its exercise, can in any way import separation or disunion between the head and the body. Such a supposition involves, as we have seen, heretical notions at every turn. The very reverse is true: that the supreme privilege of infallibility in the head is the divinely ordained means to sustain for ever the unity of the Universal Church in communion, faith, and doctrine.
And further, that the independent exercise of this privilege by the head of the Episcopate, and as distinct from the Bishops, is the divinely ordained means of the perpetual unity of the Episcopate in communion and faith with its head and with its own members.
And lastly, that though the consent of the Episcopate or the Church be not required, as a condition, to the intrinsic value of the infallible definitions of the Roman Pontiff, nevertheless, it cannot without heresy be said or conceived that the consent of the Episcopate and of the Church can ever be absent. For if the Pontiff be divinely assisted, both the active and the passive infallibility of the Church exclude such a supposition as heretical. To deny such infallible assistance now after the definition, is heresy. And even before the definition, to deny it was proximate to heresy, because it was a revealed truth, and a Divine fact, on which the unity of the Church has depended from the beginning.
From what has been said, the precise meaning of the terms before us may be easily fixed.
1. The privilege of infallibility is personal, inasmuch as it attaches to the Roman Pontiff, the successor of
