The writer does not overlook us non-Catholics. For us also the great event was pregnant with blessing, showing us, above all things, "the divine organization of the Church," and in it showing us the "remedy for the unbridled excesses of private judgment, the parent of that Babel confusion in which we are involved." Therefore,
to Mary, sweet Lady and Queen of this kingdom of Christ, be loving thanksgivings rendered, for after God to her favour do we trace the benefit obtained. Scarcely had we read in the Bull of Convocation that the Council would open its sittings on the day sacred to the Immaculate Conception of Mary, before we felt a firm and immovable hope of the definition of pontifical infallibility. It was fitting that the Pontiff who, amid the applause of the Christian world, had dogmatically asserted the highest prerogatives of her holiness, should himself behold the highest prerogatives of his apostolic ministry dogmatically affirmed (p. 180).
FOOTNOTES:
[425] It seems that the Bishop of Orleans, and most of the French prelates in opposition, wished to make a solemn protest against the treatment they had met with; against the advantage taken of the hot season to weary them; against the want of fairness shown towards them by the Presidents all through the discussion; and, lastly, against the excesses, insults, and affronts of which the majority had been guilty with regard to them. Having made this protest, they proposed to leave Rome immediately.—Vitelleschi, p. 200.
[426] Quirinus, p. 624.
[427] We have avoided noting the charges of misquotation and falsification of authorities made on the one side and the other. It would be endless.
[428] Quirinus says that he should think it a sin to print it, but that the Romans freely credited and repeated it.
[429] Serie VII. xi. p. 94.
[430] Veuillot, ii. p. 389.
[431] Friedberg, 688; or a French translation in Le Concile du Vat. et le Mouvement Anti-infallibiliste, p. 212.