written to the Eastern Emperor, and the notoriety mentioned therefore extends over East as well as West. The Holy Pontiff declares that this dogma of the Procession is one of those verities, which faith has already taught to the Emperor, which had been unfailingly asserted, which were to be believed until the end, which were testified by tradition of the Fathers, and which should be rootedly fixed in the Christian's heart.*

* F. Perrone refers to the Letter, "De Trinitate," n. 343. We have thought it better to annex a considerable portion of it, italicizing the words to which we would draw special attention:

"Neque enim possibile est ut sit diversitas prædicationis, ubi una est forma veritatis; nec ab re judicabitur alienum, si cum his, cum quibus conveniemus fide, congruamus dogmate. Revolvantur piis mansuetudinis vestræ auribus decreta synodica, et beati Papæ Leonis convenientia sacræ fidei constituta: eadem invenietis in illis quæ recensueritis in nostris. Quid ergo est post illum fontem fidelium statutorum? quid amplius (si tamen fidei terminum servat) quamlibet curiosus scrutator inquirat, aut opere aut institutione perfectius, nisi forte mavult quisquam dubitare quam credere, certare quam nôsse, sequi dubia quam servare decreta. Nam si Trinitas Deus, hoc est Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus; Deus autem Unus-specialiter legislatore dicente: ‘Audi Israel, Dominus Deus tuus, Deus Unus est,'—qui aliter habet, necesse est aut divinitatem in multa dividat, aut specialiter passionem ipsi essentiæ Trinitatis impingat et (quod absit a fidelium mentibus) hoc est, aut plures deos more profano gentilitatis inducere, aut sensibilem pœnam ad eam naturam quæ aliena est ab omni passione transferre. Unum est Sancta Trinitas, non multiplicatur numero, non crescit augmento; nec potest aut intelligentiâ comprehendi aut hoc quod Deus est discretione sejungi. Quis ergo illi secreto æternæ impenetrabilisque substantiæ, quod nulla vel invisibilium naturarum potuit investigare natura, profanam derisionem tentet ingerere et divini arcana mysterii revocare ad calculum moris humani? Adoremus Patrem et Filium et Spiritum Sanctum, indistinctam distincte, incomprehensibilem et inenarrabilem, substantiam Trinitatis: ubi etsi admittit numerum ratio Personarum, unitas tamen non admittit essentiæ separationem; ita tamen ut servemus propria naturæ, servemus propria unicuique Persona; nec Personis divinitatis singularitas denegetur, nec ad essentiam hoc quod est proprium nominum transferatur. Magnum est sanctæ et incomprehensibile mysterium Trinitatis, Deus Pater, Deus Filius, Deus Spiritus Sanctus, Trinitas indivisa : et tamen notum est quia proprium est Patris ut generaret Filium; proprium Filii Dei ut ex Patre Patri nasceretur æqualis; proprium Spiritus Sancti ut de Patre et Filio procederet sub una substantia deitatis. Proprium quoque Filii Dei, ut juxta id quod scriptum est; ' In novissimis temporibus verbum caro fieret, et habitaret in nobis': ita intra viscera Sanctæ Mariæ Virginis genetricis Dei unitis utriusque sine aliquâ confusione naturis, ut qui ante tempora erat Filius Dei, fieret filius hominis; . . . Hæc [nec] apud religiosam conscientiam tuam, venerabilis imperator, tamquam ignota dicuntur. Fides enim ipsa, quæ a te constanter asseritur, tibi reddit hoc muneris, ut sensibus tuis et affectum sui inserat et scientiam, per quam diligentius asseratur, infundat. Et tantum interest dispensationis mihi creditæ, ut ego quoque vel apud scientes nota non taceam; ut succedente sibi per vices temporum catholicorum prædicatione sensuum quod indeficienter asseritur sine fine credatur. hæc, quæ ad deitatem humanitatemque Domini nostri Jesu Christi pertinent et in eo unitas duas sine confusione naturas, potui secundum veterum definita disserere, si esset adversum eos qui his dissentiunt disputandum :

Latius

66

This Letter was written nearly seventy years before Reccared's conversion, and before "Filioque" was chanted by the Spanish Church in the Symbol; and at that time therefore, the Holy Ghost's Procession from Father and Son was notoriously" included in the Faith both of West and East. Under the reign of S. Martin I.-after the time of Reccared indeed, but more than a century before that of Charlemagnethe same dogma was so strongly expressed in a Roman synodical Letter to Constantinople, that S. Maximus had to vindicate the Latins against misconception, and to explain that they did not think of denying the Father's peculiarity as Sole Fount of Deity. However there can be no need of adducing further testimonies, except so far as they come directly across Mr. Ffoulkes's path. We will pass on then to S. Leo III.

This holy Pope is one of our author's heroes, because (p. 9) of his having engraved the Symbol in its more ancient form on two shields and hung them up in his church. Mr. Ffoulkes dwells on the fact that S. Leo avowedly did this, "pro cautelâ orthodoxæ fidei,' and not merely that the Creed," i.e. the Constantinopolitan Symbol, "might remain intact." If such a statement means anything at all but very many of the author's statements do not mean anything at all-it means that S. Leo III. not only disapproved inserting "Filioque" into the Symbol, but repudiated the corresponding dogma as contrary to "the orthodox Faith." Mr. Ffoulkes then seems to have quite forgotten what he had written only six lines back; viz., that S. Leo expressed complete concurrence with Charlemagne in doctrine. Here is the author's own narrative :

"As I understand then,' rejoined one of the Imperial deputies, 'your Paternity orders that the clause in question be first ejected from the Creed [the Symbol], and then afterwards lawfully learnt and taught by anybody, whether by singing or by oral tradition.' 'Doubtless that is my desire,' returned Leo, and I would persuade you by all means so to act'" (p. 9).

And of the same S. Leo III. Mr. Ffoulkes mentions in a former work, that he spoke to all the Eastern Churches

sed cum in manibus omnium fiunt et synodica constituta et beati Papæ Leonis dogmata, perstrinxisse potius pauca, quam evolvere credidi convenientibus universa. Nunc vero agnoscere satis est et cavere, proprietatem et essentiam cogitandam ; ut sciatur quid Personæ, quid nos oporteat deferre Substantiæ: quæ qui indecenter ignorant aut callidâ impietate dissimulant, dum omittunt quid sit proprium Filii, Trinæ tendunt insidias Unitati. Sed si quæ prædicta sunt validis teneantur fixa radicibus, nec a paternâ traditione receditur, et constanter quæstionibus obviatur."

"Christendom's Divisions," Part ii., p. 72.

"of the Holy Ghost as proceeding from the Father and the Son," and ended with these words: "him that believes not according to this Faith, the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church condemns." Most certainly then, his opposing an insertion of "Filioque" in the Symbol, did not imply ever so remotely an indifference to the indispensable obligation of believing with divine faith the dogma which those words

express.

The author however will have it, that S. Leo III.'s immediate predecessor, Adrian I., did not believe this dogma. In defence of this assertion he puts forth a statement, of which, had it proceeded from one with whose character we were unacquainted, we should say that it is about the most impudent invention to be found in controversial history. We are quite confident however, that nothing would induce Mr. Ffoulkes to say what he does not think; and moreover it is far easier to understand such a lapse in his case, than in that of an abler man. It may be added that such a view was peculiarly attractive to him, as supplying him with a glorious opportunity for sensational writing. We cannot do the thing justice, without a long extract from his pamphlet. It occurs in the course of an imaginary argument, reaching from p. 5 to p. 13, addressed to Archbishop Manning by an imaginary Anglican friend. The inverted commas with which it starts refer to this. The Seventh Ecumenical Council, he says,

"Met A.D. 787, legislated, and was confirmed by the Pope, who forwarded its decrees, as well as his own approval of them, to Charlemagne. Charlemagne, fired with rancour against the East, immediately set about composing a work to refute them; and when it was ready for publication, summoned a Council at Frankfort of all the bishops of his dominions, at which the decrees of the seventh Council were formally repudiated, and his own work, which he, with the assistance of his theologians, had written against them, approved. This work he forwarded to the Pope, who had confirmed them. One of his principal charges against them was, that the Council enacting them had been silent or ambiguous on a point which he deemed it his duty to prove to the Pope at great length, namely, the Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son: in other words, that while it had received a profession of faith from the new Patriarch in which Procession through the Son was affirmed, it had said nothing at all on that subject in its own Creed, with which he was therefore dissatisfied, as wanting the addition which had been made to it in Spain by King Reccared.

"What defence the Pope made for S. Tarasius we need not pause to inquire but this is what he says in reply to the objection urged by the monarch against the Creed.

"We have already proved the divine dogmas of this Council irreprehensible, as the works of the principal of the holy Fathers abundantly testify.

For should anybody say that he differs from the Creed of the above-named Council, he risks differing (or seems to differ) with the Creed of the six holy Councils: inasmuch as these Fathers spake not of themselves, but according to what had been holily defined and laid down before as it is written in the book of the sixth holy Council, amongst other things, 'This Creed had been sufficient for the perfect knowledge and confirmation of religion . . . . for concerning the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, what it explicitly teaches is perfect" (pp. 7, 8).

At first reading, it might be thought that Mr. Ffoulkes here purports to quote the Pontiff's ipsissima verba; though such, we soon find, is not his real intention. But he does indisputably mean to say, that he has correctly expressed the general sense of Adrian I.'s reply to Charlemagne, concerning the Holy Ghost's Procession from the Son. Our readers cannot be prepared for our declaration-which any one who chooses may verify for himself-that in Adrian's whole reply concerning that dogma, there is not one syllable which by any ingenuity can be distorted into any mention whatever of the Six Councils, nor into any even the feeblest support for the sensational paragraph just quoted. How then is our author's hallucination to be explained? Our theory is this. In the section which immediately follows,-bearing however on a totally dif ferent question, there is an obvious reference to the Seventh Ephesine Canon, and an express mention of the Six Councils. In our edition, and very possibly therefore in Mr. Ffoulkes's, the same page contains, in its first column the conclusion of Adrian's remarks concerning the Procession, and in its second his reference to Councils on his new theme. We suggest, that Mr. Ffoulkes's eye glanced accidentally from first to second column; and that, characteristically enough, he blindly read on, without being bright enough to observe the total change of subject.*

The section which speaks about the Six Councils was thus occasioned. Charlemagne has inquired "Utrum Theodorus Archiepiscopus Hierosolymorum recte sentiat, qui cum Patrem sine principio penitus et Sempiternum se credere dixit, Filium, nescio sub quâ ambage verborum, non aliud Principium quam Patrem agnoscentem, et ex Ipso subsistentiam habentem, professus sit."

The Pontiff's reply begins as follows. We italicize the sentence which mentions the Six Councils.

"Iste Theodorus patriarcha Hierosolymorum, cum ceteris præcipuis patriarchis, videlicet Cosmâ Alexandriæ, et Theodoro alio Antiochiae, dudum prædecessori nostro sanctæ recordationis quondam Paulo Papa miserunt propriam eorum recta fidei synodicam: in quâ et de sacratissimis imaginibus subtili narratione, qualiter una cum nostrá sanctâ Catholicâ et Apostolicâ universali Romanâ ecclesiâ ipsi ceteri orientales orthodoxi episcopi et Christianus populus sentiunt, et in earumdem sanctarum imaginum veneratione sincero mentis affectu ferventes in fide existunt, studuerunt intimandum. Quam synodicam in Latino interpretatam eloquio prædecessor noster quon

The whole theme of this later section concerns, not the Procession of the Holy Ghost, but the Generation of the Son.

Let us see then what Adrian said in the earlier section on the former subject. S. Tarasius was Patriarch of Constantinople. At that time the Holy See had not sanctioned any particular form of words, as exclusively to be used for expressing this dogma; and S. Tarasius expressed it, as the Easterns far more commonly did, by saying that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father through the Son. On this Charlemagne founds an accusation in these words: "that Tarasius holds incorrect doctrine (non recte sentiat), who professes in his exposition of belief, not (according to the Faith of the Nicene Symbol) that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, but that He proceeds from the Father through the Son." The Pontiff in reply takes pains to point out, that there is no real discrepancy in dogma between the Patriarch and the Holy See; and that the former did not invent the phrase, but used a phrase familiar to the Fathers: "Hoc dogma non per se explanavit, sed per doctrinam Sanctorum Patrum confessus est." In the course of his exposition, the Pope more than once cites the phrase that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son, as also patristic and undeniably orthodox. He cites S. Augustine's words that the "Spirit proceeds from the Son;" and argues that the same verity is implied in other parts of that Father's writings. He quotes S. Cyril's ninth anathema. He quotes S. Gregory's express words, that "the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son." And yet Mr. Ffoulkes dares to assert, that this Pontiff denounced all explicit profession of the Holy Ghost's Procession from the Son, as disobedience to the Six First Councils. It needs all our faith in Mr. Ffoulkes's blundering puzzle-headedness, to acquit him (as we sincerely do) of dishonest intention.

On the Procession no more remains to be said. We next turn to our author's errors on the Church's constitution.

By

dam sanctissimus Dominus Stephanus Papa in suo concilio, quod et ipse pro sacris imaginibus una cum diversis episcopis in partibus Franciæ seu Italiæ fecit, suscipientes ac relegentes, placuerunt tam de diversis Francorum patrum testimoniis, quam de Symbolo fidei ubi facti sunt, dicentes: 'Si quis alium terminum fidei, sive symbolum, aut doctrinam habet, præter quod traditum est a sanctis magnis et universalibus sex synodis, et confirmatum est ab his sanctis patribus qui in eis convenerunt, et non adorat imaginem sive figuram domini nostri Jesu Christi, neque humanationem Ejus confitetur, sicut Qui descendit et incarnatus est propter genus humanum, talem impium anathematizamus et alienum extraneumque deputamus, neque Catholicæ et Apostolicæ ecclesiæ: et cetera quæ longum est enarrari, &c. &c.'"