The Roman Catholic Church, it is well known, does not accept the Scriptures as the final authority in matters of faith and practice; the church (the pope) is held to be a higher authority than the Scrip tures, hence it is not inconsistent with the funda mental principles of this church to advocate doctrines that are not based on Scripture. The Protestant churches, on the other hand, are generally supposed to consider the Scriptures the sole rule of faith and practice and to reject that Which is not founded on Scripture. Nevertheless it is generally known that Protestant denominations defend infant baptism, though this practice is never mentioned in Scripture and prominent historians of the said denominations agree in the testimony that the baptism of infants was foreign to the thought of the apostolic church and was first introduced more than a century after the founding of the church.