the infallibility of the Church as a whole, and therefore to assail the divine certainty of Christianity altogether.
IX. The infallibility of the Church dispersed or congregated in Council is matter of necessary faith. The infallibility of the eighteen General Councils in which the Church has been congregated is also of necessary faith. But the Church, during the last eighteen centuries, has done many acts of supreme importance by its head alone. Are these acts fallible or infallible? For instance, the declaration of original sin by Innocent the First, and of the canon of Holy Scripture by Pope Gelasius—are these declarations in matter of faith fallible or infallible? Are they doubtful or indubitable? The question has been formally raised, and must, for the sake of divine truth, be as formally solved. Surely this question, at least, cannot be left in doubt. The Church must decide what its members are to believe, or its office as a teacher is at an end.12. Such were the reasons which finally determined 450 fathers of the Council to send up to the Commission of Postulates a petition that the doctrine of the infallibility of the head of the Church should be discussed in the Council.
The steps taken to prepare and to obtain signatures to this petition were as follows:—
A number of bishops of all nations met to agree upon the wording of the petition. After one or two revisions it was finally adopted in these words:
The undersigned fathers humbly and earnestly beg the holy Œcumenical Council of the Vatican to define clearly, and in words that cannot be mistaken, that the authority of the Roman Pontiff is supreme, and therefore exempt from error, when, in matters of faith and morals, he declares and defines what is to be believed and held, and what is to be rejected and condemned, by all the faithful.
