ntain, is no positive evidence for the truth of those
facts; and this is the present question; what is the _positive_ evidence
that the Church ever believed or taught a Gospel substantially different
from that which her extant documents contain? All the evidence that is
extant, be it much or be it little, is on our side: Protestants have
none. Is none better than some? Scarcity of records--granting for
argument's sake there is scarcity--may be taken to account for
Protestants having no evidence; it will not account for our having some,
for our having all that is to be had; it cannot become a positive
evidence in their behalf. That records are few, does not show that they
are of none account.

Accordingly, Protestants had better let alone facts; they are wisest
when they maintain that the Apostolic system of the Church was certainly
lost;--lost, when they know not, how they know not, without assignable
instruments, but by a great revolution lost--of _that_ there can be no
doubt; and then challenge us to prove it was not so. "Prove," they seem
to say, "if you can, that the real and very truth is not so entirely hid
in primitive history as to leave not a particle of evidence betraying
it. This is the very thing which misleads you, that all the arguments
are in your favour. Is it not possible that an error has got the place
of the truth, and has destroyed all the evidence but what witnesses on
its side? Is it not possible that all the Churches should everywhere
have given up and stifled the scheme of doctrine they received from the
Apostles, and have substituted another for it? Of course it is; it is
plain to common sense it may be so. Well, we say, what _may be_, _is_;
this is our great principle: we say that the Apostles considered
episcopacy an indifferent matter, though Ignatius says it is essential.
We say that the table is not an altar, though Ignatius says it is. We
say there is no priest's office under the Gospel, though Clement affirms
it. We say that baptism is not an enlightening, though Justin takes it
for granted. We say that heresy is scarcely a misfortune, though
Ignatius accounts it a deadly sin; and all this, because it is our
right, and our duty, to interpret Scripture in our own way. We uphold
the pure unmutilated Scripture; the Bible, and the Bible only, is the
religion of Protestants; the Bible and our own sense of the Bible. We
claim a sort of parliamentary privilege to interpret laws in our own
way, a