ruth-loving
teachers. They took a new departure; and it was not less just than it
was brave, when, recognising to the full the overwhelming reasons why
"we should not be Romanists," they refused to take up the popular and
easy method of regarding the Roman Church as apostate and antichristian;
and declined to commit themselves to the vulgar and indiscriminate abuse
of it which was the discreditable legacy of the old days of controversy.
They did what all the world was loudly professing to do, they looked
facts in the face; they found, as any one would find who looked for
himself into the realities of the Roman Church, that though the bad was
often as bad as could be, there was still, and there had been all
along, goodness of the highest type, excellence both of system and of
personal life which it was monstrous to deny, and which we might well
admire and envy. To ignore all this was to fail in the first duty, not
merely of Christians, but of honest men; and we at home were not so
blameless that we could safely take this lofty tone of contemptuous
superiority. If Rome would only leave us alone, there would be
estrangement, lamentable enough among Christians, but there need be no
bitterness. But Rome would not leave us alone. The moment that there
were signs of awakening energy in England, that moment was chosen by its
agents, for now it could be done safely, to assail and thwart the
English Church. Doubtless they were within their rights, but this made
controversy inevitable, and for controversy the leaders of the movement
prepared themselves. It was an obstacle which they seemed hardly to have
expected, but which the nature of things placed in their way. But the
old style of controversy was impossible; impossible because it was so
coarse, impossible because it was so hollow.

If the argument (says the writer of Tract 71, in words which are
applicable to every controversy) is radically unreal, or (what may be
called) rhetorical or sophistical, it may serve the purpose of
encouraging those who are really convinced, though scarcely without
doing mischief to them, but certainly it will offend and alienate the
more acute and sensible; while those who are in doubt, and who desire
some real and substantial ground for their faith, will not bear to be
put off with such shadows. The arguments (he continues) which we use
must be such as are likely to convince serious and earnest minds, which
are really seeking for the truth, not a