Those who were too proud to submit to the definition followed, of course, the example of earlier heretics in previous Councils.  They excused themselves on the plea that the Council was (a) not free, or else (b) not sufficiently representative, or, finally, (c) not unanimous in its decisions.  But such utterly unsupported allegations served only to accentuate the weakness of their cause and the hopelessness of their position; since it would be difficult, from the origin of the Church to the present time, to find any Council so free, so representative, and so unanimous.

Pope Pius IX. (whom, it seems likely, we shall soon be called upon to venerate as a canonised saint) convened the Vatican Council by the Bull AEterni Patris, published on 29th June, 1868.  It summoned all the Archbishops, Bishops, Patriarchs, etc., throughout the Catholic world to meet together in Rome on 8th December of the following year, 1869.  When the appointed day arrived, and the Council was formally opened, there were present 719 representatives from all parts of the world, and very soon after, this number was increased to 769.  On 18th July, 1870—­a day for ever memorable in the annals of the Church—­the fourth public session was held, and the constitution Pater AEternus, containing the definition of the Papal Infallibility, was solemnly promulgated.  Of the 535 who were present on this grand occasion, 533 voted for the definition (placet) and only two, one from Sicily, the other from the United States, voted against it (non placet).  Fifty-five Bishops, who fully accepted the doctrine itself, but deemed its actual definition at that moment inopportune, simply absented themselves from this session.  Finally, the Holy Father, in the exercise of his supreme authority, sanctioned the decision of the Council, and proclaimed officially, urbi et orbi the decrees and the canons of the “First Dogmatic Constitution of the Church of Christ”.

It may be well here to clothe the Latin words of the Pope and the assembled Bishops in an English dress.  They are as follows:  “We (the Sacred Council approving) teach and define that it is a dogma revealed, that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra—­that is, when discharging the office of Pastor and Teacher of all Christians, by reason of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the whole Church—­in virtue of the Divine assistance promised to him in Blessed Peter, possesses that Infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals, and that, therefore, such definitions of the said Sovereign Pontiff are unalterable of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church.  But if any one—­which may God avert—­presume to contradict this our definition, let him be anathema.”

“Every Bishop in the Catholic world, however inopportune some may have at one time held the definition to be, submitted to the Infallible ruling of the Church,” says E.S.  Purcell.  “A very small and insignificant number of priests and laymen in Germany apostatised and set up the Sect of ‘Old Catholics’.  But all the rest of the Catholic world, true to their faith, accepted, without reserve, the dogma of Papal Infallibility."[4]