to produce your credentials before you assume your privileges.
Dogmatist.—My credentials are sufficiently authenticated. Both heaven and earth are witnesses in my favor. Attend, I pray you, to my arguments.
Rationalist.—Arguments! why, you surely do not pretend to any! To tell me that my reason is fallacious, is to refute whatever it may say in your favor. Whoever refuses to abide by the dictates of reason, ought to be able to convince without making use of it. For, supposing that in the course of your arguments you should convince me, how shall I know whether it be not through the fallacy of reason depraved by sin, that I acquiesce in what you affirm? Besides, what proof, what demonstration, can you ever employ more evident than the axiom which destroys it? It is fully as credible that a just syllogism should be false, as that a part is greater than the whole.
Dogmatist.—What a difference! My proofs admit of no reply; they are of a supernatural kind.
Rationalist.—Supernatural! What is the meaning of that term? I do not understand it?
Dogmatist.—Contraventions of the order of nature; prophecies, miracles, and prodigies of every kind.
Rationalist.—Prodigies and miracles! I have never seen any of these things.
Dogmatist.—No matter; others have seen them for you. We can bring clouds of witnesses—the testimony of whole nations—
Rationalist.—The testimony of whole nations! Is that a proof of the supernatural kind?
