this an obligation of the divine order? If so, where is it to be read? In Scripture it cannot be looked for. In tradition it is not to be found. In history we have the direct reverse. We find the Pontiffs witnessing, teaching, deciding by the authority of Peter. We find the Episcopate appealing to their judgments as final. We find the faith of Peter, taken not only by the faithful, but also by the bishops, as the rule of faith, and the text of what is to be believed by all the world.
If the concurrence of the Episcopate with its Head be 'the most certain means' of avoiding error, because it is the full, ultimate, and, so to speak, exhaustive act of infallible judgment, nevertheless the privilege of stability in faith divinely granted to the See and Successor of Peter is a certain means of avoiding error; and that certainty, though extensivè it be not adequate to the certainty of the whole Church, which included always the See and Successor of Peter, is nevertheless intrinsically and by divine ordination certain, to the exclusion of the possibility of error.
Why, then, is the Pontiff bound to take 'the most certain means,' when a means divinely certain also exists? And why is he bound to take a means which demands an Œcumenical Council or a worldwide and protracted interrogation, with all the delays and uncertainties of correspondence, when, by the divine order, a certain means in the Apostolic See is always at hand? For instance, was Innocent X. bound to consult the whole episcopal body before he condemned Jansenius? or Alexander VIII., when he condemned the 'Peccatum Philosophicum'? or Sixtus
