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 be sown, and weeds may spring up, in any part of the field, and the field is now a hundred times vaster than it was.  Now, it is extremely important that as fast as errors arise they should be pointed out, and rooted up without delay, and before they can breed a pestilence and corrupt a whole neighbourhood.  But the complicated machinery of a great Ecumenical Council, which involves prolonged preparation, considerable expense, and a temporary dislocation in almost every diocese throughout the world, is too cumbersome and slow to be called into requisition whenever a heresy has to be blasted, or whenever a decision has to be made known.