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opened, as to what may or may not be, the precise present authority of the Syllabus or Encyclical Letter, but the writers referred to abundantly prove that in their opinion it requires no more than the Papal fiat to make them absolutely binding on every Roman Catholic, and consequently in many countries, and certainly in Canada, to array them in antagonism to their fellow subjects of other creeds.
With reference to this point, I have read with much interest, a very able and temperate letter, that appeared in the Toronto Globe, dated 15th March, by an "Ultramontane," and I entirely agree with him that so far as
demned as heretical; sometimes as savouring of heresy; sometimes as schismatic; sometimes simply as erroneous, or false; sometimes as dangerous, or scandalous, or perverse; sometimes as leading to heresy, or to schism, or to disobedience to ecclesiastical superiors. When a particular doctrine has been condemned by the Pope as heretical in the way designated by the doctrinal definition of the Vatican Council, speaking of the Infallible teaching office of the Pope;—then, indeed, there can be no doubt that we have, under these circumstances, an utterance of the Pope ex cathedrâ. But as in the Syllabus, through the whole catalogue of eighty propositions, designated generally in the title as 'Errors' (Syllabus errorum), there is nothing to show, as was pointed out above, under what category of condemned propositions, according to old ecclesiastical usage, a particular error falls, we are compelled to have recourse to the records or sources, in which the particular propositions of the Syllabus have been on previous occasions condemned by Popes, in order to learn whether it is condemned simply as erroneous, or whether it has some other designation, and notably whether it has been condemned as heretical."
Dr. Newman writes in his chapter on the Syllabus:—
"The Syllabus, then, is to be received with profound submission, as having been sent by the Pope's authority to the Bishops of the world. It certainly has indirectly his extrinsic sanction; but intrinsically, and viewed in itself, it is nothing more than a digest of certain Errors made by an anonymous writer. There would be nothing on the face of it to show that the Pope had ever seen it, page by page, unless the 'Imprimatur' implied in the Cardinal's letter had been an evidence of this. It has no mark or seal put upon it which gives it a direct relation to the Pope. Who is its author? Some select theologian or high official, doubtless; can it be Cardinal Antonelli himself? No, surely; any how it is not the Pope, and
