be acknowledged by the Church in perpetual succession in Peter's place: on whom Christ Himself should confer supreme authority as He did on Peter, of ordaining the matters which relate to faith, and to other things pertaining to the salvation of the faithful.' And further he says, 'that He (Christ) may confer on him the authority, which Peter had, that is, that by a certain law he may so ordain as to co-operate with him by a peculiar assistance, in rightly appointing such things in doctrine and morals as pertain to the good estate of the Church.'
And still more explicitly in another place he says, 'It is not to be denied, that what has been said of the infallible certainty of the Pontifical definitions, holds good, first, in those things which the Pontiff has proposed to the faithful, in deciding doctrinal controversies and exterminating errors, as revealed of God, and to be believed by faith. But, forasmuch as the Church is always bound to hear its Pastor, and the Divine Scripture declares absolutely the Church to be the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. iii.), and therefore it cannot ever err as a whole, it cannot be doubtful, that the authority of the Pontiff is infallible in all other things which regard piety, and the whole Church. Nor do I think that this can be denied without error.' Gregory then applies this to the canonisation of Saints, and concludes: 'This certainty surely rests upon the same promises of God, by which we have seen that it can never be that the whole Church should err in matters of religion.'[1]
- ↑ 'Cui Ecclesia tota obtemperare tenetur, in iis rebus, quæ ad spiritualem animæ salutem pertinent, sive illæ fidem sive mores con-
