if the communis sensus fidelium were not united against the dogmatiser? What bishop would have allowed or have passed such a sentence against him, unless the whole Episcopate had been united in the contrary principles and instincts? 'This tradition,' as Gerson calls it, could have had no authority, nor even existence as a tradition, if it had not been the immemorial and widespread belief of men. Adulation may make schools and cliques; it cannot make a tradition. The tradition was fatal to the novel opinions of Gerson and his master; and he solaced himself, like all innovators, in aspersing his brethren. Now, if any one can produce evidence to show that in this Gerson was wrong, and that evidence is to be found before his time of the denial of the infallibility of the See and Successor of Peter, let it be produced,[1] and it will be fairly examined. The infallibility of the Vicar of Jesus Christ is in possession. It is for those who deny it to dislodge it if they can.
I will now take other evidence: and as far as possible from the public acts of Synods or of Episcopates. The few individual witnesses I shall quote will be those whose names have an exceptional weight.
2. When, in 1314, the King of France was endea-
- ↑ Theoph. Raynaud, tom. xx. p. 389, Cracov. 1669, sums up the question in these words:—'It were in vain to bring together a number of theologians, since all may be adduced who lived before the Council of Constance. For this truth [the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff] was never called into controversy among Catholics before the time of the Councils of Bale and Constance. But all who went before unanimously taught that the definitions of Pontiffs, even without a General Council, made matter of faith, and that every judgment of faith belonged ultimately to the Holy See.' See also the whole of section xi.
