Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/76

Roman Pontiffs, the successors of Peter, who have been placed in this same Roman See, the same supreme power, jurisdiction, and primacy of Peter over all the Church abides in fulness of vigour.

The Bull then further says that

All men know with what unwearied care the Roman Pontiffs have laboured to guard the deposit of faith, the discipline of the clergy, the pure and learned education of the same, the holiness and dignity of matrimony, and day by day to promote more and more the Christian education of both sexes, to foster religion, piety, and integrity of morals among all people, to defend justice, and to provide also for the tranquillity, order, and prosperity of civil society.

Nor have they failed, when they judged it opportune, above all in times of grave perturbations and in the calamities of our most holy religion and of civil society, to convoke general councils, that with the councils and united strength of the bishops of the whole world, whom the Holy Ghost has set to rule the Church of God, they might with providence and wisdom dispose all things necessary for defining the dogmas of faith, for destroying the errors which prevail, for illustrating and developing doctrine, for upholding and restoring discipline, and for the correction of moral corruption among the peoples.

It is at this time evident and manifest to all men in how horrible a storm the Church is now tossed, and by what vast evils even the civil State is afflicted. For the Catholic Church, and its saving doctrine and venerable power, and the supreme authority of this Holy See, are by the bitterest enemies of God and man, assailed and trampled down: all sacred things are held in contempt, ecclesiastical possessions spoiled, and the ministers of holy things, men of conspicuous life dedicated to the divine service, and men of the highest Catholic excellence, harassed in everyway; the religious orders suppressed, impious books of every kind, and pestilent documents, and manifold