5 2 0
ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
the Council to be to obtain a remedy for old abuses and for recent errors. More than once, addressing a group of bishops, he said that he would do nothing to raise disputes among them, and would be content \vith a declaration in favour of intolerance. I-Ie wished of course that Catholicism should have the benefit of toleration in England and Russia, but the principle must be repudiated by a Church holding the doctrine of exclusive salvation. The meaning of this intimation, that persecution would do as a substitute for infallibility, was that the most glaring obstacle to the definition would be removed if the Inquisition was recognised as consistent with Catholicism. Indeed it seemed that infallibility was a means to an end which could be obtained in other ways, and that he would have been satisfied with a decree confirming the twenty- third article of the Syllabus, and declaring that no Pope has ever exceeded the just bounds of his authority in faith, in politics, or in morals. 1 IVlost of the bishops had allowed themselves to be reassured, \vhen the Bull Multiplices 'illter, regulating the procedure at the Council, was put into circulation in the first days of December. The Pope assumed to himself the sole initiative in proposing topics, and the exclusive nomination of the officers of the Council. He invited the bishops to bring forward their own proposals, but required that they should submit them first of all to a Commission \vhich was appointed by himself, and consisted half of I talians. If any proposal was allo\ved to pass by this Commission, it had still to obtain the sanction of the Pope, \vho could therefore exclude at \vill any topic, even if the whole Council wished to discuss it. Four elective Com- missions were to mediate between the Council and the Pope. When a dectee had been discussed and opposed, it was to be referred, together with the amendments, to one of these Commissions, where it was to be reconsidered, with the aid of divines. When it came back from the
1 That article condemns the following proposition: .. Romani Pontifices et Con- cilia oecumenica a limitibus suae potestati recesserunt, jura Principum usurparunt, atque etiam in rebus fidei et morum definiendis errarunt."
