Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/16

 The quiet frame of mind of a simple, undisputing Christian. 

It is not here the question, whether any of the writers whom you ridicule, over-stated the truth upon any of these points. I am convinced that they have not. But granting that they had, is ridicule a safe, a Christian, a godly, weapon to employ in such matters? Is it possible that those who should have been thereby made ashamed of, or scared from, any of these statements, would approach the consideration of the truth itself with that deep and considerate earnestness and reverence of mind which the subject requires,—if, indeed, you yet hold that there be any truth at all connected even with these subjects? Is it not too probable that the infection of this ridicule will extend to other truths; some of which, I presume, you would not wish to see thus assailed? since the efficacy of Baptism, the strengthening of the believer's soul by the Body and Blood of his Lord in the holy Eucharist, the Divinity of our Redeemer, and His sacrifice for sin, have been, and still are by some, represented as relics of Popery? The Socinians, and, more recently, the Rationalists of Germany, regarded or represented themselves as carrying on the work of the first Reformers, in purging Christianity from Papal corruptions.

Ridicule cannot be employed with impunity as a test of truth: error and truth often lie so closely together, nay, most religious error has so much of truth mingled up with it, that the very love of truth ought to preclude the use of jesting; not to say that the fearfulness of the subject, and the majesty of Almighty God, might well instinctively awe man into sobriety. For, through this close connexion of truth and error, mire cannot be cast at error, without defiling the truth also. To take the most palpable errors,—Could a man jest at Transubstantiation, and not thereby unfit his mind for the reception of the holy mystery of the Communion? or would not a mocking at the false doctrine of the Mediation of the Saints lower men's notions of their high and holy state? or has not the