for care and deliberation. And this is what Gelasius implies. For his language is—"which God avert, we trust it cannot happen." But this is the language of prayer and piety; it is not the certainty of a truth revealed. Gelasius has every hope that, contingently on compliance with the necessary conditions, this disaster will not be permitted to take place. But we may not transpose hope into fact. Tested by history, urges Bossuet, individual occupants of the Roman See have grievously misled the Church. Liberius and Honorius, as far as in them lay, did actually deceive the world. Yet the world was not deceived: for other remedies exist against calamities such as these. The language of Gelasius is one of the most magnificent from the Roman See. But it is the language of a pious confidence, not a dogma of the immutable faith.
6. The classic expression of the proper method, according to the Ancient Church, for distinguishing Catholic Faith from falsehood, is the famous Canon of St Vincent of Lerins. We propose to summarise his principles, and then to record their controversial use within the Roman Communion.
"Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself all possible care must be taken that we hold that faith which has been believed everywherealways by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense Catholic, which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally.
"This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity