of the former Councils; and in the Council of the Vatican the same was recited with the articles or definitions of the Council of Trent, which are called the Creed of Pius the Fourth.[1] First the Pope rose and recited the profession of faith in a loud voice. After that the Bishop of Fabriano read it from the Ambo. Then for two whole hours the cardinals, patriarchs, primates, archbishops, bishops, and other fathers of the Council made their adhesion to the same by kissing the Gospel at the throne of the head of the Church. Seven hundred bishops of the Church from all the world, the representatives of more than thirty nations and of two hundred millions of Christians, made profession with one heart of the same faith in the same form of words. If any one can believe this intellectual unity of faith, which has endured for eighteen hundred years unchanged through all changes, in all the minuteness of the definitions of Nicæa, Constantinople, and Trent, to be a simply human and natural fact, his credulity must be great. They who looked on, still more they who shared in that world-wide profession of the baptismal creed of the Christian world, will never forget it. Never at any time has such a witness been borne to the universality and unity of the Catholic faith.
- ↑ The Definitions of the Vatican Council are now in like manner added to those of the Council of Trent.
