trinal texts, what has been the teaching of the Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries respecting the authority of the Bishops of Rome.
After studying profoundly and critically, and without bias or prejudice the historical and dogmatic remains of the first centuries of the Church, we cannot read without pain the works of Romish theologians in favour of the papal authority.
We have had the patience to read most of those regarded as authorities, such as Bellarmin, Rocaberti, André Duval, Zaccaria, and many of the most renowned of the modern theologians who have taken these as their guides — such as Gerdil, Perrone, Passaglia. We have read the principal works of the modern Galileans — those, namely, of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — and particularly the works of Bossuet, Nicole, Tournely, and La Chambre. We are convinced that the latter have borrowed from the Ultramontanes those of their texts which appear to have the greatest weight, limiting the sense to a primacy of divine right and a restricted authority of the Pope, while the others extend it to an absolute authority and infallibility. Among them all, we have remarked, first, a crowd of broken and corrupted texts distorted from their true sense, and isolated from the context expressly to give them a false interpretation. We have remarked, secondly, that the texts of each particular Father are isolated from other texts of the same Father touching the same point of doctrine, although the last may modify or absolutely destroy the sense attributed to the first. We have remarked, thirdly, that these writers deduce from these texts, consequences clearly false, and which do not logically follow from them. Of this we shall give two examples, among the many we could point out.
Launoy, as we have already mentioned, has analyzed the Catholic tradition upon the interpretation of
