The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

242 INFALLIBILITY.Bible, like no other book in the world, remains eternallyimmutable, notwithstanding it is as completely adapted toeach successive condition of the Church and of society asif it had been written for that age, and no other. Whyso?Because that book is stored with great principles andcomprehensive laws, adapted to every case that can arise,and capable of being applied to all the conditions and agesof the world. The Church, so far from having got beyondthe Bible, is not yet abreast of it. Rome, on the otherhand, is an iron circle, within which the human mind mayrevolve for ever without progressing a hairbreadth. ThatChurch is the only society that never progresses. She neverabandons a narrow view of truth for one more enlarged ;shenever corrects what is wrong or drops what is untrue ; becauseshe is infallible. Had she been able to render societyas fixed as herself, it might have been safe to adopt, as herpolicy, immobility. But society is in motion ; she can neithergo along with the current nor arrest it, and thereforemust founder at her moorings.Thus, in the righteous providenceof God, that which was the source of her power willbe the cause of her destruction.We are fully warranted in affirming that the Church ofHome has claimed infallibility. If not directly and formallyasserted, it is manifestly implied, in the decrees of generalcouncils, in the bulls of popes, and in canons and articlesof an authoritative character. The Catechism of the Councilof Trent, after the assumptions we have already discussed,lays it down as a corollary, that " the Church cannot err infaith or morals.*"* Infallibility is universally and formallyclaimed in behalf of their Church, by all Romanists ; it istaught in all their Catechisms, and in all their text-booksand systems of theology ;-|-and forms so prominent a pointin all their defences of their system, that it is quite fair toassert that Papists hold and teach that their Church is in-* Cat. Rom. p. 83.+ See Dens' Theol. torn. ii. p. 126,—De Infallibilitate Ecclesiae.