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Updated: June 17, 2025
Even Augustine could say, 'I should not believe the Gospel, if the authority of the Church did not determine me to do so'; a statement which a modern ultra-montane has capped by saying, 'Without the authority of the Pope, I should not place the Bible higher than the Koran. Bellarmine claims an absolute monopoly of inspiration for the Roman Church on the ground that Rome alone has preserved the apostolic succession beyond dispute.
He then told me a memorable circumstance concerning the great Cardinal Bellarmine of saintly memory. That Prelate was promoted to the dignity, unknown to himself and against his will, by Clement VIII. Under the pontificate of Paul V., who succeeded Leo XI., he was promoted to the Archbishopric of Capua, again contrary to his own wishes, but by the desire of the Pope.
Yet such criticisms miss the real significance of the theory. It is really the introduction into English politics of that notion of the two societies which, a century before, Melville and Bellarmine had made so fruitful.
"I reckon, sir," he began, with an upward nod at a belt of larches, the fringe of a great estate, that closed the view at the head of the vale, "you'm too young to mind th' ould Earl o' Bellarmine, that owned Castle Cannick, up yonder, in my growin' days. 'Ould Wounds' he was nick-named a cribbage-faced, what-the-blazes kind o' varmint, wi' a gossan wig an' a tongue like oil o' vitriol.
They think a General Council infallible, when, but not before, the Pope has ratified it; Bellarmine, I think, gives a list of General Councils which have erred. And I never have been able to make out the Romish doctrine of Indulgences."
Never indeed was there a principle more general in its use, more sovereign in its potency. How does its beautiful simplicity also, and compendious brevity, give it rank before the laborious subtleties of Bellarmine!
James I. entered the lists with a book entitled /Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance/, in which he sought to meet the reasons contained in the papal documents and in the letters of Father Persons and Cardinal Bellarmine.
And thus much of Power Ecclesiasticall; wherein I had been more briefe, forbearing to examine these Arguments of Bellarmine, if they had been his, as a Private man, and not as the Champion of the Papacy, against all other Christian Princes, and States. The Difficulty Of Obeying God And Man Both At Once
Bellarmine saith, that the neglecting and not observing the ceremonies of the church, with them is not a mortal sin, except it proceed ex contemptu. And that he who, entering into a church, doth not asperge himself with holy water, sinneth not, if so be he do it circa contemptum.
From Rome, Bologna, and other centres of thought, even from Paris and Frankfort, polemic tractates rained upon the Republic. The vast majority of their authors were on the side of the Vatican, and of this majority the leaders were the two cardinals so eminent in learning and logic, Bellarmine and Baronius; but, single-handed, Sarpi was, by general consent, a match for the whole opposing force.
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