If but few persons, outside the Catholic Church, realise the force and
import of these words, it is because few realise the absolute and
irresistible power of Him Who gave them utterance. With their lips
they profess Christ to be God, but then, strange to relate, they
proceed to reason and to argue, just as though He were merely
man--one, that is to say, Who, when He established His Church, did
not consider nor bear in mind man's weakness and fickleness, and who
possessed no power to see the outcome of His own policy, nor the
difficulties that it would engender, nor the future multiplication of
the faithful, in every part of the world. For, did He know and foresee
all these things, He _must_ have guarded against them; and this they
_practically_ deny, by continuing to associate themselves with
churches where His promises are in no sense fulfilled, and where His
most solemn pledges remain unredeemed. We refer to those churches
wherein there is no recognised infallible authority; in fact, nothing
to protect their subjects from the inroads of the world, and from the
faults and errors inseparable from the exercise of purely human and
fallible reason.

Those, however, who can put aside such false notions, and awaken to
the real facts, will find the truth growing luminous before their
gaze. History constrains them to admit that it was Christ Who
established the Church, with its supreme head, and its various
members. But Christ is verily God; of the same nature, and one with
the Father, and possessing the same divine attributes. Now, since He
is God, there is to Him no future, just as there is no past. To him,
all is equally present. Hence, in establishing a Church, and in
providing it with laws and a constitution, He did this, not
tentatively, not experimentally, not in ignorance of man's needs and