great as is the erudition, experience, justice, prudence, and authority of the Roman Congregations, such a course would not be for the prosperity of the Universal Church; for the Church, as the Holy Ghost teaches, is a body, but the health of a body depends on the force and motion of all and each of the members. 'If all were one member, where were the body?' (1 Cor. xii. 19.) Nobody doubts that the chief member of the body is the head, and that in it, as in its centre and seat, the vital force resides; and yet no one will say that the soul resides in the head alone, which is rather diffused as its form throughout the members of the whole body.
These, then, are reasons for judging that a dogmatic decision on the infallibility of the Pope would not be opportune. Let that suffice which has been already declared, and has been believed by all; namely, that the Church, whether congregated in Council, or dispersed throughout the world, but in the Successor of Peter always one, is always infallible, and that the Supreme Pontiff, according to the words of the Council of Florence, is 'the teacher of the whole Church and of all Christians.' But as to the mysterious gift of infallibility, which by God is bestowed upon the Episcopate united to the Pope, and at the same time is bestowed in a special manner on the Supreme Pontiff, and by which gift the Church, whether in an Œcumenical Council or by the Pope without a Council, guards and explains the truths of revelation, it is not expedient to make further declarations unless a proved necessity demand, which necessity at present does not exist.
