This new thing in a creed was said by the Pope to have been ordained by the Council of Trent. If Dr. Newman had taken the trouble to see how far the terms to which he had to swear were an "echo" of those of the Council, he would have found that there was a discrepancy, considerable in words, but, in practice, monstrous. The Council decreed that no one should interpret Holy Scripture against the unanimous consent of the Fathers. That decree was confirmed by the Pope. It had thus acquired all the warrant of infallibility, and the most solemn guarantee for being irreformable that Rome had it in her power to give. This decree was "of faith." How long did it continue to be "of faith"? Only until the Pope prepared his Bull, collecting the dogmatic decrees into a novel creed. Then it was altered. The men who, henceforth, were to be the priests of Rome found themselves called upon to take oath, not as the Council willed it and worded it, that they would never interpret Holy Scripture against the unanimous consent of the Fathers, but that they would never interpret it except according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers. This was another will and another wording altogether. The latter amounts to little less than an oath that they would never interpret it at all, except on very few points.
To make the scope of this alteration clearer, let us suppose the case of Dr. Newman himself, while yet in the enjoyment of that ministry of the English Church which he afterwards threw away. Had he then been required not to preach anything contrary to the unanimous opinion of the bench of bishops, he might have felt tolerably free. But had he been required never to preach anything except according to the unanimous opinion of the bench of bishops, he would have felt—Why, I can hardly preach at all. Yet this vast change is made in a creed while its articles are passing through the process of being culled from the original documents, and presented in a collected form. In this form it was imposed by oath upon the consciences of men for ever. One and the same Papal hand signed its infallible certainty and irreformable permanency in one shape, in a little time afterwards altered its tenor, destroyed its certainty, reformed its scope, and then signed its infallibility and its irreformable permanency in the new shape. And an Englishman who swallows this camel in the creed stands between us and the light, straining out a gnat that he says has got into the Syllabus.
But what is the real teaching, as to the use of physical force, of Cardinal Soglia, who is soberly put forward by Dr. Newman before the English public as justifying him in crying out against Mr. Gladstone for accusing the Church of claiming the right to use force? Page 216: "The Church, exercising her power in the external tribunal, has been long accustomed to chastise offenders even with prison, exile, confinement in monasteries, whipping or flagellation, with fine, and other similar penalties; which, inasmuch as they affect the body, are commonly called corporeal." Page 219: "We affirm that in the inherent authority of the Church, by which she can coerce offenders with salutary penalties, is certainly contained the right of awarding such temporal penalties as consist in fine, exile, prison, whipping, and other things of the same kind." Page 222: "If a case occurs in which severer punishment appears necessary, the ecclesiastical judge may not himself resort to it, but he is to hand over the delinquent to the secular power to be punished according to its will. Besides, it is evident that the crime of heresy itself was brought under the cognizance of the ecclesiastical tribunals up to the point when the heretics, being convicted, and found obstinate, were first punished by ecclesiastical censures, and afterwards, being subjected by the lay power to capital penalty, were exterminated." Page 222: "The Church never pronounced a sentence of blood. Even the Inquisition smote heretics with the spiritual sword, and prison, but the lay princes subjected them to the last capital penalty." Page 217: "Perhingius believes that the Church does possess the right of inflicting capital punishment, but that she is not accustomed to exercise it, or to carry it out by ecclesiastical ministers and judges, but through lay ones, and by means of the temporal power, because the latter is more becoming, and more appropriate to the claims of the Church." What follows would, by internal evidence, seem to be added by Vecchiotti, but no intimation is given to that effect. Page 217: "He [Cardinal Tarquini] held that there is no kind of penalty with which the Church may not in her own right punish offenders; and thus temporal goods, reputation, rights of office and of heritage, and life itself, are subject to the ecclesiastical power. Otherwise the Church could not compel disobedient rebels, or avenge herself for their crimes, nor could she cut off rotten and noxious members from the body." Soglia, or rather his continuator, speaking of the moderns, Tarquini and "other doctors," and their doctrine of physical force, says (p. 217), "They derive it from the character and constitution of the Church herself, or from the nature of a perfect society and its end. Hence, just as in a perfect civil society the right of execution jus necis belongs to the lay power for the good of the commonwealth and of the citizens, so do they assert that none can deny that by stronger reason the same right resides in the ecclesiastical power for the spiritual good of the faithful."
FOOTNOTES:
[74] Acton's Zur Geschichte, pp. 13, 14.
[75] Acta (Freiburg edition), p. 35.
[76] Acta (Freiburg edition), p. 33.
[77] Centenary of St. Peter, p. 5.
[78] Serie VII. vol. vii. p. 587.
[79] Acta (Freiburg edition), p. 34.