And therefore, having first set down that common distinction of the grades of ecclesiastical administration befitting the Roman Pontiff—namely, as bishop of the City, as metropolitan of the Roman province, as primate of the suburbicarian dioceses, as patriarch of the Western tract, as head and summit in the whole Church—he concedes that the Pontiff can also dispose of diverse synods according to the quality of the cases. Yet with this caution, however, that he himself alone should never judge, but with due regard had to the cases which it behooves him to weigh. So that when, within his own parish or proper diocese, appeal is made to him from the sentence of an inferior judge, the appellant's cause is to be judged by the parochial synod, or by the supreme Pontiff himself surrounded by the counsel of his clergy;
when from a province the cause pertains to the provincial synod, when from the suburbicarian dioceses to the diocesan, when from the Western tract to the Western, when from other parts of the Church to the ecumenical and universal—unless by the free choice and petition of the appellants something else be signified. To this norm, unless I am mistaken, the sense of the Sardican canon is to be drawn out, and by the same reasoning the appeal of Flavian is to be judged. A pretty interpretation indeed, but exceedingly ingenious, of the pontifical law—if it could stand. But although various supports are employed by Quesnel to sustain it, nevertheless the very words of the canon first make it collapse. And then the most ancient interpreters who explained the canon;
and finally the mode of acting of Pope Leo and of the other Roman Pontiffs, who, when the cases of appellants had been received, either immediately pronounced (as they say) a peremptory judgment themselves;
or else decreed only that a general council was to be convened, when they believed the public solemnity of judgments to be necessary for removing the gravest dissensions and schisms which, on account of the diverse factions of wicked men, were wickedly vexing the state of the most holy Churches to the ruin and scandal of Catholics—for breaking the contumacy of those who had strayed from the rules of faith and ecclesiastical discipline, and for reconciling the penitent guilty who had abjured the crimes they had committed, a solemn confession of the Catholic faith having then been made, and finally for carrying into execution each and all the statutes of the Apostolic See which seemed necessary according to the condition of the times and the quality of the affairs.
Four things, therefore, are to be distinguished. First, the protestation of a deposed bishop who remonstrates and appeals from the sentence or judgment of the provincial synod; the third, the judgment of the Apostolic See itself, or of the Roman Pontiff, pronounced in a parochial synod or in consistory concerning the appellant's cause and rights, and concerning the preceding sentence of the provincial synod; the fourth, finally, regards the execution of the judgment of the Apostolic See itself, which, since it often cannot be had save by the convoking of a new patriarchal or general synod, for this reason the Roman Pontiffs send legates from their own side, that each thing defined by them may be faithfully committed to execution.
It is not true, therefore, that "a judgment is renewed" and "a council is renewed" ought to be taken for one and the same thing, as Quesnel devises. For an appeal once made certainly demands a renewal of the judgment—which, willy-nilly, the adversary must confess—but by no means another convocation of a council. For in express words, in the last canon transcribed by us, we have: "But if anyone request that his cause be heard again, and it seem good to the Roman bishop, upon his supplication, to judge, so that he send presbyters from his own side, it shall be in his power to do whatever he shall have approved as rightly disposed."
But what free power would there be in the Roman Pontiffs to do whatever they have approved, if they could not by right judge, or send presbyters from their side to hear the affair on account of which the appellant has appealed? Assuredly, if the Fathers had not adjudged full power to the Roman Pontiffs, but had wished to restrict the pontifical rights only to one new council, they ought to have employed another mode of speech, since among many fitting means for a new cognizance of matters, free liberty has been given them to choose that which shall be judged more fitting and suitable by their most prudent judgment. This the last words of that canon just reviewed expressly intimate.
Meanwhile Quesnel, by flattering himself, intends to affect a joy too great, because he has been able to prove that the cause of Flavian was carried to a general synod by virtue of an appeal resting solely on the Sardican canons; and moreover, having employed various distorted interpretations, which we have clearly proved in the preceding Exercise to be wholly fallacious, he again turns his cutting style against Jean David, and harasses him as a trifler and a deceiver, because he wrote that Flavian had appealed to the one and sole Roman Pontiff.
But who will not thoroughly perceive the confidence of a man who has been willing to compare our reasons—not excogitated in the brain, but drawn from sincere monuments—with so many and so great trifles, cavils, and false conjectures, and interpretations which he has busied himself to heap up with excessive zeal and to display to readers, in order to establish and strengthen his new system?