that
they study and labour to expel and eliminate errors and display
the
light of the purest faith.' Well might the faithful study and
labour to such ends! For, while the offence remained ambiguous,
there was no ambiguity about the penalty. One hair's-breadth from
the unknown path of truth, one shadow of impurity in the
mysterious light of faith, and there shall be anathema! anathema!

anathema! When the framers of such edicts called upon the bowels
of Christ to justify them, might they not have done well to have
paused a little, and to have called to mind the counsel of
another sovereign ruler, though a heretic--Oliver Cromwell?
'Bethink ye, bethink ye, in the bowels of Christ, that ye may be
mistaken!'

One of the secondary results of the Council was the
excommunication of Dr. Dollinger, and a few more of the most
uncompromising of the Inopportunists. Among these, however, Lord
Acton was not included. Nobody ever discovered why. Was it
because he was too important for the Holy See to care to
interfere with him? Or was it because he was not important
enough?

Another ulterior consequence was the appearance of a pamphlet by
Mr. Gladstone, entitled 'Vaticanism', in which the awful
implications involved in the declaration of Infallibility were
laid before the British Public. How was it possible, Mr.
Gladstone asked, with all the fulminating accompaniments of his
most agitated rhetoric, to depend henceforward upon the civil