interpretation given in the Rambler for July, 1859, p. 218 sqq. See also Card. Newman’s Arians, pp. 464, 467; Ward, Essays on the Church’s Doctrinal Authority, p. 70. “As the blood flows from the heart to the body through the arteries; as the vital sap insinuates itself into the whole tree, into each bough, and leaf, and fibre; as water descends through a thousand channels from the mountaintop to the plain; so is Christ’s pure and life-giving doctrine diffused, flowing into the whole body through a thousand organs from the Ecclesia Docens.” Murray, De Ecclesia, disp. x., n. 15, quoted by Ward.
III. The universal teaching of the Bishops and Priests is another mode of ecclesiastical testimony to revealed truth. The testimony of all the Bishops is in itself infallible, independently of the teaching of the inferior clergy and the belief of the Faithful, because the Episcopate is the chief organ of infallibility in the Church. It is, moreover, an infallible testimony at every moment of its duration (“I am with you all days”). This mode of testimony is sometimes called the testimony of the Particular Churches, because the teaching of each Bishop is reflected and repeated by the clergy and the Faithful of his diocese. Hence the testimony of the Priests and of Theological Schools in subordination to the Bishop holds a sort of intermediate position and value between the “Sensus fidelium” and the testimony of the Episcopate.
IV. The central, perfect and juridical representative of Tradition is the Apostolic See. From the earliest times it has been the custom to consider the formula, “The Roman Church or Apostolic See hath held and doth hold,” as equivalent to “The Catholic Church hath held and doth hold;” because the universal Church must hold, at least implicitly, the doctrines taught by the Holy See. When the Pope pronounces a judicial sentence he can bind the whole Church, teachers as well as taught, and the authority of his decisions is not impaired, even by opposition within the Teaching Body. Moreover, as a consequence of the connection between the Head of the Church and the Roman See, there exists in the local Roman Church, apart from the authoritative decisions of the Pope, a certain
