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III. Imputation of False Motives, and so Slandering.
There is, however, another class of desertions of the truth, which, in your natural character, as we are persuaded, you would most abhor, but which your assumed one has forced upon you; I mean, imputation of dishonesty to men whom, in your conscience, you believe and know to be honest. This was indeed a necessary part of the fiction; for an agreement with the Church of Rome in things indifferent, or upon which our Church has not deemed it necessary to pronounce, would even to ultra-Protestants appear to involve no very serious charge. It became requisite, then, to insinuate that they agreed with Rome further than was expressed, although prudential or other motives kept them from avowing it. This the fiction enabled you to do covertly, since such dishonesty has ever been part of the corrupt policy of modern Rome. Hence such phrases as—
"We make allowance for those difficulties which impede j^our perception or your avowal of the truth." (p. 6.)
Further, you know that these authors had written also against Popery, and republished older writings against it: their very tracts are known by the name of "Tracts against Popery and Dissent," although, when they were commenced, Dissent was every where a pressing evil: Popery had scarcely began to bestir itself, and was therefore the less noticed[1]. You know that all occasions of guarding against the corruptions of Rome had been used in the very tracts corrective of dissent. Such writers, however, would have been but bad allies to the Pope, and therefore this proceeding must, by the laws of fiction, be represented as insincere. Hence such passages as—
- ↑ A new series of "Tracts against Romanism" had meanwhile been actually commenced, although not then published.
