An antagonist of a complex bad system,—­a system, however, notwithstanding—­and such is Popery,—­should take heed above all things not to disperse himself.  Let him keep to the sticking place.  But the majority of our Protestant polemics seem to have taken for granted that they could not attack Romanism in too many places, or on too many points;—­forgetting that in some they will be less strong than in others, and that if in any one or two they are repelled from the assault, the feeling of this will extend itself over the whole.  Besides, what is the use of alleging thirteen reasons for a witness’s not appearing in Court, when the first is that the man had died since his ‘subpoena’?  It is as if a party employed to root up a tree were to set one or two at that work, while others were hacking the branches, and others sawing the trunk at different heights from the ground.

N. B. The point of attack suggested above in disputes with the Romanists is of special expediency in the present day:  because a number of pious and reasonable Roman Catholics are not aware of the dependency of their other tenets on this of the infallibility of their Church decisions, as they call them, but are themselves shaken and disposed to explain it away.  This once fixed, the Scriptures rise uppermost, and the man is already a Protestant, rather a genuine Catholic, though his opinions should remain nearer to the Roman than the Reformed Church.

Ib.

But methinks yet I should have hope of reviving your charity.  You cannot be a Papist indeed, but you must believe that out of their Church (that is out of the Pope’s dominions) there is no salvation; and consequently no justification and charity, or saving grace.  And is it possible you can so easily believe your religious father to be in hell; your prudent, pious mother to be void of the love of God, and in a state of damnation, &c.

This argument ‘ad affectum’ is beautifully and forcibly stated; but yet defective by the omission of the point;—­not for unbelief or misbelief of any article of faith, but simply for not being a member of this particular part of the Church of Christ.  For it is possible that a Christian might agree in all the articles of faith with the Roman doctors against those of the Reformation, and yet if he did not acknowledge the Pope as Christ’s vicar, and held salvation possible in any other Church, he is himself excluded from salvation!  Without this great distinction Lady Ann Lindsey might have replied to Baxter:—­“So might a Pagan orator have said to a convert from Paganism in the first ages of Christianity; so indeed the advocates of the old religion did argue.  What! can you bear to believe that Numa, Camillus, Fabricius, the Scipios, the Catos, that Cicero, Seneca, that Titus and the Antonini, are in the flames of Hell, the accursed objects of the divine hatred?  Now whatever you dare hope of these as heathens, we dare hope of you as heretics.”