properly so called, 
 instituted by Jesus Christ, and not a simple ceremony for insti- 
 tuting the ministers of God's word and the sacraments." . 
 
 We might remark, first of all, that this question is ill-stated, 
 2 A 
 
37<) HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 since it does not admit any mean between these two extreme 
 opinions. It nowise necessarily follows from your attacking 
 orders as a sacrament, that yon make them a purely human in- 
 stitution, or even that you cease to acknowledge their institution 
 by Jesus Christ. 
 
 As for the reasons that lead us to refuse to them the name of 
 sacrament, we must refer to what we have said elsewhere on the 
 sacraments in general. Orders are one of those on which the 
 question is one of words. If you will have it that sacr amentum 
 means oath, then it is clear that orders are a sacrament, for the 
 priest swears that he will consecrate himself to the Church ; but 
 it is clear, also, that they are not so in the same sense as bap- 
 tism and the supper, seeing that the latter are for all, and the 
 former for a small number only. " If I have not put it (the im- 
 position of hands) among the sacraments," says Calvin, " it is 
 because it is not ordinary and common to all the faithful." 1 
 
 Sacrament or no sacrament, can it be said that orders were 
 instituted by Jesus Christ? 
 
 If by this people restrict themselves to the idea that Jesus 
 Christ really contemplated establishing, in his Church, certain 
 persons who should be specially devoted to religious matters, — 
 we conceive that they are in the right. " Go," said he to his 
 Apostles, " teach all nations," and as he could not think twelve 
 men would suffice for this, he evidently authorized them to give 
 themselves assistants and successors. 
 
 But if it be the Roman priesthood that is contemplated, with 
 the profound separation which it establishes between priests and 
 people, with the privileges it arrogates to itself, the mystical 
 meaning it attaches to ordination, the absolute need that the 
 Church, according to it, has of its ministry, then we deny that 
 its institution can be traced to Jesus Christ, or to his Apostles, 
 or to the disciples of the Apostles. 
 
 Not to Jesus Christ, we say. Had it been his intention to 
 create priests in the Roman sense of that word, it must be ad- 
 mitted that the Apostles very much misunderstood it, and that 
 an author who should set himself to trace in what is recorded of 
 their history, the lineaments of the Christian priesthood, would 
 hardly find it was that of the Roman Church. Chosen by the 
 Master himself, manifestly guided by the Holy Spirit, they have 
 not, nevertheless, the air of men who have any idea that, in the 
 Church, they form a distinct and separate class. If they speak 
 
 1 Christ. lust., 1. iv. 
 
IS THE ROMAN PRIESTHOOD IN SCRIPTURE ? 37 1 
 
 of their quality as Apostles, it is always as of a mission which 
 they have received, not as of an internal character which has 
 heen stamped upon them. If necessary to the Church, it is as 
 Apostles, sent out, missionaries, preachers of the gospel ; but as 
 for their being priests, pontiffs, having anything else to do but to 
 teach certain truths, aud being, in fine, required by the faithful 
 for any other purposes than edification and instruction, — all this 
 is what we shall never discover from either the letter or the spirit 
 of what we read about them. And what they thought of them- 
 selves, they were all the more likely to think of those whom they 
 associated with themselves. Read over, from this point of view, 
 Paul's two epistles to Timothy, those few pages in which the 
 Church of Rome has contrived to find so many words in her 
 favour, and where we, on the contrary, find so many ideas that 
 are positively opposed to her. There, as elsewhere, you will find 
 a mission to be accomplished, an immense responsibility before 
 God and before men ; but, let us add, nothing more. In that 
 multitude of directions, of all sorts, which the Apostle gives to 
 his disciple, no mention is made of the administration of the 
 sacraments. Take away the commission to teach, to direct, to 
 reprove ; what will remain to Timothy above the mere believers'? 
 Nothing, absolutely nothing. This, nevertheless, was a question 
 of fact as well as of doctrine. Allusions, granting that there are 
 such, still do not amount to proofs. Were the principles held by 
 St. Paul on the priesthood, even remotely, those of the Koman 
 Church, it was not a matter in which he, a founder of churches, 
 could, in writing to a founder of churches, fail to express himself 
 with precision. In his other epistles, the same omission. To 
 whom are they addressed ? To the faithful of Corinth, of Thes- 
 salonica, of Rome. In several of them he makes no mention of 
 names, or of any chiefs whatever ; in others, if he gives some 
 names which might be supposed to be those of the pastors of the 
 Church, or who, in fact, were so, — these names, as in the case of 
 the epistle to the Romans, are mingled with those of persons 
 who manifestly were not at the head of the flock, for sometimes 
 they are women, sometimes whole families. If all this do not 
 prove, as some sects have maintained, that there was nowhere a 
 distinct and regular pastorate, — as little can we see that any one 
 can maintain, after having seriously weighed these facts, either 
 that the pastorate was a priesthood, or that it acted in any fashion 
 the part which has been assumed by the Roman priesthood. 
 Will it be said that this opinion weakens the authority of the 
 
372 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 evangelical ministry? We proceed to see if this be true ; but 
 were it true, that would not be an argument. There never has 
 been a usurpation or abuse of which it might not also be said 
 that those that attacked it assaulted the power that profited by it. 
 We have not to decide whether a mysterious and indelible con- 
 secration be or be not necessary to the authority of the Gospel 
 minister ; we have only to see in the writings of the Apostles 
 whether such was the view they took of their functions, and we 
 go on to shew that there is nothing of the kind there. Mean- 
 Avhile, is the fact alleged true ? Does that mysterious and 
 supernatural character tend to give to the laity more respect 
 for the priests, to the priests more respect for themselves ? No. 
 Merit being equal, we have never seen the priest more respected 
 than the Protestant pastor ; and as for self-respect, that is to 
 say, dignity of manners and language, it appears to us incontest- 
 able that the Protestant clergy are generally superior. 
 
 Now, if the idea that Rome has formed of the priesthood, if 
 the supernatural and divine power which she has recognised in 
 it, lead not, in point of fact, to any beneficial result which might 
 not be obtained without it, how much has it not had, and does 
 it not continue to have that is bad ! Think but of that pride, 
 and of all those individual and collective pretensions that have 
 so troubled the world, and drawn upon Christianity so many 
 attacks, so many sarcasms, so many bitter enmities, and say, 
 where Avas the first source of all these, if not in the mendacious 
 doctrine of a barrier raised by the hand of God himself betwixt 
 pastors and people? What we have already said of the power 
 of performing, in the celebration of mass, a greater and more 
 extraordinary miracle than any of those by which Jesus Christ 
 himself manifested his glory, we might repeat here with respect 
 to all the powers that Rome assumes for her priests. All that 
 she has thought to give them of the striking and supernatural, is 
 easily effaced by people getting accustomed to it ; all that she has, 
 at the same time, created in the way of pretensions, tyranny and 
 audacity, has been but too well kept from being effaced by pride 
 and interest. 
 
 It is not only as respects the essence of Orders that Rome 
 seems to us to have departed from the true apostolical traditions. 
 What shall we say of the complications successively introduced 
 into the organization of a ministry which appears to have been 
 in the clays of the Apostles a thing so simple, so profoundly clear 
 and one ? The Roman Church admits seven decrees in the 
 
ORDERS THEIR DEGREES THE DEACQNSHIP. 373 
 
 sacrament of orders, and, by an odd caprice, which her doctors 
 differ in their efforts to explain, the episcopate is not one of 
 them. These orders are divided into two classes. Four are of 
 the minor class, those of porter, exorcist, reader, and acolyte. 
 Three are of the major class, the sub-deaconship, the deaconship, 
 and the priesthood properly so called. We cannot blame in an 
 absolute manner the establishment of certain degrees to be passed 
 before reaching the priesthood ; but this number, seven, indi- 
 cates at once pretensions to mystery and symmetry more worthy 
 of ancient Egypt than of the renewed world, and of Pythagoras 
 than of Jesus Christ. 
 
 While we admit that the Church may not have erred in 
 establishing lower grades, we do not mean to say that their 
 institution has a scriptural foundation, or is sanctioned by the 
 example of the Apostles. We do not even think that one can 
 appeal in their support to the institution of the deaconship, as 
 related in the book of the Acts, and the council seems to us to 
 have had recourse to a play upon the words when, speaking of 
 the seven orders, it says, " Scripture makes positive mention not 
 only of priests, but also of deacons." Now, in point of fact, 
 what do we read '? Desiring to devote themselves entirely to 
 the care of souls, the Apostles request that they may be relieved 
 from certain secular concerns. Seven men are to have these 
 committed to them ; and as their functions will meanwhile tend 
 also to the spiritual benefit of the Church, they are to have the 
 imposition of hands. They are to receive the Holy Ghost, and, 
 should occasion require, take the place of the Apostles. Amid 
 all these details not a word occurs that leads to the idea of this 
 new office being instituted as an intermediate step to the minis- 
 try. It was a ministry apart, and inferior if you will, as respects 
 the habitual nature of its functions, but not one that implied 
 inferiority of character. Stephen, one of the elected seven, is 
 exhibited to us immediately afterwards discharging all the func- 
 tions of a pastor and an Apostle. Twice St. Paul 1 enumerates 
 various charges exercised in the Church, and adds nothing that 
 might lead us to suppose that they were so many successive 
 degrees. The functions are entirely parallel ; they present 
 different branches of duty among which each might make his 
 choice according to his peculiar talents, his convictions of duty, 
 and the inward call addressed to him by God. That the deacon- 
 ship was at a very early period regarded as a step to the minis- 
 
 1 1 Cor. xii., Eph. iv. 
 
374 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 try is very probable. The institution does not exclude this view 
 of the matter ; but we think it evident that it does not point it 
 out to us, and cannot consequently serve as a legitimate basis to 
 the seven degrees of the Roman Church. 
 
 Extreme unction has led us to state beforehand one of the 
 most serious difficulties attending this subject. 1 It is for the 
 Roman Church to ask itself how six inferior orders, considered 
 necessary for a man's reaching the seventh, can be reconciled 
 with the idea of this last being a sacrament, and a sacrament 
 instituted by Jesus Christ. The only method of escape from 
 embarrassment would have been to make the six inferior orders 
 a mere preparation for the priesthood ; but at the time when 
 this difficulty first challenged attention, the six preparatory 
 orders had long been considered as conferring collectively a 
 notable portion of the ecclesiastical character. Henceforth the 
 difficulty subsists in all its magnitude : we have here a sacra- 
 ment, which is stated to have been instituted by Jesus Christ, 
 and which we find to be conferred in part by formalities which 
 Jesus Christ did not institute, nor his Apostles either. 
 
 Did he at least insinuate them ? Fain would the council have 
 been able to say so. One divine made an attempt to prove it. 
 Although Jesus Christ, said he, did not positively institute the 
 series of seven orders, he suggested it by going through the 
 series himself. When he drove the sellers out of the temple, 
 was he not a porter ? In curing those possessed by devils, an 
 exorcist ? In reading and explaining the Scriptures, a reader ? 
 in concerning himself about preparations for the supper, a dea- 
 con ? In celebrating it, a priest ? This far-fetched argument 
 would be less ridiculous did it not leave unexplained why the 
 Apostles speak of the deaconship as quite a new institution, 
 suggested to them as required by new exigencies, and not con- 
 nected in their minds Avith any injunction, any saying addressed 
 to them by their master. 
 
 Another rock against which the discussion constantly struck, 
 was the making the seven orders seven sacraments, connected 
 together by their concurring to the same end, yet distinct as 
 they each and all confer something sacramental. Some of the 
 divines did not shrink from admitting this idea. In their view 
 
 1 VTe might have noticed one at the time of the seventh session, at the date of the decree 
 on the sacraments in general. That of Orders is put in the number of those which cannot 
 be reiterated. In point of discipline nothing could be better ; but in that case the Church 
 must renounce teaching that the laying on of hands, as mentioned in the New Testament, 
 was the Roman ordination, for St. Paul received it twice. (Acts ix. and xiii.i 
 
FIRST THE PRIESTHOOD THEN A SACRIFICE. 37.0 
 
 there was something mysterious and divine in it ; one sole sacra- 
 ment and seven sacraments seemed to them happily to recall the 
 idea of one God in three persons. 
 
 After long and solemn discussions, 1 the council durst not pro- 
 nounce in favour either of the daring mysticism of the one party, 
 or the timid puerilities of the other. Eepeating what it had 
 done so often before, it left vague all that it did not feel itself 
 in a condition to determine. 
 
 Thus, in the first chapter, it confined itself to stating the 
 existence of a visible priesthood established by God in the 
 Church ; but the proof of it which it adduces is valid for those 
 only who admit without contestation all the anterior decrees on 
 the supper and the mass. " In all religions, the idea of a sacri- 
 fice to be offered, and that of a priesthood instituted for the 
 purpose of offering it, have been by the will of God intimately 
 associated together. Since then there is in the Church a sacri- 
 fice, the mass, there is necessarily a priesthood." This line of 
 argument is far from wise, since it exposes the Roman priesthood 
 to all the objections that may be brought against the real pre- 
 sence, the mass, &c. On the other hand, is it at least true to say, 
 that the two things have always existed together and advanced 
 abreast ? No. The Roman priesthood appears to us to have been 
 fully constituted long before the mass was the mass. The uniform 
 conjunction of priesthood and sacrifice in other religions is of 
 small importance ; here, it is not the priesthood that has been 
 instituted for the sacrifice, it is the sacrifice that has been gradu- 
 ally introduced in order to complete and legitimize the priest- 
 hood. In the sixth, in the eighth century, at the time when 
 there began to be priests in the full strictness of the word, while 
 the transition was hardly more than in the bud, the people might 
 have said, like Isaac to Abraham, " Behold a priest and an 
 altar, but where is the victim?" And it was necessary, no 
 doubt, that one should be found. 
 
 The line of argument in the second article is neither more 
 solid nor more prudent. " The priestly ministry being a Divine 
 thing it was natural that there should be several orders of 
 ministers." Nothing more natural, in fact, if the inferior orders 
 are only a preparation for the priesthood, but if they form a 
 part of it then the argument is all the other way ; the more the 
 
 1 The first congregation general, held 23d September, reckoned, besides the legate?, three 
 patriarchs, eighteen archbishops, a hundred and fortv-six bishops, h\e generals ot orutis. 
 and eightv-four divines. 
 
376 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 priesthood is divine, the more repugnant is its being split into 
 parts. That, therefore, was the place at which the council 
 "behoved to have said whether the inferior orders are sacraments 
 or parts of a sacrament, or a mere preparatory course to the 
 priesthood, but, as in the first article, it said nothing. Thus, 
 in the first, it speaks of order ; in the second, of orders; in the 
 third it returns to the word order. But in what manner the 
 orders are the order, and the order is the orders, it does not say. 
 
 Another very serious question, serious, if not in itself, at least 
 as respects the exactness of the system, is also evaded in the 
 third article. It is there said that the order is truly and pro- 
 perly one of the Church's sacraments ; and the reason adduced 
 is because grace is conferred by ordination. In support of this, 
 the words of St. Paul to Timothy are adduced : — " Wherefore I 
 put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God which 
 is in thee, by the putting on of my hands." But the Church 
 itself has never taught that all that confers grace is in virtue of 
 that alone a sacrament ; we see cases, besides, of the Apostles 
 giving the imposition of hands to persons whom they had no 
 idea of making pastors. Moreover, there had been great dis- 
 putes on the question how we are to know what kind of grace 
 is conferred in ordination. On the one hand, it was very difficult 
 to specify any which the priest might not already have received 
 or might not yet receive, as simply one of the faithful, in one or 
 another of the other sacraments ; on the other, no sooner did 
 people set themselves to speak of graces exclusively appropriated 
 to the functions of his ministry, than the objection was raised 
 that if the priest does not draw any fruit for himself from ordi- 
 nation it no longer answers the idea of a sacrament. Many would 
 fain have inserted that it confers both these kinds of grace at 
 once, inward graces for the priest's individual sanctification, and 
 outward graces for the sanctification of the faithful under his 
 ministry ; but still this distinction had many opponents, and it 
 was thought best to say nothing. 
 
 Nothing has been more attacked in the Reformation than the 
 uncertainty which, we are told, it leaves on the character and 
 authority of pastors. Had we to refute this objection we might 
 observe that that is assumed as a fact which Protestants deny, 
 and which must first of all be proved, namely, the necessity of 
 a priesthood precisely such as that of Rome. The Protestant 
 pastor would, in fact, be very much embarrassed if asked to pro- 
 duce his authority for remitting sins, or renewing daily on the 
 
HISTORICAL ORIGIN OF THE EPISCOPATE. 377 
 
 altar, with a few words, the sacrifice offered by Jesus Christ on 
 Calvary; but if he confine himself to the functions positively 
 prescribed for him in the New Testament, particularly in the 
 two Epistles to Timothy, the true code of instructions in this 
 matter, he does not perceive that any thing is wanting to him 
 for the exercise of all of them, and we see that his authority is, 
 in fact, far less contested and far less attacked than is that of the 
 priests where these are not omnipotent. But the details into 
 which we have gone authorize our giving quite a different reply. 
 You affirm, we should say, that the non-Roman pastor cannot 
 explain in what the ordination which he has received consists. 
 Can the priest do so really any better? Does not this flimsy 
 coating of logic and assurance conceal some uncertainty, some 
 serious difficulty? Two hundred doctors, twenty sittings, speeches 
 and discussions without- end, and then, at the close, a decree 
 which promises proofs and gives mere assertions, three canons 
 which are silent on three matters that are absolutely necessary 
 to be known in order to the right understanding of what they 
 say, — such is the answer which this history would furnish for us. 
 
 We now come to another article in which there was more 
 need than ever to evade difficulties. It is that concerning the 
 hierarchy. 
 
 It is a point which we can concede that the sacerdotal hier- 
 archy, like the succession of orders, is not in itself a bad thing 
 and to be condemned. If we disengage it, in our own mind, 
 from the odiousness too often charged against it, we come to 
 the simple idea of a pastor chosen from among some others to 
 superintend them, direct them, and should the occasion require, 
 censure them. Such a pastor will naturally hold always the first 
 rank. As respects ordinary functions he will remain on an 
 equality with his colleagues ; as for the extraordinary, consecra- 
 tions, installations, dedications, they will be devolved upon him, 
 be it of right, but of right purely ecclesiastical and human, or 
 simply in consequence of the position he occupies. At Geneva, 
 for example, although the pastors are all equal, it is their yearly 
 president who is charged with the conferring of the ministerial 
 character by the imposition of hands. 
 
 Such is the sole reasonable and historically true origin that 
 can be assigned to the episcopate. All the attempts that have 
 been made for the discovery in the writings of the Apostles of 
 some traces of inequality among the Presbyter/' (from which presby- 
 
378 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 ter and priest) and the Episcopi break down entirely, alike before 
 ideas and words, before the general tenor and the details. Even 
 were these attempts a little less fruitless it would be a powerful 
 argument at once against the Roman system that so laborious a 
 search must be made for its germs, without finding in the whole 
 New Testament a single formal mention of a true inequality 
 between bishops and presbyters. But not even the germs are to 
 be found there ; wherever men may fancy they have found them 
 we could shew close at hand something that destroys them. The 
 words priest and bishop, elder and overseer, we ought to say, for 
 such is the true meaning, are perpetually used there the one for 
 the other. Were this the case but once or twice we might 
 already conclude from it that this question was not for the 
 Apostles a question of importance, and, still less, a question of 
 divine right. (Jan any one figure to himself a Roman Catholic 
 so ignorant or so careless about the right use of terms as to call 
 his parish priest bishop, and his bishop parish priest ? But it is 
 not once or twice, it is everywhere that the Apostles fall into 
 this confusion of terms. " I left thee in Crete," says St. Paul 
 to Titus, " that thou shouldest set in order the things that are 
 wanting and ordain elders in every city as I had appointed thee : 
 If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful 
 children. . . . For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward 
 of God." Thus we have elder at the commencement and bishop 
 at the end, with a. for connecting them. In the book of the Acts 
 i chap, xx.) Paul sends for the elders of the Church of Ephesus, 
 and tells them among other things that the Holy Ghost had 
 made them bishops, to feed the Church of God. Elsewhere it is 
 St. Peter himself who addresses the elders, and employs for the 
 designation of their functions the Greek verb episkopein, to over- 
 see, which ought to be applied only to bishops. At another place, 
 (1 Tim. iii.,) in a passage on the duties of the ministers of the 
 Church, St. Paul speaks first of bishops and next of deacons, and 
 betwixt those two classes speaks of none. " Likewise must the 
 deacons," says he, " be grave," &c. Elsewhere he names the 
 episcopi without naming the presbyteri, or the presbyteri without 
 naming the episcopi, and all that he says of the one he says of 
 the other. They had to receive the same ordination, to fulfil 
 the same conditions ; there is nothing, in a word, to indicate any 
 superiority or inferiority whatever. If these two words were 
 not in his view synonymous, if he believed the one to be supe- 
 rior to the other, and that by Divine right, the manner in which 
 
THE ROMAN EPISCOPATE NOT AN ORDER. 379 
 
 he confounds the two, would indicate not only negligence but 
 the most complete want of common sense. 
 
 Thus, however ancient may be the tradition in virtue of which 
 bishops are chiefs of the Church, whatever reasons of discipline, 
 unity, and order, may be urged in its favour, it remains evident 
 that the superiority of the bishops over the presbyters or priests 
 is a matter of ecclesiastical arrangement, and is human and 
 mutable. 
 
 This being laid down as incontrovertible, the episcopate not 
 being in Scripture, had the Church any right to establish it ? 
 
 The question is double, and we must, first of all, clearly sepa- 
 rate its two faces. 
 
 As soon as a church has more than one pastor it is natural 
 and necessary that one should preside over the rest. It is natural 
 too, we have said, though less necessary, that certain functions 
 should be reserved to him. In fine, should the Church see fit 
 that this precedency should be for life, that he who exercises it 
 should govern with sovereign power, that he should nominate to 
 all charges, and should have a right to all the honours, this is 
 neither necessary, nor, according to us, natural and proper, but 
 still it is not contrary to the essence of the pastorate. It pro- 
 duces an inequality of jurisdictions, not of powers, or, if you will, 
 the administrative powers are unequal, but the spiritual powers 
 remain the same. 
 
 Eeligious society, then, like civil society, can give to the ad- 
 ministrative authority of its first magistrates as great a superiority 
 as it may think proper ; but as respects spiritual authority, if 
 the equality of pastors is taught in the Scriptures we do not 
 see what right the Church has to disturb it. The very idea of 
 sacrament which the Church of Eome has attached to ordination 
 is an additional argument against the spiritual supremacy of the 
 bishops. A sacrament may have effects more or less marked 
 according to the more or less excellence of the dispositions of 
 those who receive it, but, in point of principle, it is inadmissible 
 that the same sacrament should confer on some more, on others 
 less. 
 
 It is in order to escape this objection that the Church of Rome 
 has viewed the series of orders as closed at the seventh, and that 
 the Council of Trent confirmed that view. The episcopate is 
 not reputed as order, but as an office in the order. The bishop 
 is no more a priest than is a mere parish priest ; he is a priest 
 charged with superior functions. 
 
380 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL or TRENT; 
 
 Shall we accept this distinction ? The Church must neces- 
 sarily herself accept the consequences of it ; and we can prove 
 that she does not accept them. If the bishop has only a supe- 
 riority of office, and not of real powers, if he be no more priest 
 than a priest, then a spiritual act cannot be null from the sole 
 circumstance of his having had no part in it. But, ask the Church 
 of Rome what she thinks, for example, of an ordination per- 
 formed by a simple priest. She would pronounce it null. Of 
 confirmation administered by him, null also; null, mark well, 
 not only in the administrative point of view, but further, and 
 especially in the sacramental. The child confirmed by a priest 
 is not confirmed ; the layman ordained by a priest remains to all 
 intents and purposes a layman still. There are then really in the 
 bishop spiritual powers which the priest has not, and he cannot 
 even delegate those powers to a priest. It must be himself that 
 confirms and himself that ordains, in such wise that if all the 
 bishops of the Church, including the pope, were once to disap- 
 pear, there would be no longer the means of having new priests, 
 and the priesthood would be at an end. Here, then, we have 
 spiritual inequality in all its rigour. A hundred thousand priests 
 all laying hands on a man, could not make him a priest. The 
 bishop can here do nothing ; the pope himself, according to most- 
 canonists, cannot give a priest, without having first made him a 
 bishop, the right to confer orders. There is then functionally 
 in the bishop something more than in the priest. This some- 
 thing cannot be delegated ; accordingly, it is not simply and 
 solely an affair of jurisdiction. Why is it natural that a priest 
 should not be able to delegate his functions to a deacon ? Be- 
 cause the priest has received seven orders, and the deacon only 
 six. It is contradictory, then, that the episcopate should not be 
 an eighth order, and that there should be functions for which 
 the men of the seventh, the priests, are radically and absolutely 
 unfit. 
 
 All this was said in the council, with many delicate reserva- 
 tions, it is true, and still more with many protestations on the 
 part of divines, that they by no means sought to unsettle an or- 
 ganization that had been sanctioned by ages. All they wanted, 
 they said, was to have the question well stated and elucidated ; 
 but they elucidated it a great deal too much, and having done 
 so, had the air of stopping only from motives of complaisance and 
 respect. Many of the speeches made on this occasion seem, to 
 the extent of three-fourths, to have been written by learned 
 
THE POPEDOM COMPLICATES THE QUESTION. 381 
 
 men who were opposed to the Eoman episcopate. Scriptural 
 difficulties, historical difficulties, difficulties arising from the 
 theory of the orders, all is there ; then, all at once, the speaker 
 wheels right about and concludes — as one could hardly avoid con- 
 cluding in the presence of two hundred bishops. 
 
 This discussion led to a curious result, that of changing the 
 face of the old question of the divine right. The reader will 
 remember how it began. It was in 1546, at the time of the 
 first discussion on residence. Nothing was contemplated in 
 the first instance beyond the determination of the nature of a 
 bishop's obligation to residence. Was it an obligation of divine 
 right, that is to say, emanating immediately from God, or an 
 obligation of papal right, that is to say, emanating from the 
 pope, universal and only bishop, of whom all the rest, in this 
 system, are only the delegates and the vicars ? We have seen 
 how the court of Rome held to this last opinion, and how, in de- 
 spair of having it proclaimed by the council, it had always con- 
 trived so to manage that nothing should be decided on the 
 subject. 
 
 In presence of the perilous difficulties which came to be started 
 on the very nature and the essence of the episcopal authority, 
 the question widened out and became complicated. It was not 
 only in its bearings on residence and the pope that people felt 
 themselves obliged to discuss it. " Is it by divine right, or only 
 by ecclesiastical and papal right, that the bishop is superior to 
 the priest?" Such was the problem which was to be agitated, 
 only to be finally left without solution, the last year of the 
 council. 
 
 Had it been possible in this case to attack and to resolve but 
 the half, that, to wit, which concerns the inferiority of the priests, 
 the council might easily have come to an agreement. The 
 bishops of all countries, and of all parties, asked nothing better 
 than to have to return to their dioceses with this additional 
 buckler against the pretensions of their clergy. Not, however, 
 that even then, the question would have been absolutely without 
 thorns. If this superiority of bishops over priests be of divine 
 right, that is to say, willed, ordained, and instituted by God 
 himself — the silence of the Scripture becomes an argument of 
 such force, that it is almost impossible to get over it. 
 
 Nevertheless, we have no doubt that many would have been 
 bold enough to do so ; but the Roman party felt, that on the divine 
 right being once declared with regard to the inferior clergy, it 
 
382 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 would become impossible not to declare it also with regard to the 
 pope. If the bishops possess anything whatever that does not 
 come from him, but directly from God, it can hardly any longer 
 be said, correctly, that they exist only by him. It was with this 
 feeling, then, that the Roman party again set themselves to have 
 the question set aside under this form, as they had so often before 
 set it aside under the other. 
 
 Already it had only been by dint of skilful management and 
 address that the council had succeeded in keeping the pope out 
 of sight in the first debates on the sacrament of orders. The 
 more, in fact, the members were at one in recognising him as, in 
 point of presidency and jurisdiction, supreme head of the Church, 
 the more were they puzzled, in the theoretical and sacramental 
 point of view, where to find a place and a rank for him. All the 
 reasons they had had for not making an eighth order of the Epis- 
 copate, might be urged for not making a ninth of the pope ; but, 
 on the other hand, the superiority of the pope's spiritual powers 
 was so evident, at least in fact, that it would have been mani- 
 festly absurd to make him again no more than a priest, equal to 
 others in point of character, and superior merely as respects his 
 office. It was seen, although it was not avowed, that though the 
 administrative supremacy of the pope might dispense with the 
 testimony of the Scripture, his spiritual supremacy could not but 
 require to be precisely and formally indicated there, if not in 
 words, at least in facts, the sole unexceptionable commentary on 
 words. With the utmost possible willingness to leave him in pos- 
 session of all his rights, it was very difficult, little as people set 
 themselves to reason and search for proofs, not to feel that a 
 power of that importance must become doubtful, and more than 
 doubtful, from the moment that it was found that there is not a 
 vestige of it in the New Testament. 
 
 Not a vestige, we say. What then do Ave make of the famous 
 passage, " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my 
 Church?" 
 
 What do we make of it'? Why, what we have ever made, 
 and ever will make of all isolated passages which the Scripture 
 and scriptural facts have left in their isolation. 
 
 First of all, and this is very serious — it is only in one of the 
 Gospels, St. Matthew, that we read these words. We by no 
 means, hence, conclude that they must be considered as apocry- 
 phal ; but had they had originally the force and meaning at- 
 tached to them afterwards, who shall explain to us the omission 
 
POSITION OF ST. PETER AMONG THE APOSTLES. 383 
 
 of them in the three other historians of Christ? One thing alone 
 conld make this omission, of which we think too little notice has 
 been taken, a little less extraordinary ; and that is, that these 
 three historians should have omitted the whole conversation in 
 which St. Matthew has introduced these words. But no ! turn 
 to St. Mark, the abridger of St. Matthew, who has copied from 
 him almost word for word, all that immediately precedes, and all 
 that follows. He omits only three or four lines, and those the 
 very lines in question. Turn to St. Luke, habitually so minute 
 in details, and you find him relate all the rest, yet he equally 
 omits them. Turn to St. John, who wrote after the other three, 
 and must have been a witness of the consequences that those 
 words behoved to have had, if they really had such consequences, 
 and him too we find not deeming them of such importance as 
 that they might not be omitted. Thus, let the Eoman Catholic, 
 who after having seen it so often repeated in his Church, could 
 not feel surprised were he to find it appear in twenty different 
 places in the New Testament, know, that he will find it there 
 only in one, although the mere course of the narratives called for 
 its being there at least in four. Let this, then, or any other 
 Roman Catholic, imagine himself engaged in writing a life of 
 Christ, and let him tell us if he would have forgotten these 
 words, and if he could understand how three out of four could 
 have agreed in forgetting them, and that, too, in relating the 
 very conversation that led to them. 
 
 In the second place, if there be a point where the authority of 
 tradition ought to go for nothing, in so far as not found to be 
 clearly based on Scripture, it is this. Here, in fact, we have 
 not to do with an idea, of which, as of some others, it may be 
 said, that Jesus Christ has been content to leave it to his Church, 
 as it were, in the germ, committing the care of its development 
 to human intelligence, aided by the Holy Ghost. But we have 
 to do with a fact ; and a fact which might, and ought, if the 
 Apostles had admitted it, to have distinctly developed itself from 
 the very earliest days of the Church, and of which we are en- 
 titled to desire to have traces immediately after the Saviour's 
 death. 
 
 " All the Apostles," says Pallavicini, "were not the less sub- 
 ject to St. Peter, — although such were their virtue and wisdom, 
 that hardly was there ever an occasion for his exercising this 
 jurisdiction." Hardly ever, is saying too much ; not at all, is 
 what ought to be said, inasmuch as we see, in the whole history 
 
"3S4 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 ot* the Apostles, but one of their number that was ever reproved 
 by another, and the Apostle thus reproved is no other than St. 
 Peter. " I withstood him to the face," says St. Paul, "because 
 he was to be blamed." But let us leave these details ; the cpies- 
 tion does not lie there. That Peter, supposing him to have been 
 head of the Church, should not, in fact, have had any occasion 
 to reprove, to punish, and to depose the Apostles, is very proba- 
 ble ; but it is evident that he must have had occasion every day 
 to intervene in the direction of their labours, in the establishment 
 of churches, pastors, and bishops, since so much is said to us 
 about bishops — in all those things, in fine, in which the pope 
 maintains that he has a call from God to intervene. 
 
 Assuming this, take the book of the Acts, and ask yourselves, 
 but seriously, and as in God's presence, if that piece of writing 
 leaves you with the impression that Peter was the head of the 
 ( Jhurch, that he considered himself as such, that his colleagues 
 recognised him as such. 
 
 In the first five or six chapters, it is true, we see him in the 
 first rank. On the day of Pentecost, it is he that makes a dis- 
 course to the people. Shortly after, immediately on the effect- 
 ing of a miraculous cure, it is he, too, that addresses the crowd. 
 It is lie, in fine, that pleads the cause of the infant church at the 
 bar of the magistracy. 
 
 Well, then, in these very chapters, we may challenge any one 
 to point to a phrase, or so much as a word, from which it can be 
 inferred that Peter exercised any supremacy whatever, or that 
 he did anything in virtue of some special office, peculiar to him- 
 self. Such as we see him in the Gospels, even before his Master 
 addressed to him the words which have been so much abused, 
 such do we see him also here ; prompt to put himself forward, 
 prompt to speak, except that he had sometimes shown little ma- 
 turity in his ideas, whereas now, directed by the Holy Ghost, he 
 speaks as his Master would have spoken. Xext, amid these de- 
 tails which, strictly speaking, might be reconciled with the fact 
 of a certain superiority, we behold others which cannot be so re- 
 conciled with it, and others still that are positively contrary 
 to it. 
 
 First, then, all that Peter does the other Apostles do, and that 
 without the slightest indication of direction or command on his 
 part. After having reported his first address, the historian says 
 that the faithful " continued stedfastly in the Apostles' doctrine," 
 and every time he recurs to the union of the new brethren, it is 
 
SAINT PETER AMONG HIS COLLEAGUES. 385 
 
 tlie Apostles in a body whom he represents as the heads of the 
 Church. In the cure wrought on the lame man, Peter, though 
 accompanied by John, seems to have acted alone, but it had 
 been said shortly before that many wonders and signs were done 
 by the Apostles. 1 Was a successor to Judas to be elected ? It 
 is Peter that makes the proposal, but he does nothing more. He 
 ordains in no way whatever ; he says nothing that seems to come 
 from a man in a position to ordain. Nevertheless, he was not, 
 at that moment, alone with his old colleagues, to whom one 
 might imagine that he might possibly, from a kindly feeling, 
 avoid making a display of his authority ; above a hundred dis- 
 ciples were present. On the proposal being acceded to, is it he, 
 do we find, that is to name the person to be appointed ? Not at 
 all. He says nothing about him ; nobody mentions him. It is 
 the assembled believers that present two candidates, and it is 
 the lot that decides. Does Peter proceed at least to consecrate 
 this new colleague ? Of this the historian says nothing. " Mat- 
 thias was numbered with the eleven Apostles." Are deacons to 
 be elected, — a matter of great importance, for it was a new in- 
 stitution that was to be created, — here Peter is not even named. 
 " Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them 
 and said, — the saying pleased the whole multitude, — they chose 
 Stephen, Philip, — whom they set before the Apostles, — who laid 
 their hands on them." Finally, when Peter, agreeably to divine 
 intimation, took it upon him to baptize a pagan without having 
 referred the matter to the Church, it was not only his colleagues, 
 but "the believers," the mere believers, " contended with him ;" 
 and not only does he. justify himself with the air of a man who 
 thinks it quite natural that he should be asked to account for 
 what he had done, but his discourse contains no allusion to any 
 superiority of any kind. We could very well conceive that Peter, 
 even on the weightiest occasions, may have adopted a very dif- 
 ferent tone from that which the popes were afterwards to assume; 
 but not to utter a single word that could bear that meaning, 
 never to make a single appeal, or the slightest allusion, to a pri- 
 
 1 " Peter," says Bossuet on the Unity (of the Church), " appears the first in all things ; the 
 first to make a confession of the faith — the first that confirmed the faith by a miracle." Here 
 the error is obvious. The cure of the lame man in the Acts, occurs in the 3d chapter, and it 
 is in the second that mention is made of the miracles wrought by the Apostles. The same re- 
 mark applies to Bossuet's other assertion, that Peter was the first to confess the faith. lie 
 was, in point of fact, the first to say, in reply to a question from the Saviour, " Thou art the 
 Christ, the Son of God ;" but this does not imply that he was the first to believe in the divi- 
 nity of his Master, if, indeed, it can be said that any of them believed in it previous to Christ's 
 resurrection, and the sending of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 2 B 
 
386 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 macy with which he must have believed himself to be invested 
 by a formal act of his Master's will; this would amount to im- 
 probability, carried to a higher degree than had ever been 
 reached in any history. 
 
 " Had St. Peter," says De Maistre, " a distinct knowledge of 
 the extent of his prerogative ? I cannot tell." Such, let us re- 
 mark, is the pass to which one of the most ardent defenders of the 
 Holy See is reduced. The man who scatters his yes and his 
 no where everybody before him had hesitated. " I cannot 
 tell," says he ! It is perhaps the only confession of ignorance 
 that his book contains. What a confession then ! And what 
 must not have been the cogency of the conviction that wrung it 
 from him ! Thus you hear him say, we dare not affirm that the 
 very man to whom it was said, " Thou art Peter, and upon this 
 rock I will build my Church," saw, inspired though he was by 
 the Holy Spirit, in these words what his pretended successors 
 would fain see in them. 
 
 To historical improbability, let us now join that resulting from 
 the silence of the Apostles, comprising that of St. Peter himself, 
 in their writings. St. Paul says (Epistle to the Galatians) that 
 he went up to Jerusalem " to see Peter," " to confer with Peter." 
 a phrase marked by a strange simplicity, if it were really in 
 order to receive orders from the Church's chief, — it is Paul who, 
 in the same epistle, when speaking of another journey to Jeru- 
 salem, names Peter after James ; it is Paul also, always in the 
 same epistle, who dares to write, " when Peter was come to 
 Antioch, I withstood him to the face." And how did he with- 
 stand him ? As an inferior who takes the liberty to make some 
 remarks ? We have already quoted his words : he withstood him 
 to the face, " because Peter was to be blamed." And, a little 
 farther on, " When I saw that they (the Jews and Peter) walked 
 not uprightly, according to the truth of the Gospel, / said unto 
 Peter before them all," &c. Mark that this took place fourteen 
 years after the journey to Jerusalem, that is to say, at an epoch 
 when Christians and Christian Churches were beginning to be 
 seen everywhere, and when St. Peter's primacy, Avere it even in 
 spite of himself, ought to have had a thousand occasions of being 
 overtly exercised ; mark, also, that the epistle from which this 
 is taken was itself written a long time after the stay at Antioch, 
 and, which is still more significant, was written from Rome ; 
 from Rome where St. Peter, if ever he was there at all, must 
 necessarily have been then ; from Rome, in fine, the Church's 
 
THOU ART PETER — EARLY INTERPRETATIONS. 3<S7 
 
 centre, and tlie see of the Church's head. If then St. Paul be- 
 lieved in the primacy of his colleague, this epistle was not only 
 an act of rebellion against him, but a piece of actual perfidy 
 towards the Galatians, seeing that it left them entirely beyond 
 the pale of that Eoman unity, beyond which, we are told, there 
 is no salvation, and prevented them from so much as suspecting 
 either the necessity or the existence of any supreme head of the 
 Church other than Jesus Christ. 
 
 And why speak we of the Galatians? Not only the Gala- 
 tians, but the Corinthians, the Ephesians, the Thessalonians, the 
 Romans themselves, the faithful of all countries, in fine, have 
 been left by the authors of the epistles in ignorance on this point. 
 When there were so many different Churches, threatened with so 
 many dangers, united by so many spiritual ties, but otherwise 
 so isolated, of so little account in the eyes of the world, so lost 
 in the immensity of the empire, is it possible that there could be 
 men, and men, too, inspired by God, that could have written fifteen 
 epistles without telling them, without reminding them, at least, 
 if they knew it, that God had given them a common head ! For 
 it is a poor subterfuge to say, as is sometimes said, " The thing 
 was so universally known that it was needless to mention it." 
 The more you suppose it to have been universally known and 
 admitted — impossible though it be to maintain this in the face 
 of the words and the conduct of St. Paul — the more will it be 
 absurd to conceive that St. Paul, or St. John, or St. James, 
 or St. Peter himself, should never have made the slightest allu- 
 sion to it. 
 
 Assuming this, it is clear that we need little disquiet ourselves 
 about what tradition may teach contrary to facts so potent and 
 so indisputable. Should St. Peter's primacy be found positively 
 mentioned by authors of the second or of the first century, still, 
 with the epistles in our hand, we may pronounce those authors 
 mistaken. 
 
 But it so happens that more than four centuries had elapsed 
 before the words " Thou art Peter, 7 ' began to be generally in- 
 terpreted in the present Eoman sense. Down till then, notwith- 
 standing the visible advances made by the idea that was finally 
 to carry all before it, the most widely diffused opinion was pre- 
 cisely that which has been adopted by the Protestants for the 
 explanation of these words. " On this stone," says Chrysostom,- 1 
 " that is to say, on the faith of this confession, I will build my 
 
 1 Fifty-fifth Homily on Matt. *iii. 
 
388 HISTORY OP THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 ( Ihurch. This confession is that which the Apostle made in 
 reply to that question of the Master, ' And what say ye that I 
 am ?' — ' Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,' was 
 St. Peter's answer." " Then," says St. Ambrose, 1 " the Lord re- 
 plies to him : On tins stone I will build my Church, that is to 
 say, on this confession of the universal faith I build the faithful 
 that they may have life." " What," says St. Augustine, 2 " is 
 the meaning of this saying of Jesus Christ? It is this : I will 
 build my Church on this faith, on what has just been said, to wit, 
 Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." And else- 
 where, 3 " On this rock which, thou hast confessed, I will build 
 my Church ; for the rock was Christ." " It was Christ," says 
 St. Jerome also. 4 Christ or his vicar, we shall be told. Yes, it 
 is thus indeed that the matter is arranged at the present day ; 
 hut it will ever remain not the less true that these two Fathers 
 do not say so, and that at the moment when, if ever, they might 
 have been expected to express themselves distinctly. Whatever 
 leaning they, in common with the age in which they lived, 
 might have had for Roman centralization, they were still far 
 from regarding it as founded on a command emanating from 
 Cod; the idea of a certain preference accorded to St. Peter, did 
 not yet carry along with it in their minds that of a real, per- 
 manent, transmissible supremacy. Hence those contradictions, 
 those incoherences, which behoved to disappear on the system 
 being once regularly established, but which sufficiently prove 
 how far that still was from being the case. Origen, for example, 
 after having said somewhere that the rock is St. Peter, says not 
 the less at another place, 5 " The rock, that is, every disciple of 
 Christ. Is it not for all the Apostles, for each of them that he 
 has said, ' Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my 
 Church?'" Here then we have only in a more practical form 
 the explanation given by Jerome and Augustine. The rock, 
 that is, the confession of faith made by Peter, and every believer 
 who shall make the same confession with him, may apply to 
 himself the saying of winch he had, as it were, the first fruits on 
 this occasion. 
 
 Thus, whatever meaning may be given to these words, it still 
 remains to be proved that it was Rome, that it was the pope, 
 
 i On the 2d chap, to the Ephesians. ^ On the 1st Epistle of St. John. 
 
 :i On the Gospel of St. John. 
 
 •' Commentary on St. Matthew. See al-o Cyril on the Trinity, ]. iv. Hilary on the Trinity, 
 ]. si. and vi. Basil of Seleucia's Homily on St. Matthew, &c. 
 -* Commentary on St. Matthew. 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES TRADITION. 385 
 
 that was exclusively called to reap the benefit of them. Were 
 it demonstrated that St. Peter was the head of the Church, still 
 the Roman question, properly so called, would not thereby have 
 been the more advanced, or made the clearer. 
 
 First of all, how shall we dispose of chronological difficulties ? 
 We do not insist that the quarter of a century assigned by tradi- 
 tion to the episcopate of St. Peter shall be proved to us to a day, 
 to a year, to about two years ; but, indeed, make the calculation 
 in what manner you please, it is not two, or four, or ten years 
 that are wanting : one knows not where to find a single year 
 that could have seen that Apostle at the head of the faithful 
 in Rome. Tradition places his death, as well as that of St. Paul, 
 in the year 66. Now, the book of the Acts shews him to have 
 been at Jerusalem, at Caesarea, at Antioch, until the year 51 or 
 52. Thus, already we have but fourteen or fifteen years left 
 over. Were these fourteen or fifteen years passed in Rome ? 
 In the year 57 or 58, St. Paul writes the epistle to the Romans, 
 the longest of his epistles, and not a remembrance, not an allu- 
 sion, not a word is there for the alleged founder and head of the 
 Church to which he writes. Nay more, he who at the close of 
 his letters salutes ordinarily no more than five or six persons, 
 and often not so many, on this occasion salutes twenty-seven. 
 And Peter is not among them. In the year 62 or 63, he writes 
 from Rome to the churches of Philippi, Ephesus, and Colosse ; he 
 gives them a multiplicity of details about what he has seen and 
 heard, yet not a word about Peter. In 66, the very year of his 
 death, again he writes from Rome to Timothy. He tells him his 
 position, his isolation, his sufferings. " All men forsook me," 
 says he, "except Onesiphorus." Where, then, was Peter? 
 
 Before these arguments of facts, of figures, what can tradition 
 avail, even, supposing it to be as clear and constant as we have 
 seen that it is vague and variable? Is it not a problem to ex- 
 plain how there could have arisen, unless from a total forgetful - 
 ness of the New Testament, the idea of Peter's episcopacy at 
 Rome ? Is it not also a problem, and a very sad problem withal. 
 to conceive how there should be men who know these details as 
 well as we, and who not the less persist in placing at the foun- 
 dation of Roman Catholic unity, this old and eternal lie which 
 they are sensible falls to dust in their hands ? 
 
 And now, that we may not altogether pass over a point which the 
 preceding remarks, nevertheless, would authorize our setting aside, 
 is tradition, as we have expressed it, at least clear and constant ? 
 
390 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 We might take one by one all the passages in the Fathers 
 which are adduced in favour of the popedom, and we might 
 shew that there is not one of them positive enough to he of any 
 serious avail in a question where the matter at issue is to prove 
 at once the law and the fact. Let a single passage he pointed 
 out to us, not where something is vaguely said about the privi- 
 leges of St. Peter, of the rights of the bishop of Rome, but where 
 it is positively said — 
 
 That St. Peter was the supreme head of the Church ; 
 
 That the other Apostles were subject to him ; 
 
 That all his rights have passed to his successors ; 
 
 That the pope is thus the sole legitimate source of all the 
 spiritual powers exercised in the Church; 
 
 And then, then only will the subject be worth discussing. 
 Are we asking too much '? The antiquity of this fact, now held 
 as incontrovertible in all the pages of all the Roman books that 
 have been written for the last thousand years, so impossible is it 
 from the moment of its being admitted, not to speak of it at 
 every turn, — the antiquity of this fact some would fain we should 
 consider as proved by a few lines of a Father who, in works fill- 
 ing ten volumes, shall have two or three times said something 
 approaching it ! But we have only to open those Fathers to find 
 passag-es in which it is utterly inconceivable that they should 
 not have spoken of the pope, had they believed in him ; and for 
 one word from which people hazard the inference that they be- 
 lieved in him, we should find a hundred which we might defy a 
 Roman Catholic to be able to write at the present day without 
 ceasing to be regarded as a Roman Catholic. 
 
 So much for the Fathers of the third and the fourth centuries ; 
 what then may we expect to find in those of the second and the 
 first ? In the second, we have Irenams. He admits., no doubt, 
 a journey made by Peter to Rome, a journey which might in 
 fact have taken place, although it is far from likely, in the course 
 of one of those years in which we cannot precisely determine 
 where that Apostle was ; he makes him concur with St. Paul in 
 the founding of the Church of that city ; but it is neither he nor 
 St. Paul, it is Linus, the second bishop of Rome, according to 
 present tradition, whom he names as having been the first. It is 
 to Linus also that the Apostolic constitutions 1 give this title, and 
 what is still more convincing, they represent him as having been 
 installed by St. Paul. In the first century we find Clemens 
 
 i Book vii. 46. 
 
DIFFICULTIES IN THE ROMAN POINT OF VIEW. 391 
 
 Romanus, the third or the fourth of the popes. 1 In his epistle to 
 the Corinthians he speaks of St. Peter as having died in the 
 Avest, but he does not say that it was at Rome ; an omission alto- 
 gether inexplicable, had it been the general opinion that he died 
 there. But does he not speak of him at least as having been 
 bishop of Rome ? No. As supreme head of the Church ? No. 
 Does he, the bishop of Rome, represent himself as his successor? 
 No. He puts at the head of his letter, u The Church of God 
 which is at Rome to the Church of God which is at Corinth." 
 Like St. Paul, he confounds bishop and presbyter ; he puts the 
 episcopi in the first rank and the deacons in the second. A 
 strange pope indeed ! Nevertheless, this is the very epistle 
 which, as we have said, was very nearly inserted afterwards in 
 the New Testament. What would the popes have made of it ? 
 Alas ! they would have done the same with it as they have done 
 with those of St. Paul and St. Peter. Not the less would they 
 have been popes ; not the less haughtily would they have trum- 
 peted the primacy, the popedom of St. Peter, and all the conse- 
 quences they have drawn from it. Once engaged in a false 
 course, of what moment is a little more or a little less ? 
 
 It was not this, then, to return to our council, that proved the 
 worst cause of embarrassment to the doctors of Trent. Never 
 departing from the Roman Catholic point of view, they found no 
 difficulty in keeping themselves easy with respect to the Pro- 
 testant objections, even though, like many of those we have 
 stated, they had all the eloquence of figures. Other difficulties, 
 all the more untoward, in that there was nothing Protestant 
 about them, risked intruding themselves into the discussion. 
 
 See, then, the pope, head of the Church, exclusive source of 
 all spiritual powers, &c. If such he be at the present day, he 
 must necessarily have been so, in point of lawful title at least, 
 since immediately after the death of Jesus Christ. Looking back 
 to that period, what are we to make of the other Apostles ? 
 
 Let us accept, as fully as you please, the pre-eminence of 
 Peter; still you cannot get rid of two facts which obstinately 
 refuse to bend to the Roman system, — one, that the colleagues of 
 Peter received from Jesus Christ, like him and at the same time 
 with him, their authority and their commission ; the other, that 
 they acted constantly, in the sequel, as persons entirely free to 
 
 1 The Apnslolic Constitutions were long attributed to him. It is now admitted that they 
 belong to the 4th century, with posterior intercalations, which renders the omission of .^t. 
 Peter's pontificate still more striking. 
 
392 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 transmit that authority and commission from themselves to whom- 
 soever they might deem fit. Paul laid his hands on Timothy : 
 Timothy laid his hands on a number of pastors, of bishops, to 
 adopt the language of Rome ; and in all the instructions given 
 l>y Paul on that subject there does not appear to have been any 
 question about establishing, or maintaining, any bond whatever 
 between those pastors and a supreme head. 
 
 Now, in whatever manner the relevancy of these two facts 
 may be sought to be lessened, they have a mighty bearing on 
 the point at issue. If there could exist, it matters not when, a 
 single generation of legitimate pastors independent of St. Peter, 
 the Roman chain is broken. Although it should be successfully 
 proved that in the next following generation, Peter, or his suc- 
 cessor, had become the centre, still we should be authorized to 
 see in him only a head in fact, not in right, and to view the 
 popedom only as an institution more or less useful in regard to 
 unity, not as an institution necessary for the transmission of 
 powers. Mark what Luther said at an epoch when he still pro- 
 claimed, as loudly as any, the necessity of there being a supreme 
 head of the Church, — u The bishop of Rome is above all by his 
 dignity. To him we must address ourselves in all cases of diffi- 
 culty. Yet I admit that I know not how I could defend against 
 the Greeks the supremacy that I concede to him." 1 
 
 But Luther, perhaps, without being aware of it, was already 
 detached from that unity which he still preached, and this may 
 have magnified to his eyes the objections to it. Let us turn, 
 then, from the man of the sixteenth to the man of the third cen- 
 tury, Origen, — " If you believe that (rod has built his Church 
 on Peter, and on Peter alone, what will you make of John, the 
 son of thunder, and of each of the other ten Apostles'? Was it 
 not for the Apostles, for each of them, that it was said, " The 
 gates of hell shall not prevail against it;' 7 and again. — "Upon 
 this rock I will build my Church ?"- It is curious that the Roman 
 Church forces us to go to the Fathers to confront her out of them 
 more surely, with objections which we should find quite as well 
 in the Apostles themselves. Origen's idea is no other than that 
 of St. Paul, when writing to the Ephesians, — " Ye are built upon 
 the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets.'' There is nothing 
 even in the Apocalypse, where we do not approve in general of 
 dogmas being looked for, that does not here come to our support. 
 What are we to conclude respecting those "twelve foundations, 
 
 1 Letter to Dungersheim, 1519. - Commentary on St. Matthew. 
 
CO-EXISTENCE OF PATRIARCHS AND THE POPE. 89o 
 
 and in them the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb'?'' 
 How can we imagine that this could have been written, even in 
 an allegory, by one who believed in that high primacy of one of 
 the twelve '? 
 
 We have said accordingly : let there have been but a single 
 generation of bishops, legitimate, though independent of St. 
 Peter, and the chain is broken. But have we but one genera- 
 tion to appeal to ? Who will shew us in the second, or in the 
 third century, a single trace of the intervention of the pope in 
 the ordination of bishops ? What astonishment, what profound 
 stupefaction, would have seized the believers of Jerusalem, 
 Ephesus, and Antioch, had any one bethought himself of telling 
 them at that epoch that their bishops were usurpers and intru- 
 ders, seeing that they had not derived their powers from Kome ! 
 Four or five centuries later, in the west, in Italy itself, amid all 
 those waves which were impelled by the same wind towards 
 Rome, Churches still were found that, like islands, opposed that 
 immense current. It is only in the tenth century that we find 
 that of Milan submit definitively to the papal supremacy. Less 
 than one hundred years before that, Roboald, bishop of Aloa, 
 when consulted on the subject by the archbishop, replied that 
 he would rather have his nose sjjlit up to his eyes 1 than advise 
 him to submit. 
 
 The Roman Church has even been obliged to make some con- 
 cessions in this respect, and little as the consecpiences have been 
 pressed, they would lead far enough. It gives the title of 
 patriarchs, with certain special honours, to the bishops who 
 occupy, or are understood to occupy, the seats of St. Peter's col- 
 leagues. We must refer the reader to Hurter 2 for the long ten- 
 tative efforts by which Romanists have come at length to explain, 
 for better or worse, by evading what seemed too stubborn to 
 bend to their purposes, the co-existence of patriarchs and the 
 pope, of a supreme head and of primitively independent heads, 
 and whose position cannot, in point of right, have undergone any 
 change. In the actual state of things, as the patriarchs are all 
 either beyond the pale of the Roman Church, or mere arch- 
 bishops appointed by the pope, this system presents no serious 
 inconveniences to the central authority ; all that it costs is the 
 
 1 Quod prius sustineret nasum suum scindi usque ad oculos. Ughelli, Italia sacra. 
 
 2 Institutions of the Church, ch. v. The very name of pupe, long given to a certain 
 number of bishops, became official only under Leo I., and exclusive under Gregory Vll. 
 towards the year 10S0. 
 
39-1 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 putting upon the altar, when the pope officiates pontifically, a 
 lofty tiara surrounded by five mitres, as emblematical of the pope- 
 dom amid the patriarchates. But if, without keeping ourselves to 
 things as they are, we were to ask ourselves what they might 
 be, to what results might we not come? That each of the 
 Apostles had been established in a town ; that that town had 
 been governed ever since by an uninterrupted succession of 
 bishops, successors of the first, — so that we should have eleven 
 patriarchs, eleven bishops warranted to believe themselves as 
 independent of the bishop of Rome as the eleven Apostles were 
 of Peter ; eleven bishops, consequently, entitled to ordain other 
 bishops, to establish bishopricks, to exercise, in fine, each in his 
 own sphere, the plenitude of the present papal power. Here, 
 then, we have the pope no more than primus inter pares, and 
 if other dioceses should at all comprise, as might also have hap- 
 pened, a country of some extent — one France, another Spain, 
 another Germany, and so on — what would there have remained 
 for the diocese of St. Peter ? 
 
 All this is not the case, but all this is possible, and when we 
 come to speak of right, possibility suffices. If the bishop of 
 Rome could once have risked being, and remaining, merely the 
 bishop of Rome or of Italy, his quality of universal bishop is a 
 bare fact which does not prove the right. The Church, let us 
 assume, may have had the power, if she had the will, to concede 
 to him a certain universal jurisdiction ; but in point of divine 
 right, he is only a bishop, or at the most only a patriarch like 
 another. 
 
 We see the patriarchal see of Constantinople, erected so long 
 after the other three, 1 obtain almost immediately the pre-emi- 
 nence, and this, says the Roman Catechism, because Constanti- 
 nople became the seat of the empire. That of Jerusalem, on the 
 contrary, which might have preferred so many claims to be con- 
 sidered as the first, was reputed the fourth. Why ? Because Jeru- 
 salem was, politically, the least considerable of the four cities. 
 Thus Rome herself makes the admission ; it was for reasons 
 purely human that the second capital of the empire saw her 
 bishop become the second of the Christian world. The same 
 motives, therefore, might have sufficed for raising to the first 
 rank that of the first capital, and the conquest of the Roman 
 empire by the popes no better proved their right to possess it 
 than the formation itself of that empire proved the right of the 
 
 1 Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. 
 
PRINCIPLES BROUGHT OUT IN THE DISCUSSION. 395 
 
 ancient Komans to be the masters of the world. A conquest, 
 made in what manner you please, is but a fact. The question 
 of right remains the same after as before. It is for the same 
 reason that we leave untouched, and that without any injustice, 
 the services which the popedom may have rendered to Christi- 
 anity and to Europe. Even were there no shade to mar the 
 picture that is presented to us, the theological and the moral 
 question is not thereby advanced. Every despotism has neces- 
 sarily some happy results ; peace, order, progress in the arts and 
 literature, have not, within certain limits, a surer basis to rest 
 upon. Never was France more peaceable internally than under 
 the reign of the man who had said, — " The state, that is my- 
 self." Shall this be held a proof that he had the logical right 
 to say so? "The Church, that is myself," said the popedom. 
 The benefits it has conferred, were they incontestable, would 
 not, therefore, prove that it was in the right, and it is only by 
 a sophism that the discussion can in our days be transferred to 
 that ground. 1 
 
 Such was, in fact, the conclusion at which, in the discussions 
 of the council, all those divines or prelates arrived who sought 
 for reasons rather than words, and were bold enough to utter 
 them when found. We could wish that the leading speeches 
 delivered on this occasion were in the hands of every honest and 
 reflective Eoman Catholic ; we could hand them over to him 
 with the utmost confidence, without altering a word, and adding 
 nothing but an invitation to deduce the consequences that flow 
 from them. Not that they do not further involve more than one 
 principle which we should have to contest, seeing that it was in 
 the interests of the bishops, not of religious liberty, that the 
 speakers talked of abasing the pope ; but, putting all things 
 together, we should not let these much disquiet us. The pope 
 once given up, what would become of the rest? and notwith- 
 standing all their protestations to the contrary, those certainly 
 
 1 De Maistre indirectly admits this. " The French," says he, " have had, thanks to Charle- 
 magne, the honour of constituting, humanly speaking, the Catholic Church in the world, 
 by raising its head to a rank — without which he would have teen no better than a patriarch 
 of Constantinople, the pitiable sport of Christian sultans." Is not this saying clearly enough, 
 that if the popes had not become kings of Rome, the sovereigns would not have seen in them 
 anything more than patriarchs ? Is not this tantamount to saying, a little less clearly, that 
 previous to that, they were nothing else? Let us agree with him also in what he says of 
 Charlemagne, for we are aware there are some who will absolutely have it that Rome was 
 given to the popes by Constantine, the first of the Christian emperors. Although Ariosto 
 sets down this donation as among the number of falsehoods which Astolphe found in the 
 moon, with the prayers of the wicked, lovers' sighs, &c — so many historical lies are brought 
 into credit again that we must not be too sanguine in thinking that we have done with them 
 in this case. 
 
396 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 did give him up, who, at Trent, made the speeches of which our 
 objections are almost an analysis and an abstract. 
 
 With regard to the harsh truths which came out in the course 
 of this debate, it would be curions to confront them with the 
 assertions of the popes, when, speaking without control, they 
 trace the bold picture of their rights. We should not go in 
 search of the raving tirades of a Gregory VII., a Boniface VIII. , 
 a Paul IV., or a Sixtus V. ; the most moderate bulls would 
 suffice for our purpose. "Let all remember,'' it is said in the 
 Encyclical Letter of 1832, " that it is to the Roman pontiff that 
 there has been given by Jesus Christ the full power of feeding, 
 directing, and governing the Church, as has been declared by 
 the Fathers of the council of Florence.'' The Fathers of Flo- 
 rence ! Why, then, not those of Trent, whom you are so fond 
 of quoting, and who, in fact, are quoted some lines farther on, 
 upon the question of the infallibility of the Church? Why, be- 
 cause at Florence, under the pope's dictation, the matter had 
 passed without discussion ; whereas, at Trent, Avhere discussion 
 was ventured upon, the popedom was quite happy at the members 
 being so complacent as to say nothing about it at all. Yes, Roman 
 Catholics, not a word ! The very man who is pointed out to you 
 as at the summit of the hierarchy, the Council of Trent, in the 
 course of a long decree on the hierarchy, has not found the 
 opportunity of naming. You might read that decree from begin- 
 ning to end without ever suspecting that there was a pope in 
 the world. Of the eight canons that follow, you might read 
 seven without any more suspicion on the subject ; then, quite at 
 the end, you would find one condemning the opinion that bishops 
 named by the pope are not legitimate bishops ; but even there 
 it is not said that they are the only legitimate bishops. 
 
 How are we to reconcile this excessive moderation with the 
 warmth of indignation which seized the assembly one day be- 
 cause a Spanish bishop, Avosmediano, had advanced that the 
 intervention of the pope in the institution of bishops is not ab- 
 solutely necessary? " Some prelates," says Pallavicini, 1 "with 
 an imprudent or affected zeal, exclaimed, ' Turn him out !' 
 Others went so far as to exclaim, Anathema ! Like insults 
 resounded on all sides ; others again tried to prevent his being 
 heard by shuffling with their feet or hissing." Had he had less 
 reason on his side, would there have been such a noise? He 
 would have done better indeed, to say the truth, not to have 
 
 1 Book xix. eh. v. 
 
ARCHBISHOP OF GRENADA'S TAUNTS. 397 
 
 stated that the Archbishop of Saltzburg named and instituted 
 his four suffragans, for one could reply that it was in virtue of 
 a concession on the part of the pope ; but what answer could be 
 made to all he urged before he had referred to that ? He had 
 said that the Chrysostoms, the Augustines, the Ambroses, had 
 not been instituted by the pope ; he had said that the canons of 
 Nice, in regulating what related to the institution of bishops, 
 make no mention of the pope. If this was true, why make a 
 tumult ? If false, why not decree the contrary '? 
 
 But Avosmediano was not alone. Guerrero, Archbishop of 
 Grenada, declared, that all bishops, including the pope, are 
 equal and brethren, and that the sole veritable inequality exist- 
 ing among them is an inequality of jurisdiction, an ecclesiastical 
 and human inequality. In support of this view he quoted a 
 large enough number of the writings of the first ages of the 
 Church, where not only do popes give to mere bishops the name 
 of brethren, which might, strictly speaking, be from politeness 
 only, but where bishops themselves addressed the bishop of Rome 
 as their brother and colleague. He shewed that even at the 
 epoch when the pope began to be generally recognised as head 
 of the Church, the bishops still spoke to him only as an admin- 
 istrative and hierarchical head, not at all as a man from whom 
 they could have believed that they held their authority ; witness 
 Augustine, who in his epistles treats popes Innocent I. and Boni- 
 face I. 1 as colleagues ; witness Jerome also, writing to Evagrius, 
 that whatever be the place where a man is a bishop, whether at 
 Rome or at Eugubium, at Constantinople or at Rhegium, each 
 bishop has the same merit and the same priesthood, and all are 
 successors of the Apostles. The archbishop made those espe- 
 cially the objects of his raillery who had said that no doubt the 
 Apostles had been made bishops by Jesus Christ, but that Peter 
 alone had had the right bestowed on him of making others ; he 
 asked them if they had never then read the book of the Acts. 
 He made very merry also with those who alleged that the 
 Apostles, before setting themselves to the work of the ministry, 
 
 1 Hoc etiam fratri et consaccrdoti nostro Bonifacio, vel aliis earum parti um episcopis, 
 pro confirmando isto canone, innotescat. (Council of Carthage, 419.) This passage has 
 often heen adduced in favour of the popedom ; it only bears more powerfully against it. 
 Are we told that the Carthaginian Fathers here recognise the primacy of the pope ? True, 
 hut in this they call him brother and colleague, which absolutely excludes the idea of a 
 primacy such as Romanists would have had it to be since. They ask from him the confirma- 
 tion of their canons, it is added. By no means, but of one of their canons, the fortp-seeent h, 
 where the question relates to the apocryphal books. (See above, b. ii.) In fine, is it addressed 
 to him alone ? No. It is not even to him and some other bishops, but to him or to 
 some others. 
 
398 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 had had themselves ordained bishops by their colleague ; which, 
 nevertheless, is the only explanation whereby to escape from the 
 alternative of having either twelve popes or none. He adverted, 
 in fine, to the famous letter of Pope Gregory I. to John, Bishop 
 of Constantinople, who affected the title of universal bishop, 
 " Have you come to this," wrote that pope to him, "that de- 
 spising your brethren, you desire to be called the only bishop !" 
 " Let your holiness acknowledge," he went on to say, " how 
 you puff yourself up with pride when you affect being called by 
 a name which no one ever pretended to who was truly holy. 
 No doubt, as your fraternity knows, the pontiffs of this apos- 
 tolical see which I fill, have received as a mark of honour, from 
 the venerable council of Chalcedon, the title of universal bishops. 
 And yet not one of them wished to be called by that name ; 
 none of them took to himself that rash qualification, for fear lest, 
 should he arrogate to himself in the episcopal dignity the glory 
 of being unique, he might seem to refuse it to all his brethren." 1 
 There is no end to the conclusions to be drawn from this curious 
 piece. Conclusions from the words : it is a pope who uses the 
 expression your holiness in addressing a bishop ; it is a pope 
 who says to him, " despising thy brethren" a proof of the equality 
 of bishops, including that of Rome, for it is clear that if any one 
 insults you, and you complain to him that he has despised his 
 brethren, you do not look on yourself as essentially superior to 
 him. Conclusions from the facts : when was it that the title in 
 question was given to the popes ? At the council of Chalcedon, 
 in the middle of the fifth century. How was it given to them ? 
 as a matter of right ? No ; as a mark of honour. Did they 
 accept it ? No one, down to Gregory I., that is, down to the 
 close of the sixth century, would consent to take it. And why ? 
 Because it was a rash qualification. Accordingly, it was not 
 only in its literal signification, but even as an honorific formula 
 that it was rejected by Gregory I. If he blames Bishop John, 
 it is not for having taken it away from him, Bishop of Rome 
 though he was', but for reasons drawn from the nature itself of 
 that title. Thus, whatever the pretensions of the See of Rome 
 were even at that early epoch, it is evident that the man that 
 
 1 Ad hoc perductus es ut, despectis fratribus, episcopus appetas solus vocari. Vestra 
 autern sanctitas atrnoscat quantum apud se tumeat, quse illo nomine vocari appetit, quo 
 vocari nullus praesumpsit qui veraciter sanctus fuit. Xumquid non, sicut vestra frater- 
 nitas novit, per venerandum Chalcedonense concilium hujus apostolicae sedes antistites uni- 
 versalis, oblato honore, vocati sunt. Sed tamen nullus unquam tali vocabulo appellari voluit, 
 nullus sihi hoc temerarium nomen arripuit, ne si sihi in pontificatus gradu gloriam siugulari- 
 uuis arriperet, banc omnibus fratribus deuegasse videretur. 
 
THE POPE EVERYTHING OR NOTHING. 3 ( Ji) 
 
 could have traced those lines, considered himself as neither 
 universal bishop, nor as the source of the authority of the 
 bishops. 
 
 Such then were the memorials of the past which those who 
 desired to have the superiority of bishops to priests declared to 
 be of divine right, were not afraid to evoke in the midst of the 
 council. We have said already, that this opinion in itself was 
 not displeasing to the ultramontanists. They dreaded it only 
 in view of the consequences that flowed from it, and the argu- 
 ments to which recourse was had might suffice to shew them its 
 full bearing. Farther doubt was impossible ; to arm the epis- 
 copate with the divine right as respected mere priests, would be 
 to arm them with it as respected the pope. 
 
 There was kept, therefore, perpetually suspended, like a 
 sword above the assembly, this alarming consequence, which the 
 Spaniards themselves, no more than the Gallicans, proposed to de- 
 duce in all its rigour, but at which they, like the others, would have 
 shuddered had they better understood the results to which it might 
 lead. Logically there is no middle point; the pope is everything, 1 
 or nothing ; the keystone of the arch, or a stone which has no 
 more importance of itself than any other ; the sole universal 
 bishop, or a mere bishop accidentally elevated to the presidence 
 of the episcopal body, and whom the Church might either replace 
 by another, or reduce to the common level without even replacing 
 him. However great the danger might be, the legates and their 
 adherents, who saw it best, had not even the resource left them 
 of converting it into an argument; for it was necessary that they 
 should provide for the case of there being a majority, notwith- 
 standing all they might say, in favour of the divine right of 
 bishops, and they had to guard against depriving themselves 
 beforehand of the means of attenuating the bearing of that vote 
 to the utmost extent possible. Had they exclaimed with an 
 excess of zeal and alarm that it would be tantamount to voting 
 the ruin of the hierarchy and the Church, what, in the event of 
 that being voted, could they have replied to the heretics who 
 might take advantage of it as involving such a result ? It was 
 only in secret, therefore, and with many precautions, that they 
 represented to the waverers the frightful mischief they would 
 do were they to join the Spaniards. Next, as they did not ven- 
 ture as yet to reckon on a respectable majority, they tried to pre- 
 vent the voting from taking place. " The Confession of Augs- 
 
 1 " Without the pope there is no Christianity." — De Maistre. 
 
400 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 burg," it was said, "was silent on the point; what good purpose 
 did it serve to defend what was not attacked?" It was replied, 
 that though the Confession of Augsburg did not treat the matter 
 dogmatically, it decided it sufficiently in point of fact, seeing 
 that it did not acknowledge either the pope or the bishops of the 
 pope ; that there was in this, therefore, very really in the eyes 
 of Koman Catholics, an error which the council could not avoid 
 condemning. Thus the subterfuge proving of no avail, they had 
 to submit to the questions being voted upon. 
 
 The vote did therefore take place, in order to give precision 
 to the question, on the adjunction of the words de jure divino in 
 the decree, where it is said that bishops are superior to priests. 
 Fifty-four voices were given for and a hundred and twenty-seven 
 against. Is it true, as Sarpi affirms, that a certain number of 
 the bishops who were partisans of the divine right, not daring to 
 vote according to their conscience, and not wishing to vote against 
 it, staid away ? Pallavicini says no ; but a letter from Visconti 
 to Cardinal Borromeo positively attests it, and Payva 1 makes the 
 number of prelates at this time attending the council amount to 
 two hundred and thirty. There were about fifty, then, who did 
 not vote at all. Certain it is that the legates durst not avail 
 themselves of this vote as a ground for stopping discussion. We 
 see it recommence the day following, and the more the dispute 
 waxed in fierceness the more was it forgotten that the heretics 
 would take advantage of all the admissions made on both sides. 
 
 Hence it was that, in one of the last sittings, the Polonese 
 Zeschowid, Bishop of Segna, Avas not afraid to transfer the ques- 
 tion to the ever perilous ground of the constitution and authority 
 of the council. " If the authority of the bishops," said he, " does 
 not proceed from God, what can that of an assemblage of bishops 
 amount to ? An assembly, however numerous, can derive its 
 authority only from the same source from which the members 
 themselves derive theirs. If each of us be nothing but what 
 the pope makes us, the council is nothing but what he makes it, 
 and our authority sinks to the level of a body of doctors pro- 
 nouncing, but not infallibly, on the questions submitted to them. 
 This assuredly is not the idea of the council, that the nations 
 and kings that have been urgently calling for it had formed to 
 themselves. As for myself," said he, " had I not had the 
 conviction that we should be here with the sanction of God and 
 of the Holy Ghost, never should I have come to Trent. Since 
 
 1 Defense du Cuncile de Trente, 1. 1. 
 
THE ULTRXMONTANISTS CONFOUNDED LA1NEZ REPLIES. 401 
 
 there possibly may come to be, what I never suspected, uncer- 
 tainties with respect to the nature of our authority as council, 
 from the first, what Christendom, what we ourselves, ought to 
 believe and to teach upon this point? In secular law proceed- 
 ings, from the moment that there is the slightest doubt with 
 respect to the competence of the tribunal, does it not begin by 
 examining that question itself, and by declaring in virtue of 
 what sanction, its judgment will be pronounced ?" 
 
 The Bishop of Segna very well knew why this had not been 
 done, and what were the hindrances opposed to its ever being 
 done. As for his arguments, we heartily agree with them, but 
 with this remark with regard to them as well as those of all the 
 prelates of the opposition, that they went a great deal farther 
 than he had the appearance of believing. " If each bishop," 
 said he, " derives authority only from the pope, then no more will 
 an assembly of bishops derive theirs from any other source." 
 What, then, would have been his reply, if, pursuing the same 
 line of argument, but giving it a different application, it had 
 been said to him, "Each bishop is fallible; an assembly of 
 bishops, therefore, cannot be infallible?" 
 
 This speech effectually opened all eyes to the perils of the 
 situation. Many of the leading partisans of the divine right 
 began to be seriously alarmed at the consequences that might 
 result from a dispute which nobody knew how to bring to a 
 close. 
 
 The ultramontanists were confounded. What was now to be 
 done ? To raise the cry of heresy ! But those same Spaniards 
 had shewn themselves, in all questions relating to doctrine, the 
 stiffest defenders of Romanism. They had repeatedly held firm 
 when the pope himself had been disposed to yield ; they were, 
 moreover, the representatives of the only prince who had as yet 
 made no concession to heretics. Should they proceed to vote ? 
 But a vote had been already taken, and the discussion had con- 
 tinued notwithstanding. The majority durst not avail itself of 
 the vote they had obtained ; they felt that to vote was not to 
 reply, especially on a question in a great measure historical, and 
 on which every one might exercise his own judgment. They 
 proceeded, therefore, to attempt a reply once for all, and that 
 through Lainez as their organ, the general of the Jesuits, to- 
 wards whom the eyes of all Italy had long been turned. Ever 
 since the colloquy of Poissy, where he had won the esteem and 
 admiration of the Roman party by his audacity, he had been 
 
 2 c 
 
402 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 rapidly rising in reputation ; the court of Rome and the ultra- 
 montanists of all countries had magnified him in proportion to 
 the services expected from him and his order. To your task, 
 then, thou eldest born of Loyola ! Behold the scaffolding that 
 requires being propped ! Behold Spain, most Catholic Spain, 
 setting herself to unsettle its foundations, though never unsettled 
 before. It is time, and more than time, that help were at hand. 
 
 On the 20th of October Lainez addressed the council. His 
 friends had contrived to secure an entire sitting for him. Great 
 was the expectation on both sides. 
 
 Shall we take his speech, then, as reported in Sarpi or in Pal- 
 lavicini? They both state that they had transcribed it from an 
 authentic copy, and yet these two speeches have almost nothing 
 in common. That given by Sarpi is the better reasoned of the 
 two ; that in Pallavicini is the more subtle, more Jesuitical, using 
 that expression not offensively, but merely as expressive of the 
 feeling we experience from it. The historian, accordingly, con- 
 siders it as "magnificent," though he admits that that of Sarpi 
 has fine passages in it, and that he himself long believed it 
 authentic. For the rest he gives no warranty for his own being 
 more so. All things well considered, that of Sarpi seems to us 
 to do more honour to Lainez than the long tissue of quibbles 
 of which the historian makes him the author. Moreover, the 
 doctrines laid down in both are the same, and our observa- 
 tions will bear as much as possible on what forms the essence 
 of both. 
 
 Thus, according to Sarpi, he first laid down the principle that 
 all comparison between the Church and civil societies was neces- 
 sarily inexact. Civil societies have in themselves, said he, the 
 source of all the powers by means of which they constitute and 
 maintain themselves ; the Church, on the contrary, has neither 
 made nor constituted itself: it was Jesus Christ, its sovereign 
 monarch, who began by laying down laws, and then set himself 
 to construct the body which those laws were to govern. From 
 this we see that the Church came into being posterior to the 
 laws, in virtue of which she is what she is ; essentially subject, 
 consequently, she has not in herself, and by herself, any kind of 
 liberty, jurisdiction, or power. Is she not constantly represented 
 in Scripture under the image of a field that has been sown, a 
 net thrown into the sea, a building ? But a field is not sown by 
 itself; a net does not go of its own accord into the sea ; a build- 
 in"- has not, and cannot have anv influence on its own construe- 
 
DISCOURSE PRONOUNCED BY LAINEZ. 403 
 
 tion. Now, the first and only foundation on which the Church 
 has been built, in so far as it is a divine building 1 , but destined 
 to perpetuate itself on the earth, is St. Peter. To him were 
 given the keys of the kingdom of heaven ; to him alone it was 
 said, " Feed my sheep," and no one will affirm that the sheep 
 have anything to do with the direction of the flock of which 
 each is only a unit. When Jesus Christ was upon this earth, it 
 is evident that none of the believers had the smallest power or 
 the smallest jurisdiction. The pope being his successor, nothing 
 is changed, nothing can be changed, in this primitive order : it 
 is in the pope, therefore, that we have to look for the plenitude 
 of power and jurisdiction. Moreover, it was to St. Peter alone 
 that Jesus Christ said that he had prayed for him " that his 
 faith might not fail," — there is not, and there cannot be, anything 
 infallible except in the pope. 
 
 Assuming this, still following Lainez, it was to St. Peter that 
 the charge reverted of conferring the quality of bishops on his 
 colleagues. Did he do so ? The opinion is very probable ; if 
 not, the simplest thing is to say that Jesus Christ did for once 
 what behoved to have been done by his vicar. The bishops, 
 consequently, are the successors of the Apostles only in the sense 
 of their being in their place, but just as a bishop does not pre- 
 tend to derive his authority from his predecessor, so the Apostles 
 were no more than the predecessors of the bishops, and having 
 nothing properly inherent in themselves, had nothing which 
 they could leave to them. Will it be said that, according to this, 
 the pope would have it in his power to abolish the episcopate ? 
 No. It is of divine right that there are bishops in the Church ; 
 but this hinders not that each bishop, viewed individually, may 
 exist only by papal right. The pope cannot destroy at once 
 all the bishoprics, since it is God's will that they should exist ; 
 but he may pronounce, in a sovereign manner, on the existence, 
 or the non-existence, of each bishopric in particular. Though 
 St. Paul has said that " the Church is the pillar and foundation 
 of the truth," this does not mean that she is so by herself; the 
 Apostle thus expressed himself only because he contemplated the 
 Church in conjunction with her head, from whom she cannot in 
 fact be separated, and who, in virtue of that intimate union, 
 renders her infallible by the sole fact of his being and remaining 
 at her head. 
 
 It will be seen that Lainez did not stop half way. Then, 
 as now, there was nothing complete and logical, but ultra- 
 
404 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 montane Roman Catholicism — the Roman Catholicism of the 
 Jesuits. 1 
 
 Happily the terms logical and complete, no more now than 
 then, are synonymes for reasonable and true. Shall we attempt 
 to refute the above strange line of argnment in detail ? The false- 
 ness of the principle from which it starts throws sufficient light 
 on the absurdity of the consequences deduced from it. Lainez 
 begins with saying that the constituent laws of the Chnrch 
 existed before her, and the conclusion he draws from this is, that, 
 born in dependence, in that dependence she has necessarily re- 
 mained. No doubt, indeed, if it has been so ordered that she 
 should be subject to the pope, she ought to be so, and to be so 
 always. But has it been really so ordered? That is the ques- 
 tion. The more you insist on attributing to God the institution 
 not only of a head, but of a head such as the pope conceives 
 himself to be, such as he says that he is when bold enough to do 
 so. — the more force should you give to the silence of Scripture 
 on the alleged consequences of certain words addressed to St. 
 Peter. But in proportion as the line of argument pursued by 
 Lainez would have shewn little tact in dealing with Protes- 
 tants, — free to attack the principle directly, and to go up at 
 once to the primitive equality of pastors, — it was embarrassing to 
 men who had to uphold with one hand what they were pulling 
 down with the other. 
 
 As to the question of the council's authority, he had only to 
 follow out his deductions, and the conclusion was prepared to 
 his hand. What others had omitted as a serious objection, 
 namely, that according to his system an assembly of bishops 
 would be nothing but by the pope, he adopted as a consequence 
 quite as plain, and quite as legitimate, as any other. Among 
 the reasons he adduced there are some precious ones to be noted, 
 bearing against those who imagine that they escape all objec- 
 tions by giving up to us the infallibility of the pope, and throw- 
 ing themselves on that of councils. " Each bishop is fallible,'' 
 said Lainez ; "an assembly of bishops therefore is fallible also; 
 and if you admit their decisions as infallible, you admit, by that 
 of itself, that this infallibility comes from elsewhere — that is to 
 say, from the pope, for he alone is called to confirm its decrees. 
 Did the authority of councils proceed from the bishops who com- 
 
 1 " I venture not to oast the smallest doubt on the infallibility of a council -general , all 1 
 say is. that it holds this high privilege of it* head, to whom the promises were made." — Ds 
 Haistre. 
 
THE GALLICANS INCENSED AT LAINEZ. 40') 
 
 pose them, how could we give the name of councils-general to 
 those which were never reckoned more than a very small part 
 of the episcopal body '? Under Paul III.," he added, " have we 
 not seen the most important questions decided by fewer than 
 fifty bishops ? If their decrees have become laws of the Church, 
 it is not, evidently, because fifty bishops have been found of the 
 same opinions, but because the pope, approving of their opinions, 
 has given them the force of law. In every council, however 
 numerous, if the pope be present, it is the pope alone who pro- 
 nounces, witness the formula Approbante concilio or Prcesentc 
 concilio, employed in this case, according to which it is clear 
 that the pope begins by pronouncing, and that the part of the 
 bishops is reduced to a simple declaration of adhesion, a declara- 
 tion which they could not refuse, either individually", or as a 
 body." 
 
 He was right. This is no more than we have never ceased to 
 say and demonstrate from the first page of this history. When a 
 council and a pope meet, one of the two must necessarily be 
 everything, the other nothing ; every intermediate solution is 
 illusory in point of theory, arid in practice impossible. Ultra- 
 montanism involves the annihilation of councils ; Gallicanism 
 the annihilation of the pope. But as Gallicanism, in the end, 
 cannot do without the pope, while ultramontanism does very 
 well without councils, — all explanation of difficulties among 
 Roman Catholics is inevitably to the advantage of the ultra- 
 montanists. 
 
 No speech as yet had been more praised or more criticised. 
 The ultramontanists extolled it to the skies ; the others saw 
 nothing in it but audacity, senselessness, and impudence. At 
 Rome, the only feeling was that of alarm ; the speaker was well- 
 nigh censured for having spoken out so harshly the whole bear- 
 ings of the papal system. The legates even besought him not. 
 to publish his speech ; and that time might be given for the sub- 
 sidence of the angry feelings it had excited, the sittings were 
 suspended. 
 
 But those angry feelings did not subside. The bishop of 
 Paris and the French ambassadors distinguished themselves by 
 the bitterness of their complaints. " The Church, then," said a 
 bishop, " is no longer the spouse of Jesus Christ, but a slave 
 prostituted to the caprice of a man ! This monstrous system, 
 invented scarcely fifty years ago, we must hear supported in 
 full council ! And by whom ! By an isolated and unknown 
 
406 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 doctor ? No ; by a man openly protected by the pope, openly 
 cried up at Rome as the champion of the Church. The other 
 religious orders, it would appear, have not done enough of mis- 
 chief, so that a new one was required, already more famous for 
 its encroachments within than for its successes without the 
 Church. If there ever were councils in which the pope alone 
 pronounced, it was an abuse and a usurpation. In the decree of 
 the council of Jerusalem, transcribed at length in the book of 
 the Acts, the preamble runs, — ' The apostles, and elders, and 
 brethren.' Not only is St. Peter not mentioned, but the decree 
 is drawn up in conformity with the advice of St. James, who 
 spoke the last. 1 As for the rest, Ave ought to be very glad that the 
 chief of the Jesuits has so clearly unmasked the principles of his 
 order. One may now see whether the University of Paris was 
 wrong in condemning their society as dangerous to the faith, and 
 likely to disturb the peace of the Church." 
 
 All was not equally correct in these recriminations ; but Pal- 
 lavicini is still less so in the assertions he opposes to them. " It 
 was not fifty years ago," said he, "but two centuries ago, that 
 the doctrine of Lainez was maintained, and by a Frenchman, 
 too, Noel Herve." Two centuries ! That brings us a great way, 
 indeed, in the settlement of a question bearing on a matter 
 which ought to have dated, not from two but from sixteen cen- 
 turies before ! It is true that one might further quote Albert, 
 Bonaventura, Durand, and others, more ancient than Herve, 
 who, " without openly professing it," adds the historian, " speak 
 of it in a very favourable manner." Though they had spoken 
 of it still more favourably, it would only be carrying the date 
 two or three centuries farther back ; what shall we make of the 
 nine or ten remaining centuries? Betwixt the opinion of Lainez 
 and that of the Apostles, said the bishop, there is an abyss of 
 sixteen centuries. No, says Pallavicini, this is a calumny. 
 The abyss is one of only a thousand years. Singular candour! 
 Then, says he also, is it not a calumny, "furious and extrava- 
 gant," to make this bishop speak thus ? As if he had said any- 
 thing that was not then in the mouths of all Gallicans ! But 
 let us mark, at least, how matters then stood with almost the 
 whole higher clergy of France, and that in the middle of the 
 
 1 "St. James spoke in his turn from the elevation of his patriarchal fee," says De Maistre. 
 " only to confirm what the chief of the Apostles had decided." So to arrange the narrative 
 of the Acta, is not only to alter it but to parody it. One might as well represent St. Peter 
 with the tiara on his he^id. and surrounded with cardinals, :-.s he is seen in some paintings of 
 the fifteenth century. 
 
A PLUNGE INTO FALSE PRINCIPLES. 407 
 
 sixteenth century, in the face of the conquests made by the Re- 
 formation, when all things seemed to urge them to press closely 
 round their Church's head. What a change has taken place since 
 then ! And how surprised would be the bishops of that period, 
 and those, too, of the seventeenth century, with Bossuet at their 
 head, to see their successors now on their knees before the pope 
 and the Jesuits ! Is this any just matter of astonishment ? The 
 human mind has no liking for false positions. The consequences 
 of Gallicanism have been felt ; it has been clearly seen, that in 
 presence of an essentially reasoning age, a choice must be made 
 between Rome and liberty. But liberty is Protestantism, if not 
 in its theological doctrines, at least in its principles, and the 
 same principles quickly lead to the same doctrines. There was 
 a recoil ; there was a shudder. But Rome opened her arms, and 
 men have thrown themselves into her embrace. There has been 
 a plunge made into false principles; but with the consolation 
 at least of its having been made according to the strict rules of 
 logic. 
 
 The unflinching spirit of the bishop of Paris still farther in- 
 creased the alarm, already so violent, felt by the Italians at the 
 approaching arrival of his colleagues. The Cardinal of Lorraine 
 was announced as likely to reach Trent early in November. It 
 was known he had vaunted that he would have limits set to the 
 power, and still more to the gains of the court of Rome ; his 
 arrival, accordingly, says Pallavicini innocently, was contem- 
 plated with great horror. The legates had been for some time 
 occupied in noting certain abuses beyond Italy, particularly in 
 France, and more or less cherished by the French episcopate. 
 These they kept in reserve, ready to be proposed for reformation 
 as soon as the new comers should shew themselves too urgent on 
 other points; and the Cardinal of Lorraine, who had accumu- 
 lated benefices to the amount of three hundred thousand crowns, 
 was more interested than any one else in not provoking reprisals. 
 Nothing was neglected, whether in the way of insensibly aug- 
 menting the number of the Italians, or, still more, of keeping 
 them united and docile, for one or other of them every day 
 seemed to acquire a taste for those dreaded ideas of divine right 
 and episcopal independence. Finally, as a resource against the 
 worst that might happen, the legates had asked from the pope 
 new plenipotentiary powers for transferring the council to another 
 place, or dissolving it altogether. 
 
408 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 The commission charged with elaborating the decrees had long 
 been exclusively occupied with the canon on the institution of 
 bishops. On the 20th of October, after the speech of Lainez, 
 that commission had been augmented by an addition of four 
 members. " It is not to be believed," says Pallavicini, 1 with 
 what diligence and what attention those who were charged with 
 drawing up that canon, laboured to invent and compare an in- 
 finity of forms, turns of expression, and terms. It was of im- 
 portance to find some that would plainly declare what was the 
 faith upon this article, without, at the same time, furnishing to 
 ardent minds occasion to make interpretations either contrary to 
 the faith, or little in conformity with its teaching? Ever the faith 
 and the teaching of the faith. Where was this teaching then, 
 since it was upon the very essentials of the question that it was 
 found impossible to come to a common understanding, and that, 
 after infinite new efforts, it was resolved in the end that nothing 
 should be said? The Koman historian speaks always as if the 
 council had perfectly known what it had to say, and had been 
 ill at ease only about the forms. "In the end," he goes on to 
 say, "one was found which the legates proposed to the Spaniards 
 on the evening of the 28th, so that there might be nothing to 
 prevent its being put to the vote in the congregation which was 
 to meet on the following day. The Spaniards still rejected it. 
 Then, indignant at those prelates whom nothing could soften, 
 the legates resolved to make the council vote on the draft as pro- 
 posed, and to declare it final should the majority accept it. The 
 coot night air, however, having moderated their ardour, they 
 again met with some prelates who enjoyed their confidence, and 
 tried to find new means of conciliation.'" 
 
 Upon this the Spaniards craved an audience. They had come, 
 they said, to see if it was to be finally decided that a canon, em- 
 bodying their views, should be proposed. After such long discus- 
 sions, and amid the excitement they had produced throughout 
 Europe, the council could no longer abstain from pronouncing a 
 decision. They declared, in fine, that, should their request be 
 rejected, they would attend no more congregations. 
 
 Upon this the whole city was in commotion. Two score Italian 
 bishops repaired to the legates, in a body, to ask, on the contrary, 
 that the question of the divine right should be left out, and that 
 the council should keep to voting on what had been proposed. 
 The agitation went on increasing. Everybody was obliged to take 
 
 i Buok xvtii. eh. 16. 
 
GREAT AGITATION IN TRENT ABOUT RESIDENCE. 409 
 
 a side, and the Spanish faction, recruited with several Italian pre- 
 lates, openly formed a band apart from the rest. Division spread 
 even among the legates. The Cardinal of Mantua, as we have 
 seen, had at no time been much opposed to the Spanish doctrine ; 
 he often allowed it to be seen that his charge alone prevented 
 him from making common cause with them. Cardinal Seripandi, 
 too, was not very far from holding their views ; but it was Car- 
 dinal Simonetta, an ultra-Roman, that led the majority. Cardi- 
 nal Hosius had never had much influence, and Cardinal Al temps 
 had gone away. 
 
 It was necessary, however, that they should again set to work. 
 This was hazarded on the 3d of November ; and, thanks to 
 the feeling generally entertained of the mischief done by these 
 interminable disputes, the prelates all proved a little more calm. 
 The Spaniards had, moreover, received from their king a new 
 letter, exhorting them to do nothing to the prejudice of the Holy 
 See ; a vague letter, and manifestly solicited by the pope, but 
 to which they could not altogether dispense with paying some 
 attention. In fine, as the question of the divine right was, after 
 all, a less serious one in the old subject of residence than in that 
 of the institution of bishops, since this last touched upon the in- 
 stitution and the very existence of the pope, it was decided that 
 they should fall back upon the other, and stop first at it. 
 
 The legates, accordingly, presented the draft of a decree, in 
 which, setting theory aside, they established a complete juris- 
 prudence of rewards and punishments, for the purpose of engag- 
 ing to residence, and, if necessary, compelling to it. Of all pos- 
 sible solutions, this was the least honourable to the Episcopate. 
 Money played the chief part in it ; and it was on the side of 
 money, also, that the affair was doomed to come to nothing. 
 The decree, among other clauses, bore that resident bishops 
 should not be forced to pay to sovereigns tithes, or subsidies, or 
 any tax whatever ; and the ambassadors began to protest. 
 
 The bishops, on their side, could hardly appreciate a favour of 
 this nature. They were too well aware that the affair was not 
 within the competence of a council, and that there would always 
 be found occasions when the pope could not refuse to sovereigns 
 permission to tax the clergy. The decree, accordingly, could 
 not even be submitted to deliberation, under that form at least, 
 and it was afterwards reduced to a simple explanation of what 
 had been decreed in 1547. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the 
 greater willingness to come to a better agreement with each, 
 
410 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 other, none could confine himself to the less dangerous ground 
 to which it had been hoped that the discussion might be brought. 
 The institution of bishops was found, as before, the first and only 
 subject of debate. 
 
 The bishop of Segovia having declared, that to the best of his 
 recollection, the question had been decided in 1551, and that in 
 the sense of the divine right, it was necessary to have recourse to 
 the minutes of that period ; but as the bishop insisted, consider- 
 ing that he could trust better to his memory than to all that 
 might be adduced by those who had not been present under 
 Julius III., this incident occupied some days. It was proved 
 that the draft of the decree, to which the bishop wanted to ap- 
 peal as his authority, had not then been either voted by the as- 
 sembly, or so much as examined in congregation-general ; but, 
 on the other hand, the Spaniard was not mistaken, — the divine 
 right was there. However, as the divines of the old council 
 likewise had ever been at far more pains to be obscure than to 
 avoid all equivocation, several phrases gave rise to warm dis- 
 putes. Although the words, divine right, were found there, still 
 it might be maintained that, strictly speaking, the thing itself 
 was not. At the same time, this discussion presented a striking 
 enough example of the effects of the Roman system of authority. 
 Although this old draft of a decree was the work of a commis- 
 sion, and dated but a dozen years back, it was already spoken of 
 and examined with a sort of respect. The partisans of the divine 
 right recalled it as an argument of great weight ; nor would their 
 adversaries have ventured to say that it gave them no uneasi- 
 ness. Do not we here find Roman Catholicism, as it were, 
 caught in the act ? The history of her doctrines may be said to 
 be all comprised, in this constant tendency to consider more or 
 less as legitimate and true, all that is not new, and to make 
 years, in some sort, the first element of truth. Far less import- 
 ance would have been given to that same draft, to which so much 
 weight was attached because it was ten years old, had it been 
 only four or five ; but had it been a hundred, or two hundred 
 years old, and not contrary to the views of the majority, that 
 majority would have seized on it as a precious and unassailable 
 tradition. See with what assurance the Roman controversial- 
 ists give the first rank, among their proofs, to antiquity. In 
 popular polemics, it often happens that they do not even attempt 
 to give any other. We hear every day repeated, regarding Pro- 
 testantism and the Protestants, what the pagans used of old to 
 
ARRIVAL OF THE CARDINAL OF LORRAINE. 411 
 
 say in this respect of Christianity. Yet, what was the answer 
 of the Fathers ? " That it was not by the lapse of time that the 
 authority of religion is to he measured." 1 " The pagans vaunt 
 their antiquity, as if truth hath need of being ancient. It is a 
 diabolical custom to make antiquity an argument in favour of 
 lies." 2 
 
 So this matter was once more left without issue. It had been 
 hoped that it might be concluded before the arrival of the French ; 
 but when it was seen that this was not to be dreamt of, the legates 
 were the first to propose that they should be waited for. It was 
 at least a mode of gaining time. The Cardinal of Lorraine tra- 
 velled slowly, attended by a retinue like that of a prince. On 
 the 9th of November, when word came that he had entered 
 Italy, it was decided that the meeting should be suspended until 
 he was in Trent ; and, at all events, that no session should be 
 held until the 26th. He arrived on the 13th, and was received 
 with great honours. The legates went to meet him, accom- 
 panied by a crowd of prelates, and conducted him in procession 
 to his hotel. Several French bishops accompanied him, and 
 several followed soon after. 
 
 Next day the legates received him at an audience as bearer of 
 a letter from Charles IX. He gave them an agreeable surprise, 
 by the moderation and mildness of his language ; but it could 
 not be doubted that politeness and prudence had much to do 
 with this. He protested that he came with good intentions ; he 
 declared that he had no wish to propose anything to the assem- 
 bly, without the previous assent of the legates and of the pope. 
 As for the grand debate of the day, he said that in his opinion 
 people should not shew too much eagerness in diving into theo- 
 retical questions ; that although he was inclined to hold the 
 divine right, he did not see the necessity of teaching it by a de- 
 cree. He added — as had never ceased to be repeated, ever since 
 the opening of the council, by all that were not in the fetters of 
 the Roman party — that a good and solid disciplinary reformation 
 was the sole means either of bringing back the Protestants, or 
 of confirming the Catholics. On this latter point he spoke truly ; 
 as for the Protestants, he had viewed them too closely not to 
 know that the finest reforms could no longer induce them to shut 
 their eyes to questions of doctrine. He complained, in fine, that 
 
 1 Cyprian, against the Gentiles, b. ii. 
 
 " Hie est mos diabolicus, ut per antiquitatis traducem coramendatur fallacia. (Augustine, 
 Questions on the Old and New Testament.) 
 
412 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 the king bad not yet been able to get more than twenty-five 
 thousand crowns of all that had been offered to him. He re- 
 monstrated, that if people persisted in exacting, as conditions 
 of gift and loan, declarations contrary to the liberties of the 
 kingdom, it was tantamount to saying that they would give 
 nothing. 
 
 On this last article it was replied, that the pope had too much 
 love for France, and for the king of France, to have added to 
 his benefits any conditions which his conscience did not imperi- 
 ously dictate. This amounted to saying, frankly enough, that 
 the pope could not in conscience enter into any sort of terms 
 with the Gallicans. The legates were frank enough, also, on 
 some other points. They said the time was gone when one 
 might hope to bring back the heretics by means of some disci- 
 plinary concessions, some reforms of abuses ; that the Catholics, 
 therefore, and they alone, were to be looked to. As for internal 
 ameliorations, they dared not boast of the little that had hitherto 
 been done ; they too well knew that the cardinal was one of 
 those who thought that they had done nothing. They confined 
 themselves, as during the past, to protesting the good intentions 
 of the pope, who, they said, had already begun the reformation 
 of his court, although to the detriment of his finances. 
 
 In a word, the cardinal's language little accorded with what 
 people believed they knew of his intentions and those of his fellow- 
 countrymen. What, in point of fact, were his projects ? We shall 
 reach the close of this history without knowing more than we 
 learn here. Man is never more impenetrable than under the 
 garb of frankness ; the Italians were children in presence of this 
 great actor who ascended their stage, to leave them, nevertheless, 
 in the end, if not the honour, at least the profits of the piece. 
 As for the instructions he had received — but with authority to 
 exhibit them only so far as he might deem fitting, the chief 
 points, according to Pallavicini, were as follows : — 
 
 In discipline, they included the reform of the clergy, and the 
 correction of all the abuses that it was possible to reach : — that 
 the cardinal should not be too eager to attack such as had their 
 seat principally at liome ; that he should approach these by little 
 and little, always putting in the foreground the king's intention 
 to apply himself vigorously to the extirpation of all those of his 
 own kingdom. 
 
 In doctrine and in worship, they included the concession of 
 the cup, not only to the Reformed, but to all the king's subjects ; 
 
SUSPECTED COMBINATION THE POPE'S ILLNESS. 413 
 
 the mass and prayers in French, except in monasteries and non- 
 parochial churches ; the psalms to be chanted in French, but 
 after being revised and approved by the bishops. Next, but to 
 l>e proposed to the council only as circumstances might require, 
 the marriage of the priests, and the abandonment of ecclesias- 
 tical property. 
 
 Such then was the secret baggage of the Cardinal of Lorraine. 
 Many French prelates openly talked over it, and this he did 
 nothing to prevent. Certain enough information, moreover, had 
 been got, that he had come to a secret understanding with the 
 king of Spain, with the emperor, and even with the king of 
 Bohemia, son of the emperor, and almost a Lutheran. In fine, 
 notwithstanding all his reiterated disavowals of having political 
 objects in view, no one would allow that so powerful and able a 
 prelate could come to Trent as a mere French archbishop, with 
 the simple object of adding one more to the council, and quietly 
 concurring towards the passing of the decrees. 
 
 Two events, one of small the other of sufficient importance, 
 soon complicated the state of affairs, after being apparently 
 simplified by the cardinal's arrival. 
 
 On the 19th of November the Archbishop of Otranto gave a 
 grand dinner, and not only were Italians only invited, but he 
 had been so imprudent as to have it intimated to them to be 
 careful not to absent themselves, as their attendance was of 
 consequence to the Holy See. What passed at this entertain- 
 ment may have been of no great consequence, for real conspira- 
 cies never court attention in such a way ; but not the less did 
 it lead to the belief in a general combination of the Italians 
 against the Spaniards and the French. 
 
 The other circumstance was as follows. The pope had fallen 
 into a serious illness. Hardly had he recovered when he heard 
 that the French ambassadors had intrigued at Trent, and even 
 at Eome, to secure that the next pope should be elected by the 
 council and not by the cardinals. Now, of all the prerogatives 
 of the court of Rome, if there be none greater in its eyes than 
 that of electing the Church's chief, no more is there any of which 
 the foundations are more doubtful, more fragile, more manifestly 
 human. Even were it not proved that the faithful of all the 
 churches, at Rome as elsewhere, long had a part, and a great 
 part too, in the election of their bishops, it would ever remain 
 to be explained why the clergy themselves have not the power 
 of electing their head. Shall we be told that the extent of the 
 
414 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 Church, and the impossibility of assembling her pastors, have 
 led, by the sheer force of circumstances, to the creation of a per- 
 manent and more compact electoral body ? Surely Rome then 
 ought to have begun by recognising in the cardinals the quality 
 of delegates of the Church, which she has never done, which she 
 even could not do, since it is the pope that names and has the 
 sole right of naming them. On the other hand, the more you 
 tend to exalt into popes all bishops that have sat at Rome, the 
 more you will have of them who have neither been elected by 
 the cardinals nor been cardinals themselves ; whence we must 
 conclude, if not that the cardinals are useless, at least that their 
 concurrence is by no means absolutely necessary in the election 
 of the Church's head. It is evident, therefore, that if a council- 
 general wishes to name a pope, it has the power of doing so, and 
 that if it seem good to it not even to take him from the college 
 of Cardinals, it may do that too. Such was the reasoning at 
 Trent of the French ambassadors and their adherents. 
 
 And it was not for the first time that the sacred college heard 
 the questions put, " Who are you? Where do you come from?" 
 Long before the council of Constance had settled the question 
 by making a pope, more than one bold hand had dared to draw 
 aside the purple veil which was always becoming thicker and 
 thicker between the Church and her head. The cardinals had 
 not risen to such a pitch of greatness and pride without some 
 having dared from time to time, were it from nothing but jeal- 
 ousy, to inquire into the foundations of their grandeur. More- 
 over, there was no need for these researches to go very deep. 
 All the world could know, that the title of cardinal had long 
 been a mere epithet commonly used in many dioceses to distin- 
 guish parish priests from simple clergymen, the incardinati, or 
 men attached by lunges to the Church, from those who served it 
 occasionally only, and without any fixed tie ; that the cardinals 
 at Rome, consequently, had begun by being merely the curates 
 of the Bishop of Rome ; that if, at that period, they concurred in 
 the election of the pope, it was as parish priests, and along with 
 the rest of the clergy. At that time when a cardinal became 
 bishop, he dropt his title of cardinal ; he could no more have 
 had the idea of keeping it than a parish priest on becoming a 
 bishop would at the present day retain that of parish priest. In 
 a diploma of the year 943, the parochial churches are called 
 cardinal churches. In 997, seven priests of Aix-la-chapelle re- 
 ceived from Gre""orv Y. the title of cardinals. In the eleventh 
 
THE CARDINALATE HISTORICAL SKETCH. 415 
 
 century the title began to be considered one of honour, several 
 Italian bishops assumed it of themselves, and yet were not on 
 that account charged with usurpation. We see it borne by the 
 prebendaries of Compostella, Orleans, London, and several other 
 cities. At Eavenna it was still in use at the time of the council of 
 Trent, seeing that it was abolished by Pius V. in 1598. In fine, 
 it is proved that in 1196, the cardinals that were not bishops 
 had not as yet obtained the precedency of bishops. 1 
 
 Thus it would not even be consistent with the truth to say 
 that the cardinal curates of the Bishop of Eome had risen in 
 importance at the same time and in the same proportion with 
 him. The Bishop of Borne was pope, fully pope, long before 
 the cardinals were cardinals in the sense attached in later times to 
 that title. But their rise, though slower, did not the less follow 
 the same course. We see them gradually separating themselves 
 from the rest of the clergy. They continued to be reckoned as 
 attached each to a parish in Bome, but they no longer were so. 
 Beyond Bome they had honours paid to them at first only when 
 they arrived as the pope's envoys and representatives ; ere long 
 we shall find that it was in virtue of their mere title that they 
 took the precedence of bishops, of kings' ministers, and some- 
 times of kings themselves. Notwithstanding, it was only in 
 1059 that Nicolas III. made them sole electors of the sovereign 
 pontiff; the clergy and the people retaining their right of rati- 
 fying the election. A hundred and twenty years afterwards, in 
 1179, Alexander III. abolished this last restriction, and the elec- 
 tion of the popes is now entirely in the hands of the cardinals. 
 
 Thus it was not four hundred years since the cardinalate had 
 been definitively constituted ; it was not a hundred and fifty since 
 the Council of Constance had energetically recalled the Church's 
 ancient right to elect its sovereign. And this last council had 
 been at least led to it by circumstances ; but if the Council of 
 Trent, in full peace, had taken it into its head to do as much, it 
 would have proved the ruin of the cardinals, and in many re- 
 spects of the popedom itself. Hence the mental throes of the 
 pope ; hence a new source of mutual distrust and animosity 
 between the prelates of the two parties. 
 
 The Cardinal of Lorraine proved impenetrable, at least he 
 
 1 See, for more details, Hurter's Institutions of the Church. In 1187 a bull by Pope 
 Clement III. in favour of the prior and canons of the Church of St. Andrews, is signed 
 by Pope Clement, two bishops, and seven cardinal^, shewing that the bishops had the 
 precedence. See Lyon's History of St. Andrews — Tu. 
 
4 Hi HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 believed himself to be so, for one of the doctors in his suite, of 
 the name of Hugon — secretly sold to the pope, kept the legates 
 informed of his minutest actions, which, to say the truth, rarely 
 betrayed all that was passing in his thoughts. 1 The day on 
 which the king's letter was read at the general meeting he found 
 another opportunity of making a long speech, without shocking, 
 but also without satisfying, anybody. He dwelt particularly on 
 the calamities of the kingdom, of which he gave but too truth- 
 fid a picture. Everywhere mortal feuds, outrage, pillage, and 
 murder prevailed : everywhere, among Roman Catholics as well 
 as Protestants, the royal authority was contemned. " To 
 whom," he added, "must we attribute these evils? To heresy, 
 no doubt, but not to heresy alone. For myself, I am ready, if 
 necessary, to say with Jonah, as already adduced by the legates of 
 the Holy See at the first opening of the council, k Cast me 
 forth into the sea, for I know that for my sake this great tempest 
 is upon you!' ' : Alluding, probably, to the three hundred thou- 
 sand crowns of benefices ; but he proposed nothing - , concluded 
 nothing. 
 
 The conclusion was yet to come, and the task of drawing it 
 had been committed to the second ambassador, Du Ferrier. The 
 legates had started difficulties to his being permitted to speak. 
 The cardinal had almost had to demand it. so as to make himself 
 responsible for all that he was to say, if not for his words at least 
 for the general bearing of his ideas. But ideas and words were 
 alike warm and pointed. " The king might have appeased all 
 the disorders that afflict France in three days had he so desired, 
 by convoking a national council, or by making, by his own 
 authority, the concessions called for. As the eldest son of the 
 Church, he has preferred not obtaining them for himself except 
 through the Church; but should they be refused, he should cer- 
 tainly feel compelled to provide himself a remedy for his king- 
 dom. After all, what was the amount of his demand? Nothing 
 that is not to be found in the Scriptures, the Fathers, and in the 
 canons of the first councils ; nothing but what long subsisted in 
 the bosom of the ( Ihurch, without preventing it from expanding 
 itself before God and men. When Josias wished to appease the 
 troubles of the Jews, and to recall them to the religion of their 
 fathers, he found only one means, but that was the best of all ; 
 he had only to cause the book of the law, after its long conceal- 
 
 1 The Spaniards also had n spy observing them in the person of one of their countrymen, 
 Sebastiani, bishop of Patti, in Sicily. All these details are taken from Visconti s Letters. 
 
CHURCH OF ROME CHARGED WITH BLOODSHED. 417 
 
 ment by the malice of men, to be read and observed. 1 And if 
 you ask why France is suffering from this surfeit of disorders 
 and evils, the only answer that can be made to you is that 
 of Jehu to Joram, — ' What peace so long as' — You know 
 what, added Du Ferrier, interrupting him as he spoke; 2 and if 
 reformation does not come from you, in vain should all the 
 princes come to the aid of France. As for all who shall perish, 
 even although it be by their own iniquities that they have 
 brought ruin on themselves, you, and you alone, will be held 
 responsible for their blood." 
 
 Some of these shafts were more severe than jnst. At the 
 point to which things had come, the council could do nothing 
 towards appeasing the wars of religion short of declaring itself 
 Protestant. Nevertheless, taking a higher view, this very in- 
 justice was just. The council could do nothing ; but it was the 
 organ and representative of that Church which had for ages had 
 it in its power to do all, and yet had made use of its power only 
 to disfigure Christianity, and to bury under the commandments 
 of men those laws which alone were capable of bridling the pas- 
 sions of kings and peoples. An aged and infirm mother must 
 plead in vain her present inability to repress the disorders of her 
 son ; if she was the original cause of those disorders, there can 
 be no injustice in holding her responsible for them. Yes, Du 
 Ferrier was in the right. For all the blood that had flowed in 
 France, all that was yet to flow there, the. Church was responsible, 
 and doubly responsible ; responsible as the mother of all those 
 errors and of all those abuses which had provoked the Eeforma- 
 tion ; responsible also as having given but too much sanction, 
 by her acts of violence, for those terrible reprisals exercised by 
 the Reformation in some of the places where it had the upper 
 hand. And why speak we here of the acts of vengeance done 
 by the Reformation ? The Reformation had never ceased by its 
 chief organs to preach order, the support of government, and 
 peace. No Synod, no Church that we know of, had ever decreed 
 revenge for the massacre of the Albigenses, or any other old and 
 bloody grievance ; but it was the Roman Church, properly and 
 duly represented by its chiefs, its doctors, and its pious butchers, 
 that had decreed the destruction and taken upon itself the whole 
 
 1 Pallavicini, ordinarily so prolix, has avoided reproducing these details. " Du Ferrier," 
 says he, " explained his meaning by an ingenious application of several examples from the 
 Sacred Books." — Book xix. ch. iv. 
 
 2 " So long as the whoredoms of thv mother and her witchcrafts are so many." — 2 Kings 
 ix. 22. 
 
 2 D 
 
418 HISTOEY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 responsibility of the extermination of those same Albigenses. 
 What audacity in Roman Catholic historians when they com- 
 placently register the crimes committed in the name of the Re- 
 formation during those epochs of desolation and of blood. Not 
 an act of violence to which we could not, with history in our 
 hand, oppose a thousand ; not a Roman Catholic corpse which 
 we could not cover with a heap of the corpses of Albigenses, 
 Waldenses, French and German Protestants, victims of the 
 [nquisition in Italy, in Spain, in Belgium, everywhere, in short, 
 where that frightful tribunal succeeded in establishing itself. 
 Ah ! wo, doubtless, wo to those who know not how to forgive, 
 and to prove the superiority of their faith by the superiority of 
 their feelings and of their patience ! But wo also, wo above all 
 to the Church that had so long given, and that was still so long- 
 to continue to give — not only during epochs of tumidt and violent 
 excitement, but coldly and systematically — the example of all 
 atrocities. 
 
 One knows, for the rest, by what an abominable subterfuge 
 the Church sought to reconcile its bloody persecutions with its 
 pretended horror for blood. The Inquisition did not condemn to 
 death ; it was held to ignore what the secular power did with 
 the unhappy victims whom it handed over to it. It was even 
 the custom, at first, to insert at the end of the sentence a formula 
 in which the magistrate was besought to spare the culprit's life ; 
 an atrocious farce which people had sufficient sense of shame at 
 last to suppress, but always continuing to abstain from asking 
 for any punishment whatever. Accordingly, when the con- 
 demned person came to the place appointed for his punishment, 
 it was only by accident that there happened to be there a stake 
 and fagots and executioners to kindle them. The Church 
 washed her hands of all this. Had she not decided in 1179, 1 
 that, without ceasing to reprove the shedding of blood, she 
 could accept the offers of succour made by the civil powers ? it 
 being well understood that a prince who should take it into 
 his head, after the Inquisition had been once established in his 
 territory, to refuse this kind of succour, might find himself 
 in no enviable position ; the king of Spain himself would have 
 perilled his crown. The number of victims that perished under 
 the Spanish Inquisition in the time of the second Inquisitor- 
 General, Thomas of Torquemada, has been estimated at ten thou- 
 sand, that is, about two per day during seventeen years. And 
 
 1 Council of Laterau, canon xxvii. 
 
THE INQUISITION ARRIVAL OF CARDINAL OF LORRAINE. 419 
 
 this is not a round number, put down at random from data more 
 or less inexact ; Llorente 1 lias given all the details of the calcu- 
 lation from which he deduces this result. To these ten thousand 
 persons burnt alive we must add about seven thousand burnt in 
 effigy, that is to say, who would have perished like the rest had 
 the Inquisition had them in its power. Torquemada has not 
 been canonized, but his predecessor, Peter Arbues, was made a 
 saint, and that, mark well, not in the fifteenth century, at the 
 height of the fanatical enthusiasm of which he was the minister, 
 but almost two hundred years after his death. It was in 1664, 
 in the time of Pascal, of Arnault, that Rome placed upon her 
 altars the ferocious organizer of her bloody tribunal. 
 
 On the 26th November, the day on which it was expected that 
 the session would have been held, matters were as little ripe for 
 it as on the day of the cardinal's arrival. 
 
 All eyes continued to be directed to him. Perplexed and flat- 
 tered by turns at the part that people persisted in giving him, 
 he was forced to feed alternately the hopes and the fears of all. 
 He one day held a meeting in his hotel, at which the French 
 bishops voted unanimously for the divine right ; another day he 
 renewed at the general meeting his proposal that that point 
 should be left undecided. On the 1st of December, at the close 
 of the tumult, occasioned as we have seen by the boldness of 
 the bishop against whom the Italians declared anathema, he 
 seemed desirous of giving a decided opinion ; but his speech, 
 which began with a keen attack on those who had thus attempted 
 to restrain the freedom of voting, ended again in vagueness and 
 ambiguity. There was nothing positive in it but his proposing 
 to replace the words divine right by the simple statement that 
 bishops are instituted by Jesus Christ. However, the legates 
 having immediately referred the matter to Rome, he ventured 
 one step farther, and complained openly enough of that manner 
 of proceeding. The Italians, on their side, were daily more and 
 more out of temper. Behold, said they, we are fallen out of the 
 Spanish into the French disease. The French laughed at the 
 jest, and repaid it with interest ; but the Spaniards, who could 
 not laugh, were mortally offended. 
 
 With all this agitation there was mingled that of political 
 news, the interest attached to which was prodigiously increased 
 by the presence of a member of the house of Guise. On the 7th of 
 
 1 History of the Inquisition, chap. viii. 
 
420 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 November, intelligence was brought of the death of the king of 
 Navarre, and all knew that that event might call the Cardinal of 
 Lorraine to the head of affairs in France. He himself allowed it 
 to be well enough seen that he regretted not being on the spot, 
 so as more surely to take up the inheritance of his rival. 
 
 In Germany, Maximilian, son of the emperor, and already 
 king of Bohemia, had been elected king of the Eomans and heir 
 to the imperial dignity. On the occasion of his coronation, (Nov. 
 30,) the emperor had had conferences with the Protestant princes, 
 in which he made one attempt more to prevail on them to accept 
 the council, and these efforts had only served, as they had always 
 done, to provoke demands which they well knew would never be 
 granted, that in particular of having all that had been done at 
 Trent declared null and void. Yet, whether from policy or from 
 secret sympathy, the emperor had testified no displeasure. He 
 even offered to go in person to Trent and to present their de- 
 mands, on this sole condition, that they should soften down a 
 little whatever was too much calculated to wound the feelings of 
 the council and of the pope. 
 
 While the canon on the institution of bishops was on its way 
 to Rome along with the amendment proposed by the cardinal, 
 the council once more fell back on the question of residence. 
 The cardinal, against the advice of several French prelates, per- 
 sisted in saying that it was not necessary to mix it up with that 
 of the divine right of bishops. As for residence, in itself, he 
 seemed to be moderately desirous to see it become obligatory, 
 according to the plan proposed by the legates, by means of fixed 
 rules and a proportionate penalty : but, himself a court prelate, 
 he had no wish to condemn himself to vegetate at his diocese 
 of Rheims ; he had the air of one who was little convinced of the 
 good results to be expected from a law on this matter. He 
 thought that, on the subject of residence, everybody was more 
 or less crazed, and that this remedy could as little as any other 
 prove a cure for all evils. 
 
 Notwithstanding this half-abandonment of the main difficul- 
 ties of the question, he was disappointed by finding that none, or 
 almost none, sided with him ; he further knew that this began 
 to be a subject of remark, people asking if this was the omnipo- 
 tent influence that he had nattered himself he was about to ex- 
 ercise. The French disease had quickly been replaced by the 
 Spanish ; that is to say, the Spanish prelates had again put them- 
 selves at the head of the opposition, a post at which it is easy to 
 
SUBJECT OF RESIDENCE RESUMED. 421 
 
 draw attention to one's self and to appear important. To them, 
 and not to the French party, those Italians who had broken with 
 the papal party now attached themselves. Even the French 
 were at times sufficiently disposed to murmur against their chief. 
 They were angry at his demi-defection on the divine Tight, and 
 said they saw well " that it is not easy for a cardinal to make a 
 good Frenchman." 
 
 About the same time, in fine, the legates having presented the 
 draft of a decree on various abuses relative to the sacrament of 
 Orders, the Spaniards complained that they saw hardly any of 
 the things in it which they had all along insisted should be taken 
 up and examined ; and forthwith joining the German prelates, 
 they resumed with fresh vigour the subject of residence in the 
 view of the divine right. Might we not well say that one might 
 suppose that he had opened at a wrong page, and that he was 
 reading over again what he had more than once read already. 
 And yet we could wish the reader to remember that we abridge 
 to the best of our ability, and that we often compress into a few 
 lines whole pages of Sarpi and Pallavicini. The council had 
 never yet spoken more or done less. 
 
 In the congregation of 16th December, one of the legates had 
 thought it his duty to complain of the extreme prolixity of the 
 speeches. It was remarked, in fact, that several prelates, habi- 
 tually mute till now, had taken a fancy for speaking. Every 
 one having had time, and more than time, to study the question 
 thoroughly, there were few who did not deliver their opinions 
 at great length, even although it was but to repeat what twenty 
 others had said already. Newly arrived members, little informed 
 of all that had been said and done, daily appeared on the scene, 
 and unintentionally renewed discussions about matters of detail 
 which people had every reason to suppose had been finally closed. 
 In short, the council was like a ship beaten upon by such oppos- 
 ing winds, as to do little more than revolve on its own axis, and 
 find itself at night in the same place as in the morning. For 
 the rest, the legates had no cause to complain. Lassitude was 
 their surest auxiliary. Already it had many a time saved the 
 pope's affairs ; it alone could save them still. 
 
 The pope, however, was impatient in good earnest. Although 
 informed from day to day, and hour to hour, of all that was 
 spoken at the council, he could form no correct idea of the posi- 
 tion of the legates. Accustomed to reign himself, it appeared to 
 him that were he in their place, nothing would be easier than to 
 
422 II [STORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 have the mastery. His courtiers shared in the same mistake, 
 and even the common people began to fret. It was like the 
 Romans of old murmuring at the delays of Fahius. To all the 
 other cares of the legates, accordingly, there was added that of 
 having unceasingly to apologize for themselves to the pope and 
 their colleagues at Rome. They begged that at least formal 
 orders might be sent them ; but, to say the truth, the pope found 
 himself as much embarrassed as his ministers. 
 
 He had been thrown into the greatest uneasiness, in particular, 
 by having to give an opinion on the formula proposed by the 
 Cardinal of Lorraine. After much hesitation, on the strength of 
 the consent of that prelate, he ventured to pronounce against the 
 doctrine of the divine right, or at least against the insertion of 
 those words in the decree. Availing himself, therefore, of the 
 idea that bishops are instituted by Jesus Christ, an idea suffi- 
 ciently vague to admit of a hope that it might be turned in a 
 manner favourable to the ultramontane view, 1 he fixed upon 
 three drafts of a formula, elaborated in a commission of cardinals. 
 One, and the vaguest of these formulas, bore simply an anathema 
 against whoever should say, that the bishops are not in any man- 
 ner instituted by Jesus Christ ; another, a little clearer, but 
 which quite departed from the question, anathematized whoso- 
 ever should believe that the episcopal rank has not been in- 
 stituted by Jesus Christ; the third, in fine, anathematized who- 
 ever should teach that the bishops chosen by the pope, and on 
 whom he relieves himself of part of his solicitude, are not chosen 
 by the Holy Ghost for the guidance of that portion of the Church 
 which is confided to them. This last, the best according to the 
 Italians, was naturally thought the worst by the others, for it 
 was equivalent to the positive negation of the divine right. 
 Nothing would have been easier than to deduce from it, even- 
 tually, the universality of the Roman episcopate, in its most ab- 
 solute meaning, to wit, that the pope is the sole bishop by divine 
 institution, and that all the rest exist only through him. One 
 might even have contrived, in case of need, to make a new 
 prerogative spring from it. If the bishops chosen by the pope, 
 are chosen by the Holy Ghost, this is, as it were, a new branch 
 of infallibility accorded to the successor of St. Peter. How 
 to reconcile this fact with that other fact, that there are bad 
 bishops, is what we do not very clearly see ; but it matters 
 
 1 By saying, with Lainez, that the bishops, the episcopal body, exists by divine right, but 
 that each bishop individually exists only by papal right. 
 
NEWS OF THE BATTLE OF DREUX. 423 
 
 not. Is ultramontanism ever embarrassed about the difficulty of 
 reconciling papal infallibility with the existence of bad popes ? 
 
 About a whole month, marked by several incidents, in regard 
 to which we shall ere long have to say a word or two, had passed 
 in waiting for a reply from the pope. The Christmas festivities, 
 designedly celebrated with extraordinary pomp, had diverted the 
 attention of the prelates for a time ; but the first week of the 
 year 1563 found them impatient, soured, and disheartened. 
 
 The courier arrived at last. It was now the 15th of January. 
 The council resumed its labours next day; and the third formula, 
 as the most fully developed and the clearest, became the princi- 
 pal text of discussion. The efforts of the French and Spaniards 
 were mainly directed against that part of the phrase in which 
 the bishops are said to be chosen by the pope, in order to be 
 charged by him with a part 'of his solicitude. The Latin ex- 
 pression, in partem solicitudinis, was to be found in respectable 
 Latin authors ; but it was remarked that it is one thing to employ 
 certain words cursorily, and another to insert them in the rigor- 
 ous statement of a system. Besides, said the opposite party, the 
 best proof that we ought not to employ that expression is, that 
 we are not yet come to an agreement about its meaning; and 
 that, consequently, after we are dead and gone, there will be still 
 less agreement about it. The Italians, in fact, would have it 
 that in partem solicitudinis did not necessarily involve the idea 
 of the pope's universal episcopate ; to which the rest replied, 
 that if such were not the bearing of the words, this ought to be 
 stated ; and that in the decree itself a warranty ought to be 
 given to those who dreaded its being interpreted in that sense. 
 Many offered to declare themselves satisfied, if the other party 
 would consent to have it run thus, — that bishops have been esta- 
 blished by Jesus Christ, for the purpose of being charged by the 
 pope with a part of his solicitude ; but this middle course gave 
 little satisfaction. And as the question of residence re-appeared 
 at every turn, the two parties passing perpetually from one to 
 the other, according as they could see their way to the gaining 
 of a little ground, — the end of January arrived without their 
 having come to an understanding on any one point. 
 
 The first news of the battle of Drenx (17th December) had 
 been received and celebrated in the council, as that of a great 
 triumph ; but more detailed reports had modified this first im- 
 pression, and while the enthusiasm of the Roman Catholic popu- 
 
424 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 lations continued to be maintained by means of pompous thanks- 
 givings, still there was food for bitter reflections. Granting that 
 the Protestant army had been completely beaten, still it was seen 
 at once to be no small matter for the Reformation to have an 
 army, and an army, too, capable of confronting the combined 
 forces of the king of France and Philip II. ; but although beaten, 
 it was known to have lost fewer men than that of the Poman 
 Catholics ; that it was neither discouraged nor broken ; and, 
 when an army does not consider itself defeated, it is not really 
 so. The only positive result of the battle of Dreux, accordingly, 
 had been to raise, both in a political and military point of view, 
 the party of the Reformation to the level of that of the king ; 
 after the two armies had fought on equal terms, these two great 
 parties might treat as one power would with another. 
 
 The pope had judged more soundly on the subject than any 
 one else. The ambassador, De Lisle, in his letters to the queen, 
 complains of not having succeeded in getting him to consider 
 this much vaunted triumph as a real victory. " His holiness," 
 says he, 1 " persevering firmly and with words full of disdain and 
 discontent, will not allow me to speak of your victory, and says 
 that it has been none." But patience ! Only nine years later, 
 Rome was to resound with cries of joy for another victory, ap- 
 parently a more complete, and a still finer one in its eyes, — that 
 of St. Bartholomew's eve. 
 
 In the early part of January, the French ambassadors had 
 presented to the council a project of reformation, with which the 
 cardinal had affected not to meddle, and which, having emanated 
 from the government, had not in fact met the approbation of all 
 the French bishops. The rights of the pope, without being at- 
 tacked in theory, were touched in it at more than one point, par- 
 ticularly in money matters. The seventeenth and eighteenth 
 articles established the right to communicate in both kinds, and 
 to celebrate worship in the vulgar tongue. The worship of 
 images, the collation of benefices, dispensations of every descrip- 
 tion, were also made the object of dispositions, more or less con- 
 trary to the ideas and to the interests of the court of Rome. 
 The victory of Dreux began to bear fruits that were not all 
 equally pleasant. The more it was vaunted, the more was the 
 French government placed in a position to require concessions 
 from the council, and to make concessions itself to the Pro- 
 testants. 
 
 i Letter of 8th March 1J63. 
 
ALARMING ARTICLES FROM FRANCE. 425 
 
 The legates were so alarmed at the effect that this memoir 
 might have on the old pope's health, for he had been for some 
 months in a sickly and dying state, that they lost no time in 
 sending one of his confidential friends, the bishop of Viterbo, to 
 soften the rudeness of the blow. But the impression it produced 
 was terrible notwithstanding. The pope exclaimed that France 
 was in revolt. The bishop succeeded in calming him, but not 
 without difficulty, by urging that there were thirty-four articles, 
 and that the French never surely could have the idea of obtain- 
 ing them all, — that one might easily grant some, modify others, 
 and reject a good many. In fine, and this was the most conso- 
 latory circumstance, the Cardinal of Lorraine had secretly com- 
 missioned the bishop to make an offer of his services to the pope, 
 if not for the purpose of conjuring the storm, at least to turn it 
 in another direction, and to moderate its violence. The cardinal, 
 at bottom, was neither ultramontane nor Gallican ; his religion 
 was simply that of an ambitious man, that is to say, he was 
 ready to change it any day. 
 
 The pope, accordingly, began to take up this affair, about 
 which, nevertheless, he was supposed to know nothing, seeing 
 it had been transmitted, not to him by the ambassador resid- 
 ing at Rome, but to the council by the ambassadors residing at 
 Trent. The Cardinal of Ferrara, as legate in France, had orders 
 to reply to the king, " That there were in fact good things in 
 those articles, and that the pope asked nothing better than to 
 see them examined ; that he could not suppose that any one, 
 least of all, the most Christian king, could intend to deprive the 
 Holy See of any portion whatever of the powers which it holds 
 from Jesus Christ ; that if such or such church-dues were bur- 
 thensome to the kingdom, one might proceed to lighten them 
 amicably ; that, besides, there were things in the memorial which 
 were little fit to be treated of in a council." One of the reasons, 
 the pope added, on account of which these articles did not all 
 equally please him, was, that some were not less contrary to the 
 king's authority than to that of the pope. Slightly dependent 
 on the Holy See, the bishops would find facilities for being still 
 less dependent on the king. Finally, all these observations were 
 to be supported by the Cardinal of Ferrara, with a new advance 
 of forty thousand crowns on the hundred thousand previously 
 offered as a gift. These money presents, openly made by one 
 prince to another, offered and accepted without the smallest 
 shame, however inadequate the sum might be to the greatness 
 
42 G HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 and opulence of the two parties, form one of the curious traits 
 that mark the political history of that age. It seemed generally 
 admitted that a full purse was as good an argument as any other, 
 and that one had no more reason to blush at receiving a good 
 round sum than at admitting the conclusiveness of a good sound 
 argument. But if merely curious in political affairs, in reli- 
 gious it was certainly something more. 
 
 Nothing being ready for the session, it was found necessary to 
 prorogue it again. Although it was but the commencement of 
 February, the legates proposed to put it off till Easter. This 
 suggestion was strongly opposed ; all the more as the legates 
 talked of taking up the article of marriage, and it was thought 
 strange that new matters for discussion should be sought for, 
 when they could not make an end of the old. Many wanted the 
 vote to be taken on all the points that had been sufficiently 
 examined ; but the Italians, though sure of victory, dreaded 
 obtaining it in this way. The Cardinal of Lorraine, while he 
 consented to delay, had the air of one who lent himself to that 
 course only from complaisance ; but he had his own reasons for 
 not being displeased at it. He projected making a journey to 
 the emperor, and the affairs of France were still in too entangled 
 a state to admit of his seeing clearly what it was best to do in 
 the interest of his party. 
 
 This journey, which had been long talked of, was a subject of 
 much uneasiness. It was thought certain that he had in view, 
 besides the political affairs of France and Germany, a closer 
 union between the French and Germans in the affairs of the 
 council ; the emperor, and still more his son, were too much dis- 
 affected to admit of the cardinal returning from them without 
 bringing projects with him of a more or less hostile nature. 
 Rumours were afloat respecting certain questions which the em- 
 peror had submitted to the examination of his own divines, and 
 which were not the most encouraging, among others: — 
 
 If the pope had good grounds for his desiring that the legates 
 alone should have the right to propose, and if the clause pro- 
 ponent/bus legatis ought not to be expunged as contrary to the 
 authority and the liberty of the council ; 
 
 If the pope could transfer it to another place, or dissolve it, 
 without the concurrence of the secular princes; 
 
 If means might not be found for making the bishops at the 
 council independent, as well on the side of the pope as on that 
 of their respective civil rulers ; 
 
CARDINAL OF LORRAINE VISITS THE EMPEROR. 427 
 
 If there was no possibility of protecting the minority from the 
 violence or intrigues of the majority ; 
 
 If, in the event of the pope happening to die, the nest elec- 
 tion would belong to the council ; 
 
 And other points, among which public rumour placed some 
 that were still more menacing. 
 
 The cardinal left Trent about the middle of February, after 
 having made the legates promise that the question of marriage 
 should not be agitated in his absence. Here there was new 
 matter of uneasiness. He had, it would appear, views on this 
 point which might not be those of the majority. He remained 
 five days at Inspruck. Every effort was made to penetrate the 
 secret of his conferences with the emperor ; but all that could be 
 known was, that he remained every day at least two hours 
 with him and his son. On the cardinal's return no one was a 
 whit wiser. He merely reported to the legates that the em- 
 peror had broken out, when he was with him, into bitter com- 
 plaints that not one of his demands had been so much as pro- 
 posed for deliberation ; that he had been very hot on the subject, 
 insisting that the assembly had done nothing yet of any import- 
 ance, that the pope was deceived either by the council sitting 
 at Trent, or by his own council sitting at Rome, &c. &c l The 
 cardinal added that he had clone his best to soften the emperor ; 
 but, says the historian, " he said all this in the tone of a man 
 who not only relates the sentiments of another, but desires also 
 to add weight to his own by giving them the support of a supe- 
 rior authority." On the following days he spoke almost openly 
 of the emperor as an ally, a friend ; he went so far as to say, 
 that if things were to continue in the same state, some great 
 scandal would be the result. This scandal was evidently that the 
 princes would decree, of their own authority, what they should 
 have failed to obtain from the council or from the pope. Thus 
 agitation and mutual distrust went on increasing. 
 
 In fine, while the Cardinal of Ferrara was in France com- 
 municating the ambiguous answer made by the pope to the thirty- 
 four articles which had thrown Rome into a fright, the French 
 ambassadors, having communicated to the council, by a letter 
 from the king, the official news of the battle of Dreux, took that 
 occasion to ask what had been done with those articles, and what 
 it was proposed to do with them. Then, with a malicious show 
 of candour and simplicity, "If any are surprised," said Du 
 
 1 Pallavicini, Book xx. ch. v. 
 
428 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 Ferrier, " that we have stuck to these points rather than to 
 others, and that we have omitted so many things of importance, 
 we would reply that we have been desirous to begin with lighter 
 matters, with the view of clearing the way, and thus facilitating 
 our reaching the most important. Think not," he added, " that 
 Christians are now what they were fifty or a hundred years ago. 
 If there are many still who want nothing better than to remain 
 Catholics, those very persons are already too much awakened to 
 abstain from judging, according to Scripture, whatever you shall 
 have presented to them as what they have to believe and to do." 
 Why, then, did such persons, and he himself as the first of them, 
 put off any longer declaring themselves Protestants ? Had not 
 the council decreed enough of things contrary to Scripture, to 
 warrant their ceasing to wait for more ? 
 
 The debates on the doctrine of marriage, after being delayed 
 for some days by a dispute about precedence among the divines, 
 were opened in the course of February. Eight articles, not 
 necessary to enumerate, had been presented by the legates. Let 
 us confine ourselves to the three points on which the discussion 
 was chiefly to run; marriage in itself; marriage as a tie; and 
 celibacy. 
 
 Is marriage a sacrament ? It is easy to affirm this, but not so 
 easy to prove it. This the divines sufficiently admitted, if not 
 in set terms, at least by the length and the embarrassment 
 shewn in their speeches. 
 
 Let us first recall, to refresh our memories, what we have al- 
 ready said or suggested elsewhere. That it seems little agree- 
 able to the very notion of a sacrament to give that name to what 
 is found in all religions ; that in order to find ancient Christian 
 authors who make a sacrament of marriage, we must go back to 
 times when the word sacrament was applied to all religious acts 
 whatever j 1 that Scripture, in fine, nowhere speaks of it as it 
 would be natural for it to speak of an act pertaining to the new 
 law, and fellow, so to speak, of the supper and of baptism. If this 
 last, although in use previous to Christian times, has become a 
 sacrament, it is because Jesus Christ positively appropriated it, 
 
 1 " Marriage is, according to SI. Paul's expression, a great sacrament in Christ and in the 
 Church." — Encyclical Letter of 1832. 
 
 "A great mystery," says the Greek text. We hare already had an example of this same 
 play upon words, (Book ii.) Cardinal Cajetan admits the falsification. " Non habes ex hoc 
 loco, prudens lector, a Paulo, conjugium esse sacramentiun. Non enim dixit esse sacra- 
 mentum, sed mysterium." 
 
CAN MARRIAGE BE A SACRAMENT? 429 
 
 and made it as it were the seal by which his disciples were to be 
 marked, when he said, " Go, therefore, and teach all nations, 
 baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
 Ghost." We find nothing of this sort respecting marriage. The 
 New Testament speaks of it only in a moral point of view. It 
 takes it np as a fact ; it purifies and elevates it ; but nowhere do 
 we see there either institution of the fact, or modification in its 
 essence. Thus, religion sanctifies, but does not create it ; the 
 Church proclaims it, and blesses it ; but it would exist without 
 her, and has really existed, at some epochs, among pagans, as 
 much respected and as sacred in men's eyes as ever it was among 
 Christians. 1 But, give what definition you please to the. term 
 sacrament in general, never would it logically apply to an act 
 where the part taken by religion and the Church is a mere in- 
 tervention which, strictly speaking, might be dispensed with. 
 Every act, every transaction on which you would call for God's 
 blessing and the Church's prayers, would, by parity of reason, 
 be a sacrament. 
 
 What, besides, would you make of a sacrament, the true and 
 immediate object of which has nothing religious about it, and 
 does not even in any respect touch upon religion ? Though the 
 marriage state, when blessed by godliness, becomes an abundant 
 source of sanctification and salvation, this, after all, is only an 
 occasional result. The conjugal union may have none of those 
 blessed effects, yet not the less would it continue to subsist. 
 Marriage is not, therefore, of itself a religious act ; it exists in- 
 dependently of religions ; it is, therefore, essentially different 
 from the supper and baptism, and all those other sacraments, if 
 people will insist on there being others, since these, if you ab- 
 stract from them their religious meaning, signify nothing, and 
 are absolutely nothing. 
 
 Let us take up for a moment, one of the most favourite 
 ideas of the Roman Church, that of the superiority of celi- 
 bacy to the married state, and forthwith a new objection occurs. 
 All the other sacraments have, or are reputed to have, for their 
 object, the exercise of a salutary influence on the soul, and the 
 increase of its spirituality ; but here the case must be quite other- 
 wise. If the unmarried be a holier state than the married, and 
 marriage nevertheless a sacrament, — we have a sacrament im- 
 mediately resulting in the transference of the soul into an inferior 
 condition, in its being bereft of part of its spirituality, and, in 
 
 1 For example, at Rome in the early times of the Republic. 
 
430 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 fine, in its having certain sources of salvation closed against it. 
 The Roman Church admits marriage only as a necessary evil ; 
 can it be thought logical, then, to view that as a sacrament 
 which creates an evil ? And if it be replied that it is natural 
 for religion to lay hold of this evil for the purpose of lessening it, 
 and drawing forth all the good that can be in it, this only takes 
 us back to the objection stated above, " That there can be no 
 sacrament where religion does no more than bless what would 
 exist beyond its sphere and without it." 
 
 For the rest, it were much to be desired that the Roman 
 Church had never taught anything more dangerous. In placing 
 marriage in the number of the sacraments, a good object may 
 have been aimed at, that of enhancing its sacredness and invio- 
 lability. We might only inquire, then, if this has been the con- 
 sequence, and if the conjugal tie be really held more sacred in Italy 
 than in England, in France than in the United States, at Rome 
 than at Geneva, and we might fearlessly look for the answer that 
 every enlightened traveller, and every candid Roman Catholic 
 would be sure to give. 
 
 But if the good results are doubtful, it is not so with the bad. 
 On becoming a sacrament, marriage passed into the domain of 
 the Church; 1 the Church alone had from that time forth the right 
 to lay down its conditions. This right has proved an exhaust- 
 less source of influence over individuals, families, kings, and na- 
 tions. Civil society thus became bound to the Church by fibres 
 that rooted themselves profoundly in all the interests and affec- 
 tions of mankind. And what a strain has been put upon those 
 fibres ! What delight has been felt in multiplying difficulties 
 and impediments of all sorts ! At the commencement of the 
 thirteenth century, the bar to marriage constituted by relation- 
 ship, was extended to the seventh degree ; there were no ties of 
 relationship, even down to adulterous ones, that did not consti- 
 tute a sort of kin in which the interdiction of marriage extended 
 to the fourth degree. In the midst of this maze of impediments 
 there was hardly a marriage which the Church might not possi- 
 bly prevent, were she in the least desirous to apply her rules 
 rigorously ; and in that case the only resource was to petition 
 and to pay. Often, too, impediments coming to be discovered 
 after the marriage was over, there had to be fresh petitions 
 and fresh outlay, if people wished to be married according to the 
 
 1 "Marriage, forming a part of holy things, is consequently subject to the Church." — The 
 Pope's Encyclical Letter of 1332. 
 
ENDLESS IMPEDIMENTS TO MARRIAGE. 431 
 
 rules. Spouses united for twenty years might still feel not quite 
 sure that their marriage was valid, and their children legiti- 
 mate ; the latter, even after the death of their parents, might 
 some fine day hear of then' being declared bastards. 
 
 From the times of the Council of Trent, it has not been quite 
 thus. Universal complaints had constrained Innocent III. to 
 reduce to four the normal number of the degrees ; use had, more- 
 over, given the force of law to clivers mitigations in detail, and 
 what remained too oppressive in the law was left to be alleviated 
 by dispensations. Notwithstanding this there prevailed a gen- 
 eral feeling of uneasiness. Civil society strongly tending towards 
 its own emancipation, its attention was incessantly directed to 
 the most delicate of the points of contact between the spiritual 
 and the temporal. The Reformation had called upon the Church 
 of Rome to say by what rights she alleged that she alone was 
 competent to lay down laws on the subject of marriage, and the 
 Church of Rome, beyond the argument of authority, which 
 people would no longer admit, had not much to reply. Many 
 Roman Catholic jurisconsults had, on this point, come to enter- 
 tain ideas nearly approaching those of the Protestants. In 
 France, in particular, people began to see that marriage was an 
 essentially civil act, which religion consecrated, but did not 
 create. It was perfectly understood that the Church retained 
 the power of determining in what cases the priest was to grant 
 or refuse that consecration ; but it began generally to be under- 
 stood that, as respects society, it is an accessory. In fine, the 
 civil power began to believe that it too had the right to fix 
 within its own sphere the conditions beyond which the Church 
 could not proceed to celebrate a marriage. Such was the com- 
 mencement of that system, which, after remaining long in abey- 
 ance, was to become, as it is at this day, that of France and 
 many other states. 
 
 These discussions on the essence of marriage, necessarily led 
 to the next question of those above indicated, namely, that of 
 marriage viewed as a tie. 
 
 This tie the Roman Church had pronounced indissoluble. View- 
 ing the matter in its social and moral aspects, weighty reasons may 
 be alleged in favour of this system ; but the question was, how 
 do we know that the Church had a right to establish it ? Now, 
 with the Scriptures before us, this cannot be maintained, least 
 of all if we are to hold that marriage is a sacrament. For a 
 sacrament — this the Church has always maintained — is beyond 
 
432 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 her power. She may regulate the use of it, she may modify its 
 accessories, but its essence she cannot modify. If marriage be a 
 sacrament, and Jesus Christ nevertheless did not regard it as in- 
 dissoluble, its very quality of sacrament deprives all parties what- 
 soever of any power of changing it. Assuming this, what do we 
 find said of it by Jesus Christ ? " It hath been said by them of 
 old time, Let him give her a writing of divorcement ; but I say 
 unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, save for the 
 cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery ; and who- 
 soever shall marry her that is divorced, committeth adultery." 1 
 Whosoever shall marry that woman. It was permitted then to 
 marry a repudiated woman. Does Jesus Christ forbid it ? By 
 no means. He confines himself to saying, that if the repudia- 
 tion has not had a valid motive, the new marriage shall not be 
 legitimate. It would be so then if the repudiation has been so. 
 Will any one maintain that had he wished to teach its indis- 
 solubility, he would not have done so at this place ? Or that 
 what our Lord said was from a desire to defer to the ideas and 
 the usages of the Jews ? We cannot conceive that the Son of God 
 could carry compliance so far as to grant, even provisionally, 
 what would have been contrary to God's will, and to the essence 
 of the sacraments under the new law. 
 
 Here we have nothing to do with the question, whether certain 
 states have done well or ill in sanctioning divorce in other cases 
 besides that of adultery. It is enough to have demonstrated 
 that the absolute prohibition of divorce, cannot with any shew of 
 reason be invested with the authority of a law of God. It is 
 hardly worth while to refute the charges which have on this 
 score been levelled at the Eeformation. Some authors will have 
 it that this impossibility of dissolving marriage cannot be taken 
 off without opening the door to the most scandalous disorders. 
 Happily here, as in the sacramental question, we have only to 
 appeal to facts. Where are those disorders to be found ? Shall 
 we be told of many cases where the prospect of divorce has 
 loosened ties which, but for that would not have been loosened ? 
 It is of course understood that we do not speak of that brutish 
 divorce which history shews as in use among some nations, but 
 of divorce legal and solemn, such, in a word, as we find in all 
 the Protestant countries that have admitted it. There, encom- 
 passed with all the civil restrictions which morality and social 
 order demand, it never occurs without formalities and delays 
 
 1 Gospel according to St. Matthew, ch. v. 
 
IS MARRIAGE INDISSOLUBLE ? 433 
 
 such as are tantamount to its being declared beforehand impos- 
 sible, if it shall be found in the least that the motives that have 
 led to its being asked are insufficient or of a temporary character. 
 Hardly will there be found a case to be adduced, at distant in- 
 tervals, in which, upon the whole, more good has not been done 
 than evil ; and how many cases, on the contrary, do we see 
 occur, in which the indissolubility of the marriage produces more 
 evil than good ? Next, we repeat, this is not the question. 
 Although the permission of divorce had only untoward results, 
 the Church has no right to interdict it as long as it remains 
 uninterdicted by Scripture. All very well to dissuade people 
 from it ; to do all that is humanly possible to prevent, in each 
 several case, the spouses from coming to that deplorable extre- 
 mity is a positive duty ; nothing better than that the civil law 
 should be asked to be severe in repressing it, to require minute 
 examination of the circumstances, and to interpose salutary de- 
 lays ; but when the law of God does not expressly say no, the 
 Church cannot say no. 
 
 We find these ideas re-occurring in the opinions delivered by 
 almost all the divines who elaborated the questions relating to 
 marriage at Trent. The argument which might have been 
 drawn, and which is with such confidence drawn to this day, 
 from the words of Jesus Christ, " What God hath joined together, 
 let not man put asunder," 1 was found to be defeated by antici- 
 pation in the passage where he admits divorce on the ground of 
 adultery ; a rule could not be promulgated as absolute after he 
 himself had admitted one such serious exception. On the other 
 hand, it was felt that a law of this importance could not be 
 made to rest solidly on the Church's sole authority. Infinite 
 pains therefore were taken to find for it some scriptural founda- 
 tions, but here as on so many other points, there was no resource 
 but to travesty into doctrinal declarations certain words of 
 Scripture which are evidently nothing of the kind. Thus in the 
 decree itself the indissolubility of marriage is made to rest first 
 of all-, on these words of Adam, " This is now bone of my bone, 
 and flesh of my flesh ;" next, on these words of St. Paul, " A 
 man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto 
 his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh ;" lastly, on these 
 words, " What God hath joined together, let not man put 
 asunder." But not a word does the council say as to the ex- 
 ception pointed out in the case of adultery ; more than that, in 
 
 1 Gospel according to St Mark, cb x. 
 2 E 
 
434 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 the seventh canon, an anathema is launched against whosoever 
 shall maintain that the Church is mistaken in teaching the in- 
 dissolubility, even in case of adultery. Let us repeat what we 
 have already said : this point is one on which we could most 
 willingly forgive Roman Catholicism for being in contradiction 
 with the Bible ; but not the less is the contradiction there, 
 patent, flagrant. There might be some plea for making indis- 
 solubility a law, but to teach it as a dogma is a lie. 
 
 To this first difficulty there were added others, lighter of 
 themselves, but for which, when complicated by the idea of 
 marriage being a sacrament, no solution was possible. Among 
 the conditions attached to marriage some are purely human ; 
 the consent of parents and tutors, the minimum of age allowed 
 in the spouses, &c. Now, supposing one of these conditions 
 awanting, what is the marriage ? 
 
 Would you pronounce it null ? But it is contrary to the 
 essence of a sacrament to suppose that it can be annihilated by 
 the mere omission of a civil formality. In vain would you, like 
 many of the Trent divines, call in the scholastic logic to your 
 aid. " Every sacrament," they would say, " must have a sacra- 
 mentary material. Just as there can be no baptism where there 
 is nobody to be baptized, so there can be no marriage where there 
 is nobody to marry. If, consequently, the spouses have not the 
 requisite conditions, there are no materials for marriage. The 
 act, therefore, is null, just as would be the baptism of a dead 
 child or of a stone." Miserable subtleties, to which, moreover, 
 there was needed but one word of reply, to wit, that the civil 
 conditions of marriage are not everywhere the same, and that it 
 involves a contradiction, and is absurd, to say that the same 
 sacramental words might create an indissoluble tie, or have ab- 
 solutely no meaning or effect, according as the same priest may 
 have pronounced them on the same persons to the right or the 
 left of a brook, if that brook happens to be the boundary between 
 two states differing in their civil laws relative to marriage. 
 
 There is but one way of escaping from this absurdity, and that 
 is by insisting that the civil power has absolutely nothing to do 
 with marriage. As long as the Church shall have failed of 
 reaching the point of regulating, in a sovereign manner, all its 
 conditions, alike in the civil and in the ecclesiastical order, the 
 sacramentality of that act can only be for her a source of embar- 
 rassments and rebuffs. The council of Florence, accordingly, 
 had taught that the consent of the contracting parties is the only 
 
MARRIAGE ROME NO LONGER OMNIPOTENT. 4.60 
 
 indispensable condition. This is good logic. When you bap- 
 tize a child, it is in vain that his father may not have consented, 
 the child is baptized. In like manner, if marriage be a sacra- 
 ment, in vain may the parents have said no : from the moment 
 that the formula has been pronounced, there has been a mar- 
 riage. One might, always in consistency with sound logic, have 
 gone even farther than this. The child you baptize has neither 
 sought nor accepted baptism. If marriage be a sacrament, if 
 the formula of marriage has the virtue, like that of baptism, of 
 operating a certain infallible effect, — one does not see how the 
 priest might not marry of his own authority, as many people as 
 he may think fit, without asking the consent of parties, without 
 even informing them of the fact. 
 
 Here, then, as in so many other things, what contributed most 
 to the force of the Church when she was omnipotent, contributes 
 now only to her humiliation. What really is the civil marriage, 
 as it is called, recognised now by most states, but the standing 
 negation of the idea, so dear to her ambition, that she alone 
 can make lawful marriages? That idea, nevertheless, she has 
 not abandoned ; she cannot, indeed, abandon it, seeing she has 
 made it a point of faith. She is reduced, therefore, to the neces- 
 sity of submitting to the affront in silence ; she dissembles it by 
 appearing to ignore it. Civil marriage, in her eyes, has no ex- 
 istence ; if she ever spoke of it, it could only be as nothing short 
 of an impious usurpation. Excellent as her theory of marriage 
 might be, looking to an epoch of omnipotence, it was, at bottom, 
 the fruit of temerity rather than of skill ; her advisers ought to 
 have provided for the case of her ceasing to have the mastery of 
 Christendom, and to have secured at least some outlet for the 
 retracing of her steps. But no. Who could have ventured to 
 foresee or to predict the final close of that omnipotence which had 
 been so fondly dreamt of, and towards which new advances were 
 made every day ? Was not the very transformation of marriage 
 into a sacrament one of the things apparently most likely to lead 
 to it, and to secure its permanency ? Looking at that continued 
 encroachment made by Roman Catholicism for a thousand years, 
 one would say that it was an army which advances, which is 
 ever advancing in proportion as the tide retires, without reflect- 
 ing that those waves which are fleeing before it, may yet return 
 faster than they have fled. Wherever the Church could plant 
 her foot, there she planted it, and behold the tide approaches ; 
 behold the foot which cannot withdraw itself, seeing that a single 
 
436 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 step backwards must insure an utter defeat ; behold the Church 
 encompassed with the billows of secularity. She well knows 
 how to drive them before her, does she say ? Vain hope, indeed ! 
 The tide of ideas is not one that ebbs and flows. Once that it 
 has begun to rise, it rises, ever rises. God alone could arrest it ; 
 and, further, he could arrest it only by arresting and crushing 
 the human mind. Sad miracle, which God will never perform, 
 but for which Rome has ever been found but too surely prepar- 
 ing all minds that have not revolted at the blind submission she 
 preaches. 
 
 Side by side with these tyrannical restrictions there were placed 
 the most unheard of relaxations. Of all the obstructions to 
 marriage, there was hardly one the removal of which might not 
 be purchased with money ; the very indissolubility of marriage, 
 admitted as a doctrine, was often reduced to no more than a mere 
 word, if we look at the infinite number of causes of nullity, one 
 or other of which it was always easy for princes and other great 
 folks to find suited to their purpose when they had a mind to 
 change their wives. Divorce, in fact, did exist, but under its 
 worst form, that of a retro-active judgment, annulling the union 
 that had previously existed, and denying that there had been a 
 marriage. By means of ready money and submission all was 
 obtained when wanted. Provided the question of right was 
 yielded, the court of Rome was not in the least offended at be- 
 coming, practically, the humble serving-maid of the secular 
 princes. The Reformation has, in these matters, led to infinitely 
 fewer disorders than Rome covertly legitimized. 
 
 The subject of matrimonial dispensations accordingly became, 
 at Trent, a perpetual theme of complaint and lamentation for 
 the Spanish, German, and French bishops. Only it was painful 
 to see personal interest so often peeping out in the reproaches 
 they cast on others. Many of them were manifestly less dis- 
 tressed at dispensations being so multiplied in number, than at 
 the law according to which the pope alone was authorized to 
 grant them and receive the price. Be that as it may, at some 
 meetings of the council, one might have fancied himself at that 
 of a Reformed Synod, so little did the divines and prelates re- 
 strain themselves in denouncing those abuses. The most violent 
 charges ever launched against the Reformation, as relaxing the 
 conjugal bond, were now hazarded by bishops, and without any 
 calumny against the head of their Church. Some proposed that 
 die number of obstacles should be reduced to the lowest possible 
 
MARRIAGE— RESTRICTIONS AND RELAXATIONS. 437 
 
 amount, but that these should at the same time be declared 
 absolute, so as not to be removable even by the pope himself. 
 This was tantamount to a decree pronouncing the council to be 
 supreme ; it was what the ultramontanists, as was to be expected, 
 would not listen to or endure to be spoken of. Many of them 
 even, in the course of the discussion, made bold to assert in set 
 terms the omnipotence and absolute irresponsibility of the pope, 
 being what had never before been maintained at Trent. The 
 Portuguese Cornelio, one of those who commanded most atten- 
 tion of all the doctors of the Roman camp, laboured to prove 
 that there was nothing in the world that the pope could not 
 grant a dispensation for, excepting only belief on points of faith : 
 of all else, of the commandments of God, as well as of those of 
 the Church, of the canons of councils as well as of the decrees of 
 the Holy See, he was supreme arbiter. And, on this occasion, 
 the party were not afraid to resuscitate even those wretched 
 arguments, based on single words and syllables, which one would 
 think must have been buried for two centuries. " Abolish dis- 
 pensations ! has not St. Paul said that the Church's ministers are 
 the dispensers of God's mysteries?" Such was the serious argu- 
 ment which a Dominican, of the name of Valentino, had the 
 honour to propound. Fortunately, there happened to be present 
 a Frenchman called John of Verdun, whose keen satire made 
 him pay dear for this honour. In general, when any of the 
 members ventured to make themselves ridiculous in presence of 
 the learned doctors of France, it was not done with impunity. 
 But, alas ! what availed them all their wit ? Even while making 
 game of the ultramontanists, were they not bound by the same 
 chains ? And if they jested at the Romish arguments, if they 
 stood out to the last against certain exclusively Roman preten- 
 sions — how many arguments were there not a whit more valid, 
 yet of which they durst not make a jest? How many points 
 were there quite as far from being well established, and yet of 
 which they durst not expose the fragility without renouncing 
 their profession as Roman Catholics ? 
 
 All these discussions resulted only in obscure decrees, present- 
 ing a crude medley of discipline and doctrine, in which each 
 party remained free to find more or less the opinion which itself 
 had endeavoured to introduce into it. Of this we shall ere long 
 give some examples. 
 
 The council kept its promise to the Cardinal of Lorraine, and 
 
438 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 accordingly it was not till after his return, in the congregation 
 of the 4th of March, that the great question of the celibate was 
 broached. 
 
 First of all, the principle was laid down that celibacy, in 
 itself, is holier than marriage. On this first point the meeting 
 was unanimous. 
 
 Is this a question, we have asked ourselves, which can fairly 
 be put under the form of a comparison between the relative 
 merit of the two states in life ? We think not. Marriage is the 
 normal state of man ; celibacy is not so, seeing that it would end 
 at last in the destruction of the human race, a result manifestly 
 opposed to the designs of God. Hence a first objection. Can it 
 be admitted that with a Creator supremely wise and powerful, 
 there is in the creation anything, whatever in which what is 
 abnormal, is essentially more pure than the normal ? The barren 
 fig-tree, then, says an ancient controversialist, was purer than 
 had it been loaded with fruits. In the second place, the apolo- 
 gists of celibacy have never said, nor could say, that it saves in- 
 fallibly and of itself ; no more have they ever said, in so far as we 
 know, that people cannot be saved in the married state. You 
 cannot, then, establish a direct comparison between them in 
 point of intrinsic merit ; neither the one nor the other saves ; 
 neither the one nor the other consigns to perdition. "Which 
 contributes most to salvation?" Such is the only question that 
 can reasonably be started. The matter in hand is not to know 
 which of the two states is the most holy, but which is best fitted 
 to make people holy. 
 
 Now, in these terms, any general and systematic answer is 
 impossible. Such a one will find salvation in celibacy without 
 any marring of his comfort and happiness ; another will find 
 nothing in it but ennui, disgust, temptations, evil thoughts of 
 every kind. " When I had pronounced my vows," said Luther, 1 
 "• my father, who had strongly opposed my doing so, exclaimed, 
 May it please heaven this may not prove a cunning trick of 
 Satan !" In marriage, the same diversity of effects. One will 
 grow better and better in it, thanks to the salutary pressure of 
 his new duties ; another will see in it only a yoke, and those 
 same duties will have proved but the occasions of new faults. 
 Therefore, we repeat, the question is one of facts, not of princi- 
 ples. Such an one may have been lost in celibacy, who might 
 have been saved in marriage. It is as impossible to say, a 
 
 1 Letter to Link, 1531. 
 
CELIBACY MONASTICISM SUICIDE. 439 
 
 priori, which of the states is the hetter of the two in respect of 
 its effects, as to prove by serious reasons the intrinsic superiority 
 of the one over the other. 
 
 Celibacy, in the Roman Church, is imposed on two categories 
 of persons, monks and nuns forming the one, and priests the 
 other. 
 
 As for the former of these, if we once admit their existence, it 
 is clear that celibacy is the necessary and indispensable element 
 of their condition. We cannot therefore attack the celibacy of 
 the monks ; it is the monks, it is the monastic life itself, which 
 we are called to attack in the name of Christianity and of 
 reason. 
 
 In the name, we say, of Christianity ; and if we had to do so 
 here in detail, we should not stop at the idea — weighty as it is, 
 however, that monasticism is not to be found in Scripture, and 
 that it is not easy to understand how a thing destined to play so 
 important a part in the Church, should not have had so much as a 
 single line assigned to it in the New Testament ; no, we should 
 go straight to the root of the matter, and would ask, " Is it in 
 fleeing from temptations, or in combating them, that man is 
 best brought fully out, and answers best to the views contem- 
 plated by his Creator?" In denouncing the crime of suicide the 
 idea that most naturally occurs is, that a man has no right to 
 quit the post assigned to him by God. What, then, does that 
 man do who buries himself in a monastery ? And if although 
 this mode of committing suicide may have less guilt attached to 
 it, because it may originate in Christian motives, and have some 
 happy results, still is it not essentially the same act ? 
 
 Suicide, it is, in fact, and that of the saddest kind, since it not 
 only results in death to the world and the trials of the world, 
 but often, too, in the death of the victim's mind, the death of his 
 heart, the death of piety itself. What, indeed, can there be in 
 common with true piety, in that gross religiosity in which Chris- 
 tianity becomes a craft, worship a duty, and the sentient and 
 immortal soul a praying machine? Have not even the wisest 
 religious orders pushed this last abuse to the most incredible 
 excess ? At Cluny, besides religious offices of a frightful length, 
 conducted in common and individual prayers without end, one 
 hundred and thirty-eight psalms had to be recited every day. 
 How is it possible that such worship could fail speedily to be- 
 come mechanical ? Accordingly, when the Reformers set them- 
 selves to attack the monks, they found nothing to say that had 
 
440 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT, 
 
 not already been said a thousand times over. Their ignorance, 
 their sloth, their gluttony, had already been for ages the laughter 
 of the wity, and the despair of the godly. 1 Is it much otherwise 
 at the present day ? Revolutions have passed over the face of 
 Christendom, and their bloody rake has rid it of many abomina- 
 tions ; but go to Italy and to Spain, and you will have no diffi- 
 culty in finding, in all its turpitude, the old type of the monks 
 described by Rabelais and Erasmus. 
 
 Let us beware, then, of trusting to the poetic reveries of so 
 many sentimental folks by whom convents and monasteries are 
 never seen except through the clouds of the imagination, or the 
 mists of party spirit. Hurter, too, becomes eloquent in his pic- 
 tures of the monastic life. 2 But Avhen he descends to history he 
 finds himself compelled to go into details which are equivalent 
 to a confession that he had been hitherto speaking only as a poet. 
 Even writers that Lave been no friends to the Roman Church. 
 have for the most part allowed themselves to be too much 
 seduced into the belief that monasteries and convents gradually 
 degenerated, and that it required the corrupting influence of 
 ages before they could be brought into the condition in which 
 the Reformation found them. Looking to what they were as 
 early as the thirteenth century, when almost under the eye of their 
 founders, and when controlled by so severe and powerful a pope 
 as Innocent III., we must ask ourselves where, then, we are to 
 place those days which are so often appealed to, and so eulogized, 
 and the golden age of monasticism flits from us almost as much 
 as that of Saturn. 
 
 Conventual establishments, then, according to-many, are places 
 where man is wholly devoted to God ; they are celestial infir- 
 maries for the reception of all the ailments of man's mind and 
 heart. That it has often been of use to have some such refuge 
 to offer to weary and heavy laden souls, to use the words of Scrip- 
 ture, may be admitted ; notwithstanding, on this very ground, 
 where the Church of Rome appears so strong, we might still 
 venture to ask if a soul so regenerated as to pant sincerely, not 
 from sloth, but from piety, f>r the repose of the cloister, would 
 not be sufficiently regenerated to rear for itself, without the 
 intervention of material walls, — possibly indeed with more diffi- 
 culty, but with more true progress also, — a barrier between it 
 
 1 " Did they alone perish it were an evil, yet one which could be endured. But, circulating 
 throughout Christendom as the veins do in a human body, their deprivation brings with it 
 the ruin of the world." Memorial addressed to Paul III., 1538, 
 
 ■ Institutions of the Church, oh. vii. 
 
WIDOWHOOD OF THE CLOISTER ITS CRUELTY. 441 
 
 and the seductions of the world. We might ask, on the other 
 hand, if the possibility of ending then lives in a house having 
 the reputation of sanctity, and viewed as the gate to heaven, were 
 not for many an encouragement to lead ill lives, spending 
 whole years in utter forgetfulness of God, but with the prospect 
 of returning to Him for a few days, and dying in the cell, or 
 only, as was long the fashion, in the dress of a monk. But, let 
 this never be forgotten, those who have become monks and 
 nuns after having known the world, those for whom the cloister 
 has been a seriously felt desideratum, have ever formed but a 
 very small minority. It has been in youth, often in very child- 
 hood, that they have thrown themselves, and are to this day 
 throwing themselves, into monasteries and convents. The 
 monastic state was one in which there was hardly any thing 
 to do, for the few monasteries to which we are indebted for 
 useful labours can never be put in the balance against the 
 ten thousand conventual houses which have only had to consume 
 their revenues. 1 What has there not been said of the services 
 rendered by the monks in preserving the manuscripts of ancient 
 times ! People forget that what they have preserved in manu- 
 scripts — and in what a state too ! — is not the hundredth part of 
 what they have suffered to perish. 
 
 Should it be said that the men, at least, entered with their 
 full consent into the cloister ; as for the women, how many were 
 there whose vocation was not the result either of constraint or 
 of moral influences equivalent to restraint ? The heart shudders 
 to think with what impious coolness a father, a mother, would 
 condemn a daughter from her birth to the eternal icy widowhood 
 of the cloister. Every daughter to whom her parents saw no 
 prospect of their being able to give a portion suitable to the rank 
 of the family, it was considered as a matter of course should have 
 no vocation but the convent. " Instead of having one daughter 
 destined to the cloister, behold I shall now have two !" said a 
 great lord, one day, under Louis XIII., after having lost a large 
 sum at cards. The Chinese, we are told, kill those children 
 whom they dread being unable to support. Are they much more 
 cruel than such parents? Although the authors of the last 
 century have somewhat damaged the cause of the nuns by the 
 
 1 In the space of a century and a half (1066-1216) five hundred and fifty monastic esta- 
 blishments were founded in England. The year 1200 beheld the rise of twenty-three abbeys 
 of the same order, (Citeaux.) At the close of the thirteenth century Florence had more 
 than a hundred monasteries and convents. See on this subject a curious bull of Innocent X., 
 [October 1652.) Protestants never said more or spoke better against the multiplication of 
 monks and their houses. 
 
442 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 bombast of their infidel pleadings, how can we but groan to 
 think of those millions of existences which have fleeted away, 
 valueless, incomplete, suffering, under the vaults of the cloister ! 
 and yet we should not commiserate and lament so much if those 
 poor women had at least found there a God in spirit and in 
 truth ; we should not even dream of regretting, on their account, 
 their never having known the endearing ties of spouses and 
 mothers, if it were at least ties truly celestial that were given to 
 them instead. But, as we have said alread}^ piety is nowhere 
 more gross, more childish, more miserably carnal, than in con- 
 vents ; nowhere is the worship of God more scandalously effaced 
 by that of the Virgin, of the saints, of images ; nowhere will you 
 find more deeply rooted, more miserably pushed to its remotest 
 consequences, the idea that salvation is acquired, is purchased, 
 is paid for, by dint of external practices and vain repetitions. 
 And the Roman Catholic historian, in speaking of convents, has 
 not even the resource of being able to point to some that have 
 rendered services to the world. People imagine they have said 
 all in citing the Sisters of Charity ; but they forget that it is not 
 two centuries since they began to exist, and that Roman Catho- 
 licism remained a thousand years all-powerful, loaded with 
 riches, without doing what she now vaunts having done. Where 
 were there, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, the 
 greater number of the answers that the Romanism of oar day 
 thinks itself entitled to give to those who criticise it? 
 
 Nor were the assaults then made on monachism confined to 
 the principles or to the realities of the system. 
 
 There were, further, questions of religious and of common law 
 on which the Church had rough adversaries to deal with, some 
 among the princes, others among the ranks of her ordinary 
 members. People asked themselves if she had any right to insist 
 that the vows should be perpetual, irrevocable ; if, in the case 
 where a monk, or nun, wished them broken, she had lawfully 
 the power of constraining such an one to remain faithful to them, 
 the power at least of any constraint beyond that of censures. 
 Here there was, in fact, a singular anomaly ; controversialists, 
 it strikes us, do not generally press it enough. The Roman 
 Church glories in the credit she assumes of having abolished 
 ancient slavery, and yet she has established a new slavery, still 
 more absolute, since redemption is impossible. The monk and 
 the nun were monk and nun for ever, neither could any more 
 quit the monastic life than a prisoner his prison or a condemned 
 

 MONASTIC VOWS CELIBACY OF THE PRIESTS. 443 
 
 criminal the hulks. No doubt there was a personal engagement 
 to this effect, but every vow is, in its own nature, an affair 
 between man and God. It is God who receives a monk's vows ; 
 the Church does no more in reality than regulate the form. But 
 the greater or less solemnity neither augments nor diminishes the 
 worth of the promise before God, so that one does not see how 
 the Church could be more entitled to exact by force the fulfil- 
 ment of a solemn vow than that of an engagement made in the 
 recesses of a man's heart. Starting from this idea, several 
 jurisconsults, even before the Keforrnation, asked themselves how 
 an engagement of the conscience can be regarded as comprised in 
 the domain of public jurisprudence ; more accustomed than the 
 divines to positive reasons, they sought for a logical transition, 
 but could find none. Next, being the party best acquainted in 
 general with the Bible, at least as a collection of laws, and 
 finding absolutely nothing there to support the pretended rights 
 of the Church in so serious an affair, oftentimes they ventured to 
 doubt whether she could have any legitimate right to establish, 
 of her own authority, laws that pressed so hard on the most 
 essential and the most inalienable rights of man. 
 
 Since the Reformation the discussion had borne principally 
 on the celibacy of the priests. There the question of right was 
 less complicated. A Church may, strictly speaking, fix by her 
 own authority the conditions on which a man is to become her 
 minister. If a master has the right of choosing to have bache- 
 lors only in his service, one cannot refuse to a society that of 
 imposing celibacy on the men whom she pays. 1 The evil lies in 
 this, that Eome has made it a matter of divine right. The 
 priest's liberty is alienated for ever. It is vain for him to quit 
 the Church's ministry and to renounce every kind of function 
 and stipend ; he is bound, eternally bound ; the Church will 
 never recognise a marriage contracted by such an one. 
 
 Thus we see the abuse immediately follow the right. We 
 acknowledge that temporary celibacy may be required ; it is 
 another matter knowing how far it were well to exact it. As 
 for perpetual celibacy we should say, as in the case of monastic 
 vows, that we cannot comprehend how a human authority can 
 impose it on those who do not feel it to be binding in conscience, 
 
 1 This reasoning surely rests on a false foundation. The Church is not an absolute mistress. 
 It is her duty not to make arbitrary rules, but to obey those of her Divine Master, who, as 
 will appear from what follows, not only does not choose to be served in the pastoral office 
 by the unmarried only, but seems to give a preference to the married. — Tr. 
 
444 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 and who should renounce the functions in view of which they 
 had submitted to it. 
 
 Much noise has been made about the influence which their being 
 tired of celibacy may have had on the priests who embraced the 
 Reformation, and in particular on Luther and Calvin. As for the 
 latter, it is the most gratuitous calumny that was ever forged ; 
 and as respects Luther, it is far easier to declaim against what 
 have been called his carnal tastes, than to prove that they had 
 any influence in the first movements of his revolt against the 
 papal yoke. Was it a matter of such difficulty then to procure 
 for himself, while remaining a priest, those gross enjoyments 
 which some are bold enough to reproach him with having 
 sought in marrying ? Theodore Beza in his youth had been 
 under no necessity of making himself a Protestant in order to 
 his indulgence of those irregularities for which he is so absurdly 
 reproached to this day, as if those disorders had not been com- 
 mitted by a Roman Catholic and a priest ; as if history did not 
 stand by ready to say how many priests and monks did as he 
 did, and worse than he did. 
 
 And wherefore, besides, wherefore should we be so anxious 
 to establish the point that the question of celibacy had abso- 
 lutely no influence on the progress of the Reformation among the 
 priests ? Of all the yokes of bondage imposed by Rome on her 
 ministers, none weighs more sadly on their existence, and on 
 all the portions and details of their existence. Here is a law 
 which pursues them everywhere, which condemns them never 
 to taste joys which their Church herself pronounces legitimate 
 and pure everywhere but with them ; and can it be any just 
 matter of surprise that that law should contribute more than 
 another to suggest their inquiring into the right, in virtue of 
 which it has been imposed on them ? 
 
 The authority from which it emanates is that of the Church, 
 but of the Church alone, standing apart from all divine precept, 
 from all analogy even with divine lessons and facts. Under 
 the Old Testament law the priests were married ; the high-priest 
 himself — he of whom the most scrupulous purity was required 
 in his person, in his habits, in his most insignificant actions — 
 the high priest was married. That law is abolished ; the New 
 Testament has superseded it. To make Jesus Christ come down 
 daily upon the altar is more, it may be alleged, than to enter 
 once a year into the most holy place. Be it so. But if celibacy 
 be one of the consequences of this superiority of the Christian as 
 

 CELIBACY DOCTRINE OF ST. PAUL. 44/) 
 
 compared with the Jewish priesthood, how are we to account 
 for the silence of Scripture on this new condition that was to be 
 exacted ? For, in fine, if it be a question of purity, it is inad- 
 missible that it should not have been resolved by Jesus Christ, 
 by the Apostles at least, and that the supper should have been 
 so long administered by hands radically unworthy of the honour. 
 How much grandiloquence has been wasted, especially in our 
 own days, on this pretended profanation of the holy mysteries, 
 should they happen to be committed to married men ! Yet St. 
 Paul speaks of this profanation, and that too without horror, 
 without censure, without the slightest trace of disapproval. " A 
 pastor," says he, " must be the husband of one wife, one that 
 ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with 
 all gravity." 1 And at another place, " I left thee in Crete," he 
 writes to Titus, " that thou shouldest set in order the things that 
 are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, if any be blameless, 
 the husband of one wife, having faithful children," &c. Had 
 Chateaubriand read this when he dared to write that Protestant 
 ministers " repudiate the Creator for the sake of espousing the 
 creature ?" Were these lines to fall under the eye of a heathen 
 it would not be easy to convince him that the latter of those 
 two authors was a disciple of the former. In another passage, 
 it is true, St. Paul seems to counsel celibacy ; but to whom does 
 he there address himself? 2 To pastors? ISTo ; what he says is 
 said to everybody. Does he venture to establish a law ? Not at 
 all, for he elsewhere 3 ranks among the disciples of Satan those 
 who should venture to preach it. What then is the drift of the 
 Apostle's counsels ? He speaks of persecutions that had to be 
 endured and precautions that were to be taken. In such a case 
 it is clear that celibacy is attended with advantages ; the fewer 
 the ties to be broken, the more prepared is a man for suffering. 
 Such is the amount of what St. Paul says ; nothing more. The 
 precept is one entirely of circumstances ; even were it more 
 general, the fact that the author had spoken elsewhere of a 
 bishop's being married as a thing perfectly natural, and about 
 which there could not be two opinions, were enough to dissipate 
 any idea that the contrary counsel could in the smallest degree 
 appear, in his eyes, a question of purity. And why do we speak 
 only of St. Paul ? He whom the Church of Eome has made the 
 prince of the Apostles, the vicar of Jesus Christ, the channel of 
 
 1 1 Tim. iii. - 1 Cor. rii. 
 
 3 1 Tim. iv., "doctrines of devils, taught by seducing spirits . . . forbidding to marry." 
 
446 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 conveyance to this earth of all the spiritual powers, and of all 
 the graces that descend upon it — St. Peter was married ! He 
 was so when the Saviour addressed the words, which, according 
 to Rome, made him sovereign pontiff; he was so when he be- 
 came, according to Rome, the bishop of the world's capital, for 
 it was certainly less than twenty-five years before his death that 
 St. Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, 1 speaks of his colleague's 
 wife. The Church of Rome has no great liking for this detail. 
 She who has made male or female saints of all the persons 
 named or alluded to in the New Testament, and even of some 
 who are not named or alluded to there, for example, the father 
 and the mother of Mary, has taken special care not to grant this 
 honour to the wife of St. Peter, although St. Paul represents her 
 as accompanying the Apostle in Ins painful and perilous journeys. 
 So successful has Rome been in saying nothing about her, that 
 a great many Romanists never heard her mentioned all their 
 lives, and that they hardly believe their eyes when what St. 
 Paul says is shewn to them. " My dear friend," wrote Luther, 2 
 " let us not affect a higher flight than Abraham, than David, 
 than Isaiah, than St. Peter, than so many holy martyrs and holy 
 bishops who have not been ashamed to acknowledge that they 
 were men created by God, and, according to his word, have not 
 remained alone." 
 
 See then reduced to its poetic value — if poetry can be where 
 truth is not — this fundamental argument in favour of the law of 
 celibacy. What yet remains to be said? That it is fitting and 
 proper ? But facts are at hand to prove that in this argument, as 
 well as the other, there is more poetry than reason. Nothing more 
 beautiful than what has been said, in prose, in verse, under all 
 possible forms, especially under that of insults to the Protestant 
 Churches, on this intimate and mysterious union between the 
 priest and the Church, on this celestial marriage by whose duties 
 he is entirely absorbed, the joys of which so fill up his soul as 
 to leave no room for those of domestic life. That this ideal 
 picture may possibly have been sometimes realized we deny not, 
 nor do we deny that it may be so still ; we confine ourselves 
 to looking at facts as they are, and ask ourselves if Romanist 
 priests generally bestow more time and pains on their churches 
 than Protestant pastors do on theirs. On their churches, we say; 
 on the Church is another question. There are by much too 
 many, on the contrary, who see nothing but the Church ; who 
 
 l 1 Cor. ix. 5. s Letter to Reissunbauh, 1525. 
 
EXPERIENCE OF ROMANIST AND PROTESTANT LANDS. 447 
 
 never dream of anything but the Clmrch, who live and breathe 
 only for the Church ; but this devotedness is too much alloyed 
 with human ideas and human interests to admit of our allowing- 
 it, in Christian consistency, to be taken into account. Is the 
 Eoman clergy, then, on the whole more devoted to its flocks than 
 are Protestant pastors ? Are those men who have no families 
 to tend, sensibly more ardent in tending the poor ? Are those 
 men who have less need of money, generally reputed to love it 
 less ? Do those men who have no children of their own to oc- 
 cupy their time, find more time to devote to the children of other 
 people ? — is the instruction of the peasantry, for example, better 
 attended to under them than under the Protestants? Do those 
 men who are not distracted, it is said, by the cares of this life, 
 appear, taking their life as a whole, to be more absorbed by 
 thoughts of heaven '? Are they more serious, more spiritual, — not 
 at set hours, or set tasks, with a mass to say and a breviary to 
 read, but with a living spirituality mingling with everything, 
 and based on an incessant contemplation of divine things ? 
 
 We make no reply. All churches, we know, have their own 
 sores ; pride, bitterness of spirit, too readily insinuate themselves 
 into parallels of this kind. And yet, without entering into any 
 details, all that we have said elsewhere of the incontestable supe- 
 riority of the Protestant clergy, viewing the matter in the general 
 light of excellem-e in the functions of their office, we might repeat 
 here. We would address ourselves, in the second place, to all 
 who have seen Protestant churches, not as they are represented 
 in Romanist writings, but with their own eyes ; and we would 
 challenge them to say, whether they have not usually found the 
 pastor having an eye upon all the wants and distresses of his 
 flock, and at the head of all charitable or pious undertakings. 
 We would ask, in particular, if it has often been discovered that 
 the duties they have to discharge as fathers and spouses, really 
 clog their duties as pastors ; if the co-operation of a helpmate of 
 the other sex be not, on the contrary, useful and desirable amid 
 a host of cares in which the pastoral dignity would risk being 
 compromised. We would appeal, in fine, to those who have lived 
 at one time in a Protestant, at another time in a Roman Catholic 
 country, and would ask them where they have found the clergy 
 lying under the popular charge of being ignorant, lazy, avari- 
 cious, and negligent of their duties. We may admit that there 
 have been certain ameliorations in our days ; still it remains to 
 be seen whether this great pastoral zeal has not had its source, 
 
448 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 more or less, in the eager and feverish revival which we behold 
 everywhere struggling for the mastery. Even were it momen- 
 tarily pure from all human alloy, still we have here a general 
 question to deal with ; the pastoral zeal of the Roman clergy, at 
 such or such a period, cannot be of itself an argument in favour 
 of their celibacy. Were they, then, a married clergy of whom, 
 as they existed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, even the 
 most Roman Catholic historians are compelled to say so much 
 evil ? Are they a married clergy who are found to this day in 
 so many Roman Catholic countries, so lazy, so worldly, so dead ? 
 " What strikes one first in the Italian clergy," wrote Lamennais, 
 while still dreaming of nought but the revival of Roman Catho- 
 licism, " is something sluggish, apathetic, cold, indifferent, in 
 one word, it is the absence of life, and in this respect Rome itself 
 forms no exception. Everything goes on as it best can by a 
 sort of old habit and half-worn-out mechanism. Nothing more 
 rare than true zeal, an ardent love of good, self-devotion, self- 
 sacrifice. They live by their profession, and that is all." No ; 
 it is not for the good of the Churches that the celibacy of the 
 clergy has been, and is still, thought desirable. The churches, 
 the pastoral life, the parish, have never been matters of more 
 than second or third-rate interest to Rome. We find proofs of 
 this in all the revelations which her encroachments forced from 
 the lips of members of the council. The grand affair, everything 
 in short with her, was the Church, centralization, unity. The 
 clergy are, in her view, an army. The same motives which lead 
 every conqueror to desire such soldiers only as know none but 
 their own leaders, and have no other tie, have led Rome to en- 
 join celibacy. If ideas of purity, devoteclness, and moral fitness 
 prepared the law, it was not long before these proved mere pre- 
 texts. Soldiers Rome behoved to have, and it was only at this 
 price that she could have them. Not that it is to be said that at 
 the very origin of the affair, it was explicitly declared, " We 
 want soldiers, men entirely devoted to us ; we ordain that they 
 shall be unmarried." No ; but the spirit of such a declaration 
 was there ; in following out their mischievous propensities, cor- 
 porations, like individuals, have no need of openly explaining, at 
 the very first, their ultimate design. By a gradual process, that 
 which had been given out at first as a human law, came to be 
 imposed as a divine law. The vow of celibacy became of all 
 vows the most sacred. According to Innocent III., it adheres 
 so profoundly to the very bones of the monks, that the pope him- 
 
HORROR FOR MARRIAGE IN A PRIEST. 449 
 
 self cannot absolve them from its obligations. 1 Among the secular 
 clergy there have been examples, at wide intervals, of priests 
 marrying with the pope's consent ; rare practical alleviations, 
 which did not prevent the theory from ever becoming more and 
 more severe and absolute. One would have said that the guilt 
 attached to the violation of this law of celibacy, was great in pro- 
 portion to its utter want of any foundation in reason, or in the 
 Gospel. Even at this day, when a priest leaves the Church, his 
 former colleagues generally express more pity than hatred. But 
 if he proceeds to become a married man, oh, then, no invectives 
 are thought strong enough, no malediction can be found propor- 
 tioned to his crime. That which Jesus Christ permitted in the 
 man whom Romanists pronounce the first of the popes, that which 
 St. Paul formally authorized among bishops, that which the 
 Church long left free to all her ministers, has now become trans- 
 formed into not only an act of disobedience, but a crime, a 
 frightful profanation. The celibacy of a priest has entered into 
 the very essence of his priesthood ; some doctors have gone so far 
 as to teach that whoever has once lived in marriage, however 
 long he may have been a widower, is for ever disqualified for 
 offering the sacrifice of the mass. Celestine III. was very nearly 
 giving this tenet the force of a dogma. In fine, to return to the 
 council, among those very men who had been heard preaching 
 up the the pope's absolute power of dispensing with all laws, civil, 
 ecclesiastical, and divine, there were some who refused him the 
 right of allowing a priest to marry. And they did not under- 
 stand that this right was to be taken from him by the council ; 
 they went much beyond this ; according to them it was a right 
 which the popes never possessed, or could have possessed, any 
 more than that of annihilating what exists, or of creating what 
 does not exist. Such w T as the importance attached to the main- 
 tenance of the law of celibacy ! So much need was there felt for 
 having piled around this palladium of the Roman Church all 
 those ramparts which people were not allowed to raise round laws 
 that had emanated directly from God. 
 
 This question, moreover, like all the rest, had come before the 
 
 1 Numerous details will be found in Hurter, (ch. vii.,) on the progress of the question in the 
 Middle Ages. Resistance to it was far more prolonged, and more obstinate than is generally 
 believed. The Danish clergy, who were the last to submit, were powerfully supported by the 
 peasantry, who said " they had to look to the safety of their wives and daughters.'' A proof 
 this of the disorders which they saw following the celibacy of the clergy in other countries. It 
 will be observed that we leave this side of the question entirely out of view. Of all the argu- 
 ments against forbidding the priests to marry, the picture of their own morals has long been 
 the most powerful. The improvement ai«w seen in that respect, cannot blind us to the recol- 
 lection of what they were luring whole centurie-, and what in some countries thev still are. 
 
 2 p 
 
450 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 council, not in its simple state, but associated with a train of poli- 
 tical interests and prejudices. People were curious to know 
 whether in the event of the pope being admitted to have the 
 power of allowing a priest to marry, the French would ask his 
 sanction for the marriage of the Cardinal de Bourbon, who might 
 be called in right of birth to the throne. But the French them- 
 selves did not yet know how they should act, and were waiting 
 for instructions from their court. The Cardinal of Lorraine, 
 whom the queen-mother had almost left to follow in this matter 
 whatever course he might deem best, was more undecided than 
 anybody. On the one hand, in the event of the Cardinal de 
 Bourbon leaving the Church, he would become the premier pre- 
 late of the kingdom, and in the possible contingency of a breach 
 with the pope, he might consider himself patriarch of France ; 
 on the other hand, in the case of Bourbon remaining a priest, 
 the Bourbon family might become extinct, and the house of Lor- 
 raine ascend the throne. 
 
 It was in the midst of these uncertainties that he heard (9th 
 May) of the death of his brother, the Duke of Guise, who had 
 been assassinated at Orleans. That event, though viewed at first 
 in Italy as the worst of calamities, was ere long to prove almost 
 as fortunate for the pope as for the French Protestants. De- 
 prived of its main stay, the court, it is true, found itself com- 
 pelled to make peace with these last ; but, on the other hand, it 
 felt, at the same time, that it had need of being on better terms 
 with the pope, and must now look abroad for those means of re- 
 sisting the Beformation, which it despaired of finding any longer 
 at home. It was not even thought necessary to send orders to 
 the bishops to moderate their zeal. They did so instinctively; 
 from the very first days that followed the new T s, the Boman party 
 could see that they had not intractable foes to deal with. And 
 when so many difficulties that once appeared insoluble were seen 
 to disentangle themselves as if by enchantment, " Poltrot's ball," 
 it was said some months afterwards, " has rebounded as far as 
 Trent. It has cut the knot by which the chariot of the council 
 had been indefinitely stopped." 
 
 Possibly, too, there was, although on a different account, 
 some softening down of their terms on the part of the pope 
 and his party. He had received, much about the same time, two 
 letters which could not fail to have so far influenced him. 
 
 The one was from the Cardinal of Mantua, the premier legate. 
 We have seen that he was a straightforward and pious man. 
 
PIUS IV. REBUKED BY A DYING CARDINAL. 451 
 
 Many a time lie had testified his repugnance to being made the 
 blind minister of the interests and the wishes of Borne ; many a 
 time had he groaned to see that unless he chose to become her 
 declared opponent, he was condemned to contribute more than 
 any one else to the success of her intrigues. The pope, in fact, 
 after having repeatedly expressed his profound discontent, had 
 come to give him his entire confidence. It had been perceived, 
 at last, what advantages might be derived from his popularity in 
 the council, and from the favour with which he was regarded by 
 the secular princes. Sick, worn out with anxiety and watching, 
 he received an order to go and meet the emperor. But what was 
 he to do at Inspruck ? He was not even clearly told what, but 
 the Cardinal of Lorraine had gone thither ; and this was enough 
 to induce the pope to send some one too, however painful the 
 part he might have to perform. 
 
 Hard, indeed, was the service exacted by the court of Borne ; 
 a man's self-esteem was often exposed in it to as hard rubs as 
 his conscience. The cardinal began to weary of constant obe- 
 dience. First, he dictated to his secretary a respectful letter in 
 which he shewed the uselessness of the journey ; next, taking up 
 the pen himself, he summoned courage to speak out his mind. 
 He was weary, he said, of perpetually repeating to ambassadors 
 and bishops promises which he had begun to see would not be 
 kept. He blushed both for himself and for the Holy See, when 
 he thought of these interminable tergiversations ; he trembled 
 for the future prospects of the Church, while thus obstinately 
 refusing all the reforms which Europe, led on by her kings, 
 loudly demanded. He added that he was sensible that his end 
 was drawing near, called God to witness to the purity of his 
 intentions, and felt remorse at having, against the voice of his 
 conscience, taken part in so many efforts to perpetuate abuses. 
 Six days elapsed 1 and the writer was no more. 
 
 Such was the first of the two letters ; the second was from the 
 emperor. As strong and much more frank and explicit than any 
 that the pope had previously received from the sovereigns, it was 
 not unlike the Cardinal of Mantua's postscript in its essence. 
 The emperor told him, in substance, that he had come to In- 
 spruck in order to have a nearer view of the council's proceed- 
 ings, and that he had not as yet perceived anything but intrigues, 
 doubtfully good intentions, and too manifestly bad ones ; that 
 matters could not remain on this footing ; that the council was 
 
 i 2d March. 
 
452 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 about to fall to pieces of itself, to the intense satisfaction of here- 
 tics and the everlasting confusion of the Church ; that he would 
 not, however, suppose the pope to be capable of any such selfish 
 purpose as that of allowing an assembly, on which so many hopes 
 had been built, to pass away in smoke, but that were such really 
 the pope's intention, matters could not go on Avorse than they 
 did. Three things, the emperor added, had especially struck 
 him, and not him only, but all his prelates, all his subjects, in 
 short, all Europe. The one was, that the decrees all came ready 
 made from Rome ; next, that the legates alone had the right 
 to propose matters to the council; lastly, that the prelates from 
 Italy formed a party, and took post openly as the champions 
 and the advocates of the court of Rome. Now, it lay with the 
 pope, and with the pope alone, to rid the council of these three 
 plagues. Certain rumours of translation and dissolution had 
 reached the emperor's ears ; but he would not insult the pope by 
 suspecting that he had given any ground for them. His Holi- 
 ness, doubtless, understood better than any one else, that after 
 having convened the council at the instance and with the assent 
 of all the secular princes, he could not dissolve it without their 
 approbation. 
 
 This last point was not quite clear. The pope had never 
 acknowledged, in point of right, that he required the assent of 
 the secular princes in convoking the council ; and as all Roman 
 Catholics were agreed that there could be no council-general 
 without his concurrence, they, by that alone, acknowledged that 
 he had the power to dissolve it. But if Ferdinand on this point 
 went too far, it is not the less instructive to see what was thought 
 of the council, shortly before its close, by a pacific prince, a man 
 full of good intentions, a sincere subject of the Holy See, and 
 sincerely desirous that the Church should recover her claims to 
 the esteem and the confidence of the nations. Pallavieini, ac- 
 cordingly, struggles hard to weaken the purport of this letter. 
 He insists on the compliments, the excuses, the expressions of 
 respect and submission with which the emperor had mingled his 
 remonstrances. Sarpi, according to him, saw only the dark side, 
 the rude strokes, and these he tried rashly to embellish. " The 
 emperor's letter," says he, u contained not a single grain of that 
 aloes which springs up only in Sarpi's garden ; though 1 ought 
 to call it rather colocynth than aloes, seeing the bitterness of 
 the one has a healing virtue, whereas the other is poisonous." 1 
 
 1 Bi>"k xx. ch. viii. 
 
PIUS IV. REBUKED RY THE EMPEROR. 458 
 
 Notwithstanding this, Sarpi's analysis, clown to the very strokes 
 of politeness, hardly contains anything which is not to be found 
 in his tart rival. He has only forgot to mention that it was 
 secret. This was an additional piece of politeness, hut a proof 
 at the same time of the severity of the contents. Thus, accord- 
 ing to the emperor, the assembled prelates had not yet performed 
 anything that the world expected from them. They had lost 
 consideration in the eyes of all right-minded and godly people ; 
 there was nothing good to be expected from them as long as they 
 should remain as they were. Well, then, did his letter put an 
 end to all that he referred to as ruining the council's authority 
 beyond its own circle ? Certainly not ; on the very day of its 
 closing, in December, he might have repeated, word for word, 
 all that he had said at the beginning of March ; his letter might 
 only have been richer in facts, reproaches, and objections. Such 
 as the council had appeared to him at the earlier period, the same 
 it ought to have appeared at the last, and in the same colours 
 would he have painted it, had he not been induced to refrain. 
 As for the dogmatical authority of the council and its infalli- 
 bility, the letter says not a word. The emperor speaks of the 
 council as of an assembly altogether human, occupied with human 
 affairs, actuated by human passions. He does not even ask how 
 one could make the nations believe that it was under the guid- 
 ance of the Holy Ghost ; he has not the air of a man who sup- 
 poses that any one could entertain the idea of seriously present- 
 ing its decrees as having emanated from God. Once more, we 
 do not mean to say that his was the language of a Roman Catho- 
 lic ; we simply remark the tone in which a good Roman Catholic 
 still could make bold to express himself, in the first months of 
 1563, in speaking of an assembly whose most insignificant de- 
 cisions have been magnified into oracles. 
 
 Pius IV. caused a memorial to be drawn up in which he in- 
 sisted strongly on what did not depend upon him, but said little 
 about what he was personally responsible for. He declared that 
 he had never put force upon the council ; but this was not what 
 the emperor had said. It was well known that there had been 
 no open violence ; what was complained of was the occult and 
 continuous action, in presence of which it was no exaggeration 
 to say that the council was at Rome, not at Trent. The pope, 
 moreover, affirmed that he had never forbidden the council to 
 vote without his previous advice. Officially, this was true ; in 
 reality every one knew that it was false. When he had sent off 
 
454 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 his advice, he added, lie had never alleged that the council was 
 bound to follow it. This, too, was true in one sense, but not 
 true in another, since the pope well knew that all that came from 
 Rome was sacred in the eyes of the majority. The great evil, 
 according to him, was, that few people formed to themselves a 
 correct idea of the council's rights, duties, and proper place. 
 Had all the princes imitated the piety and followed the example 
 of a Constantine and a Theodosius, all things would have gone 
 on regularly of themselves. 
 
 The pope would no doubt have been very angry had he been 
 taken at his word, and had his crowned adversaries been strong 
 enough in history, or bold enough in logic, to think of placing 
 themselves, in their relations with the Church, in the same posi- 
 tion with the emperors he had named. Those two great names, 
 or rather those two great words — Constantine and Theodosius — 
 are still in great favour among certain defenders of Roman Ca- 
 tholicism, some of whom are ignorant enough to appeal to them 
 in good faith, others because they think they may safely enough 
 reckon upon the ignorance of their readers. The Church has 
 never been less independent of the civil power than under the 
 first Christian emperors ; the profound sense of obligation with 
 which she accepted the imperial favours sufficiently shews that 
 she had no idea of claiming any of these as a right. When 
 ancient ecclesiastical writers speak of the calling together of a 
 council, is it the pope, or the emperor, whom they represent as 
 having ordained its convocation? Have they ever said, for 
 example, "the council of Nice under Melchiades," or "the 
 council of Constantinople under Liberius," in the same man- 
 ner as " the Lateran council under Innocent III.," or " the 
 Council of Trent under Pius IV.," came afterwards to be 
 spoken of? "It was from a spirit of concession," one author 
 tells us, 1 "or, at least, of toleration, that Constantine and his 
 successors convened the first councils-general. Accordingly, il 
 is very bad reasoning to say, the emperors convened the first 
 councils; the right to convening councils, therefore, belonged to 
 them." Tins, we admit, would be bad reasoning; but, let us 
 add, it is not we who say it. Our sole conclusion is the follow- 
 ing- : If councils-general, reputed legitimate, could have been 
 convoked by an emperor, then it is not indispensable to the legi- 
 timacy of a council that it be convoked by a pope. "Rut that 
 arose from concession — toleration." Ay, and such is the view 
 1 Promptsault. 
 
THE POPE'S ANSWER TO THE EMPEROR. 455 
 
 that must absolutely be maintained, else the whole system must 
 be abandoned. But where have we the proof? The Fathers at 
 Constantinople write to Theodosius that in calling them together 
 himself, he put an honour on the Church. 1 That, you say, was 
 a mere compliment. Agreed ; but you will not go so far as to 
 insult an oecumenical and infallible council, as to think that it 
 could have turned into a compliment what it considered to be at 
 bottom an act of sacrilege. Next, what was the object for which 
 that very letter was written ? Shall we say that it was from 
 toleration, too, that the council asked from the emperor, and that 
 in the most formal terms, the confirmation of its decrees? 
 " Giving to God the thanks that are due to him, of necessity, 
 also, we refer to your piety those things that have been done in 
 the holy council." 2 Such were the expressions of the Constanti- 
 nopolitan Fathers in the year 381. In a word, it is not becaxise 
 we are at all taken with a state of things in which councils were 
 in the hands of the emperors ; but this is widely different from 
 their being in the hands of the popes, and their being nothing 
 without them. 
 
 With this exception the reasoning of Pius IV. was correct. It 
 is clear that if all the sovereigns had maintained the respectful im- 
 mobility which it was-alleged Constantine and Theodosius of old 
 were observed to maintain, the council would long ere this have 
 come to a close. It would have been shaken off in a few months, 
 after havinglaunchedsome anathemas against heretics, and having 
 effected a few reforms in matters of detail, unless, indeed, a still 
 shorter course had been adopted, that of not convoking it at all. 
 
 The Cardinal of Mantua was dead, and so his letter might be 
 tossed aside. That from the emperor suggested some serious re- 
 flections ; but they ended only in redoubling the precautions taken 
 against all that was not delivered over to the pope and his par- 
 tisans to be dealt with as they pleased. The reply of Pius IV. 
 was not even sent off. u It was thought," says Pallavicini, " that 
 this matter, so abundant and so crude, required being gradually 
 mollified and prepared for deglutition, by the vital warmth of 
 suitable words, so as to make it easier of digestion." The pope, 
 accordingly, wrote only a very short brief, in which he thanked 
 the emperor for his devotedness to the Holy See, for his zeal for 
 the good of Christendom, his advices on the subject of reforms, 
 
 1 Litteris, quibus nos convocasti, ecclesiam honore prosecutus es. 
 
 2 Agentes autem Deo debitas gratias, necessario quoque ea quae acta sunt in sancto con- 
 ci'lio ad tuam referimus pietatem. 1{ ogam us igitur tuam clementiam ut per litteras quoque 
 t\in* pietatis ratuni liabeatur concilii decretum. 
 
456 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 and, finally, for his caution in listening- to false reports. He 
 added that Cardinal Morone was about to set off for Germany, 
 and would present to him, in greater detail, the observations he 
 had to make on his letter. 
 
 The pope, at the same time, paid the utmost attention to 
 cementing a closer union between himself and the king of Spain. 
 The arrival of an ambassador extraordinary was about to give 
 him the occasion of making greater advances towards that, with- 
 out too much condescension. Don Lewis d'Avila was received, 
 therefore, with the highest honours ; Pius gave him apartments 
 in his own palace, and loaded him with courtesies. His 
 instructions, which were a curious medley of submission and 
 boldness, of ultra-Romanism on some points, and ultra-Gallicanism 
 on others, faithfully represented that frank, yet false position, 
 which we have seen invariably held by the Spanish prelates at 
 Trent. Philip II., while formally protesting, on the one hand, 
 against the concession of the cup, loudly protested, on the other, 
 against that old subject of scandal, the proponentibus legatis, 
 with which, said he, the council never could be free. He re- 
 gretted that the continuation had not been openly avowed at the 
 very first session after the council had resumed its sittings ; but 
 the more faith he had in the authority of the council, the longer 
 was he of seeing the assembled prelates apply their hands to all 
 that had to be reformed in the Church. The king, in fine, 
 craved the pope's sanction for his levying, during five years, the 
 subsidy that had been granted to him on the property of hiss 
 clergy; he required, also, a dispensation for the marriage of his 
 sister with his son, a ticklish case which the council had spoken 
 of putting among those for which a dispensation could never be 
 granted. On this latter point the pope said that he would have 
 the matter submitted to examination, and that he woidd refuse 
 nothing- that he had the power to grant ; as to the former, that 
 he was quite disposed to grant the subsidy, but could not in con- 
 science do it, as long as the Spanish prelates should remain at 
 Trent and be subjected to so many expenses there. Let the 
 king, then, but help towards the winding-up of the council, and 
 the subsidy would be granted immediately. 
 
 But what could Philip II. do? Notwithstanding his advices and 
 his orders, the Spanish prelates continued to display the most in- 
 dependence of any. In the question of the authority of the Holy 
 See, they astonished the Galileans themselves ; they were nearly 
 jumping at once into consequences from which the latter recoiled. 
 
TWO LEGATES DIE THEIR SUCCESSORS. 457 
 
 " Let the pope give us back our own, since we lejwe him more 
 than his own !" said the Archbishop of Grenada, one day. Angry 
 feelings had gradually spread even into the numerous throng of 
 footmen and other domestics with which so many ambassadors 
 and prelates had crammed the city. Bloody brawls disgraced 
 the streets. Italy, Spain, became two war-cries which in a few 
 minutes would bring hundreds of combatants together. On the 
 12th of March a general fray took place; some were killed and 
 many wounded. At last the excess of these disorders led to seri- 
 ous efforts for their suppression : but the congregation-meetings 
 were for several days interrupted, and never had the council less 
 of the appearance of a council. 
 
 We have seen why it was that the pope, even though very 
 ill-pleased with the Cardinal of Mantua, had retained him in the 
 presidency. That prelate's death left him at liberty to select a 
 more devoted representative, and such he found in Cardinal 
 Morone, to whom was added another legate, Cardinal Navigero. 
 Hardly had they left their homes for Trent when news arrived 
 of the death of Seripandi, who discharged the office of interim- 
 premier legate, and survived his colleague only a few days. 
 Thus, there remained at Trent, only Simonetta and Hosius. It 
 was resolved that business should be suspended until the arrival 
 of the two new legates, and the keenness of controversy was a little 
 moderated in consequence. Two deaths happening so near to 
 each other, had produced a profound sensation ; the present 
 looked dark, and the future darker still. Two thoroughly ultra- 
 montane legates could bring with them only new elements of 
 distrust, and, in that respect, the ultramontanists themselves 
 looked for their arrival with apprehension. 
 
 They travelled slowly. The pope, it was positively said, had 
 enjoined them to reach Trent so near the time of the Easter 
 holidays that no one could expect the sittings to be resumed im- 
 mediately. The president, in fact, arrived only on holy Satur- 
 day. A magnificent reception was given him. At the first 
 congregation, held on the 13th of April, the members learnt 
 from his own mouth what had previously been a flying rumour, 
 namely, that he was about to set out immediately for Inspruck. 
 This news had something in it to displease almost everybody, 
 Spaniards as well as French, as indicative of an alliance be- 
 tween the pope and the emperor ; the Italians, as a weakness, 
 for they thought it little becoming in the president of a council 
 to put himself about for the sake of visiting a temporal prince ; 
 
458 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 the impatient, as causing- delay ; the religious, in fine, as prov- 
 ing that the council was to continue to be, before all things, and 
 in all things, a mere political affair. 
 
 As for the Cardinal of Lorraine, who had eagerly made interest 
 for the title of legate, and for this end had made advances little 
 in consistency with his Gallicanism, he had gone to hide his ill 
 humour at Venice, but not without exhaling it, in the company 
 of his friends, in terms little fitted to make the pope regret his 
 not having named him. Morone, on the contrary, greatly de- 
 sired to see him before setting out for Germany; but as the 
 crafty Lorrainer had no wish to come under any engagement, by 
 no means could he be induced to return in time. He arrived on 
 the 20th of April, and Morone had set off on the 16th. 
 
 This embassage into Germany had been officially announced 
 as a mere matter of courtesy and good understanding betwixt the 
 pope and the emperor ; at bottom, it was an affair of the greatest 
 delicacv and gravity that had occurred for a long while. First 
 of all, as the pope began to see no hope of safety but in a coup 
 d'etat which should put the council absolutely in his power, it 
 was necessary that Ferdinand should be brought to consent to 
 the eventuality of a translation to Bologna. In the second place, 
 as he had spoken of coming to Trent, and the pope dreaded this 
 extremely, it was necessary that he should be induced to renounce 
 this purpose, and to engage him at the same time to come to 
 Bologna, in case of the assembly transporting itself thither ; the 
 pope would repair there also, and would solemnly place the im- 
 perial crown with his own hands upon his head, — a ceremony by 
 which Pius IV. would have been happy to verify, at least in 
 point of form, the right of distributing crowns claimed by the 
 Holy See. Moreover, once at Bologna, the pope would naturally 
 find himself at the head of the council, but this, people were 
 assured, only to bring it to an auspicious termination by himself 
 proposing many of the reforms that were demanded. In fine, 
 the emperor had to be induced to desist from pressing a large 
 part of the demands which he had presented or approved. With 
 this view, Morone had orders to promise him that, on the council 
 being brought to a close, he would obtain directly from the pope 
 all that should be judged necessary for the good of his States, 
 and, in particular, the concession of the cup. It is not explained 
 how the pope could permit himself to be carried away by the 
 hope of such a change in the ideas and plans of the emperor. 
 
 Meanwhile he thought he was bound to pronounce an encr- 
 
THE COUNCIL DISTRUSTS ITSELF. 459 
 
 getic protest against the treaty of peace that had been concluded 
 l>etween Charles IX. and the French Protestants. Contrary to 
 one of the most ancient privileges of the kingdom, in virtue of 
 which no bishop could be tried in the first instance except in 
 the country itself, and by twelve of the bishops of the country, 
 ten of them were summoned to appear personally at Eome as 
 heretics and favourers of heresy. So much despatch and secrecy 
 had been employed that the French ambassador had had no time 
 to protest; he confined himself to remonstrating that this irregular 
 summons would not be received, and that even were the bishops 
 willing to obey, the parliament and the court would oppose their 
 doing so. In fact the summons fell to the ground, and while it 
 was published at Rome the parliament of Paris registered the 
 edict of pacification, bearing among other things that were little 
 suited to please the pope, " that the kingdom had suffered enough ; 
 that the king was determined to make peace, and to grant liberty 
 of conscience, under certain restrictions, in the hope that with 
 time, by means of a holy and free council, whether general or 
 national, all disunion would at last disappear." This was a 
 prospect for the future hardly warranted by the past ; but we 
 have here a fact confirmatory of what we have superabundantly 
 demonstrated, to wit, that the Council of Trent, down to the 
 close of its sittings, was almost nowhere considered as free, or as 
 really general, or as having answered to the object that people 
 had in view in calling for it. 
 
 And it was not in the very midst of the assembly that least 
 doubt was expressed, if not upon its legitimacy, at least upon the 
 authority and permanent force of its acts. At the epoch at 
 which we now have arrived all the correspondence by letters, 
 all the written accounts, bear the impress of weariness and dis- 
 gust. We see men who have ceased to have any confidence 
 either in themselves or in their work. Some we see blindly 
 throwing themselves into the inconsistencies of Gallican liberal- 
 ism ; others pressing more and more eagerly round the pope ; 
 but as for people believing apparently in the council, in its divine 
 commission, in the future subsistence of its acts, we see none, or 
 next to none. Europe is there, all around, as if at the side of 
 the bed of a dying person who still breathes, but who is spoken 
 of as if already dead. Ambassadors, and even princes, protest 
 no longer. Formerly the king of France would have thought 
 himself obliged at least to say why he did not accept the council ; 
 in March, 1563, he does not so much as mention it. A free 
 and holy council, says he, will succeed at last in consolidating 
 
460 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 peace. He speaks like one quite unaware that there is any- 
 where an assembly calling itself a council. It is true that that 
 assembly had little answered hitherto to the ideal that he had 
 traced of it in speaking of consolidating peace. The gulf be- 
 tween the Reformation and Rome was deeper than ever. A 
 thousand matters of dispute that had lain buried hitherto in the 
 dust of the schools had been brought out into open sight of 
 Christendom. " 0, city of Trent! 0, inhospitable city!" ex- 
 claimed the Bishop of Budoa, " with good reason wilt thou be 
 put to the ban by the nations as a hotbed of troubles !" And 
 upon this thesis he had constructed a whole burlesque parody of 
 Isaiah's threatenings against Jerusalem. A poor joke and a 
 foolish bishop ; but, after all, he merely gave a farcical inter- 
 pretation to what was said by some and thought by almost all. 
 
 Meanwhile nothing, or next to nothing, was done. Cardinal 
 Navigero did not arrive until the 30th of April, the bearer, he 
 said, of an order from the pope to labour seriously at the work 
 of reforms ; but he had orders, also, to do nothing before the 
 premier legate's return. The latter had been followed to In- 
 spruck by an envoy of the Cardinal of Lorraine, charged with 
 instructions to urge the emperor to keep to his resolution. Ac- 
 cordingly he met with no success, and the imperial doctors con - 
 tinned peaceably to work at the far from Roman articles that had 
 been submitted to them. 
 
 In fine, while the Cardinal of Lorraine was intriguing against 
 the pope at Inspruck he sent one of his secretaries to the pope 
 himself with the assurance of his most profound devotion. Cari- 
 catures were circulated accordingly, in which he Avas represented 
 with two faces, one looking arrogantly to the north, the other 
 looking humbly and submissively to the south. The pope, offi- 
 cially, saw only the latter ; the former, without appearing to see 
 it, he saw better still. Was the cardinal, then, the only man 
 that had two faces ? If any one had attempted to give a por- 
 trait of the pope, how many would he have needed to give him '? 
 Had the council itself never more than one face ? And, in short, 
 would not one rather have said of it that it was like one of those 
 theatrical scenes in which the personages see each other, hear 
 each other, almost touch each other, without apparently seem»' 
 or hearing each other ? Happily the piece has not disappeared 
 with the actors; and that piece has become something too seri- 
 ous for us not to be entitled to scrutinize the worth at which it 
 was estimated in the eyes of the spectators at that time, and in 
 the eves of the actors themselves. 
 
461 
 
 BOOK SIXTH. 
 
 Glance at the position of parties — The assembly — The Roman Catholics — The Protestant^ — 
 The Pope — Rome — The emperor begins to fail — The Cardinal of Lorraine goes over to the 
 ultramontanists — What is a heretic in the eyes of the Church — Consistency with her re- 
 quires persecution — The question of divine right resumed — The cardinal makes a second step 
 — The council is led away into the field of the pope's authority — The opinion of Lainez on dis- 
 pensations and the right to dispense — Almost everybody shocked by his ideas and the tone in 
 which he announced them — He excuses himself — The cardinal stops the protests. 
 
 Dispute betwixt the ambassadors of France and Spain — State of the question — A bias and 
 its sequel — Violent acts of the French ambassador — Compromise — Other disputes of the same 
 kind. 
 
 Why such an indisposition to vote on the question of the divine right — It is definitively 
 withdrawn — Consequences of the vague state in which it has been left — Disagreement among 
 the doctors — Is it true that it was a question of little importance — Silence of the council on 
 all that relates to the popedom — Is it true that this silence was quite voluntary — Historical 
 sketch of the discussions. 
 
 Almost as many questions omitted as decided — An attempt made to draw up a table of the 
 functions of the seven orders — It fails — The council admits, in spite of itself, the legitimacy of 
 the suppressions made by the Reformation — Theological difficulties — If a layman be fit for 
 certain sacerdotal functions he canno^be absolutely unfit for certain others — The Roman 
 system is logical and clear only at the surface. 
 
 The Spaniards persist in requiring explanations — They desist — The legates are delighted — 
 Twenty-third session — Decree of Reformation in eighteen chapters — Residence — Conditions 
 and formalities of ordination — Conditions as to age — Other points — The seminaries — Histo- 
 rical review — The seminaries are one of the fruits of the Reformation. 
 
 Universal astonishment at the view of the omissions — The assembly resumes the question 
 of marriage — Discipline and dogma mingled more in this than in anything else — Ambiguous 
 decree — Fifty-six bishops are for the council speaking clearly, without troubling itself about 
 consequences. 
 
 Forty articles presented to the ambassadors — Articles which the latter wished to be added 
 to these — Why so many cardinals Italians, and always an Italian for pope — The princes think 
 of taking their guarantees against the bishops — Pius IV. urges matters to a close — The princes 
 exact the suppression of every article contrary to their rights — The ultramontane party — 
 Intervention of the Cardinal of Lorraine — His journey to Rome — Draft of decree on the 
 princes — Exorbitant pretensions — Du Farrier's protest — Other protests — The council is more 
 than ever a chaos — An explanation of the propone ntibus consented to — A congregation in 
 confusion — Twenty -fourth congregation held, in greater confusion still — Pallavicini's success 
 
 Objections to twelve anathemas of the decree on marriage — Contradictions, incoherencies, 
 shifts, and quibbles — Why was the indissolubleness of marriage not formally taught — Dis- 
 ciplinary articles— Clandestine marriages, dispensations, &c — Reformatory articles — Elec- 
 tions, provincial and diocesan councils — Visits, preaching, censures, draft of a catechism, pen- 
 ances, salaries, competitions, ecclesiastical procedure — Why, after so many decrees, did people 
 still complain of the insufficiency of the council ? 
 
 The Queen of Navarre is summoned to Rome — Protest of the Queen of France — The pope 
 seconds the views of Philip II. on that kingdom — It is decided that the close of the council 
 shall take place before the close of the year — The discussions hastened by the bad state of the 
 pope's health. 
 
482 HISTORY OF TIIK COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 General review of the questions on purgatory, the worship of saints, &c. — Question of 
 purgatory — Scriptural discussion — Involuntary admissions in the Protestant sense— Could 
 purgatory fail to be expressly mentioned in Scripture? 
 
 The worship of the Virgin — Mary in the Gospels — In the Acts — In the Epistles — In the 
 Apocalypse — Historical review — The Virgin in the writings of the Fathers — Great eulogies, 
 but no trace of worship — Epiphanius, Cyril, Proclus— The worship of the saints — Silence of 
 Scripture — What all prayer addressed to a dead person pre-supposes — The peace of those 
 who pray to the saints — Pagan objection — Luther and the saints — Is there anything wanting 
 in those pious persons who do not pray to them — What would be lost, in general, by not pray- 
 ing to them — The worship of the saints is forbidden by implication in many passages of 
 Scripture — There is but one sole Mediator. 
 
 Abuse of the worship of the saints — Has it ever remained and can it remain within the 
 limits traced by the council — The common people invoke them as present everywhere and 
 as possessing power of themselves — Proofs — The saints according to Chateaubriand — Does the 
 Church combat the tendencies of the common people — What would be thought by a pagan 
 entering Rome again after eighteen hundred years' absence — Juliana of Liege and the cut in 
 the moon — " You might steal God from them, and they would never notice it" — A mandemeitt 
 of the Archbishop of Lyons — Falsehoods and sophisms — The Virgin queen of the universe — 
 Proofs — Citations — The mob of saints — How they are fabricated at Rome — Relics and wor- 
 ship of relics. 
 
 Worship of images — The Second Commandment — Fraud — Discussion — If the images are 
 nothing in themselves, why are some more venerated than others — Is the worship of images 
 really different from what it was among the pagans — The worship of the Virgin, worship of 
 beauty — Questions to her worshippers. 
 
 Indulgences — Historical review — The council tries to purify the practice, but leaves all the 
 obscurities of the theory untouched — Discussion — Several wherefores — Ridiculous facilities — 
 Although salvation were to be bought, the greatest of the saints would not have wherewithal 
 to pay for it — It is a matter, therefore, in which none except Jesus Christ can lend aid to 
 any one. 
 
 Reformatory decree on the subject of the religious orders — Divers details — Encroachments 
 on the rights of the civil authority — Decree of general reformation — Wise measures — New 
 encroachments — Digression on the acceptance of the council in France — Variations of the 
 clergy. 
 
 The dogmatic decrees are thought superficial and little worthy of a council — Everybody, 
 with the exception of the Spanish ambassador, wishes it to be closed — The pope is danger- 
 ously ill — 31 ore and more haste made — Threatening difficulties — These are smoothed down — 
 The pope's confirmation to be asked for — All the old decrees to be read in public — The decree 
 on the princes to have everything removed from it that can shock them. 
 
 Twenty-fifth and last session — Unlooked-for article in favour of the pope's authority — Pro- 
 rogation until next day — The decree on indulgences pa°t — Resumption of the session— Fasts, 
 festivals, the Index, the Catechism, questions of precedency, &c. — Reading of the old de- 
 crees — One further difficulty eluded — Final voting — The pope's confirmation asked for Dis- 
 positions of Pius IV. — Those of his court — Resistances — View taken of the confirmation by 
 those even who advise it — It is given — The pope reserves to himself the interpretation of 
 the decrees — Rome can as little trust the decrees of Trent as she can trust the Bible. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 As avc draw towards the conclusion it will not be uninterest- 
 ing to explain in a few words the position of the parties chiefly 
 interested. To describe in detail all that was in agitation in 
 Trent, and around Trent, at this time, would be to describe 
 chaos. 
 
SENTIMENTS OF VARIOUS PARTIES. 463 
 
 Among the members of the assembly, as we have already 
 said, there prevailed weariness and discouragement, to which Ave 
 may add an almost general neglect of dogmatical questions. A 
 stranger never would have imagined that any of these yet re- 
 mained on the orders of the day ; he would have supposed him- 
 self rather in a diet than in a council. 
 
 Among the generality of Roman Catholics, we have already 
 said also, there were disappointment, distrust, unanimity in feel- 
 ing, and almost unanimity in saying that this was not what had 
 been expected. 
 
 Among the Protestants you might, see that the council was 
 forgotten and despised. They were no longer spoken to about 
 submitting to the council. Matters had come to that point that 
 it would not only have been unreasonable, as it had ever been, 
 but ridiculous, to give them for oracles of the Holy Ghost the 
 decisions of an assembly where so many passions and intrigues 
 were fermenting. 
 
 The secular princes, who had always, and before all things, 
 seen in a council the re-establishment of unity, an illusion which 
 vanished from the time that the first sessions were held, the 
 princes, we say, now concerned themselves about the council 
 as people concern themselves about affairs that they have once 
 taken up, but on which they have ceased to found any hopes. 
 Besides, with excellent views and excellent intentions relative 
 to abuses in general, each held to the preservation of those from 
 which he himself in particular derived some advantage, and, as Pius 
 IV. very well said, each wanted to reform everybody but himself. 
 
 The pope, in fine, while loudly complaining of the selfishness 
 of the princes, knew assuredly better than any one else, that 
 there lay the anchor of his own salvation. Had they all been 
 agreed on all points, resistance would have been hopeless. But 
 what was asked for by some was not asked for by others, or the 
 very contrary was asked for. If this was not a reason for ab- 
 solutely refusing, it was always one for putting the matter off 
 indefinitely, or for referring it to the judgment of the pope. 
 Hence some of the most delicate points had successively escaped 
 being judged by the council. Not that there was not more than 
 one on which all sovereigns were agreed ; all, for example, were 
 for the divine right in the episcopate. But as they had no com- 
 mon understanding as to the importance to be attached to the 
 question, as to the necessity for having it settled, and the form 
 to be adopted for that effect, ample room was afforded for tak- 
 
4G4 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 ing advantage of these divergencies and avoiding a decision 
 either way. The pope, moreover, although he had more to 
 hope from time than from any other auxiliary, was more impa- 
 tient, more fatigued, more sick-tired, than the council. Seven- 
 teen years of struggling had led the court of Rome to unmask, 
 one after another, all its batteries, to let the world see all its 
 fears, and even all the details and all the various shades of those 
 fears. It reckoned up with terror all that it had lost by the 
 council, if not in positive rights, at least in moral authority ; it 
 durst not believe in the stability of the decisions that had been 
 taken according to its views ; it knew too well, and care enough 
 was taken to tell it, that its intrigues had been manifest to every- 
 body, and none had been deceived but those who wished to be 
 so. Had it been told that the day would come when the collec- 
 tion of the canons of the council would be the citadel of the 
 Church of Rome and of the popedom, it would have thought the 
 prediction an idle dream ; the best thing, according to all ap- 
 pearances at that time, that it could expect was that, the council 
 once over, not a word should ever be said about it, either good 
 or bad. 
 
 The essential matter, accordingly, was to bring it to a close. 
 Morone had come back from Germany after long and useless 
 conferences, and with nothing but vague and far from encourag- 
 ing answers to communicate to the pope. The ernperor had 
 said that the transference of the council was not to be thought 
 of without the consent of the kings of Spain and France ; that 
 the good intentions of the pope, which, for his part, he had no 
 wish to doubt, would not prevent unpleasant suppositions as to 
 the object of the translation ; that all the bishops, according to 
 him, ought to enjoy the right of proposing measures, and that 
 either the proponentibus must be expunged, or a declaration made 
 to the effect that there had been no intention of asserting an ex- 
 clusive privilege ; that, in tine, he could not renounce his de- 
 mand for the examination of all that had been presented, both 
 in his name and in that of the king of France. 
 
 But when he saw that same prince begin to give way on all 
 points, one after another, except that of the translation, and to 
 shut his eyes on all the expedients that were employed for bring- 
 ing, right or wrong, the council to an end, it was not to be be- 
 lieved that that unbending reply had been really his last word 
 to the papal envoy. The report was circulated that Morone had 
 been more fortunate than had been thought at his return, or 
 
DE BIRAGUE AND THE FRENCH REFORMED. 465 
 
 than he himself had seemed to believe. It was not supposed, 
 nevertheless, that he had converted Ferdinand to the views of 
 the pope ; but it might have been supposed that by shewing him 
 how very enormous the obstacles were, he had indirectly put 
 him in the predicament of having to choose between a rupture 
 with Rome and a speedy termination of the council, alternatives 
 between which a Roman Catholic prince could hardly hesitate, 
 especially in Germany at the centre of the Reformation. We 
 cannot know up to what point these suppositions were well 
 founded ; but they were justified by the event. True, we shall 
 still see the emperor's representatives throwing obstacles occa- 
 sionally in the way of the assembly's course ; but whether they 
 were in the secret of his policy or not, their opposition will be 
 observed to have always stopt at the point beyond which it 
 would have been a declaration of war, and we shall see the 
 emperor express neither open gratitude for their efforts, nor 
 formal regrets for their want of success. We shall also see the 
 Cardinal of Lorraine, whether in accordance with him, or at his 
 own instance, enter definitively into the same course of deference 
 towards the pope, and of conciliation towards all. 
 
 This was perceived, on the 7th of June, on occasion of a 
 speech made by the President de Birague, sent by the court of 
 France, to justify before the council the peace that had been 
 granted to the Protestants. That peace, in a Roman Catholic 
 point of view, had much need of justification. If you are asked 
 what a heretic is, and try to define this, assuming as a basis the 
 Roman anathemas, you will make him to be a creature in per- 
 petual and voluntary revolt against all that is most sacred, a 
 species of monster, who is less to be dealt with in the way of 
 covenant than the worst of brigands, 1 seeing that a robber may 
 go to heaven on a single movement of repentance, whereas a 
 heretic, unless he abjures heresy, is irrevocably excluded from 
 it. That being so, it cannot but be a crime, and an enormous 
 crime, to leave them in peace ; by so much the stronger reason 
 was it criminal to have authorized them to celebrate their wor- 
 ship, ancVto remain constituted in churches. The Roman Church 
 has the misfortune of finding, that she cannot be tolerant, even 
 by halves and provisionally, without setting herself in contra- 
 diction with the laws that have emanated from her, and which 
 owe their rigour, not to passing necessities, but to principles 
 
 1 Those heroic Vaudois (Waldenses) who have suffered so much, and forgiven so much, 
 were called by Gregory XVI., in 1832, " the scum and opprobrium of the human nice " 
 
 2 G 
 
46G HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 which she has proclaimed, and still proclaims to he necessary, 
 immutable, and eternal. With Protestantism, consistency re- 
 quires toleration ; with Romanism, the same consistency requires 
 persecution. 
 
 De Birague had represented peace as a political necessity, a 
 truce to last only till something better could be had. But from 
 what quarter was that better to be expected? From the council, 
 he had said. An old compliment which re-appeared in all the 
 harangues, and which had long ceased to be really one, since 
 there never failed to be added, or hinted, that if the council was 
 to do any good it must be by its beginning to be something very 
 different from what it had hitherto been. The speaker had con- 
 cluded, as was always done, by disparaging all the council's doings 
 hitherto as inadequate to their object. A great internal reforma- 
 tion alone could, in his view, open the way to a return of unity. 
 
 The Cardinal of Lorraine having risen to speak on the reply 
 to be made to this communication, it was remarked that setting 
 aside all that bore upon reforms, he confined himself to enlarging 
 upon the political motives that had been stated by the ambas- 
 sador. This he did with great vigour and eloquence. The 
 pains he took to argue from the ground of necessity alone, with- 
 out giving the slightest place to considerations of justice, tolera- 
 tion, compassion, anything, in a word, that could be regarded as 
 favourable to the Protestants, was accepted as a pledge given to 
 the Roman party, as a first step hi a course where all was about 
 to be smooth. 
 
 Erelong he took a second. The never-ending question of the 
 divine right, repelled under so many forms, had never remained 
 a single day without re-appearing, sometimes feebly, as if by 
 way of memorandum, sometimes with fresh vivacity. It then 
 became anew, for some days, the only important question. Each 
 party reproduced its reasons, and after a crisis of longer or 
 shorter length, and more or less stormy, each found itself just 
 where it had been before. The intermediate distance had not 
 been narrowed by a single hair-breadth. 
 
 The Cardinal of Lorraine had said on his arrival, that he was 
 for the divine right, but that he did not insist that mention 
 should be made of it in a positive decree. Afterwards, without 
 openly contradicting himself, he had made common cause with 
 the partisans of that opinion ; it was too much bound up with 
 all his other views to admit of his abandoning it, even had he 
 wished to do so. On coming out from a conference with the 
 
CONTENTIONS ABOUT THE POPE'S AUTHORITY. 467 
 
 Cardinal of Ferrara, he himself had made it known that that 
 prelate had eagerly urged him to consent to a decree in which 
 that question should be eluded, but that he had refused and 
 would ever refuse. Great, therefore, was the surprise, alike of 
 his friends and his enemies, when on the 11th of June, at a 
 semi-official conference between the legates and a score of 
 bishops, he declared that his opinion remained unchanged, but 
 that, in order to have done with the matter, he had ceased to 
 insist on its insertion in the decree. He interposed this condi- 
 tion only, that no more should the decree contain anything con- 
 trary to that opinion, even, he added, to the idea of the superi- 
 ority of a council over the pope. 
 
 Thereupon, notwithstanding the joy that must have been felt 
 by the Eoman party on receiving such an overture, great was 
 the quarrel that ensued on that scorching question about the 
 authority of the pope. The Archbishop of Otranto so far lost 
 his temper as to tax with heresy the opinion which he knew to 
 be that of the cardinal ; no one but Lainez had as yet expressed 
 with such frankness his faith in the absolute and full superiority 
 of the pope. The cardinal replied, but with great moderation, 
 and with the evident intention of wounding nobody. The con- 
 tention, skilfully diverted, then ran chiefly on the dispensations. 
 As always, — for there was not a question in which the parties 
 did not revolve in a circle, — some wished that there should be 
 cases in which no dispensation should be accorded, others that 
 the pope should remain sole judge. Tired of the contention, the 
 parties paused ; but there had been enough of bitterness betwixt 
 the Cardinal of Lorraine and the legate Morone, who had a few 
 days before accused him of attacking, in general congregation, 
 things that he had in private seemed to approve. The cardinal 
 could perceive, accordingly, that he had much to be forgiven, 
 and set himself more and more to obtain forgiveness. A fine 
 opportunity was now about to present itself. 
 
 On the 16th of June, Lainez announced that he would reply 
 to all that had been said or insinuated against the pope's autho- 
 rity. Starting, accordingly, from the principles announced in 
 his previous speech, he reviewed the various applications of the 
 papal power, and endeavoured to shew that there is none of them 
 that is not of divine right. According to him, to say that a dis- 
 pensation from the pope does not discharge from an obligation 
 towards God, is to teach men to put the decisions of their con- 
 science above those of the Church, and to throw themselves, in 
 
468 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 fact, on the Protestant principle. " Embracing- in its univer- 
 sality all times and all men, the divine law is irrevocable ; but 
 as for ecclesiastical discipline, whose precepts have for their only 
 object the facilitating to men the observance of the laws of God, 1 
 it may undergo modifications, and it is for this end that the 
 ( 'lmrch lias a head who can dispense from the observance of her 
 laws. That authority has been committed by Jesus Christ to 
 the pope ; none therefore can dispute his possession of it without 
 setting himself in opposition to the will of the founder of the 
 Church. A law which should forbid the pope to exercise the 
 right of dispensing- would, by the very fact of its having had men 
 for its authors, be revocable of its own nature ; and although the 
 pope should engage by a solemn oath never to use that power, 
 his promise would cease to be obligatory from the moment that 
 charity should counsel the violation of it." 2 
 
 Thus the only right that Lainez refused the pope, was that of 
 interdicting himself even by an oath, from using the right of dis- 
 pensing. Here, then, we have omnipotence pushed to the last 
 conceivable extreme, that in which it has not even the power of 
 binding- itself. In vain would a pope swear to the observance of 
 a law ; in spite of his own very will, he remains free to violate 
 that law. 
 
 As for the council, always according to Lainez, the pope being 
 incontestably superior to each of the members, one does not see 
 how he should not be superior to the assembly itself. To him 
 alone belongs the power of reforming, if they have need of it, 
 each of the churches of which the bishops compose the council ; 
 it cannot, therefore, be maintained that those bishops, assembled 
 together, have that of reforming the entire body of the Church. 
 
 Never yet had the bishops heard so frank a declaration, that 
 they were nothing, and could do nothing. The very Italians, 
 habituated as they were to a sense of their own nullity, but who 
 could not be altogether insensible of the pleasure of being some- 
 thing as members of a council, thought these hard words. They 
 said nothing, however ; but the Spaniards could not repress their 
 impatience, and still less could the French. What shocked them 
 most, was the tone in which Lainez spoke. He alone arrogated 
 to himself the right to speak from the centre of the hall, seated 
 on a chair that had been brought for him. There he sat, like a 
 
 1 May we not say that there is the fundamental principle of Jesuitism ? Its dogmas, 
 irs morality, its policy, all that it has done of evil or of good, all is there. 
 ' l Pallavicini, Book xxi. chap. vi. 
 
FRANCE AND SPAIN QUARREL ABOUT PRECEDENCE. 469 
 
 professor in his chair, nay, almost like a magistrate on the bench 
 of justice. The greatest personages did not obtain from him a 
 direct refutation, and his haughty looks formed a fit accompani- 
 ment to the cold inflexibility of his language. 
 
 On that day, however, he felt that he had gone a little too far. 
 Having learnt that the French prelates had met at the Cardinal 
 of Lorraine's to deliberate about the course to be taken after such 
 a manifesto, he sent them the offer of an apology, saying that he 
 had not had the least wish to offend any one. That small meet- 
 ing prepared itself to the best of its power ; all present, not ex- 
 cepting Hugo the spy, who was prompted either by anxiety to 
 conceal his connexion with the pope, or by conviction, spoke 
 only of attacking Lainez. One recalled one passage, another 
 another, and all mutually exhorted each other to omit nothing, 
 to forgive nothing. Thus everything promised some vigorous 
 attacks on the following day. The cardinal seemed to approve. 
 Then scruples gradually suggested themselves. " What will be 
 the result of this contention ? The majority will not on that ac- 
 count be the less ultramontane, and ready to vote, on being 
 pushed to it, in the direction desired by the Jesuit. What we 
 have most to wish, is that there should be no voting at all." 
 These scruples insensibly took the form of advices ; and the ad- 
 vices of the cardinal were equivalent to orders. The prelates 
 gave up the idea of refuting Lainez ; from that moment the 
 legates and the pope saw that the cardinal was entirely theirs. 
 
 Before proceeding farther, let us say some words on a quarrel 
 foreign to the proper business of the council, but which had long 
 contributed to complicate all difficulties, and to envenom all de- 
 bates. 
 
 In all the public ceremonies of Europe, the pope or his repre- 
 sentatives had the right of figuring in the first rank, and the 
 emperor or his representatives in the second. The third, after 
 having long pertained to the king of France, had been latterly 
 disputed by the king of Spain. Under Charles V., who was at 
 once emperor and king of Spain, there had been no room for 
 contention on the subject ; but after having enjoyed the right of 
 precedence for forty years, the Spaniards were less than ever 
 disposed to yield it. 
 
 Count Claud Quignones di Luna, ambassador to Philip II., 
 had arrived about the end of March, and near two months had 
 been spent in trying to discover how an audience might be 
 
470 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 granted him, without giving him such a place as would not 
 offend either him or the French ambassadors. It was settled, 
 accordingly, that for this time he should have a seat by itself, 
 in the middle of the hall ; hut it was understood that this should 
 form no precedent for or against either party. 
 
 Thus the question remained entire. The legates referred it 
 to the pope, and, while waiting for his decision, the two rival 
 ambassadors avoided coming into each other's presence. The 
 pope had submitted the affair to a commission of cardinals. 
 Their unanimous opinion was that in such matters, the rule of 
 anticpiity is the only one possible ; precedency, accordingly, be- 
 longed to the French. But, for the moment, the publication of 
 a decision unfavourable to the only prince that appeared friendly 
 to both the council and the pope, was not to be dreamt of. After 
 several months of deliberation, an expedient was supposed to have 
 been hit upon at last, but it was thought prudent not to say a 
 word about it, until the moment of its being put into execution. 
 On the 29th of June, St. Peter's day, after all present had taken 
 their places in church, and high mass was about to commence, 
 an arm-chair appeared, brought in by footmen, and set down in 
 the line of the prelates, between the last cardinal and the first 
 patriarch. At the same instant the Spanish ambassador arrived 
 and placed himself in it. Thereupon great was the. buzz of 
 voices. The mass commenced, but nobody attended to it. The 
 French murmured aloud ; they sent to inquire in what manner 
 the offering of incense was meant to be arranged, for, thought 
 they, then it must be decided whether to commence with France 
 or Spain. The legates replied that there would be two censers ; on 
 which the French declared that it was not equality they wanted, 
 but precedence. It being found impossible to make them give 
 way, the count was besought to agree at least to the incense being 
 presented to nobody. He first refused, and then consented, and 
 the mass was finished amid the greatest agitation. 
 
 What particularly aggravated this affair, was that the legates 
 declared that they acted only upon an express order from the 
 pope. Pius IV., therefore, found himself directly implicated in 
 the quarrel ; but while he had at least the approbation of the 
 Spaniards, the legates were chagrined to see that they had dis- 
 contented everybody, — the Spaniards, by not having fully car- 
 ried through the pope's decision in their favour, the French, by 
 having kept it a secret, and attempted to execute it by surprise. 
 The Cardinal of Lorraine was particularly shocked at such con- 
 
THE POPE THREATENED BY THE FRENCH. 471 
 
 duct, he to whom the promise had so often heen made, that 
 nothing would be kept concealed from him. He complained of 
 it with much warmth ; and when the legates complained that 
 they could not refuse to execute the pope's order, on the follow- 
 ing Sunday, should the Spanish ambassador require them to do 
 so, he declared that he himself would go up into the pulpit, and 
 call on the prelates to leave the church, so as not to be witnesses 
 or accomplices of such a scandal. The legates, in great alarm, 
 prevailed with the count not to require anything for some time, 
 and once more the whole affair was remitted to the pope. 
 
 There had been perpetual conferences at the houses of the am- 
 bassadors. The Spanish seemed ready at times to give way, and 
 again would demand the strict execution of the pope's decision, 
 that is to say, the maintenance of the place that had been given 
 him on the 29th of June, and the simultaneous presentation of 
 incense. As for the French ambassadors, they had made up 
 their minds to protest and go away. Their protest, they said, 
 would not be against the legates, the king of Spain, or his repre- 
 sentative, or against the Holy See, but personally and directly 
 against the pope, the author, according to them, of all the mis- 
 chief. That poor pope, whom they had persisted in speaking of 
 with a certain respect, as long as they had found themselves con- 
 tending with him only on the great interests of the Church, was 
 treated as a monster from the moment that he had dared not to 
 be strictly just in a question of etiquette. Many of the French 
 spoke of nothing less than refusing him his very title of pope. 
 They had in their possession, they said, proofs that he had pur- 
 chased votes at the conclave ; that thus, in terms of the ancient 
 canons, his election was null, and null also, must consequently 
 be any council convened by him. 1 Du Ferrier drew up a long 
 protest ; without going so far, he confined himself to repre- 
 senting the pope's having had for his sole object embroiling 
 France with Spain. " He, the common Father of Christians, 
 wished to disinherit his eldest son, the king of France ; making 
 Scripture to lie, instead of bread he gives him a stone, and for a 
 fish, a serpent. A man who casts off his son is no longer a 
 father ; the French can no longer recognise him as such." 
 
 Had not this protest risked calling forth others, the legates 
 need not have felt much uneasiness at so foolishly passionate a 
 
 1 When Clement XL, in 1709, declared himself against Lewis XIV., the French ambassa- 
 dor, the Mareehal de Tesse, left Rome declaring that that city was no longer the seat of the 
 Church. 
 
472 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 document. It was too manifestly absurd for Roman Catholics to 
 think themselves authorized to call for the dethronement of a 
 pope, because he had wronged them in an affair altogether 
 human, and in which he had unwillingly interfered. But as the 
 smallest attack, even although unjust, might lead to a terrible 
 concussion, the legates made desperate efforts to prevent its get- 
 ting abroad. The emperor's ambassadors communicated on the 
 subject with the Spanish ambassador, and the Cardinal of Lor- 
 raine with those of France. The rigour of his first threats was 
 succeeded by too much calmness, not to make it suspected that 
 there had been an affectation of more indignation than he really 
 felt ; and it was surmised that he had caught at an opportunity 
 of making a parade, in quite an accessory affair, of an independ- 
 ence which he was no longer prepared to exercise on essential 
 questions. Notwithstanding these suspicions, which his conduct 
 was ere long to change into certainty, he shewed enough of tes- 
 tiness on the subject of French honour, to admit of the king of 
 France's ambassadors listening to what he had to say. They 
 consented, accordingly, to allow the count the arm-chair that had 
 been brought in for him on the 29th of June, and the count, on 
 his side, no longer pressed the subject of the incense. It was de- 
 cided that this arrangement should be regarded as provisional, 
 but should be maintained until the ambassadors should have re- 
 ceived new orders from their masters. These orders, it was 
 tacitly understood, were not to arrive before the close of the 
 council. 1 
 
 We have omitted various contentions of the same kind, that 
 had successively arisen between the ambassadors of Portugal and 
 Hungary, of Bavaria and of Venice, &c. Without making so 
 much noise, they had contributed not a little to keep up the pre- 
 vailing dissatisfaction and irritation. 
 
 When this storm had blown over, the council resumed its 
 labours, but with the conviction that they would never come to 
 an understanding on the question of the divine rig-ht ; and that 
 unless it were left out altogether, everything would be brought 
 to a halt, and that indefinitively. For the Roman party, as we 
 have already said, it was not a question as to the majority ; there 
 was no doubt that a general voting would give them the victory. 
 What made them pause, therefore, was the dread of too strong a 
 
 1 It is known that the question wns not definitively settled iu favour of France until the 
 tim; of Lewis XIV., just a hundred years after. 
 
QUESTION OF DIVINE RIGHT FINALLY WITHDRAWN. 473 
 
 minority, and of protests too warmly urged to admit of tbeir dar- 
 ing to regard the vote as finally settled ; and then what was to 
 be done ? " Nine-tenths of the Fathers," says the Jesuit Biner, 
 " were agreed in acknowledging the pope's superiority to the 
 council, and yet, on the reclamations of certain Frenchmen, it 
 was not declared." Nine-tenths, that is saying a great deal ; the 
 anti-Romanists, at that epoch, formed at least the fourth part of 
 the assembly. Be that as it may, we cannot admit with the 
 author whom we have quoted, that the council was to be com- 
 mended for this. Were it the case of a political assembly, we 
 should willingly admit that it would have been prudence, re- 
 serve, and a wise respect for the minority ; but in that of a 
 council, it furnishes, it would appear, far more matter for blame 
 than praise. You admit that human considerations prevented 
 the voting of what nine-tenths of the assembly, according to you, 
 considered to be a truth ! So the Holy Ghost quailed before 
 "certain Frenchmen!" The council's enemies never said any- 
 thing stronger against its pretensions and its tribulations. 
 
 It was not, however, without difficulty that the leaders of the 
 majority prevailed on their followers to be quiet. Heated by 
 contention, and sure of carrying the day, many Italians wished 
 for the vote ; but the legates, by express orders from the pope, 
 compelled them to abandon their purpose. It was tbe Cardinal 
 of Lorraine who took in hand and proposed the omission. As 
 nothing more, then, than a motion on a point of order had to be 
 put, a mere majority sufficed. The vote was taken, and the 
 question was definitively withdrawn. 
 
 Here, then, we have this fundamental article of the Boman 
 hierarchy shoved away for ever among the uncertain points of 
 the system. With the decrees of Trent hi his hand, the bishop 
 you may consult will answer you without hesitation, without 
 possibility of error, according to him, on a multitude of sub- 
 jects which revelation does not teach, and which man is quite 
 incompetent to see or to know ; but ask him if he is by divine 
 right superior to priests, and whether it is from God or from the 
 pope that he holds his power? he will hold his peace. If he 
 speaks, he can but give you his private opinion. Did it appear 
 to you to be good, and had you nothing to reply, you might 
 always object that it is his opinion, that he cannot warrant its 
 correctness, that his Church, in fine, makes herself infallible, and 
 convenes councils only to leave in uncertainty a subject even of 
 that importance. The certainty which Rome maintains that she 
 
474 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 alone is in a condition to give, the bishop has not, and without 
 a new council never will have, on what every man called to any 
 ministry whatever, has most need to know, the nature, namely, 
 and the source of his authority. Will he maintain that it suffices 
 for him, in practice, to speak and to act in the name of the 
 Church? He is neither elected nor instituted by her ; he does 
 not receive from her any commission. Then, the question is not 
 one of practice, but one of right. From whom does he receive 
 his commission to speak in the name of the Church ? That is 
 the question. Will he reply that he receives it from the pope ? 
 That again is true ; but true actually, true in fact, and what he 
 must be able to say is, that it is true in point of right, true ab- 
 solutely, and it is here that the want of harmony commences. 
 At Fribourg, " every bishop who has not been instituted, or re- 
 cognised by the pope, is an intruder, a false pastor." 1 At some 
 leagues from Fribourg, " legitimate bishops are those who are in- 
 stituted according to the rules of the Church, and who are in com- 
 munion with the pope. According to the present discipline of 
 the Church, which has been in force for several centuries, it is 
 our Holy Father, the pope, who institutes bishops." 2 Between 
 these two teachings, though identical in their present results, 
 the distance is great, it is immense. In the one the pope is the 
 source ; in the other he is only the channel, and even the present 
 channel only ; the Church might delegate to others, did she 
 think fit, the power to institute bishops. It is, accordingly, as if 
 in one and the same state, two political catechisms were to teach, 
 the one, that authority emanates from the prince, the other, that 
 it emanates from the people. It were in vain that the practical 
 results were momentarily the same — who would assert that the 
 two authors were agreed ? Who would think the difference of 
 their views unimportant ? This, however, is what has to be clone 
 in order to save the unity of the Eoman Church. But even 
 although common sense were not to exclaim that this question is 
 on the contrary at the basis of all, let it be remembered how the 
 council devoted more time to it, and threw itself with more 
 ardour into it than any other, falling back upon it, in spite of 
 itself, at every turn, — and then, after all this, let people say, if 
 they can, that it was thrown aside because it was thought of no 
 moment. 
 
 But it was not only on the popedom viewed in its relations 
 with the episcopate, but on the popedom itself, its essence, its 
 
 1 Fribouri: Catechism. - Catechism of St. Claude. 
 
DEFENCE OF THIS OMISSION UNTENABLE. 475 
 
 origin, its place in the hierarchy and in the Church, that our 
 council maintained the most complete silence. We have already 
 remarked this ; but we would also call attention to the contrariety 
 to facts, to be found in the answer that Eomanists have had to 
 make to the arguments deduced from this strange omission. 
 " If the council," it is said, " has taught nothing on this point, 
 it is because the supremacy of the pope had appeared to it to be 
 sufficiently established by the universal assent of the Church." 
 Nothing is less true. For first, the council nowise restricted 
 itself to speaking only of things that required to be fixed. We 
 have seen it teach many things in which, for a long while, there 
 had been no want of certainty among Eoman Catholics. There 
 was not, therefore, any reason on that ground for its not having 
 spoken of the pope. In the second place, we have seen that the 
 assembly always preferred attaching itself to those points that 
 were attacked by the Protestants. Now, what had they attacked 
 more keenly than the pope ? On what, then, would it have been 
 more natural to confound them and anathematize them ? In 
 fine, let us proceed to facts. In order to maintain that if the 
 council omitted this point, it was because it saw no need of 
 speaking about it, one must be able to say that the council had 
 decided from the first that it should be set aside, and that there 
 had been no attempt to give it any place in the decree. Far 
 from that ; from the first presentation of the articles on the 
 sacrament of orders, that is to say, eight months before the 
 session in which we have seen that they were published, it was 
 proposed that one should be drawn up on the pope. No formula 
 was as yet officially proposed, but none of the speakers seemed 
 to think that they could dispense with looking for one ; to speak 
 of the pope on the occasion of the sacrament of orders, seemed 
 as natural in their eyes as to speak of the mass when the 
 eucharist was under discussion. After five weeks' debating, dur- 
 ing which the question of the popedom was not for a single day 
 separated from that of the priesthood in general, the Cardinal of 
 Lorraine proposed two canons, one of which declared the bishops 
 to be instituted by divine right, while the other anathematized 
 the opinion " that St. Peter had not been established Prince of 
 the Apostles, supreme vicar of Jesus Christ ; that a sovereign 
 pontiff is not necessary ; that the legitimate successors of St. 
 Peter have not constantly held the primacy of the Church." 
 Attacked by some as giving too much to the pope, by others as 
 not giving him enough, that article served as the topic of discus- 
 
476 HISTORY OF "THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 sion for a month. It was communicated by the legates to the 
 pope ; the pope added to it what he considered to be wanting, 
 and sent it back to the legates. In the new draft of it, there 
 was anathema to whosoever should say, " that the legitimate 
 successors of St. Peter have not constantly been the fathers, the 
 pastors, the teachers of all Christians, and that there has not 
 been given them by Jesus Christ, in the person of St. Peter, 
 full power to rule and govern the universal Church." And on 
 this new ground the discussion was continued for three months. 
 Thus it remains an unquestionable fact that neither bishops nor 
 legates, neither the pope nor any one, had the intention origi- 
 nally of not speaking of the pope ; that thus, as we have 
 asserted, the sole cause of the silence observed in the council's 
 decrees on that head, was the impossibility of coming to a com- 
 mon understanding upon it. The best proof, in fine, that they 
 did not consider themselves to be agreed by the sole fact of 
 their being so, in the gross, on the primacy of the poj)e, is, that 
 it was never once proposed that they should get rid of the diffi- 
 culty by adopting an article in which they should acknowdedge, 
 in two words, that primacy. The least scrupulous felt that it 
 would be ridiculous to merge under one term the profoundly 
 diverse opinions which had come to light in interpreting it. Is 
 there any better agreement upon it at the present day? It 
 would appear so. But not the less is it an historical fact that 
 the Council of Trent did not dare, or was not able, after several 
 months of effort, to teach anything on the subject of the pope. 1 
 
 The grand obstacle was now taken out of the way. In put- 
 ting their hands, in order to have done with it, to the omission of 
 a point of such importance, each party had, in some sort, taken 
 an engagement to abandon in like manner every question on 
 which inability to come to an agreement was dreaded. We shall 
 have to notice that thenceforward, to the close of the council, 
 
 1 What a contrast betwixt this silence and the boldness of the popes when they hare to 
 dogmatize on the mi^ty origin of their pretended rights ! Hear Alexander VII. writing to 
 the University of Louvain : "That excellent precept, so often inculcated by the Saviour's 
 voice, to keep the Church's commandments, and to listen to the voice of the pastor whom 
 he has established his vicar." And yet this is what Cardinal Pacca quoted, fifteen years 
 ago, as an oracle. If there be no small audacity in even so much as asserting that Jesus 
 Christ ever intended to create for himself a vicar, what term shall we apply to the incon- 
 ceivable impudence with which a pope dares to affirm that the order to obey him was put 
 into set form, was inculcated, and that so often, by the very voice of the Saviour ! With 
 these lines in one hand, and the Scriptures in another, there is enough to disgust with the 
 popedom whosoever detests fraud, and has also the courage to exercise his powers of re- 
 flection. 
 
ORDERS PROTESTANTS VIRTUALLY JUSTIFIED. 477 
 
 almost as many questions were omitted as there were questions 
 decided. 
 
 The first thing done was to take from the draft of the decree 
 on residence everything that could shock either the partisans or 
 the adversaries of the divine right. Eesidence was found not to 
 have been ordained either by the pope or by God ; the council 
 confined itself to prescribing it as natural and necessary. This 
 was in many respects the best thing that could be done, for 
 there is no better way of recommending a duty than by frankly 
 referring it, without any cavilling, to the saci'ed law of duty ; 
 but there was wherewithal to make them a little confounded at 
 the thought, that they had for years been quarrelling about 
 residence, only to say at last what might have been said the 
 first day they began, had they but contrived to keep to plain 
 common sense. 
 
 After having decreed the seven orders, it,, would have been 
 natural to point out the different functions attached to them. 
 The attempt was made ; but the enumeration, elaborated at 
 great length, was found so unlike the actual state of things, 
 that it was soon seen to be absolutely impossible to embody it in 
 a law. For several centuries, in fact, the three major orders 
 (subdiaconate, diaconate, and priesthood) were the only ones the 
 existence of which was not purely nominal. The impossibility 
 of finding for all churches a porter and an acolyte in orders, had 
 led to their being replaced by laymen, often by children. Even 
 in churches provided with that kind of ministers, it was not 
 they, but beadles, sacristans, singing boys, as is generally the 
 case to this day, that watched the doors, took care of the church 
 materials, served at the altars, &C. 1 To decree that these 
 should receive orders corresponding to their functions, would 
 have been to incorporate them with the clergy, a course which 
 would have had great inconveniences ; to decree that the titu- 
 lars should condescend to discharge such humble functions, would 
 have been to lower the sacerdotal dignity, for it would have 
 been hopeless to attempt leading people to regard as honourable 
 and sacred what they never could recollect having seen done by 
 any but domestics. On the other hand, to do nothing towards 
 preventing these four orders from falling definitively into desue- 
 tude, would have been to admit that the Protestants had been 
 in the right when they abolished them as useless. A middle 
 
 1 The functions of reader and exorcist, considerably curtailed, were discharged by the 
 priests. 
 
478 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 course, therefore, was adopted. Setting aside all details as to 
 the functions of these orders, it was decreed, in principle, that 
 they should be exercised only by persons regularly ordained. 
 The application of this rule was then restricted to cathedral, 
 collegiate, and parochial churches, in so far as can conveniently 
 be done. 1 It was added, in fine, that in default of ordained and 
 unmarried men, any man of good morals, provided he was not a 
 bigamist, might exercise these functions. The council, accord- 
 ingly, did no more, upon the whole, than consecrate what usage 
 had everywhere established. This was wise ; but to recognise 
 so openly the possibility of dispensing with ordained porters, 
 readers, exorcists, and acolytes, was but a pitiful way of attain- 
 ing the object indicated in the preamble of the decree : " Lest 
 these functions should be traduced by heretics as tending to idle- 
 ness." 2 Moreover, after such large concessions, what becomes 
 of the canon in which the admission of the seven orders is ranked 
 among points of faith? How can one pronounce an anathema 
 to whosoever shall not acknowledge seven, while admitting that 
 there are four that the Church can dispense with, and with 
 which it actually does dispense. 
 
 This admission is not less serious as tending to confirm all 
 that we have said on the theological difficulties of the sacrament 
 of orders. If the seven orders are so many parts of one same 
 sacrament, and if, nevertheless, there are several whose func- 
 tions can be performed by laymen, where shall we set the limit 
 to this ? At what point shall the intermixture of laymen begin 
 decidedly to be a sacrilege ? AVhat notion shall we form of a 
 sacrament, one sole and perfect sacrament, in which some parts 
 are of an indispensable and absolute necessity, while certain 
 others are useless ? A^iewed in the light of discipline and good 
 order, the Church has reason incontestably to desire that certain 
 charges shall fall exclusively to her ministers ; what we wish to 
 say is, that if necessity suffices for authorizing a layman to dis- 
 charge the functions of four orders, one does not see any more 
 why the same reason should not authorize him to discharge the 
 functions of five, six, or seven, and why, for example, in a 
 desert island, some shipwrecked seamen might not choose one 
 among themselves to dispense to them the supper. Here, then, 
 we are brought back, by another road, to the objection that had 
 already presented itself to us in the question of baptism. If a 
 layman can baptize, we said, it cannot be logically maintained, 
 
 1 Quantum fieri commode poterit. - Xe ab hsereticis, tamquarn otiusa, tradueantur. 
 
THE SPANIARDS STILL HOLD OUT. 479 
 
 even although the apostolic history should not prove the con- 
 trary, that he is radically unfit to administer every other sacra- 
 ment. If a layman, we now say, may discharge certain parts of 
 the sacrament of orders, which is one sacrament, on what ground 
 shall he he declared radically and absolutely unfit for the func- 
 tions conferred by the rest of the sacrament? a new proof in 
 support of what we have so often had occasion to repeat, that 
 the clearness of the Romish theories is found oftenest at the 
 surface, and that there is no need of going very deep in order to 
 find embarrassments and obscurities. 
 
 By dint of omissions, hopes began to be indulged that the 
 session might take place on the day fixed, to wit, the 15th of 
 July 1563. The Cardinal of Lorraine had got his part acted 
 out, and it was no fault of his if the council was not ready several 
 days sooner. Unfortunately the Spaniards had not yet all given 
 in, and did not speak of doing so. In the congregation of the 9th, 
 the Archbishop of Grenada took it upon himself once more to 
 say that it was shameful to have so long amused the fathers on 
 the subject of the divine right, only to leave it at last unresolved. 
 He declared that neither he nor his friends would ever change 
 their opinion ; that it was, in then eyes, not only an error, but a 
 heresy, to think otherwise. He well knew, however, that that 
 heresy was the opinion of the court of Rome and of the majority 
 of the council. How did he contrive to reconcile all this with 
 conscientious views as a Roman Catholic and an archbishop ? 
 And when he spoke of never changing his opinion, what then 
 did he mean to do, if the council, in accordance with the pope, 
 had decided the question in a sense the reverse of his own ? On 
 the day before the session, he again waited on the Count di Luna, 
 to exhort and to protest, in the name of Spain, against the omis- 
 sion of the decree which he and his colleagues were resolved to 
 call for up to the last moment. Strange, indeed, would have 
 been the spectacle of an ambassador protesting in favour of a 
 dogma ; already it was odd enough to see bishops asking him to 
 take such a step, and we might join this fact to all those that 
 have appeared to us to shew how little common understanding 
 there was, at that epoch, on the nature and the extent of the 
 authority of a council. The count refused to comply ; he even 
 tried, but in vain, to divert his countrymen from their projected 
 protest. The legates ignored this conference ; they thought 
 themselves at the end of their labours. " At the moment they 
 
480 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 were closing the despatches which they were sending off to Rome 
 to announce the joyful news, they received a message from the 
 Spanish ambassador. It was to inform them that he had made 
 great efforts, but in vain, in order to induce his countrymen to 
 give way ; he thought that, consequently, the session could not 
 be held without the risk of giving offence to the whole of Spain." 1 
 The legates persisted. They called a last general congregation. 
 Italians, French, Germans, and others, with the exception of six, 
 adopted unanimously the decrees as they had been arranged ; the 
 Spaniards were immovable. They voted in silence, but were to 
 protest in full session. Anxiety was now at its highest pitch ; 
 the legates deliberated ; they durst neither hold the session nor 
 put it off. What was to be done '? The ambassador was to be 
 implored to make another effort with the rebel prelates. He saw 
 them, accordingly, once more ; besought, urged, conjured them, 
 and, at last, wrested from them, in the evening, the promise not 
 to protest next day. Let us now hear Pailavicini. The delight 
 felt at this news by the legates seems to have become his own ; 
 his style rises into poetry. "The legates," he says, "had laid 
 themselves down that they might taste that rest which has long 
 to be waited for, even on a bed of down, when the mind is tor- 
 mented by an excruciating sting, at the moment they received 
 this joyful news. To them it was like the intoxicating liquor 
 with which Homer inebriates his heroes. They did taste a few 
 moments' sleep until Aurora called them to a session, the fruit of 
 so many fatigues and perspirations, the object of such lively and 
 such various hopes. Very ignorant or very malicious must be 
 the man who should accuse nature, as an unjust stepmother, for 
 having given this pleasure at the cost of so much fatigue and 
 suffering ! Just as the bee distils the sweetness of its honey from 
 the bitterness of the thyme, so by present toils we prepare matter 
 for future joys." Here, truly, is a grandiloquent way of telling 
 us that the legates had been in great trepidation, and it is the 
 first time, to our knowledge, that people ever thought of pro- 
 claiming a victory when they had only escaped from having a 
 battle. 
 
 After ten months of delays, accordingly, this famous twenty- 
 third session took place. The Spaniards kept their word. They 
 did not protest, and the greater number even voted without 
 making any observations. Three or four, that they might not 
 seem to abandon their old opinions, declared that they voted in 
 
 ' P.-illavicini, Book xxi. ch. 11. 
 
REFORMATION DECREE ITS PROVISIONS. 481 
 
 the hope that the council would, ere long, develop what re- 
 quired development. They well knew that that would not Ik* 
 done. 
 
 The reformation decree contained eighteen chapters. 
 
 We have spoken of the first, that on residence. Full of good 
 things, but of exhortations rather than of orders, it could not 
 have, and actually has not had, any more effect than that of the 
 sixth session. Among the legitimate motives for non-residence, 
 there had been put the "service of the Church ;" to which the 
 Cardinal of Lorraine, who never forgot himself, had caused to be 
 added " the service of the State." Obligation to residence, how- 
 ever, on the part of the cardinals, not without rmich opposition 
 on the part of the idtra-Bomanists, was inserted in the decree. 
 
 The subsequent chapters regulated the disciplinary conditions 
 and formalities of ordination, whether for bishops or for priests. 
 The twelfth fixed that no one should be made sub-deacon under 
 twenty-two years of age, deacon before twenty-three, and priest 
 before twenty-four. The sixth, that no benefice could be ob- 
 tained by any one under fourteen years. As they were frequently 
 given to perfect children, this rule shewed some progress ; but 
 it is clear that at the same time it sanctioned a serious abuse. 
 A boy of fourteen is no more capable of being an abbot than one 
 of twelve or of six. It had been put into the first draft that 
 bishops appointed by princes should, after being instituted by the 
 pope, be examined by the metropolitan ; but this security had 
 been rejected by the Italians as contrary to the pope's independ- 
 ence, and by foreign prelates as calculated to give offence In 
 the secular princes. Those chapters, in short, comprised some 
 excellent regulations, to which nothing lias been found wanting 
 but their being better executed. 
 
 In the fifteenth, it was said that no priest, secular or regular, 
 should confess in any diocese without the sanction of the bishop ; 
 an important law which the bishops had vainly solicited in the 
 early times of the council. 
 
 The sixteenth bore that no priest shoidd be ordained without 
 being attached to a church. Many of the prelates had asked 
 that it should be the same with bishops, but the Roman party 
 had insisted on preserving for the pope the right to confer the 
 episcopate as an honorary title. 
 
 The seventeenth treated of the minor orders. Of these we 
 have already spoken. — In the eighteenth, in fine, the institution 
 of seminaries is handled. Let us pause for a moment at it. 
 
 2 H 
 
482 HISTORY OF TlfK COUNCIL of tkv.st. 
 
 Had the Council of Trent produced nothing Imt this decree, 
 we are told it would have earned perpetual claims to the Church's 
 gratitude. Possibly so. The idea was beautiful, it was great ; 
 we shall not stop to recall how many inconveniences, neverthe- 
 less, are found to be combined in them with incontestable ad- 
 vantages. We shall only ask why it was that such a decree 
 should still have remained to be made. With all her power, 
 and all her wealth, the Roman Church had never yet seriously 
 set herself to secure for her ministers an education worthy of 
 their calling. All had dwindled down, on this point, to some 
 vague injunctions, a few ancient canons, fixing the minimum of 
 learning, or rather the maximum of ignorance, which the candi- 
 dates might bring" with them, and even those rules were con- 
 stantly violated. The slight mental cultivation enjoyed by so 
 many priests at this day, particularly in countries altogether 
 Roman Catholic and not in contact with better educated nations, 
 sufficiently shews what they must have been before the institu- 
 tion of seminaries, and at an epoch when to be able to read was 
 sufficient to place a man above nine-tenths of the population. 
 At all epochs there have been learned men : but how many ? 
 Beyond the universities and the higher charges, that is to say. 
 throughout nearly the entire body of the inferior clergy, hardly 
 can we discover here and there a man that participated in the 
 feeble enlightenment of his aye. The Reformation, on the con- 
 trary, had no sooner enjoyed some moments of peace, than it 
 made the utmost endeavours to secure for itself educated and 
 capable pastors. If it had not established seminaries, — having 
 always thought these, not without reason, much too like monas- 
 teries, — it had everywhere founded schools, which, in a few 
 years, rivalled the ancient universities. The Roman Church 
 had been struck with this. She felt herself carried along, like 
 the world around her, towards an epoch in which ignoramuses 
 would be left on the back-ground. Without waiting for the 
 orders or the aid of a council, several bishops had already made 
 efforts to procure priests a little less below their calling. Semi- 
 naries, in fact, already existed ; the council had only to general- 
 ize their establishment. The bishops were authorized to raise 
 froru Church revenues of every kind the sums recpiired in order 
 to cover the expense. It was ordained at the same time that 
 every theological canon should he hound to discharge in those 
 schools the teaching functions already attached to that title, or 
 to find, at his own expense, a capable substitute. The whole 
 
THE PUBLIC DISAPPOINTED MARRIAGE. 483 
 
 decree is very well conceived ; we have thought it therefore of 
 consequence to shew how much the Reformation had contributed 
 to render it necessary, and to prepare matters for its being carried 
 into execution. 
 
 Still, its utility was not so very evident as to prevent the pub- 
 lic from exclaiming against the barren results of a session pre- 
 pared for at such length, and so laboriously. The dispute about 
 the divine right had, during the whole of that time, kept all the 
 divines, all the universities, all Europe, on the stretch of expec- 
 tation. It had been seen, with redoubled interest, to reach by 
 slow degrees the domain of the popedom itself; friends and 
 enemies were alike kept in a state of inexpressible suspense. 
 Accordingly, even after the decree had been for some days before 
 everybody's eyes, people still continued to ask themselves if the 
 council could have dared to say nothing on such a subject. 
 
 At Trent, as it was much to be dreaded that the discussion 
 might recommence, the decree on marriage, already elaborated, 
 was resumed without delay. It had been thrown aside, in the 
 last instance, not only because the other absorbed all the council's 
 attention and time, but also on account of the difficulties found 
 in it. No subject had, in fact, occurred as yet, in which doctrine 
 and discipline were more mingled, and we have already seen how 
 many inconveniences arose from this medley. No sooner was it 
 resumed than the same difficulties occurred, augmented by all 
 the arguments for or against each opinion which a long delay 
 had allowed the parties to prepare. The most delicate question, 
 we have said, was that of the validity of marriages contracted 
 without the intervention of the civil power. The council durst 
 not pronounce them good ; and yet, in spite of all the distinctions 
 imagined in order to explain how a sacrament can be null with- 
 out any of its religious elements being wanting, logic continually 
 returned to the charge. People said, in spite of themselves, that 
 if marriage be a sacrament, the omission of civil formalities can 
 no more make it be considered as null, than it could prevent 
 transubstantiation from taking place wherever a legitimate priest 
 shall pronounce the sacramental words of consecration over the 
 wafer. One might have gone even farther than this, for if the 
 Church cannot make the consecrated wafer to become bread 
 again, one does not see how the sacrament of marriage, after 
 being once performed, can in any case be reduced to nothing. 
 What caused alarm, not without reason, was the consequences ; 
 
484 HISTORY OF Till-; COUNCIL 01 TRENT. 
 
 it was the reclamation of the princes, for they bad never ceased 
 to protest against clandestine marriages, and the French am- 
 bassadors, in particular, had formally demanded that they should 
 be declared null. Priests might indeed be forbidden to celebrate 
 such marriages, but the ease had to be provided for of priests 
 [laying no attention to this, and how, after that, could the coun- 
 cil dispense with determining what was to become of the sacra- 
 ment so administered? 
 
 After fifteen days of contention, there was no means of coming 
 to an agreement, or of appearing to be agreed, but by drawing 
 up a decree in which each party would find more or less of his 
 views, saving that the practical interpretation was to be left to 
 the bishops and to the pope. They began, therefore, with sim- 
 plifying the question by deciding that it should be spoken of only 
 in the disciplinary articles, where they hoped they might avoid 
 pronouncing, in precise terms, either a yes or a no on the validity 
 of clandestine marriages. After getting rid of this first difficulty, 
 the following shift was adopted : — " Although it be certain that 
 secret marriages have been true and valid marriages, in so far as 
 the Church has not annulled them, — although the council anathe- 
 matizes those who do not hold them to be such, together with 
 those also who maintain that fathers and mothers may annul 
 marriages that have taken place without their consent, the 
 Church, nevertheless, has always forbidden and detested them.'* 
 Then come diverse regulations prescribing the public formalities 
 to be observed before the celebration of a marriage, but not a 
 word is said about the intervention of the civil power. 
 
 Here but one point is very clear : it is that fathers and mothers 
 must not believe that they have power to annul, by simply re- 
 fusing their consent, a marriage celebrated in secret, and without 
 their participation. The annulling could come only from the 
 Church. Was the Church, then, to annul all marriages that 
 fathers and mothers might refuse to ratify? Were it to engage 
 to do this, it would leave one door for the admission of an idea 
 which it had expelled by another; fathers and mothers could 
 not but believe, in fact, that it is they who annul, or, at least, 
 who have the right to exact the annulling. Hence this studied 
 obscurity. Are such marriages valid ? Yes, as long as the 
 Church has not annulled them. Then the Church can annul 
 them? No doubt. Does it annul them thenceforward? No 
 answer. The council only makes a step that prevents its ad- 
 vancing farther. 
 
FORTY DISCIPLINARY ARTICLES MEMORIAL. 485 
 
 One point more, consequently, on which the council durst not 
 express its thoughts, and recoiled before the rigorous application 
 of its principles. This ambiguity displeased many of the bishops. 
 Fifty-six were for frankly keeping to the theological legality of 
 marriage, without disquieting themselves about the civil legality. 
 This opinion being at once more logical and more favourable to 
 the sacerdotal authority, had great charms for the Eoman party; 
 the legates had much to do to prevent its passing openly into the 
 decree, a result that would have produced the most dangerous 
 protests. Such was the way in which a place was tacitly contrived 
 for the civil legislation ; but that place the articles, viewed as a 
 whole, tended to make as small and as inconvenient as possible. 
 We shall notice, farther on, those which contributed to prevent 
 the reception of the council in France and elsewhere. Other 
 facts which we cannot leave behind now require our attention. 
 
 Immediately after the session of loth July, the legates had 
 sent to the ambassadors forty disciplinary articles, with a request 
 to have their opinion upon them before submitting them to dis- 
 cussion. These articles, although put together in such a way as 
 to do no prejudice to the pope, and even, as we shall see, to 
 favour his authority, were generally good ; had the close of the 
 council not been so near, they might have been accepted with 
 joy, as an approximation to reforms of a more important kind, 
 and really such as Europe desired them to be. But the Roman 
 party talked of bringing matters to an end in one session, or at 
 most in two ; those articles, accordingly, risked being the last, 
 and there was but a small number that answered directly to the 
 desires of the secular princes and their subjects. 
 
 This was remarked by all the ambassadors. On the 31st of 
 July, those of the emperor presented a memorial, in which they 
 shewed how far people still were from that reformation in the 
 liead and the members, so often solicited, so often promised for 
 a century. They called attention to a dozen of points hitherto 
 omitted or rejected, and without which, they held all that had 
 been done, or might yet be done, would end in nothing. They 
 placed in the first line a severe revision of the laws and customs 
 relative to cardinals and conclaves. The French ambassadors, 
 whose answer did not appear till three days after, insisted no less 
 strongly on this last article. They required, among other things, 
 that the number of cardinals should be restricted to twenty-four ; 
 that the pope should not elevate to this dignity either his own 
 brothers or nephews, or the nephews or brothers of a living car- 
 
486 history of the council op tkemt. 
 
 dinal; that they should all have an equal and fixed revenue; in 
 fine, that there should never he at one time more than eight of 
 the same nation. At all times, in fact, there have been mur- 
 murs against the exorbitant privilege accorded, on this last point, 
 to Italy. Why should so many of the cardinals be Italians? 
 Quite recently, on the death of Gregory XVI., there were fifty, 
 while all the rest of the Roman Catholic world reckoned only ten, 
 not one of whom took part in the election of the present pope. 
 Besides, why always have an Italian for pope? There is little 
 consistency, surely, between the universality which the Roman 
 Church arrogates to herself and this absolute preponderance in- 
 definitely accorded to one nation. 
 
 The Spanish ambassador, who replied only on the 7th of 
 August, began by declaring himself content with the forty 
 articles, but afterwards insisted still more strongly than the rest 
 on the insufficiency and the nullity of a reform that should stop 
 at that point. He required, also, that among the prelates of 
 each nation a committee should he named for proposing the re- 
 forms which they severally might want. He declared, in fine, 
 as had been done already by the French and German ambassa- 
 dors, that his present remarks were not to be considered as his 
 last words on the subject, but that before pronouncing definitively, 
 he waited for instructions from his court. 
 
 Several things, in fact, were contemplated in which the secular 
 princes behoved to look well to their interests before committing 
 themselves. If the bishops laboured to re-conquer from the popes 
 those ancient rights out of which they had been cozened, the 
 princes, on their hand, had need to see to it that these conquests 
 did not turn to the detriment of the royal authority. Those pre- 
 tensions which they might lend their aid to destroy in the heart 
 of Italy, they could never wish to find starting up in the heart 
 of their own states. Accordingly, the ambassadors of Charles 
 TX. had added to their demands in behalf of the bishops, thai 
 they should be interdicted from meddling in any way with secular 
 affairs. The rest, without going openly so far, had also said 
 enough to let it be seen that neither Ferdinand nor Philip would 
 forget to take their own precautions. It does not appear that 
 there resulted from this any perceptible coolness between the 
 ambassadors and their prelates ; but one may be allowed to think 
 that for the latter it was a new motive to he more accommodat- 
 ing to the pope, and not to protest too strongly against the ap- 
 proaching close of the council. 
 
COMPLAINTS OF THE EMPEROR AX1> THE KING OF FEANCE. 487 
 
 Pius IV, eagerly pressed towards that object. Repeatedly, 
 during these late times, when danger seemed to him to be aug- 
 menting, the suspension or dissolution of the assembly had been 
 in question between his legates and himself. After the auspi- 
 cious termination of the debates upon orders, the legates had 
 almost advised this course ; seeing, thought they, people could 
 not flatter themselves with the prospect of not being driven to 
 it, they ought not to wait until a new crisis should come, when 
 they might have no resource but an ignominious retreat. The 
 pope had thought otherwise. He had ordered them not to dream 
 of any suspension, unless the necessity was present and absolute: 
 but he had at the same time sent them word to have done with 
 the council as speedily as possible and at any cost. In conse- 
 quence of this, they first of all retrenched from their forty articles 
 six of those which, after hearing the remarks of the ambassadors, 
 they thought might lead to long debates or contested decisions. 
 The remainder were submitted to deliberation only on the 21st 
 of August, and all that raised, or seemed likely to raise diffi- 
 culties, the legates hastened to retrench. Thus the forty articles 
 were reduced to twenty-one. 
 
 While these things were doing, (27th August,) the imperial 
 ambassadors received from their master a memoir on those very 
 articles. He warmly complained that they comprised nothing 
 good, nothing in accordance with the wishes of the princes that 
 was not accompanied with clauses contrary to their rights. It 
 would appear, said he, that the design has been to make this 
 reformation insupportable to them, so that they could not but 
 reject it, and that the disgrace of its failure might fall on them, 
 while the court of Rome would persevere in its disorders without 
 disturbance. 
 
 The French ambassadors received (11th September) letters 
 from their king. Knowing as little as the emperor, that the 
 greater part of what might displease the princes had already 
 been retrenched, he enjoined his ministers to declare that he 
 would never subscribe to it. 1 But what he ordered them spe- 
 cially to oppose, was the draft always announced and always 
 kept in reserve since the time of Paul IV., of a special decree of 
 reformation applicable to the princes. 2 He protested beforehand 
 
 1 "I ara very far from (obtaining) what I expected from the council, if the Fathers pro- 
 ceed to the judging of these articles, which will make the claws of kings be pared, while 
 their own are allowed to grow, a thing I shall not endure." 
 
 2 " Seeing that each falls upon us. His Holiness is of opinion that for the love of God 
 you should allow or cause the council still to continue harping on the reformation of the 
 
488 HISTORY OF THE COUXC1L OF TRENT, 
 
 against all invasion of the rights of the civil authority, enjoining 
 his ambassadors, his prelates, and, in particular, the Cardinal of 
 Lorraine, to leave Trent the very day that that decree should be 
 proposed by the legates. 
 
 The legates seemed to have no wish to do so ; but there had 
 arisen among the Italians a powerful and bold party, with which 
 all were forced to reckon. More popish than either the pope 
 or his ministers, this party had resolved to oppose all internal 
 reform as long as the decree on the princes remained undrawn 
 up and unvoted. Neither the entreaties of the legates, nor 
 those of the pope, nothing, in short, could keep them quiet. 
 They would not be quiet, they said, unless they were openly 
 commanded to be so; and how think of putting such an affront 
 on mast devoted servants ? They were about a hundred in 
 number. 
 
 On this side, then, as well as others, the pope saw no way of 
 safety but through the intervention of the Cardinal of Lorraine. 
 But although this prelate had for two months gone with the 
 Roman party, he was still far from being its master. He had no 
 choice, therefore, but to burn his vessels; at that cost he was- 
 sure of being listened to. The pope invited him to come to 
 Rome ; this was a decisive step. He first hesitated, then pro- 
 mised. The session having* been notified for the 15th of Sep- 
 tember, the legates thought for a moment of holding it with the 
 articles on marriage, being the only ones ready, or in the way to> 
 be ready ; but the ambassadors opposed this, dreading, not with- 
 out reason, that the reform decrees, if omitted once, would be so 
 a second time, and perhaps altogether. Not wishing,, therefore,, 
 to delay the cardinal's departure, the legates asked for an ad- 
 journment until his return, or until the 11th of November. 
 To this the majority consented, and the cardinal set out on his 
 journey. 
 
 He was received at Kome as few princes had ever been. The 
 pope lodged him in his own palace, and, a thing quite unex- 
 ampled, paid him a public visit. Are we to believe, as it was 
 reported, that Pius IV. promised to point him out as his suc- 
 cessor, and to neglect nothing that could secure his election ? 
 lie that as it may, we shall see there was reason to believe that 
 they were quite of one mind. 
 
 A few days after his leaving Trent, the legates had to yield 
 
 princes. You will also act in such a manner that we shall not seem to have any hcu.l. in 
 :L" — Letter from Cardinal liorrouieo to the Legates, June 1563. 
 
t»ECEEE FOR REFORMING THE SECULAR POWERS. 480 
 
 to the ultramontanists, and to propose the decree on the princes. 
 In substance it was as follows : — 
 
 It began by establishing the principle that a clergyman cannot 
 be tried on any occasion or in any cause whatever, even criminal, 
 by laymen, without the previous consent of his bishop. 
 
 The incompetence of lay courts was next extended to every 
 kind of causes, not spiritual only, but touching more or less 
 closely upon spiritual things, upon clergymen, upon the Church's 
 property and privileges. 
 
 Consequently, to every layman who shall have constituted 
 himself, or allowed himself to be constituted judge of a clergy- 
 man, or in an ecclesiastical clause — excommunication. 
 
 To every clergyman who shall have accepted from the civil 
 power a commission to try a clergyman — suspension as a priest, 
 deprivation of his benefices, incapacity for possessing other 
 benefices. 
 
 Should a prince have made an edict or ordinance concerning 
 the clergy, the affairs, or the possessions of the Church, the edict 
 shall be null, and the prince excommunicated. 
 
 He also shall be excommunicated who shall attempt to inter- 
 pose the smallest obstacle to the publication and circulation of 
 ecclesiastical sentences, especially those that emanate from the 
 pope. 
 
 He also shall be excommunicated who shall make bold to levy 
 at his own instance, any kind of impost or subsidy on the goods 
 of ecclesiastics, even on those that belong to them not as Church 
 property, but patrimonially or by purchase. 
 
 Thus it was not only religious independence, but the right of 
 being a state within a state which was sought to be secured. 
 Was there any hope of success ? Should a vote have come to be 
 taken could there be any hope entertained that it would be ac- 
 cepted by the princes ? In order to this one must have believed 
 himself to be in the twelfth century, for such pretensions were 
 hardly more admissible in the sixteenth century than they would 
 appear to be in oxir own days. This very principle, that a clergy- 
 man can be tried only by clergymen, has been made a sort of 
 axiom by the Church ; and it was, in fact, as an axiom that it 
 had been a long time admitted without a proof being asked or 
 sought for. But when people began to take it into their heads, 
 in this as in other matters, to desire to have reasons, what was 
 there found that could serve as a basis to this doctrine ? First 
 of all, under the Old Testament, we find nothing of the sort. 
 
490 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TREXT. 
 
 The Hebrew priests were amenable to the tribunals of the 
 country. Beyond their religious functions they fully owned the 
 authority of the kings, and we do not find that the prophets, those 
 inflexible guardians of the rights of religion, ever made any 
 reclamations on this head. After the prophets came the apostles. 
 They, like their master, preached submission to the civil autho- 
 rities. St. Paul submitted, without a murmur, to being tried 
 by a Nero. He could do no otherwise, it has been said. What 
 could Nero have understood about a reclamation based on eccle- 
 siastical law? Nothing, in fact ; but St. Paul wrote about the 
 same time to people capable of understanding it, and prepared, 
 moreover, to receive as emanating from God whatever he might 
 have said to them on the subject. Does he make any reserva- 
 tion? Does he not, at least, lay in some few words the foun- 
 dations of what was afterwards to be the law? Not at all. 
 After him, under the pagan emperors, whole centuries elapse 
 without the clergy having the idea of withdrawing themselves, 
 in temporal matters, from under the jurisdiction of the civil 
 judges. That that independence which was afterwards acquired 
 in the course of the decomposition of the empire had some good 
 results is incontestable, but, as we have already said in speaking 
 of another question, human possession cannot establish a divine 
 right. 
 
 The protest by the French was not long of appearing. Du 
 Ferrier was entrusted with it. It is a piece of cutting sarcasm, 
 which we would willingly produce from beginning to end, not 
 that we approve of it without reserve, for it is here and there 
 very unbecoming and very unjust, but as a specimen of what a 
 man of talent, an ambassador of the king of France, might still 
 think and say of the council, in full council, and in the face of 
 the pope and of Europe. " The Jews," said he, " were very 
 well off indeed in having had only twenty-seven years to weep 
 while waiting for their deliverance! As for us, we have been 
 waiting a hundred and forty years for ours, and now, instead of 
 getting it, people talk of tightening the yoke. "Where do we see. 
 in the earlier times of the Church, this independence of the 
 clergy? Did Constantine, Theodosius, Justinian, and so many 
 other princes, never make laws then for any but laymen ? Have 
 we not, on the contrary, a host of decrees past by them of the 
 same sort as those that people now pretend to anathematize? 
 Have you done so much, then, for the reformation of the Church, 
 that von are authorized, and have time, to set about reforming 
 
THE AMBASSADORS THREATEN A COMMON PROTEST. 401 
 
 the civil powers? Let us see ; what progress have you made?'' 
 And forthwith this hold ambassador began to run over all the 
 decrees already made, shewing, as it was not difficult to do, that 
 not on a single question had they gone to the roots of the evil. 
 Then passing under review the last decrees that bad been pro- 
 posed, " Is this," said he, " is this the healing balm of which 
 Isaiah speaks, and which is to close the wounds of Christendom? 
 Is it not rather the dressing of Ezekiel which makes the wound 
 to be seen and opens it when closed?" Thus spoke Du Ferrier, 
 and his animated diction, set off with quotations, was at once 
 biting and violent. 1 
 
 The form spoilt the substance. The French prelates were 
 obliged to disavow a discourse which was nothing but a long 
 sarcasm. The Cardinal of Lorraine, then at Ronie, apologized 
 for it to the pope. 
 
 Nevertheless, sarcasm apart, there always remained a fact — 
 the king's protest. To it, although with more reservations, the 
 emperor added his. The Spanish ambassador, in presenting 
 that from his master, had seized the opportunity of asking once 
 more that the clause projjonentibits, with which he said the de- 
 crees would never have the consideration due to those of a council 
 assembled freely and in accordance with the ancient canons, 
 should be expunged or explained. Other states, and Venice in 
 particular, also solicited, some of them by simple prayers, others 
 by protests, according as they ventured to express their thoughts 
 more or less openly, the softening down or the omission of the 
 decree on the princes. As for the Church's enemies, they might 
 well desire that the decree should pass ; nothing could be better 
 fitted to snap asunder the last ties that bound together the sove- 
 reigns of Christendom and Rome. 
 
 The ultra-Romanists persisted. The discussion was about to 
 open. It then came to be known that the ambassadors were 
 concerting a common protest, and the prelates felt that they 
 were not in a condition to face such a manifestation. The council 
 consented, therefore, to confine itself, for the next session, to 
 the decrees on marriage, together with such of the disciplinary 
 decrees as the members were almost quite agreed upon. Mean- 
 while there would be prepared the materials for purgatory, in- 
 dulgences, the worship of saints and of images, in a word, all 
 that remained for examination before the circle of doctrinal in- 
 struction could be complete. 
 
 1 Pjillavicini, Book xxiii. ch. i. 
 
4i)2 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 Commissions were actually named for elaborating these vari- 
 ous subjects; but the assembly had very little time to devote 
 to them. The month of October and the early days of Novem- 
 ber were spent in discussions, either on the points already ripe 
 for voting, although not yet voted, or upon the proponentibus. 
 The pope was daily called to intervene, either openly, when ob- 
 stacles occurred which he only could remove, or secretly, when 
 the legates asked from him counsels or orders. Of these they 
 had more need than ever. One cannot imagine the state of 
 confusion, of chaos, the assembly then presented. As the mem- 
 bers had become a little drilled into parliamentary usages the 
 sittings were less tumultuous than formerly ; but this calm and 
 this order served only to facilitate the bringing out of all the 
 diversities of opinion that prevailed. The legates seldom suc- 
 ceeded in concentrating the discussion on one point. Discipline, 
 dogma, clandestine marriages, the proponentibus, disputes about 
 precedence, bishops' grievances, princes' grievances, each and 
 all were perpetually returning, on all occasions, in everything, 
 everywhere. With the discussions which we have related, or 
 to which we have alluded, there were mingled many more of 
 which we have said nothing. 1 One's head becomes dizzy, says 
 Pallavieini, in perusing the inextricable history of those last 
 times of the council. Nowhere can you perceive a guiding 
 thread, or fixed marks, or probable end ; it would be impossible 
 for you to say if the council is to extricate itself in a year or in 
 a month, within a few days or never. 
 
 Unlikely as it was that the council would close soon, judging 
 only by the state of the debates and the multiplicity of business 
 before it, that event was, in reality, highly probable, if we look 
 to the resolution that had been taken, as we have seen, to aban- 
 don whatever should be too long, or, still more, if we look to the 
 extreme lassitude of parties in general and of all the prelates in 
 particular. The way was further prepared for it by consenting, 
 by the advice of the pope, to an explanation of the proponentibus 
 in a liberal sense. Of what now was there any risk? Every- 
 body was so eager to come to an end and to go away that there 
 was little fear of any party making serious use of that right of 
 proposing which had been hitherto confiscated to the advan- 
 tage of the pope's representatives. There was added, therefore, 
 to the decrees, a declaration, bearing that there had been no in- 
 
 1 Contention between the emperor and the pope about the election of his son as king of the 
 Rowans; affair of the patriarch of Venice. Erimani, who was accused of heresy, &c. 
 
CLOSE OF THE COUNCIL VOTED UNANIMOUSLY. 493 
 
 tention of making any change, by this word, in the ordinary 
 practice of councils-general ; hut as several doctors had rigidly 
 maintained that in these councils the right of proposing did not 
 belong to the legates, that declaration was too vague for the 
 Spaniards to be satisfied with it. They accordingly rejected it, 
 but without being able to obtain any clearer expression of opinion 
 on the subject ; and, in fine, on the solicitations of the Cardinal of 
 Lorraine, who arrived from Rome, they decided on accepting it. 
 
 Nothing farther being opposed to the holding of the session 
 fixed for the 11th of November, a general congregation met on 
 the 10th for the definitive settlement of the decrees. That last 
 sitting threatened the loss of all. Those members who were 
 most disposed to yield seemed to hold themselves bound once 
 more to express their whole opinion. All seemed ready to begin 
 anew ; and if the legates had not been aware how eager they all 
 were to agree and to have done with it, never would they have 
 hazarded holding the session on the following day. 
 
 That session, for the rest, was about to present almost the 
 same spectacle. " While in the others," says Pallavicini, " one 
 was astonished if, by chance, some prelates, very few in number, 
 did not give their pure and simple adhesion to all the proposi- 
 tions agreed on in congregation-general ; in this, on the contrary, 
 there were very few who had not something to reprehend." " The 
 most notable acquiesced," adds the historian, even although he 
 reports long observations made by the Cardinal of Lorraine and 
 Cardinal Madrucci. In short, the decrees could not be fixed in 
 the course of the sitting. The president stated that modifica- 
 tions would be made as much in conformity as possible with the 
 wish of the greater nmnber ; these changes were to be equally 
 valid as if they had been voted in public session. The hour was 
 far advanced ; they had been sitting ever since morning ; the 
 close was voted unanimously. Upon this a new burst of triumph 
 from Pallavicini. " On seeing this success the council thought 
 it could perceive the port towards which it felt itself borne on- 
 wards by a propitious gale, but not without the dread of some 
 furious hurricane yet coming on and driving it again to a dis- 
 tance." As for the pope, " One cannot express the delight with 
 which he was transported on hearing this happy news. He sent 
 to say that it had overwhelmed both him and his court with 
 infinite joy, and remarked that he viewed this success as the ear- 
 nest of an approaching conclusion." Success, always success, 
 as if four months of convulsions and of chaos were not, on the 
 
494 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 contrary, the very rudest defeat to which the makers of infallible 
 laws could he subjected. 
 
 Let us now cast a glance over the general mass of those that 
 had been promulgated. 
 
 The doctrinal decree which we have examined elsewhere, is 
 accompanied with twelve canons, with anathema to whosoever 
 shall teach — 
 
 That marriage is not one of the seven sacraments instituted by 
 • lesus Christ; that no divine law forbids polygamy; that the 
 Church has not the right to diminish or to extend the number 
 of matrimonial impediments established by the law of Moses ; 
 that the Church has erred in those she has established; that 
 marriage may be dissolved on account of heresy, the defects or 
 the voluntary absence of one of the spouses ; that marriage cele- 
 brated, but not consummated, is not dissolved by one of the 
 spouses entering a religious order ; that the Church has erred in 
 teaching that the tie is not dissolved by adultery ; that she has 
 erred in authorizing, in certain cases, the separation of the 
 spouses without dissolving the marriage; that clergymen and 
 the religious (monks and nuns) may marry if they do not find 
 themselves capable of persevering with honour in celibacy ; that 
 the state of marriage is preferable to virginity, and that celibacy. 
 on the contrary, is not superior to marriage ; that the prohibition 
 of weddings at certain seasons is a tyrannical superstition ; that 
 matrimonial causes are no concern of the ecclesiastical judges. 
 
 All these points might furnish matter for many observations. 
 Several have been made already. Let us add a few more with- 
 out dwelling long on the subject. 
 
 St. Paul, who has said so much about marriage and so much 
 pressed its holiness, nowhere says that it was instituted by Jesus 
 Christ, 
 
 Nothing better than to forbid polygamy as contrary to the 
 spirit of Christianity. To affirm that it has been forbidden by 
 a divine law, is to go beyond the truth. 
 
 A law proceeding from God, the law of Moses, has laid down 
 certain impediments. Jesus Christ, in introducing modifications 
 on other points relative to marriage, has said nothing of that. 
 neither have his Apostles done so. The Church cannot therefore 
 impose, as articles of faith, the modifications she has made in it. 
 
 The divine law speaks of marriage, but does not speak of 
 monastic vows. On what shall we rest the recognition of such 
 
A DECREE PRUDENTIAT.I.Y MODIFIED. 49") 
 
 a superiority in the latter of these engagements that the other 
 may be broken by it ? 
 
 What foundation is there, in fine, for teaching as an article of 
 faith, and sanctioning with an anathema, the prohibition of 
 weddings at certain times'? After such a canon, there is no 
 reason for all the Church's laws not being also points of faith. 
 To place the latter among the canons, and to relegate that on 
 clandestine marriages among the disciplinary articles, intimately 
 associated though it be with doctrine, is a subversion of order, 
 such as we shall find rarely exemplified even in the most ill- 
 assorted civil laws. 
 
 Without recurring to the grand question of the indissolubility 
 of marriage, still let us notice in what manner this dogma is 
 taught here. " Anathema," it is said in the seventh canon, "to 
 whosoever shall maintain that the Church errs in teaching that 
 marriage cannot be dissolved on account of the adultery of one 
 of the spouses." Why this roundabout statement ? If the 
 Church has not erred in teaching that adultery does not autho- 
 rize divorce, why not have simply announced the thing, with 
 anathema to whosoever shall deny it? This is what was done 
 at first ; but the Venetian ambassador having remonstrated that 
 his republic had subjects belonging to the Greek Church, where 
 this opinion is not held, the statement was purposely softened 
 down. Hence this simple declaration that the Latin Church has 
 not erred in teaching it. This was more prudent ; but then 
 what signifies the anathema? How anathematize an opinion, 
 while you at the same time avoid declaring it to be false ? A 
 principle in discipline may be bad in the West and good in the 
 East ; but a matter of faith is necessarily everywhere true or 
 everywhere false. Ever the same confusion between discipline 
 and dogma, between the fallible and the infallible ; ever the 
 same influence of the things of the earth on that which is to be 
 taught in the name of heaven. If the council abstained from 
 declaring absolutely the indissolubility of marriage, it was not 
 because Jesus Christ had taught the contrary, it was because 
 the Venetians possessed the islands of Cyprus and Candia, and 
 it did not suit them, for the moment, to disquiet the Greek mer- 
 chants that resided there. 
 
 Let us pass on to the disciplinary articles. 
 
 We have spoken of the first, — that of clandestine marriages 
 and public formalities. 
 
 The three next bore upon the impediments to marriage. 
 
49(3 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 Some useful alleviations were applied to the boundless despotism 
 that the Church had arrogated to herself in those matters. 
 
 The fifth ordained that matrimonial dispensations should be 
 granted rarely and gratuitously. — We need not say how this 
 last clause is observed. 
 
 The sixth, and the two following, treat of rape and concu- 
 binage. — The substance was good, but the civil authority very 
 ill treated. The magistrates were reduced to the humble office 
 of mere police agents, under the supreme direction of the bishops. 
 
 The ninth excommunicated every prince or lord who should 
 have constrained one of his subjects to marry against his will. 
 
 The tenth, in fine, limited to Advent and to Lent the seasons 
 during which no marriage could be celebrated. 
 
 The first of the articles, said to be of reformation, contains 
 excellent counsels on the choosing of the bishops, parish priests, 
 and all the other functionaries of the Church. The minority 
 had succeeded, not without difficulty, in having these rules de- 
 clared applicable to the election of the cardinals ; it had even 
 been added that the pope should choose them as much as pos- 
 sible from among all Roman Catholic nations. We have seen 
 what has been the result. 
 
 II. The provincial councils shall meet every three years.- — ■ 
 This has never been observed. The popes have never seen to 
 its being observed. The isolation of the bishops was more 
 favourable to the See of Rome than that union of which those 
 colloquies might be the source. The diocesan councils, accord- 
 ing to the same article, ought to meet every year ; a rule which 
 has been no better observed, the bishops having the same rea- 
 son as the popes for not liking to have deliberative assemblies 
 under them. 
 
 III. Every year, or at least every two years, the bishop shall 
 make a general visitation of his diocese. The rules to be ob- 
 served in these visitations. 
 
 IV. Additions to the decree of 1546 on preaching. — The 
 council repeats that preaching is the principal duty of the 
 bishops. 1 
 
 V. A bishop accused of a serious crime shall be judged by 
 the pope. — This has not been admitted in France. The Gralli- 
 can practice, founded on the ancient general practice, attributes 
 to provincial councils the trial of bishops. 
 
DISCIPLINARY REGULATIONS. 4'J7 
 
 VI. The bishops shall have power to absolve in secret from 
 all censure incurred for secret crimes, excepting homicide. 
 
 VII. The bishop shall see to it, that previous to the adminis- 
 tration of the sacraments, their meaning and virtue shall be 
 explained to the people. The explanation shall be in conformity 
 with a catechism drawn up by the council, and translated into 
 all languages. — That catechism was not made at Trent, and, as 
 matters stood, it was well known that it would not be made 
 there. It is the Roman Catechism, or the Catechism of Trent, 
 that which we have repeatedly quoted. We have seen that the 
 council is made to say there a great deal that it had not said, 
 and sometimes the contrary of what it had said. 
 
 VIII. Public sinners shall be subjected to public penances, 
 always susceptible of being converted by the bishop into secret 
 penances. — The exception has continued to be made the rule. 
 There are no obligatory public penances. 
 
 IX. The bishop, as delegate of the pope, shall inspect the 
 churches in his neighbourhood which shall not be found to be of 
 any diocese. 
 
 X. In affairs connected with morals, the bishop's sentence 
 shall take effect immediately, even in the case of an appeal to 
 the pope. 
 
 XL New applications of the right of inspection in bishops, 
 always in their quality of delegates of the Holy See. 
 
 XII. That none shall be raised to any dignity to which the 
 charge of souls is attached, before the age of five- and- twenty. 
 That archdeacons, canons, as well as the priests of important 
 parishes, shall, as far as possible, be doctors or licentiates in 
 theology. 
 
 XIII. Divers measures to be taken for providing that parish 
 priests shall everywhere have a fitting salary. — 111 observed. 
 We have seen that the inferior clergy continued to have no 
 share in the wealth of the Church. 
 
 XIV. The council reproves and interdicts the custom of pay- 
 ing any sum whatever for the acquisition of titles and taking of 
 possession. — Although this article struck at the payment of 
 annats, 1 the popes have never liked it to be understood in this 
 sense. 
 
 XV. Divers measures concerning canons and their revenues. 
 
 XVI. Duties of chapters during vacancies in the episcopal see. 
 
 1 Sum tbat has to be paid to the pope upon entering on a benefice. It Mas ordinaril 
 a year's revenue. 
 
 2 i 
 
4!)8 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 XVII. That no one possess more than one benefice requiring 
 residence. — Often violated or eluded, as we have seen, until 
 public opinion, more powerful than the decree, made things 
 better. 
 
 XVIII. Parish livings to be bestowed according to compara- 
 tive merit. A jury, named by the bishop, shall subject the 
 candidates to a public examination. — Well meant, but attended 
 with great practical inconveniences. The most capable of shin- 
 ing at an examination will often prove the least capable of being 
 a good parish priest. The rule has remained on the paper. 
 
 XIX. Against divers abuses in the collation of benefices. 
 
 XX. Ecclesiastical procedure. Forms, guarantees, appeals, 
 &c. The pope shall not have it in his power to evoke a cause 
 to himself, unless for very serious reasons, and by a rescript 
 signed by his own hand. 
 
 XXI. We have said enough of this. It is the tardy explana- 
 tion of the proponentibus. It would have been more natural to 
 have made a separate decree of it, or at least to have placed it 
 at the head, than to have made it the twenty -first article of a 
 decree that treats of something cpiite different. 
 
 On the whole, however, we cannot but think that people were 
 wrong in continuing to accuse the council of having made in- 
 significant regulations only. But one thing was wanting ; a 
 sanction that could be reckoned on ; and this is probably what 
 was especially meant when they were said to be feeble and null. 
 Moreover, as there was nothing in these reforms that might not 
 have been equally well decreed by the pope, they were thought 
 to be beneath the dignity of a council : what was wanted from 
 it was principles, not details ; a constitution, in fine, not simple 
 laws. We have seen the efforts made by the Court of Rome 
 constantly tending, on the contrary, to confine it to the condition 
 of a legislative assembly, deliberating by favour of the prince. 
 But if we willingly acknowledge all that was good and important 
 in the decisions that Borne allowed it to take, — the number and 
 the gravity of the points which it regulated sufficiently shew, 
 on the other side, whether or not the Church of Borne had been 
 wronged in being represented as inundated with abuses, and de- 
 livered over to the most complete arbitrary power. 1 
 
 1 After the admissions of Roman Catholic historians this remark seems superfluous ; but 
 we must not be in too much haste in supposing a fact acquired in history. In the present 
 struggle between Roman Catholicism and the Reformation, have we not witnessed the re- 
 appearance of ideas and assertions which one might have believed to lie buried three 
 centuries ago '.' That frightfi'.l corruption, against which there had for so Ions a time beeu 
 
DECREE ON THE PRINCES PROTESTS. 499 
 
 And so the twenty-fourth and second last session was cele- 
 brated. 
 
 The second last, we say ; but those who felt most eager to 
 come to an end durst not hope that that end was so near. Be- 
 sides the abundance of matters that had still to be treated, a 
 thousand difficulties might emerge ; and there was enough of 
 these already. 
 
 Immediately after their protest against the decree on the 
 princes, the ambassadors of Charles IX. had retired to Venice. 
 They had been accused of having exceeded their commission ; 
 but they could soon shew a new letter in which the king gave 
 them his full and entire approval, enjoining them not to return 
 to Trent until they had received a promise that the obnoxious 
 decree should be abandoned. 
 
 Although the pope had not approved of its being presented, 
 he believed himself possessed of a still wider extent of rights 
 than had been mentioned in that famous piece. On the 22d of 
 October, by a proclamation solemnly posted at the gates of St. 
 Peter's, he summoned the Queen of Navarre to appear before 
 him as a heretic and supporter of heretics, under penalty of being 
 declared to have escheated her dignities, estates, domains ; hav- 
 ing her marriage declared null, her children bastards, &c. The 
 Cardinal of Lorraine had vainly tried to make the pope compre- 
 hend that this summons, particularly in the terms employed, 
 was only a dangerous anachronism. He detested the queen ; 
 but felt also that the pope was about to compel Charles IX. to 
 undertake her defence, and that this was not quite the way to 
 put her down. Under this form, in fact, her cause was that of 
 all crowned heads ; heretic or not, the question was whether 
 Koine meant to return to her ancient omnipotence over states 
 and sovereigns. 
 
 This question was stated to the pope with a vigour which he 
 nowise expected. The French ambassador at Rome, D'Oisel, 
 had orders to say to him, " that at the first rumour of this 
 strange news the king could not believe it ; that after the read- 
 ing of the proclamation, he still hesitated before he could figure 
 
 nothing but one universal cry, has been denied. Those immense disorders, so energetically 
 denounced, at Trent, by all the independent and pious bishops to be found there, have been 
 made out to be slight abuses in detail, wickedly exaggerated by the Protestants. In pre- 
 sence of such tactics no argument is superfluous. With people who would deny the exist- 
 ence of the sun, were it to suit their object in the smallest degree to do so, we must put 
 ourselyei in a condition to prove that the sun exists. 
 
500 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 to himself such a forgetfulness of the royal majesty, of the liber- 
 ties of the kingdom, of the universal reprobation now bestowed 
 on this kind of procedure. And although the right of the pope 
 had been as much acknowledged as it was little, why put it 
 forth against the Queen of Navarre rather than against so many 
 other princes in the same case ? Could it be because she had 
 no means of defence, and that hopes were entertained of tempt- 
 ing the king by offering him an opportunity of usurping the 
 estates of his kinswoman ? The king would take care not to 
 sanction, by accepting the proffered advantage, a light which 
 next day might be turned against himself. When, then, would 
 the popes come at last to see that if Jesus Christ said, My king- 
 dom is not of this world, it cannot pertain to his vicar either to 
 take away or to bestow states'?" 
 
 Pius IV. was in no condition to resist ; he promised that the 
 matter should go no farther. It had generally been thought 
 monstrous, even in Italy, that he should have ventured to speak 
 of declaring the illegitimacy of the children of a prince who had 
 died in fighting for the Church. Notwithstanding this, as the 
 summons had never been officially withdrawn, the enemies of 
 Henry IV. did not fail to make use of it as an arm against him. 
 It was said, that " as his mother had not obeyed, the threat was 
 accomplished. He had ceased to be the son of Anthony of 
 Bourbon ; the throne of France did not belong to him." Thus 
 were there prepared long before, and always at Rome, the storms 
 that were to convulse the kingdom. 
 
 The future agent of those convulsions, Philip II., although 
 the council often gave occasion to his having contentions with 
 the pope, was, in reality, daily becoming more and more united 
 with him. This was because the council, between them, was no 
 more their greatest affair. In sending directions to his legates 
 to have it closed as soon as possible, Pius IV. had added con- 
 fidentially, that they need not pay too much attention to the 
 reclamations of the Spaniards, as he was sure of their king. 
 Here we see the court of Pome already offering to the bigotted 
 ambition of Spain the bribe of having France to control, and 
 perhaps to conquer. 
 
 It formed part of the king's policy, accordingly, that his union 
 with the pope should remain concealed under the noisy reclama- 
 tions of his ambassadors and his bishops. The latter having 
 asked for his orders with respect to the closing of the council, 
 he had given them only vague directions, and their opposition 
 
ALL PARTIES EAGER FOR RAPID DESPATCH. 501 
 
 had already somewhat slackened. It revived when the Car- 
 dinal of Lorraine, taking the lead in stating what was the wish 
 of the majority, proposed to finish before Christmas, that is 
 to say, in less than six weeks. " He and his French col- 
 leagues," he said, "ought to be on their way back to France 
 before the end of December. It would be painful for him to 
 leave the council while still sitting ; it would be annoying to 
 the council to close without any French bishops being present 
 at the signing of the decrees." The emperor's ambassadors 
 also began to say that the sooner they came to a close the 
 better. Those of France were still at Venice, and although 
 their personal feelings Avent quite the other way, they left the 
 cardinal to act as he pleased. Finally, the Spaniards gave way. 
 It was decided that the next session should be the last ; some of 
 them even proposed, in order to make more sure of this, that 
 purgatory, indulgences, and the worship of saints should be 
 omitted. The majority felt that such an omission would be 
 very strange. They refused, but as we have seen them do 
 before, they promised to abandon all the points on which the 
 members should not be immediately agreed, or on which dis- 
 agreement might be apprehended. Yet the man who should 
 have ventured to say that the close would take place, not at 
 Christmas, but at three weeks before Christmas, would have 
 been treated as a dotard. 
 
 The pope's ill health admirably served the purposes of his 
 ministers. In his private letters he often spoke of it ; urging 
 them to spare him the affliction of dying before the close of the 
 council, with the prospect of the election of his successor by the 
 assembly, or preceded at least by the most perilous contentions 
 between it and the cardinals. The Roman party did not need his 
 entreaties in order to make them enter fully into his fears, and 
 prevent at any cost their being realized. The French and the 
 Spaniards wanted nothing better, for the moment, than to escape 
 the agitation of so serious a question. The emperor and his 
 prelates, though quite enough disposed to regard the council, in 
 point of theory, as charged with the election of the head of the 
 Church, preferred also, for the moment, not having to explain 
 their views upon it. All were agreed, in short, that it should 
 be left, in the event contemplated, to the college of cardinals ; 
 but as no party felt sufficiently sure of the others, there was 
 hardly a bishop to whom the death of the pope would not have 
 now appeared either a calamity, or a subject of serious perplexity, 
 
502 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 and who would not have been ready to sanction all that could be 
 done to prevent their being overtaken by it. 
 
 Nine prelates, to whom care was taken not to add any divine 
 by profession, were charged with the dogmatical questions. The 
 only condition imposed on them was, that they should proceed 
 with despatch. In a few days the decree was ready for being 
 voted. 
 
 Although we, too, are anxious to conclude our labours, we 
 cannot dispense with pointing out the course to be pursued in 
 the discussion of the subjects that were now to be treated. 
 
 First of all, let us be careful to distinguish between theory and 
 practice. Not that the Church of Borne does not here appear to 
 us quite as responsible for abuses in practice, as for errors in 
 theory ; but it is prudent that, before proceeding farther, we 
 should shut the outlet which we see daily taken advantage of in 
 questions of this nature. The grossest superstitions are tolerated, 
 encouraged, provoked ; and when we have the misfortune to 
 press these excesses, we are denounced as wanting in good faith. 
 " The Council of Trent," is the instant reply, " has taught 
 nothing of the kind. You maintain that the people adore the 
 saints, and give all the attributes of the Deity to the Virgin 
 Mary. Shew us a single article in which this adoration is or- 
 dained ? You say that the worship of images and of relics is in 
 many places a veritable idolatry. But the council teaches ex- 
 pressly that they are to be honoured only with a reference to 
 those whose lives and persons they recall." This is Bossuet's 
 favourite argumentation in all his pleadings in these matters. 
 
 Let us, for the nonce, accept this distinction. Should we be 
 rigorously bound to it? No. In judging of a man who would 
 maintain that we must keep to his writings and his theories ? 
 Writings and theories, in this respect, are to be adduced only if 
 the man's conduct be conformed to them. From the moment 
 they are found opposed, we are allowed to keep to facts. On 
 these the final judgment must rest ; in these the true spirit is to 
 be found. 
 
 Be that as it may, let us confine ourselves, in the first place, 
 to the council's declarations. Let us see what it teaches, and 
 how much of that Scripture, history, and reason permit us to 
 accept. 
 
 Purgatory, in itself, at a first glance, has nothing that shocks 
 us. " Nothing that is unclean shall enter heaven," says an Apos- 
 
PURGATORY STRANGELY OMITTED IN SCRIPTURE. 503 
 
 tie. For souls therefore that are unclean, ,the Roman Church 
 concludes, there is a place of purification and expiation. 
 
 Take care. For one passage from which you may try to infer 
 that such a place exists, you will find twenty where the purifica- 
 tion of the soul is represented to us as the immediate and direct 
 result of grace manifested in Jesus Christ and accepted by faith. 
 
 For one passage from which you might believe you were 
 authorized to intercalate the idea of purgatory, you will find 
 twenty in which the passage from this life to another, from earth 
 to heaven or to hell, is so close, so straight and direct, that never 
 will you, with any shew of reason, succeed in interposing any- 
 thing between them. 
 
 For the proof, were anything necessary, we should go to 
 Roman Catholic preachers themselves. Is it not a very curious 
 and withal a very significant fact, that when they follow the 
 Scripture, in order to speak of the last judgment, they are led 
 involuntarily to say nothing about purgatory ? What, for ex- 
 ample, says Massillon about it, in his sermon on the fewness of 
 the elect ? What say Bossuet, Flechier, Bordaloue, about it, 
 when they take up the subject in that sense, and keep to the 
 promises, threatenings, and figures of the holy books '? Is it not 
 always, just as in Protestant sermons, the good on the right 
 hand, and the wicked on the left, the good seed and the tares, 
 the wheat and the chaff, the sheep and the goats, the elect and 
 the reprobate, to the one happiness, to the other misery ? But 
 mark what is still more significant. The Roman Catechism, in 
 its chapter on the last judgment, one of the most complete and 
 biblical in the whole book, says nothing about purgatory, does 
 not even mention it. Elsewhere, no doubt, it speaks of it, and 
 at great length too ; but is not this careful development of the 
 chief texts in the Bible in which the last judgment is spoken of, 
 without a single word that leads to the mention of purgatory, 
 tantamount to an admission beforehand of the little foundation 
 that there exists for what is said about it afterwards ? 
 
 In fine, for one passage where it might be maintained that, 
 strictly speaking, the writer was not logically bound to mention 
 purgatory, you will find a host where it cannot be admitted 
 that he would have said nothing had he believed in it, or had 
 any idea of it. 
 
 And this is no longer a question in theology or history ; it is 
 a matter of common sense and common honesty. Here is a 
 doctrine of fact, purely of fact ; a question, if ever there was 
 
o04 HISTORY OF THK COUNCIL Oi v TIIF.NT, 
 
 such, to be decided by an ay or a no. If there be a purgatory 
 the sacred writers must have spoken of it, less often, if you will, 
 but quite as plainly as of a heaven for the good, and a hell for 
 the bad. But mark, not a word have they said about it, not 
 a word at least that does not primarily mean something else, 
 and which must not be strained hard in order to bring that 
 meaning out of it. Could this be because it was a subject in 
 which few were interested '? Purgatory, on the contrary, must 
 be a serious affair for all ; if there be such a place, where is the 
 man who can flatter himself that he will not go there '? Yet this 
 point, so interesting, so positive, so indispensable to be known, 
 Jesus Christ and the sacred penmen must have passed hundreds 
 of times on the right, on the left, above, below, without touching 
 it, without allowing to drop from their mouths or pens that «y, 
 or that no, which would have shed light on one whole portion of 
 eternity ! Ah ! doubtless, there is many another ay and many 
 another no, about which we fain would know somewhat, but 
 which God has kept to himself, but then what right have men 
 to impose theirs on us ? The Church of Eome herself has never 
 held herself authorized to teach new doctrines. Her infallibility, 
 according to her own admission, is confined to the infallible de- 
 termination of what has been taught. What value then can be 
 attached to her testimony in favour of a doctrine of fact, when 
 once we discover that that fact is noAvdiere to be found in the 
 Scriptures, and when common sense proclaims that if it exist 
 at all, it must have appeared there at almost every page ? 
 
 The same principles apply to the worship of the Virgin. Here 
 again we have a positive question, a fact which, if it ever entered 
 into the designs of God at all, must have manifested itself more 
 or less distinctly from the earliest days of Christianity. The 
 greater the importance attached to it by the Eoman Church, the 
 more cogent will our argument be. The larger the space that 
 the Virgin shall occupy in her faith, in her worship, the greater 
 right shall we have to ask why she occupies no place in Scrip- 
 ture, none in the history of the first ages of the Church. 
 
 None in Scripture, we say. In the four Gospels, first of all, 
 there is not a word to indicate that Jesus Christ accorded to his 
 mother any share whatever in his work, neither during nor after 
 his ministry on earth, neither in this world nor in the other, 
 neither as acting of herself, nor as an intercessor with her son or 
 with God. 
 
WORSHIP OF THE VIRGIN NOT IN SCRIPTURE. .005 
 
 " Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee ; 
 blessed art thou among women." " Behold the handmaid of the 
 Lord ; be it unto me according to thy word !" And some days 
 after, when she began to comprehend the future grandeur of her 
 son, "All generations," she said, " shall call me blessed." 
 
 Yea, blessed indeed was she whom God had chosen to be the 
 mother of the Saviour ! Protestants have never said otherwise. 
 But, from that to a worship, to any invocation whatever, the dis- 
 tance is great, it is infinite. This very word blessed, so evidently 
 applicable to any one who has been the object of a great favour, 
 finds its commentary elsewhere, and from the mouth too of the 
 Saviour himself. " Blessed," exclaimed a woman, "is the womb 
 that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked!" What 
 was his reply ? " Yea, rather blessed are they that hear the 
 word of God and keep it." Here we see at once that the simple 
 grace of being a believer is put above that of having given birth 
 to the Messiah. 
 
 Is this unique privilege represented to us at least in such a 
 manner as to lead to the belief, that she could avail herself of 
 it as an intercessor in behalf of men ? Why, on one occasion, 
 she makes a request to her son. A request, this is saying too 
 much ; she does not even go so far as that. Jesus had so com- 
 pletely separated himself from her in all that bore " on his 
 Father's business," 1 that she has no wish to seem to intermeddle 
 with it. " They have no wine," she said. " Woman," replied 
 Jesus, " what have I to do with thee?" He then performs the 
 miracle ; but he had made it a point to shew that it was not 
 because she had asked him. On another occasion, when told that 
 his mother and his brethren wanted to speak with him — " Who 
 is my mother?" said he, "who are my brethren?" Then, 
 stretching forth his hand toward his disciples, he added, " Behold 
 my mother and my brethren ! For whosoever shall do the will 
 of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and 
 sister, and mother." One does not see how he could better have 
 expressed the idea, that in so far as he was the sent of God, to 
 him the ties of blood were nothing. Had these words never been 
 recorded, and were we permitted to put them into his mouth, we 
 could not in truth have found any more clearly, more positively, 
 expressive of our view of the subject. 
 
 So much for the four Gospels. In the book of Acts there is 
 
 1 " How is it that ye sought me ? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business ':" 
 Luke ii. 49. 
 
• r >% HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 nothing, absolutely nothing, that allows us to suppose that any 
 power was owned in Mary, or any homage rendered to her. No 
 mention is made even of the respect which the disciples could 
 not have failed to entertain for the mother of their master. " All 
 continued with one accord in prayer and supplication with the 
 women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren." 
 Such is all that appears. After that, and it occurs in the first 
 chapter, her name is no more introduced. 
 
 In the Epistles, finally, even in those which must have been 
 written a longer or shorter time after her death, mark this, in 
 those even of that beloved disciple to whom Jesus when expiring 
 said, "Behold thy mother!" nothing is said about her; she is 
 not even mentioned. Words fail you when you would fully ex- 
 press how inconceivable, how unheard of it would be, that she 
 whose worship was to fill so important a part, should not have 
 had even a page, not a sentence, not aline, not a word, not even 
 the shadow of an allusion, among so many letters, addressed to so 
 many churches, full of so many lessons and instructions on all 
 sorts of subjects. In the Apocalypse, the same omission ; and 
 this silence, Avhatever opinion one may profess with respect to 
 the doctrinal authority of that book, is still more significant, in 
 certain respects, than that of the Epistles. Posterior by five and 
 twenty or thirty years to all the rest of the New Testament, the 
 Apocalypse might have been subjected, and was in fact sub- 
 jected to the influence of more than one new idea. If this idea 
 were then in favour, had it even begun to be so, how is it that 
 there is not here the slightest trace of it '? And yet there was 
 no doctrine, no usage, more of a nature to find a place in the 
 Apocalypse. She whom Eoman mysticism was afterwards to 
 make the gate of heaven, the queen of angels, the star of the 
 morning, fee., 1 — how shall we account for there not being the 
 smallest place for her in that magnificent representation of the 
 celestial magnificences ? 2 
 
 1 Janua coeli, Regina angelorum, Stella matutina, &c. — See the litanies. 
 
 2 Would the reader know how one of the historians of the Virgin tries to escape from the 
 overwhelming signiticancy of this silence ? The following passage occurs in the Month of 
 Mar ji, a work approved and recommended by several bishops : — " For the celebration of the 
 noblest of creatures Scripture has but a few words, tradition but a few memorials, whether 
 the evangelists and doctors wished to re'-pect the thick veil with which the humble Virgin 
 was enveloped, or that the human idiom cannot attain to such altitudes. Thus, the human 
 idiom sufficed for speaking of God, and of the Son of God ; but was inadequate to the task of 
 speaking of the Virgin. Be it so. But, then, why do you say so much of her ? If the sacred 
 writers had so much respect for " the thick veil with which she was enveloped," why remove 
 it ? On a subject on which " Scripture has but a few words, and tradition but a few memo- 
 rials," why those long histories, long romances rather, which you put into the hands of the 
 people ? 
 
WORSHIP OF THE VIRGIN NOT IN THE FATHERS. 507 
 
 Assuming- this, although it could be proved that the worship 
 of the Virgin dated from the commencement of the second, or 
 even from the end of the first century, already it must be ad- 
 mitted as hopeless to attempt assigning to it an apostolic and 
 divine origin. 
 
 But no. Down to the middle of the fifth century, not a trace 
 do we find of the acts of homage rendered, or to be rendered to 
 the mother of the Saviour. We admit that there were early tes- 
 timonies of respect and admiration, amplifications more or less 
 strong on her glory and her sanctity ; but all these testimonies, 
 all these amplifications, so much quoted at the present clay, are 
 precisely the strongest points we should have to adduce against 
 the worship which some make bold to authorize by them. 
 
 Of all those declarations which Eomanists go to collect 
 among the Fathers, and which they take great care to isolate 
 from all that might throw a shade over them, 1 how is it that 
 we do hot find one in which we find a practical conclusion ? 
 How happens it that none of those writers have added to those 
 benedictions and those eulogiums, either that the Church offered 
 worship to the Virgin, or that it was her duty to offer it to her ? 
 Wherefore, again, do the liturgies, the catechisms, the histories, 
 the sermons of the times, make no mention of any ceremony, any 
 practice in honour of her, of any recourse had to her on any 
 occasion, or under any form whatever ? Wherefore does Epi- 
 phanius, towards the close of the fourth century, attack the honours 
 which some Arab women had paid to the Virgin ? These, it 
 is replied, were idolatrous honours. Not more idolatrous, as 
 we could shew, than those enjoined or tolerated at the present 
 day. But it is not even possible, with that writing before our 
 eyes, 2 to say that Epiphanius meant to blame excess only. In 
 that case, the best mode of attacking what these women did, 
 would have been to shew what the Church did, what the Church 
 authorized. But there is nothing of the sort. He condemns 
 without restriction ; he does not speak of any worship, of any 
 commencement of worship ; with the terms he employs, and the 
 
 1 Tertullian (De Carne Chvisti vii.) comparing Mary to the sisters of Lazarus, thinks that 
 she was inferior in devotedness and in faith. Origen, (on St. Luke, Homily xvii.,) Basil, 
 (Epistle 317.) and others, still affirm that she was scandalized, shaken, by the death of her 
 son. Others, in fine, and Chrysostom, in particular, are not afraid to interpret as a repri- 
 mand, the words, " What have I to do with thee ?" There had been in her, they said, a feel- 
 ing of pride. She wanted to make a parade of the supernatural power of her son. This is 
 not our view ; but it is clear that those who thought thus, and who wrote thus, had no 
 belief in Mary's impeccability. 
 
 2 Heresies 79. 
 

 508 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 disdain which he expresses, we are not even permitted to suppose 
 that those women had followed the impulsion of any known doc- 
 tor, or that there was any party at that time ready to declare 
 itself in their favour. Thirty years afterwards, when the dis- 
 putes that preceded and followed the council of Ephesus were at 
 the highest, when Nestorius was deposed for not having wished 
 to give Mary the title of Mother of God, when Cyril and Pro- 
 clus, liis antagonists, using and abusing the victory which the 
 council had given them, were celebrating the mysterious gran- 
 deurs which seemed to them to be involved in that title, well 
 then, in these very sermons in which Mary is magnified as much, 
 and more perhaps than ever was her Son, there is nothing, ab- 
 solutely nothing, to indicate an established worship, or a worship 
 to be established. 
 
 We need not go farther. The idea made its way ; the wor- 
 ship was yet to come. What is certain and incontestable is, 
 that at that epoch it had not yet come. 
 
 What shall we now say of the worship of the saints in general V 
 Here we must pass over the same ground, and arrive very nearly 
 at the same conclusions. 
 
 First, then, there is the same silence on the part of the sacred 
 writers ; the same absence of every trace that it could have ap- 
 peared to them that the dead, saints or not, behoved to serve as 
 intermediates, by any title whatever, between the living and 
 (lod. Some imperceptible allusions never could counterbalance 
 so complete an absence of all teaching, all invitation, all orders 
 on the subject of the invocation of saints. We do not speak of 
 lessons to the contrary ; that would carry us into too wide a held. 
 AVhen the preacher says that the dead " have no part more for 
 ever in anything done under the sun," 1 that "they know not 
 anything," where is the exception in favour of the saints? 
 
 Has all that is implied in a prayer addressed to a dead person 
 been in fact well considered ? That the saints have, at the pre- 
 sent moment, access to the presence of God we willingly admit, 
 albeit that at first what was said by Jesus Christ of one sole 
 universal judgment at the end of the world, has generally been 
 understood in its literal meaning. 2 The saints pray at present — 
 
 i Eccles. ix. C. 
 
 2 This opinion, so manifestly contrary to all idea of invocation and worship, is formally 
 taught by several of the fathers. See Irenaaus, Against Heresies, v. 25 ; Justin, Dialogue 
 vith Tiiphon ; Lactantius, Institutions, c. vii. Note, moreover, that in remitting to the 
 last j udgment the entrance of the saints into heaven, neither the^e authors nor any other add 
 uiut the Virgin gets there before them. 
 
WORSHIP OF THE SAINTS WHAT DOES IT IMPLY? 509 
 
 be it so ; but do they hear you who pray to them, and who ask 
 them to pray for you ? Think well ; what you attribute to them 
 is nothing less than the greatest, the most incomprehensible, the 
 most essentially divine of all God's attributes, — that of being 
 everywhere, of seeing everything, of hearing everything. What ! 
 a man who but yesterday was like myself, who like me both saw 
 and heard within a very narrow and impassable range, who 
 could no moi-e than myself seize at one and the same time more 
 than one object, one idea, one word, 1 — behold him now, like God, 
 seizing at once millions and hundreds of millions of objects, ideas, 
 words ! The man who no more than myself could read what 
 passes in the heart of a single fellow-creature, behold him read- 
 ing what passes in all men's hearts at once ! behold him in 
 Europe, in America, in the lowest mines and on the mountain 
 tops, by day, by night, everywhere and always ! behold him in- 
 stantaneously and simultaneously taking in all the words, all the 
 sighs, every slightest emotion of the soul into which the idea of 
 his intercession has entered ! For, in fine, if he is to hear me 
 whenever I shall address myself to him, he must be always at 
 hand, always with me, always with everybody ; you cannot sup- 
 pose that there are places where, or moments when, he will not 
 hear you. Thus no middle ; either the saints have not the 
 faculty of hearing you at all, or they have it in the same degree 
 as God. God no doubt may have wished that it should be so ; 
 but the greater the privilege the more must we insist on seeing 
 it established on declarations authentically proceeding from Him 
 who alone can bestow it. " They see Hhn who sees all," says 
 Gregory VIII. , " of what then could they be ignorant?" 2 Idle 
 antithesis, which would amount to saying that one cannot see 
 God without becoming his equal. " If I see a man mounted on 
 the top of a steeple," says Du Moulin, " do I on that account 
 see all that he sees ?" 
 
 You figure to yourself the peace of a soul that feels itself sur- 
 rounded by so many friends, that cannot breathe a sigh without, 
 these divine messengers disputing in some sort the honour of 
 bearing it to God. This is very nearly what the pagans said 
 when asked to renounce those countless deities who also encom- 
 passed them from the cradle to the tomb, and besieged them with 
 
 1 No man is great in the presence of his valet, it is said. Are there many saints whom 
 those who lived on familiar terms with them could seriously invoke * On hearing of the 
 canonization of St. Francis de Sales, " Ah," said an old bishop, who had known him well. 
 " that is fine, but the fellow cheated furiously at piquet." — Mimoires de Tallemant. 
 
 3 Quid e^t quod nesciant qui scientem omnia sciant ' 
 
510 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TitF.NT. 
 
 their constant protection. No doubt, looking to the outward side 
 of things, the Christianity of the Apostles was singularly cold 
 and bare compared with those poetic creeds, consecrated by so 
 many exquisite works of art and by ages of antiquity, under 
 which not a city, not a village, not a ko\ise, not a tree, but had 
 its tutelary deity, — not a man, in fine, that could not, in every 
 circumstance of life, invoke a god expressly placed at his service 
 in that very exigency, so that the slightest volition on his part 
 might have a divine volition at its command. And yet, in reality, 
 which was best, those petty gods of every moment — supposing 
 that there existed such — or one sole perfect God, great enough 
 and good enough alone to do as much and more than they all ? 
 Which too, since we are compelled to touch this chord, is the 
 grander, the more beautiful, the more realty poetical also, the in- 
 vocation of all those subaltern deities, or a direct and intimate 
 communication with Him who has all power and who fills all 
 space ? Thus the same answer that was made to the pagans we 
 may make to the partisans of the invocation of the saints. Duke 
 George of Saxony, one of the greatest enemies of the Keforma- 
 tion, as he sat, in 1537, at the bedside of a dying son, exhorted 
 him to leave the saints to themselves and to think only of Christ. 
 The dying man's wife, a Lutheran at heart, gave a look of sur- 
 prise. The duke noticed it. "For the dying," said he, "this 
 is the best instruction to give." It is in fact, and we love to 
 acknowledge it, what all truly pious priests say to the dying. 
 When the danger is thought at a distance, you find for yourselves 
 insignificant protectors ; when it presses, if you have not forgot- 
 ten Him who alone and of Himself can save you, to Him, to Him 
 alone you feel urged to cry. But if this doctrine be the best for 
 the dying, why should it not be so for all, and on all occasions ? 
 " In popish times," said Luther, 1 " people made pilgrimages to 
 the saints ; they would go to Eome, to Jerusalem, for the expia- 
 tion of their sins. And now we still make pilgrimages, but it is 
 into the regions of faith. We go not to Jerusalem, but straight 
 to God. This is the true visiting of the promised land. What 
 are the saints in comparison with Christ ? Nothing more than 
 the small dew-drops of the night on the head of the spouse and 
 on the locks of his hair!" Luther was a poet; he had known 
 enough of you, ye saints of both sexes ; he had worn his knees 
 before their images ; and it was only on going, as he would say, 
 " straight to God" that he beheld opening before his steps, like 
 
 1 Table Talk. 
 
"WORSHIP OF THE SAINTS UTTERLY SUPERFLUOUS. 511 
 
 a new and unknown world, the regions of true peace, the springs 
 of life in Christ. This that we have told, moreover, applies to 
 more people than one would think. There are Koman Catholics, 
 and many too, and the most pious, who do not believe in the 
 intercession of the saints ; many, at least, who do not believe in 
 it for themselves, and who never have recourse to it. Well, 
 then, when these would go to God, is anything wanting to them ? 
 Have they a longer journey to make in order to perceive the sun 
 than others who look only at the stars ? And after their eyes 
 have once been turned towards Him whom the Bible calls the 
 " Sun of Righteousness," is there perceptibly less peace, less faith, 
 less confidence in them than in others ? 
 
 Shall we be told, then, that the direct way is not proscribed, 
 that the invocation of saints is not enjoined as indispensable to 
 salvation, that the Council of Trent, in fine, only recommends it 
 as good and useful ? No doubt, when the sun is set it is useful, 
 it is good to have the stars ; but as long as it is above the 
 horizon, what need have we of them ? Let us speak without a 
 figure. It is, in the end, as a resource to the weak that the in- 
 vocation of the saints is recommended. We have just spoken, in 
 fact, only of certain choice souls who, without condemning it, do 
 without it, and are none the worse. Would the others lose 
 much ? That is the question. That a man who has been in the 
 habit of addressing God only through the saints, should expe- 
 rience at first no little embarrassment in addressing him alone, 
 and directly, is possible enough ; but is any embarrassment, any 
 stupefaction felt by those who have been in the habit, on the 
 contrary, of praying only to God ? Are there things of which 
 they dare not speak to him ? If there be, they are things felt 
 by them to be bad or unworthy of him, and, in that case, it were 
 a pitiful service to render them, to give them beings to pray to, 
 to whom they shall have less dread of opening their hearts. 
 Next, what business have we to inquire whether this be the 
 more or less easy, the more or less dangerous way ? The grand 
 point, and to this we must ever return, is that God has not 
 pointed it out to us. Here we have not to do with a mystery 
 which he might have meant to leave in the shade. The ques- 
 tion of prayer is the very one on which the sacred books have 
 gone most into practical details ; and if they could have spoken 
 of it two or three hundred times, under every form, and on all 
 sorts of occasions, without enjoining or advising what the council 
 declares to be useful and good, — by what right should any one 
 

 512 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 add aught to the command everywhere repeated, to address our- 
 selves to God, to seek the intercession of Christ ? Shall we he 
 told that there is no formal prohibition against seeking that of 
 others ? What ! if Jesus Christ he formally pointed out to us as 
 our intercessor and our advocate, if he be represented to us as 
 always ready to discharge that divine office for us, — does not this 
 imply that we are prohibited from having recourse to any less 
 holy and less powerful than he ? Far be it from us, however, 
 to admit that the prohibition is merely implied. " There is one 
 •God," says St. Paul, "and one Mediator between God and man, 
 to wit, Christ Jesus." 1 Yes, say Roman controversialists, one 
 sole mediator of redemption ; but that does not exclude media- 
 tors of intercession. Where has this distinction been found ? 
 Not assuredly in the Bible, where intercession and mediation are 
 constantly confounded. What is the subject in hand, in fact, at 
 the very place from which the passage we have quoted has been 
 taken? Why, prayer in general, and all sorts of prayers. " I 
 desire, therefore," says the Apostle, "that first of all, prayers, 
 requests, supplications, and giving of thanks be made for all men, 
 for kings, for . . " &c. How maintain, after this, that the me- 
 diation of which he speaks two or three lines farther on can be 
 understood of redemption only'? Besides, with the doctrine of 
 indulgences, redemption itself passes in part into the hands of 
 the saints. This, Bellarmine admits. 2 Thus, even were the 
 above distniction as well founded as it is groundless, the Church 
 of Rome cannot take advantage of it. 
 
 •' Let no man," says he elsewhere, 3 " beguile you of your re- 
 ward, in a voluntary humility, and worshipping of angels." 
 According to Bossuet, this refers only to angels viewed, accord- 
 ing to the neo-platonician theory, as subaltern creators of the 
 universe. That opinion may have given occasion for the prohi- 
 bition, but the Apostle speaks in general terms. There must be 
 no worship of angels, under pretext of humility. Now, the: 
 Roman Church does not go so far as to teach that God is inac- 
 cessible to men ; it is from humility, then, that people pray to 
 saints and angels, and thus enter fully into what the Apostle has 
 interdicted. 
 
 Shall we once more cite the Apocalypse? This we might do. 
 How happens it that the saints, who are represented to us as 
 surrounding the throne of God, have nowise the air of having 
 prayers to listen to? Let a Roman Catholic suppose himself 
 
 i I Tim. ii. .". 5 be Imlul -entiK i. 24. ! Coins*, ii. 18. 
 
APOCALYPTIC PRAYERS OF SAINTS. 513 
 
 writing that book, and let him say if he could omit such a de- 
 tail? A single passage has been adduced. "Then," it says, 
 " the four living creatures, and the four-and-twenty elders, fell 
 down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and 
 golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints." Such 
 is what has been ventured upon as a set-off to the overwhelming 
 silence of the Gospels, the Epistles, and the rest of the Apoca- 
 lypse ; such is what people fancy they may oppose to the direct 
 teaching which, in that crowd of passages where it could not fail 
 to have been, shines only by its absence. Were we not afraid of 
 appearing to accept the challenge to discuss the question on this 
 field, we should find in those very lines, wherewithal to refute what 
 has been attempted to be deduced from them. First of all, through- 
 out the whole chapter, we find the subject in hand to be songs 
 of praise. Can the prayers of saints, mentioned in this passage, 
 mean anything else ? No, for they are presented under the form 
 of odours or perfumes in golden vials, which is never said, and 
 which cannot anywise be said, of any prayers whatever, coming 
 from whomsoever you will, and comprehending all sorts of de- 
 mands. Next, who present those prayers f The four living 
 creatures and the four-and-twenty elders. Do you admit that 
 there are in heaven four living creatures and four-and-twenty 
 elders serving intermediately between the saints and God? It 
 is a figure, will you say ? Be it so. Under this figure, never- 
 theless, there is formally announced this fact, — the existence of 
 an intermediate, it matters not who, between God and the 
 saints. Now, what do you make of this detail ? If the figures 
 that follow have a dogmatic value, how refuse it to this ? In 
 fine, what is represented to us as thus coming to God, are the 
 prayers of the saints. Their prayers for us ? That is not said; 
 and, moreover, in that which is cited of them a little farther on, 
 the living are not in question at all. We see elsewhere the 
 saints praying for the Church, for the salvation and the peace of 
 men in general ; but not a trace do we find of individual peti- 
 tions, of prayers which they bear the appearance of having heard 
 for the purpose of transmitting them. Such is the utmost, we 
 repeat, that Eomanists have been able to adduce in favour of the 
 invocation of the saints. 
 
 Now, if the invocation of saints is neither enjoined nor sanc- 
 tioned by Scripture, all the more may we say this of the abuses 
 to which it has given rise. Thus far, in fact, according to our 
 
 2 K 
 
514 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 engagement, we have combated only what the council teaches ; 
 but we did not interdict ourselves from following out what the 
 Church has done or allowed to be done. Of all the points above 
 noted, there is hardly one on which there has not been as wide a 
 departure from the decisions of Trent as those decisions them- 
 selves are a departure from both the letter and the spirit of the 
 Holy Scriptures. 
 
 In vain might you prop up a system with good proofs, it is 
 always a serious defect not to be capable of being applied with- 
 out being altered. We shall ask, then, in the first place, if the 
 worship of saints is generally such as it is found necessary to re- 
 present it in order to elude our objections? 
 
 "You accord to them," we have said, "the most divine of all 
 attributes, that of being everywhere present." This it has been 
 found impossible to deny ; but, says Bossuet, " Never has it been 
 thought by any Koman Catholic, that the saints could know of 
 themselves our wants, or even the desires by which we pray to 
 them." Never has any Koman Catholic, we admit, taught that 
 the saints could of themselves possess this astounding power ; but 
 how many are there, who, in praying to them, make this distinc- 
 tion ? How many are there who, on their knees before the image 
 of a saint, say to themselves, have ever said to themselves, " He 
 hears me not. If my prayer reaches him, it is through the in- 
 termediate agency of angels, or by a revelation from God, or by 
 a vision of God !" For such are, in fact, the three means sug- 
 gested by Bossuet. But of these the council says nothing ; no 
 more does the catechism. The universal presence of the saints 
 is admitted by implication as a fact in every invitation to pray 
 to them, in every prayer addressed to them ; there is not one 
 Komanist in a hundred, perhaps not one in a thousand, who, 
 unless under the influence of scruples inspired in him from 
 without, does not absolutely omit this reservation without which, 
 according to Bossuet's admission, the worship of the saints be- 
 comes an insult to God. 
 
 Moreover, between the invocation of the saints as intercessors 
 only, and the invocation of those same saints as having power to 
 grant answers, as omnipotent, in short, as gods, — if there be, as 
 is maintained, an abyss in point of theory, there is not, in fact, 
 more than a step. And as for that step, how many pious Boman 
 Catholics are there in a condition to keep from taking it, and 
 who, in fact, refrain from taking it ? We have had occasion to 
 make researches on this subject in a country where the worship 
 
WHAT AVAILS THE CHUKCH's INTENTION ? 515 
 
 of the saints and of the virgin, although much diffused, still is 
 much less so than in Italy or in Spain ; and not only have we 
 found no one who, in the spontaneous movements of his heart, 
 has not always suffered himself to run at once into the invocation 
 of them as omnipotent beings, but the very prayers in which 
 they are called intercessors, do not in general prevent their view- 
 ing them as something very different. We have seen it proved 
 that even in repeating to satiety, "Holy Virgin, pray for us" 
 the idea of intercession is absorbed in that of a direct, absolute 
 protection, to be obtained from the mother of Christ. At the 
 very moment when the lips shall be opened to say Pray for us, 
 the inward feeling is just the same as that which might be trans- 
 lated instantly after by the words, " The holy Virgin bless you — 
 the holy Virgin conduct you — if it please the holy Virgin," — and 
 a hundred other forms of language in which the Virgin is openly 
 substituted for God. 
 
 But, says Bossuet again, 1 in whatever terms the prayers ad- 
 dressed to the saints be conceived, the Church's intention, and 
 that of the faithful, reduces them always into this form, " Pray 
 for us." The Church's intention, that may be ; the intention of 
 the faithful, that we deny ; and what avails the Church's ab- 
 stract intention, when the faithful are almost inevitably led to 
 intend quite otherwise. When a beggar, to whom you have 
 given alms, and who thanks you, as is usual in so many coun- 
 tries, not by a " God repay you" but by " May the Virgin re- 
 pay you" of what consequence is it that the Council of Trent, 
 which he has never heard of all his life, has reduced his prayer 
 beforehand to an intercessory request ? The Virgin, or God — in 
 his mind it is all one. He gives to the creature without any re- 
 serve what is due to the Creator only ; and if this, as has been 
 always said, constitutes idolatry, his prayer to the Virgin is evi- 
 dently an act of idolatry. In this sense, we repeat, are there 
 many prayers to saints of which we may not say as much ? 
 
 Our best auxiliary here is one of the most zealous champions 
 of Koman Catholicism, the man who has most contributed, in our 
 days, to make it what it is, Chateaubriand. Without caring 
 about what councils have forbidden or permitted, he does not 
 discuss, he paints, and his pictures have hardly a feature in them 
 that does not confirm our criticisms. " The sprightliest and the 
 bravest race were consecrated io Genevieve, the daughter of simpli- 
 city and peace." " Those shepherdesses transformed by their vir- 
 
 1 Exposition iv. 
 
516 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 tues into beneficent deities.'''' " There is nothing, even to the feeble 
 advantage of difference of sex and of visible form, that our deities 
 do not share with those of Greece." " The deity of a saint begins 
 with his felicity in the regions of eternal light." " It was proper 
 that the female saint of the woods shoidd work miracles." 
 " Those martyrs who deserved to rise to the rank of the celestial 
 powers." " For the man of faith, nature is a perpetual mar- 
 vel. Does he suffer? He prays to his little image, and is com- 
 forted. He prostrates himself; he prays to the saint to restore 
 to him a son, to save a wife." " Never was there a people so sur- 
 rounded with friendly deities as the Christian people." " Those 
 men who have merited to be adored." Here we see Roman 
 ( latholicism, such as it is ; here is what it cannot fail more and 
 more to become, as long as its heads shall believe that they have 
 only to shelter themselves behind the impotent and deceptive de- 
 clarations of a council. 
 
 Do we see, in fact, that the Roman Church tries at least to 
 struggle against that irresistible bent of the nations to adore 
 that which, we are told, she gives them only to revere ? Does 
 she insist much with her members on that distinction which she 
 so loudly proclaims, when she has to prepare a reply to adver- 
 saries? We know not ; fain would we believe, even though we 
 have strong reasons to doubt it, that there are no Roman Catho- 
 lics to whom the subject has not been clearly explained, once at 
 least. But precept is one thing, example another ; to teach sel- 
 dom and coldly a subtle distinction is one thing ; very different is 
 the resistless contagion of practices repeated every day. There 
 are countries in which you may pass twenty years without seeing 
 anything that does not lead right to the error of which the ad- 
 mission is forbidden. Were an ancient Roman to re-appear in 
 the midst of Rome, what would he find changed there but the 
 names of the gods, and the forms of the sacrifices? Could he 
 doubt that the saints that give their names to the temples, that 
 have their altars, their festivals, are not the deities of the coun- 
 try ? That Pantheon which he had left consecrated to all the 
 gods, he finds again consecrated to all the saints ; those columns, 
 those pedestals on which he had seen Jupiter, Romulus, Trajan, 
 or some other deified emperor, he now sees supporting Peter or 
 Paul, John or Mary. 1 Would you tell him, then, how that 
 
 1 The very title Divus, ordinarily replaced in official documents by that of Beat us, has not, 
 however, been expelled from them. We meet with it once or twice in the Acts of Trent. 
 Would it have passed into the language, had not the idea which it involves first passed into 
 men's minds ? 
 
AX ANCIENT ROMAN IN MODERN ROME. 517 
 
 temple of St. Peter is not a temple to St. Peter ? Your explana- 
 tion he will not find it easy to comprehend, however little this 
 pagan may have remarked the foot of the saint to have been 
 worn away by the perpetual kissing of the faithful ; well, too, 
 will it be, if he fails to recognise in the statue that of an ancient 
 Jupiter ! When he shall see the Virgin on the altar, and a 
 whole people on their knees befoi'e her ; when he shall hear her 
 called — for he must needs understand Latin, and in this respect 
 at least will have the advantage, which many Christians have 
 not, of understanding what is said among them — when he shall 
 hear her called by all those magnificent names that have been 
 lavished upon her by the Church of Eome, how could he compre- 
 hend your maintaining, after all this, that you do not make her 
 a goddess? How could he comprehend, most of all, that she is 
 not a goddess in the view of the people ? He will hear them 
 chanting Ora pro nobis ; but he, too, in his day, often addressed 
 himself to the inferior deities, to ask their intercession with the 
 princes of heaven, and those deities of the second or third order, 
 did not thereby cease to be considered as deities. When the 
 pious iEneas invokes his mother Venus, he very well knows that 
 of herself she can do nothing, that she must go and petition 
 Jupiter ; is she the less, in his eyes and those of his people, a 
 high deity ? Does she cease on that account to have temples 
 raised to her, to have sacrifices offered to her, to be treated habi- 
 tually on the same footing with Jupiter ? Direct adoration is 
 nowise incompatible, in fact, with the idea of intercession ; were 
 this generally as well understood as it is little, the adoration 
 would remain. And how many prayers to saints, besides, whether 
 in the most widely diffused collections, or in the worship itself, 
 where intercession is not mentioned ! How many others in 
 which it occurs only at the close, in two words, and as it were 
 out of sight, at the end of long and fervent invocations! That 
 famous Sub timm, which you hear repeated morning and evening 
 in all the schools of Roman Catholicity, what is there in it 
 more or less than a prayer to (a) god. " We take refuge under 
 thy guardianship, Holy Mother of God. Despise not our suppli- 
 cations, but from all perils ever deliver us, glorious and blessed 
 Virgin." 1 In such an atmosphere — we have seen it proved — 
 there is not one — even to the Lord's Prayer, that the perverted 
 instinct of the faithful has not quietly transformed into a prayer 
 
 1 Sub tuum presidium coirfughnus, sancta Dei genetrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despi- 
 ciiiS, sed a periculis cunotis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. 
 
518 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 to the Virgin. That prayer, according to the Catechism, may he 
 recited before any image of the saint, provided the reciter have 
 the sentiment that the saint repeats it to God. How many 
 Romanists have any such sentiment ? When Juliana of Liege 
 saw the famous cut made in the moon, and concluded from it 
 that God was distressed at having no festival, while all the 
 saints had theirs — it was, setting aside the oddity of the form it 
 took, a very great truth ; hut has the festival which people lost 
 no time in establishing, the Fete-Dieu, of which Liege lately 
 celebrated the six hundredth anniversary, remained at least a 
 true festival to God '? Not at all. There are countries, and those 
 the most Roman Catholic, where it has nothing more than the 
 name. In Italy, in Spain, in Provence, the Fete-Dieu is only a 
 new festival to the Virgin. 
 
 Thus wherever the worship of the saints has been developed 
 freely and without control, God's worship has been more and more 
 effaced. " You might steal God from them without their noticing 
 it," said some one in describing Italian Catholicism. Nothing 
 more true. You have only to remove the name of God from 
 some Latin prayers, where it still remains, and all would go on 
 as if there were no void in religious worship, and without the 
 bulk of the people suspecting any change. Were a new council 
 to declare that God no longer exists, and that there is no other 
 deity but the Virgin, it would only give the form of law to 
 what already exists in fact, in the great majority of certain 
 populations. 
 
 We have no thought that any such sacrilegious decree will 
 ever be passed, but it must be admitted that with this exception, 
 it would be impossible to accord more to the Virgin than has 
 been accorded to her in our days, and that too in the centre of 
 Europe, in France, in the face of indignant Protestantism and 
 sneering infidelity. Instead of restraining the nations while in 
 this dangerous downward course, the Church of Rome has clone 
 her best to urge them into it. Here, as in so many other things, 
 all that she could not have destroyed without shutting against 
 her certain sources of influence, she has thought it more simple, 
 and, above all, more advantageous boldly to lay hold of for her 
 own purposes, and has put herself at the head of all those natural 
 impulses which she could not arrest. It will not be her fault 
 if in this respect France shall ere long see nothing to blame in 
 the superstitions of the remotest hamlets of Calabria. We wish 
 we could cpiote at full length the famous mandement by which a 
 
CARDINAL DE BONALD's MARIOLATRY. 519 
 
 cardinal 1 has inaugurated this new era. At full length, we 
 say, without omitting the few lines in which the author protests 
 against all assimilation of the Virgin to God. What then is the 
 amount of those lines, and how far do they undo our objections ? 
 We have not said that the Church of Kome teaches the deity of 
 the Virgin ; we have said that it stimulates people to believe ill 
 it, or, at the very least, not to pray, or to discharge any duty, 
 or to live or to die, in fine, but as if they believed in it, and, in 
 these terms, what could we cite that could better confirm our 
 assertions ? Wherein do a few details, wherein does a distinc- 
 tion so very refined in point of theory, so impossible in practice, 
 anywise restrain the outburst of those tendencies which as a 
 whole are so lauded ? From the very opening lines behold the 
 worship of the Virgin carried back, according to the author, to 
 the first days of Christianity. " The Saviour," says he, " gave 
 to religion, from the cradle, a companion whose gentleness was 
 to temper his severity. This faithful companion was devotion 
 to the holy Virgin." From the cradle ! Did not your hand 
 become withered when it had so impudently given the lie to the 
 silence of Scripture ! The author recurs to it ; he is delighted 
 with it ; he seems to dread that the expression may still be 
 wanting in preciseness, and that from the cradle may be thought 
 to mean only from the first ages. " Eeligion and devotion to 
 the Virgin," we are told, " came down together from the holy 
 mountain, to advance together to the conquest of souls. Thence- 
 forward wherever the standard of salvation has been unfurled, the 
 ensigns of Mary have been seen displayed." What ! the ensigns 
 of Mary were displayed in those Churches to which the Apostles 
 addressed so many and such long epistles, without saying a word 
 about them? Cardinal de Bonald, you say this, — believe it you 
 do not. 
 
 And how have they advanced together, the religion of Christ 
 and devotion to the Virgin, to the conquest of the world ? 
 " United by the bond of a common origin, and of one same 
 vocation, these two sisters joined hands." Here at once we have 
 equality, if not between God and the Virgin, at least between 
 the two worships ; and the equality of the two worships im- 
 plies, let people say what they will, in the view of the immense 
 majority of the faithful, equality between the two beings to 
 whom worship is addressed. Equality ! Do they even keep to 
 that ? The mandement does not even contain a phrase which 
 
 1 Archbishop of Lyons, November 1842. 
 
520 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 does not come to this, " See how much more agreeable, more 
 easy, more poetical, and more cheering' is the worship of the 
 Virgin than any other !" The author admits that in our " holy 
 hooks, the Spirit of God throws a hardly transparent veil over 
 the celestial life of the Saviour's mother." This is an ingenious 
 way of telling us that she is very little mentioned there at all. 
 But when the author, some lines farther on, lays hold of the 
 narrative of the marriage at Cana, and concludes from it that 
 one may and ought to pray to the Virgin for the supply of our 
 bodily as well as of our spiritual wants, shall we say that this 
 too is ingenious ? To quote this incident without quoting the 
 words, which give it a totally different meaning, 1 is a piece of 
 ingenuity such as we are not in the habit of calling by that 
 name. And how many details, besides, on what we may ask 
 of the Virgin to have alleviated ! But as for spiritual wants 
 they are hardly spoken of at all ; while as for the temporal, Mary 
 is announced from one end to another, as particularly ready to 
 supply them 1 The more of those wants you shall have, the 
 more easy will it be for you to be pious ; the more you shall be 
 afraid of trials and of death, the more, to judge by the fervour 
 of your prayers to Mary, will you be able to believe yourself a 
 finished Christian. The worship of the Virgin, in this point oi" 
 view, is the hospital of the unbelieving.' 2 
 
 But let us leave this new source of danger, which would lead 
 us back into the general discussion of the question. All that 
 we have said we might support by quotations ; all the results to 
 which we point are admitted by the mandemenf, but with songs 
 of triumph. " True Catholics," says he, " pray no longer, in 
 some sort, to Jesus, except through Mary. For them there are 
 no festivals without her ; one might say that apart from her 
 there is no more hope for them. Her name is found incessantly 
 on their lips, and her image in all their hearts. The Church, 
 far from opposing, applauds these bursts of filial piety. From 
 his tempest-tossed bark Peter turns his looks constantly to the 
 star of the sea. It seems that God has given over his omnipo- 
 tence, to his mother." Yes, this is just what we never cease to 
 repeat, it seems, to look at the Roman Catholic world, there is 
 now no other deity but the Virgin. Is it only externally so? 
 So it is alleged. Were there reason in this allegation, it would 
 
 • Woman, what have I to do with thee ? 
 
 - We know that Scripture often calls unbelieving, not those who believe in nothing, h;;t 
 those who believe without having the strength to be Christians. 
 
THE SAINTS EITHER ACCUSERS OR GODS. 521 
 
 be a singular way of honouring that God, " strong and jealous," 
 who will have "no other gods before him." 1 But mark again 
 the archbishop's words, as he becomes, without suspecting it, 
 the interpreter of the true sentiments of the people, " Could 
 we," he says, " fail to direct our eyes towards that celebrated 
 sanctuary, whence a tender mother watches lovingly over her 
 family, where sits a powerful queen, whose hand has raised a 
 dyke to restrain the impetuosity of the billows ?" See, in spite of 
 all fine distinctions, what it comes to at last. It is no longer 
 God, as formerly in the Bible, that says to the waves, " Thus 
 far shalt thou come and no farther," it is the Virgin. 
 
 Shall we now adduce some of the countless passages in which 
 the popes have made themselves, with still more frankness and 
 recklessness, the interpreters of the same sentiments ? What 
 shall we say, in particular, of those expressions that occur so 
 often in their decrees, in which the saints are represented as 
 punishing, avenging, fulminating? We shall not go back to 
 John XXII., excommunicating Lewis of Bavaria, and saying, 
 " May the wrath of God and his Apostles Peter and Paul kindle 
 upon him, in this world and the next !" We shall not go to 
 Leo X. excommunicating Luther ; that piece, admirably com- 
 posed in other respects, in which the pontiff conjures all the 
 saints to rise against the heresiarch, is known to have been 
 modelled after that in which Cicero, in his famous De Signis, 
 invokes the wrath of the gods on the profaners of their altars. All 
 the bulls that relate to the Council of Trent are closed with these 
 words, " Whosoever shall have contravened this let him know 
 that he will incur the indignation of God, and of his Apostles 
 Peter and Paul.'" Now, there are but two senses in which you 
 can understand this formula, which is to this day in use ; either 
 Peter and Paul, in their indignation at the guilty person, will 
 punish him at their own instance, and, in that case, you make 
 them gods ; or, powerless of themselves, they shall call upon 
 God to punish them. A fine part truly to assign them. On one 
 sole occasion in the Gospels do the Apostles think of speaking 
 against the guilty. " Ye know not," says the Master severely, 
 " what spirit ye are of." And, behold, we are to look upon them 
 in heaven, making themselves accusers, and counselling revenge! 
 But no ; it is not thus that the matter is understood. One would 
 blush at the thought of St. Paul, or St. Peter, or Mary, above 
 all, approaching the throne of God for the purpose of pointing 
 
 1 First Commandment 
 
522 HISTORY OF TTIE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 out victims to be smitten by bis wrath. In spite of themselves 
 Romanists keep to the first alternative ; compelled to choose 
 betwixt making the saints informers and accusers, or gods, they 
 cannot hesitate. Not that they plainly say to themselves, 
 " these are gods, they have the power to punish ;" but it is as 
 gods that they are dreaded, it is as gods that people are taught 
 to dread them. 
 
 So much for the formulas in which the divinity of the saints 
 is tacitly assumed, and which, as they excite no suspicion, only 
 serve the better to make it believed without people being aware 
 of it. But if we would now have more direct declarations, the 
 papal bulls will supply them abundantly. In these, for the 
 most part, there are no restrictions ; no prudent protests, which, 
 as in the case of Cardinal de Bonald's mandement, if they do not 
 seriously guard against any error, permit, at least, the author to 
 plead afterwards that it was not his fault. Take, for example, 
 a piece which we have already often cited, the encyclical letter 
 of 1832. God is there invoked, but only at the close in a few 
 frigid lines, as one would speak, in a letter, of some great useless 
 personage, — too great, however, to be entirely set aside. But, at 
 the commencement, " This letter is addressed to you on that 
 auspicious day on which we solemnize the assumption of the 
 Virgin into heaven, 1 in order that she, whom, in the midst of 
 the greatest calamities, we have recognised as patroness and 
 liberatrix, may be no less favourable at the moment in which 
 we write, and that with her heavenly breath she may inspire," 
 &c. 2 Give this letter to a man who knows nothing of Chris- 
 tianity : he will have read three-fourths of it before having a 
 doubt that the Virgin was not the deity of Christians, and the 
 pope her high priest. A year afterwards the pope, in referring 
 to that piece, says that he wrote it " with assistance from above, 
 and particularly under the auspices of the Virgin." 3 In fine, 
 
 1 It is known that the Roman divines are not agreed as to what is to be understood by 
 this. Some will have it that the Virgin, like Jesus Christ, had a true ascension ; others 
 that she was resuscitated and ascended to heaven, but not corporeally, forty days after her 
 death. In both cases it has been agreed that the word assumption should be used, indicat- 
 ing that she was taken up into heaven, not that of ascension, which would indicate that she 
 had gone up thither of herself. The common people, of course, see no difference here, and 
 the ascension of Mary on the 15th of August is a far grander festival than the ascension of 
 Christ. Note, that the assumption has not yet been raised to be an article of faith : the 
 Church advises people to believe it, but does not command them to do so. To institute a 
 festival in commemoration of an event which Rome dares not affirm to have ever taken 
 place, is still more whimsical than it would be frankly to decree its reality. 
 
 2 Ut quam patronam ac sospitem persensimus — ipsa et scribentibus adstet propitia — 
 montemque nostram cidesti afflatu suo in ea inducat consilia. 
 
 3 Brief to the Archbishop of Toulouse. 
 
THE POPE MAY ERR IN REGARD TO SAINTS. 523 
 
 that same year, in a brief to the Bishop of Rennes, we find, 
 " After having implored the protection of the most holy virgin, 
 mother, sovereign, guide, and mistress of all men." 1 After 
 that, maintain if you can that you do not teach the people the 
 divinity of the Virgin. Had the Council of Trent ordained its 
 being taught, could you have said more? In 1849, the Roman 
 bishops, assembled at Imola, wrote to Pins IX., felicitating him 
 on the re-establishment of his authority ; and the pope, in his 
 reply, commends them for having taken care, above all, to 
 acknowledge that that event had been due to the protection of 
 the Virgin. One may, without being a Protestant, see some- 
 thing a little odd in this idea, for it is almost tantamount to 
 admitting, that God might likely enough, but for the Virgin, 
 have left the pope at Gaeta, and the republic at Rome ; but of 
 what consequence is one absurdity more or less? the essential 
 matter is the consolidation of a worship from which they look 
 for everything. 
 
 We have spoken hitherto only of the Virgin and the principal 
 saints. Juvenal laughed in his sleeve at the mob of the Roman 
 gods ; is the mob of saints much more respectable in the eyes of 
 a religion, we do not say enlightened, but only not quite blind? 
 You ridicule the idea of Roman emperors becoming gods by a 
 decree of the senate ; can Rome warrant the sanctity of any one 
 of the personages with whom she has peopled heaven ? The 
 pope, even in the opinion of those who think him otherwise 
 infallible, is not so with regard to facts. He, like anybody 
 else, may be seduced by outward shows of sanctity. We do not 
 expect to have objected to us the miracles of which the pope 
 insists on having proofs before proceeding to canonize. We are 
 well aware that the process is always very long, and still more 
 very dear; but as we know of no case in which, with patience 
 and with money, the petitioners for canonization have not suc- 
 ceeded in their object, we have hardly, we confess, any more 
 confidence in the impartiality of the tribunal than in its infalli- 
 bility. Besides, there are many saints whose canonization has 
 not even been surrounded with this vain guarantee. 2 The pope, 
 in fine, it is further admitted, may be led into error in the 
 matter of the miracles, as well as in his estimate of the virtues 
 of the person to be canonized. Accordingly, this personage who 
 
 1 Quas omnium mater est, domina, dux et magistra. 
 
 2 We know that the right of canonization, now reserved to the pope, once belonged to 
 the bishops. 
 
524 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 is offered to you as a protector in heaven, alas ! may possibly be 
 in the deepest pit of hell. The Church of Rome once made 
 more than one saint of whom she does not boast, and whom she 
 would be very well pleased to expunge from her catalogue. If 
 she was mistaken with respect to these, who shall warrant her 
 not being so as respects others also ? Martyrdom itself is not a 
 proof of sanctity. " Though I give my body to be burned," 
 saith St. Paul, ^ and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." 
 A man may thus go to the' stake for the glory of God, and yet 
 be no true saint. 
 
 It is, nevertheless, on the credit of their martyrdom alone, 
 that a host of saints are held forth, in the Roman Church, to 
 the veneration of the nations. Of that number there are many 
 of whom absolutely nothing beyond this circumstance is known, 
 which does not, however, prevent the fabricating, or the permis- 
 sion to fabricate, admirable histories of them ; nay, there are 
 some whose martyrdom is as little certainly known as anything 
 else. One feels petrified with surprise and indignation on learn- 
 ing the manner in which a good number of those demigods are 
 created at Rome, whose mortal remains are displayed on the 
 altars of Roman Catholic Christendom. It is in the catacombs, 
 in ancient Christian cemeteries, wherever, in short, there is a 
 chance of finding any bones of the first centuries, that a provi- 
 sion of new saints is made from time to time. Formerly, no 
 tombs were ransacked but such as bore certain inscriptions and 
 emblems, but it is long since no such scrupulosity has been 
 shewn. 1 The bones, accordingly, are taken up and committed 
 to certain persons whose office it is to clean them ; next the 
 cardinal-vicar or the sacristan-bishop 2 of the pontifical chapel, 
 puts them into a box which he seals. What are called testi- 
 monial letters are then drawn up, bearing that these bones are 
 certainly relics, and that they may be exposed, in any church 
 whatever, to the veneration of the faithful. If the body be 
 entire, the signature of the cardinal is attached to them ; if 
 there be only fragments, that of the bishop. If the name of the 
 defunct be unknown, which often happens, one is given to him. 
 And thus on the old horizon of Rome there have lately arisen 
 St. Prudentissimus, St. Felicissimus, and many others. 
 
 What can we add to these details '? To worship known saints 
 
 1 See a curious dissertation of Father Mabillon, intituled, Lettre d'Eus^be Romain a 
 Theojihil- Frinfais. sur Ic eulte dcs sahtts inconnus, 1697. 
 
 2 The cardinal-vicar is the vicar of the pope, in so far as the pope is bishop of Rome. 
 He discharges the functions of bishop in the city. 
 
WORSHIP OF IMAGES. 525 
 
 is, no doubt, a deplorable error, but at least one can understand 
 it; to worship saints of whom we know not the life, the death, or so 
 much as the name, beings of whom we possess nothing but bones, 
 which possibly belonged to persons who were neither saints nor 
 martyrs, nor even Christians, is not this the ne plus ultra of 
 impudence among those who place them on the altar, and of 
 imbecility on the part of those who pray to them ? 
 
 For the rest, there are not many ancient relics having an 
 authenticity so clearly proved as not to make it at least im- 
 prudent to make them objects of worship. To the uncertainties 
 add the improbabilities; 1 to the improbabilities the evident im- 
 possibilities ; 2 to the impossibilities the frauds, still innumerable, 
 to judge by those that have been discovered ; 3 and see if the 
 worship of relics, even supposing it to remain within the limits 
 traced by the council, that is to say, without any alloy of super- 
 stition or adoration, be not one of those things that have done 
 most to disfigure Christianity. 
 
 One word more on this worship and that of images. Let us 
 observe first : — 
 
 1. That there is nothing said of it in history or in the first 
 times of the Church, although it might have been very easy for 
 the faithful of Judea to have images, and, still more, relics of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 2. That if the old law, altogether material in so many respects, 
 absolutely banished it, the greater reason have we to consider it 
 as incompatible Avith the lofty spirituality of the new. 4 
 
 Here, accordingly, the Church has been obliged to have 
 recourse to a fraud which would be hardly credible were it less 
 easily verified. Of the ten commandments of God there is not 
 one more positive, more clear, more detailed, than the second. 
 " Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any like- 
 
 1 What likelihood is there that so many objects, originally of no value, should nevertheless 
 have been preserved ? 
 
 2 Saints with several heads, several bodies, bits of the true cross, " as many as would load 
 a large boat," says Calvin, &c. 
 
 3 At Geneva, for example, the famous skull of St. Peter is found to be a piece of pumice- 
 stone. And the blood of St. Januarius ? It is said that the clergy of Naples are now beginning 
 to be sufficiently embarrassed by it, having no mind either to admit the farce or to continue it. 
 
 * One is confounded to see how little certain persons disquiet themselves about setting 
 themselves in opposition not only to the spirit but to the very words of the most formal 
 scriptural declarations. " But the hour cometh, and now is," saith Jesus Christ, iJohn iv.,) 
 " when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth : for the Father 
 seeketh such to worship him." " At the present day," says Audin, ( Vie de Calvin,) " one 
 must see that prayer requires external excitations, that the iunorant soul, in order to fly to 
 God, requires material signs, and that worship in truth is a mere abstraction." 
 
526 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 ness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth 
 beneath, or that is in the water under the earth ; thou shalt not 
 bow down thyself to them, nor serve them." Certainly this is 
 embarrassing. Before such a law there is no way of saying, as 
 with respect to the worship of the saints, " We do not adore 
 them, we only pay them certain marks of homage." No, the 
 commandment has anticipated all this. " Thou shalt not bow 
 down before images ;" it matters not with what feelings. " Thou 
 shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them," neither 
 in the way of veneration, consequently, nor of adoration. Ob- 
 serve, in fact, that this prohibition cannot be made to mean only 
 forbidding an approach to images with such feelings as we ought 
 to have towards God alone. " Thou shalt have no other gods 
 before me," is said in the preceding commandment. Here, then, 
 we have the formal interdiction of all adoration not having God 
 for its object. It is ciear, therefore, that what follows bears not 
 upon the feeling but upon the act itself. Whatever notions you 
 may have with respect to the image, whatever efforts you may 
 make to avoid adoring it, from the moment that you bow clown 
 before it, from the moment you give it any worship whatever, 
 the commandment is violated. The Jews never understood it 
 otherwise. 
 
 What, then, do you suppose has the Church of Eome done 
 with this commandment? She has expunged it ! Another, the 
 tenth, has been cut into two ; x and so, in spite of the omission, 
 all the Roman catechisms present us with ten commandments 
 as the ten commandments of God. 2 
 
 In the Vulgate, however, and when the commandments have 
 to be quoted at length, Romanists have not gone so far as to 
 suppress one of them ; they think it enough to unite the second 
 with the first, an arrangement which the Jews have never ad- 
 mitted, and which was admitted in the Church only on the credit 
 of St. Augustine, without ever having been positively decreed. 
 
 i Not only cut into two, but reversed. For mark, it is not the first part of the tenth that 
 the Church of Rome has made the ninth. " Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife" does 
 not come before, but after, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house." The Roman Cate- 
 chism, after having devoted a chapter to each of the preceding commandments, is honest 
 enough to combine the two last into one, so impossible is it logically to separate them. 
 
 2 Some years ago, if we recollect right, in the famous Lady Hewley case, an English judge, 
 asking for a Socinian translation of the New Testament into English, and putting his finger 
 on one or two passages, in which he said a mere tyro in Greek might detect a forced and 
 wrong translation, made that a ground for denying the right of Socinian ministers to be con- 
 sidered ministers of Christ's Gospel. What, in the eye of law, must that body be which first 
 falsifies that code which forms the basis of our laws, and is the lex legum, and then makes a 
 fraudulent attempt to conceal the falsification '.' — Tr. 
 
WHY ONE STATUE PREFERRED TO ANOTHER. 527 
 
 In analyzing the Decalognc, 1 Chateaubriand follows the Hebrew 
 text. Bossuet, warmly pressed by one of the ablest controver- 
 sialists of his time, 2 replied that he was ready "to accommodate 
 himself, if wished, to the arrangement followed by his adver- 
 saries;" and he continues to support the opinion of which we 
 have shewn the improbability, to wit, that this commandment, 
 as the mere complement of the first, forbids, not the honouring, 
 but only the adoring of images. 
 
 Although the prohibition were capable of being thus inter- 
 preted, which we formally deny, it would still remain to be 
 seen if this distinction be observed, and if it can be observed. 
 All the dangers which we have noticed in the worship of saints 
 you find also here. "We adore God before the image," said 
 Innocent III., " and not the image before God." We ! Here, 
 no doubt, we have another instance of what we have seen called 
 elsewhere as the intention of the Church, that invisible correction 
 of all practical errors, of all individual idolatries. As if in God's 
 sight there was anything but individuals ! As if, with idolatrous 
 thoughts and sentiments, one could not be an idolater, because 
 the Church has not categorically prescribed his being so ! It 
 was in vain for the council to teach that if the Church honours 
 images, it is not that she believes that they have any divinity, 
 any virtue, 3 but because the honour redounds to those whom they 
 represent. Although to prostrate one's self before creatures would 
 of itself be going infinitely too far, in the very temples of God, 
 before his face, as the commandment says, — are there many 
 people who know at least that they must keep to that, and who 
 really address to the saints all the honours paid to their images ? 
 Are there in Italy, in Spain, wherever the worship of saints has 
 been fully developed, and where nobody cares about Protestant 
 objections, are there, we say, many to whom it is a matter of in- 
 difference whether it be to such or such a madonna, to such or 
 such an image of the same saint that they address themselves? 
 Will you find at Marseilles many mariners who would embark 
 after having prayed, not to their ancient patroness, Our Lady de 
 la Garde, but to Our Lady of some other place ? Yet they very 
 well know that there are not several Virgin Marys. If their 
 homage be paid only to her, why this preference openly given to 
 one above another of her statues? How does it happen that so 
 many statues have their special attributes, and that it is so com- 
 
 1 Genie du Christianisme. 2 Noquier. 
 
 3 Non quod credatur inesse aliqua in iis divinitas, vel virtus. 
 
o28 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 ruon to ask something from a saint in one locality which would 
 not be asked at all, or with much less confidence in another ? On 
 this point there is no way by which the Church of Kome can 
 escape complicity. Though she may never have said, ex professo, 
 that certain images had more virtue than others, no more has 
 she ever had anything but encouragements for those special 
 devotions whereby this idea is rooted in the popular belief. 
 How shall a madonna, which you treat as if she were a queen, 
 and which you suffer people to consider as the palladium of a 
 city or a country, not appear a very different object in their eyes 
 from that which stands neglected at the neighbouring street- 
 crossing? How shall a statue to which you attribute the work- 
 ing of miracles be no more than another which has not the 
 reputation of working any ? It is not to the statue, say you, 
 that you attribute them ; it is not even to the saint whom it re- 
 presents ; it is to God acting in compliance Avith the prayer of 
 the saint. Ay, such, no doubt, is the theory ; the theory as 
 modified and modernized at least, for your Romanists of pure 
 blood have nothing to do with it, far from it ; but is the practice, 
 once more we ask, is the practice often in accordance with it ? 
 Are there many who make this long circuit within which you 
 admit that there would be idolatry ? All might make it, but the 
 objection would still subsist. From the moment that one image 
 shall pass for being more habitually than another, ^ve do not say 
 the cause, for it is maintained that this is not believed, but 
 merely the occasion of certain favours, is it not clear that some 
 part at least of the confidence felt in the original, will be be- 
 stowed on the image? " The man must be blind," says Bossuet, 1 
 " who does not perceive the difference between those who put 
 their trust in idols and those who would make images assist them 
 in raising their minds to heaven." But no more did the pagans 
 ever admit that they worshipped statues. In Greece, at Rome, 
 you would not have found one who, on being asked to give a 
 theoretical exposition of his worship, would not make the gods 
 the ultimate recipients of the honours paid to their statues. All 
 that Roman Catholic doctors tell us to this effect, is, word for 
 word, what was said in the third and fourth centuries, by the 
 apologists of expiring paganism. The first author of the lines 
 we have just quoted was not Bossuet — it was Julian the 
 Apostate. 
 
 Shall we now speak of what the images ordinarily are, and of 
 
 1 Exposition v. 
 
WORSHIP OF BEAUTY. 529 
 
 the new perils with which art has surrounded the worship of 
 thern ? What might we not have to say of those of the Virgin 
 in particular? The council certainly did not decide that her 
 worship ought to be that of beauty ; a but Chateaubriand has said 
 it, 2 and, as elsewhere, has in this said only what is actually the 
 fact. Let painters be allowed to represent her according to their 
 own ideas ; but upon altars, if people will have her there, she 
 ought at least to remain what she was here below. Instead of 
 the simple Hebrew type, why that Greek cast of features and 
 those renewed traits of Venus ? Why that roseate tint, instead 
 of the copper-colour paleness of the women of Nazareth ? Why 
 that virgin blooming with perpetual youth and beauty, although 
 she had seen her son live till his thirty- third year, and may have 
 outlived him, perhaps, many years? When a statue is erected 
 to a great man, nobody dreams, if he has died advanced in life, 
 of representing him young ; at least it would only be in the case 
 of wishing to recall some trait of his youth. Shall it be said 
 that, in representing Mary as at the age of twenty, she is taken 
 at the time when she was the mother of Christ? All well, if 
 the only object were to recall that great event ; but from the 
 moment that she is to be prayed to, is it not an anachronism to 
 present her to us as she was when nobody in the world dreamt 
 as yet of praying to her, and when she herself suspected less 
 than any one the post that was to be assigned to her ? If ever 
 she filled that post — which we persist in denying — it is clear it 
 must have been at a much later period, after the death of her 
 son, after her own death. Why, then, we repeat, why pray to 
 her as a young and beautiful woman, if it was only in her old 
 age or after her death that she began to be in a position to be 
 prayed to ? In heaven, it is true, souls are neither young nor 
 old ; but if this be the reason for your Virgin being always young, 
 remember that this privilege is common to her with all the souls 
 that have been released from the body's miseries. You gene- 
 rally represent the male saints as very old ; 3 but as for the female, 
 nothing too fresh, too charming for them. Provided you can but 
 lay hold of people, it matters little to you whether it be by the heart 
 or the eyes, the pure or the impure. 4 Come, now, tell us can- 
 
 1 On the contrary, Proeeiei ven nutate imagines non pinaantvr nee ornentur, says the decree. 
 
 2 " Enchanting dogma which softens down the terror of a god, by interposing beauty be- 
 tween our nothingness and the divine majesty." 
 
 3 Except Saint John. Although he survived all the other Apostles, a whimsical usage has 
 condemned him to remain under the figure of a youth. 
 
 4 Liguori, Sanchez, the Compendium and many other books, would supply us with revela- 
 tions, were they required, of what is concealed under the worship of the saints. 
 
 2 L 
 
5.30 HISTOKY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 didly, would you have been as much devoted to the Virgin, had 
 you never seen her represented but as a woman of sixty, dressed 
 as she ought to be, in a small town of Judea, the wife or the 
 widow of a carpenter? Would you in that case have given her 
 all those poetical surnames which you shower upon her in her 
 litanies'? Would all those poets who sing her praises, and many 
 of whom, with that exception, are no more Eoman Catholics than 
 we are, — well for them, indeed, if they be not at heart perfect in- 
 fidels, — would they ever think of singing her praises? Ah! Rome, 
 Koine, here we see thee truly all things to all men ! It remains 
 to be seen whether after the manner of St. Paul or as " the great 
 prostitute" of the prophets. 
 
 To come at hist to indulgences, it is impossible for us to fol- 
 low the same course, by attacking first the principle, then the 
 form and the abuse. Here the abuse is inherent in the principle. 
 There is no indulgence that is not necessarily, and in itself, an 
 abuse. 
 
 To say that there is nothing about it in Scripture would be as 
 if we should try to prove that it was day at noon, and night at 
 midnight. This the Church of Rome knows as well as we. 1 
 
 Or rather, yes ; there is something about it in Scripture, and 
 a great deal too. From beginning to end the New Testament 
 is just a long indulgence, sealed at every page with the blood of 
 Jesus Christ ; but that indulgence is unique and it is perfect ; it 
 belongs by faith to whosoever desires and asks for it, and, for an 
 evangelical Christian, there is no stranger enigma than an in- 
 dulgence of two days, of three days, of a hundred days, as says 
 the Roman Church. 
 
 Indulgences, in their origin, were merely an accommodation of 
 the ancient discipline to the less severe morals of the times that 
 followed. The penances imposed by the Church were, in primi- 
 tive times, measured by days, months, sometimes years. Hence 
 the custom of granting to the faithful, on some occasions, means 
 of abridging their duration. A three days' indulgence, for ex- 
 ample, signified that all the faithful, subject at the time to certain 
 penances, might, on fulfilling certain fixed conditions, prayers, 
 alms, &c, abridge them by three clays. 
 
 This arrangement was too much in accordance, on the one 
 
 • Would the reader know what Father Biner has ventured to say ? The salutary dogma of 
 indulgences, of purgatory, of the worship and the invocation of saints, images, and relics, 
 were discussed by following the Word of God to the litter. Assuredly few more impudent 
 lines have been written from the beginning of the world. 
 
INDULGENCES HISTORICAL REVIEW. 531 
 
 hand, with the public relaxation of morals, and on the other, 
 with the encroaching propensities of the Church, not to be carried 
 ere long some steps farther. From the idea of a mere mitigation 
 of temporal pains inflicted by the Church, it gradually passed 
 into that of the abbreviation of men's sufferings in the life to 
 come. This doctrine, and that of purgatory, after having mutu- 
 ally accredited each other, formed at last only one and the same 
 system : a three days' indulgence then signified and have con- 
 tinued to signify, in the language of the Church, three days 
 retrenched from those appointed to be spent in purgatory. As 
 for the scandalous excesses which afterwards made the sale of 
 indulgences so notorious, it would be superfluous to speak here 
 in detail. It forms one of those points on which the Komanist 
 historians resign themselves best to being agreed with us. 
 
 The council abolished what had been most flagrant in the 
 human or, if you will, commercial abuse of indulgences ; they 
 continue to be paid for, but at least they are not made a market of. 
 The form, accordingly, is a little better ; the substance has not 
 changed and could not change ; it has, on the contrary, received 
 a strikingly significant sanction. At Trent the doctrine of in- 
 dulgences took its place definitively among the Eoman dogmas. 1 
 
 Yet the council did not condescend to any explanation of the 
 nature and the object of indulgences. We have seen, at the 
 commencement of this history, on the occasion of the attempts 
 made by Adrian VI. to give a satisfactory theory on the subject, 
 that it is quite as difficult to explain the matter to Eoman 
 Catholics as to prove it to Protestants. On the one hand, we 
 said, if the dispositions of the heart go for nothing in the effect 
 which the indulgence is to produce, paradise is put up to the 
 highest bidder ; if they do go for something, they necessarily go 
 for a great deal, and then it becomes impossible to say precisely 
 what is given to you when you obtain an indulgence. The de- 
 cree refers us to what the Church teaches. Where are we to 
 find that ? Surely it was for the council to say. Usage has 
 led, although the decree says nothing about it, to indulgences 
 being considered as applicable to the dead ; one may gain them 
 for the dead as well as for himself. Ever the same scandalous 
 partiality of which we have spoken already in treating of the mass. 
 If you have left relations and friends who are concerned about 
 your being delivered from purgatory, delivered you will be ; if 
 
 1 See how ingeniously all this is arranged and attenuated by Bossuet, (Exposition viii.) 
 " Such," says he in concluding, " is the holy and innocent doctrine of the Church." 
 
532 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 you happen to have none, then though you might have heen all 
 hut a saint, you must stay out your time. 
 
 Next, let us see. Either the pope has the power of bringing 
 souls out of purgatory, or he has not. If he has not, the question 
 is decided. If lie has, 1 what cruelty then for him to leave there 
 whole millions of souls whom he might by a word bring out of 
 it ! Without going so far, why this strange inequality in the 
 distribution of a treasure which is deemed inexhaustible ? Why 
 will a pater and an ave in my parish church avail for only five 
 or six days' indulgence, when they avail for forty days in another 
 church, before another Madonna or another cross ? Why is the 
 performance of the same works paid, in such or such a congre- 
 gation, with a plenary indulgence, and, in this or that other, 
 with a mere indulgence for a time ? Why — but we should never 
 end with the contradictions with which this matter is beset. Yet 
 let us give one, just one more. If plenary indulgence be not 
 merely a lure, how comes it that masses continue to be said for 
 the souls of those who received it when dying? Why that so- 
 lemn de profundis repeated at Eome during the whole reign of 
 a pope, on the anniversary of the death of his predecessor ? 
 This is what Luther said in his theses, and the objection is not 
 the less embarrassing for being old. The only means of getting 
 out of the difficulty would be to accept the consequences of the 
 system. You have only to regard as well and duly entered into 
 heaven all who left this world with that infallible passport, and 
 to refuse, therefore, to say a mass for them. And why is this 
 not done ? We have no need to explain. Between a mere act 
 of inconsistency added to so many others, and the drying up of 
 the very best source of her revenues, could Eome ever hesitate ?, 
 
 But if there be ground to ask, on the one hand, why the pope 
 and the bishops have not, at least, the charity to grant every- 
 where, and to all, as many indulgences as they have a right to 
 dispense, — no less reason have we to be astonished at the low 
 price they put upon them, and the incredible facilities offered to 
 such as want to acquire them. See, for example, the statutes of 
 the brotherhood, (confrerie,) well known under the name of 
 the most holy and immaculate heart of Mary. By a brief of 
 1 838, plenary indulgence is accorded to those who shall worthily 
 confess on the day of their reception into the brotherhood ; which 
 is as much as saying to people, " Come in among us, and all 
 
 1 Let us not forget that it was Alexander VI. who first officially arrogated to himself this 
 power. 
 
ROAD TO HEAVEN MARVELLOUSLY WIDENED. Odd 
 
 your previous sins will be wiped out." Plenary indulgence, 
 moreover, to such as shall confess themselves, and communicate 
 at certain epochs of the year, and these are ten in number. 
 Further, indulgence of five hundred days to whosoever shall de- 
 voutly be present at the mass of Saturday, and shall pray for the 
 conversion of sinners. 1 Though we should believe in indulgences, 
 it strikes us that we could not but feel some scruples at seeing 
 them lavished away in this manner. For a mass that shall 
 have cost you half an hour, to be exempted from purgatory for 
 near a year and a half! For one confession, to be exempted 
 from it for altogether, although you may have deserved a thou- 
 sand years of it ! If not stopt by shame, these bold traffickers 
 in salvation ought, at least, one would think, to dread lest their 
 wares should suffer depreciation in consequence of being given 
 away for so little. True, they do not cost them anything, and 
 there is no limit to the purchases. Nobody well knowing to 
 how many years of purgatory he may be condemned, can reason- 
 ably stop in adding to the amount of indulgences with which he 
 is to appear at the bar of judgment. By placing himself on the 
 most favourable conditions, and taking care to let no occasion 
 be lost, a man of sixty might without difficulty have amassed 
 them for above a million of years, over and above the plenary 
 ones, each one of which ought to suffice, and with which one 
 does not well see what the rest can signify. In St. Dominick's 
 time an indulgence of one hundred years cost 15,000 disciplinary 
 lashes, and Dominick once gave himself 150,000 of these in the 
 course of a single Lent. 2 The road to heaven, it will be seen, 
 has been marvellously widened since that time. Lainez said, 
 the object of church discipline is to facilitate man's fulfilling of 
 God's law. 
 
 It is commonly taught, in fine, that the indulgence has for its 
 basis the merits of Jesus Christ and of the saints, applied by 
 the Church to persons whose own merits would not suffice for 
 their salvation 
 
 Now, as for those of Jesus Christ, we have already observed 
 that the Church has nothing to do with administering them in 
 fixed doses, since every one may, by faith, find there fully his 
 justification and his salvation. The Church herself would not 
 dare to proclaim them insufficient. 
 
 1 The intention is laudable ; but what is the prayer which the associated shall have, 
 besides, to repeat daily for the conversion of sinners? The Ave Maria. Is it not to belie 
 both letter and spirit to invite people to repeat certain words with an eye to au end which 
 those words do not even mention ? 2 Hurter, Institutions de I'Eglise, VII. 
 
534 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 As for those of the saints, the custom of applying 1 them to 
 others is not only an abuse, but it amounts to the subversion of 
 the Christian economy. 
 
 There is not, in fact, in the whole Bible, any truth more 
 clearly or more frequently taught than that of man's inability to 
 win heaven. Common sense, besides, sufficiently teaches it. A 
 workman, however earnestly he may set himself to his task, 
 could never earn in one day the right to take rest for thirty 
 years. Between eternity and the sixty or eighty years of this 
 life, the disproportion is a hundred times, a thousand times 
 greater. Fill up these sixty or eighty years with as many 
 virtues as you will, not the less evident is it, that they never 
 could make up the purchase-money of an eternal and infinite 
 happiness. Assuming this, in vain for you to have had a little 
 more of the virtues, a little more zeal than another : how could 
 you contrive to let him have the benefit of them ? You have 
 not paid for the thousandth part of your own acquisition, — what 
 could another borrow from you that is not owing to your credi- 
 tor, as payment to account of the whole sum due ? Two men 
 have each an enormous sum to pay : one produces fifty crowns, 
 the other five-and-twenty, and the debts of both are discharged. 
 Would you say, therefore, that the first has paid more than was 
 necessary, and that his overplus of five-and-twenty crowns will 
 cover the debt of a third debtor ? Although we should teach, 
 in opposition to Scripture, that salvation is to be purchased by 
 works, still it would have to be admitted that the very greatest 
 of saints has never paid more than an imperceptible proportion of 
 the price of it. And if one may say, strictly speaking- that God 
 might have saved him for less, this nowise proves that he has 
 done too much, paid too much, and that the surplusage of his 
 efforts may be passed to another. Do we find this to be said by 
 those saints, those martyrs, in the Apocalypse, who are repre- 
 sented as praying- for the Church before the throne of God ? 
 What humility, on the contrary, in their sublimest songs of 
 triumph. What fervour in their acknowledgments that they 
 have been saved by the blood of him whom they call the Lamb. 
 How little do they seem to say that their merits could save, or 
 help to save, any creatures whatever ! Yet such is the doctrine 
 that Roman Catholics make bold to preach. " What affecting- 
 tilings," says Chateaubriand, " in this doctrine. My virtue, 
 poor paltry mortal as I am, becomes the common property of all 
 Christians : and in like manner, as I have been tainted with 
 
REFORMATORY DECREES RELIGIOUS ORDERS. 535 
 
 Adam's sin, my righteousness has been put to the account of 
 others." It would be difficult to imagine anything more radi- 
 cally antichristian. Let us listen rather to Innocent III., the 
 wisest and the most evangelical of the popes, every time that he 
 does not speak as a pope. " Nobody is justified in the sight of 
 God," said he, " by the merit of his works, but by the gift of 
 grace. Before the purity of the Creator, all the purity of the 
 creature is impurity." Did Luther say anything else ? And 
 having said that, did he not say everything? 
 
 And now let us return, no more to digress from them, to the 
 last deliberations of the council. 
 
 Two decrees of reformation accompanied the dogmatical de- 
 crees that we have been analyzing. 
 
 In the first, relative to the religious orders, we perceive in 
 many an article a collision with the civil power. In the fifth, 
 for example, magistrates and princes are enjoined, under pain of 
 excommunication, to aid bishops in confining within the cloister, 
 nuns who should attempt to be free. Now, governments the 
 most disposed, by being Eoman Catholic, to act in this spirit, 
 have never admitted that the Church had the right to require it 
 at their hands. 
 
 The council fixed sixteen years as the minimum age required 
 For the validity of vows. This was a compromise between the 
 custom that prevailed of pronouncing them much earlier, and the 
 term of eighteen, twenty, and even thirty years, generally asked 
 by the princes ; but this regulation, so inadequate in itself, has 
 never been seriously observed. Girls destined to the cloister, 
 continued to enter as children, and their liberty was, in point of 
 fact, engaged long before they took the vows. Another enjoined, 
 it is true, that before admitting them to the solemn profession, 
 the bishop should ascertain that they came to it with their full 
 consent; but what was there to fear from those wills so fashioned 
 and compressed ? The council had no need to excommunicate 
 whosoever should force a girl to embrace the religious life ; the 
 field remained, and will ever remain, open to indirect compulsion, 
 to skilful circumventions. It was said, in fine, that the renuncia- 
 tions and donations of the novices in favour of their convents, 
 should not be valid till after their vows. A very wise regula- 
 tion, but no more had that any effect, but to redouble the eager- 
 ness of the monasteries to retain those whose patrimony they 
 coveted. In a state of things which was faulty at the base, all 
 
536 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 corrections in detail do as much harm as good, and only serve, in 
 short, to legalize abuses. Several prelates made some very judi- 
 cious remarks on this subject, but the council was too much 
 pressed for time to pause to consider them. 
 
 Still more did the decree of general reformation give signs of 
 the precipitation with which it had been prepared. Of the 
 twenty articles of which it was composed, few were not either 
 too vague to have serious results, or too much mixed up with 
 civil matters not to raise invincible opposition on the part of the 
 princes. 
 
 Among the articles which were too vague, but to which it 
 would hardly have been possible to give more precision, without 
 making a profound breach on the constitution of the Church, 
 we would adduce that which forbids bishops to enrich their 
 relations and friends with church property, recommending to 
 them at the same time, the greatest simplicity in their dress, 
 furniture, table, and general habits ; that in which all here- 
 ditary, or appearance of hereditary succession to benefices, is 
 proscribed ; that, in fine, which prescribes that dispensations 
 should be granted, only after mature consideration and know- 
 ledge of the case ; and, moreover, without any retribution. 
 Many a time does this last clause occur, yet we cannot but re- 
 peat that it has never been observed, and at Koine less than any- 
 where else. 
 
 As for the articles in which the council encroached on the 
 civil authority, there were some of all sorts. 
 
 In the third, side by side with some wise advices on the danger 
 and impropriety of lavishing excommunications, the bishop is 
 allowed to retain the power of excommunicating, in certain cases, 
 for civil and criminal affairs. 
 
 In the eighth, he is authorized to change, when it shall appear 
 necessary to him, the destination of hospital property. 
 
 In the ninth, he is made sole judge of the legitimacy of 
 patronages, that is to say, of the virtues on the ground of which 
 the feudal lords should as patrons appoint to certain cures and 
 benefices. 
 
 In the tenth, the pope's legates and nuncios are assumed to 
 have in all countries a jurisdiction independent of that of the 
 sovereigns and bishops. 
 
 In the nineteenth, in fine, duelling is proscribed, 1 but to can- 
 
 1 Tlii< detestable custom, says the decree, introduced by the devil, its author. Detestabilis 
 usus,fabricante diabu/o introductus. As detestable and diabolical as you please ; but it is 
 
THE COUNCIL NOT ACCEPTED IN FRANCE. 537 
 
 onical penalties is added that of the confiscation of goods, a 
 penalty purely civil, and totally beyond the competence of the 
 assembly. 
 
 All these articles are of the number of those which prevented 
 the council, after its close, from being accepted without restric- 
 tion in any state in Europe. 1 In France, as we have said already, 
 it has never been officially received, either with or without re- 
 strictions, notwithstanding the reiterated solicitations of the 
 bishops, addressed to Charles IX., Henry III., Henry IV., and 
 Lewis XIII. Those of our day insist that the solicitations of 
 their predecessors were equivalent to the regular reception of 
 the council by the whole body of the French clergy. They rea- 
 sonably may do so ; but those very solicitations, and still more 
 the terms in which they are conceived, prove at the same time, 
 with the clearest evidence, that the clergy who made them did 
 not consider the council as received in France, inasmuch as it 
 had not been received by the French government. " The Coun- 
 cil of Trent has been received by all kings, and there remains 
 only this kingdom that. ... In such sort that for your kingdom 
 there remains a mark and reproach put upon it by other king- 
 doms for the crime of schism." 2 " Other kingdoms have received 
 it, and this kingdom which, above all others, has the title of Most 
 Christian, has yet to receive it." 3 " The whole earth has re- 
 ceived this council. Shall we make ourselves the enemies of 
 Judah and Benjamin? Shall we, like the infidels, hinder the 
 rebuilding of the temple?" 4 The States-general, in 1614, were 
 addressed in the same language. Fifty years after the council, 
 therefore, the king not having received it, the bishops did not 
 consider it as received. This question, for the rest, is a much 
 more serious one among Eoman Catholics, than when viewed in 
 relation to the attacks made against them. We would here 
 merely point to it in passing, and remark how much the French 
 clergy, on this, as on so many other things, have changed their 
 opinions since the sixteenth century. 
 
 All these decrees, with the exception of that on indulgences, 
 
 curious to see the council attribute to the devil a custom, which every one knows was intro- 
 duced, or certainly at least adopted, in the Middle Age, by the Church herself. What is 
 duelling but a degenerate continuance of the famous Judgment of God? 
 
 1 See Iiistoire ds la reception dn Concile de Trente, by the Abbe Mignot, 1756. 
 
 2 The Archbishop of Bourges to Henry III., in the name of the General Assembly of the 
 Clergy, 1582. 
 
 3 The Bishop of Mons to Henry IV., in the name of the Assembly of 1596. 
 
 * The Archbishop of Vienne, in the name of the Assembly of 1605. — See the work last 
 cited, and the Notes stir le Concile de Trent, by Rapicod, 1706. 
 
538 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 which they did not well know how to arrange, and which they 
 spoke of omitting, were drawn up and voted with extraordinary 
 rapidity. Hardly was there here and there a detail, a word upon 
 which there was not immediate unanimity ; but this very unani- 
 mity called forth, on the part of some prelates, an objection 
 which was destined not to disappear with the opposition given 
 by those who then formally stated it. Those prelates openly 
 said that these last doctrinal articles appeared to them superfi- 
 cial, insufficient, little worthy of a council. One has seen, and 
 we could have demonstrated the thing still more clearly, how 
 much ground there was for this reproach. All difficulties are 
 evaded. Of all the questions which a Roman Catholic might 
 ask himself on these points, all so interesting to him, and so 
 closely connected with what is most usual in Lis faith and in his 
 worship, there is hardly one of which he finds the solution there. 
 Hardly will he find what is most elementary in a child's cate- 
 chism. After so many anathemas on disciplinary, and even on 
 civil matters, there is none on the worship of saints, none on that 
 of images, none on purgatory. 
 
 This arose from the desire to come to a close having daily 
 gained ground, so as to ferment " marvellously" in all men's 
 hearts. 1 The emperor's ambassadors, in particular, were con- 
 stantly pressing the legates. If matters were not hastened, they 
 said, their master would recall them ; it was not until after the 
 close that it was known that the emperor had not really had 
 any such intention. The Portuguese ambassador held nearly the 
 same language. Those of Venice and other states joined their 
 urgent calls, and the Count di Luna, even while expressing his 
 desire to wait for a letter from the king of Spain, did not seem 
 indisposed to their proceeding notwithstanding. The legates 
 wrote in consequence, that " harvest time had arrived," when of 
 a sudden, on the 27th of Xovember, in the evening, the count 
 came to them, and expressed quite different sentiments. As for 
 him, he said, he had more reasons than any one to return to his 
 country at the soonest possible, death having there decimated 
 his family, and thrown his affairs into disorder ; but the interest 
 of the council and of the Church had more weight with him 
 than any other consideration. Would it not be very sad that a 
 work pursued during eighteen years should not have an honour- 
 able end ? If it were not really possible to do all that the wants 
 of Christendom might have exacted, ought not the council at 
 
 1 Pallaviciiii, 1. xxiv. All the details that follow are from him. 
 
THREATENED DIFFICULTIES. 539 
 
 least to proceed with dignity to the little that it was still about 
 to do ? " Wherefore expose themselves, in their eagerness to 
 pluck the apple some days too soon, to the risk of having only 
 harsh fruit, that never can have the sweet and healthy fragrance 
 that perfect ripeness alone can give ?" 
 
 In spite of these representations the legates persisted ; they 
 even openly announced their intention not to wait for the day 
 that had been fixed (9th December) for the celebration of the 
 last session. On the 29th of November the count called around 
 him all the prelates of his nation, and, to his great surprise, 
 found only two or three who were resolved to join him in oppos- 
 ing the council's being brought to a close. On the day follow- 
 ing he held another meeting, but with no better success. Hardly 
 had they left the house when a courier arrived from Kome ; the 
 pope had had a relapse ; he may by that time have died. In 
 vain did the count protest anew that his master did not dream 
 of troubling the next election, by holding that it belonged to the 
 council : the majority could never feel at their ease till the as- 
 sembly should be dissolved. 
 
 Everything concurred towards the hastening of the close ; but 
 it might bring back all the old difficulties attending the opening. 
 On the 2d of December, although the legates had decided to 
 hold the session on the morrow, there was a host of things on 
 which the members had not come to any common understanding. 
 
 First of all, the pope was not presumed to have any cogniz- 
 ance of the decrees that were to be made, or of those of the other 
 sessions. Under what form was the official communication to 
 be made ? Was the council to make a formal request for the 
 pope's approbation ? That would be to own the council's in- 
 feriority ; to which the Spaniards and the French would never 
 consent. Were they to send the decrees to him as definitively 
 passed ? That would be to teach the superiority of the council. 
 The Roman party had at first the idea of taking the course of 
 separating without having regulated that point. The decrees 
 were to be sent to Rome ; the confirmation was to be given 
 without any farther explanation. But all other difficulties 
 were so evidently in the course of being smoothed away that 
 it was thought one might venture to remove this too. The 
 conferences were calm and brief. The most rebellious were 
 given to understand that the papal confirmation did not neces- 
 sarily imply the superiority of the pope ; that it was merely the 
 act by which, as head of the executive power in the Church, he 
 
540 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 made himself responsible for the execution of her decrees. As 
 they wanted nothing better than to be persuaded, they were 
 persuaded, and in the end there was but one prelate, the Arch- 
 bishop of Grenada, who persisted in not asking for the pope's 
 confirmation . 
 
 At the same time there vanished, as if by enchantment, the 
 difficulty which had very nearly prevented the council from being 
 resumed. It will be remembered with what warmth the French 
 and the Germans had repelled the idea that the assembly of 
 1562 was the secpiel of those of 1545 and 1551. We have seen 
 that a decision on this point had been avoided, and the event 
 proved how much wisdom there had been in leaving it to be 
 decided by time and the force of circumstances. Time had 
 brought everybody to desire a speedy conclusion ; now that presup- 
 poses one whole, which the decrees of those last two years evident- 
 ly were not. To vote for the close was therefore of necessity to 
 vote the acceptance of all the anterior decrees. It was proposed, 
 accordingly, in that sitting of the 2d of December, that there 
 should be read at the last session all that had been published 
 under Paid III., and under Julius III., and not a voice was 
 raised against this solemn declaration of the unity of the three 
 councils. 
 
 In fine, by way of acknowledgment for so much ready com- 
 pliance, the Roman party consented to remove from the decree 
 on the princes, all the special proscriptions, as well as all the 
 anathemas with which it had been proposed that they should be 
 supported. The council was only to renew, in general terms, 
 the ancient canons relative to the Church's immunities, and the 
 princes were to be respectfully craved to observe them, and to 
 cause them to be observed. 
 
 On Friday, 3d December 1563, after the ordinary ceremonies 
 and a triumphal sermon preached by Jerome Raggazoni, a 
 Venetian, and Bishop of Nazianzum, the Council proceeded to 
 the reading of the decrees which had not been definitively agreed 
 upon until pretty far on in the night. The legates took the 
 freedom to add an article, no mention of which had been made in 
 the preparatory meetings, and which, at any other time, would 
 not have passed without raising a storm. It bore, that " what- 
 ever expressions and whatever clauses might have been put into 
 the decrees, the council meant that it should not be, and that it 
 could not be interpreted, in any case, to the prejudice of the 
 
THE SALVA SEMPER MORE POSITIVE THAN EVER. 541 
 
 authority of the Holy See." 1 This was the old salva semper 
 more positive and more general than ever. The authority of the 
 Holy See not having been defined, either de jure or de facto, the 
 pope remained, as he had ever been, sole judge of his own 
 rights, and widest latitude was left to him, as was abundantly 
 seen from the sequel, in the interpretation and application of the 
 decrees. Although this article, in fine, did not plainly contain 
 the doctrine of the pope's superiority, it was clear that ultra- 
 montanism would have no difficulty in giving it that meaning. 
 The authority of the Holy See is represented in it as in such sort 
 beyond the sphere of every kind of discussion, that no council 
 could ever entertain the thought of circumscribing it by any 
 limits. 
 
 As four or five hours at least were required for reading the 
 old decrees, it had been decided that the session should last two 
 days. 
 
 Next day, then, very early, the members held a general con- 
 gregation for deciding on the decree upon indulgences. The 
 ultra-Eomanists had made fresh efforts to have it thrown aside, 
 but this was opposed by a pretty large majority. Singular des- 
 tiny of the question that had once on a time made so much noise, 
 and that had turned men's minds most warmly towards reforma- 
 tion and a council." It was at the close of eighteen years, an 
 hour or two before it met for the last time, that the assembly, 
 with great difficulty, found a few moments to devote to what 
 had, in 1517, evoked the first thunderbolts that were launched 
 at the head of Luther ! 
 
 This accomplished, the session was resumed. The decree 
 just finished was read, then a second on fasting, the distinction 
 of meats, and the observance of festivals. 2 On those points the 
 council confined itself to recommending, in a general way, the 
 observance of the laws of the Church. As it was known that 
 the bishops were but little agreed on the question whether laws 
 of this kind are of divine or of ecclesiastical right, 3 and up to 
 
 1 Omnia et singula, sub quibuscunque clausulis et verbis . . . ita decreta fuisse, ut in his 
 salva semper auctoritas Sedis Apostolicie et sit et esse intelligatur. 
 
 2 " That pastors should do their utmost to make people obey these commandments, espe- 
 cially those that concern the mortification of the flesh, such, as the distinction of meats, 
 fasts'," kc.—Tlic Council. 
 
 " Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink. Wherefore if ye be dead with 
 Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to 
 (such) ordinances ?" — St. Paul. 
 
 3 St. Paul, nevertheless, has said (Colossians ii.) that these laws are the " commandments 
 and doctrines of men ;" but St. Paul had no voice in the council if they in the least dreaded 
 any opposition on his part. 
 
542 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 what point they are either, it had been so contrived that the 
 council had not to pronounce either way. 
 
 Three other articles followed. One, that the definitive com- 
 position of the Index and the Catechism, 1 previously decreed, 
 should he remitted to the pope. A second, to declare that ques- 
 tions of precedence, whatever solution might have been given 
 to them at Trent, were to be considered as precisely where they 
 were before the council had met. The third, recommending to 
 the princes and bishops the prompt and rigorous observance of 
 the decrees. 
 
 In fine, they proceeded to read those that had been passed 
 under Paul III. and under Julius III., but with the studious 
 omission of anything that could intimate whether this was 
 meant as a confirmation of them, or only as a declaration, by 
 recalling them, of the identity of the council. It was of great 
 consequence that this point should remain undecided. To de- 
 clare that they were thus confirmed was to give a triumph to 
 those who had previously attacked them as not being definitive 
 decrees ; to declare that they were recalled, but without con- 
 firming them, inasmuch as they had all their authority already, 
 would have been to put many persons in the dilemma of either 
 having to admit that they had done wrong in protesting before 
 or of renewing their protests. Hence the precaution taken to 
 speak only of a reading. 2 Ever, down to the last moment, com- 
 promises, subterfuges, questions eluded, principles dissembled 
 under forms, because there was either want of the courage or 
 want of the will to agitate what lay essentially at the bottom of 
 them. 
 
 There remained the final voting, that on the petition to the 
 pope for confirmation. Although it might have been hoped, in 
 the last preparatory assembly, that there would be but a single 
 opposing voice, great was the anguish of anxiety ; the ground 
 they stood upon was felt to be so radically false that it Avas not 
 easy for one to stumble without making many others do the 
 same. It was perceived that it would require no great effort for 
 people to ask themselves what sort of infallibility that could be 
 that went in search of a confirmation of its decrees from another 
 infallibility. We have said already how the matter stood; 
 either the council's decisions had been hitherto null, although 
 the assembly had all along spoken and acted as if they thought 
 
 1 The Index appeared in March 15C4, and the Catechism in September I5C6. 
 = Vult sancta synodus ut ilia nunc recitentur et legantur. 
 
PERPLEXITIES OF PIUS IV. HIS COURT. 543 
 
 them valid, or they had their force, their full force already, for 
 there are no degrees in infallibility. What in that case would 
 the papal confirmation signify? 
 
 These objections, which they were fortunate enough to con- 
 trive that no one should bring forward, were about to become 
 more salient than ever by the manner in which the papal sanc- 
 tion was bestowed. 
 
 Pius IV. felt disposed to grant it immediately ; but however 
 inadequate the reforms that had been ordered might be, there 
 was enough in them to frighten his court, and nothing had more 
 shocked it, in particular, than to see the cardinals expressly com- 
 prised in some of the most severe decrees. Accordingly, long 
 before the last session the parties chiefly interested had taken 
 their measures. When the legates arrived at Pome with the 
 petition for confirmation, the pope was already circumvented, 
 troubled, dismayed. As for personal sacrifices, he had resigned 
 himself to them all the more readily, as he remained after the 
 dissolution of the assembly sole master of bis own conduct, so as 
 either to carry the reforms into effect or to say no more about 
 them ; but he made efforts in vain to close his ears to those de- 
 clamations and those lamentations that now came upon him 
 from all quarters. To the vexation of making so many discon- 
 tented there were added his own scruples, those at least which 
 artful advisers had contrived to suggest to him with respect to 
 his duties and his position as pope. Was he free in point of 
 conscience to abandon any portion whatever of what his prede- 
 cessors had considered as the rights of the Holy See ? Very great 
 doctors had said — No ; and as there was not a single abuse, how- 
 ever crying, that might not have been shewn to be connected 
 more or less remotely with the papal prerogatives, there was not 
 a kitchen scullion belonging to the pope, as De Lansac the am- 
 bassador would say, that was not ready to throw himself on the 
 rights of Peter, were it even in opposing the pope himself. Is 
 it much otherwise at the present day '? Ask Pius IX. He is 
 better acquainted than any one with that inextricable maze of 
 interests, usages, abuses, prerogatives, real or factitious wants, 
 with which the pontifical throne has ever been beset. From the 
 pope down to the lowest sacristan, everybody at Rome feels as if 
 he were in one of those ancient houses which are wanting neither 
 in beauty without nor in comfort within, but of which not a bit 
 of wall can be taken down and repaired without your being led 
 to rebuild the whole from top to bottom. 
 
544 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 These difficulties were removed. Let us see how. 
 
 First, we find that the Cardinal da Mula, in a commission of 
 inquiry on the subject, voted for the confirmation, but with the 
 following remarks : — 
 
 That people had much reason to congratulate themselves on 
 seeing they had come to the end of so many fatigues, disquietudes, 
 and expenses ; and to avoid the risk of falling into them again, 
 only perhaps to extricate themselves in a far worse condition the 
 next time ; 
 
 That to refuse confirmation might lead some to dispense with 
 it, and to obey the council, as having no need of it ; others to 
 consider all the decrees as null ; and then to have recourse to 
 national councils ; 
 
 That by taking a middle course, as was recommended by 
 many, that is to say, by selecting the decrees on the faith for 
 immediate approval, and reserving the rest to be determined 
 upon afterwards, the difficulty would not be effectually removed, 
 and all sorts of dangers would be amassed for the future ; 
 
 That if, according to other counsels, they were to be approved 
 in the lump, but with certain modifications in detail, this would 
 be to expose the pontifical authority to the most delicate con- 
 testations ; 
 
 That, accordingly, there was no room to hesitate between 
 some disagreeable things, the bearing of which it would be 
 easy to attenuate, and the storms of all kinds which so unlooked 
 for a refusal would infallibly draw down upon the Holy See. 
 
 Da Mula was followed by Hugh Buoncompagno, bishop of 
 Bestice, not a cardinal till afterwards, but already one of the 
 pope's oracles, who summed up the state of matters with even 
 more frankness. 
 
 First, he asked why the decrees of Trent, even when con- 
 firmed by the pope, should have more authority than so many 
 others, of which the pope has remained supreme arbiter. The 
 validity of laws, according to him, and not only their practical 
 validity, but their meaning, necessarily depends on the man who 
 governs. There is nothing to prevent opposing use to laws, the 
 necessity of the moment to the general necessities contemplated 
 in the decree. Will it be said that the adversaries of the Holy 
 See will have, in this new code, an arsenal always open '? But 
 nothing more easy than to shut it against them. When the 
 rule of St. Francis, full of ambiguities, threatened to raise a war 
 among its interpreters, what did Xicolas III. do? He forbade 
 
council's decrees not to he interpreted. 545 
 
 the interpretation of it by any one but himself or his delegates. 
 This might be wisely done as respects the decrees of Trent. 
 Confirm them ; but ordain at the same time that no one shall 
 have the right, or ought even to entertain the thought of inter- 
 preting them. 
 
 This idea pleased Pius IV. Yet it was a thing quite unheard 
 of even in the annals of papal despotism. To forbid writing 
 glosses on ancient and more or less obscure laws, is still done ; 
 but to publish simultaneously with the code, a prohibition against 
 studying its meaning, is the last possible step that can be taken 
 in the subjugation of the conscience and of thought. 
 
 That very step, which we should deem to be fabulous, were 
 there not the solemn bull there 1 to attest it, was actually taken. 
 " In virtue of the apostolic authority, we prohibit all, whether 
 ecclesiastics, of any rank Avhatsoever, or laymen, whatever be 
 the authority with which they are invested, the former under 
 pain of interdiction, the latter under pain of excommunication ; 
 we prohibit all, in a word, whosoever they may be, to make 
 upon these decrees of the council any commentaries, glosses, 
 annotations, scholia, or interpretations whatsoever." 2 
 
 After this, reproach Eoman Catholicism, forsooth, for having 
 deprived you of the right to interpret the Bible ! That which 
 it has itself put in the place of the Bible, its decrees, its council 
 by predilection, what it had spent eighteen years in elaborating, 
 calculating, weighing, — even that it does not yet believe itself 
 sufficiently sure of, to admit of its being abandoned to the con- 
 science and the reason of the faithful. It publishes this code, 
 but with a prohibition which, if strictly observed, would be 
 equivalent to an interdict against reading it ; for it is clear that 
 you cannot open it any more than the Bible, without the risk of 
 interpreting some one or other passage differently from the pope, 
 and consequently, being excommunicated. Truly Bousseau was 
 an excellent Roman Catholic, when he said, " The man who 
 thinks is a depraved animal." 
 
 i 26th January 1564. 
 
 2 " . . . Ullus commentarius, glossas, annotationes, scholia, ullumve omnino interpreta- 
 tionis genus super ipsius concilii decretis quocunque modo edere." The pope then evokes 
 to himself all the difficulties that may emerge. A permanent commission, known under the 
 name of the Congregation of the Council, was instituted to this effect. It still subsists ; M. 
 d'Andrea, formerly nuncio in Switzerland, is a member of it. Its decision-; have been 
 several times collected and published. Some of them are very curious, whether as an am- 
 plification of the Tridentine dogmas, or as an abatement of the decrees that are unfavourable 
 10 the pope. 
 
 2 M 
 
0-46 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 See, then, ye children and apologists of Rome, the yoke 
 under which you are placed. True, many hardly suspect it, in 
 those countries, at least, in which the Roman Church has not 
 the government in her hands. She leaves those in tranquillity 
 who, without having broken with her, would break with her 
 evidently on the first attempt she might make to enslave them. 
 She takes care not to lay upon those who only half belong to 
 her, anything in the way of believing or doing beyond what the 
 faith and devotedness of each will bear. As for those whom she 
 believes to be entirely hers, who eulogize and who defend her, 
 on them she lavishes all sorts of encouragements, facilities, and 
 flatteries. Say a word, write a sentence which has the appear- 
 ance of an apology, and although that sentence, that word, should 
 bear only upon something quite unessential, such as the beauty 
 of a cathedral, or the majesty of a high mass, or the poetry of 
 steeple bells, forthwith you are pronounced a man of faith, whose 
 numbers, if we are to believe certain books, are daily on the in- 
 crease. Alas ! it must be admitted, their numbers are increas- 
 ing ; fortunately we can have a near view of them, and after 
 having had such a view, we are soon reassured. Ask these 
 alleged men of faith if they believe in the authority of the 
 Church : put the case before them of their being called upon, 
 not to speak, but to submit and to obey, and you will find how 
 little they differ from those who tell you that they do not believe 
 in that authority. Ask them what they think of the pope's in- 
 fallibility ? Some will, without hesitation, deny it, and you will 
 shew them that it is nevertheless a dogma, not only at Rome 
 and among Jesuit professors, but with almost the universal body 
 of Roman Catholic bishops of all countries ; you will tell them 
 that if the Council of Trent did not venture to teach it in set 
 terms, it formally assumed it by submitting its decrees to Pius 
 IV. 1 Others will maintain that they admit it ; and, as in the 
 
 l No more let us forget the form under which the approbation was granted. The more 
 the pains that had been taken, till then, to evade the question of the respective authority of 
 councils and of popes, with the more assurance did Pius IV. decide it in his own favour. 
 " After mature deliberation," says he in his bull, "having seen that all the decrees are 
 Catholic, useful and salutary to the Christian people, we confirm them, ordaining that they 
 shall be received and observed." Thus the decrees that he confirms he recognises as not 
 only useful and salutary, but Catholic j he has tried them, then, tried them as sovereign 
 judge, in point of faith as well as in point of discipline. He pronounces, but it is after 
 mature deliberation. He accords. We are entitled, therefore, to suppose the case of his 
 having possibly refused, and to ask ourselves what, in that event, would have become of 
 the authority of the council. If there be no difficulty here for those who frankly admit the 
 omnipotence of the pope, and his superiority over councils, there is enough certainly to 
 perplex those who deny it. Everywhere, and under all forms, you come upon this grand 
 problem which would be enough to subvert the Church of Rome altogether, but for the 
 immense interest that all her members have in letting it sleep. 
 
CONCLUSION. 547 
 
 case of the Church's authority, you will only have to enter into 
 some details, in order to prove that they do not admit it. 
 Will they try to make a distinction between infallibility in doc- 
 trine and infallibility in discipline ? Still you can prove to 
 them not only, as we have done, 1 that this distinction has never 
 been admitted at Eome, but that there is a host of decrees pre- 
 senting such a medley of discipline and dogma, that we defy 
 you to effect any such sifting of the one class from the other. 
 And why speak we of popes and papal bulls ! The council 
 itself, that infallible summary of Roman doctrine, you have a 
 hundred means of proving to those people, is, at bottom, just as 
 little an object of their belief. And here you may boldly extend 
 your sifting of men's creeds beyond the circle of persons decidedly 
 superior in point of education and talent. To all whom you 
 could induce to reason and to account a little to themselves for 
 what they believe, you might shew, even in the council, things 
 which they do not believe, which they never will believe ; you 
 might thus wrest from them the admission, direct or indi- 
 rect, it matters not, that they are not Roman Catholics ; and 
 these professed believers might, in their turn, reckon with 
 their fingers, how many of the condemnations and anathemas, 
 denounced by these same decrees of Trent, and under which 
 they have long believed you to be overwhelmed, they them- 
 selves have hitherto been, still are, and all their lives must be 
 obnoxious to. 
 
 Roman Catholicism, we are told, is one and invariable. This 
 we have denied. The quarrels that agitated the council, the in- 
 trigues to which it was necessary to have recourse, in order to 
 have so many important questions put out of the way or decided, 
 the proofs we have had of the novelty and of the human origin 
 of so many articles of faith, all this might still authorize us in 
 coming to a close, to deny, as we have done so often in the 
 course of this history, both that unity and that invariability. 
 But here let us admit, both that Roman Catholicism is one, and 
 that Roman Catholicism is invariable. Viewing the subject in 
 the light we have already indicated, its adversaries will only be 
 all the stronger as such. If Roman Catholicism be one, there 
 is but one way of being a Roman Catholic, — it is to have an 
 equal faith in all that it teaches ; it is to be ready to say yea, 
 and amen, not onlv to the four or five chief doctrines that 
 
")48 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 characterize, in the gross, the Romish creed, but to all the 
 secondary doctrines that Rome has deduced from these, and to all 
 the developments that she has given to them. Thanks to infal- 
 libility, all is of a piece ; it is a gigantic arch from which you 
 cannot remove a stone, not even the smallest, without bringing 
 the whole to the ground. Reduced to regular shape in virtue of 
 the same authority, all the Church's doctrines have an ecpial 
 right to your absolute submission. You cannot doubt one, 
 without thereby doubting the authority which enjoins your be- 
 lieving it ; you cannot reject one, without at the same time sub- 
 verting the whole edifice of infallibility ; for if the Church could 
 err on a single point, however minute, there is no reason to be- 
 lieve that she may not have erred on others. Deny that minute 
 point, and you are no longer a Roman Catholic, seeing you thereby 
 abandon, in fact, the principle, without which your Church is 
 nothing more than any one of the fractions of the Reforma- 
 tion. 
 
 It would, then, could we but compel people to be consistent, 
 it would at the present day be an easy thing to shake and sub- 
 vert Roman Catholicism. Among all the objections scattered 
 throughout this volume, if there be one, a single one that is well 
 founded, it is in reality as if they all were so. Let the Triden- 
 tinc Fathers have been mistaken once or a hundred times, it 
 matters little which, in either case they were fallible. Let a 
 Roman Catholic admit that we are right on one point, or a hun- 
 dred points, it matters little which, he has admitted his disbelief 
 in the infallibility of his Church. He has examined, he has 
 made his choice, — he is a Protestant, for he has admitted the 
 fundamental point of Protestantism. If he stops there, if he 
 continues to believe himself, or to call himself a child of the 
 ( 'hurch of Rome, it is because he dares not, or knows not, or 
 does not wish to follow out consequences to their legitimate 
 end. 
 
 But if we reckon up all who, from timidity, dare not, or who 
 from ignorance know not, or who from indifference desire not to 
 do this, alas ! shall we not find they form nearly the whole ? 
 Let us not therefore indulge any illusion as to the results of our 
 efforts. Twenty years ago the ruin of Roman Catholicism was 
 spoken of as quite a simple thing, inevitable, close at hand ; 
 people would readily have fixed the very year. No doubt it will 
 tall. We should consider that we insulted both the Bible and 
 reason were we to find ourselves thinking for a moment that 
 
CONCLUSION. 54!) 
 
 victory will not remain with them. It will fall, — hut when ? 
 If it has little faith in the Gospel, seeing it tramples it under 
 foot in so many things, 1 little faith even in many of its own doc- 
 trines, as we have superabundantly proved, it has faith in itself, 
 in its unity, true or false, in its powerful organization, in its em- 
 pire over the masses, and all this goes a very great way. No 
 doubt we have often enough shewn how those men, whom it as- 
 sembled together three centuries ago, for the purpose of fixing 
 and giving consistency to its faith, despaired of their work. And 
 yet, had we related in detail the close of their last assembly, we 
 should have had to represent them as united, in high spirits, 
 grasping each other by the hand, embracing each other with 
 tears of surprise and joy. From the midst of those groping 
 efforts, those quarrels, those critical conjunctures of every kind, 
 there came forth at last something which, right or wrong, might 
 be presented to the world as unity. No more was wanted. 
 The man whom they had dreaded most, the old head of the 
 opposition, the Cardinal of Lorraine, himself drew up and 
 chanted the acclamations Avith which the sitting was closed. 
 From the top of her new plastered citadel, Eome again ventured^} 
 to look her foes in the face, and the last words of the council } 
 were, "Anathema ! anathema!" -* 
 
 But, thanks be to God, that citadel which was raised at Trent, 
 is formidable to him only who looks at it from a distance and from 
 below ; it is from at hand, and from above, that we have tried t( > 
 see it ourselves, and to show it to others. Hard by the moun- 
 tain of Trent there towers the triple mountain of Scripture, his- 
 tory, and reason. Thither we have sought to conduct our readers. 
 We ascended — the other grew less ; and we had not reached 
 the top, when our eye plunged right among the ramparts with 
 which Eome has covered hers. Our readers will remember all 
 that we then perceived of incoherence in the plan, of vice in the 
 details, of fragility in the foundations of the loftiest towers. It 
 was not without effort and vexation, they may be assured, that we 
 viewed so often and so pertinaciously the earth rather than the 
 heavens : it cost us not a little to have to bend to the rugged exi- 
 gencies of polemics, those doctrines of peace, of love, of life, 
 which God has called us to publish, in a very different strain, 
 from the pulpit. But, we can call him to witness, never has the 
 hatred of error been converted under our pen, never, above all, in 
 
 1 " I would give my two hands to be able to believe in Jesus Christ, as firmly as the pope 
 does not believe in him." — Luther, Table Talk. 
 
">.")0 HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 
 
 our heart, into hatred of those who profess it; and if we have 
 succeeded in inspiring others with our sentiments, as we hope we 
 have succeeded in justifying our ideas, it will not be with the 
 cry of the Tridentine Fathers, "Anathema! anathema!" hut 
 with the prayer, that God will enlighten, touch, pardon, and 
 bless, that our readers will shut this book- 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Page 92, line 22. 
 . in order to sustain this untenable decree, 1 &c. 
 
 1 This was the subject of the last letters exchanged between Bossuet and Leibnitz. Their 
 l<mg discussion was gradually concentrated on the Council of Trent, and this point had ap- 
 peared to Leibnitz, if not the most false, at least the most clearly false. A hundred and 
 twenty-four arguments, neither more nor less, were enumerated in support of his attack ; and 
 although the council, said he, had introduced no innovation when it decreed the canonicity 
 <>f those books, where could one find, in ancient times, in the middle ages, down to that 
 session in fine, the slightest trace of the anathema by which that decree is sanctioned ? 
 
 Page 109, line 14. 
 
 More recently, . . . can have any intention but that 
 of subverting the Church and destroying men's souls j 1 it is, &c. 
 
 1 Pius IX., in his encyclical letter of December 1849, calls those also who circulate the 
 Bible " the enemies of human society." On this question the popes will all and always be 
 • >f the same opinion. 
 
 Page 132, last line. 
 . among the articles of faith. 1 
 
 1 Since these lines were written, a new step has been taken. The pope has issued a 
 general authorization to make a festival of the immaculate conception, and he ordered 
 (February 1849) universal prayers to be offered up to God, asking from Him a definitive solu- 
 tion. It needs not be said that the previous recommendations from the bishops will all be 
 favourable, and that one may, from this time forth, consider the matter as settled. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Page 171, line 27. 
 
 to be afterwards filled up by the Inquisition. 
 
 Thus when the Boman Church leaves those at peace who 
 have broken with her, let us be well aware that it is not from 
 toleration. The council has pronounced an anathema on all 
 who should believe that she ought not to punish them. 
 
 HDtSSntGB : I. CONSTABLE. I'RI.NTKK To IIKR MAJKSTT, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Absolution, is it absolute or conditional ? pp. 
 2C3, 2C4 ; its deplorable results, 265 ; admis- 
 sions with respect to it made by Bossuet, In- 
 nocent 1 1 1. , and in the formula of Indulgences 
 in 1517, 266, 267. 
 Abuses which would now be thought fabulous, 
 
 316. 
 Adrian VI., his character, 8, 9 ; the extermina- 
 tion of the Lutherans his last resort, 9 ; 
 Pallavicini's opinion of him, 10 ; opposed to 
 calling a Council, and why, 10; his death, 
 11. 
 Albert of Brandenburg, Archbishop of May- 
 
 ence, sends his procurators to Trent, 38. 
 Alexander VI., his character a blot on the 
 popedom to this day, 41 ; how treated by 
 the Popes in official acts, 42. 
 Ambrose, St., on the Scriptures, 86. 
 Anathema, how understood by the Greeks, and 
 how by St. Paul, 114; hesitation of the 
 Council with respect to such a sanction be- 
 ing appended to its decrees, 115 ; decrees of 
 reformation not to bear anathema, 116 ; no 
 anathemas on the worship of saints, none on 
 that of images, none on purgatory, 538. 
 Apocryphal books, opinions of the ancients, 91. 
 Arbues, Peter, the ferocious organizer of the 
 Inquisition, canonized in the seventeenth 
 century, 419. 
 Arian, Pope Liberius one for four years, 44. 
 A nanism condemned by the Council of Nice, 
 
 28. 
 Athanasian Creed read at the opening of the 
 Council, 62 ; furnishes no arms against Pro- 
 testants, but is rather a weapon in their 
 hands, 62. 
 Athanasius condemned by the Council of Tyre, 
 28 ; his precise language on the sufficiency 
 of the Scriptures, 86. 
 Augsburg, Diets at, 17, 19S ; Confession of, 17; 
 
 taken by Maurice of Saxony, 276. 
 Augustine the least Roman Catholic of the 
 Fathers, 50 ; his opinion of Councils, 51 ; on 
 the Scriptures, 86 ; his language absolute, 
 86 ; recommends the study of the Hebrew 
 and Greek Scriptures as a correction of the 
 Latin, 94. 
 Austria sends no bishops to Vicenza, 22. 
 Authority, the question of its source left un- 
 decided at Trent, and still undecided by the 
 Roman Catholics, 55 ; in the Roman Catho- 
 lic sense of the word proved to be an illusion, 
 
 70-74 ; its alleged necessity disproved, 74-82 ; 
 striking illustration of the Roman system of 
 authority, 410; contentions about the Pope's 
 authority, 467. 
 
 Baptism held to efface original sin, 126 ; un- 
 baptized infants, how disposed of, 127 : 
 baptism administered in the primitive 
 Church only on Easter-day and Whitsunday, 
 127, 128; inference from" this fact, 128. 
 
 Baronius makes tradition the foundation of 
 the Scriptures, 89. 
 
 Basil, St., his appeal to Scripture alone, 86. 
 
 Bavarian ambassador at the Council joins in 
 demanding the concession of the cup, 336, 
 337. 
 
 Beauty, worship of, 529. 
 
 Bellarmine writes the preface to Sixtus Quin- 
 tus's edition of the Vulgate, and admits 
 inaccuracies, 99. 
 
 Beza, 362 ; at the colloquy of Poissy, his strong 
 position, 300. 
 
 Bible, by it only can the Council of Trent be 
 subverted altogether, 67 ; the Bible to be in- 
 terpreted only by the Church, and yet first 
 given us to interpret, 69 ; the Bible addressed 
 to every body, 75 ; with authority the Bible 
 eclipsed, with liberty never, 78; authority of 
 the Bible and that of Rome deplorably 
 identified, 80 ; Homage to the Bible, 83 ; the 
 Bible, how recommended by the Fathers, 
 85 ; Latin Bibles made to contradict them- 
 selves, 93 ; old and new views of the Latin 
 as compared with Hebrew and Greek ver- 
 sions, 94 ; the Bible at the di-position of all, 
 101 ; recommended by the Father.--, 102-104 ; 
 the decree of Trent on the reading of the 
 Bible more discreet than the Roman Church 
 has been since, 105 : enmity of the pope- 
 dom to the Bible, 105-110 ; Bible anathemas, 
 114 ; appeals from tradition to the Bible 
 anathematized, 115 ; Bible language not to 
 be employed for pleasantry, sorcery, or flat- 
 tery, 116. 
 
 Bishops, preaching their principal duty, 124, 
 496 ; institution of, difficulty in elaborating 
 the canon, and commotion caused by the 
 attempt, 408 ; a bishop accused of a serious 
 crime shall be judged by the Pope, 496. 
 
 Bishops' Courts, their origin, 248 ; their en- 
 croachments, 249. 
 
 2 N 
 
554 
 
 Bologna, Council transferred from Trent to 
 Bologna, 1D3; only thirty-four bishops meet 
 there, 196. 
 
 Brandenburgh, Elector of, his envoys appear 
 at the Council, 251 ; their spokesman dis- 
 pleases everybody, 252. 
 
 Budoa, the Bishop of, exclaims against Trent, 
 and parodies the threatemngs of Isaiah 
 against Jerusalem in denouncing it, 460. 
 
 Canok of Scripture, discussion upon it, 89 ; 
 uncertainty felt bv Romanists regarding it, 
 90. 
 
 Canons appended to the doctrinal chapters on 
 the Mass, remarks on them, 357. 
 
 Caratra, Peter, succeeds Marcellus II. as Paul 
 IV., 282— See Paul IV. 
 
 C'ardinalate, historical notices, 414 ; a severe 
 revision of laws and customs relating to 
 cardinals demanded, 485. 
 
 Catechism and decrees differ, 233 ; composition 
 of catechism referred to the Pope, 542. 
 
 Catherine de Medieis demands from Pius IV., 
 iD 1561, nearly all that the reformed require, 
 299. 
 
 Celibacy not man's normal state, 438 ; imposed 
 on two sets of persons, 439 ; celibacy a sui- 
 cide of the saddest kind, 439 ; Hurter's 
 eloquence on celibacy neutralized by his 
 details. 440 ; cruelty of the cloister, 441 ; 
 pietv nowhere more miserably carnal, 442 ; 
 celibacy of the priests, how can it be im- 
 posed by a human authority ? 443 ; the 
 saddest of all the yokes imposed by Rome, 
 444 ; doctrine of St. Paul, 445 ; experience 
 of Romanist and Protestant countries, 447 : 
 horror for marriage in a priest, 449. 
 
 Charles V. blames the Nuremberg reformatory 
 decree, 1 2 ; his insolent treatment of Cle- 
 ment VII., and wavering policy as respected 
 the calling of a Council, 13-18 ; compels 
 regulations on precedency, 32 ; supersedes 
 the Pope in judging the Archbishop of Co- 
 logne, 35 ; coquets with the Protestants, 39 ; 
 refuses an offer of 12.000 men from the Pope. 
 47 ; becomes absolute master of Germany, 
 197 ; his agents insult the Pope at Bologna, 
 201 ; still looks to the Council for unity, and 
 publishes the Interim, 205 ; negotiates with 
 the Pope. 208 ; his discontent, 209 ; abolishes 
 the Interim, 277: is pronounced a heretic 
 by Paul IV., 284 ; makes a truce with 
 France, 2S4 ; abdicates, 285 ; his doubtful 
 character as a Roman Catholic, 280. 
 
 Chateaubriand on absolution, 262 ; on prayers 
 in Latin. 364 ; on prayers to saints and 
 images. 515. 
 
 Christendom, how represented at Trent, 27 ; 
 people of Roman Catholic Christendom for 
 12(10 years without any voice in the election 
 of their chief pastors, 29. 
 
 Chrysostom, no proof of true faith but by holy 
 Scripture, 86. 
 
 Church, what is it in the eye of God ? 81. 
 
 Clement VII., his character, 11 ; his enmiiy to 
 
 Charles V., humiliations, and dissimulation. 
 13-17 ; diverts the emperor from the idea of 
 a Council, 17; recommends the execution of 
 the imperial edict, 19 ; unites himself with 
 Prance, falls sick, and has his last days em- 
 bittered by the defection of England, 20 ; his 
 approval of Henry the Eighth's divorce 
 proved by Burnet, 20. 
 
 Clement VIII. publishes a corrected edition of 
 the Vulgate, 98. 
 
 Clergy, corruption of, 52 ; contrast between the 
 Roman Catholic and the Protestant in the 
 reception they meet with from their flocks. 
 257. 
 
 Close of the Council voted unanimously. 
 493. 
 
 Combination of the Cardinal of Lorraine with 
 the King of Spain, the Emperor, and the 
 King of Bohemia, against the Pope, 413. 
 
 Commendams, their history, 181. 
 
 Communion under both kinds, testimony of 
 the Scriptures, of the Fathers, and of ancient 
 Popes, 224 ; historical progress, the Church's 
 incompetency to alter, 225 ; motives for re- 
 fusing the cup to the laity, 227 ; its conces- 
 sion made a primary condition of their 
 return by the Protestants, 227 ; question re- 
 sumed, but mis-stated, 321, 322, and 330-335; 
 conditions proposed by its partisans, 355 ; 
 referred to the Pope, 305. 
 
 Conclaves, internal history of, 213 ; seldom so 
 divided as at the death of Paul III., 214 ; a 
 severe reform in regard to conclaves de- 
 manded, 485. 
 
 Conference proposed between the Romanist 
 and Protestant doctors, 280. 
 
 Confessional, silence of the Apostles, 255 ; its 
 uses exaggerated, 201. 
 
 Confirmation of the Council's decrees by the 
 Pope causes the utmost anxiety, 542 ; Pius 
 IV. disposed to grant it immediately, 543 ; 
 parties in Rome opposed to the confirmation, 
 543 ; Cardinal de Mu'.a and others recom- 
 mend it. 544. 
 
 Congregations and Sessions, how distinguished. 
 57 ; Council divided into three congregations, 
 and why, 61. 
 
 Constance, Council of, 2 ; its scandalous de- 
 baucheries no longer permitted or possible. 
 54. 
 
 Convocations of the Council, first under Paul 
 
 III. in 1545, 24 ; second under Julius III. 
 in 1551, 218 ; third under Pius IV. in 1562, 
 298. 
 
 Cordeliers and Jacobins, quarrel between them 
 about original sin in the Virgin Mary bursts 
 out afresh, 129. 
 
 Costume regulated, 35. 
 
 Council, France and Spain demand from Pius 
 
 IV. a new Council, not the resumption of the 
 old, 295. 
 
 Council, it distrusts its own authority and the 
 permanent force of its acts, 459 ; Council of 
 Trent formidable only when looked at from 
 a distance, 549. 
 
 Council's decrees, all men prohibited from 
 
making any commentaries, glosses, annota- 
 tions, scholia, or interpretations upon them, 
 545. 
 
 Dbaconship, the, 373. 
 
 Degradations, ecclesiastical, some small con- 
 cession made, 251. 
 
 Delegates of the Holy See, this title given to 
 bishops for the sake of maintaining intact 
 the lights of the Pope, 341. 
 
 Delegation, infallibility by, 37. 
 
 Demi-gallicanism of the Spaniards, its instruc- 
 tive history, 313. 
 
 Despatches, double, open and secret, sent from 
 Trent to Rome, 31. 
 
 Disciplinary and doctrinal decrees intermingled 
 — untoward result* of this medley, 60. 
 
 Disciplinary regulations, 490-498. 
 
 Discipline, reformation of, called for by St. 
 Bernard, 5 ; such a reformation would have 
 led men into the domain of the faith, 6 ; 
 Adrian VI. attempts it, but in vain, 9 ; re- 
 commended to the Council by Paul III., 
 58 ; no anathemas on disciplinary decrees, 
 538. 
 
 Dispensations allowed for voting by procura- 
 tion, 38. 
 
 Dispensations, matrimonial, a constant theme 
 of complaint among the Spanish, German, 
 and French bishops, 436. 
 
 Diversities of opinion in the Council, a chaos 
 of them appears towards the close of the 
 Council, 492. 
 
 Divine right — See Residence. 
 
 Divines by profession, their intervention in 
 the Council of Trent, 90 ; unanimous in re- 
 cognising the inferiority of the apocryphal 
 books, 91 ; divines at the Council much com- 
 plained of, and their violence restrained, 252 ; 
 questions distributed among the divines, 369. 
 
 Divisions anions the French Romanists on the 
 accession of Charles IX., 288. 
 
 Divisions in the Council cause alarm, 57 ; how 
 to be kept out of sight, 57 ; the congregations 
 to meet with shut doors, yet all known that 
 passed, 57 ; national divisions, 63, 64 ; divi- 
 sion between the bishops and the divines on 
 the subject of the canon of Scripture, 91 ; on 
 the approbation to be given to the Vulgate, 
 96 ; on the interpretation cf Scripture, 99 ; 
 on the title of the Council, 11 7 ; between the 
 bishops and the monks on religious teaching, 
 121 ; among the divines on original sin, 125; 
 in the Council on what was to be decreed on 
 original sin, 128 ; between the Cordeliers and 
 Jacobins on the immaculate conception, 129 ; 
 on the question of the divine right in resi- 
 dence, 315, 408, 466, 472 ; on the concession 
 of the cup, 354, 355 ; on the mass, 366. 
 
 Dogmas, Roman, their usual course, 133. 
 
 Dreux, battle of, celebrated in the Council, 
 but its importance overrated, 424. 
 
 Education of the ministry neg'ected by the 
 
 Church of Rome, 482 ; establishment of 
 seminaries, 482. 
 
 Encroachments of the bishops' courts, 249. 
 
 Ephesus, Council of, its decrees framed as rest- 
 ing on Scripture alone, 87. 
 
 Episcopal jurisdiction, complaints against 
 Rome, 271 ; decrees made more severe, yet 
 still inefficient, 272. 
 
 Episcopate, its historical origin, 377 : equality 
 of the presbyteri and episcopi in the writings 
 of the Apostles, 378 ; the Roman episcopate 
 not an order, 379 ; the popedom complicates 
 the question, 381 ; great agitation on the 
 subject of residence, and far from honourable 
 issue, 408, 409 ; reference on the divine right 
 to what had passed twelve years back, 410 ; 
 three formulas on the institution of the epis- 
 copate, 422 : question of the divine right per- 
 petually recurs, 466, 472. See Residence. 
 
 Eucharist, subject taken up amid fierce agita- 
 tion, 223 ; decree upon it, 251. See The Mass. 
 
 Faith, men of, their numbers said to be daily 
 increasing ; they differ little from those who 
 do not believe, 546. 
 
 False citation by a Pope, 105. 
 
 Farnese, Cardinal, succeeds Clement VII. as 
 Paul III., 20— See Paul III. 
 
 Fasting, decree upon, 541. 
 
 Ferdinand II. requires the dismissal of all 
 questions relative to the mass, except that 
 of the cup, 353 ; questions said to be sub- 
 mitted by him to his own divines, 426 ; he 
 begins to give way, 464. 
 
 Festivals, observance of, 541. 
 
 Florence, to regain the domination of it, a 
 leading motive with Clement VII., (i. 
 
 France returns to the idea of a national Coun- 
 cil, 295 ; accused of heresy on account of the 
 Colloquy of Poissy, 304 ; French ambassa- 
 dors pronounce a long and severe satire on 
 the Council, 320 ; bold demand for the con- 
 cession of the cup, 337 ; the French prelates 
 trifle with the Council, 352 ; instructions 
 from France brought by the Cardinal of Lor- 
 raine to Trent, 412 ; Du Ferrier charges 
 Rome with the bloodshed caused in France 
 by the warsof relidon, 417: alarming articles 
 from France make a terrible impression on 
 the Pope, 425 ; Du Ferrier's bluntness, 428 ; 
 France thrown on the Pope for means of 
 resisting the Reformation, on the death of 
 the Duke of Guise, 450 ; sarcastic protest by- 
 France against proposed decree on the secu- 
 lar princes, 490 ; French ambassadors retire 
 to Venice, 499 ; spirited protest against the 
 papal denunciation of the Queen of Navarre, 
 500 : influence of that measure on the posi- 
 tion of Henry IV. , 500 ; the Council of Trent 
 never officially received in France, 537. 
 
 Gali.ica>' practice in regard to bishops ac- 
 cused of serious crimes, opposed to the decree 
 of Trent, 496. 
 
o5(i 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Galileans attacked by Lainez at the Council, 
 401 ; they are proved logically wrong, 404 ; 
 are inceDsed, 405. 
 
 G eneva proposed for the meeting of the Council, 
 20 ; threatened by Pius IV. ; its providen- 
 tial preservation in the midst of powerful 
 enemies, 292; incorruptibility of the Gene- 
 vese, 203. 
 
 German bishops absent themselves from the 
 Council, 119: a special summons addressed 
 to them displeases Charles V., 119. 
 
 Gospel more altered by Rome than by all the 
 sects with which the Reformation has been 
 reproached, 78. 
 
 Gravamina centum of Germany, 11. 
 
 Gregory XIV. presses the publication of a cor- 
 rected eiition of the Vulgate, 98. 
 
 Grace, propositions on, 141-148. 
 
 Henry II. of France favours Paul III., and 
 promises his natural daughter Diana to the 
 latter's grandson, 197; keeps no measures 
 with Julius III., 219; prohibits the remit- 
 tance of money to Rome, 223 ; is courted 
 by Julius III., 275; with whom he makes 
 a treaty, 277. 
 
 Heresies, their extirpation recommended to 
 the Council by Paul III., 58. 
 
 Heretics, their extermination the last resort 
 of Adrian VI., 9. 
 
 Hermann, archbishop of Cologne, excommu- 
 nicated by Paul III., but acknowledged by 
 Charles V., 120 ; he resigns, 120. 
 
 Historical investigations avoided, 123. 
 
 Hospitals, 271 ; 316; 35G ; 530. 
 
 Illogical returns to the Gospel, 52 
 
 Images, worship of, 525-530. 
 
 Immaculate conception of the Virgin, disputes 
 respecting it, 129-132 
 
 Index of prohibited books, historical review, 
 308-311 ; advantage taken of the subject to 
 call Protestants to the Council as authors, 
 but to no purpose, 312 ; drawing up of an 
 index referred to the Pope, 542. 
 
 Indulgences, historical review, 531, 534; de- 
 cree upon, and singular destiny of the ques- 
 tion, 541. 
 
 Infallibility not held so rigorously in the six- 
 teenth century as now, 34 ; openly arrogated 
 by the Popes, 43 ; taught in the Roman Cate- 
 chism, 43 ; practically disowned in Rome 
 itself, 46 ; not believed in really by those 
 who are called men of faiih, 546 ; infallibi- 
 lity all of a piece — one point shaken, the 
 whole falls, 548. 
 
 Infallibility of Councils proclaimed in the open- 
 ing sermon of first Session, 57 ; pretended 
 approbation of the Church the last seal of 
 infallibility, 65. 
 
 Infallibility of the Council, compromised by 
 petition for confirmation, 542. 
 
 Infallibility, Papal, in discipline and doctrine, 
 41-47. 
 
 Infants dying without baptism, questions 
 relating to them, 126 ; fact relating to 
 the primitive administration of baptism, 
 admitted by the CatecMsmus Romanus, 
 127. 
 
 Inquisition established by Charles V. at Naples 
 and in the Netherlands, 220 ; clung to by 
 Paul IV., 289 ; its abominable hypocrisy, 
 418 ; its ferocious organizer canonized in the 
 seventeenth century, 419. 
 
 Intention, necessity of fact, and necessity of 
 intention, in the sacraments, 163 ; what 
 avails the Church's intention in addressing 
 the saints ? 515. 
 
 Interdiction of Roman Catholic subjects from 
 studying theology at Rome, 199. 
 
 Interim, its origin, provisions, and re-ult, 
 205 ; left to destroy itself, 205 ; abolished, 
 277. 
 
 Interpretation of Scripture — to whom does it 
 belong ? 99 ; here the divines more reason- 
 able tlian the bishops, 99 ; Fenelon's opinion 
 absurd, 100 ; Scripture declared useless by a 
 Norman divine, 101 ; the decree virtually 
 says the same thing, 101 ; opinions of Cle- 
 ment of Rome, Poiyearp, Ambrose, Origen, 
 Isodore of Pelusium, Jerome, Augustine, 
 Chrysostom, St. Bernard, Gregory the Great, 
 Council of Aix-la-Chapelle in 816, Ulphilas, 
 and Bede, 102-105. 
 
 Invocation of saints, 508. 
 
 Isodorus of Pelusium thought the Bible in- 
 tended for all, 103. 
 
 Italians accused of being above all things 
 Italians in the Council, 63 ; their oath to 
 the Pope, 64 : a general combination of the 
 Italians against the Spaniardsand the French, 
 dreaded, 413 ; a bold Italian party more 
 popish than the Pope, 488. 
 
 Italic version of the Scriptures, 94. 
 
 Italy, results of the confessional on the morals 
 of the country, 260 ; its modern paganism, 
 517. 
 
 Jansenius reproved for asserting that the Holy- 
 See sometimes condemns a doctrine solely 
 for peace's sake, 43 : condemned by the infal- 
 lible Innocent X., at the instance of the fal- 
 lible Pallavicini, 45. 
 
 Jubilee for the success of the Church and of 
 the emperor proclaimed by Paul III, 136. 
 
 Julius III. (del Jlonte) elected Pope, 214; his 
 change of character, position, and policy, 
 215-217 ; convokes the new Council as a con- 
 tinuation of the old, 21 7 ; difference between 
 Charles V. and him in their views of the 
 Council, 21S; quarrels with Henry II. of 
 France, 219; creates fourteen cardinals at 
 once, 275 ; makes a treaty with Henry II, 
 and orders the suspension of the Council, 277 ; 
 names a commission for internal reforms, 
 278 ; is consoled for his disappointments 
 by the submission of England under Mary, 
 280 ; dies, and is succeeded by Marcellus 
 II., 281. 
 
557 
 
 Lainez attacks the French court at the Collo- 
 quy of Poissy, 302 ; his defence of ultramon- 
 tanism in the Council, 400-405 ; he defends 
 the Pope's authority, 467, 468 ; his haughty 
 pretensions, 468. 
 
 League, its origin in France, 303. 
 
 Legates, Hercules de Gonzaga and Cardinal 
 I>u Puy appointed for the Council hy Pius 
 IV, 208. 
 
 Leo X. engages to hold a Council, 7 ; Luther's 
 idea of his position as Pope, and his impo- 
 tency as a reformer, 9. 
 
 Liberius Pope, for four years an Arian, and 
 anathematized by St. Hilary, 44. 
 
 Liberty and authority contrasted, 80 ; false pre- 
 tensions tolibertyin the Roman Church, 111. 
 
 Lindanes calls the Scriptures a nose of wax, 
 89. 
 
 Liturgy of the mass refutes the mass itself, 
 361. 
 
 Lorraine, Cardinal of, attempts to refute Beza 
 at Poissy, 301 ; his arrival at Trent contem- 
 plated with horror, 407 ; he comes to Trent 
 with the retinue of a prince, and surpri-es 
 by his mildness, 411 ; his perplexity at the 
 part people assigned him, 419 ; his journey 
 to the emperor viewed with alarm, 426 ; 
 returns and maintains impenetrate secrecy, 
 427 ; disappointed of being made legate, re- 
 tires in disgust to Venice, 458; his duplicity 
 towards Pius IV., 460 ; adopts a conciliatory 
 course towards all, 465 ; his intervention 
 sought for by the Pope, 488 ; takes a leading 
 part at the close, 549. 
 
 Luther and St. Bernard compared, 7 ; his 
 constancy, 18 ; his ideal of a Council, 34 ; 
 joy of the Council at the news of his death, 
 66 ; Luther and transubstantiation, 229. 
 
 Madrucw, Cardinal, bishop of Trent, does the 
 honours of the place, 25. 
 
 Marcellus II. (MarcellusCervini) elected Pope ; 
 his character, views, addiction to astrology, 
 and death, 282. 
 
 Marriage, debates on the doctrine of, opened, 
 428 ; is it a sacrament ? 429 ; endless im- 
 pediments to it, 431 ; is it indissoluble ? 432 ; 
 proves Rome to be no Ionser omnipotent, 
 435 ; restrictions and relaxations side by side, 
 436, 437 ; discussion resumed, 483 ; studied 
 obscurity as to clandestine marriages, 484 ; 
 doctrinal decree with its twelve canons 
 and anathema examined, 494 ; disciplinary 
 articles, 496. 
 
 Mariolatry, 519. 
 
 Mass — the mass and the supper, 241 ; extremes 
 of pomp and paltriness in the celebration of 
 the mass, 244 ; adoration of the host — honour 
 and adoration not to be confounded, 245 
 the worshipped wafer becomes a god, 247. 
 
 Mass, the, does it re-produce the supper? 343 
 can it be found in the Bible ? 345 ; analysis 
 of the four alleged proofs of it, 347-349 
 glaring difficulty and proposed evasion, 349, 
 350 ; atmosphere in which the decrees were 
 
 elaborated, 352 ; four opinions formed, 352 ; 
 regulations and anathemas relative to the 
 mass, 357-365. See Transubstantiation. 
 
 Meats, distinction of, singular discrepancy be- 
 tween the Council and St. Paul, 541. 
 
 Melanchthon hazards concessions, 18. 
 
 Mobility, Protestantism reproached with, 51. 
 
 Money presents openly made by one prince to 
 another, indicate the low morality of the age 
 425. 
 
 Monte, Cardinal Del, is appointed legate to the 
 Council, 23 ; his name suggests the applica- 
 tion of an ancient apologue, 26 ; celebrates 
 the opening mass, 48; play upon his name 
 in the opening sermon, 53 ; is elected Pope 
 on the death of Paul III., 215. See Julius 
 HI. 
 
 Morone, Cardinal, appointed legate in the place 
 of the cardinal of Mantua, 457; gives offence 
 by proceeding to Inspruck, 457 ; returns with 
 only vague answers for the Pope, 464. 
 
 Musso Cornelio, bishop of Bitonto, preaches 
 the opening sermon at the first convocation, 
 48 ; his absurdity and impiety, 52 ; yet only 
 the candid expression of the system, 53 ; his 
 conceits and oddities, 53. 
 
 Naclanttjs, Bishop of Chioggia, treats as im- 
 pious tradition being put on an equality with 
 Scripture, 116; he refuses to say placet to 
 the decree on the Scriptures, 117. 
 
 Naples, the viceroy proposes that its bishops 
 should send four to represent them in the 
 Council, 37; this not allowed by the Pope,3'8. 
 
 Navarre, Queen of, summoned to appear at 
 Rome as a heretic, 499. 
 
 Nice, Council of, only three Latin bishops 
 there, 28 ; its decrees framed as resting on 
 Scripture alone, 87. 
 
 Nuncios instead of legates sent into Germany 
 on the occasion of the Interim, 208 ; their 
 ill reception, 209. 
 
 Nuremberg, Diet of, 10, 11. 
 
 Oath taken by the Italian members of the 
 Council, 64 ; made a ground of nullity by 
 many authors, 65. 
 
 Observance of the decrees enjoined on princes 
 and bishops, 542. 
 
 Oecumenical Councils, 27-29. 
 
 Orders a true sacrament or not ? 369 ; their 
 degrees, 373 ; difficulties, 374 ; consistency 
 found impossible in framing the decree, 477 ; 
 theological difficulties, 478. 
 
 Orken, his opinion of the reading of the Bible, 
 103. 
 
 Original sin, questions upon, 125 ; nothing to 
 be directly taught on it, but only heretical 
 ideas condemned, 128 ; five decrees, quarrel 
 about the immaculate conception revived, 
 129; historical retrospect, 130-132. 
 
 Pacaxism of Romanism and of Rome, 514-530. 
 
 / 
 
558 
 
 Parties, glance at the position of, towards the 
 close of the Council, 403. 
 
 Paul III., (Farnese,) his character, 20, 21 ; 
 summons the Archbishop of Cologne, 35 ; 
 his nepotism, 40; scandalizes all men — 
 could the}' believe in his infallibility ? 47; 
 sends legates to open the Council, 48 ; re- 
 commends three points to the Council, 58 ; 
 tact shewn by him in the number of Italians 
 sent to the Council, 63 ; ordains the publi- 
 cation of the Council's decrees in spite of 
 their publication at Trent, 118 ; his disquiet 
 about the Council, 189 ; affects to mediate 
 between the prelates at Bologna and those 
 at Trent, 195: allies himself with France, 
 197; offers to proclaim Charles V. King of 
 England, 199 ; his death and character, 211. 
 
 Paul IV. (Caraffa) laughed at the Council's 
 pretensions, 27 ; succeeds Marcellus II., 
 2S2 ; his character, 283 ; appoints a com- 
 mission of 150 members against simony, 283 ; 
 embroils himself with Charles V., and curses 
 the Spaniards as schismatics and heretics, 
 2S4-286 ; seeks to make the Council a bug- 
 bear to overawe the princes, 287 ; disposes 
 of kingdoms, and claims the appointment of 
 the emperor, 288 ; is overmatched by France 
 and Spain, and chagrined at the state of 
 England, Germany, France, and Italy, 289 : 
 clings to the Inquisition, and dies, 289 ; his 
 statue insulted, 290. 
 
 Peace, re-establishment of, recommended to 
 the Council by Paul III., 58. 
 
 Penance, alleged scriptural proofs, 252 ; mis- 
 representations, 256 ; in what sense is it a 
 sacrament, 257; diversities of opinion upon 
 it, 259. See Confessional. 
 
 Permission granted by the Pope to the Coun- 
 cil to read the books they were to condemn, 
 implies slavish subjection, 311. 
 
 Philip II. unites with the Pope in accelerating 
 the close of the Council, 500. 
 
 Pius IV (John de Medicis) succeeds Paid IV. 
 in 1559, his character, position, and policy, 
 290, 291 ; threatened with a national coun- 
 cil in France, 291 ; urges the seizure of 
 Geneva, 293 ; announces the re-assembling 
 of the Council, but meets with more objec- 
 tions than ever, 295 ; hesitates about the 
 concession of the cup, 304 ; decides on open- 
 ing the Council, 305 ; thrown into the old 
 track by its dissensions, 318 : his use of 
 money as a means of influence, 319 ; charges 
 his legates with mismanagement, 323 ; pro- 
 mises a speedy reform in his court, 342 ; 
 augments his troops, and tries to league all 
 Italy against Spain, 351 ; urges his legates to 
 hasten the close of the Council, 352 ; im- 
 patient at their slowness, 421 : perplexed at 
 the Cardinal of Lorraine's formula on the 
 institution of bishops, 422 ; rebuked by a 
 dying cardinal, 451 ; severely rated by the 
 emperor, 453-455 ; seeks a meeting with him 
 at l?ologna, 458 ; protests against the peace 
 between Charles IX. and the French re- 
 formed, 459 ; implicated in the quarrel be- 
 
 tween the French and Spanish ambassadors, 
 470; summons the Queen of Navarre to 
 Home as a heretic, 499 ; dreads the election 
 of his successor by the Council, 501 ; cir- 
 cumvented and dismayed when the Council's 
 decrees come for confirmation, 543. 
 
 Placentia, Duke of, murdered in his own palace, 
 196. 
 
 Placentia occupied by the imperial troops, 197. 
 
 Plurality of benefice", not to be eluded, 178. 
 
 Plurality of Popes has happened twenty-four 
 times, 44. 
 
 Poissy, colloquy of, 299-304. 
 
 Pole, Cardinal, appointed legate to the Coun- 
 cil, 23. 
 
 Political considerations occupying the first 
 place in the Council, 124. 
 
 Pope, references to him, 315, 365 ; contentions 
 about the Pope's authority, 467, 472, 473 ; 
 difficulties arising from the relative position 
 of the Pope and Council in the publication 
 of the decrees, 55, 539. 
 
 Popedom, its unique position, 325 ; its political 
 uses, 327 ; not a vestige of the popedom in 
 the New Testament, 382 ; St. Peter among 
 the Apostles, 3S3, 384 ; chronological diffi- 
 culties, tradition, 389 ; difficulties in the 
 Roman point of view, 391 ; co-existence of 
 patriarchs and the Pope, 393 ; principles 
 brought out, 395 : Tridentine decree says 
 nothing of the Pope, 396 ; Archbishop of 
 Grenada appeals to the Fathers against the 
 superiority claimed for the Pope, 397; the 
 Pope everything or nothing, 399 ; the legates 
 would fain evade the question, 400 ; the 
 ultramontanists confounded, Lainez replies. 
 401 ; Sarpi and Pallavicini report his speech 
 differently, 402 ; the Gallicans incensed, 
 405 ; a plunge into false principles, 407. 
 
 Port-Royalists spoke of the Bible as the ancient 
 fathers and Luther spoke of it, 110. 
 
 Preaching the principal duty of bishops, 124 ; 
 additions to the decree of 1546, 496. 
 
 Precedency, regulations for, 32 ; quarrel about, 
 469 ; questions to remain as they stood be- 
 fore the Council met, 542. 
 
 Prelates, disparity among them, 31 9. 
 
 Prierio, one of Leo the Tenth's divines, makes 
 Scripture derive its force and authority from 
 the Roman Church and Pontiff, 8S. 
 
 Priesthood, is the Roman, in Scripture ? 371 ; 
 first the priesthood, then a sacrifice, 375. 
 
 Procuration admitted in some cases, 38. 
 
 Prolixity of the speeches complained of, 421. 
 
 Promptsault, the Abbe, defends the authenti- 
 cating of the Vulgate, 97. 
 
 Proponent ibus dispute, its origin, 307 ; pro- 
 gress, 492 ; close, 498. 
 
 Protestant ambassadors, disquieting intimacy 
 between them and those of the emperor, 
 275. 
 
 Protestant doctors arrive at Trent, and busi- 
 ness stops, 276. 
 
 Protestantism, the mobility with which it is 
 charged, accepted by St. Augustine, 51. 
 
 Protestant pastors and Romanist priests, their 
 
550 
 
 respective acceptability and influence among 
 their flocks, 256, 257. 
 
 Protestants, convocation of the Council in- 
 timated to them, 32 ; did they engage to sub- 
 mit to the Council ? 53 ; Charles V. would 
 have them send deputies to the Council, 221 ; 
 the question of their coming resumed, 227 ; 
 their demands. 273, 274 ; their contempt for 
 the Council, 463. 
 
 Provincial councils to meet every three vears, 
 496. 
 
 Publication of the decrees ordered by the Pope, 
 as if his concurrence were absolutely indis- 
 pensable, 118. 
 
 Purgatory, commission for elaborating the de- 
 cree, 492 ; purgatory strangely omitted in 
 Scripture, 503 ; no anathema on it, 538. 
 
 Raggazoxi, Bishop of Nazianzuin, preaches 
 the triumphal sermon at the close of the 
 Session, 540. 
 
 Reformation decree of the twenty-fourth Ses- 
 sion shews some progress, 481 ; forty dis- 
 ciplinary articles sent by the legates to the 
 ambassadors, 485 ; the forty articles reduced 
 to twenty-one, 487 ; reformatory articles, 
 496 ; reform of the religious orders, 535. 
 
 Reformation, the, contrasted with Rome in 
 regard to the education of the Church's 
 pastors, 482. 
 
 Residence of bishops, 139 ; to be made more 
 general, 313; the question, is residence of 
 divine right ? hotly debated, 314 ; voting on 
 this question in reality in favour of the 
 divine right, but this evaded, 315 ; the Pope 
 pronounces neither way, 316 ; question stiU 
 undecided, 317; question resumed by the 
 Spanish prelates against the wish of Philip 
 IX, 350 ; Philip II. sends a new order to 
 his prelates to allow this, to Rome, terrify- 
 ing question to drop, 351 ; great agitation 
 about residence, draft of decree, 409 ; sub- 
 ject resumed, 420 ; question of divine right 
 finally withdrawn, and a fundamental article 
 of the Roman system left for ever unsettled, 
 473 ; different views taught upon it at this 
 day, 474 ; the omission of so important a 
 point totally indefensible, 475 ; the Spaniards 
 still hold out, 479 ; they are conjured not to 
 protest, and agree not to do so, 480 ; Palla- 
 vicini rises into poetry on the occasion, 
 480 ; decree on residence ineffective, 481 ; 
 immense disappointment at the nullity of 
 the decree, 483. 
 
 Rousseau's infidelity mitigated by his education 
 as a Protestant, 80. 
 
 Sacred language, Christianity has none, 363. 
 
 Safe-conduct asked for the Protestants in the 
 name of the Council and the Pope, 222 ; one 
 granted them under another name, but not 
 binding the Pope, 228 ; safe-conduct read 
 with the omission of the Pope's name, 274 ; 
 new safe-conduct rendered illusory by the 
 
 furtive introduction of a nullifying clause, 
 312. 
 
 Saints, worship of, 508-525 ; the saints made 
 either accusers or gods, 521. 
 
 Salmeron, the Jesuit, his intrigues complained 
 of by the prelates in the Council, 353. 
 
 Salva semper clause always re-occurs, 186 ; 
 made more positive than ever, 541. 
 
 Saxony, Elector of, sentenced to death, but his 
 life spared, 197; Elector Maurice declares 
 against the emperor, and takes Augsburg, 
 276. 
 
 Saxony, envoys from, their language at Trent, 
 274. 
 
 Scripture conjoined with tradition as the rule 
 of faith, 84 ; contrary opinions of Tertullian, 
 St. Basil, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. 
 Chrysostom, St. Athanasius, and of the Coun- 
 cils of Nice, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, 85-87 ; 
 Scripture not to be employed in pleasantry, 
 sorcery, flattery to the great, &c, 116. 
 
 Secular powers, decree for their reformation, 
 
 489 ; exorbitant powers claimed for the 
 clergy, 489; sarcastic protest from France, 
 
 490 ; decree withdrawn, 491 ; encroachments 
 on the secular powers, 536. 
 
 Seminaries for the education of the clergy, 
 their establishment, 482. 
 
 Session I. Opening of the Council, and indie- 
 tion of next Session, 48. 
 
 Session II. Manner of living and other matters 
 to be observed during the CouncU, 54. 
 
 Session III. Symbol of Faith, 62. 
 
 Session IV. Canonical Scriptures, edition and 
 use of the Sacred Books, 83-117. 
 
 Session Y. Original Sin, Reformation, 120-133. 
 
 Session VI. Reformation, Residence of Bishops, 
 Justification, 139-156. 
 
 Session VII. The Sacraments in general, Bap- 
 tism, Confirmation, Reformation, Govern- 
 ment of Cathedral Churches, &c, 156-188. 
 
 Session VIII. The Translation of the Council, 
 193. 
 
 Session IX. At Bologna, Prorogation of the 
 Session, 196. 
 
 Session X. Prorogation of the Session, 196 ; the 
 Session prorogued during the good pleasure 
 of the Sacred Council, 197. 
 
 Session XI. Resumption of the Council, 218. 
 
 Session XII. Prorogation of the Session, 222. 
 
 Session XIII. Sacrament of the Eucharist, 
 Reformation, Obligations of Bishops, Clerks, 
 &c, Safe-conduct to Protestants, 228-251. 
 
 Session XIV. Sacraments of Penance and 
 Extreme Unction, Reformation, Office of 
 Bishops, Clerks, &c, 252-273. 
 
 Session XV. Proroguing the Session, Safe-con- 
 duct to Protestants, 274. 
 
 Session XVI. Suspension of the Council, 277. 
 
 Session XVII. Decree for Celebrating the Coun- 
 cil, 305. 
 
 Session XVIII. The Choice of Books ; for in- 
 viting all men on the public faith of the 
 Council, 312. 
 
 Session XIX. Prorogation " for just and 
 honourable reasons," 318. 
 
560 
 
 Session XX. Prorogation of the Session, 321. 
 
 Session XXL Communion under both kinds, 
 Reformation, 339 ; pitiful results of the Ses- 
 sion, 321-342 
 
 Session XXII. The Sacrifice of the Mass, Re- 
 formation, Reference to the Pope, 342-305. 
 
 Session XXIII. Prorogued eight times. Sacra- 
 ment of Orders, Reformation, 308-483. 
 
 Session XXIV. Sacrament of Matrimony, Re- 
 formation of Marriage, Reformation, 483- 
 499. 
 
 Session XXV. Purgatory, Invocation of Saints, 
 Relics, &c\, Reformation, Regulars and Nuns, 
 &c, Continuation of the Session, Indulgen- 
 ces, Choice of Food, Index of Books, Cate- 
 chism, Breviary, Missal, &c. Close of the 
 Council, Acclamations and final Anathema, 
 502-5.70. 
 
 Sessions and congregations, how distinguished, 
 57. 
 
 Silence of the Council on important questions 
 where difficulties had to lie shirked, 177. 
 
 Simony, Paul IV. appoints a commission upon 
 it, 283. 
 
 Spain, results of the confessional on the morals 
 
 of the country, 261. 
 State subjected to the Church systematically, 
 251 ; decree for reforming the secular powers, 
 489, 490. 
 Systematic arrangement of its doctrines, never 
 attempted by Rome until the meeting of the 
 Council of Trent, 49. 
 
 Tertuilian, his appeal to Scripture alone, 85 
 Theory and practice, danger of confounding 
 them in our estimate of the Church of Rome, 
 502. 
 
 Toleration by halves, and provisional, impos- 
 sible with Rome, except at the expense of 
 consistency', 405. 
 
 Tradition conjoined with the Bible as the 
 source of authority, 84 ; is tradition favour- 
 able to itself ? 85 ; made little account of by 
 the early Fathers, 87 ; its position never 
 regulated, 87 ; tradition in its present sense 
 then unknown, 88 : the discussion long, and 
 many opinions, 88 ; first made equal, then 
 put above Scripture, 88, 89 ; tradition itself 
 on the Protestant side, 117. 
 
 Translation of the Council from Trent to 
 Bologna desired by the Pope, and how 
 effected, 189-193. 
 
 Transubstantiation, definitively voted as true 
 under Innocent III., 33 ; the foundation of 
 Roman doctrine on the Eucharist, 223 ; 
 
 voted at Trent without a debate, 228 ; an 
 attempt to explain sets the Dominicans and 
 Franciscans by the ears, 228 ; did Luther 
 admit it? 229; physical objections, 230; 
 things above reason, and contrary to reason, 
 distinguished, 231 ; transubstantiation con- 
 trary to Scripture, 233 ; not held by the 
 Fathers, 236 ; Rome anathematizes her own 
 historians, 239 ; a priest's belief in transub- 
 stantiation, 243. 
 Trent again selected for the Council after ten 
 years' interval, and why, 297. 
 
 Uitrajiostaxism of the bishop of Bitonto's 
 opening sermon, 53; ultramontanismof the 
 Popes, 302. 
 
 Ultrainontanists concede the conditional fal- 
 libility of Councils, 29 ; confounded by a 
 Spanish and a Polish bishop, 401 ; re-assured 
 by the reasoning of Lainez, 402-404. 
 
 Unction, extreme, its origin, 267 ; its inconsis- 
 tencies, 269 ; it is often dangerous, 270, 271. 
 
 Unions, of benefices, attempts to correct the 
 abuses arising from them, 186; grossness of 
 these abuses, 187 ; additional restraints, 272. 
 
 Unity, Roman unity of the present day dates 
 from the Reformation, 49 ; has it entered into 
 God's purpose that there should be unity in 
 the Church? 81 ; unity of the popedom a 
 human invention, and quite illusory, 82 ; 
 Roman Catholic unity denied, 547. 
 
 Vagaries, Roman Catholic, employed to dis- 
 credit Christianity, 78, 79. 
 
 Variations, Protestant, a weak answer to at- 
 tacks against the popedom, and it: doctrines, 
 79. 
 
 Viconti, bishop of Vintimilli, set over the 
 legates at the Council by Pius IV., 329, 330. 
 
 Virgin, worship of, not in Scripture, 505 ; nor 
 in the Fathers, 507. 
 
 Visitation of dioceses, 496. 
 
 Voltaire, his infidelity affected by his having 
 been brought up a Romanist, 80. 
 
 Vulgar tongue, di-cussion of its disuse in the 
 mass, &c, 362-365. 
 
 Vulgate, its history down to the time of the 
 Council, 94, 95 : urgency of the decree re- 
 specting it, 96 ; results, 97 ; subsequent his- 
 tory of the Vulgate, 98, i)9. 
 
 ■\Vurtejiberg. Duke of, conduct of his deputies 
 at Trent, 273. 
 
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