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are said to have failed in. It was certainly the object of the New Testament writers to declare the truths necessary to salvation. St. John (xx. 31) tells us his object in writing— These are written, that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His name.' Yet we are required to believe that these apostles and evangelists, who wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, performed their task so badly, that one who should have recourse to their pages for guidance is more likely than not to go astray, and is likely to find nothing but perplexity and error. Strange, indeed, that inspired writers should fail in their task: stranger still, that writers who claim no miraculous assistance should be able to accomplish it in halfa-dozen lines. But the main point is, that if the list of necessary truths is so short, the necessity for an infallible guide disappears. The four great truths of faith, just enumerated, are held as strongly by Protestants, who dispense with the guidance of the Church of Rome, as by those who follow it.

The great argument by which men are persuaded to believe that there is at least somewhere or another an infallible guide is, that it is incredible that God should leave us without sure guidance when our eternal salvation is at stake. It is thought that, if it is once conceded that an infallible guide exists somewhere, the case of Rome will be established by the absence of competition from anyone making a similar claim. Now, we saw that Milner's axiom was altogether extravagant. He demanded that God should miraculously secure men from error of any kind. Surely, it cannot be required that we should be given certain knowledge on all possible subjects? All that with any plausibility can be demanded is, that we should be guarded against error destructive of salvation. But now it is evident that infallible guidance cannot be asserted to be necessary, except in cases where explicit knowledge is necessary. If our readiness to believe all that God has revealed, without knowing it, is enough for our salvation, there is an end to the pretence that it was necessary to the salvation of the world that God should provide means to make men infallibly know the truth. Here is

a specimen of what Roman Catholics call an act of faith: 'O my God, because Thou art true, and hast revealed it, I believe that Thou art One God; I believe that in Thy Godhead there are Three Persons; I believe that Thy Son Jesus became man, and died for us; I believe that Thou wilt reward the good in heaven, and punish the wicked in hell; I believe all that the Catholic Church teaches; and in this belief I will live and die.' In other words, this act of faith is a profession of explicit belief in the four great truths of faith, and of implicit belief in all the teaching of the Church. Now, substitute the word 'Bible' for the word 'Church,' and a Protestant is ready to make the same profession. He will declare his belief in the four truths already enumerated, and in all that the Bible teaches. If a Roman Catholic may be saved who actually contradicts the teaching of his Church, because he did not in intention oppose himself to her, why may not a Protestant be saved, in like manner, who is sincerely and earnestly desirous to believe all that God has revealed in the Scripture, and who has learned from the Scripture those four great truths of faith, and many other truths which make wise unto salvation, even if there be some points on which he has wrongly interpreted the teaching of Scripture? Have we not as good a right in this case as in the other to say that his mistaken belief will not be fatal to one who, notwithstanding his error, is of an humble, teachable disposition, and who does not wilfully reject anything that he knows God to have revealed? In fact, if it were even true that a belief in Roman Infallibility is necessary to salvation, a Protestant would be safe. For, since he believes implicitly everything that God has revealed, if God has revealed Roman Infallibility, he believes that too. Thus the argument for the necessity of an infallible guide has no plausibility, unless, with regard to the absolute necessity to salvation of an explicit belief, we hold a theory far more rigid than even the Church of Rome has ventured to propound.

There is, however, something more to be said before we can part with the discussion of Milner's axiom.

H

VI.

IN

MILNER'S AXIOMS.-PART II.

IN the last Lecture I tried to show that, if Milner's axiom were limited to an assertion about saving truth-that is to say, truth an explicit knowledge of which is necessary to salvation-it would be perfectly useless to one desirous to establish the necessity of an infallible guide. I wish now to show that, if Milner's axiom be asserted not only with regard to truths necessary to salvation, but also to truths highly important and useful, then the axiom is not true. There is an immense amount of knowledge, both secular and religious, highly important for man to possess, but for which God has not seen fit to provide certain neverfailing means whereby men may attain to it, and consequently which, as a matter of fact, many men do fail of obtaining. I am the more particular in stating this, because I should be sorry if the previous discussion had led you to think that I represented the great bulk of God's Revelation as useless, and that I taught that, provided a man be made acquainted with that minimum of knowledge which is absolutely necessary to salvation, it is a matter of small importance whether any further knowledge be communicated to him. I hold the gaining of such knowledge to be of the very highest use and importance; but I say that all we know of God's dealings forbids us to take for granted that, because knowledge of any kind is of great value to man, God will make it impossible for him to fail to acquire it.

There is one piece of vitally important knowledge which Roman Catholics must own God has not given men neverfailing means for attaining: I mean the knowledge what is the

true Church. They must own that the institution of an infallible Church has not prevented the world from being overrun with heresy. They do not number in their communion half of those who profess the name of Christ. We need only call to mind our own Church, with its important ramifications in Scotland, the Colonies, and America; the dissenting bodies in England and America; foreign Protestants in Scandinavia and Germany; the Greek Church in Russia, and other Eastern communities. We need not discuss how much of essential truth is preserved by each of these bodies. Their very existence shows that it is as hard to find the true Church as the true doctrine; for it would be grossly unfair to deny that there are among these different bodies many sincere inquirers after truth. In whatever else these Churches disagree, they agree in denying that Rome has made out her claim to infallibility and supremacy. It is plain, then, that God has not endowed His Church with credentials so convincing as irresistibly to command men's assent; and, according to Roman theory, He works a stupendous miracle in vain. To guard Christians against error, He works a perpetual miracle in order to provide them with an infallible guide to truth, and yet He neglects to furnish that guide with sufficient proof of his infallibility. Nay, He allows that infallibility to be wielded by men who have made themselves so distrusted through deceit and imposture and other evil practices, that a prejudice is excited against their pretensions. This one consideration is sufficient to overturn the a priori proof that there must be an infallible guide, because we want one, and because it seems incredible that God should leave us without any means necessary for the attainment of religious truth. The proof equally shows that such a guide ought to be able to produce unmistakeable credentials; and the claims of one who has been rejected by half the Christian world are by that very rejection disproved.

But we may further show in the case of secular knowledge how much there is very desirable for us to possess, which God has given us no certain means of attaining. Man is left in a variety of cases to act on his own responsibility and to the

best of his fallible judgment; exposed to various dangers, and called on for the exercise of diligent care, which, in point of fact, very often is not exercised. No one who has read Butler's Analogy can be at a loss to expose the fallacy of inferring that because a thing seems to us desirable, God must therefore have constituted His world so that we shall be sure to have it. To quote one of his analogies, take the case of disease and the remedies for it. If we might have indulged our conjectures, we should have imagined that there would have been no such thing as disease in the world. But, at least, we might argue that, if God did, in His mercy, provide remedies for disease, these remedies would, to parody Milner's words, have been certain, never-failing, such, in short, as to free those who use them from ill-health of every kind'; and if a quack were to present himself, declaring that such were the remedies he was possessed of, and that we ought to acknowledge the justice of his pretensions without examination, because no one else claimed to have such remedies as we should have expected God to provide for us, while he alone spoke with confidence, and never admitted the possibility of his falling into error;-such a quack would have all the titles to our obedience that the Church of Rome has, according to the arguments of many of its advocates, who seem to think that we are bound to receive him who talks biggest and brags loudest, and will not own that he may sometimes make a mistake.

But analogy furnishes us with a still better answer to the Roman Catholic argument about Infallibility. One simple test will expose the fallacy of any of these arguments. Substitute the word 'sin' for the word 'error,' and examine whether the argument will then lead to true conclusions. is not only our own speculations that would lead us to think God would have provided means to banish sin from the world. The Scriptures would certainly, at first sight, lead us to conclude that it would, at least, be banished from the Church. There is not a single promise to the Church that does not speak even more distinctly of her members being led into the ways of holiness than into the way of truth. The name 'holy' is the distinctive title of the Church, 'saints'

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