An Inquiry into the History and Theology of the Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses

taining any doubt as to what the Bishop really meant by the Catholic Church. Unquestionably, he would have us understand by the title that Exclusive Portion of professed believers in Christ who are in communion with the Church of Rome, who acknowledge the Pope as their head upon earth, and who pronounce him to be the indubitable centre of ecclesiastical unity.

Still, however, though such is palpably the case, the sufficiently obvious remark will not therefore be any less valid: that, before he predicated of the Romish or Papal Church his four distinguishing points, he surely, in all fairness, ought, by something more tangible than mere confident assertion, to have satisfactorily demonstrated both that The Romish Church EXCLUSIVELY is the Catholic Church, and that The Romish Church ALONE is the particular Church to which our Lord’s two promises are addressed.

(2.) But, instead of settling these necessary preliminaries, the Bishop shows himself equally sophistical on yet another ground.

From the unvarying soundness both of her doctrine and of her practice, he ought, I apprehend, to have proved that The Romish Church, exclusively of all other Churches which differ from her, is the alone Church to which our Lord’s promises are...