furnishes the matter of protest is--the _deduction of the title_
upon which Rome plants the right to be church at all. This deduction
is so managed by Rome as to make herself, not merely a true church
(which many Protestants grant), but the exclusive church. Now, what
_Phil._ in effect undertakes to defend is not principles by
preference to doctrines (for they are pretty nearly the same thing),
but the question of title to teach at all, in preference to the
question of what is the thing taught. _There_ is the distinction,
as I apprehend it. All these terms--'principle,' 'doctrine,' 'system,'
'theory,' 'hypothesis'--are used nearly always most licentiously, and
as arbitrarily as a Newmarket jockey selects the colors for his
riding-dress. It is true that one shadow of justification offers
itself for _Phil.'s_ distinction. All principles are doctrines,
but all doctrines are not principles; which, then, in particular?
Why, those properly are principles which contain the _principia_,
the beginnings, or starting-points of evolution, out of which
any system of truth is evolved. Now, it may seem that the very
starting-point of our Protestant pretensions is, first of all, to
argue our _title_ or right to be a church _sui juris_; apparently
we must begin by making good our _locus standi_, before we can be
heard upon our doctrines. And upon this mode of approach, the
pleadings about the _title_, or right to teach at all, taking
precedency of the pleadings about the particular things taught,
would be the _principia_, or beginning of the whole process, and
so far would be entitled by preference to the name of _principles_.
But such a mode of approach is merely an accident, and contingent
upon our being engaged in a polemical discussion of Protestantism
in relation to Popery. _That_, however, is a pure matter of choice;
Protestantism may be discussed, 'as though Rome were not, in relation
to its own absolute merits; and this treatment is the logical