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26 in some things, and so will more easily make them believe, they are as much deceived in all the rest. And thus the East and West may meet at last, and the most furious antagonists may become some of the easiest converts. This I do really fear will be the case of many thousands among us, who now pass for most zealous Protestants; if ever, which God forbid, that religion should come to be uppermost in England. It is, therefore, of mighty consequence for preventing the return of Popery, that men rightly understand what it is. For, when they are as much afraid of an innocent ceremony as of real idolatry, and think they can worship images and adore the Host on the same grounds that they may use the sign of the cross, or kneel at the Communion, when they are brought to see their mistake in one case, they will suspect themselves deceived in the other also... When they find undoubted practices of the Ancient Church condemned as Popish and Antichristian by their teachers, they must conclude Popery to be of much greater antiquity than really it is; and when they can trace it so very near the Apostles' times, they will soon believe it settled by the Apostles themselves. For it will be very hard to persuade any considering men, that the Christian Church should degenerate so soon, so unanimously, so universally, as it must do, if Episcopal government, and the use of some significant ceremonies, were any parts of that apostasy..... Three ways, Bishop Sanderson observes, our dissenting brethren, though not intentionally and purposely, yet really and eventually, have been the great promoters of the Roman interest among us; (1) by putting-to their helping hand to the pulling down of Episcopacy .... (2) by opposing the interest of Rome with more violence than reason; (3) by frequently mistaking the question, but especially through the necessity of some false principle or other, which having once imbibed, they think themselves bound to maintain, whatever becomes of the common cause of our Reformation.

I believe, O blessed and adorable Mediator, that the Church is