ainst those who either disputed their authority, reprehended their
manner of life, or cast suspicion upon the popular methods of lulling
the conscience in the lifetime, or purchasing salvation on the
death-bed.

Sec. XCVII. Besides this, the reassertion and defence of various tenets
which before had been little more than floating errors in the popular
mind, but which, definitely attacked by Protestantism, it became
necessary to fasten down with a band of iron and brass, gave a form at
once more rigid, and less rational, to the whole body of Romanist
Divinity. Multitudes of minds which in other ages might have brought
honor and strength to the Church, preaching the more vital truths which
it still retained, were now occupied in pleading for arraigned
falsehoods, or magnifying disused frivolities; and it can hardly be
doubted by any candid observer, that the nascent or latent errors which
God pardoned in times of ignorance, became unpardonable when they were
formally defined and defended; that fallacies which were forgiven to the
enthusiasm of a multitude, were avenged upon the stubbornness of a
Council; that, above all, the great invention of the age, which rendered
God's word accessible to every man, left all sins against its light
incapable of excuse or expiation; and that from the moment when Rome set
herself in direct opposition to the Bible, the judgment was pronounced
upon her, which made her the scorn and the prey of her own children, and
cast her down from the throne where she had magnified herself against
heaven, so low, that at last the unimaginable scene of the Bethlehem
humiliation was mocked in the temples of Christianity. Judea had seen
her God laid in the manger of the beasts of burden; it was for
Christendom to stable the beasts of burden by the altar of her God.

Sec. XCVIII. Nor, on the other hand, was the opposition of Protestantism
to the Papacy less injurious to itself. That opposition was, for the most
part, intemperate, undistinguishing, and incautious. It could indeed
hardly be otherwise. Fresh bleeding from the sword of Rome, and still
trembling at her anathema, the reformed churches were little likely to
remember any of her benefits, or to regard any of her teaching. Forced
by the Romanist contumely into habits of irreverence, by the Romanist
fallacies into habits of disbelief, the self-trusting, rashly-reasoning
spirit gained ground among them daily. Sect branched out of sect,
presumption rose