know that he has thought proper to preserve any other, or Christianity itself?

Which of the hundred contains the genuine one of them all fully

But the reformation restored Christianity to its original purity. What assurance have we of this? contradictory systems of Protestantism type of that restoration? Or does any realize the original Church of Christ? Must we take them all together, in order to have original Christianity in its purity and integrity? But this were absurd and impossible; for they mutu-. ally exclude one another, and the original Church of Christ was certainly not a chaos of discordant and irreconcileable elements. To think this, would be to blaspheme Jesus Christ himself.

But there was the Greek church which still remained after the Latin or western had apostatized-.This is another signal delusion. As I have already shown, the Greek church, even after its schism, continued to agree in belief with the Latin Church in all articles of faith, except in two; the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son as well as from the Father, and the supremacy of the pope; in regard to the former of which all evangelical Protestants of the present day differ from it and agree with the Roman Catholic Church. In all things else; in all those distinctive doctrines of Catholicity against which Protestants object as superstitious and idolatrous; the Greek church of the present day, as well as all the oriental sects, still profess and retain precisely the same faith and practice as we do. Therefore, they are clearly with us, and against Protestants. And therefore, if the western Church erred in those things, the eastern erred also; and so the whole Church, both in the east and in the west, fell away together from the true doctrine. Then the true Church of Christ disappeared entirely from the face of the earth. Horrible inference! You cannot believe it, for an instant, my dear brethren, without losing all faith in Christianity itself, and turning deists at once, as perhaps more than half the Protestant world have already done.

4. But this pretended falling away of the Catholic Church is opposed to the very genius of Christianity; and it moreover openly falsifies the clearest, most explicit, and most solemn predictions and promises of Jesus Christ; nay, it subverts

Christianity itself, and saps the foundation of all faith. I have already had occasion to hint at some of these promises; but the subject is so very important, that I propose to devote the next Lecture to its consideration.

From what I have already said and endeavored to prove in this, I hope you will agree with me in the belief, that the two propositions upon which the present argument rests have been fully established:—that Protestantism is not, and cannot claim to be, eighteen hundred years old; and that Catholicity can clearly prove her claim to this amount of antiquity. The conclusion is necessary and irresistible :-that the Catholic Church alone is the one true Church of Jesus Christ.

AND THIS IS THE SIXTH EVIDENCE OF CATHOLICITY.

May Almighty God vouchsafe to grant to us all, my dear brethren, to be of one mind and of one heart in Christ Jesus; that there may no longer be any schisms amongst us; and that, by coming to a knowledge of the one ancient truth, and entering upon the old paths trodden by our ancestors, we may attain life everlasting. "For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" May God grant us his holy light and grace to enable us to see, understand, and walk in these things: through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior! Amen.

10

LECTURE VIII.

INFALLIBILITY OF THE CHURCH.

THE SEVENTH EVIDENCE OF CATHOLICITY.

Text explained-Importance of the principle it involves-Doctrine of infallibility-What it is not-What it is—Popular objections solved-The seat of infallibility-The pope and a general councilCouncils of Constance and Basle-Can many fallibles make an infallible?-The charge of reasoning in a vicious circle answeredAnd retorted-The whole question depends upon a fact-Presumptive evidence in proof of this fact-Four great principles applied to its elucidation-The apostolic age-Infallibility in possession at its close-Positive evidence-The promises of Christ addressed to St. Peter-And to the other apostles-Testimony and reasoning of St. Paul-The spotless Bride of the Lamb-St. Cyprian-Recapitulation-The seventh evidence of Catholicity-St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine-Conclusion.

"And I say to thee: that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, AND THE GATES OF HELL SHALL NOT PREVAIL AGAINST IT." St. Mathew xvi. 18.

SUCH, my beloved brethren, is the solemn declaration and promise in regard to the stability of his Church, made by our blessed Lord and Master more than eighteen hundred years ago. Prophet and God as he was, he could not be himself deceived, nor could he deceive us; he could promise whatever he pleased, and redeem all that he promised. We are, then, to listen to his words with humility and reverence, and with the simplicity and docility of little children; and we are carefully to banish from our minds all prejudice and all disposition to cavil, if we would gather and profit by their sacred meaning.

These dispositions are the more important here, as it is question of a great fundamental principle upon which the whole

edifice of the Church securely rests, and by which it can show to the world that it is the self-same structure now that it was eighteen centuries ago, when the great Man-God himself built it upon a rock. For if we once establish, that Christ is and always has been with his Church, teaching through it as his official organ, watching over its destinies, guarding it from error, averting from it all dangers both from within and from without; and that he pledged his eternal truth to preserve it in all its original purity and integrity to the very end of time;—if, in a word, we once admit that the Church is infallible in her public teaching; we have cut the Gordian knot of controversy, and have put an end to all religious disputes and sects: for we have established a competent and infallible judge of controversies, to whose decisions all are bound to submit, and upon the truth and certainity of whose judgments all may most implicitly rely.

Nay more, we are enabled, by means of this single principle, to thread with ease and safety all the intricate mazes of Church history, to discover the finger of God every where, and to connect the present Catholic with the primitive Christian Church. For if the Church of Christ could not err in matters of faith and morality, she could not change, and therefore is the self-same now as she was in the beginning. Therefore, if the Catholic was once the true Church, she is so yet. This, you will recollect, is the argument which I promised in my last Lecture to develop on this evening. Considering the vast importance of this tenet of infallibility in the Christian system, and the great and eternal interests involved in the belief or rejection of it, may I solicit your patient and undivided at

tention?

The infallibility of the Church!—I fancy that I hear some of you exclaim with a smile or a lurking sneer,-surely you are not going to attempt proving this absurdity to an intelligent audience in the nineteenth century ! It is too late in the day to attempt persuading men of sense that your popes, bishops, or priests are infallible; as if they were not all as fallible men as any other; as if they were not as much liable to sin and frailty as the rest of mankind; as if history did not represent many

of them as very corrupt, and a disgrace to the Church and to humanity itself!

Have a little patience, my dear brethren, and I hope to show you that this popular objection, upon which declaimers have rung so many changes during the last three centuries, does not really touch the matter at issue between Protestants and the Catholic Church, on this subject of Church infallibility. For what do we mean, when we assert that the Church is infallible? Do we mean to say that any priest, or bishop, or any particular body of priests or of bishops, not representing the whole Church, is impeccable or infallible? Not at all; we hold no such doctrinal tenet; our adversaries may impute it to us for their own purposes; we maintain it not.

Do we mean to say that even the pope is impeccable or infallible, in his private and individual capacity? No Catholic divine ever so much as dreamed of saying or thinking so. Do we mean to say that the pope, viewed in his public and official capacity, when he speaks out as the organ and visible head of the Church, is gifted with infallibility? No Catholic divine ever defended his infallibility, even under such circumstances, unless when the matters on which he uttered his definition were intimately connected with the doctrines of faith and morals, and when, if he should be permitted by God to fall into error, there would be danger of the whole Church being also led astray. Those Catholic theologians who maintain the individual infallibility of the Roman pontiff in this particular case, consider it as a matter of opinion more or less certain, not as one of Catholic faith obligatory on all. There is not one among them all who ventures to brand the defendants of the opposite opinion as heretics or even as suspected of heresy; and some of the greatest men who have, in modern times, adorned the Catholic Church with their virtues and writings,-as, for instance, the famous Bossuet,-have openly and publicly to the very hour of their death denied the proposition that the pope is, under any circumstances, personally infallible.

In regard to papal decrees or bulls having reference to particular cases of Church discipline and government, to matters of fact dependent on human testimony, to affairs of a political