THE POPE S: AN Bistorical Summary; COMPRISING A PERIOD OF 1784 YEARS: FROM LINUS TO PIUS IX. CAREFULLY COMPILED FROM THE BEST ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITIES, BY G. A. F. WILKS, M.D. 66 NOTHING EXTENUATE, NOR SET DOWN AUGHT IN MALICE.' -SHAKSPEARE. LONDON: FRANCIS AND JOHN RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, AND WATERLOO PLACE. 1851. 110. C. 115. TO THE REV. FRANCIS HODGSON, B.D. PROVOST OF ETON, AS A TRIBUTE OF ESTEEM FOR HIS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE CHARACTER, AND OF RESPECT FOR THE TIME-HONOURED INSTITUTION OVER WHICH HE PRESIDES, WHERE the YOUTH OF ENGLAND ARE INSTRUCTED IN USEFUL LEARNING AND SOUND RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLES, THE TRUE PRESERVATIVES AGAINST POPISH Error, The following Pages are, BY PERMISSION, RESPECTFULLY AND GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED, BY HIS OBLIGed Friend, THE AUTHOR PREFACE. Among all the falsehoods which the Church of Rome, mis-called Catholic, has endeavoured to impose upon the credulity of mankind, there is none that has been more confidently and repeatedly asserted than that the pope, in virtue of his office as the successor of St. Peter, is INFALLIBLE in doctrine,' IMPECCABLE in practice, and the SOLE UNQUESTIONABLE AUTHORITY in matters of fact.3 The last assertion, the most audacious of all, was actually the foundation of a bull condemning the Jansenists, who ventured to suggest that the infallibility of the pope extended only to doctrine and practice, and did not extend to a question of facts. Nevertheless, the examples furnished by the histories of their own Church, and recorded by their own historians, prove, beyond all possibility of contradiction, that succeeding popes have repeatedly set aside and condemned the decisions of their predecessors in all three particulars. Thus, we find a pope approving of monothelism, and 1 1 P. 112, n. 2 P. 32 and 96. 3 P. 241. 4 P. 241. 5 5 P. 47. |