They have taken the Protestants' word for it, that Protestantism is more reasonable than Romanism; and they think, therefore, that if they have destroyed the former, _a fortiori_ have they destroyed the latter.[41] No conception of the matter, however, could be more false than this.

To whatever criticism the Catholic position may be open, it is certainly not thus included in Protestantism, nor is it reached through it.

Let us try and consider the matter a little more truly.

Let us grant all that hostile criticism can say against Protestantism as a supernatural religion: in other words, let us set it aside altogether.

Let us suppose nothing, to start with, in the world but a natural moral sense, and a simple natural theism; and let us then see the relation of the Church of Rome to that.