the violent stimulus of the Revolution.  Many thought that Romanism continued to gain ground in England, and some cried out that still stricter laws were needed to suppress the Papists.  It is doubtful, however, whether advances in some quarters were not more than balanced by losses elsewhere.  As the century advanced, Rome gradually ceased to be dreaded as a subtle pervading power, full of mysterious activity, whose force might be felt most severely at the very moment when least preparation had been made to meet it.  Later still, fear was sometimes replaced by a confidence no less excessive.  ‘It is impossible,’ said Mr. Windham in the House of Commons, 1791, ’to deem them (the Roman Catholics) formidable at the present period, when the power of the Pope is considered as a mere spectre, capable of frightening only in the dark, and vanishing before the light of reason and knowledge.’[313]

Until the last decade of the century, Roman Catholics were rarely spoken of in any other spirit than as the dreaded enemies of Protestantism.  There was very little recognition of their being far more nearly united to us by the tie of a common Christianity, than separated by the differences in it.  A man who was not a professed sceptic needed to be both more unprejudiced and more courageous than his neighbours, to speak of Roman Catholics with tolerable charity.  In this, as in many other points, Bishop Berkeley was superior to his age.  He ventured to propose that Roman Catholics should be admitted to the Dublin College without being obliged to attend chapel or divinity lectures.[314] He could speak of such an institution as Monasticism in a discriminative tone which was then exceedingly uncommon.  In Ireland he wisely accepted the fact that the Roman Catholic priests had the heart of the people, and shaped his conduct accordingly.  His ‘Word to the Wise’ was an appeal addressed in 1749 to the priests, exhorting them to use their influence to promote industry and self-reliance among their congregations.  This sort of Episcopal charge to the clergy of another Communion was received, it is said, with a no less cordial feeling than that in which it was written.[315]

Dr. Johnson, a man of a very different order of mind, may be mentioned as another who joined a devoted attachment to the Church of England with a candid and kindly spirit towards Roman Catholics.  Perhaps his respect for authority, and the tinge of superstition in his temperament, predisposed him to sympathy.  In any case, his masculine intellect brushed away with scorn the prejudices, exaggerations, and misconstructions which beset popular ideas upon the subject.  He took pleasure in dilating upon the substantial unity that subsisted between them and denominations which, in externals, were separated from them by a very wide interval.  ‘There is a prodigious difference,’ he would say, ’between the external form of one of your Presbyterian Churches in Scotland, and a Church in Italy; yet the doctrine taught is essentially the same.’[316]