passages. Preaching on the anniversary of his election to the Pontificate, he says: 'Not only the Apostolic, but also the Episcopal dignity of Blessed Peter enters into our solemnity, and he never ceases to preside over his See, and he has always an unfailing fellowship with the Eternal Priest. For that solidity which, when he was made the Rock, he received from Christ the Rock, transmits itself to his heirs.'[1] Again: 'The solidity of that faith, which is commended in the Prince of the Apostles, is perpetual.'[2] 'If anything, therefore, is rightly done, or rightly decided by us … it is by the work and merits of him whose power lives and whose authority is supreme in his See. … For [the faith of Peter] is divinely guarded by such a solidity that neither has heretical pravity ever been able to violate, nor heathen perfidy to overcome it.'[3]
It was with this consciousness of his commission and prerogatives that S. Leo sent his Dogmatic Letter to the Council of Chalcedon. He peremptorily forbad, in his letter to the Emperor, that the doctrine of faith should be discussed as if it were doubtful. To the Fathers of the Council he wrote: 'Now I am present by my vicars, and in the declaration of the Catholic Faith I am not absent: so that you cannot be ignorant what we believe by the ancient tradition, you cannot doubt what is our desire; wherefore, most dear brethren, let the audacity of disputing against the divinely inspired Faith be altogether
- ↑ Opp. S. Leon.: In Anniv. Assump. Serm. v. 4. Ed. Ballerini, 1753.
- ↑ Ibid. Serm. iii. 2.
- ↑ Ibid. Serm. iii. 3.
