Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/55

Rh then, I say, is our position, a defensive one; we are assailed, and we defend ourselves and our flocks. There is no plea for calling on us in England to do more than this,—to defend ourselves. We are under no constraint to go out of our way spontaneously to prove charges against the Romanists; but, when asked about our faith, we give a reason why we are this way of thinking, and not that. This makes our task in the controversy incomparably easier, than if we were forced to exhibit an offensive front, or volunteered articles of impeachment against the rival communion. "Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called," is St. Paul's direction. We find ourselves under the Anglican regimen; let every one of us, cleric and layman, remain in it, till our opponents have shown cause why we should change, till we have reason to suspect we are wrong. The onus probandi plainly lies with them. This, I say, simplifies our argument, as allowing us to content ourselves with less of controversy than otherwise would be incumbent on us. We have the strength of possession and prescription. We are not obliged to prove them incurably corrupt and heretical; no, nor our own system unexceptionable. It is in our power, if we will, to take very low ground; it is quite enough to ascertain that reasons cannot be brought why we should go over from our side to theirs.

But besides this, there are the Apostle's injunctions against disorder. Did we go over to the Roman Catholics, we should be fomenting divisions among ourselves, which would be a primâ facie case against us. Of course there are cases where division is justifiable. Did we believe, for instance, the English Church to be absolutely heretical, and Romanism to be pure and Catholic, it would be a duty, as the lesser evil, to take part in a division which truth demanded. Else it would be a sin. Those dissenters who consider union with the state to be apostasy, or the doctrine of baptismal regeneration a heresy, are wrong, not in that they separate from us, but in that they so think.

And further, a debt of gratitude to that particular branch of the Church Catholic through which God made us Christians, through which we were new bom, instructed, and (if so be) ordained to the ministerial office; a debt of reverence and affection towards the