He tried to extend the benefit or plea of invincible ignorance as widely as possible. He laboured and reasoned, with a warmth unusual to him, to remove the notion some Catholics have, that the majority of Protestants know they are wrong, but from some unworthy motive will not give up their errors. His proofs of the position he chose to take here were not certainly the most convincing, for his stock argument was to quote himself. It did of course occur to him that its point could be retorted by the fact of his becoming a Catholic for his _bona fides_; but he took up the argument then by saying we were therefore to hope for the conversion of England. His idea of England's apostasy was mainly this: that the body of the people had been swindled out of their religion by the machinations of a few crafty, unprincipled statesmen, at the time of the Reformation. A system of misrepresentation and false colouring of Catholic doctrines and practices was invented and handed down from generation to generation, which impregnated the minds of children with the notion that Catholicity and absurdity were one and the same thing. From this point of view did he look at the millions who groped in the {388} darkness of error, blaspheming the doctrines of Jesus Christ, and imagining they were thereby doing Him a service. He took then the side of pity, which always inclines one to the lessening of faults. He lamented nothing more than the loss of faith in England, and he thought that a harsh, iron way of dealing with Englishmen would close their hearts against grace altogether. This led him to use the mildest terms he could find,--nay, the most respectful,--in speaking of Protestants. He would never call them "heretics," nor their ministers "parsons." "Separated from the Church," "Church of England people," "Dissenters," "Clergymen," were his usual terms, and he would often also speak of them as "our separated brethren."