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me, if he has any experience in such cases, that works and children of darkness do not ordinarily court the light. From the offenders and their friends, as is evident in the proceedings of every court of justice, it is with the utmost difficulty, that any thing in the shape of criminating evidence can be wrung. So that the friends of truth and equity are often under the necesssity of satisfying themselves with evidence of a broken and deficient character — accidental and apparently involuntary both admission and disclosures — the light mutually reflected by different and distant admitted facts upon each other, and various other proofs weaker or stronger — seldom sufficient for conviction absolutely legal, and yet quite sufficient for personal and moral assurance of the truth of the particular charge — quite sufficient to exclude all reasonable doubt.
This is precisely the case of the Church of Rome as respects the iniquities charged upon her, particularly that under consideration.
I have done my best to collect and present all the evidence, weighing its value as I could, extant upon the subject. Kven an advocate of Rome would riot expect me to invent evidence; this at least is not the practice with protestants. Had I allowed myself such liberty I might have made out a much clearer, indeed a perfectly clear case —
totus teres atque rotundus,
Externi ne quid valeat per leve morari.
I have given my materials as I found them in their natural order: some of them new, others improved or enlarged, all pertinent, many important. It is needless to say what I have done, as any reader who chuses may have recourse to my volume.
It is more to my purpose to shew what my opponent has done, and likewise what he has not done.
He has done as follows: — He has given a long detail of exextracts from the Venality, with the effect, whatever were the intention, of appearing to present an extended and fair statement of the argument oppugned. But with this he has intermingled passages selected to favour his purpose from different parts, and some of them rather obtusely perverted: and assuming, that my cause is answerable for all the imperfections and variations in the documents — facts, not denied but openly and carefully stated — with nothing but a protestant though valuable re-print, and another, in his own possession, he feels himself warranted to come to the bold conclusion, — "Now, Sir, whether I can reasonably be called upon to defend or reply to any of the individual charges in documents so strangely discordant with each other, and so totally destitute of valid authentication, I may fearlessly leave to the judgment of the
