INFALLIBLE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH.

The Church has authority from God to teach regarding faith and morals,
and in her teaching she is preserved from error by the special guidance of the Holy Ghost.
The prerogative of infallibility is clearly deduced from the attributes of the Church already mentioned.
The Church is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.
Preaching the same creed everywhere and at all times; teaching holiness and truth, she is, of course,
essentially unerring in her doctrine;
for what is one,
holy or unchangeable must be infallibly true.
That the Church was infallible in the Apostolic age is denied by no Christian.
We never question the truth of the Apostles’ declarations;
they were, in fact,
the only authority in the Church for the first century.
The New Testament was not completed till the close of the first century.
There is no just ground for denying to the Apostolic teachers of the nineteenth century in which we live a prerogative clearlypossessed by those of the first,
especially as the Divine Word nowhere intimates that this unerring guidance was to die with the Apostles.
On the contrary,
as the Apostles transmitted to their successors their power to preach, to baptize, to ordain, to confirm, etc.,
they must also have handed downto them the no less essential gift of infallibility.
God loves us as much as He loved the primitive Christians;
Christ died for us as well as for them and we have as much need of unerring teachers as they had.
It will not suffice to tell me: “We have an infallible Scripture as a substitute for an infallible apostolate of the first century,”
for an infallible book is of no use to me without an infallible interpreter,
as the history of Protestantism too clearly demonstrates.
But besides these presumptive arguments,
we have positive evidence from Scripture that the Church cannot err in her teachings.
Our blessed Lord,
in constituting St. Peter Prince of His Apostles,
says to him:
“Thou art Peter,
and upon this rock I will build My Church,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
Christ makes here a solemn prediction that no error shall ever invade His Church,
and if she fell into error the gates of hell have certainly prevailed against her.
The Reformers of the sixteenth century affirm that the Church did fall into error;
that the gates of hell did prevail against her;
that from the sixth to the sixteenth century she was a sink of iniquity.
The Book of Homilies of the Church of England says that the Church
“lay buried in damnable idolatry for eight hundred years or more.”
The personal veracity of our Savior and of the Reformers is here at issue,
for our Lord makes a statement which they contradict.
Who is to be believed,
Jesus or the Reformers?
If the prediction of our Savior about the preservation of His Church from error be false,
then Jesus Christ is not God, since God cannot lie.
He is not even a prophet,
since He predicted falsehood.
Nay, He is an impostor,
and all Christianity is a miserable failure and a huge deception,
since it rests on a false Prophet.
But if Jesus predicted the truth when He declared that the gates of hell should not prevail against His Church
—and who dare deny it?
—then the Church never has and never could have fallen from the truth;
then the Catholic Church is infallible,
for she alone claims that prerogative,
and she is the only Church that is acknowledged to have existed from the beginning.
Truly is Jesus that wise Architect mentioned in the Gospel,
“who built his house upon a rock;
and the rain fell,
and the floods came,
and the winds blew,
and they beat upon that house, and it fell not,
for it was founded upon a rock.”
Jesus sends forth the Apostles with plenipotentiary powers to preach the Gospel.
“As the Father,”
He says,
“hath sent Me,
I also send you.”
“Going therefore,
teach all nations,
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.”
“Preach the Gospel to every creature.”
“Ye shall be witnesses unto Me in Jerusalem,
and in all Judea,
and Samaria,
and even to the uttermost part of the earth.”
This commission evidently applies not to the Apostles only,
but also to their successors,
to the end of time,
since it was utterly impossible for the Apostles personally to preach to the whole world.
Not only does our Lord empower His Apostles to preach the Gospel,
but He commands,
and under the most severe penalties,
those to whom they preach to listen and obey.
“Whosoever will not receive you,
nor hear your words,
going forth from that house or city,
shake the dust from your feet.
Amen, I say to you,
it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment than for that city.”
“If he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen andthe publican.”
“He that believeth shall be saved;
he that believeth not shall be condemned.”
“He that heareth you heareth Me;
he that despiseth you despiseth Me;
and he that despiseth Me despiseth Him that sent Me.”

in fact, that the definition was a mistake, and that the blunder of 1854 would be repaired in 1869.” I told him, of..

night,
that he is steering his course directly to the city of his destination;
and is not an infallible guide as necessary to conduct you to the city of God in heaven?
Is it not, moreover,
a blessing and a consolation that,
amid the ever-changing views of men,
amid the conflict of human opinion and the tumultuous waves of human passion,
there is one voice heard above the din and uproar,
crying in clear,
unerring tones:
“Thus saith the Lord?”
It is very strange that the Catholic Church must apologize to the world for simply declaring
that she speaks the truth,
the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth.
The Roman Pantheon was dedicated to all the gods of the Empire,
and their name was legion.
Formidable also in numbers are the Founders of the religious sects existing in our country.
A Pantheon as vast as Westminster Abbey would hardly be spacious enough to contain life-sized statues for their accommodation.
If you were to confront those figures,
and to ask them,
one by one,
to give an account of the faith they had professed,
and if they were endowed with the gift of speech,
you would find that no two of them were in entire accord,
but that they all differed among themselves on some fundamental principle of revelation.
Would you not be acting very unwisely and be hazarding your soul’s salvation
in submitting to the teachings of so many discordant and conflicting oracles.
Children of the Catholic Church,
give thanks to God that you are members of that Communion,
which proclaims year after year the one same and unalterable message of truth,
peace and love,
and that you are preserved from all errors in faith,
and from all illusion in the practiceof virtue.
You are happily strangers to thoseinterior conflicts,
to those perplexing doubts and tothat frightful uncertainty which distracts the souls
of those whose private judgment is their only guide,
who are
“ever learning and never attainingto the knowledge of the truth.”
You are not, like others,
drifting helplessly over the ocean of uncertainty and “carried about by every wind of doctrine.”
You are not as “blind men led by blind guides.”
You are not like those who are in the midst of a spiritual desert intersected by various by-paths,
not knowing which to pursue;
but you are on that high road spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, which is so
"straight a way that fools shall noterr therein.”
You are a part of that universal Communion which has no “High Church” and “Low Church;” no
“New School” and
“Old School,”
for you all belong to that School which is
“ever ancient and ever new.”
You enjoy that profound peace and tranquillity which springs from the conscious possession of the whole truth.
Well may you exclaim:
“Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwelltogether in unity.”
Give thanks, moreover,
to God that you belong to a Church which has also a keen sense to detect and expose those moral shams,
those pious frauds,
those socialistic schemes which are so often undertaken in this country ostensibly in the name of religion and morality, but which, in reality,
are subversive of morality and order,
which are the offspring of fanaticism,
and serve as a mask to hide the most debasing passions.
Neither Mormons nor Millerites,
nor the advocates of free love or of women’s rights,
so called,
find any recruits in the Catholic Church.
She will never suffer her children to be ensnared by these impostures,
how specious soever they may be.
From what has been said in the preceding pages,
it follows that the Catholic Church cannot be reformed.
I do not mean, of course,
that the Pastors of the Church are personally impeccable or not subject to sin.
Every teacher in the Church, from the Pope down to the humblest Priest,
is liable at any moment,
like any of the faithful,
to fall from grace and to stand in need of moral reformation.
We all carry
“this treasure
(of innocence)
in earthen vessels.”
My meaning is that the Church is not susceptible of being reformedin her doctrines.
The Church is the work of an Incarnate God.
Like all God’s works,
it is perfect.
It is, therefore,
incapable of reform.
Is it not the height of presumption for men to attempt to improve upon the work of God?
Is it not ridiculous for the Luthers,the Calvins,
the Knoxes and the Henries and a thousand lesser lights
to be offering their amendments to the Constitution of the Church,
as if it were a human Institution?
Our Lord Himself has never ceasedto rule personally over His Church.
It is time enough for little men to take charge of the Ship when the great Captain abandons the helm.
A Protestant gentleman of very liberal education remarked to me,
before the opening of the late Ecumenical Council:
“I am assured, sir, by a friend, in confidence, that,
at a secret Conclave of Bishops recently held in Rome
it was resolved that the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception wouldbe reconsidered and abolished at the approaching General Council;