The Catholics and the other sects do not believe that Anderson is a descendant of Jesus.
I remember the day when the Intelligence Extraordinary came with Mr. Peel's speech in it, containing the terms on which the Catholics were to be let in!
We certainly do not wish to excuse or palliate the evil deeds of Catholics, who, with all the blessed aids which their religion affords, ought to be much better than they are.
Yet, in truth, there was some reason for the young man's fears; since, even in those days, Catholics were hunted down both by law and by public opinion, as virulently as Protestant nonconformists.
By continuing their violent persecution, and still more violent menaces against priests and Papists, they confirmed the Irish Catholics in their rebellion, and cut off all hopes of indulgence and toleration.
Toleration had hitherto been so little the principle of any Christian sect, that even the Catholics, the remnant of the religion professed by their forefathers, could not obtain from the English the least indulgence.
We frankly admit and heartily deplore the disorders which Catholics commit, but we deny that they are worse than their Protestant neighbors; and still more emphatically do we deny that the Church is responsible for their disorders.
For he knew that, in some shape or other, and that certainly not the true one, the affair would be spread over the country, where now prejudice against the Catholics was strong and dangerous in proportion to the unreason of those who cherished it.
The estimate which so many Protestants set on the virtue of even the lower classes of Roman Catholics is clearly enough evinced in the preference which they constantly manifest in their employment of Catholics--practical Catholics--Catholics who go to confession.
The division showing the highest proportion of illegitimacy is the north-eastern, which comprises, or almost consists of, the Province of Ulster, where the population is almost equally divided between Protestants and Roman Catholics, and where the great majority of Protestants are of Scotch blood and of the Presbyterian church.