But if 'quod primum verum' means 'quod prius verius,' this again is far from being of universal application, much less self-evident. Astrology was prior to astronomy; the Ptolemaic to the Newtonian scheme. It must therefore be confined to history: yet even thus, it is not for any practicable purpose necessarily or always true. Increase in other knowledge, physical, anthropological, and psychological, may enable an historian of A.D. 1800 to give a much truer account of certain events and characters than the contemporary chroniclers had given, who lived in an age of ignorance and superstition. But confine the position within yet narrower bounds, namely, to Christian antiquity. In addition to all other objections, it has this great defect; that it takes for granted the very point in dispute, whether Christianity was an 'opus simul et in toto perfectum,' or whether the great foundations only were laid by Christ while on earth, and by the Apostles, and the superstructure or progression of the work entrusted to the successors of the Apostles; and whether for that purpose Christ had not promised that his Spirit should be always with the Church. Now this growth of truth, not only in each individual Christian who is indeed a Christian, but likewise in the Church of Christ, from age to age, has been affirmed and defended by sundry Latitudinarian, Grotian and Sociman divines even among Protestants: the contrary, therefore, and an inference from the supposition of the contrary, can never be pronounced self-evident or primary. Jeremy Taylor had nothing to do with these mock axioms, but to ridicule them, as in other instances he has so effectually done. It was sufficient and easy to shew, that, true or false, the position was utterly inapplicable to the facts of the Roman Church; that, instead of passing, like the science of the material heaven, from dim to clear, from guess to demonstration, from mischievous fancies to guiding, profitable and powerful truths, it had overbuilt the divinest truths by the silliest and not seldom wicked forgeries, usurpations and superstitions. J.S.'s very notion of proving a mass of histories by simple logic, he would have found exposed to his hand with exquisite truth and humour by Lucian. 1810. In the preceding note I think I took Taylor's words in too literal a sense; the remarks, however, on the common maxim, 'In rebus fidei, quod prius verius,' seem to me just and valuable. 2. March, 1824. Ib. p. 297. When he talks of being infallible, if the notion be applied to his Church, then he means an infallibility antecedent, absolute, unconditionate, such as will not permit the Church ever to err.