Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/183

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The True Story of the Vatican Council.
171

ance in the exercise of it. Now, under jurisdiction is contained the office of teaching. To deliver the law is to teach. The assistance of infallible guidance is attached to the magisterium or teaching office, and the magisterium is contained in the primacy. The infallibility is therefore attached to the primacy. It is not a quality inherent in the person, but an assistance inseparable from the office. It is therefore not personal, but official. It is personal only so far as the primacy is borne by a person. The primacy is not held in commission, as the office of Lord Treasurer or of Lord High Admiral. It is personal, therefore, only in the sense that the successor of S. Peter is a man and not a body of men—he is one and not many.

The Introduction then affirms that this doctrine has always been held by the Holy See, confirmed by the perpetual usage of the Church and of the Œcumenical Councils, especially in those by which the reunion of the East and West was for a moment effected.

In the fourth Council of Constantinople, which is the eighth of the Church, Pope Hadrian required the Eastern bishops to subscribe the creed of Pope Hormisdas, in which it is declared that the promise of indefectibility made to Peter is fulfilled in the fact that the Catholic religion has ever been preserved spotless in the Apostolic See.

In the second Council of Lyons the Greeks con-