If it had been given to one of those masters of art of the sixteenth century to make a synoptical picture of that grand epoch, he would have singularly modified the perspectives and enlarged the horizons. In regard to that rebellious monk who holds up the Bible as a standard of revolt; in regard to those men who surround him, and among whom are found at the same time the co-workers and the adversaries of his work; a Melanchthon, who had been his disciple, and a Zwingle who had been his rival--strange council, where there is no unanimity except to attack and deny, and where there is division when the matter to be treated of is that of affirming and establishing--in this respect, one would have seen, majestically grouped upon the steps of a temple based, sixteen hundred years previously, upon immovable foundations, the Fathers of the Council of Trent, who, during a term of nearly twenty years, had brought together, classified, and fixed, in wonderful conformity with the whole current of tradition, the divers points of the doctrine and the discipline of the Christian church. {65} Five popes [Footnote 16] occupied the See of St. Peter during the holding of that memorable council. Some among them may, perhaps, be justly blameworthy for this or that fault, in their administration; but to have been able to convoke and reunite that immortal assembly; to have caused it to resume its labors when they had been interrupted; to have conducted them through so many obstacles and difficulties, coming from men or things, to their close; to have, at last, as was done by Pius IV., perpetuated, so to say, the authority and reformatory action of that oecumenical assembly by the institution of that _Congregation_ of the council, whose mission, for three hundred years past, has been to explain and put into practical execution the decrees passed at Trent--this is evidently one of the most important pages of the history of the Reformation within the fold of Christianity, and is, perhaps, one where the divine power and the supernatural constitution of the church shine forth most visibly. For neither the popes who presided over the council nor the bishops who composed it were, taken individually, men of genius; and it is permitted to us to say that in great matters where the personal consideration of man appears the least, there the wisdom and power of God shine forth all the more strikingly. [Footnote 16: Paul III., Julius III., Marcellus II., Paul IV., and Pius IV.]