And that this operation would take place, on the first opportunity, is as certain as that "Peter's pence" were once raised in England with as much regularity as the king's taxes; that every Papist in Europe paid his portion of pence to Rome; that every bishop received his mitre from Rome; and that Rome never gave anything without a sum in hand, or a handsome promissory note--and that Rome boasts of being always the same. All this traffic would be under the name of charity; the old cry of Judas, "Ought not this ointment to have been sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?" would be echoed by the new keeper of the bag; and we should establish an annual drain of our circulation, to which all the contrivances of taxation would be child's play. For what could be the limit to the demands of foreign avarice invested with domestic authority, extortion calling itself zeal? or what could be the limits of a market selling absolution here, and Paradise hereafter, to profligate men and silly women--to lives wallowing in voluptuousness, and death-beds groaning in despair? It has been distinctly stated that, at the Reformation, _one-third_ of the whole land of England had been absorbed into the possession of the Popish priesthood! In all the annals of usurpation, there never was a broader grasp than in this Bull; in all the annals of effrontery there never was a more impudent assumption; but, in all the annals of infatuation, there never was an act of more headlong absurdity. It instantly roused the whole people; it reinforced every argument of the honest against Popery; it overthrew every pretence of the dishonest on behalf of Popery; and it worked the still greater wonder of forcing the loose and the lukewarm, the waverers and "waiters on the turn of things;" the "decently" knavish, the "respectably" hollow, and the "reputably" unprincipled, to acknowledge that Popery was really a "presuming kind of thing;" and that it ought to be, in some delicate way or other, _if possible_, put down.