the seamless robe of our Lord, from the top throughout. The texture of the robe spread downwards from the beam on which it depended. The organisation of the Church was unfolded from the plenitude of its head. The prerogatives of stability, perpetuity, and indefectibility in the head became endowments of the body united to him. But they existed in Peter before they were communicated to the Church, and before the Church was organised to which they were to be communicated. The indefectibility of truth, therefore, both in its conception and enunciation, which includes necessarily the discernment between truth and falsehood in the custody of the Deposit, or, in other words, the supernatural gift of infallibility, in the ordinary[1] state of the Church, resides first in its head, next in the whole episcopate united with him; so that the declarations and condemnations of the head of the Church apart from the episcopate are infallible; and likewise those of the episcopate, being united with him. This constitutes what is called the active infallibility of the Church. From this, too, arises the passive infallibility; that is, the Divine security which sustains the whole Church in its faith:
- ↑ It is impossible to treat in this place of the extraordinary condition of the Church, such as occurred in what is called 'the great Western schism.' It is enough for the present to quote the words of Bellarmin: 'Etsi Concilium sine Papa non potest definire nova dogmata fidei, potest tamen judicare tempore schismatis, quis sit verus Papa, et providere Ecclesiæ de vero pastore, quando is nullus aut dubius est: et hoc est, quod recte fecit Concilium Constantiense.'—De Concil. Auct. lib. ii. c. 19, sect. 22.
