Security on this point is obviously indispensable. The inspired volume is allowed by all Christians to contain unerring rules of faith and practice. But our erring reason, we are told, is liable to misconceive them. Hence the supposed necessity for another guide. But the very same liability to error which exposes us to mistake in interpreting the Scriptures, exposes us to mistake also in interpreting the bulls of a Pope, or the canons of a general council. God Himself inspired his chosen servants to write the Scriptures “for our learning.” God nevertheless is misunderstood. Neither Pope nor Council, therefore, is secure from being so. Their decisions, jointly or separately, may be misinterpreted through our weakness of apprehension. We consequently need a new interpreter for expounding their interpretation. But the expositions of this new interpreter may, like those of his unerring predecessors, be erroneously understood; and thus we should require an infinite series of infallible guides, and at the end of this elaborate process we should not be nearer to infallibility than we found ourselves at the beginning. {29a} Accordingly, we read, without surprise, that there are disputes among Romanists in regard to the right construction of their infallible decrees and canons; disputes as constant and as vehement as those unhappily subsisting among Protestants, in regard to the meaning of our inspired Scriptures. {29b} In the celebrated Council of Trent, the last, and by the Romanists regarded as the greatest ever held, many points of doctrine which had called forth the most violent and argumentative disputation were purposely expressed with ambiguity in the canons, that the consent of all parties might be obtained. Even on that all-important article of faith, respecting the proper object of religious adoration, the Tridentine Fathers were satisfied with a vague declaration, that “due worship should be given to images,” without informing the conscientious worshipper, (in a strait betwixt the danger of profaneness on one hand and of idolatry on the other,) what kind of worship that doubtful phrase was intended to imply. {29c} It may be also noticed that there are several controverted points in religion, (the very points, in fact, most frequently contested among Protestants,) on which no unerring oracle has yet pronounced a decision, and on which variations of opinion may be discovered in the papal Church analogous to those prevailing throughout Protestant communions. I allude to the numerous questions connected with election, foreknowledge, predestination, grace, free-will, and the perseverance of the Saints.