PREFACE.

Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you. And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. Matt. xxviii. 19, 20.

Such is the celebrated argument of Bossuet: and such, if I mistake not, are the promises upon which it claims to be founded In other parts of his work, he specifically adduces these two texts. Whence I conclude that I am not mistaken in supposing them to be here tacitly referred to..

Bossuet, we may observe, like the rest of his fraternity, claims for the Church the prerogative of Infallibility; and, since he limits the Catholic Church to the Church of Rome and the subordinate Churches which acknowledge her as their mother and mistress, he of course claims the prerogative of Infallibility for what we may call the Romish Church as distinguished from the diocesan Roman Church.

May I be allowed to ask, on what authoritative decision of what Ecumenical Council do Bossuet, Trevern, and other Popish ecclesiastics claim for their Church this same prerogative of Infallibility?

If there be any such decision, it would run, I suppose, in some such terms as the following:

The Catholic Church is infallible. Therefore, if anyone shall assert that the Catholic Church either has erred or can err in defining the faith: let him be anathema.