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The Purpose of the Papacy by John S. Vaughan
page 45 of 95 (47%)
head, as is a living human body. The similitude is not of man's
choosing, but is inspired by the Holy Spirit Himself. "As the
(natural) body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of
that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.... Now,
ye are the (mystical) Body[7] of Christ" (1 Cor. xii.).

What can be clearer, what more explicit? Now, if the Spirit of Truth,
that is to say, the Holy Ghost, _is really_ with the Church (as God
promised He always would be), and if He is always present for the
_express purpose of "guiding her into all truth"_ (as God promised
would be the case), surely this guidance must be a great reality, and
not the mere sham that it is everywhere found to be, outside the
Catholic Church.

3. Consciously or unconsciously, Anglicans and other non-Catholics
have for centuries denied the truth of Our Lord's words and have
contradicted His clearest statements. In fact, the Church of England,
in her Book of Homilies, declares that "clergy and laity, learned and
unlearned, all ages, sects, and degrees of men, women, and children,
of whole Christendom, were altogether drowned in damnable idolatry by
the space of 800 years and more"! (Hom. on Peril of Idol., part iii.).
This is a specimen of the way in which God's promises are set aside,
and the Bible misinterpreted by outsiders while professing to make it
the foundation of their creed. Nor was this the teaching of a few
irresponsible persons. It was enforced by the whole Anglican Church.
"All parsons, vicars, curates, and all others having spiritual cure,"
were "straitly enjoined" to read these Homilies Sunday after Sunday
throughout the year in every church and chapel of the kingdom. And the
25th Article declares the second book of Homilies to contain "a godly
and wholesome doctrine and necessary for these times"! Probably this
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