Theory” stands self-condemned, if truth be of any importance:  because it is inconsistent with truth.  For, if one Church contradicts the other on any single point of doctrine, then one or the other must be false, that is, it must be either asserting what Christ denied; or else denying what Christ asserted.  They cannot, under any circumstances, be described as true Churches.  This is not sophistry or subtilty.  It is common-sense.  Christ promised unity in promising truth; since truth is one.  Is Christ divided? asks St. Paul.  No!  Then neither is His Church.

2.  How was His truth to be maintained and securely developed, century after century, pure and untainted, and free from all admixture of error? Humanly speaking, the thing was impossible.  Then what superhuman guarantee did He offer?  What was to be our security?  Nothing less than the abiding presence of the Holy Ghost Himself.

Surely, then, we need not be anxious after that!  Listen, and remember it is to God you are listening.  “The Spirit of Truth shall abide with you for ever” (John xiv. 17).  Non-Catholics do not seem in the least to realise what those words mean, or that it is God Himself who promises.  But, to continue; what is the purpose of this extraordinary and enduring presence?  Why is it given?  What is it for?  Well, for the express purpose of hindering divisions and sects.  In order to lead, not to mislead us.  How do we know?  Because God said so:  “He shall guide you into all truth” (John xvi. 13).  And this truth, thus permanently secured, was to draw all together into one body.  In fact, we have it on Divine authority, that the Church of Christ was to be as truly a single organic whole, in which every part is subject to one 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