he placed upon them in order that the minds of the multitude might be reassured. A curious and very instructive correspondence[1] ensued. Lord Acton took advice as to the answer he should give.
"The great question is," he wrote privately to a friend, "whether I ought to say that I submit to the acts of this as of other Councils, without difficulty or examination (meaning that I feel no need of harmonising and reconciling what the Church herself has not yet had time to reconcile and to harmonise), or ought not the word submit to be avoided, as easily misunderstood."
After further reflection Lord Acton proposed to say:—
"I do not reject—which is all the Council requires under its extreme sanctions. As the Bishops who are my guides have accepted the decrees, so have I. They are a law to me as much as those at Trent, not from any private interpretation, but from the authority from which they come. The difficulties about reconciling them with tradition, which seem so strong to others, do not disturb me a layman, whose business it is not to explain theological questions, and who leaves that to his betters.[2]
"Manning … says he must leave the thing in the hands of the Pope, as everybody tells him I don't believe the Vatican Council. He means, it seems to me, that he simply asks Rome to excommunicate me—a thing really almost without example and incredible in the case of a man who has not attacked the Council, who declares that he has not, and that the Council is his law, though private interpretations are not, whose Diocesan has, after enquiry, pronounced him exempt from all anathema."[3]
Against Lord Acton no further action was taken.
