The Relationship Recognized.
THE Christian at Work says:— "When the subject of Roman Church baptism came up the other day, Professor Francis L. Patton showed that if the Roman Church were to be disenfranchised because it contained error, so must Protestant churches as well, for nearly, if not all the errors of the Roman Church could be discovered hidden away in some phases of Protestantism. . . . The doctrine of the 'deity of the wafer' is one that is peculiarly abhorrent to many Protestants. Yet it is both held and declared by those claiming the Protestant name. But that does not unchristianize the denomination. No more do errors in the Roman Church unchristianize a body by whom the essential doctrines of evangelical Christianity are held in common with Protestants." If the first statement is true, and we are not disposed to dispute it, viz., that "all the errors of the Roman Church can be discovered hidden away in some phases of Protestantism," then certainly Protestantism needs reforming. The fact is that many of the errors of the Catholic Church are not very deeply "hidden" in Protestantism. They are too425plainly apparent; and this doubtless explains the growing kindly feeling among Protestants toward Catholics. They recognize the relationship between them. The principle on which they act is something like this: "The Catholic Church has errors, but what of it? They certainly are not damnable ones, for we ourselves have the same errors." This is the kind of logic which recognizes Catholic "baptism" as a Christian ordinance, and condones all the Catholic abominations. If gross errors, nay, positive perversions of truth, willfully and persistently maintained, do not unchristianize a body, of what value is the truth? and what then is the difference between Christianity and infidelity?