UNCTION, EXTREME UNIGENITUS DEI FILIUS. 



717 



plied to letters standing for words in inscriptions ! 

 and epitaphs. Manuscripts written with uncial 

 letters possess, from that circumstance, a proof of 

 considerable age, since these characters have not 

 been in use since the seventh century. 



UNCTION, EXTREME, has been, since the 

 twelfth century, one of the seven sacraments of the 

 Catholic church : the council of Trent also declares 

 it to be a sacrament (sess. xiv., canon 1 et seq.). 

 It is performed, in cases of mortal disease, by anoint- 

 ing the head, the hands and the feet with oil con- 

 secrated by the bishop, and accompanied with pray- 

 ers. (See Chrism.) As it has, according to the 

 opinion of the Catholics, sacramental power (that 

 is, it effects the purification of the dying person 

 from his sins, and a communication of the divine 

 forgiveness), it can only be administered by a bishop 

 or priest ; and, because it requires piety on the 

 part of those who receive it, it is allowed to such 

 sick persons only as are permitted to partake of the 

 Lord's supper. Small children and excommunicated 

 persons are, therefore, not permitted to receive it. 

 The Catholic church derive their opinion of the ef- 

 ficacy of extreme unction from the custom of the 

 apostles to anoint the sick with oil, accompanied 

 with prayer (James v., 14 and 15), in order, by this 

 means, to console them and promote the good of 

 their souls. The Protestants deny the sacramental 

 signification and power of this ceremony, because 

 nothing is known of a formal establishment of it by 

 Christ himself. In the Greek church, it is adminis- 

 tered, not only to dying persons, but generally, in 

 diseases of all kinds, as tending to promote the re- 

 storation of health and the forgiveness of sins. 

 UNDERWALDEN. See Unterwalden. 

 UNICORN. According to Von Zach's examina- 

 tion of the accounts given, in ancient and modern 

 times, of the unicorn, the opinion of its fabulous 

 character, which has prevailed since the time of 

 Buffon, does not rest on sufficient grounds. In the 

 country of the ancient Meroe, a beast of this de- 

 scription is found, of the size of a cow, and the 

 form of an antelope ; and the male has upon his 

 forehead a long and straight horn. 



UNIFORMITY, ACT OF. See Non-Conformists. 

 UNIGENITUS DEI FILIUS, &e., are the first 

 words of a bull issued by pope Clement XI. in 1713, 

 which, under the name of Constitution of Unigeni- 

 ttts, has acquired a celebrity very dangerous to the 

 papal authority and the peace of the Catholic 

 church. This bull condemns 101 propositions 

 drawn from the work of Pasquier Quesnel, priest 

 of the Oratory, entitled Le nouveau Testament tra- 

 ditit en Francois, avec des Reflexions morales. 

 Those who adhere to the bull say that the doctrines 

 contained in those 101 propositions had been al- 

 ready condemned in the writings of Baius and Jan- 

 senius. Against the reproach, that the pope had 

 condemned the propositions in mass, without teach- 

 ing any religious truth, so that the bull could not 

 serve as a rule of faith, the " constitutionists," as 

 the adherents of the " constitution" were called, 

 say that the "anti-constitutionists" were equally 

 regardless of the bull of Innocent X. which, never- 

 theless, censured every error of Jansenius in parti- 

 cular ; and as regards the charge that the condem- 

 nation of Baius, Jansenius and Quesnel was oc- 

 casioned mainly by an intrigue of the Jesuits against 

 the Jansenists, they say, that it is unnecessary to in- 

 vestigate this point, or whether the Jesuits are 

 really enemies to the adherents of St Augustine's 

 doctrine, since the condemnation has been pro- 



nounced and confirmed by four or five successive 

 popes, and that similar doctrines were condemned 

 by the church before the influence of the Jesuits 

 existed, as those of the predestinarians, in the fifth 

 century, of Gothescalc, in the ninth, and those of 

 Calvin, condemned by the council of Trent, in 1547, 

 when the society of Jesuits was just beginning to 

 exist, having been founded in 1540. The reader 

 who wishes to see the views of the anti-constitu- 

 tionists further treated must be referred to works 

 written on this subject, also to the article Unige- 

 nitus, in the Dictionnaire de Theologie, Extrait de 

 I 'Encyclopedic Methodique (Toulouse, 1817). 



We will now state the case as viewed by those 

 who consider themselves disinterested judges. In 

 order to strike a deadly blow at the Jansenists, the 

 Jesuit party at the court of Louis XIV. especially 

 the confessor of the king, Le Tellier, projected the 

 bull unigenitus, and extorted it from the pope. The 

 101 propositions condemned though those respect- 

 ing grace will not be acknowledged by all Chris- 

 tians were taken, almost literally, either from the 

 Bible or other acknowledged authorities of the 

 Catholic church. Quesnel, who, after his exile, 

 lived in Amsterdam, was considered by the Jesuits 

 as the principal champion of the Jansenists since 

 the death of Arnauld and Nicole. The hatred of 

 the Jesuits towards him and the archbishop of 

 Paris, cardinal Noailles, who was almost univer- 

 sally revered, and who had publicly recommended 

 Quesnel's work, and honourably maintained his in- 

 dependence against Le Tellier, affords an explana- 

 tion of this arbitrary measure. The world was 

 astounded to see the papal condemnation extended, 

 not merely to those passages in which Quesnel, as 

 a true Jansenist, ascribed to divine grace an uncon- 

 ditional and irresistible influence upon the human 

 heart, but also to those which insisted upon purity 

 of motives, on the necessity of true religious love 

 of virtue, and reconciliation with God, on the 

 general use of the Bible, on the correction of the 

 morals of the clergy, and the necessity of a con- 

 scientious fulfilment of their duties ; and was un- 

 able to understand why the chief of the Roman 

 church had yielded so far to the Jesuits and the 

 French court as to issue, under his name, a de- 

 nunciation of some of the fundamental truths of 

 Christianity; for the bull was considered as such, 

 not only by many Jansenists, but also by many 

 other Catholics in foreign countries. The French 

 parliament, cardinal Noailles, with a large part of 

 the French clergy, the majority of the theologians 

 of Sorbonne, even the French ladies (from whom 

 the bull, by condemning the passage of Quesnel 

 " that woman ought to be allowed the means of a 

 thorough knowledge of religion and the holy Scrip- 

 tures," withholds the fundamental right of Chris- 

 tians), and public opinion, either openly declared 

 against this bull which was universally considered 

 as the production of the Jesuits or actively op- 

 posed it in private ; whilst the Jesuits, through the 

 king, used all the means of power and persuasion 

 to make the bull a law of the realm. But, though 

 a large number could be won over by royal decrees, 

 by bribes, threats, and the arrest of some refractory 

 persons of lower rank, yet nothing was to be ef- 

 fected by these means against the parliament and 

 the archbishop. The former would not enrol the 

 bull as a law of the kingdom, except on certain 

 conditions, which invalidated it almost entirely; the 

 latter at first refused to publish the bull; and 

 when he did proclaim it at a later period, it \vas 



