non placet up to the decisive day of July 13, they, to their disgrace, remained absent from the formal act of July 18; and this from mere human respect of persons.'
Here I must again say: These are hard words for a man of learning to fling publicly in the faces of German, Austrian, and Hungarian archbishops and bishops—viz. that, out of mere human and personal motives, they kept away from the solemn act of expressing their assent to a revealed truth. Such a hard judgment as this neither the Pope nor their brother bishops pronounced upon them; it has been reserved for a layman to constitute himself the judge of their consciences, and to raise this cry of scorn against bishops: 'You stayed away from the solemn sitting of the Council, July 18, out of mere human respect.' What avails it to say, 'He doesn't blame them for it'? The reproach of acting in so grave a matter from a motive of mere human respect is the greatest reproach that can be made to a bishop.
Very different was the judgment of their brother bishops upon the cause of their absence. It is not in the General Congregation, but in the Solemn Session of the Council, that the decisive vote is given. This it is easy to see from the acts of General Councils. If even up to this point in the last General Congregation before the Solemn Session the bishop is not satisfied as to all his difficulties, or if he thinks it better that the decision should not yet be pronounced on such and such a doctrine, he may in the interval between the last General Congregation and the Solemn Session acquire a full conviction on the subject by discoursing
