We need not pause to examine into the frail and feeble arguments on which the claim to such a gift is based, nor need we attempt to follow controversial writers in their contradictory endeavours to ascertain its seat. Let that seat be what it may, whether popes alone, or councils alone, or councils summoned under pontifical authority, we are prepared to prove from the prophetic Scriptures that there are no circumstances whatever under which any body of uninspired men can claim to be received as unerring authority by the church. If ever there has been a necessity for an infallible living voice to preserve the truth, and to cut off heresy by decrees, that necessity, all must admit, will be vastly multiplied in the latter days. Then there will be the false Christs foretold by our Lord; then the three unclean spirits will go forth to seduce professors; then the man of sin will be seated in the temple of God, and then, if ever, the infallible decree will be needful to assert the truth. But who at such a time is to decree it? There will be, as we have shown, a body of men within the church, corrupting the truth, resisting the truth, turned unto fables, believing lies. Are such persons to be admitted to the church’s councils, or are they not? Are they, or are they not, to take a part in the decision? If they are, there is too much reason to fear it would be vitiated by their fables, that the dead fly would cause to stink the apothecary’s ointment. But, if not, how are they to be excluded? By what tests is the council to be purified? They will all retain the form of godliness; they will appear with all the weight of ecclesiastical position, and apostolical ordination; there will be nothing wanting in the regularity of their orders, the validity of their sacraments, or the apparent godliness of their life; they will subscribe to any forms, and sign any articles; nor will there be any visible, tangible, criterion, by which they can be excluded from the church’s ministry or council chamber; but yet, if admitted, they will draw away disciples after them, and by speaking perverse things will vitiate every decision in which they are permitted to take a part.