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Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
page 16 of 590 (02%)
bishops under their control, and so down through the ministry to the
common folk. Such was, in her opinion, the Church as established in the
beginning, and no religion without these characteristics could lay any
claim to being the true one. Ritual was to her of as great importance
as morality, and if every tradesman and farmer were allowed to invent
prayers, and change the service as the fancy seized him, it would be
impossible to preserve the purity of the Christian creed. She agreed
that religion was based upon the Bible, but the Bible was a book which
contained much that was obscure, and unless that obscurity were cleared
away by a duly elected and consecrated servant of God, a lineal
descendant of the Disciples, all human wisdom might not serve to
interpret it aright. 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
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