the kind of effects that, it seemed to me, each side would
experience in turn, should the other, at any rate for a while,
become dominant, that I have written these two books.

Finally if I may be allowed, I should wish to draw attention to
my endeavours to treat of the subject of "religious persecution,"
since I strongly believe that in some such theory is to be found
the explanation of such phenomena as those of Mary Tudor's reign
in England, and of the Spanish Inquisition. In practically every
such case, I think, it was the State and not the Church which was
responsible for so unhappy a policy; and that the policy was
directed not against unorthodoxy, as such, but against an
unorthodoxy which, under the circumstances of those days, was
thought to threaten the civil stability of society in general,
and which was punished as amounting to treasonable, rather than
to heretical, opinions.

ROBERT HUGH BENSON.

ROME Lent 1911




THE DAWN OF ALL



PROLOGUE