And now for the first time the excellence of the Council Hall is proved, and the wise foresight of the _Curia_ in choosing it and adhering to it with the firmness of old Romans in spite of all entreaties and representations to the contrary. It is precisely adapted to the present tactics of the majority. The Bishops will occupy a number of sittings with speeches, generally read, seldom spoken, which four-fifths of their auditors, as before, neither understand nor wish to understand. For the majority know everything already, they are armed with a triple breastplate, and have their short and powerful watchword, which renders them invincible. Those who frequent infallibilist circles here may hear St. Augustine's saying quoted ten times a day, "Roma locuta est, causa finita est," or St. Ambrose's "Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia," or that St. Irenæus said every one must necessarily agree with the Roman Church. These are mere fables; Augustine and Irenæus said nothing of the kind, but something quite different; and while Ambrose did indeed use the words, it was without the remotest reference to the Pope and his infallibility. But the words are quoted in a hundred books and pamphlets, and are used like theological revolvers which never miss fire. And then Mermillod will repeat in the Council what he lately said in a sermon here about the threefold manifestation of God in the crib of Bethlehem, in the Sacrament of the Altar, and--in the Vatican. Pie of Poitiers will utter some of those bold Oriental metaphors, which all France laughs at but which are gravely received in the Council Hall. Manning will commend infallibility as the one plank of safety for mankind who are sinking in the shipwreck of scepticism, while he sings a pæan over the triumph of the dogma over history. There will be room even for some flashes of genius from the German infallibilists, the Tyrolese and the three Bavarians, if they can resolve on opening their lips hitherto so firmly closed. And then the African heat and sultry atmosphere, drying up the brain, which have already begun to press on Rome like a leaden pall, will come in to expedite the close. The majority will avail themselves of the right the Pope has conferred on them to break off abruptly the discussion, in which nothing has been discussed, and the Pope will appear in a Solemn Session, in the full pomp of the earthly representative of Christ, to proclaim with infallible certainty his own infallibility and that of all his predecessors and successors, "approbante Concilio." And thus will he enter on his new empire of the world; for he will then for the first time be the acknowledged master and sole teacher of mankind; before, he was only a pretender. The Bishops will bow their heads reverently under a profound sense of their own fallibility before the one divinely enlightened man, and the world will go to sleep to wake next morning enriched and blessed with the new and fundamental article of faith. The day of the promulgation will be a great day of creation. "God said, Let there be light, and there was light, and the evening and the morning were the first day" of the new Church, after the old Church for 1869 years had been unable to ascertain and formulize its chief article of faith. For the Popes were always infallible; "the light appeared in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." From the Pentecost of the blessed year 1870, as Manning has prophesied, dates the age of the Holy Ghost, and the Church is for the first time really complete. As the Pentecost of the year 33 was the birthday of the ancient Church, so will the Pentecost of 1870 be the birthday of the new and infinitely more enlightened Church. Nearly all commentators now assume that the seven days of creation in Genesis are not seven ordinary days, but signify a great period of the world's history. It cannot then be taken ill if the Church, instead of distinctly putting forward her principal dogma on the first Pentecost, which would certainly have been the most natural course, should have waited nineteen centuries in the vain attempt to ascertain and formulate it, and have only now hatched the egg in the year 1870.