Meditation on what was involved in these claims to all-absorbing power was not likely to relieve the bishops of the pain caused by the stealthy attempt upon their vote. What the Presiding Cardinals and the Bishop of Rovigo had tried to steal from them, was not trash. It was all that ancient bishops, even when acknowledging the primacy of Rome, would have fought for with at least ecclesiastical weapons. Of the Committee not a man spoke his scorn, and the steady majority was not shaken. The world accused it of conspiring against the rights and liberties of mankind. It might full as well have been accused of conspiring against the rights and liberties of bishops. If the official organs had often, during the Council, used such language as "lying" and so forth, they were quiet now, while words like "lying," "cheating," "deceiving," etc., flew freely about, and, if Quirinus be correct, were repeatedly used in the meetings of the bishops of the minority.
But if the majority was not disturbed, a note rang out from the French minority which might remind any one who has lived in their country through a revolution, of the Prend ton sac—Take thy sack!—the three sudden taps which at such a time make timid hearts in a house beat as if they had been hit by the drumstick.
"1. The hour of Providence has struck," cries this voice, with the true French ring. "The decisive moment for saving the Church has arrived. 2. By the additions made to the third Canon of the third chapter, the committee, de fide, has violated the Rules, which permit not the introduction of any amendment without discussion by the Council. 3. The addition surreptitiously made is of importance beyond calculation. It changes the constitution of the Church. It enacts the monarchy of the Pope pure, absolute, and indivisible. It carries the abolition of the judicial rights and the co-sovereignty of the bishops, and with it the affirmation and anticipatory definition of separate and personal infallibility. 4. Duty and honour permit us not to vote this Canon without discussion, as it contains an immense revolution. The discussion can and may last six months, for it affects the capital question, the very constitution of the sovereign power in the Church. 5. This discussion is impossible, because of the pressure of the season and the disposition of the majority. 6. One thing alone, worthy and honourable, remains to be done—to demand the immediate prorogation of the Council till the month of October, and to present a declaration, in which all the protests already sent in shall be enumerated, and the last violation of the Rules shall be set forth, as well as the contempt shown to the dignity and liberty of the bishops. At the same time, we must give notice of our intended departure, which can no longer be deferred. 7. By the departure, on such grounds, of a considerable number of bishops of all nations, the œcumenicity of the Council would be at an end, and all acts which it might subsequently adopt would be null in point of authority. 8. The courage and devotedness of the minority would produce an immense effect in the world. The Council would meet in the month of October in circumstances vastly more favourable. All the questions now only broached would be taken up again and treated with dignity and liberty. The Church would be saved, and the moral order of the world."[442]
Had this energetic advice been adopted, the Roman Catholic Church would for the time have been saved from the last step in a downward series; but whether the moral order of the world would have been the better is another question. Those who seek a moral order higher than could be given by the men who attempted to palm the new Canon upon the Council, may well be content to have the lines drawn and the forces defined. The Council has given to all men an opportunity of knowing, if they will, what are the morals of the Pope and his officers, and what is order in their vocabulary. The moral order of the world must now be secured either under the absolute dominion of the Pontiff, or, as it has been best secured before, over the remains of his pretensions.
But the bishops of the minority were not the men to give the Church a further chance of continuing that confusion of all moral order which resulted from her old ambiguities. They did now as they had done before—let her take her way, and sent in a protest stating the main facts of the deception and breach of Rules.[443] One can almost see the smiles of the men in power at the sight of one piece of paper more.
If ever there was a case to justify the hasty saying ascribed to Burke, that Protestantism is a mere negation, it was that of the Vatican minority always protesting and never maintaining its ground. Of course, every protest has its negative side, but that is the side turned towards him who is protested against. It always has its positive side; that is, the side of him who makes the protest. He asserts a right. Dr. Newman, in a moment of sound sense, said, "What is the very meaning of the word 'Protestantism,' but that there is a call to speak out?"[444] So, when in a day of mercy, nations, hearing from heaven a call to speak out, protested against the sins and follies of the Pontiff, their protest was indeed a mere negation to him whose pretensions were rolled back; but to those who made the protest good, it was a positive upholding of existing rights, a positive recovery of lapsed rights, a positive deliverance from great evils, and a positive entrance into possession of great and heritable good. They protested against the doctrinal authority of the Pontiff, and maintained the doctrinal authority of the Bible. They protested against the authority of ecclesiastical courts or Councils to fetter the press, the pulpit, or the private conscience. In doing so, they maintained a duty imposed, and a right given, by God. The negative result was to the Inquisition and the Curia. The positive result was to the Press, the Pulpit, the Civil Court, and the silent tribunal of the Soul, with its reinstated jury of accusing and excusing thoughts. They protested against indulgences, purgatory, and all the commerce of the mass, and maintained the free gift of God's unpurchaseable grace, the sovereignty of His judgment, the finished and all-perfect sacrifice of His Son. They protested against sensuous and idolatrous spectacle, and upheld scriptural worship; protested against colours, scents, and gorgeous dress, and upheld sound teaching, borrowing all its glory from spiritual elements, none from physical; they protested against priestly caste, and upheld a brotherhood, a royal nation of priests; they protested against progressive conformity to newly-invented superstitions, against the service of local and subordinate divinities, and at the same time upheld progressive conformity to the standard of our Lord and His apostles. They protested against the idea of one fold or one pen, but upheld that of one flock diversified in its members, various in its folds, but one in love to the common Lord and in likeness to the common Father.
When Darboy and Dupanloup, on July 4, gave up the attempt of averting the definition by delay, how little did they know that a couple of days later and the whole prospect of the Papacy would be changed. When the Pope on the morrow of that day followed up his victory by the additional blow which the surreptitious Canon dealt at the very semblance of liberty or rule in the Council, how little did he suspect that the visions of restoration long floating before his fancy were to give place to real scenes of fresh disaster. It was only on June 10 that Ollivier, in the Chamber of Deputies, gave confident assurances of peace, while on July 6, in the same Chamber, Gramont sounded an unmistakable blast of war. Even now, human foresight did not measure the rapidity with which events were to rush to a collision, and then to a catastrophe. Napoleon III had so often seemed bent on measuring himself with Prussia, and had so often drawn back, that it was not unreasonable to hope that, even after bellicose words, he might be prudent once more.
The next week following that day which placed in hazard the fortunes of the restorer of the Papacy and those of the Papacy itself, was spent in the Council in voting the chapters in their final shape. The Canon which had been brought surreptitiously forward on the fifth was produced in the regular manner on the thirteenth, and after all the outcry it was passed; "the most pregnant article," says Quirinus, "that had been laid before any Council for six hundred years." It was now voted by rising and sitting,—which is not to be wondered at when originally the Presidents had wanted it to be voted without being even known. We must not blame the minority for not now debating it. The Rules did not allow of this. It had been adopted by the committee and must be met with a Yea or Nay. How many voted against this pregnant act is uncertain. Some say fifty or sixty, some ninety or a hundred.[445] In that act every shred and tatter of the Gallican liberties, or any other liberties, except that of doing the Pope's will, passed from the Papal officers, whom, as Quirinus says, the Roman Chancery still calls bishops. The chapter to which this Canon was attached annulled all national rights whatever, whether Gallican, Josephine, or parliamentary, which might conflict with the supreme authority. Vitelleschi (p. 202) says that the Secretary of State appeared very uneasy as to the opinion of governments on this fresh declaration. The bishops naturally would have similar apprehensions, but as to them, fear cast out fear. They had good reason to believe in the gentleness of Liberal governments, and they had no reason to believe in the gentleness of the Pope. They trusted, says Vitelleschi, to the tolerance and freedom of thought which has everywhere triumphed in modern days. With the Papal government, on the other hand, they had neither tolerance nor freedom to trust to. They knew that if they dared to provoke it, the stroke of Pius IX would come down hot and heavy. The oath of a bishop to the Pope, which obviously aims more at feudal vassalage than at spiritual works, had made the Emperor Joseph II feel that men bound by it were not citizens in the sense of free men. "It does not accord with the fidelity or obedience due by a bishop, as a subject, to his sovereign.... A bishop who feels himself bound by that oath must become perjured."[446]
Many writers mention what is clearly stated in a letter of Hefele, under date of July 9:—[447]