The faith of our fathers - Carmel Apologetics

INFALLIBLE AUTHORITY. 85CHAPTER VII.INFALLIBLE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH.from God to teach reTHE Church has authoritygarding faith and morals and in her; teachingthe ispreserved from error by the special guidanceof the Holy Ghost.,The prerogative of infallibility is clearly deducedfrom the attributes of the Church already mentioned.The Church is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.Preaching the same creed everywhere, and at alltimes ; teaching holiness and truth, she is, of course,essentially unerring in her doctrine for what is;one,holy, or unchangeable, must be infallibly true.That the Church was infallible in the Apostolicage, is denied by no Christian. We never questionthe truth of the Apostles declarations ;lthey were,in fact, the only authority in the Church for thefirst century. The New Testament was not completed till the close of the first century. There i&no just ground for denying to the Apostolic teachers of the nineteenth century in which we live, aprerogative clearly possessed by those of the first,especially as the divine Word nowhere intimatesthat this unerring guidance was to die with the1See Gal. iv. 14; 1 Thess. ii. 13.