infallible Guide and Teacher.

Venerable Bede, speaking of the conversion of our own country by
Augustine and his monks, sent by Pope Gregory the Great, says: "And
whereas he [Pope Gregory] bore the Pontifical power _over all the
world_, and was placed over the Churches already reduced to the faith
of truth, he made our nation, till then given up to idols, the Church
of Christ" (_Hist. Eccl._ lib. ii. c. 1). If we will but listen to the
Pope now, he will make it once again "the Church of Christ," instead
of the Church of the "Reformation," and a true living branch, drawing
its life from the one vine, instead of a detached and fallen branch,
with heresy, like some deadly decay, eating into its very vitals.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: No Pope, no matter what may have been his _private_
conduct, ever promulgated a decree against the purity of faith and
morals.]




CHAPTER II.

THE POPE'S GREAT PREROGATIVE.


The clear and certain recognition of a great truth is seldom the work
of a day. We often possess it in a confused and hidden way, before we
can detect, to a nicety, its exact nature and limitations. It takes