within no long time, been rigorously executed. The Test Act
excluded from civil and military office all who dissented from
the Church of England; and, by a subsequent Act, passed when the
fictions of Oates had driven the nation wild, it had been
provided that no person should sit in either House of Parliament
without solemnly abjuring the doctrine of transubstantiation.
That the King should wish to obtain for the Church to which he
belonged a complete toleration was natural and right; nor is
there any reason to doubt that, by a little patience, prudence,
and justice, such a toleration might have been obtained.

The extreme antipathy and dread with which the English people
regarded his religion was not to be ascribed solely or chiefly to
theological animosity. That salvation might be found in the
Church of Rome, nay, that some members of that Church had been
among the brightest examples of Christian virtue, was admitted by
all divines of the Anglican communion and by the most illustrious
Nonconformists. It is notorious that the penal laws against
Popery were strenuously defended by many who thought Arianism,
Quakerism, and Judaism more dangerous, in a spiritual point of
view, than Popery, and who yet showed no disposition to enact
similar laws against Arians, Quakers, or Jews.

It is easy to explain why the Roman Catholic was treated with
less indulgence than was shown to men who renounced the doctrine
of the Nicene fathers, and even to men who had not been admitted
by baptism within the Christian pale. There was among the English
a strong conviction that the Roman Catholic, where the interests
of his religion were concerned, thought himself free from all the
ordinary rules of morality, nay, that he thought it meritorious