Indeed I am of opinion that if those who foster and stimulate this detestable spirit of persecution against you only knew how certainly and surely it defeats their purpose, by cementing your hearts and the hearts of your flocks together, they would not, from principles even of worldly policy, persist in it.

The man who attempted to break down the arch by heaping additional weight upon it ultimately found that the greater the weight the stronger the arch, and so I trust it will be with us." "It would seem," said the priest, "to be an attempt to exterminate the religion of the people by depriving them of their pastors, and consequently of their Church, in order to bring them to the impression that, upon the principle of any Church being better than no Church, they may gradually be absorbed into Protestantism.

This seems to be their policy; but how can any policy, based upon such persecution, and so grossly at variance with human liberty, ever succeed?
As it is, we go out in the dead hours of the night, when even persecution is asleep, and administer the consolations of religion to the sick, the dying, and the destitute.

Now these stolen visits are sweeter, perhaps, and more efficacious, than if they took place in freedom and the open day.

Again, we educate their children in the principles of their creed, during the same lonely hours, in waste houses, where we are obliged to keep the windows stuffed with straw, or covered with blinds of some sort, lest a chance of discovery might ensue.