And in no way can this be better effected than when
the frightened captives are made to see in how many points the
disentangling itself is a work of expedience rather than of
necessity; so easily and at so little loss might the web be cut or
brushed away.
First, let their attention be fixed on the history of Christianity as
learnt from universal tradition, and the writers of each successive
generation. Draw their minds to the fact of the progressive and
still continuing fulfilment of the assurance of a few fishermen, that
both their own religion, though of Divine origin, and the religion of
their conquerors, which included or recognised all other religious of
the known world, should be superseded by the faith in a man recently
and ignominiously executed. Then induce them to meditate on the
universals of Christian Faith--on Christianity taken as the sum of
belief common to Greek and Latin, to Romanist and Protestant. Show
them that this and only this is the ordo traditionis, quam
tradiderunt Apostoli iis quibus committebant ecclesias, and which we
should have been bound to follow, says Irenaeus, si neque Apostoli
quidem Scripturas reliquissent.
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