memorials and counter representations, according to the new order of business. This means that the work carefully matured by a Bishop through weeks or months of severe study will be summed up in two or three words, and in the shape it is thrown into by a hostile Committee. If the Bishops regard it as an intolerable oppression at home to have to submit their Pastorals for previous inspection to their Governments, here they can have nothing printed, even after it has undergone the censorship. It is no mere phrase, when the Bishops say in their Protest against the new order of business that their consciences are intolerably burdened, and that the Œcumenical character of the Council is likely to be assailed and its authority fundamentally shaken (_labefacteretur_). They consider the arrangement for deciding doctrines by simply counting heads intolerable, and they recognise as of immeasurable importance, and the very turning-point of the whole Council (_totius Concilii cardo vertitur_), the question as to the necessary conditions of a definition of faith binding the consciences of all the faithful. The Pope wants to have a new article of faith made by the Council, on the acceptance or rejection of which every man’s salvation or condemnation is henceforth to depend. And now this same Pope has overthrown the principle always hitherto acknowledged in the Church, that such decrees could only be passed unanimously, and has made the opposite principle into a law. The Opposition Bishops are well aware that any regular examination and discussion of the infallibility question is rendered impossible by the nature of the Council Hall and the plan of voting by majorities. They have therefore proposed to the Legates that a deputation of several Bishops chosen from among themselves should be associated with the Commission on Faith, or with certain Bishops of the majority, to discuss the form of the decree, and that, when they have come to a common understanding, the formula as finally agreed upon should be submitted to the vote of the Council in full assembly. The authorities will not readily yield to this demand on many accounts, and chiefly because what Tacitus said of the Roman people 1800 years ago is well understood at Rome now, “Juvit credulitatem nox et promptior inter tenebras affirmatio.”