The encouraging promise; “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world,” is not a grant of infallibility, but a promise of assistance, protection, and consolation; and was indispensably required, when our Lord delegated to his Apostles the perilous labour of propagating the Gospel in opposition to all the rulers of this world, sending them forth “as sheep among wolves.” {24a} His promise that the “Spirit of truth” should “guide them into all truth,” relates entirely to the extraordinary gifts with which they were endowed, and is immediately connected with another promise, confessedly peculiar to the Apostolic age. “He” (the Holy Ghost) “shall show you things to come.” The words, “It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us,” in the decree of the first council at Jerusalem, have left no precedent for other councils to use the same language; unless on separate evidence it can be shown that those councils have the same authority of inspiration. The position therefore, that general councils, as representing the Church of Christ, are infallible, labours under a total want of Scripture Evidence. There is not a single precept given for assembling them; not one solitary rule for determining their proceedings. As the learned Albert Pighius, an advocate of pontifical infallibility, very justly argues: “There is not a word about general councils in the canonical books of Scripture; nor did the primitive Church of Christ receive by Apostolical institution any special direction respecting them.” {24b} This able writer represents the practice of summoning a general council in cases of ecclesiastical emergency, to be an expedient piously introduced by the Emperor Constantine for the purpose of composing the dissensions of the Church. But the same author insinuates a charge of great ignorance against the Emperor and his council, who in adopting this course, appeared not to know that the privilege of infallibility belonged to the Papal chair, and that Rome was the proper Delphos where he might receive the infallible oracles. This imperial ignorance is a remarkable admission by the advocate of the Papacy in his zeal against general councils. He succeeds in demolishing the latter; but acknowledges at the same time a fact which is fatal to the former. For if Constantine and the Bishops of his court were ignorant of the papal pretensions, it must be obvious that such pretensions either could not have been put forth at all, or could not at that time have been generally recognized.