He is a stranger

disgrace, do not murder the officer at my side. amongst us; he has not dabbled in the blood that has been shed in holes and corners throughout the land during the last five years. If he has done you wrong, it has been in fair and open war. Since he has fallen into your hands, let him have the treatment of an honourable soldier, if you have any idea what that may mean. This much I ask you for the sake of the nation you belong to and the profession you follow. For myself I ask nothing. Do your worst; I despise, but I do not fear you."

These bold words brought a scowl to every bronzed face in the group before him, and to some a flush of something resembling shame. In appealing to their professional pride, O'Duigenan had touched a chord that had remained sensitive when every finer sense of their nature had been blunted by the brutalising occupations of their daily life.

"You speak insolently, rebel," said Ormsby, "and deserve to have your offensive jabbering cut short with a sword-thrust. But work of that kind we leave to the pistols of our troopers. Do all concur in the sentence Major Storey asks us to pronounce?" he inquired, looking round the faces of his colleagues.

Contrary to his expectations, they were not unanimous. O'Duigenan's taunting language had roused within some of those ruthless breasts scruples which had long been strangers there; and some there were who essayed to moderate Storey's half-fanatic, half-revengeful eagerness for the blood of the prisoners. This unexpected opposition only served to rouse fully the religious energies of the major. With a headlong torrent of his choicest eloquence he rebuked the contumacious among his associates and denounced their backsliding, at the same time that he pointed out the inconvenience of charging themselves with a wounded man at a moment when they would require all the speed of movement they could command to escape from O'Neill. His exhortations and his arguments at last prevailed; the repugnance of his comrades to the deed of blood he advocated slowly gave way before his enthusiasm and his reasonings.

"Speak," he cried, with exultation, observing that he was winning the day, "ye who ride on fair horses, ye that sit in judgment, and walk in the way, shall the sword we have girded to our thigh remain rusting in the scabbard whilst the necks of the enemies of the Covenant are bared before us? Chiefs of the army of Israel, go and set your feet upon the necks of them lying under ye, and when ye have put your feet upon them, strike and slay, and let them be hanged upon gibbets until the evening."

The Parliamentarian officers conferred for a few moments together. When their deliberations were at an end, Ormsby addressed the pri

soners.

"In the opinion of this court you are adjudged worthy of death. It is our award that you be now led from this spot, and that, one hour hence, you be shot dead on the space in front of this cabin. prisoners be removed."

MacDermott deigned no reply to the brutal sentence.

Let the

"And if," added the devout Storey, "the ministrations of so humble a vessel as myself be acceptable, I will, for the coming hour, wrestle with them in prayer, that they may be delivered at the last from the power of the evil one."

MacDermott replied to the suggestion by a look of cold disdain, and leaning on the arm of his fellow-prisoner turned to go. The indignity contained in the major's proposal was, however, too much for O'Duigenan to bear in silence.

"Keep your prayers for yourself, canting blood-sucker," he cried, looking back over his shoulder," and take a parting advice from me. In the wrestling match look well to your points; the devil will trip you up before many rounds are over."

THE RELATIONS OF THE CHURCH TO SOCIETY.

BY THE REV. EDMUND J. O'REILLY, S.J.

XXII.*-THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE.

WHEN treating of the Definition of Papal Infallibility, and not long after entering on that subject, I alluded to the Councils of Pisa and Constance," of which latter," I added, "I will say more hereafter." I have not yet fulfilled this promise. I was taken up first with the development of views concerning the Infallibility, then, following a natural connection, with "Obedience due to the Pope," out of which arose a statement on "Conscience," and out of this arose again another on "Liberty of Conscience." It is time I should say what I have to say about the Council of Constance. It will not, after all, be very much; for though a great deal has been written on the subject and a great deal consequently could be set down here regarding it, and though it could be treated at considerable length without ground being afforded for a charge of superfluousness, yet this would be out of proportion with the scale on which I am proceeding, and is besides not at all necessary for the solution of any difficulty which has arisen

out of the decrees or action of the Council of Constance.

I might indeed spare myself the trouble of treating the question at all, and refer my readers to the able answers already given by Dr. Kavanagh and Canon Neville-by the former in "A Reply to Mr. Gladstone's Vaticanism;"‡ by the latter in "Some Remarks on Vaticanism," subjoined to a second edition of "A few Comments on Mr. Gladstone's Expostulation." But, as I have promised, I must perform.

This is the true number of the present paper, counting all those that have preceded, though through mistake the numbers of some of them do not accord with it. + IRISH MONTHLY, Vol. II. p. 413.

Page 48 and following.

Page 11 and following (of third edition, which I have before me).

Mr. Gladstone has made great capital of the Council of Constance. against the Pope's Infallibility, and his supreme authority over the Church collectively, and over a General Council. He does not argue so much from that Council taken by itself, with its confirmation by Martin V., as from the diametrical opposition he sees between it and the Vatican Council.

"It is not," he says, "my object to attempt a general appreciation of the Council of Constance. There is much against it to be said from many points of view, if there be more for it. But I point out that for the matter now in hand the questions of fact are clear, and that its decrees are in flat and diametrical contradiction to those of the Vatican. This of itself would not constitute any difficulty for Roman theology, and would give no proof of its breach with history. It is admitted on all or nearly all hands that a Council, however great its authority may be, is not of itself infallible. What really involves a fatal breach with history is when a body, which professes to appeal to it, having proclaimed a certain organ to be infallible, then proceeds to ascribe to it to-day an utterance contradictory to its utterance of yesterday; and thus depriving it not only of all certainty, but of all confidence, lays its honour prostrate in the dust. This can only be brought home to the Roman Church, if two of her Councils, contradicting one another in the subject matter of faith or morals, have each respectively been confirmed by the Pope, and have thus obtained, in Roman eyes, the stamp of infallibility. Now this is what I charge in the present instance."

Mr. Gladstone then goes on to develop his arguments in an exulting and triumphant strain. His glee and buoyancy are quite soulstirring and almost cheering, antagonist though he be; and we can afford to enjoy the rushing of this torrent, which we know after all to be harmless. Everything depends on the view to be taken of the Council of Constance and its decrees and subsequent confirmation by the Roman Pontiff; and the whole of this is a matter of old standing, often discussed and sufficiently settled long before the Vatican definition, and still more thoroughly settled since. No doubt the contrast and asserted mutual contradiction between the decisions of the two Councils is new-that is not of earlier date than 1870-but the character and sense and position of the decrees of the earlier Council, and their consequent bearing on the Pope's Infallibility and supreme authority, have been before the world in general, and the theological world in particular, for more than four centuries; they have not stood in the way of innumerable defenders of that doctrine which the later Council solemnly sanctioned five years ago, men who had the same ideas about General Councils that we have, and the same absolute belief of the infallibility of a General Council in conjunction with the Pope that we have, and had before the Vatican Council was thought of. They knew likewise as well, at least, as Mr. Gladstone, what was the state of facts as to the Council of Constance. No doubt there were others, in much smaller number, who impugned the Pope's pre

• "Vaticanism," pp. 57, 58.

rogatives from the decrees of Constance, but did not for the most part regard the so-called Ultramontanes as heretics. It is rather too Îate to make the discovery that a definition such as that of the Vatican Council, embodying doctrines so extensively maintained in the Church, must necessarily be irreconcilable with a previous declaration with which all were acquainted.

Suppose the Vatican Council had issued no definition or had not existed at all, would the defenders of the Pope's infallibility and supreme authority over General Councils be justly branded as rebels to the Teaching Church and to an approved General Council? Were they so regarded by the Gallican school-by which phrase I mean to designate those writers who, while they restricted, and even unduly restricted, the Pope's prerogatives, were recognised generally through the Church as still Catholics? Most undoubtedly not. Now the opposition between the Vatican Council and that of Constance-if there be any opposition-is not greater than the opposition between the defenders of the Papal claims in question and the same Council of Constance. A Council's definition is something more serious than a Theological assertion or even a Theological treatise. But an assertion merely made by any writer is as much or as little opposed to a given definition as the same assertion would be if it too was defined. If the Pope's fallibility and his inferiority to a General Council had been effectually defined by a General Council, confirmed in this by the Roman Pontiff, all contraveners of these doctrines would have been, according to Catholic principles, maintainers of heresy; and it is presumable that this would have been found out in the course of four centuries.

So much for a general answer to Mr. Gladstone's argument, and the alleged collision between two General Councils on a point of dogma. I will now come down to particulars. And first, we shall be helped by considering the circumstances which led to the holding of the Council of Constance. On the death of Gregory XI. (which took place at Rome, whither he had gone from Avignon, where he and several of his predecessors had successively lived and kept their court, though, of course, Bishops of Rome) in 1378, the Cardinals then in the city-sixteen out of twenty-three then constituting the Sacred College-went into Conclave and elected Pope the Archbishop of Bari, a Neapolitan, who took the name of Urban the Sixth. At the time of the election there was a good deal of tumult and commotion at Rome, and a stormy demand for the creation of a Roman or at least an Italian (some say a Roman absolutely—and this point is to be noted) to the exclusion of foreigners, and, I should say, specially Frenchmen. Soon after the instalment of the Pontiff, twelve of the

The importance of the distinction-so far as it is important-lies in this, that if the crowd demanded a Roman absolutely, the Cardinals did not yield to the popular clamour by electing a Neapolitan, but went against it, and thus acted with more palpable liberty than if by electing an Italian not a Roman, they had in some degree fulfilled the desire of the turbulent party. The Cardinals, after having elected the Archbishop of Bari, being invaded by a mob, pretended that they had elected a certain Roman Cardinal, who, however, a little later informed the people it was not so.

Cardinals who had formed the conclave and one who had not been then in Rome assembled at Anagni, and protested against the election as not free, and a little later, with three others who had formed part of the conclave-in all again sixteen-met at Fondi, and elected a Pope, who called himself Clement VII. Though the election of Urban is now generally considered to have been valid, there was colourable ground for viewing it otherwise, and for regarding Clement as the true Pope. Each of these claimants had his College of Cardinals. On the death of each of the claimants a successor was elected by the Cardinals of his obedience, as the supporters of the respective claimants were termed. The successor of Urban was Boniface IX., who was succeeded in his turn by Innocent VII., and he again by Gregory XII. The only successor of Clement VII.—that is, the only one of whom any account is to be made-was Peter de Luna, who was called Benedict XIII. In the year 1409 the Cardinals of both obediences-that of Gregory XII. and that of Benedict XIII.-united in calling a General Council to meet at Pisa and settle the question of the Papacy. A Council accordingly assembled, Gregory and Benedict were summoned to appear before it, and, not appearing, were eventually deprived and deposed by the Council. After this the Cardinals assembled in conclave and elected Cardinal Filargi Pope. He took the name of Alexander V. Gregory and Benedict still held their ground, so that there were three claiming the Papacy-Gregory as the legitimate successor of Urban VI., whom he maintained to have been legitimately elected and truly Pope; Benedict as the legitimate successor of Clement VII., who, he contended, was truly Pope, and Alexander as elected to fill the chair made vacant by the deposition of Gregory and Benedict. Alexander died, and was succeeded by John XXIII. This Pope called the Council of Constance, in some sort as a continuation of that of Pisa, but still by a sufficient distinct convocation. The Council assembled in 1414. Such were the circumstances under which the Council of Constance commenced.

We may here stop to inquire what is to be said of the position, at that time, of the three claimants, and their rights with regard to the Papacy. In the first place, there was all through from the death of Gregory XI. in 1378 a Pope-with the exception, of course, of the intervals between deaths and elections to fill up the vacancies thereby created. There was, I say, at every given time a Pope, really invested with the dignity of Vicar of Christ and Head of the Church, whatever opinions might exist among many as to his genuineness; not that an interregnum covering the whole period would have been impossible or inconsistent with the promises of Christ, for this is by no means manifest, but that, as a matter of fact, there was not such an interregnum. Next, it seems pretty well established that Urban VI. and his successors, including Gregory XII., were true Popes; that Gregory continued so till his deposition in the Council of Pisa; that he then ceased to be Pope; that Alexander V. on his election became really Pope, and after him John XXIII., who convoked the Council of Constance. Still, the right of Gregory XII. up to the Council of Pisa, depending as that right did on the valid election of Urban, is