be justified. To justify it there must be added the further endowment of Infallibility. He ought to have it, therefore he has. Can anything better illustrate the craving after systematic completeness than this the marvellous construction of an ideal of absolute authority, for which the attribute of Infallibility appears logically necessary, to make the stupendous system quite complete?
The relation of the Pope's Infallibility to that of the entire Episcopate has been left by the Vatican Decision in great confusion. It may, of course, be said that time has not yet elapsed sufficient to allow a proper readjustment of various truths. It appears to be still acknowledged that all antiquity is committed to belief in the Infallibility of the entire Episcopate, whether assembled or dispersed. It appears to be also affirmed that the Pope alone is infallible whatever the Bishops may think, If the Pope's authority can render the minority infallible, what becomes of the Infallibility of the entire Episcopate?
The question which Newman puts in the mouths of the Irish Bishops of 1826 is greatly to the point:—
"How," they would ask, "can it ever come to pass that a majority of our order should find it their duty to relinquish their prime prerogative, and to make the Church take the shape of a pure monarchy?"[1]
The real effect of the Vatican Decree upon the entire Episcopate is to deprive them of their prime prerogative. The Collective Episcopate is not for the modern Roman the ultimate voice of the Church. But for the ancients, for the contemporaries of St Vincent of Lerins, for instance, this is exactly what it was. The fierceness of the struggle in the Vatican was due to a consciousness that it was a struggle for existence between two
- ↑ Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 13.
