Page:Petri Privilegium - Manning.djvu/417

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TERMINOLOGY OF DOCTRINE OF INFALLIBILITY.
103

A mixed privilege may be both personal and real; it may also attach to a community or body of persons, as to an University, or a College, or a Chapter.

The primacy, including jurisdiction and infallibility, is a privilege attaching to the person of Peter and of his successors. It is therefore a personal privilege in the Pontiffs.

It is personal, as Toletus says, because it cannot be communicated to others. It is not a real privilege attached to the See, or Cathedra, or Church of Rome, and therefore to the person; but to the person of the Roman Pontiff, and therefore, to the See.

It is not a mixed privilege, attaching to the Pontiff, only in union with a community or body, such as the Episcopate, congregated or dispersed; but attaching to his person, because inherent in the primacy, which he alone personally bears.

The use of the word personal is therefore precise and correct, according to the scholastic terminology; not, indeed, according to the sense of newspaper theologians. Theology, like chancery law, has its technical language; and the common sense of Englishmen would keep them from using it in any other meaning.

In this sense it is that the Dominican theologian De Fiume says, 'There are two things … in Peter: one personal, and another public; as Pastor and Head of the Church. Some things therefore belong to the person of Peter alone, and do not pass to his successors; as the saying, Get thee behind me Satan … and the like. Some, again, are spoken of him as a public person, and by reason of his office