truth and error, and must consequently be qualified and authorized to do so.—2 Thessalonians iii. 6; Romans xvi. 17; 2 John 10.
6th. From the necessity of the case, men need and crave an ever-living, visible, and cotemporaneous infallible Interpreter and Judge.
7th. From universal analogy every community among men has the living judge as well as the written law, and the one would be of no value without the other.
8th. This power is necessary to secure unity and universality, which all acknowledge to be essential attributes of the true church.
18. By what arguments may this claim of the Romish church he shown to be utterly baseless?
1st. A claim vesting in mortal men a power so momentous can be established only by the most clear and certain evidence, and the failure to produce such converts the claim into a treason at once against God and the human race.
2d. Her evidence fails, because the promises of Christ to preserve his church from extinction and from error do none of them go the length of pledging infallibility. The utmost promised is, that the true people of God shall never perish entirely from the earth, or be left to apostatize from the essentials of the faith.
3d. Her evidence fails, because these promises of Christ were addressed not to the officers of the church as such, but to the body of true believers. Compare John xx. 23 with Luke xxiv. 33, 47, 48, 49, and 1 John ii. 20, 27.
4th. Her evidence fails, because the church to which the precious promises of the Scriptures are pledged is not an external, visible society, the authority of which is vested in the hands of a perpetual line of apostles. For—(1.) the word church (ἐκκλησία) is a collective term, embracing the effectually called (κλητὸι) or regenerated.—Rom. i. 7; viii. 28; 1 Cor. i. 2; Jude i.; Rev. xvii. 14; also Rom. ix. 24; 1 Cor. vii. 18–24; Gal. i. 15; 2 Tim. i. 9; Heb. ix. 15; 1 Pet. ii. 9; v. 10; Eph. i. 18; 2 Pet. i. 10. (2.) The attributes ascribed to the church prove it to consist alone of the true, spiritual people of God as such.—Eph. v. 27; 1 Pet. ii. 5; John x. 27; Col. i. 18, 24. (3.) The epistles are addressed to the church, and in their salutations explain that phrase as equivalent to "the called," "the saints," "all true worshippers of God;" witness the salutations of 1st and 2d Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, 1st and 2d Peter and Jude. The same attributes are ascribed to the members of the true church as such throughout the body of the Epistles.—1 Cor. i.
