Patrizi, the Senior Cardinal present,[266] now rose, came to the throne, knelt, laid his hand on the volume of the Gospels, and lifting up his voice, said, "I, Constantine, Bishop of Porto and Rufina, promise, vow, and swear according to the form now read, so help me God, and these God's Holy Gospels"; and he kissed the book.

Then Cardinals and Patriarchs, one by one, after them Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, and Generals of Orders, in regular gradation of rank, first two and two, and, later, four and four,[267] came successively to the throne, and during the space of two hours, knelt down, laid the hand on the book, repeated the above words, each inserting his own name, kissed the book, and so swore allegiance to the King of the Vatican, under the form of a profession of the simple and loving faith of Christ. The two creeds, recited at Trent and in St. Peter's, are below, in parallel columns—the one representing what the Council of Trent found, and the other representing what it left. Future epochs will have to mark subsequent innovations. We put the clause forming the basis of the new dogmas in italics. The other italics are those given in Dr. Challoner's recension[268]:—

The Catholic Creed before the Reformation The Romish Creed after the Reformation
"I, N., with a firm faith, believe and profess all and every one of the things which are contained in that creed which the holy Roman Church maketh use of; namely— "I, N., with a firm faith, believe and profess all and every one of the things which are contained in that creed which the holy Roman Church maketh use of; namely—
"I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible: and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages: God of God; Light of light; true God of true God; begotten, not made; consubstantial to the Father, by whom all things were made; who, for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. Was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried, and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; He ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, and is to come again with glory to judge the living and the dead; of whose kingdom there shall be no end. And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Life-giver, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who together with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who spoke by the Prophets; and (I believe) apostolic Church, I confess one baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen." "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible: and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages: God of God; Light of light; true God of true God; begotten, not made; consubstantial to the Father, by whom all things were made; who, for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. Was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried, and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; He ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, and is to come again with glory to judge the living and the dead; of whose kingdom there shall be no end. And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Life-giver, who proceeds from the Father one holy catholic and and the Son, who together with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who spoke by the Prophets; and (I believe) one holy catholic and apostolic Church, I confess one baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
"I most steadfastly admit and embrace apostolical and ecclesiastical traditions, and all other observances and constitutions of the same Church.
"I also admit the holy Scriptures, according to that sense which our holy Mother, the Church, has held, and does hold, to whom it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Scriptures; neither will I ever take and interpret them otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.
"I also profess that there are truly and properly seven sacraments of the new law, instituted by Jesus Christ our Lord, and necessary for the salvation of mankind, though not all for every one; to wit, baptism, confirmation, eucharist, penance, extreme unction, orders, and matrimony; and that they confer grace; and that of these, baptism confirmation, and orders cannot be reiterated without sacrilege.
"I also receive and admit the received and approved ceremonies of the Catholic Church, used in the solemn administration of all the aforesaid sacraments.
"I embrace and receive all and every one of the things which have been defined and declared in the holy Council of Trent, concerning original sin and justification.
"I profess, likewise, that in the Mass there is offered to God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead. And that in the most holy sacrament of the eucharist there is truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that there is made a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood; which conversion the Catholic Church calls transubstantiation.
"I confess, also, that under either kind alone, Christ is received whole and entire, and a true sacrament.
"I constantly hold that there is a purgatory, and that the souls detained therein are helped by the suffrages of the faithful.
"Likewise, that the saints reigning together with Christ are to be honoured and invocated, and that they offer prayers to God for us; and that their relics are to be held in veneration.
"I most firmly assert that the images of Christ, and of the Mother of God, ever Virgin, and also of the other saints, are to be had and retained, and that due honour and veneration are to be given to them.
"I also affirm that the power of indulgences was left by Christ in the Church, and that the use of them is most wholesome to Christian people.
"I acknowledge the holy catholic and apostolical Roman Church, The Mother and Mistress of all Churches; And I Promise [and Swear] True Obedience to the Bishop of Rome, successor to St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and Vicar of Jesus Christ.
"I likewise undoubtedly receive and profess all other things delivered, defined, and declared by the sacred Canons and General Councils, and particularly by the holy Council of Trent. And I condemn, reject, and anathematise all things contrary thereto, and all heresies which the Church has condemned, rejected, and anathematised.
"This true Catholic faith, Out of Which None Can Be Saved, which I now freely profess, and truly hold, I, N., promise, vow, and swear most constantly to hold and profess the same whole and entire, with God's assistance, to the end of my life; and to procure, as far as lies in my power, that the same shall be held, taught, and preached by all who are under me, or are entrusted to my care by virtue of my office. So help me God and these Holy Gospels of God."

Among the seven hundred men who repeated this set of propositions, unknown to Holy Scripture, we may feel assured that there were not wanting some who as they approached the end of the old, thought, That was the faith as it was professed before Luther; and as they entered upon the new, thought Where was this religion before Luther?

What a contrast between the old and the new! If ever it was true, it is here true, that the old is better. Under the old creed, the conscience is not hampered by any question about the authority of traditions, either apostolic so-called, or such as were confessedly ecclesiastical. The conscience is not perplexed with a fear of interpreting Holy Scripture differently from the unanimous opinion of the Fathers. It is not weighted with seven sacraments, not contracted with scruples about mere rites and modes of administration, not burdened by having to take for gospel every word which some past Council has said on some specified doctrine; not bewildered by a professed repetition ofttimes of the sacrifice once offered up forever, full, perfect, and sufficient; not materialized by transubstantiation of the substance of the bread and wine, not mystified by taking half a sacrament for a whole one, and by asserting that the deliberate evasion of Christ's sacramental command was a true performance of it; not secularized by the mercantile reckonings of purgatory; not let down from filial Christianity towards servile polytheism by the worship of saints, relics, and images; not demoralized by the traffic in indulgences; not narrowed by the domination of one municipal Church over all others; not cramped and degraded by identification with the sins and follies of one human head, much less by an allegiance to that head, as a lord of the faith and a sovereign of the conscience; not envenomed by anathematizing all who do not accept every article that we ourselves accept.

Trent diminished the comprehensiveness of the Papal Society by many new and some grotesque conditions. The present Pontiff has added others, and so far has the shrinking process been now carried that a reductio ad absurdum cannot be logically far off. Believing too much, which comes to believing too little, ends in believing nothing. All these successive submissions of conscience to "authority," of spiritual inquiry and private judgment to priestly dictation, end in the paralysis of the believing faculty. They render a man capable of nothing but submitting.

The ordinary oath of the Papal bishops has often been shown to be in substance the oath of a feudal vassal to his liege lord. It has but a flavour of any evangelical office or work of the soul-winning ministry of Christ. The Emperor Joseph II clearly saw that any man bound to the Pope by that oath could not be reckoned as the subject of any other prince, except by one of those generous fictions which on behalf of the Pope, by way of exception, governments have admitted. But even that oath was not enough; the confession of faith in God must, for all the clergy, be turned into an oath of loyalty to the Bishop of Rome—an oath to a human head in a creed!

The process of taking the oath lasted, as we have said, two hours. The crowd was not great. The session did not raise enthusiasm in any one. Friedrich, who viewed the act of homage from the gallery for theologians, said that nothing could be more tedious. He did not feel flattered with his company in that gallery. Formerly, only doctors were known at Councils as theologians, and, as we have seen, they had real work to do. Now, he says, the chaplains and secretaries of bishops, and even the men who carry the red caps of the Cardinals, figure as theologians—"an edifying company." Even the Stimmen had only a few sentences for this session; and the Civiltá, though read principally by persons who may be supposed to have already seen the creed of Pius IV, filled up room by printing it at full. Quirinus wondered whether this "profusion of superfluous oaths was reconcilable with the scriptural prohibition of needless oaths." They had seven hundred and forty-seven oaths taken.

Only the genius of M. Veuillot sufficed, so far as we remember, to cheer the gloom of the day. It was the Epiphany, and in the portions of Scripture included in the offices of the day, he saw the interpretation of the ceremony. The royally robed potentates who bowed before the enthroned priest-king were the kings of the Gentiles prostrating themselves and worshipping the Church, presenting their gold, and frankincense and, myrrh. The words of Isaiah, "The nations shall come to Thy light, and the kings to the brightness of Thy rising," had the same grand meaning. So he cries (i. 79):—

Behold St. Peter's! The throne of the Pontiff and the Cardinal at the altar, and between throne and altar eight hundred bishops! Behold the prophecy and behold the fact!