, composed by the
Cardinal of Lorraine and Cardinal Madruccio, solemnly commending the
ordinances of the council to the Church and to the princes of
Christendom, and remitting any difficulties concerning the execution of
the decrees to the Pope, who would provide for it either by summoning
another general council or as he might determine. A concluding decree
put an end to the council itself, which closed with a kind of general
thanksgiving intoned by the Cardinal of Lorraine.

The decrees of the council were shortly afterward (January 26, 1564)
ratified by Pius IV, against the wish of the more determined
Curialists, while others would have wished him to guard himself by
certain restrictions. These were, however, unnecessary, as he reserved
to himself the interpretation of doubtful or disputed decrees. This
reservation remained absolute as to decrees concerning dogma; for the
interpretation of those concerning discipline, Sixtus V afterward
appointed a special commission under the name of the "congregation of
the Council of Trent." While the former became _ipso facto_ binding on
the entire Church, the decrees on discipline and reformation could not
become valid in any particular state till after they had been published
in it with the consent of its government. This distinction is of the
greatest importance. The doctrinal system of the Church of Rome was now
enduringly fixed; the area which the Church had lost she could
henceforth only recover if she reconquered it.

Many attempts at reunion by compromise have since been made from the
Protestant side, and some of these have perhaps been met half way by the
generous wishes of not a few Catholics; but the Council of Trent has
doomed all these projects to inevitable sterility. The gain of the
Church of Rome from her acquisition at Trent of a clearly and sharply
defined "body of doctrine" is not open to dispute, except from a point
of view which her doctors have steadily repudiated. And it is difficult
to suppose but that, in her conflict with the spirit of criticism which
from the first in some measure animated the Protestant Reformation and
afterward urged it far beyond its original scope, the Church of Rome
must have proved an unequal combatant had not the Council of Trent
renewed the foundations of the authority claimed by herself and of that
claimed by her head on earth.

The effect of the disciplinary decrees of the council, though more
far-reaching and enduring than