behalf of the validity of indulgences which the Pope preached and caused to be preached. But this passage of Aquinas obviously admits of more than one construction. It is general and vague. It does not necessarily ascribe to the Pope any Infallibility at all. It affirms that it would be wrong to credit the Pope with a desire to deceive. It infers that indulgences possess validity because the Pope proclaims them, but also because it is a matter which the whole Church receives and approves. The infallibilist writer Schwane[1] urges that we must not infer from the phrase "which the whole Church receives" that the Pope's Infallibility depends on the Church's consent. But it seems perfectly clear that to St Thomas's mind the reception and approval by the whole Church of the doctrine in question was precisely that which gave stability to the papal utterance about it. He does not write as if the Church's consent was a necessary sequel to a papal decree. In point of fact, if this were so, any reference to the Church's consent might seem superfluous, since it could add nothing to the validity of the Pope's instructions. But in Aquinas's argument for indulgences the elements are two: the Church's reception and approval of the doctrine, and the papal utterance. And these are mutually supporting.
Elsewhere Aquinas says:—
"If any one rejected a decision after it had been made by the authority of Universal Church, he would be considered a heretic. And that authority chiefly [principaliter] resides in the Supreme Pontiff."[2]
But the exact force of his language is among his interpreters a matter of dispute.
Bossuet held that the language of St Thomas on
