Many infidels, Mr.Townsend argued, had been made believers by the miracle of the loaves and fishes; and therefore it was permissible for him to make use of the same means for drawing over proselytes to the true church.

If he could find hungry Papists and convert them into well-fed Protestants by one and the same process, he must be doing a double good, he argued;--could by no possibility be doing an evil.
Such being the character of Mr.Townsend, it will not be thought surprising that he should have his warm admirers and his hot detractors.

And they who were inclined to be among the latter were not slow to add up certain little disagreeable eccentricities among the list of his faults,--as young Fitzgerald had done in the matter of the dirty surplices.
Mr.Townsend's most uncompromising foe for many years had been the Rev.Bernard M'Carthy, the parish priest for the same parish of Drumbarrow.

Father Bernard, as he was called by his own flock, or Father Barney, as the Protestants in derision were delighted to name him, was much more a man of the world than his Protestant colleague.
He did not do half so many absurd things as did Mr.Townsend, and professed to laugh at what he called the Protestant madness of the rector.

But he also had been an eager, I may also say, a malicious antagonist.