ever, during three
generations of civil discord, wavered in fidelity to his house, abhorred
even by that army on which, in the last extremity, he must rely.

His religion was still under proscription. Many rigorous laws against
Roman Catholics appeared on the Statute Book, and had, 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 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 bar