An Essay on Papal Infallibility

“Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.”—Sixth Article of Religion.

“As we deny not those things that are written, so we refuse those that are not written.”—Jerome. {1}

“The Spirit of God, therefore, is the only infallible judge here; and has declared as plainly as any successive judges can, in those things that are necessary to life and salvation, what is to be believed and to be done; which if we believe and practise in particular, and do also in general, and implicitly believe and stand in a readiness to obey the rest of the Scripture, when the sense thereof appears to us, we are in a safe condition, and need not doubt but it will go well with us in the other state.”—Works of Henry More, pp. 453, 454.

EVERY reflecting Christian, as soon almost as he is capable of reflection, must have continual occasion to observe with sorrow and anxiety the multiplied varieties of opinion that divide the Church of Christ, on every point or article of Christian faith; the confidence with which every sect lays claim exclusively to the possession of saving knowledge, and the unqualified severity with which each party reprobates the other, as being implicated in unpardonable heresy. On hearing (and who can escape hearing?) the fulmination of these mutual anathemas, we not only grieve for the state of dreadful peril in which, if we admit such principles, a large proportion of our neighbours, friends, and fellow Christians must be involved: but we grieve likewise on our own account. We are visited with doubts, misgivings, and apprehensions, lest we ourselves, through ignorance or prejudice, should have adopted unawares into our creed some article containing deadly error; or should have omitted something indispensable to salvation.

In this state of intellectual and spiritual perplexity, if we want the Christian industry and moral courage to work out for ourselves, by the help of God, this greatest of all problems, we are in a state of passive readiness to receive counsel from the first adviser. Among the multitude of counsellors who present themselves, none is more importunately obtrusive, or more dictatorially confident than the Romanist; and I propose, for the subject of this essay, to examine successively the remedies and expedients he suggests for calming our disquietude, and restoring our religious peace.

He informs us that our state of mind is the necessary consequence of adhering to a Protestant communion; and that we never can obtain repose and satisfaction until we enter the Catholic Church—until, with the other wandering sheep dispersed over the forbidden pastures of the earth, we return with humble penitence to the fold which we have left; until, in short, we renounce all dependence on the conclusions of uncertain reason, and establish our Faith for ever upon the dictates of infallibility. “That there must,” he adds, “be some where upon earth an infallible living judge, an arbiter of religious controversy incapable of error, an authority from whose decision on points of faith there can be no appeal, is a plain and obvious principle, which, on proper reflection, you will find impossible to be rejected. Not to insist on arguments from Scripture, although sufficiently conclusive, and capable in themselves of proving that such an arbiter has been appointed, there are independent considerations in favour of infallibility which ought to satisfy every reasonable mind: for the wise Creator of man would never grant a revelation to his creatures, and then leave them to the direction of their own erring judgment in ascertaining the truths revealed. The benevolent Creator of man must know that man is fallible; that he needs indispensably a conductor; and that without some infallible conductor the benefits of revelation would be doubtful and precarious. But if infallibility exist at all in the Church, it must exist in the Papal communion, which alone makes the least pretension to the privilege. Therefore, only reconcile yourself to our infallibly directed Church, and you will no longer find occasion for uneasiness. You will be guided safely through all the mazes of theological disputation. Instead of being ‘tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine’ {3a} on a shoreless ocean of uncertainty and error, you will repose with comfort and unruffled calm in the quiet haven of infallibility.”