so explicit that the Clergy of England and Scotland afterwards adopted it as their own and presented it to the Holy Father. The newspaper in question was never pleased to insert the correction.
But these are flowers plucked at random.
I will now endeavour to give shortly a more connected outline of the Vatican Council, as drawn by the newspapers of the last eight or nine months; and as their representations will be one day read up as contemporaneous records for a future history, I wish to leave in the Archives of the Diocese a contemporaneous record of their utter worthlessness, and, for the most part, of their utter falsehood.
As the highest point attracts the storm, so the chief violence fell upon the head of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. On this I shall say nothing. Posterity will know Pius the Ninth; and the world already knows him now too well to remember, except with sorrow and disgust, the language of his enemies. 'If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household?' No one has this privilege above the Vicar of the Master; and it is a great joy and distinct source of strength and confidence to all of the household to share this sign, which never fails to mark those who are on His side against the world.
The Council was composed, at first, of 767 Fathers. We were told that their very faces were such as to compel an enlightened correspondent, at the first sight of them, to lament 'that the spiritual welfare of the world should be committed to such men.'
Then, by a wonderful disposition of things, for the
