pride to its twenty-five Pontiffs, how much more to-day, when it can claim the world's reverence and admiration with its two hundred and fifty-three bishops who have sat successively in the Prince of the Apostles' Chair.[1]
'Nor is this enough; the Church of Rome is imperishable. Placed in the swiftest stream of events, amid the vicissitudes of ages and of empires, amid the raging billows of every passion, exposed to every fury, constantly assailed by emperors, Gothic kings, Greek exarchs, Lombards, and Franks—by paganism, schism, and heresy—there it has ever remained, immoveable on that Rock of Peter: that rock, itself unshaken, of Apostolic and universal unity. What could Nero do against it, or Domitian, or Decius, or Dioclesian? What could the gates of hell do against it, or what can they now?'[2]
The evidence from inspired and uninspired writings for the infallibility of the Church may be distinguished into three classes.
First, those which declare the perpetual stability or infallibility of S. Peter, or of S. Peter and his successors.
Secondly, those which declare the perpetual stability or infallibility of the Church with reference to S. Peter in his successors.
Thirdly, those which declare the perpetual stability
