170 REV. CHANCELLOR J. J. LIAS, M.A., ON THE DECAY OF 
Sarpi have told the story of the latter, so Mr. Arthur, following 
Friedrich and the author of the Letters of Quirinus, is confronted 
by Cardinal Manning, in his True Story of the Vatican Council. 
Modern historians, with their peculiar views of impartiality, 
have been accustomed to cut the Gordian knot of this conflict of 
testimony on the well-known commercial principle of “splitting 
the difference that is to say, taking the mean between the two 
extremes. It would seem to me, I confess, fairer to scrutinise 
the statements on each side with unsparing severity, just as 
witnesses on both sides of a case tried in our Courts of Law are 
examined and cross-examined by the counsel employed, and 
more especially to make allowance for the fact that the conflicting 
witnesses are on the one side speaking on behalf of an ancient 
and powerful association, strong in prescription, in material 
resources, and in influence with persons in authority, while the 
witnesses on the other side are men with their lives,* or at 
least their characters and prospects, in their hands, men who 
may not unfairly plead that they were urged on by a moral 
necessity to expose the devices by which their opponents have 
sought to maintain their influence over the thoughts and actions 
of mankind. 
Certain it was that the resistance to the Vatican decrees was 
extremely strong in intellect if not in numbers, both within 
and without the Council, and that the strongest possible 
pressure of all kinds was put upon the recalcitrants. But 
the prediction of Lamennais was fulfilled to the letter. Every 
bishop, except Strossmayer, who had opposed the decrees, 
ultimately gave in his submission. And Strossmayer, so long 
as his adversaries let him alone, was indisposed to attack them. 
The Archbishop of Munich therefore felt himself strong enough 
to excommunicate the real leader of the opposition, Bollinger, 
who declared that neither as a Christian, a theologian or a 
citizen, could he accept the decrees. The excommunication was 
launched in April, 1871. 
The sequel is a further illustration of the soundness of the 
forecast by Lamennais. The excitement throughout Europe 
was immense. Would there be any resistance ? It had been 
threatened. And if Bollinger headed a schism, it would most 
certainly be a formidable one. But Bollinger had enjoyed — or 
undergone — the training of a Roman ecclesiastic, and at the 
critical moment he shrank from precipitating a schism. He 
* Fra Paolo Sarpi was more than once attacked by assassins, and 
escaped with difficulty from their hands. 
