Our Churches and Chapels: Their Parsons, Priests, & Congregations: Being a Critical and Historical Account of Every Place of Worship in PrestonAtticus
History
Our Churches and Chapels: Their Parsons, Priests, & Congregations: Being a Critical and Historical Account of Every Place of Worship in Preston
Atticus
Preston (Lancashire, England) -- Church history
Parr has been at our Parish Church nine and twenty years, and
although we don't subscribe to his ecclesiastical creed, we believe
he has done good in his time. He is largely respected; he would have
been more respected if he had been less exacting towards Dissenters,
and less violent in his hatred of Catholics. Neither his Church-rate
nor Easter Due escapade improved his position; and some of his
fierce anti-Popery denunciations did not increase his circle of
friends. But these things have gone by, and let them be forgotten.
In private life Canon Parr is essentially social: he can tell a
good tale, is full of humour; he knows a few things as well as the
rest of men, and is charitably disposed--indeed he is too
sympathetic and this causes hint to be pestered with rubbishy tales
from all sorts of individuals, and sometimes to act upon them as if
they were true. As a Protestant vicar--and, remembering that no
angels have yet been born in this country, that everybody is
somewhat imperfect, and that folk will differ--we look upon Canon
Parr as above the average. He has said extravagant and unreasonable
things in his time; but he has rare properties, qualities of sense
and erudition, which are strangers to many pretentious men in his
line of business; and, on the whole, he may be legitimately set
down, in the language of the "gods," as "O.K."
No. II.
ST. WILFRID'S CATHOLIC CHURCH.
It was at one time of the day a rather dangerous sort of thing for a
man, or a woman, or a medium-sized infant, living in this highly-
favoured land of ours, to show any special liking for Roman
Catholicism. But the days of religious bruising have perished; and
Catholics are now, in the main, considered to be human as well as
other people, and to have a right to live, and put their Sunday
clothes on, and go to their own places of worship like the rest of
mortals. No doubt there are a few distempered adherents of the
"immortal William" school who would like to see Catholics driven
into a corner, banished, or squeezed into nothing; probably there
are some of the highly sublimated "no surrender" gentlemen who would
be considerably pleased if they could galvanise the old penal code
and put a barrel able to play the air of "Boyne Water" into every
street organ; but the great mass of men have learned to be tolerant,
and have come to the conclusion that Catholics, civilly and
religiously, are entitled to all the liberty which a free and
enlightened constitution can confer--to all the privileges which
fair-play and even-handed justice call give; and if these are not
fully granted now, the day is coming when they will be possessed.
Lancashire seems to be the great centre of Catholicism in England,
and Preston appears to be its centre in Lancashire. This benign town
of Preston, with its fervent galaxy of lecturing curates, and its
noble army of high falutin' incumbents, is the very fulcrum and
lever of northern Romanism. If Catholics are wrong and on the way to
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