e the Pope's
return. They had suffered more than others in the revolution that
dethroned him; and they had their reward in the restoration. They had
long been held in check by the Dominicans; but the theology of the
Dominicans had been discountenanced and their spirit broken in 1854,
when a doctrine which they had contested for centuries was proclaimed a
dogma of faith. In the strife for the Pope's temporal dominion the
Jesuits were most zealous; and they were busy in the preparation and in
the defence of the Syllabus. They were connected with every measure for
which the Pope most cared; and their divines became the oracles of the
Roman congregations. The papal infallibility had been always their
favourite doctrine. Its adoption by the Council promised to give to
their theology official warrant, and to their Order the supremacy in the
Church. They were now in power; and they snatched their opportunity when
the Council was convoked.

Efforts to establish this doctrine had been going on for years. The
dogmatic decree of 1854 involved it so distinctly that its formal
recognition seemed to be only a question of time and zeal. People even
said that it was the real object of that decree to create a precedent
which should make it impossible afterwards to deny papal infallibility.
The Catechisms were altered, or new ones were substituted, in which it
was taught. After 1852 the doctrine began to show itself in the Acts of
provincial synods, and it was afterwards supposed that the bishops of
those provinces were committed to it. One of these synods was held at
Cologne; and three surviving members were in the Council at Rome, of
whom two were in the minority, and the third had continued in his
writings to oppose the doctrine of infallibility, after it had found its
way into the Cologne decree. The suspicion that the Acts had been
tampered with is suggested by what passed at the synod of Baltimore in
1866. The Archbishop of St. Louis signed the Acts of that synod under
protest, and after obtaining a pledge that his protest would be inserted
by the apostolic delegate. The pledge was not kept. "I complain," writes
the archbishop, "that the promise which had been given was broken. The
Acts ought to have been published in their integrity, or not at
all."[371] This process was carried on so boldly that men understood
what was to come. Protestants foretold that the Catholics would not rest
until the Pope was formally declared infallible;