the Declaration of 1682. The incoherence of admitting a Supremacy and denying its infallible action encouraged and provoked the spirit of scepticism and mockery in the bad, and of doubt and hesitation in the good, which prepared for the Encyclopedia and the Voltairian unbelief. Gallicanism was a political aberration, and France has dearly expiated it. With this before our eyes, it is our duty towards the faith, towards the Divine order of the Church, towards the flocks committed to us, and towards our country for which we labour and pray, to testify to the whole revelation of truth, and to the whole Divine economy ordained for its perpetuity and its preservation in purity and integrity. It is not then needless, or gratuitous, still less is it polemical and hostile, to declare in the fullest and most explicit way the truths which are embodied in this great Centenary. They may be summed up in the words of S. Leo: 'The solidity of that faith which was commended in the Prince of the Apostles is perpetual; and as that which Peter believed in Christ abides for ever, so does that for ever abide which Christ instituted in Peter. … The order of truth, therefore, is abiding, and Blessed Peter, persevering in the firmness which he had received as of a Rock, has not forsaken the helm of the Church.'[1]
Or in the words of S. Peter Chrysologus, 'Blessed Peter, who lives and presides in his
- ↑ S. Leon. Opp. Serm. ii. in Die Assumptionis suæ, tom. i. pp. 51–52, Ed. Lugd. 1700.
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