and can do very well without it. What does he establish, then, but what Catholics have always told him, that there is no alternative but pope or no infallibility? He says: "We are even prepared to go so far as to claim that, as human nature has been divinely constituted, it is a psychological impossibility for any man to waive this prerogative of being the _supreme authority_ over himself in regard to his religion; for if he decides to accept the pope and his dictum as conveying to him the sure will of God, that infallibility can only be received as such by an express volition of his own thus to receive it; that is, the man infallible stands behind the pope infallible, and decrees that he shall become to him an infallible pope; so that all the infallibility which the pope can have is just only what the man had before, and gives to him by his volition." In this it is not only conceded that the internal, as we have seen, does not give infallibility, but asserted that man is so constituted that he is incapable of having an infallible faith. Consequently, there can be no infallible teaching. It goes farther, and denies the supreme authority of God in matters of religion; and, like all error, puts man in the place of God. It says: "It is a psychological impossibility for any man to waive his prerogative of being the supreme authority over himself in regard to his religion." This is the necessary conclusion from the writer's assumption in the outset, that the infallible authority is inside the soul, not outside of it; therefore, purely subjective and human. Consequently, man is his own law, his own sovereign; therefore independent of God, and the author and finisher of his own faith. This is pretty well for a Calvinist, and the organ of New England Puritanism! But we charitably trust that the writer hardly understands the reach of what he says. He confounds the action or office of reason in receiving the faith, or the internal act of believing, with the authority on which one believes, or on which the faith is received. The act is the act of the rational subject, and therefore internal. The authority on which the act is elicited is accredited to the subject, and therefore necessarily objective or external. I believe on testimony which comes to me from without, or a fact or an event duly accredited to me. I believe the messenger from God duly accredited to me as his messenger, although he announces to me things far above my own personal knowledge, and even mysteries which my reason is utterly unable to comprehend. Hence, Christians believe the mysteries recorded in the Holy Scriptures, because recorded by men duly instructed and authorized by God himself to teach in his name.