3. On what security we can rely, that our own fallible reason will not mistake nor misconceive the doctrine propounded for our belief.
Our desire of satisfaction on these points is not expressed in any captious spirit, but is suggested by the necessity of the case. For if we cannot infallibly discover in what person or persons infallibility resides; if the Romanist cannot prove to us by infallible arguments, that infallibility belongs to the person or persons for whom he claims it; and if further, we cannot obtain from our instructor in Romanism some infallible security that we shall understand the doctrines proposed to us: it plainly follows that the infallibility he so pertinaciously insists upon, must be to us a matter of indifference, attended with no one practical result. Our doubts and perplexities will continue unresolved, and we shall be compelled to seek some other guide to the peace and certainty we so anxiously desiderate.
But unhappily in all these respects the promises of our Romish advocate, the more they are examined, appear the more unstable and unsafe. For first of all, when we inquire by what organ the infallible oracles are promulgated; he is obliged to acknowledge, that this important point has been for ages a subject of much dispute, and a question very far from being yet infallibly determined. Various are the conflicting authorities, the whole of which it would be needless, or perhaps impossible to enumerate. [9] Some learned Romanists are of opinion that infallibility is lodged in the Roman Pontiff, as successor to St. Peter: others of equal learning are inclined to place it in a general Council: a third party, not conceiving that a Pope or Council singly is infallible, ascribe infallibility to both in conjunction: and fourthly, there are not wanting numerous and learned authorities who insist that even the decrees of a general Council, ratified by the Pope, are not to be accounted infallible, until they have been received by the Church Universal.
This explanation is very far from satisfactory: for we thus perceive, (according to the avowal of Romanists themselves,) our liability to continual mistakes and misapprehensions respecting the real quarter where infallible direction can be found. If we take a Pope or Council singly for our guide, we have no security for avoiding deadly heresy; for a Pope or Council singly may be heretical. On the other hand, if we study to avoid this danger by attaching our faith exclusively to a Pope and Council in conjunction, (that is, to the decree of a general Council ratified by Papal sanction,) we fall into another danger, and may reject or omit some necessary doctrine, to which a Pope or Council singly has affixed the seal of infallibility.
This admitted uncertainty as to the quarter of the earth towards which we are to look for infallible guidance, is a ground of fair presumption, perhaps even of demonstration, that infallibility is in no quarter to be found. For the very object of infallibility is the removal of all doubt; but doubt can never be removed while the question, who is the remover of it, remains unfixed, and impossible to be decided. To receive assurances the most positive and solemn, that all our doubts shall be resolved; and yet to be told that the authority for resolving them is doubtful, is to use a cruel mode of trifling with our simplicity. For it has been long and painfully remarked, as the reproach of Romanists, that, on their principles, the greatest controversy among Christians is, how to fix the organ by which, or by whom, controversies shall be unerringly determined. [10]
Finding ourselves disappointed that this great question, in what place the infallible oracle resides, remains still in agitation, we next entreat our Papal adviser to explain the grounds on which the several parties he has mentioned claim the lofty privilege ascribed to them. And since a living judge, sitting constantly in one spot, and therefore always ready to be consulted, is incomparably more desirable as the organ of unerring truth, than an assembly of divines, whom it is often difficult to call together; we are all attention, waiting eagerly to hear in the first place the claims of the Roman Pontiff, and to receive, if possible, such clear and convincing arguments for Pontifical infallibility, that henceforward we shall be able to rely upon it with infallible assurance.
In compliance with this request, our Papal guide adduces what he considers evidence from Scripture, and rests the Papal cause upon the following declarations of our Lord. First, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church;” secondly, “I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven;” thirdly, “I have prayed that thy faith fail not;” and lastly, “Feed my sheep.” [11]
When we learn that these quotations are brought forward as sufficient grounds for establishing an infallible assurance of Papal infallibility, our first impression is of surprise: and our surprise increases into amazement, the more we try to follow our guide, and to rest an infallible assurance upon reasons so uncertain and precarious. There is throughout the texts quoted, no mention of the Roman Pontiff whatever, nor any distinct allusion to the subject of infallibility. It therefore seems extremely difficult to comprehend how any reasoning man should thence infer that the Pontiff is infallible. But here we are next given to understand that his Holiness, as successor to St. Peter, inherits all the privileges of St. Peter; and that what our Saviour promised to that Apostle was not promised to him personally, but to his successors in all ages. Yet, on examining the authorities again, we find no warrant for the conclusion asserted. There is nothing to assure us infallibly, nothing which would even lead us to suspect that our Lord looked further than to the Apostle himself, or conferred upon him any privilege not shared in common with his brethren. Our Saviour’s prayer that the faith of Peter might not fail, and his subsequent restoration of him to the Apostolic office by the thrice repeated charge of “Feed my sheep,” have obvious reference to the character and conduct of that disciple—at one time an apostate, afterwards an accepted penitent. They can relate to no other person, and to no other circumstances. And “it is absurd,” as Bishop Stillingfleet observes, “to infer an impossibility in the Pope of falling, from a promise to St. Peter of recovery” and restoration. [12a] Again, the promise, “whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,” [12b] conveys no peculiar advantage or pre-eminence to St. Peter; for the very same power is conveyed afterwards by our Lord Himself to the whole number of the Apostles. “Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” [12c] In respect to the privilege with which that promise is introduced, “I give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” if these words really have any meaning distinct from the power already mentioned of binding and loosing, they refer prophetically to St. Peter, as the person by whose instrumentality the gates of the Church would be opened to mankind. And accordingly with one key the Apostle, on the day of Pentecost, opened the gate of the Church to the believing Jews and proselytes, when by the sermon which he preached at Jerusalem he converted about three thousand souls; and with the other key he afterwards opened the gate of the Church to Cornelius and his friends, who were the first Gentile converts. [13a]
The declaration, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock [13b] I will build my church,” is a text of very ambiguous meaning, and cannot therefore be the ground of infallible assurance. We have no means of clearly ascertaining whether our Lord refers to the person of St. Peter as a foundation for the Church, or to the confession of St. Peter made in the preceding verse. “Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God.” A large proportion of the fathers, including Hilary, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Theophylact, and Augustin, [13c] understood our Saviour’s declaration as referring solely to the confession of Faith made so distinctly and so zealously by the Apostle. The text itself seems evidently to require the interpretation. To speak strictly, Christ Himself is the sole foundation of the Christian Church; and an Apostle could only be so in a secondary sense. In this secondary sense, however, the Church is not founded upon St. Peter only in particular, but on the Apostolic college in general; as St. Paul more than once affirmed. “Ye are built,” he says to the Ephesians, “upon the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.” [13d] “Other foundation,” he says to the Corinthians, “can no man lay.” [13e] And again, addressing the Church of Corinth, (when the same inspired writer reckons up the different gradations of Christian ministers,) he does not mention St. Peter first, as nearer the foundation than any other member of the Apostolic college; but speaks of the whole body in the following general terms; “God hath set some in his Church, first Apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers.” [13f] The Revelations of St. John describe in like manner the wall of the holy city, as having “twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb.” [14a]
There is not a vestige therefore of scriptural evidence, much less an infallible demonstration, that the successors of St. Peter, whoever they may be, are possessed of infallibility. And supposing his successors to be infallible, there is not the slightest scriptural ground for believing that his successors are the Bishops of Rome. On this point, so vitally essential to the Papal cause, the sacred writings are wholly silent. They indeed inform us that this Apostle preached at Jerusalem, at Cæsarea, at Joppa, and at Antioch, but they no where even intimate that he ever was at Rome: still less therefore can we expect them to affirm that he was local Bishop of that See; and least of all, that the Roman Bishops (in preference to the Bishops in other churches of which he was the founder,) were heirs of his peculiar privileges; and along with other Apostolic privileges, inherited infallibility, while they lost the gifts of miracles and of tongues. [14b]