Page:Petri Privilegium - Manning.djvu/221

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jurists, and Jansenists. The declaration of 1682 is no more than a mere modern refinement of the same doctrine, rude and inchoate at first, afterwards reduced to system and expression. It is to be borne in mind that the Articles of 1682, if they deny the infallibility of the Pope, do not affirm the fallibility of the Roman Church and See. The distinction 'inter sedem, et in eâ sedentem,' is carefully guarded even by Gallicans. Instinct told them that to deny the infallibility of the Roman See was to deny the infallibility of the Church, and to depart from the whole praxis of the Church for the first sixteen centuries. The third period may be said to begin from 1682, in which the denial of the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff was first enunciated in a formula. It opened the period of definition. The contests between those who maintained the Immaculate Nativity and those who maintained the Immaculate Conception led to a closer and more scientific analysis, from which two things have resulted: first, the elimination of the doctrine of the Immaculate Nativity as inadequate and erroneous; and secondly, the definition of the Immaculate Conception. So, also, the contests between those who maintain the infallibility of the Church, but reject the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, have already resulted in an analysis of the whole subject of the divine certainty of faith, and the divine order by which the faith is preserved and propounded in the world; and from this will likewise follow in due time—whether now or hereafter, it is not for us to say—two consequences: first, the elimination of the doctrine of 1682 as inadequate and erroneous; and

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