“We are frequently as unjust to Protestants as they are to us,” she constantly said to her over-zealous friends. “If they are sincere in their disbelief, it would show a lack of principle in them to be over-indulgent and complacent to us. You must recollect that many a Protestant cannot help believing us guilty of something like, at least, unconscious idolatry; cannot help having a sort of horror for some of our ways. Besides, we must not claim merit to ourselves for having faith. ‘_Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam._’ Then, again, here is an inquiry worth making: Look about among your Catholic acquaintances, including yourself among them, and ask, from your knowledge of them and of yourself, ‘If the drama of salvation were yet to be acted, and Christ were but just come on earth, poor, humble, and despised, how many of these people would follow him? Would I follow him? What instance of a sacrifice of worldly advantages, a giving up of friends and happiness, a willingness to be despised for God’s sake, have I or any of these given?’ It is easy, it is a little flattering, indeed, to one’s vanity, and pleasing to one’s imagination, to stand in very good company, among people many of whom are our superiors in rank and reputation, and have our opponents fire their poor little arrows at us. We feel ourselves very great heroes and heroines indeed, when, in truth, we are no more than stage heroes, with tinsel crowns and tin swords, and would fly affrighted before a real trial. It is easy to talk, and those who do the least talk the most and the most positively. Some of the noblest natures in the world are outside of the fold, some of the meanest are inside. God’s ways are not our ways, and we cannot disentangle these things. Only we should not take airs to ourselves. When I see the primitive ardor and nobleness of Christianity in a person, I hold that person as independent of circumstances, and am sure that he would join the company of the fishermen to-day, if they were but just called. The others I do not wish to judge, except when they make foolish pretences.”