Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/18

 one may go further, and observe, that even the ridicule of false virtue hath been sometimes attended with mischievous effects. The Spaniards have lamented, and I believe truly, that Cervantes's just and inimitable ridicule of knight-errantry rooted up, with that folly, a great deal of their real honour. And it was apparent that Butler's fine satire on fanaticism contributed not a little, during the licentious times of Charles II., to bring sober piety into disrepute. The reason is evident: there are many lines of resemblance between truth and its counterfeits; and it is the province of toil only to find out the likenesses in things, and not the talent of the common admirers of it to discover the differences."

But if these evils result from ridiculing religious error, what shall be said, if vv'hat you have ridiculed be after all the truth? And yet, because ultra- Protestants of the present day think any truth to approximate to Popery, it follows not that it is Popish, or if found in Popery, it follows not that it is untrue, else must all the Catholic verities be untrue also. Whenever you shall be pleased to abandon the ground of ridicule, and to treat questions of religious truth with seriousness, then will we also show, that the positions which you have ridiculed are neither Papistical nor untrue, but that you have been ridiculing the truth. Meanwhile, we propose for your consideration a catalogue of writers (which might easily be swelled to any amount), who, upon the subject which you have chosen for your chiefest ridicule, and which ultra-Protestants of this day are most ashamed of, have spoken as strongly as they, whom you on that ground decry as Papists: I mean, Apostolical Succession.

I would only observe by the way, since persons in these days dispense lightly with truths, the value whereof they do not understand, that in jesting at the doctrine of apostolical succession you despise a fact, wherein one of the acutest writers of any age or land saw an evidence for the truth of our holy faith. The apostolical succession of ministers is a £act which satisfies Leslie's criteria of the truth of the history wherewith it is connected; and the sceptical Middleton in vain attempted, during