practice-morals and worship-discipline and belief. The guardians of the faith were well practised in every description of spiritual warfare. They were men of acute observation and philosophical minds. Many of them had learned dialectics in the Roman schools, and were adepts in disputation before they embraced Christianity. The bishops among them were the seniors of the Churches over which they presided, selected for this office in consequence of their irreproachable lives, their thorough acquaintance with the doctrines of Christianity, their facility in communicating knowledge, and their ability to confute error. It is useless to say that there are no records of their having disputed on such questions as the spiritual efficacy of extreme unction or the intercessory power of the saints. They were occupied with questions fully as detailed and obscure, and if errors were broached on these points, they were equally competent to meet and refute them. They were watching for novelty. They were in readiness to attack and dispute everything that savoured of error. They were learned. They were subtle. They were zealous. It is difficult to understand how the Church in these times, so well lectured to beware of heretics and defended by such champions as these, could have fallen into error on any point of the revealed doctrine committed to her. Certain it is that she did not fall wilfully. But was there an intrinsic weakness in the constitution of the Church, by which she might have lost any portion of the deposit of faith, innocently, it is true, but fatally for the interests of posterity? DIVISION IV. INFALLIBILITY OF THE CHURCH IN THESE AGES. § 1. The Old Testament.-Let us make the supposition that, through a fallibility inherent in her constitution, the Church had fallen into error before the days of Tertullian. General errors have many times pervaded society. The Church had fallen and had lost the faith; tried to preserve it entire, but was not able, lost a portion of it, and she lost it in all her members-the priests, the bishops, and the laity. It was the Church that lost it, too, and not a particular congregation. It was not the Church of Jerusalem, or the Church of Alexandria, or, the Church of Corinth, but the aggregation of all the particular, Churches that, then existed. It was the Church of Christ-that congregated mass of all believers which constituted what the Scripture designates" the kingdom of God on earth.". An error in some particular dogma originated with some teacher, or bishop, or it began to manifest itself in a religious practice in some particular locality, and from this centre it had gone out, in ever-widening circles, over the surface of the Church, until it had settled down in the minds of all and become a fixed conviction, and other storms blew over and agitated that multitude, but, so far as the truth lost, the error received, it was unconscious, calm, unruffled as the ocean reposing under a summer sun. The supposition made, reduces itself to this: The mass of Christians, and of that class of Christians which we look upon as "the orthodox," believed, in the third century, some article to be "of faith" which was not "of faith," something to be revealed which in fact was a falsehood, something to be the word of Christ which was the suggestion of the enemy of God. Could such a supposition be admitted consistently with the view of this Church which we are constrained to adopt from the Scriptures? The scriptural idea of the Church is-a congregation of people collected from all the nations of the earth: "The kingdom of heaven is like to a net cast into the sea, and gathering together all kinds of fishes." A vast society in which wanderers might come to dwell: "The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard-seed, which a man took and sowed in the field. Which is the least indeed of all seeds; but when it is grown up, it is greater than all herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and dwell in the branches thereof." A dominion extending over the whole world: "He (the Messiah) shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river even to the uttermost bounds of the earth." This Church to be perpetual -never to fail, never to fall away-different from human societies, which, sooner or later, break up and form new combinations-this vast assemblage of true believers to remain in its integrity until the end of time: "But in the days of those kingdoms, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, and his kingdom shall not be delivered up to another people; and it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms; and itself shall stand for ever." 4 These two characteristics of the Church-universality and perpetuity-are referred to again and again in the scriptural prophecies which foretold the reign of the Messiah. Universality: "Ask of me, and I will give the Gentiles for thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy dominion."5 "All the ends of the earth shall remember and shall be converted to the Lord. And all the kindred of the Gentiles shall adore in his sight." "Behold! I have given thee to be the light of the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation even to the farthest part of the earth."7 "Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of a 1 Matthew xiii. 47. 3 Psalm lxxi. 8. 5 Psalm ii. 8. 7 Isaias xlix. 6. 2 Ibid. 31, 32. 4 Daniel ii. 44. 6 Psalm xxi. 28, 29. 1 summer threshing-floor, and they were carried away by the wind, and there was no place found for them; but the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth." Perpetuity: "And I will make a covenant of peace with them, it shall be an everlasting covenant with them, and I will establish them and will multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for ever." 992 "If my covenant with the day may be made void, and my covenant with the night, that there should not be day or night in their season; also my covenant with David my son may be made void, that he should not have a son to reign upon his throne, and with the Levites and priests, my ministers. As the stars of heaven cannot be numbered, nor the sand of the sea be measured, so will I multiply the seed of David my servant and the Levites my ministers." 3 "Thou shalt no more have the sun for thy light by day, neither shall the brightness of the moon enlighten thee; but the Lord shall be unto thee for an everlasting light, and thy God for thy glory." + The Church was to be perpetual and universal. The prophetic books of the Old Testament exhibited these properties of the Church in glowing terms many hundred years before the Redeemer came upon earth. It might be almost said that there is a degree of exaggeration common in poetry and highly-wrought figurative language in the manner in which these characteristics are attributed to the Church in the Psalms and the prophecy of Isaias. They are, however, so often recurred to, and so strongly insisted upon, they occur in so many passages, they appear under so many types and figures, as leave us no room to doubt that they enter into the very essence and constitution of the Church. There would be no Church of Christ if there was not a perpetual Church. There would be no Christian Church if it was not universal and catholic. The Church would be small at first naturally; the prophets represent her as growing rapidly, opening out her arms and 1 Daniel ii. 35. 3 Jeremias xxxiii. 20, 21, 22. 2 Ezech. xxxvii. 26. receiving the Gentiles far and near, and then retaining them in her bosom, or if losing some of them from time to time, receiving others by fresh conquests, and always comprising so large a body of believers as to be morally diffused through the world. Such is the idea of the Christian Church suggested by the Old Testament-universal, perpetual, perpetually universal, and universally perpetual. The books of the New Testament reproduce the idea of universality and perpetuity in terms equally significant. At one time it is a net cast into the sea and gathering together of all kind of fishes, universal. At another time it is a tree greater than all herbs, in which the birds of the air come and dwell, still universal. And then, on the other hand, the Holy Ghost is to remain with it "for ever," perpetual; and Christ to be with it, 66 even to the consummation of the world." Supposing the Church to be constitutionally-its constitution being derived from the will of God-perpetual and universal, two questions naturally arise:-1. Is there consequently any difficulty in supposing the Church to be infallible? And, 2, Does the property of infallibility follow naturally, if not necessarily, as a consequence of perpetuity and universality? 1. The Church being supposed to be universal and perpetual, and perpetually universal, it follows as a necessary consequence that the very existence of the Church is supernatural and out of the ordinary course of things. Perpetuity does not naturally belong to any human society. The greatest empires have had a beginning and an end, and the history of antiquity is but the record of the birth, the decadence, and the dissolution of society in every variety of combination. Religious societies, on the whole, have had more permanence than civil societies. Yet even religious societies, with the strong attachment of men and nations to established forms of religion, have had their day of absorption or annihilation. So that if we could discover a religious society constitutionally free from the principle of decay, we would be compelled to admit that the finger of |