Chapter X · CONCLUSION.
Reading edition
At the close of this brief manual, it may perhaps be useful to state the question as it now presents itself.
I. Upon those who assert, rests the duty and incumbency of proof. Yet, in regard to what by a single comprehensive word may be styled Popery, the question stands negatively, in manner following.
The peculiar doctrines and practices, which the Clergy of the Roman Church pertinaciously inculcate upon their Laity, and to which they would proselyte the unthinking and uninformed Protestant, CAN NOT BE TRACED UP TO CHRIST AND HIS INSPIRED APOSTLES, either by the evidence of God’s Written Word, or by the subordinate testimony of the successive ecclesiastical writers of the three first centuries.
II. But this circumstance, bad enough even in itself, is by no means the worst part of the matter.
Scripture and the early Fathers, not only, negatively, DO NOT ESTABLISH the apostolicity of the peculiarities of Popery: but they also, positively, CONTRADICT AND CONDEMN those same peculiarities.
III. Hence, if I mistake not, the sober inquirer, who demands proof instead of assertion, will at length find himself irresistibly brought to the following very important conclusion.
IN ADMITTING THE PECULIARITIES OF THE LATIN CHURCH AS ARTICLES OF THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION, THE ROMANIST BELIEVES, NOT ONLY WITHOUT EVIDENCE, BUT EVEN AGAINST EVIDENCE.
THE END.
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