"This Consilium was the result of an assembly of four cardinals, among
whom was our Pole, and five prelates, by Paul III. in 1537, charged to
give him their best advice relative to a reformation of the church. The
corruptions of that community were detailed and denounced with more
freedom than might have been expected, or was probably desired; so much
so, that when one of the body, Cardinal Caraffa, assumed the tiara as
Paul IV., he transferred his own _advice_ into his own list of
prohibited books. The Consilium became the subject of an animated
controversy. McCrie in his _History of the Reformation in Italy_, has
given a satisfactory account of the whole, pp. 83, &c. The candid
Quirini could maintain neither the spuriousness of this important
document, nor its non-identity with the one condemned in the Index.
(See Schelborn's Two Epistles on the subject, Tiguri, 1748.) And now
observe, gentle reader, the pontifical artifice which this discussion
has produced. Not in the Index following the year 1748, namely, that of
1750 (that was too soon), but in the next, that of 1758, the article
appears thus: 'Consilium de emendanda Ecclesia. _Cum Notis vel
Praefationibus Haereticorum. Ind. Trid._' The whole, particularly the
Ind. Trid., is an implied and real falsehood."-- Mendham's _Literary
Policy of the Church of Rome_, pp. 48, 49.
M. Barbier, in his _Dictionnaire des Pseudoynmes_, has given his opinion of
the genuineness of the Consilium in the following note, in reply to some
queries on the subject:
"Monsieur.--Le _Consilium quorundam Episcoporum_, &c., me parait une piece
bien authentique, puisque Brown declare l'avoir trouve non-seulement dans
les oeuvres de Vergerio, mais encore dans les _Lectiones Memorabiles_, en 2
vol. in fol. par Wolphius. _Je ne connais rien contre_ cette piece.
"J'ai l'honneur, &c.
"BARBIER."
The learned Lorente has reprinted the "Concilium" also in his work entitled
_Monumens Historiques concernant les deux Pragmatiques Sanctions_. There
can, therefore, be no just grounds for doubting the character of this
precious article.