of the Council
expressed their adhesion by kissing the Gospel at the throne of the Chief
Pastor. Seven hundred bishops of the church, representing more than thirty
nations and about(10) three hundred millions of Christians, thus solemnly
professed, with one heart and mind, the same faith in the same form of
words. In this wonderful unanimity there is more than nature and
philosophy. Through all the changes of nearly nineteen hundred years, this
intellectual unity of faith, although minutely defined at Nicea,
Constantinople and Trent, has endured unchanged. We cannot but behold in
this immutability of Divine faith something far beyond the power of human
wisdom. It is surely providential that, in the face of so much unbelief,
such witness should have been borne to the unity and universality of the
Catholic faith.

And now closed the second public session of the Vatican Council.

THIRD SESSION.

Preparatory to the opening of the third public session of the council, the
_schema_ "on Catholic faith and on the errors springing from rationalism"
was discussed by thirty-five bishops in the general congregations, between
the 18th of December and the 10th of January. It contained eighteen
chapters, and was sent back to the Commission on Faith in order to be
completely remodeled. It was a grand theological document, and was cast in
the traditional form of conciliar decrees, taking its shape, as they did,
from the errors which it was intended to condemn. It was somewhat archaic,
perhaps, in language, but worthy to rank with the decrees of the Councils
of Toledo or of Lateran. Having been referred to the Commission on Faith,
it was again distributed to the council in its new form on the 14th of
March, wholly recast, and was received with general approbation. This new
document is quite of a distinct character, and not to be compared with the
_schema_ by which it was preceded. It contained, instead of eighteen
chapters, only an introduction and four chapters, in which every sentence
is full of condensed doctrine, the whole having impressed upon it a
singular beauty and splendor of Divine truth. The commission was engaged
in recasting this _schema_ until the end of February. Its subject-matter
was what may well be considered the first foundations of natural and
revealed religion, viz.: the existence and perfections of God, the
creation of the world, the powers and office of human reason, revelation,
faith, the relation of reason to