brethren, to say to you that all these confident assurances are pleasant illusions. None but those who are admitted to the work of preparing for the Council know what is in preparation, and they are all bound by the Pontifical Secret. From them, nothing can be known; from others, nothing can be learned. As S. Augustine said: 'Nemo dare potest quod non habet.' We may therefore dismiss all those confidential communications.
But beyond this, they who believe, as we do, that an Œcumenical Council deliberates and decrees by an assistance over which human partisanship, political calculation, private interests, controversial rivalries, and human errors have no power to prevail, will have no anxiety as to the result, and no eager predispositions to express. If the Council should decide contrary to their previous judgment, they would rejoice to be corrected by its unerring guidance; if it should refrain from pronouncing on matters on which they previously believed a decision to be opportune or even necessary, they would with their whole heart submit their judgment, and believe that such a decision would be not only not necessary, but not even opportune. In this sense of perfect submission, springing from faith in the perpetual and infallible assistance of the Holy Spirit, all Catholics will await the final result of the first Council of the Vatican. All this hot anxiety as to its decrees belongs to minds used to the contentions of convocations which may err, or to the debates of Parliaments in which parties rule the day. But to those who believe with undoubting faith that the acts of the coming Council,
