pease the troubles which had so long afflicted Christendom. The measure was distinctly proclaimed exceptional, and explicitly limited to a particular occasion, whereby its importance as a precedent is heightened; for this involves the principle that the Church considers itself free to invent new forms, when their adoption may seem advisable for meeting the exigencies of particular times. The Roman Bullarium contains, indeed, a string of Bulls subsequent to the three we have mentioned, that hear on Papal elections; hut where they do more than solemnly confirm the above, they deal with matters of quite secondary importance, modifying points of mere detail. No new organic principle has been imported into the machinery of Papal elections since the days of Gregory X. The only subsequent pontifical utterance on this subject that can lay any claim to the importance of an organic law, is the Bull issued in 1621 by Gregory XV., and supplemented in the year after by an elaborate injunction of ceremonial, which is the one still observed. To go through these successive enactments in their chronological order would, however, be merely to run through a wearisome cata-
