The Vatican Decrees and Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance: A Political Expostulation
Digital Verbum Edition
Overview
The First Vatican Council caused great unease in Protestant churches and nation states with the declaration of papal infallibility. In response to this new dogma, the great church historian Philip Schaff teamed with one of the most influential national leaders of the nineteenth century, William Gladstone.
Schaff digs into the First Vatican Council and the politics of papal infallibility, discussing its implications in and outside the Church. The great British prime minister Gladstone then comments on the potential invasion of the Catholic Church into the realm of temporal civil authority after the First Vatican Council. Schaff also includes the Latin and English text of the Catholic Church’s dogmatic decrees from the First Vatican Council.
For more by Philip Schaff, see Philip Schaff: Select Works on Religious Liberty (2 vols.).
Key Features
- Details the implications of the doctrine of papal infallinility in and out of the Church
- Includes a treatise on the political implications of the First Vatican Council
- Contains the Latin and English text of the Catholic Church’s dogmatic decrees from the First Vatican Council
About the Authors
Philip Schaff (1819–1893) was a distinguished church historian who had an enormous influence on German Reformed churches in America. He was educated at Tübingen, Halle, and Berlin, and was professor of church history and biblical literature at German Reformed Theological Seminary in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. When the Civil War forced the seminary to close, Schaff moved to Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Among his most impactful works are History of the Christian Church (8 vols.), The Creeds of Christendom (3 vols.), and The Principal of Protestantism.
William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) was a British Liberal politician who served as prime minister of the United Kingdom four separate times between 1868 and 1894, also serving as chancellor of exchequer four times. He earned the nickname “the people’s William” for his commitment to low public spending and electoral reform, and was referred to by his supporters as the GOM (Grand Old Man). He resigned from his final term as prime minister when he was 84 years old. He was renowned for his oratory and his fierce rivalry with Conservative Benjamin Disraeli, who referred to Gladstone alternatively as “God’s only mistake” (GOM).