134 INFALLIBILITY. [Booz I. promise can belong only to the apostles; because it was to tier re* membra,tce only that these things could be brought. 2. That this pro- raise can agree to no councils or Pope8 after the death 01' the apostles, seeing they never challenged to themselves the gift of prophecy, no? had future contingencies revealed to them. If the bishops of the Church of Rome can show that they have the gift of prophecy in a continued succession, and can foretel things to come, as the apostles did, then we will own that the promise was directed to his church in all ages, but not till then. But admitting that the passage refers to the apostles and their suc- cessors, or, which is different, to the whole church; yet so St. John tells all believers: "Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and know all things," that is, all things necessary and useful; not that they were incapable of mistaking, but that with due care they might avoid all serious mistakes. Besides, the promise is made to those who love -Cod and keep his commandments; which gives no very good ground for many popes and others of the Roman Catholic clergy to lay claim to the privilege embraced in the promise. Nothing can be more unreasonable than to challenge a right to a privilege, by virtue of such a romise as was granted on quite different �P . considerations from the grounds on which that right is challenged. The promise of an infallible assistance had a peculiar respect to the apostles and the first state of the church, and was not made upon reasons com- mon to all ages. It is, therefore, very unreasonable that a promise made to persons in one office must be applied in the same manner to persons in quite a different office; that a promise made to each of them separately must be equally applied to others only as in a council; that a promise made of immediate divine revelation, and enabling the ?er- sons who enjoyed the privilege of it to work miracles and utter pro- phecies to attest their testimonyto be infallible, should be equally applied to such as dare not challenge a divine revelation, and never did work a miracle or utter a prophecy to attest such an infallible assistance. Yet all this is done by Romanists when they endearour to deduce the infallibility of their church from those promises of the assistance of Christ and his Spirit which were made to the aposfies. (5.) In confirmation that the promise of infallibility made to the .apostles is to be pestrained to their own times, we present the folio,v- mg serious ditTiculties attending the contrary supposition:--l. It is tluite a different thing to say, there shall always be a church, and to say, that church shall always be infallible. Protestants maintain that the church shah never quite fall away, but that there shall be always a number of men professing Christianity in the world without infalli- bility. And should the members of the Roman Church be destroyed in one age or renounce Christianity, there would still be a sufficient number in the Protestant and Greek churches to profess Christianity and perpetuate the church. 2. The perpetuity of the church rather argues the infallibility of the promise than of the church; for certainly' infallibility* for the church cannot be inferred from a promise of per- petairy. All the infallibility supposable in this case is an infallibility of accomplishment of the promise made, just as that the sceptre would not depart from Judah (Gen xlix, 10)till the da of the Messiah. Tats d?d no secure infallibility to the Jewish polity, but a continuance 1
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