that all the so-called Christian creeds of the age (and ten times more the practice of the sectarians of those creeds) were bloodthirsty and paganistic—a bitter mockery of the teachings of the Prince of Peace.
Perhaps the least intolerant of the people of western Europe of that time were the English Catholics, among whom was only a small class of fanatics. It would do to admit the moderate Catholics to the colony, but for some reasons it would be unwise to have a majority of them. Next to the Catholics the Church of England people were least intolerant. Reference is here made to the body of the Episcopalians, not to the officials of the government. The intolerance these officials showed was rather political than religious, rather aimed at sedition than heresy.
Although the Church people in authority sternly, even cruelly, repressed the Catholics, it was for two strong reasons: first, the diabolical plots of a few fanatics, mostly Jesuits—plots which the great body of English Catholics abhorred and of which they were innocent; and, second, the clamors of the great and growing body of Puritans, a sect or variety of sects of fanatics who, although they did much
