to teach be a promise to render infallible. As the Church has gone through the world bathed in tears and blood, so has she gone soiled with sin and error. It is just as manifest that she has never been infallible, as that she has never been perfectly holy. Christ no more promised the one than the other.
F. The Doctrine eontradided hy Facts.
The fourth argument is that the Romish doctrine of the infalli- bility of the Cliurch is contradicted by undeniable historical facts. It therefore cannot be true. The Church has often erred, and therefore it is not infallible.
Protestants believe that the Church, under all dispensations, has been the same. It has always had the same God ; the same Re- deemer ; the same rule of faith and practice (the written Word of God, at least from the time of Moses), the same promise of the presence and guidance of the Spirit, the same pledge of perpetuity and triumph. To them, therefore, the fact that the whole visible Church repeatedly apostatized during the old economy — and that, not the people only, but all the representatives of the Church, the priests, the Levites, and the elders — is a decisive proof that the external, visible Church may fatally err in matters of faith. No less decisive is the fact that the whole Jewish Church and people, as a church and nation, rejected Christ. He came to his own, and his own received him not. The vast majority of the people, the chief priests, the scribes and the elders, refused to recognize him as the Messiah. The Sanhedrim, the great representative body of the Church at that time, pronounced him worthy of death, and de- manded his crucifixion. This, to Protestants, is ov^erwhelming proof that the Church may err.
Romanists, however, make such a diffei'ence between the Church before and after the advent of Christ, that they do not admit the force of this arguirient. That the Jewish Church erred, they say, is no proof that the Christian Church can err. It will be neces- sary, therefore, to show that according to the principles and admis- sions of Romanists themselves, the Church has erred. It taught at one time what it condemned at another, and what the Church of Rome now condemns. To prove this, it will suffice to refer to two undeniable examples.
It is to be borne in mind that by the Church, in this connection, Romanists do not mean the true people of God ; nor the body of professing Christians ; nor the majority of priests, or doctors of di- vinity, but the episcopate. What the body of bishops of any age
144 INTRODUCTION. [Ch. V. — R. C. R. of Faith.
teach, all Christians are bound to believe, because these bishops are so guided by the Spirit as to be infallible in their teaching.
The Arian Apostasy.
The first great historical fact inconsistent with this theory is, that the great majority of the bishops, both of the Eastern and Western Church, including the Pope of Rome, taught Arianism, which the whole Church, both before and afterwards, condemned. The de- cision of three hundred and eighty bishops at the Council of Nice, ratified by the assent of the great majority of those who did not attend that Council, is fairly taken as proof that the visible Church at that time taught, as Rome now teaches, that the Son is coiisub- stantial with the Father. The fact that some dissented at the time, or that more soon joined in that dissent ; or, that in a few years, in the East, the dissentients were in the majority, is not considered as invalidating the decision of that Council as the decision of the Church ; because a majority of the bishops, as a body, were still in favor of the Nicene doctrine. Then, by parity of reasoning, the decisions of the two contemporary councils, one at Selencia in the East, the other at Ariminum in the West, including nearly eight hundred bishops, ratified as those decisions were by the great ma- jority of the bishops of the whole Church (including Liberius, the bishop of Rome), must be accepted as the teaching of the visible Church of that age. But those decisions, according to the pre- vious and subsequent judgment of the Church, were heretical. It has been urged that the language adopted by the Council of Ari- minum admits of an orthodox interpretation. In answer to this, it is enough to say, (1.) That it was drawn up, proposed, and urged by the avowed opponents of the Nicene Creed. (2.) That it was strenuously resisted by the advocates of that creed, and renounced as soon as they gained the ascendency. (3.) That Mr. Palmer himself admits that the Council repudiated the word " consubstan- tial " as expressing the relation of the Son to the Father. But this was the precise point in dispute between the Orthodox and semi- Arians.
Ancients and moderns unite in testifying to the general preva- il nee of Arianism at that time. Gregory Nazianzen says,i " Nam si perpaucos exceperis, .... omnes (pastores) tempori ob- secuti sunt : hoc tantum inter eos discriminis fuit, quod alii pitius, alii serius in eani fraudem inciderunt, atque, alii impietatis duces antistitesque se prsebuerunt." Jerome sa^^s : " Ingemuit totua
1 Oral. xxi. t. i. p. 387, edition Paris, 1609.