If any of my readers suppose that the character of Popery has changed with the lapse of ages, I must tell you that such is not the ease.  Popery is unchangeable and this her ablest advocates declare.  Chas. Butler, in the work he wrote in reply to Southey’s book of the church, says, “It is most true that the Roman Catholics believe the doctrines of their church to be unchangeable; and that it is a tenet of their creed, that what their faith ever has been, such it was from the beginning, such it is now, and SUCH IT EVER WILL BE.”  A copy of the eleventh edition of The Faith of Our Fathers, published in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1883, lies before me.  It was written by Archbishop (now Cardinal) James Gibbons, the highest authority of the Roman Catholic church in this country.  In page 95 he says:  “It is a marvelous fact, worthy of record, that in the whole history of the church, from the nineteenth century to the first, no solitary example can be adduced to show that any Pope or General Council ever revoked a decree of faith or morals enacted by any preceding pontiff or council.  Her record in the past ought to be a sufficient warrant that she will tolerate no doctrinal variations in the future.”  So the doctrine of her inherent right to persecute and slay every one who disagrees with her, which has been enacted by Pontiffs and General Councils and so carried out in the past, is still in vogue and would now be enforced were it in her power to do so.

While this statement of Gibbons’ shows the unchangeable spirit of Popery, still it is the basest presumption upon the historical knowledge of the reader.  The facts are that the official acts of some of their Popes and General Councils have been so far wrong that Romanists themselves have been compelled to admit it.  Thus the sixth General Council, which was held at Constantinople in 680, and which every Catholic accepts as Ecumenical, condemned, in the strongest terms, Pope Honorius as a Monothelite heretic.  Let them attempt to deny it, and we will bring forward our proof.  Romish authors themselves admit it, the well-known Dupin with the rest, as appears by the following extract from his writings:  “The Council had as much reason to censure him as Sergius, Paulus, Peter, and the other Patriarchs oL Constantinople.”  He adds in language yet more emphatic, “This will stand for certain, then, that Honorius was condemned, AND JUSTLY TOO, AS A HERETIC, by the sixth General Council.”  Dupin’s Eccl.  History, Vol.  II, p. 16.

The Decretals of Isodore furnish another example of Papal infallibility (?).  For ages these documents were the chief instrument of the Popes in extending their power and the proof of the righteousness of their assumptions to excessive temporal authority.  Wickliffe declared them false and apocryphal.  For this he was condemned by the sixteenth General Council, held at Constance in 1414, and his bones ordered dug up and burnt because of his daring impudence.  The spurious character of these false decretals have since been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt; and since it is impossible to deny it longer, it is admitted even by Romanists.  So, after all, this infallible Council was wrong, the Papists themselves being the judges.