certain and generally acknowledged. For in these questions, Bishops are witnesses who testify, not authors who discover. The conditions essential to an article of faith are: that it be revealed by God; and that it be contained in the Deposit which the Christian centuries have faithfully guarded and transmitted one to another without alteration. Now it is incredible that five or six hundred Bishops will affirm in the face of the world that they have found in the convictions of their respective Churches that which is not there. If, then, they propose in Council truths to be believed, it is because these truths already exist in the evidence of Tradition, and in the common instructions of Theology; and thus that they are not something new."
What Darboy meant by these guarded words, and what his clergy understood him to mean, is beyond dispute. The theory of Papal Infallibility was not contained in the traditions of the Diocese and See of Paris. The contrary theory had prevailed. The Archbishop went to Rome with a full intention of saying so—and he said it.
When Darboy arrived in Rome, he was speedily admitted to an audience with the Pope. He was one of the few to whom this privilege was given. The Pope had decided not to give special audiences before the Council assembled. But the Archbishop of Paris could not well be left out. The very security and existence of the Council depended, humanly speaking, entirely on the goodwill of France. Accordingly the Archbishop of Paris had to be received. It was a difficult interview. Darboy complained of the publicity given to the letter of 1865, which, being confidential, ought never to have been yielded to general curiosity, by persons surrounding the Pope. Moreover, the letter contained inaccuracies and errors. The Archbishop
