CHAPTER V.
CONCLUSION. TRADITION OF ENGLAND. GREATER UNITY OF FAITH RESULTING FROM THE DEFINITION.
In an Œcumenical Council, Bishops are witnesses of the Faith of their respective Churches. Not indeed as if they were representatives or delegates of their flocks; a theory strangely advanced by some writers who counted up the population of what they were pleased to call the greater cities, in order to give weight to the testimony of their Bishops as against that of others. In this they simply betrayed the fact that they were resting upon the natural order, and arguing, not on principles of faith, but of the political world.
Bishops are witnesses, primarily and chiefly, not of the subjective faith of their flocks, which may vary or be obscured, but of the objective faith of the Church committed to their trust, when by consecration they became witnesses, doctors, and judges. They were by consecration admitted to the Ecclesia docens, and the Divine Tradition of the Faith was entrusted to their custody. But this is one and the same in the humblest Vicar Apostolic, and in the Bishop of the most populous and imperial city in Christendom.
In the course of the discussions, testimony was given to the unbroken tradition of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility in Italy, Spain, Ireland, and many
