Puritans in England were terror-stricken. Fasts were held, and young people were worn out by abstinence and prayer. Amidst a crowded congregation, near Bradford, where all were groaning and weeping, there came a man, who cried, "Friends, we are all as good as dead men, for the Irish rebels are coming; they are come as far as Rochdale, and Littleborough, and the Batings, and will be at Halifax and Bradford shortly."[273] Upon hearing this, the congregation fell into utter confusion, and began to run for their lives,--screaming about the bloody Papists, and expecting every moment to meet the cut-throats. Not only were ignorant multitudes thus panic-stricken, but Richard Baxter believed that the Irish had threatened to come over, and, he remarks, that such threats, "with the name of 200,000 murdered, and the recital of the monstrous cruelties of those cannibals, made many thousands in England think that nothing could be more necessary than for the Parliament to put the country into an armed posture for their own defence."[274] [Sidenote: _Irish Rebellion._] Not only did aversion to Popery proper increase through what had happened in Ireland, but that aversion regarded much which bore but a very partial resemblance to Popery. It was not easy then, with cool discrimination, to distinguish between things which differed; and some things, it must be remembered, were more alike then than they are at present. What would be folly in one age may be something like wisdom in another; what would be groundless fear now might be caution then; that which all would pronounce insanity in a Protestant of the nineteenth century was probably only a reasonable apprehension in a Puritan of the seventeenth. At that time there not only rose a stronger determination to resist the power of Rome, but also a stronger determination to put an end to the power at Lambeth. The tiara became more hateful than ever, and not less so the mitre: images of the Virgin were pronounced intolerable, so were all superstitious ornaments in churches. The Popish rebellion helped on the measure for removing Bishops from amongst the rulers of the country, and imparted a fresh impulse to the desire for abolishing Episcopacy. [Sidenote: 1641, October.]