I often called on my friend Mr. Jasper. One morning he had just laid down his daily paper as I entered. “Did you see this?” he asked, “that the Pope and the Romish Church propose to dedicate England to the blessed Mother of God, and to St. Peter, to consecrate the whole country to the Holy Mother of God, and to the blessed Prince of the Apostles.” These are the exact words. Where does God come in? He, the Creator and Preserver of the universe, and, as we believe, of England, is left out, ignored altogether. How can one read such blasphemy as this without being shocked and angry? Such a proposal is not only an insult to all the Protestants and non-Christians of the British Empire, but is an outrageous imposition on the common sense of mankind! It is a sin against God. What must be the cheek and impudence of any men to dare propose such a thing as giving England over to the protection of a woman and a man who died nearly two thousand years ago, and taking it out of the hands of Almighty God? The world is shocked at the idolatry of the heathen, but what is there in their systems worse than this deifying a woman and a man, and placing them above God? It is awful, profane, wicked and insulting! “Most holy!” No stronger words could be used of God himself, and these applied to a woman! As if the eternal, infinite God without a beginning, should have a mother, and she a woman, an ordinary finite being! I had rather be a heathen, an infidel, or even an atheist, than to be guilty of such sacrilege and driveling nonsense.