infallible certainty of all his declarations and condemnations, in virtue of the supreme and singular prerogative of Doctor of the Universal Church, given by our Lord Jesus Christ to Peter, and through Peter to his successors. They renewed, before the tomb of the Apostle, the adhesion they had already given, one by one, in the midst of their flocks, to the successive utterances of the Sovereign Pontiff, as these, from time to time, had reached them. The Encyclical Quanta Cura, and the Syllabus or compendium of eighty condemnations in previous encyclicals and allocutions—all these had been at once received by them as a part of the supreme teaching of the Church, through the person of its head, which, by the special assistance of the Holy Ghost, is preserved from all error. They did not add certainty to that which was already infallible.[1] This act of adhesion was a recognition of the supreme and plenary office of the successor of S. Peter, which, as the Council of Florence defined, he has received in and through the person of Peter: not by canons, nor by councils, nor by ecclesiastical institution, as some blindly say, with the decree refuting them before their eyes, but from the direct grant and gift of our Lord Jesus Christ, before as yet a canon was made, or a council assembled.
I have lately seen it affirmed by a Protestant critic, that the truths and principles which have been
- ↑ Gerdil. Per la Bolla Auctorem Fidei. Sez. 2. Art. vii., viii., ix. Op. inedit., tom. v. p. 256–259. Napoli, 1855.
