ived that for all, as
bearing the figure and the person of all."

He then shows that this tradition had gone down even to his own times:
"This holy and apostolic doctrine of the Episcopal jurisdiction and power
proceeding immediately from, and instituted by, Christ, the Gallic Church
hath most zealously retained." "Therefore,[161] that very late invention,
that Bishops receive their jurisdiction from the Pope, and are, as it were,
vicars of him, ought to be banished from Christian schools, as unheard of
for twelve centuries."

It is precisely "this very late invention" which is urged against the
Church of England. Unless this be true, her position in itself, supposing
her to be clear of heresy, with which, at present, I have nothing to do, is
impregnable.

Such is the most Catholic interpretation by which Bossuet sets in harmony
with the teaching of all antiquity a few expressions, which are all that I
have been able to find that are even capable of being forced into
accordance with the present Papal system, and which, as soon as they are so
forced, contradict the whole history of Councils, and the whole life of the
most illustrious Fathers.

Now there is no doubt that Bellarmine's doctrine is the true logical
development of the Papal Theory; it alone has consistency and completeness;
it alone is the adequate expression of that prodigious power which was
allowed to enthrone itself in the Church during the middle ages; it would
fain account for it and justify it. Grant but its postulate, that the Pope
is the sole vicar of Christ, and all which it requires must follow. On the
other hand, that school which ranks Bossuet at its head, and which sought
to limit, in some degree, by the Canons the power of the Roman Pontiff, and
maintained that Bishops were, _jure divino_, successors of the Apostles, in
a real, not in a fictitious sense, however well-founded in what it
maintained on the one side, was certainly inconsistent. It gave either too
much or too little to the Roman See;--too much, if its own declarations
about the succession of Bishops and the authority of General Councils be
true, and founded in antiquity, as we believe; too little, if the Pope be
indeed the only Vicar of Christ on earth, and the supreme Ruler of His
Church; for then these maxims put their partisans very nearly into the
position of rebels, and, in truth, brought the Gallican Church to the brink
of a schism, in 1682. However this may be, that school