his adhesion to that form of church
government dear to the Presbyterians, where a general council of the
ministers directed the affairs of their church. Every man was, in his
opinion, equal in the eyes of the Almighty, and none had a right to
claim any precedence over his neighbour in matters of religion. The book
was written for all, and all were equally able to read it, provided that
their minds were enlightened by the Holy Spirit.

My mother, on the other hand, held that the very essence of a church
was that it should have a hierarchy and a graduated government within
itself, with the king at the apex, the archbishops beneath him, the
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;