As surely as infallibility is the essential prerogative of a divinely constituted Teaching Church, so surely can it exist only in that institution which alone has always claimed it, both as her gift by promise and the sole explanation of her triumphs and her perpetuity. It would be the idlest of dreams to search for it in a fractional part of a modern community, like the Church of England, which had always disowned and scoffed at it, and which could account for its own existence only on the plea that the Promises of God had signally failed, and that it alone was able to correct the failure.
Men ask for some sign, by which they may recognise the true Church of God and discriminate it readily from all spurious imitations. God, in His mercy, offers them a sign—namely unity. Yet they hesitate and hold back, and refuse to guide their tempest-tossed barques by its unerring light into the one Haven of Salvation.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] See Charge, etc., dated November, 1893.
[6] Ang. Ministry, by Hutton, p. 504.