on the scheme de concilio, as completely destroying the freedom, and so the authority, of the Council), with a notorious absence of any internal assent. The Archbishop of Munich is very anxious. He told Dr Döllinger that the deputation which went to the Pope, begging him to spare the Church, nearly carried its point."
It is clear from this and other sources that the Archbishop of Munich, if left to himself, had no desire to proceed to extremities with the opponents of the Decree. But Döllinger fully realised, ever since the first mention of Infallibility as a subject for decision, that excommunication lay before him if the Decree was passed. Archbishop Scherr found himself reluctantly driven to the painful task of imposing on the theologians a reversal of belief similar to that which he had himself undergone. Rome was determined that the Munich stronghold of the minority should be brought into line with the new Decree. The Archbishop was made the instrument for effecting this. He wrote a letter to the Munich Faculty of Theology, in which he said that harassing doubts widely prevailed as to the attitude which the Theological Faculty meant to adopt toward the Vatican Council. It was his duty as Archbishop to set these doubts at rest. As for himself, he frankly owned that, during the deliberation at Rome, he gave utterance to his own opinion with all the positiveness of a conviction attained after mature consideration. " But," he added, "I never intended to retain this conviction of mine if the decision should turn out differently." Accordingly he invites the Theological Faculty to follow suit. The faculty, as a body, complied. But neither Friedrich nor Döllinger. The Archbishop waited two months. Then he wrote entreating Döllinger to conform. To this Döllinger replied that assent to the recent Decree would require him to refute his lifelong historical teaching.
