and others that it was not only opportune, but necessary.
8. A grave injustice has been done to the bishops who opposed the definition. The world outside the Church, not believing in infallibility, claimed them as its own. They were treated as if they denied the truth of the doctrine itself. Their opposition was not to the doctrine, but to the defining of it, and not even absolutely to the defining of it, but to the defining of it at this time. The chief and foremost of those who opposed the defining it in the Vatican Council had signed the Address of the Centenary, in which, as we have seen, were contained the acclamations of Chalcedon and of Constantinople. They were united in declaring that Peter spoke by Pius. How, then, could anyone so far wrong them as to say that they opposed the definition because they denied the doctrine to be true? They who were in the Council may be permitted to bear witness to what they heard and know. Not five bishops in the Council could be justly thought to have opposed the truth of the doctrine. This is the testimony of one who heard the whole discussion, and never heard an explicit denial of its truth. Arguments were indeed advanced which logically, if pushed to their conclusion, would seem to oppose the doctrine; and representations of history were made which could not be
