Page:Petri Privilegium - Manning.djvu/25

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have been honourable, manly, and straightforward. Certainly the late events in Rome ought to awaken in any Christian heart a noble and a generous sympathy. They were an exhibition of the Christian Faith and Church in acts of Divine worship, and of charity to all mankind, divested of every accent of controversy. Whosoever believes in Christianity and desires the spread of the kingdom of our Divine Lord upon earth, must have a sympathy in the great assembly of the Church the other day. Even those who are separated from the Catholic and Roman Church recognise it as the great foundation of Christendom. They who reject parts of its doctrine hold the Creed of the Apostles, which it has guarded from the beginning; they who rest their faith upon Councils, Fathers, and Scriptures, know that the custody of all these is ultimately in the Catholic Church. They who repose their Christianity upon the testimony and facts of history, know that the last and highest witness for the Christian revelation, in its succession and even in its origin, is the Catholic and Roman Church. It is impossible, therefore, that they can look without sympathy upon this majestic demonstration of its indefectible life and immutable identity.

It may without exaggeration be said, not only that, since the Council of Trent, no such manifestation of the unity and universality of the Church has been seen, but that the eighteen years of interrupted and lingering toil of that Council in a valley of the