was regarded as infallible from the first moment of its promulgation. As for Honorius, there is not the slightest reason for misgivings: "heretical he could not be." We have his letters. They prove his Catholicity. The papal acts of the primitive ages imply infallibility, according to Manning, "and in almost all cases explicitly declare it."[1] The exercise of authority is everywhere to him Infallibility. Thus the Archbishop presented the English Romanist with a sketch of the first ages pervaded by a calm, unchallenged faith in the Pope's Infallibility.
The second period in the doctrine's progress is that of analysis and contention. And here Manning pours unqualified contempt on the Gallican view. Gallicanism was Manning's peculiar and special abomination.
"Gallicanism," he said, "is rationalism; that which the Gospel cast out; that which grew up again in medieval Christendom. Gallicanism is no more than a transient and modern opinion which arose in France, without warrant or antecedent, in the ancient theological schools of the great French Church; a royal theology, as suddenly developed and as parenthetical as the Thirty-nine Articles; affirmed only by a small number out of the numerous Episcopate of France. …
"To this may be added, that the name of Bossuet escaped censure only out of indulgence, by reason of his good services to the Church: and that even the lawfulness of giving absolution to those who defend the Gallican Articles has been gravely questioned."[2]
In Manning's view of history, Gallicanism was a disease engendered by the corruptions of the old French Monarchy.
The third period in the progress of Infallibility is the
