But unhappily in all these respects the promises of our Romish advocate, the more they are examined, appear the more unstable and unsafe. For first of all, when we inquire by what _organ_ the infallible oracles are promulgated; he is obliged to acknowledge, that this important point has been for ages a subject of much dispute, and a question very far from being yet infallibly determined. Various are the conflicting authorities, the whole of which it would be needless, or perhaps impossible to enumerate. {9} Some learned Romanists are of opinion that infallibility is lodged in the Roman Pontiff, as successor to St. Peter: others of equal learning are inclined to place it in a general Council: a third party, not conceiving that a Pope or Council singly is infallible, ascribe infallibility to both in conjunction: and fourthly, there are not wanting numerous and learned authorities who insist that even the decrees of a general Council, ratified by the Pope, are not to be accounted infallible, until they have been received by the Church Universal. This explanation is very far from satisfactory: for we thus perceive, (according to the avowal of Romanists themselves,) our liability to continual mistakes and misapprehensions respecting the real quarter where infallible direction can be found. If we take a Pope or Council singly for our guide, we have no security for avoiding deadly heresy; for a Pope or Council singly may be heretical. On the other hand, if we study to avoid this danger by attaching our faith exclusively to a Pope and Council in conjunction, (that is, to the decree of a general Council ratified by Papal sanction,) we fall into another danger, and may reject or omit some necessary doctrine, to which a Pope or Council singly has affixed the seal of infallibility. This admitted uncertainty as to the quarter of the earth towards which we are to look for infallible guidance, is a ground of fair presumption, perhaps even of demonstration, that infallibility is in no quarter to be found. For the very object of infallibility is the removal of all doubt; but doubt can never be removed while the question, who is the remover of it, remains unfixed, and impossible to be decided. To receive assurances the most positive and solemn, that all our doubts shall be resolved; and yet to be told that the authority for resolving them is doubtful, is to use a cruel mode of trifling with our simplicity. For it has been long and painfully remarked, as the reproach of Romanists, that, on their principles, the greatest controversy among Christians is, how to fix the organ by which, or by whom, controversies shall be unerringly determined. {10}