Note 5 — ON PAPAL INFALLIBILITY.

“But it is more useful and fit (you say) for deciding of controversies, to have, besides an infallible rule to go by, a living infallible judge to determine them: and from hence you conclude, that certainly there is such a judge. But why then may not another say, that it is yet more useful, for many excellent purposes, that all the Patriarchs should be infallible, than that the Pope only should? Another, that it would be yet more useful, that all the Archbishops of every province should be so, than that the Patriarchs only should be so. Another, that it would be yet more useful, if all the Bishops of every diocese were so? Another, that it would be yet more available that all the parsons of every parish should be so? Another, that it would be yet more excellent, if all the fathers of families were so? And lastly, another, that it were much more to be desired, that every man and every woman were so? just as much as the prevention of controversies is better than the decision of them; and the prevention of heresies better than the condemnation of them; and upon this ground conclude, by your own very consequence, that not only a general Council, not only the Pope, but all the Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, Pastors, Fathers—nay, all the men in the world, are infallible? If you say now, as I am sure you will, that this conclusion is most gross, and absurd, against sense and experience, then must also the ground be false from which it evidently and undeniably follows, viz., That that course of dealing with men seems always more fit to Divine Providence, which seems most fit to human reason.”—Works of Chillingworth, vol. i. p. 296.