I appeal to your own conscience, Julian Peveril, whether this awakening hath not been in time, since you yourself know, and none better than you, the secret but rapid strides which Rome has made to erect her Dagon of idolatry within our Protestant land." Here Julian seeing, or thinking he saw, the drift of Bridgenorth's suspicions, hastened to exculpate himself from the thought of favouring the Roman Catholic religion.

"It is true," he said, "I have been educated in a family where that faith is professed by one honoured individual, and that I have since travelled in Popish countries; but even for these very reasons I have seen Popery too closely to be friendly to its tenets.

The bigotry of the laymen--the persevering arts of the priesthood--the perpetual intrigue for the extension of the forms without the spirit of religion--the usurpation of that Church over the consciences of men--and her impious pretensions to infallibility, are as inconsistent to my mind as they can seem to yours, with common-sense, rational liberty, freedom of conscience, and pure religion." "Spoken like the son of your excellent mother," said Bridgenorth, grasping his hand; "for whose sake I have consented to endure so much from your house unrequited, even when the means of requital were in my own hand." "It was indeed from the instructions of that excellent parent," said Peveril, "that I was enabled, in my early youth, to resist and repel the insidious attacks made upon my religious faith by the Catholic priests into whose company I was necessarily thrown.

Like her, I trust to live and die in the faith of the reformed Church of England." "The Church of England!" said Bridgenorth, dropping his young friend's hand, but presently resuming it--"Alas! that Church, as now constituted, usurps scarcely less than Rome herself upon men's consciences and liberties; yet, out of the weakness of this half-reformed Church, may God be pleased to work out deliverance to England, and praise to Himself.

I must not forget, that one whose services have been in the cause incalculable, wears the garb of an English priest, and hath had Episcopal ordination.