The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

strongest of all doctrines in fixing the hearts of men, as a bulwark against
all her efforts to regain the ground she had lost. The anathemas of the
Council of Trent are almost all levelled at our Church; her soldiers have
poured forth their blood on the battle-fie1d, and the spirits of her martyrs
have taken flight from the scaffold and the stake, in preserving, amid
Romish conspiracies and persecution, the truth she gave them. Without our
Church, there would be, so far as human sight may pierce, no
Protestantism on the face of the earth at this hour, and without her
Confession she would have perished from among men. It cannot be that
loyalty to the Protestantism she made and saved, can demand treachery to
that by which she made and saved it. It cannot be that fidelity to the truth
which overthrew Romanism, can involve connivance with Romanism
itself. But there are others who, acknowledging for themselves the force of
all that can be urged for the Confessions, and not unwilling for themselves
to adopt them, look with desponding eye on the facts which seem to them
to show that there can be no large general acceptance in this country, so
unchurchly and unhistoric as it is, of these Confessions. Were we to grant
the gloomiest supposition possible, that would not affect our duty.
Suppose it were true, that the arguments for the pure doctrine of the
Confessions seem to have little weight with men, shall we cease to urge
them? After Nineteen Centuries of struggle, Christianity is in minority in
the world. After the evidences of Christianity have been urged for some
three centuries, there are many deists, more open and avowed even than at
the Reformation. After centuries of argument for the Trinity, there are,
perhaps, more Socinians than ever. After three centuries, in which the pure
doctrine of justification has been urged, millions in the Romish Church
and very many nominal Protestants reject it. With all the arguments for
infant baptism, with the proofs urged so long and so ably for the validity of
other modes of Baptism than immersion, how many millions of Baptists
there are! With the clear testimony of Scripture and History for the
perpetual obligation of the two Sacraments, how many Friends there are
(and their number is