Protestant Church, though disapproving a great deal of _that_, disaproves also a great deal in its own sister churches of the protesting household; and because every Protestant Church holds a great deal of Christian truth, in common with Rome. But what 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 treatment, applying itself to what is permanent in the _nature_ of the object; whereas the other treatment applies itself to what is casual and vanishing in the _history_ (or the origin) of Protestantism. For, after all, it would be no great triumph to Protestantism that she should prove her birthright to revolve as a primary planet in the solar system; that she had the same original right as Rome to wheel about the great central orb, undegraded to the rank of satellite or secondary projection--if, in the meantime, telescopes should reveal the fact that she was pretty nearly a sandy desert. _What_ a church teaches is true or not true, without reference to her independent right of teaching; and eventually, when the irritations of earthly