That was my mother's position, and neither argument nor entreaty could move her from it.

The only question of belief on which my two parents were equally ardent was their mutual dislike and distrust of the Roman Catholic forms of worship, and in this the Churchwoman was every whit as decided as the fanatical Independent.
It may seem strange to you in these days of tolerance, that the adherents of this venerable creed should have met with such universal ill-will from successive generations of Englishmen.

We recognise now that there are no more useful or loyal citizens in the state than our Catholic brethren, and Mr.Alexander Pope or any other leading Papist is no more looked down upon for his religion than was Mr.William Penn for his Quakerism in the reign of King James.

We can scarce credit how noblemen like Lord Stafford, ecclesiastics like Archbishop Plunkett, and commoners like Langhorne and Pickering, were dragged to death on the testimony of the vilest of the vile, without a voice being raised in their behalf; or how it could be considered a patriotic act on the part of an English Protestant to carry a flail loaded with lead beneath his cloak as a menace against his harmless neighbours who differed from him on points of doctrine.

It was a long madness which has now happily passed off, or at least shows itself in a milder and rarer form.
Foolish as it appears to us, there were some solid reasons to account for it.