Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/75

Inasmuch as the motives for which Pius the Ninth convoked the Council cannot be more directly known than from his own words and acts, it will be well to examine the text of the Bull of Indiction, which is dated the 29th of June, 1868. It runs as follows:—

Pius Bishop, servant of the servants of God, for perpetual remembrance. The only begotten Son of the Eternal Father, for the great love wherewith He loved us, that He might liberate mankind from the yoke of sin, the bondage of the devil, and the darkness of error, by which, through the sin of our first parents, it had been long and miserably oppressed, descended from the heavenly seat, but left not the glory of the Father, and, clothed in mortal array of the immaculate and most holy Virgin Mary, revealed the truth and way of life which He brought down from heaven, and having borne witness to it by many wonderful works, He delivered Himself for us as an Oblation and Sacrifice to God in the odour of sweetness.

After reciting the power given to the apostles to rule the Church which He had bought with His own blood, the Bull continues:—

And that the government of the Church should for ever proceed rightly and in order, and that the Christian people should ever abide in one faith, doctrine, charity, and communio;i, He promised both that He would be always present, even to the end of the world, and also from them all He chose Peter, and him He constituted to be the prince of the apostles, and His vicar here on earth, the head of the Church, its foundation and centre. . . . And forasmuch as the unity and integrity of the Church and the government of the same instituted by Christ needs to be stable and perpetual, therefore in the