This is proved, in the first place, by an argument, the force of which is admitted in all courts of law, viz., the argument of __prescription__. The Roman Church is in possession of this claim, and has been from time immemorial. A claim on a certain property or to a certain right, which is so ancient that the mind of man runneth not to the contrary, is always admitted as valid in a law court. Now, it is evident that the Roman Church now asserts this claim; that she asserted it before the Reformation; that she asserted it before the Greek schism; and that not a single Church exists in the world which has not at some time admitted this claim, and submitted to it. If we go back, then, to the earlier centuries, we find the Roman Church always in possession of this supremacy, and we can never find its beginning. Protestants and others, who wish to prove that it began after the Apostolic age, can never agree together as to the epoch of the rise of the Papal power, although all give it a very early date. Now, I say that, according to all sound principles of reasoning, the fact that this claim had been made and assented to from time immemorial is a certain proof that it is just. It could not have been established so early and so universally without violence and without resistance, unless it existed under the Apostles, and was established by them in the infancy of Christianity. {216} Just as it would be impossible for the Governor of Virginia to take peaceable possession of the Presidential chair and govern the United States, as its acknowledged chief magistrate, without any election of the people; so it would have been equally impossible for the Bishop of Rome to make himself peaceably the supreme ruler of the Catholic Church, unless he were appointed by St. Peter and the Apostles, according to the divine constitution of the grand Christian commonwealth, with the knowledge of all Christians. This argument alone would be perfectly conclusive, even if the New Testament were altogether lost, or were entirely silent on the subject.