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THE Roman Catholic Church was not organized, it grew. Many of its peculiar doctrines date back from a comparatively late epoch. Thus Papal infallibility was not claimed until about the eleventh century, nor dogmatically asserted by Council till the nineteenth; the celibacy of the clergy was not adopted till after the fourth century; penances were introduced about the middle of the third century; indulgences in the fourteenth century; there is no trace of the worship of the Virgin Mary prior to the fourth century, and it has been ever since then growing in extent; the very word transsubstantiation had no existence till the beginning of the twelfth century. Thus it will be seen that so far as Romanism is a system of doctrine, it does not in its present form date from the Apostolic days.—Christian Union.

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— October, 1884 —