The Papists have a beam in their own eye, i.e. their false doctrine, but they see the mote in the eye of others “as regards the life.”[1247] If it is a question with whom the true Church is to be found he assures us: “We who teach God’s Word with such certainty are indeed weak, and, by reason of our great humility, so foolish that we do not like to boast of being God’s Churches, witnesses, ministers and preachers or that God speaks through us, though this we certainly are because without a doubt we have His Word and teach it”; it is only the Papists “who venture boldly to proclaim out of their great holiness: Here is God and we are God’s Church.”[1248] It was not, however, bold presumption and lack of humility that led Luther’s literary opponents among the Catholics to appeal to the promises Christ had made to His Church; rather it was their conviction that these solemn assurances excluded the possibility of the Church’s having ever erred in the way Luther maintained that she had done. _The Indefectibility of the Church and Her Thousand-Year-Long Error_ When the question arose, how the Church, in spite of Christ’s protection, could nevertheless have fallen into such monstrous errors,[1249] Luther was disposed to admit in his polemics that the true Church, i.e. the community of real believers, could not go astray. “The Church cannot teach lies and errors, not even in details.… How could it then be otherwise when God’s mouth is the mouth of the Church. As God cannot lie neither therefore can the Church.”[1250] Such an immutable and reliable guide to erring men for their perfect peace of mind and sure salvation, the Catholics retorted, did Christ intend to leave in His visible Church, ruled by the successors of St. Peter. An able Catholic work of 1528, already referred to above, emphasises the Church’s immutability in her dogma: “That preacher who does not preach in accordance with the Holy Catholic Church and the holy Fathers sins against the truth.… With due reverence we firmly believe all that is written in the approved Books of the Old and New Testament. We must not, however, so confine ourselves to this as to look upon what the Holy Church teaches apart from Scripture as human dross, seeing that Scripture itself commands us to keep the doctrine of the Church and the Fathers.” The author goes on to show his opponent Luther what services are rendered by the Church’s authority, how she preserves intact and vouches for the Canon of Scripture. It is only from the lips of the Church that we learn which books were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. “For where is it written that we must believe the Gospels of Matthew, John and the rest? But, if it is nowhere written, how is it you believe in these Gospels? How much at variance is your practice with your teaching?”[1251]