to violate those rules if, by so doing, he could avert injury or
reproach from the Church of which he was a member.

Nor was this opinion destitute of a show of reason. It was
impossible to deny that Roman Catholic casuists of great eminence
had written in defence of equivocation, of mental reservation, of
perjury, and even of assassination. Nor, it was said, had the
speculations of this odious school of sophists been barren of
results. The massacre of Saint Bartholomew, the murder of the
first William of Orange, the murder of Henry the Third of France,
the numerous conspiracies which had been formed against the life
of Elizabeth, and, above all, the gunpowder treason, were
constantly cited as instances of the close connection between
vicious theory and vicious practice. It was alleged that every
one of these crimes had been prompted or applauded by Roman
Catholic divines. The letters which Everard Digby wrote in lemon
juice from the Tower to his wife had recently been published, and
were often quoted. He was a scholar and a gentleman, upright in
all ordinary dealings, and strongly impressed with a sense of
duty to God. Yet he had been deeply concerned in the plot for
blowing up King, Lords, and Commons, and had, on the brink of
eternity, declared that it was incomprehensible to him how any
Roman Catholic should think such a design sinful. The inference
popularly drawn from these things was that, however fair the
general character of a Papist might be, there was no excess of
fraud or cruelty of which he was not capable when the safety and
honour of his Church were at stake.

The extraordinary success of the fables of Oates is to be chiefly
ascribed to the prevalence of this opinion. It was to no purpose