The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

JUSTIFICATION. 369
justification,^ while the polemical writings of Catholic scholars
of later times were to some extent tainted by the error of
double justice. Thus the Council was in this faced by its
most difficult task ; it accomplished it brilliantly, and to the
complete satisfaction of all the fathers of the Council, after
arduous labours which occupied seven months of its time.^
The doctrine of the Sacraments, by means of which justifi-
cation is granted, increased, and restored, forms the subject
of the decisions of the Sessions that follow, from the Vllth
to the XXIVth inclusively. The doctrine of the Eucharist
as a sacrament is treated in an especially detailed manner in
the Xlllth, and in connection therewith that of the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass in the XXIInd Session. In the Vllth
Session, in which the sacraments in general, with baptism
and confirmation, were dealt with, the Council was content
with rejecting the errors of the innovators in short propositions.
With the next dogmatic decision, in the Xlllth Session, it
reverted to the procedure adopted in the Vlth Session, namely,
^ " In eo [articulo de peccato originali] habebamus et sancta
concilia et multa sanctorum Patrum dicta. ... At in articulo
de iustificatione nihil tale habemus, sed pnmi sumus, qui isto
modo materiam istam aggredimur " (Pacheco in Merkle, I., 82) ;
cf. Card. Cervini, ibid., 8t, and Ehses, II., 257; Pallavicini,
8, 2, 2. Jos. Hefner, Die Enstehungsgesch. des Trienter Recht-
fertigungsdekretes, Paderborn, 1909. St. Ehses, Zwei Trienter
Konzilsvota (Seripando and Salmeron), 1546. Isidor Clarius
in the Rom. Quartalschrift, XXVII. (1913) 20 *seqq., 129 seqq.
Hefner, Voten (di Is. Clarius) vom Trienter Konzil, Wiirzburg,
1912 {cf. Ehses, loc. cit., 25 *seq.). The origin of the decree on
original sin is treated by W. Koch in Tiibingen Quartalsch. XCV.
(1913), 430 seq., and F. Cavallera in the Bulletin de litterature
eccles., 19 13, 241 seq. ; on that of the reform decree on preaching,
see J. E. Rainer, in Zeitschr. fiir kath. Theol., XXXIX (1915),
256 seq. Ehses (V., xiv. n. 3) gives for the first time a satisfactoryexplanation
of the absence of the clause relating to the Immaculate
Conception in several of the earliest impressions of the decree ;
c/. also Cavallera in Recherches de science relig., IV. (191 3),
270 seqq.
* C/. Vol. XII. of this work, p. 337 seq.
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