It has been asked: Is not any religion better than none? ...and that all heresies condemned by the Church [of Rome] are to be anathematized; that out of the [Roman] Catholic faith there is no salvation

It has been asked: Is not any religion better than none? The answer is that a bad religion is worse than none; that truth will have more power on the mind that is blackened over with prejudice; and that nature is a better teacher than superstition. The savage slays his enemy, but he does not torture his neighbour for refusing to bow down to the same idol as himself. The Arab plunders, but he has no confessor to teach him perfidy: he keeps his oath, and the man who has shared his bread and salt is safe, whether he prays towards Mecca of Jerusalem. Ignorance is obviously better than the fierce fallacy which at once enfeebles the mind, inflames the passions, and plants an inveterate hostility to truth in the heart of man. To teach error is not to teach at all.

It has been asked: Must not Popery, by acknowledging the principles of Christianity, be, at least, good in part? The answer is that the acknowledgement of those principles was necessary to their perversion. To delude is impossible but¹ under the semblance of sincerity. By the constitution of the human mind, wherever truth and falsehood are thus compounded, the falsehood inevitably overwhelms the truth, because the very attempt to combine them implies the worldliness which leads to error. We might as well yoke the living to the dead in the expectation of giving life to the corpse: the corpse corrupts the living. We must have truth alone or falsehood alone. How can a man believe in God and yet worship an idol?

In the year 1563 the Council of Trent decreed that all persons promoted to Benefices with care of souls should make a public confession of their faith, and in the following year Pius IV issued the formulary which is since called his Creed and which is acknowledged as the standard of Romish doctrine. As the subject is familiar to all readers of Church history, I shall merely glance at the nature of this memorable document, which is generally divided into separate Articles.

The first three contain the Nicene Creed; the remainder belong especially² to Rome.

Those Articles pronounce the Church [of Rome] to be the only judge of the sense of the Scripture;

appoint seven sacraments;

declare that in the mass there is offered a true propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead; that the whole body and blood,

soul and divinity of our Lord are offered in the Eucharist, and that the sacrifice is offered in either kind alone;

that there is a purgatory and that souls therein are helped by the suffrages of the faithful; that the saints are to be invocated³,

 that they pray for us to God, and that their relics are to be held in veneration; that the images of Christ, the Virgin and saints are to be retained,

and to be held in "due veneration";

 that the power of indulgences was given by God to the Church; and that the use of them is most wholesome;

that the Church of Rome is the mother and mistress of all churches;

that all things declared by the Councils, and especially the Council of Trent,

are to be undoubtingly received,

and that all heresies condemned by the Church [of Rome] are to be anathematized;

 that out of⁴ the [Roman] Catholic faith there is no salvation!

Enquiry into the Scriptures is the foundation of faith in the mind of the Christian;

but Popery commands an implicit belief, not in the Scriptures,

but in its Church, and even in that Church only as speaking¹³ by the Council of Trent¹⁴.

[…] The especial¹⁵ characteristic of the Romish Church is image worship, and this charge it virtually acknowledges by excluding the second Commandment.

Popery attempts a subterfuge¹⁶ under the words "due veneration";

but who is to be the judge of "due veneration", or who ever saw the mass solemnised without asking himself:

Could worship go further? The jewelled crowns and tissued robes of the images, the golden shrines and votive tablets, the lifted hands, the adoring eyes, the hymns, the chorus of prayer!

What mean they? If the Deity Himself descended on the altar, could man offer him more significant homage?

The divine commandment excludes all worship of an image, all "due veneration" – even the presence of an image.

"Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image."

The ground of the commandment is perfectly intelligible.

An image must be a false representation of God; it gives a false familiarity with the divine presence; it makes the Infinite local and gives the Omnipotent to the hands of a man.

What work of canvass or stone can possibly realise¹⁷ even to the mind the Eternal?

 And the conception becomes lower still when miracles, tears and smiles of divine benefice, and the melancholy artifices of the Breviary, are attributed to the picture and the statue.

¹⁴ Creed of Pope Pius IV, Article V:

 "our Holy Mother the Church […] to which it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Scriptures".

Thus the Council of Trent fastens the padlock on the Scriptures at the moment when it hangs the chain on the human mind.

 Enquiry into the Scriptures is thenceforth useless to the whole community of Romanism.