it enacts command the obedience of the faithful". In its decisions concerning facts connected with doctrine, and in its censures of the works which contain that doctrine', it is also infallible, and the same assent is required. "In matters of fact "or discipline, things alterable by circum"stances of time or place, or in matters of speculation or civil policy," things not under its jurisdiction", but " depending on mere human judgment or testimony",' it is conceded that the Church may err.

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a "

It might be sufficient to remark, that these privileges of inerrancy, which are assumed from the promises made to Peter, cannot be proved from those promises, and that the conclusion is contradicted by notorious acts of errancy and fallibility, of which Protestants need not to be reminded, and of which Romanists will not be convinced. What more immediately concerns the proposed method of our inquiry is,

" versetur vel in iis in quibus præscribitur circumstantiis 66 religioni Christianæ sit nociva."

that the Scriptures, so far from delivering the most distant intimation of the permanent purity of the Church, speak explicitly and distinctly of the corruption of the Christian faith, and of the degeneracy of Christian manners, the preservation of which would have been the appropriate office of an infallible Church. If it be allowed to draw the veil from accomplished and unaccomplished prophecy, and to unfold the sublime mysteries of the Apocalypse, there are predictions, copious, distinct, and marked by the precision of chronological detail, of the rise and fall of the great apostasy of Mohammed, and of the progress, maturity, and declension of a corrupt and persecuting Church.

3. The Church to which infallibility is assumed, "is that which is termed the Ro"man

man Catholic Church";" a Church always the same, divided from none more ancient than itself, and binding all its members in identity of profession and

b 1 Tim. iv. 1, 2, 3. 2 Thess. ii. 3-12. 2 Pet. ii. 1, 2. 1 John ii. 18. 22. Rev. passim. c2 Tim. iii. 1-7. d Berington, p. 90.

unity of communione. This Church alone possesses universality simultaneous and permanent f; no other Christian society possesses apostolic origin, and ministry, and succession. She is the primary unity, the original root and trunk from which has flowed to other Churches that apostolic vigour which gave them life in Christ". She alone is the bride, which Christ hath purchased with his blood; the Church, which he ordained for an endless perpetuity, and suffered not the gates of hell to prevail against it'. With the same lofty pretensions it is maintained, that the Church of Rome is the only survivor of the Churches which were directly and immediately founded by the Apostles*; that she is the mother and mistress of all "Churches 1;" "that... illegality and nullity characterized the first Protestant "consecrations";" that Protestants are

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g

e Delahogue, p. 44. f Ibid. p. 58. 61. 65. Ibid. p. 74,75. Ibid. p. 75. 82. i Ibid. p. 82. k Ibid. p. 424. 1 Creed of Pius IV. which "is subscribed by Catholics on "several occasions."

m

Gandolphy, vol. iv. note in p. 102. "And yet this is

therefore, by the very fault of their origin, schismatical"; that they cannot clear them

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"the legitimate stock from whence all their subsequent "ordinations have emanated: now what says Jesus "Christ?' He that entereth not by the door into the "sheepfold, but climbeth up another way, the same is "a thief and a robber;' and all who adhere to such, par"ticipate in the same grievous crime." Ibid. "The ar"guments of Catholics against the validity of Protestant "ordinations may be resolved into these two grand "objections. 1. A defect of succession from the Catho"lic hierarchy. 2. A defect in the sacramental form of “ordaining.”—"At present a Protestant Bishop or "Clergyman, on his conversion to the Catholic faith, "returns to the rank of a layman, and should he solicit "and prove worthy to become a minister of that reli

66

gion, he receives his consecration from a Bishop of the "Catholic Church, which would be a sacrilegious act of "the Catholic party, were he really previously ordain"ed."-" Valid orders, like valid baptism, can never be "reiterated." Ibid. p. 68-71.

n Delahogue, p. 461. "The term Reformation, in the "understanding of a Catholic, means, first, a departure "from the ancient faith or revealed religion of Jesus "Christ: 2dly, the substitution of one of human inven"tion, by Luther and his followers, more agreeable to "the passions, and better adapted to the inclinations of "the heart: thirdly, the unjustifiable rebellion against "the lawful authority of Christ's Catholic Church." Gandolphy, vol. ii. p. 129. “It is neither apostasy, nor

selves of the charge which puts them out of the way of salvation?; that they have neither the sanctity, the catholicity', nor the apostolicity of the true Church; that their orders, however valid, are not legitimatet; and that the Churches of the East are also schismatical, and all separated at a definite period from the Romish communion ".

Under these imputations the Protestant and scriptural theologian may take up his parable, and say: What! "went the word "of God out from you, or came it unto "you alone?" Without digressing into the question of an apostolical succession at the time of the Reformation, the unanswerable defence of which obtained for a Romanist the honours of this University; it may be asked, Where was the Church of Rome

"schism, nor rebellion, to separate from them: even "the Church of England, which is the eldest of her "heretical sisterhood, is a schismatical branch, a dead "limb of the true vine, a rebellious child." Ibid.

• Delahogue, p. 41. 460. PIbid. p. 35. 12. 16. Ibid. r Ibid. p. 65. 66. s Ibid. p. 74. t Ibid. p. 71.

p. 55.

u Ibid. p. 75. 76. Gandolphy, vol. ii. p. 200.