Catholic Church -- Controversial literature -- Protestant authors; Popes -- Infallibility
Concluding exhortation 37
FOOTNOTES.
{1} _Ut hæc quæ scripta sunt non negamus_, _ita ea quæ non sunt scripta
renuimus_.—Hieron adv. Helvid. oper. t. iv. pars ii. p. 141. ed. Ben.
{3a} Eph. iv. 14.
{3b} The theologian will here observe, that the argument from “motives
of credibility,” as they are termed, is in this view more presumptuous
and objectionable than the claim so loudly and so vehemently objected
against Protestants. Surely there is more presumption in claiming a
right to prejudge what God _must_ have done, than in claiming the right
of private judgment to ascertain what God _has_ actually revealed.
{5} “But it is more useful and fit (you say) for deciding of
controversies, to have, besides an infallible rule to go by, a living
infallible judge to determine them: and from hence you conclude, that
certainly there is such a judge. But why then may not another say, that
it is yet more useful, for many excellent purposes, that all the
Patriarchs should be infallible, than that the Pope only should?
Another, that it would be yet more useful, that all the Archbishops of
every province should be so, than that the Patriarchs only should be so.
Another, that it would be yet more useful, if all the Bishops of every
diocese were so? Another, that it would be yet more available that all
the parsons of every parish should be so? Another, that it would be yet
more excellent, if all the fathers of families were so? And lastly,
another, that it were much more to be desired, that every man and every
woman were so? just as much as the prevention of controversies is better
than the decision of them; and the prevention of heresies better than the
condemnation of them; and upon this ground conclude, by your own very
consequence, that not only a general Council, not only the Pope, but all
the Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, Pastors, Fathers—nay, all the men
in the world, are infallible? If you say now, as I am sure you will,
that this conclusion is most gross, and absurd, against sense and
experience, then must also the ground be false from which it evidently
and undeniably follows, viz., That that course of dealing with men seems
always more fit to Divine Providence, which seems most fit to human
reason.”—Works of Chillingworth, vol. i. p. 296.
{6} Deut. xvii. 8–14.
{7a} Deut. xvii. 8.
{7b} Exod. xxxii. 4–7.
{7c} 1 Kings xii. 28.
{7d} 1 Kings xxii. 6.
{7e} Jerem. v. 30, 31.
{7f} Isa. lvi. 10.
{8} See Tracts published by Bishop Gibson. Title iv. chap. i. vol. i.
p. 18.
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