the Council would know what course to take. The Council of Trent made no definition of the Immaculate Conception. It went to the very verge, but no further. If the bishops were unanimous in declaring the prerogatives of the Head of the Church, they would not thereby abdicate or divest themselves of any privileges or endowments divinely conferred upon the Episcopate. The divine endowments of the Church are not at war with each other. The Apostles did not cease to be infallible because their Head was so. The infallibility of the Church does not diminish the infallibility of Councils. The endowments of the body are the prerogatives of the head, and both have their proper sphere and their full and legitimate exercise. No bishop alone is infallible, nor is the whole Episcopate infallible without its Head. Of what, then, could they divest themselves by declaring their Head to be infallible?
5. That the hope of reunion with the East is alone to be found in the explicit recognition of the divine prerogatives of the Church. Reunion on anything short of this, on any base, obscure, ambiguous, or equivocal, would not endure for a day. The rent would be made worse. The Decree of the Council of Florence, which is alleged to be sufficient, was not sufficient for the Greeks. They accepted it, but as soon as they were again at Constantinople they threw it to the winds. Reunion is not to be gained or to be sought by reducing its conditions, like a bargain, to the minimum; but by an explicit and precise acceptance of the truth. Gregory XIII., Urban VIII., Benedict XIV., kept strictly to the Florentine Decree,
