llible ruling of the Church," says E.S. Purcell. "A very small and
insignificant number of priests and laymen in Germany apostatised and
set up the Sect of 'Old Catholics'. But all the rest of the Catholic
world, true to their faith, accepted, without reserve, the dogma of
Papal Infallibility."[4]

For over eighteen hundred years the Infallible authority of the
Pope-in-Council had been admitted by all Catholics. And in any great
emergency or crisis in the Church's history, these Councils were
actually held, and presided over by the Pope, either in person or by
his duly appointed representatives, for the purpose of clearing up and
adjusting disputed points, or to smite, with a withering anathema, the
various heresies as they arose, century after century. But in the
meantime, the Church, which had been planted "like a grain of mustard
seed, which is the least of all seeds" (Mark iv. 31), was fulfilling
the prophecy that had been made in regard to her, and "was shooting
out great branches" (Mark iv. 32) and becoming more extended and more
prolific than all her rivals. She enlarged her boundaries and spread
farther and farther over the face of the earth, while the number of
her children rapidly multiplied in every direction.

In course of time, the immense continents of America and Australia,
together with New Zealand and Tasmania and other hitherto unknown
regions, were discovered and thrown open to the influences of human
industry and enterprise. And as men and women swarmed into these newly
acquired lands, the Church accompanied them: and new vicariates and
dioceses sprang up, and important Sees were formed, which in time, as
the populations thickened, became divided and sub-divided into smaller
Sees, till at last the number of Bishops in these once unknown and
distant regions rose to several hundreds.

Thus the whole condition of things became altered; and the calling
together of an Ecumenical Council--a very simple affair in the
infancy of the Church--was becoming daily more and more difficult. Not
so much, perhaps, by reason of the enormous distances of the dioceses
from the central authority, for modern methods of locomotion have
almost annihilated space, but because of the immense increase in the
number of the hierarchy that would have to meet together, whenever a
Council is called.

On the other hand, with the greater extension of the Church, would
naturally come an increased crop of heresies. For, cockle may b