THE CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS 533

that to the Galatians, are as evidently to the Visible Church: the one being general, and the other to persons “removed from Him that called them.” Missing out, therefore, these two epistles, but including Christ’s words to His disciples, we find in the Scriptural addresses to members of the Invisible Church, fourteen, if not more, direct injunctions “not to be deceived.”* So much for the “Infallibility of the Church.”

Now, one could put up with Puseyism more patiently, if its fallacies arose merely from peculiar temperaments yielding to peculiar temptations. But its bold refusals to read plain English; its elaborate adjustments of tight bandages over its own eyes, as wholesome preparation for a walk among traps and pitfalls; its daring trustfulness in its own clairvoyance all the time, and declarations that every pit it falls into is a seventh heaven; and that it is pleasant and profitable to break its legs;-with all this it is difficult to have patience. One thinks of the highwayman with his eyes shut in the Arabian Nights;¹ and wonders whether any kind of scourging would prevail upon the Anglican highwayman to open “first one and then the other.”

11. (4) So much, then, I repeat, for the infallibility of the Invisible Church, and for its consequent authority. Now, if we want to ascertain what infallibility and authority there is in the Visible Church, we have to alloy the small wisdom and the light weight of Invisible Christians, with the large percentage of the false wisdom and contrary weight of Undetected Anti-Christians. Which alloy makes up the current coin of opinions in the Visible Church, having such value as we may choose-its nature being properly assayed-to attach to it.

There is, therefore, in matters of doctrine, no such thing

* Matt. xxiv. 4; Mark xiii. 5; Luke xxi. 8; 1 Cor. iii. 18, vi. 9, xv. 33; Eph. iv. 14, v. 6; Col. ii. 8; 2 Thess. ii. 3; Heb. iii. 13; 1 John i. 8, iii. 7; 2 John 7, 8.

¹ [Night 31; the Story of the Barber’s Second Brother.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]