bus" was simply the constitutional
expression of the principal familiar in many governments, that the
legislative should act only on the initiative of the executive, thus
giving an immense advantage to the latter. The second means of
subordinating the council was the decision to vote by heads and not by
nations and to allow no proxies. This gave a constant majority to the
Italian prelates sent by the pope. So successful were these measures
that the French ambassador bitterly jested of the Holy Ghost coming to
Trent in the mailbags from Rome.

[Sidenote: Membership]

At the first session there were only thirty-four members entitled to
vote: four cardinals, four archbishops, twenty-one bishops and five
generals of orders. There were also present other personages,
including an ambassador from King Ferdinand, four Spanish secular
priests and a number of friars. The first question debated was the
precedence of dogma or reform. Regarding the council chiefly as an
instrument for condemning the heretics, the pope was in favor of taking
up dogma first. The emperor, on the other hand, wishing rather to
conciliate the Protestants and if possible to lure them back to the old
church, was in favor of starting with reform. The struggle, which was
carried on not so much on the floor of the synod as behind the members'
backs in the intrigues of courts, was decided by a compromise to the
effect that both dogma and reform should be taken up simultaneously.
But all enactments dealing with ecclesiastical irregularities were to
bear the proviso "under reservation of the papal authority."

[Sidenote: Dogmatic decrees]

The dogmatic decrees at Trent were almost wholly oriented by the
polemic against Protestantism. {392} Practically nothing was defined
save what had already been taken up in the Augsburg Confession or in
the writings of Calvin, of Zwingli and of the Anabaptists. Inevitably,
a spirit so purely defensive could not be animated by a primarily
philosophical interest. The guiding star was not a system but a
policy, and this policy was nothing more nor less than that of
re-establishing tradition. The practice of the church was the standard
applied; many an unhistorical assertion was made to justify it and many
a practice of comparatively recent growth was sanctioned by the
postulate that "it had descended from apostolic use." "By show of
antiquity they introduce novelty," was Bacon's correct judgment.

[Sidenote: Bib