In the time of William Prynne there was no stronger feeling in the minds of the people of England than a dread of a return of the dominion of Eome. In the estimation of our forefathers of that period popery was a conspiracy against the just liberties and the right reason of mankind. The evils connected with it as a conjoint system of belief, and of spiritual government, were deemed intolerable. In its former character, degrading superstitions seemed interwoven into its very essence; in the latter, it was seen and known to be the enemy, in every possible form, of freedom of thought, and speech, and pen; in both it was looked upon as handing over its subjects to the domination of a priesthood, who were foreigners in their hearts, whose chief allegiance was given to a foreign power, who used the people for their own purposes, kept them in ignorance as a means of perpetuating their dominion, and strove, heart and soul, by the publication of wicked libels, by secret conspiracy and open war, for the restoration of that temporal supremacy which they had lost. Many people now-a-days entertain the same opinions of the Church of Eome, but there is a marked distinction between the impression produced by these opinions upon the minds of our ancestors and upon those of our contemporaries. But there is a marked distinction between Eomanism as it existed then, and now. Then, it was not merely a form of faith.