The discerning reader, as he examines the apologetical endeavors of ancient and modern Roman Catholics, will become increasingly aware that he is dealing with indefatigable masters of sophistry. From Bellarmine in the 1500's to Scott Hahn, Gerry Matatics, and Karl Keating and Catholic Answers in the 1990's, the Papal purveyors spare no efforts in their excruciating distortions of the Scriptures to fit the mold of their apostasy.

Indeed, equivocation and deception are quintessential to Roman Catholicism, and their proponents may rightly be denominated theological and linguistic thaumaturgists. No less miraculous and no less blasphemous than their "transformation" of the bread and wine into the "real" body and blood of Christ, are their transubstantiations of truth into error, grace into legalism, worship into idolatry, the creature into God, and God into the creature.

Soberly and sagely, then, did R.L. Dabney speak when he referred to "the doctrine of Rome [as] a masterpiece of cunning and plausible error." Though true of Romanism in its totality (to a greater or lesser degree), these words of Dabney had reference to the Romish view of justification.

It is in this vital arena especially where their skill in sophistry is at times almost breath-taking -- at once marvelous, unbelievable in audacity and cruelty to souls, and exasperating in its relentless efforts to pervert and subvert the clear gospel of Jesus Christ. Little wonder is it that Luther would assert that "Justification is the article on which the Church stands or falls."