Page:William John Sparrow-Simpson - Roman Catholic Opposition to Papal Infallibility (1909).djvu/31

Of course the doctrine's recognition as a theory is separable from its exercise as a fact. Many Roman Catholic writers have not only maintained that during the Age of the Fathers no case occurs of its exercise; but that the principles advocated demonstrate that it was not even recognised as a theory, since by those very principles it is actually excluded. Roman opponents of the doctrine have also pointed out that no profession of belief in the infallibility of the Church can be adduced to prove belief in the infallibility of the Pope for the simple reason that many Roman theologians who believed the former have rejected the latter.

All that can be done in a limited space is to select the chief examples of the Patristic teaching; and then to show how the Ultramontanes and their opponents employed them.

1. A crucial instance is the famous language of St Irenæus:—

 

"It is within the power of all, who may wish to see the truth, to contemplate clearly the tradition of the Apostles manifested throughout the world in every Church; and we are able to enumerate those whom the Apostles appointed to be Bishops in the churches, and their successors, quite down to our time, who neither taught nor knew anything like what these [heretics] rave about. Yet surely if the Apostles had known any hidden mysteries, which they were in the habit of teaching to the perfect apart and privily from the rest, they would have taken special care to deliver them to those to whom they were also committing the churches themselves. … But because it would be too long in such a volume as this, to enumerate the successions of all the churches, we point to the tradition of the very great and very ancient and universally known Church which was founded and