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I may yet add another instance of the risk, which (for want of better acquaintance with our old divines) you run of involving unawares in your censures those giants of old times, against whom, for very shame, a modern should not open his mouth, while you think you are only attacking men of modern days like yourself, οἷοι νῦν βροτοί εἰσι.
Every system of theology, as indeed every tendency of mind, every good disposition, every performance of religious duty, has its dangers, the danger of degenerating; and so, of necessity, has Protestantism. One of the writers of the Tracts brought forward some of these in warning, especially the tendency to require too rigid argumentation, explicit proof, and not to yield to conviction until compelled. The Romanist is too easy of belief, believes on false grounds; the tendency of the Protestant is, to be over-difficult of belief, not to believe on sufficient and true grounds. This was illustrated by reference to the prevailing feelings in some quarters with regard to episcopacy; and it was shown, that the same principle would, consistently extend not only to infant baptism, but to a case of
"doctrine, of necessary doctrine, doctrine the very highest and most sacred, where the argument lies as little upon the surface of Scripture,—where the proof, though most conclusive, is as indirect and circuitous as that for episcopacy, viz., the doctrine of the Trinity. Where is this solemn and comfortable mystery formally stated in Scripture, as we find it in the Creed? Why is it not? Let a man consider whether all the objections which he urges against the Scripture argument for Episcopacy may not be turned against his own belief in the Trinity. It is a happy thing for themselves that men are inconsistent; yet it is miserable to advocate and establish a principle, which, not in their own case indeed, but in the case of others who learn it of them, leads to Socinianism. This being considered, can we any longer wonder at the awful fact, that the descendants of Calvin, the first Presbyterian, are at the present day in the number of those who have denied the Lord who bought them?"
It certainly was not any common mind, which saw how a principle, now so commonly avowed in the instance of episcopacy, will, when carried out, ultimately affect men's belief in the highest doctrines of the faith: it was also popular ground to take, and a great temptation, to represent these writers, as weakening the evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity—and
