been, even at the time of the Nicene Council, superfluous for deciding on faith and morals. This doctrine would be a declaration of war against the innermost convictions of the Church, and she would be robbed for the future of those aids supplied by the Council of Trent at her extremest need; even the See of Rome would lose the support the Bishops then assembled gave to it, for after the close of that Council, the power of the Popes became greater than it was before.” The remark of Cardinal Rauscher that, when the dogma of papal infallibility is defined the Church will be deprived of one of her most effective institutions, viz., General Councils, has made a great impression here, as far as I can see. It is readily understood that an assemblage of men, educated to believe in the infallibility of one master, and to repeat mechanically without examination whatever he tells them, would have no influence among men and would be universally regarded as superfluous, a mere idle pageant rather than any real support to the Church. The Church would be impoverished by the loss of one member of its organism, and that very member would be paralysed which in moments of distress and danger had most effectually protected her. Bishop Hefele’s work is worthy of the man who is beyond question the most profound historical scholar among the members of the Council. One can only regret that a writer so pre-eminently qualified to pronounce a clear and weighty opinion on the whole controversy in all its bearings should have confined himself to the single question of the condemnation of Pope Honorius. Those who wish to know the history of Honorius and the Sixth Council in 681, and to see a flagrant example of the utterly crude and unscientific poverty of that modern scholasticism which is treated as theology in the Jesuit lecture-rooms, may be recommended a brief study of this question, which has already produced so many writings and hypotheses, simple and easily understood as it is in itself. A General Council, acknowledged by the whole Church in East and West, condemned a Pope for heresy after his death, and anathematized him on account of a dogmatic letter he issued. The sentence was without contradiction accepted throughout the whole Church, the Roman Church included, and even introduced into the profession of faith to which every new Pope had to swear at his election. It was repeatedly confirmed by subsequent Councils, and in short remained in full force for centuries, till the Popes were seized with a desire to become infallible. It is only since the fifteenth and sixteenth century, and especially since the Jesuits—beginning with Bellarmine—undertook to revise history according to the requirements of their new dogmatic system, that this extremely contradictory fact had to be submitted to a process of manipulation, and the rock on which all schemes of papal infallibility seemed to be wrecked had to be got out of the way.