“I seed the priest riding past here two days since,” said the tavern man, “and his team half dead from driving.  There can be little doubt of Jac’s conversion to the Romish faith.  I asked that young lad Paul, who used to stop at Prying’s, and he said it was true.”

“’Tis really astonishing,” said Benjamin Lifford, the Quaker.  “I’d have let him die without a minister, if he did not content himself with the inflooence of the speerit.  These is how I would sarve thee, Jacob.”

“I consider Mr. Prying rather simple to allow such a man as the priest to come into his house at all,” said his honor Squire Wilson, the Universalist.

“Had it been my brother,” said old Elder Fussel, “I would pay no attention to the dying request of old uncle Jacob.  That would be the way to bring him to.”

“That would be cruel,” said High Sheriff Walter, “seeing that Jacob left him all his property, real and personal.  Besides, this is a free country, and I say a man ought to be allowed to embrace any religion he has a mind to.  That’s my creed, at all events.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Ebenezer White, the Methodist class leader, “pervided the creed he wanted to jine was the religion of the Bible; otherwise not.”

“Do not the Roman Catholics ground their doctrines on the Bible?” said the sheriff.  “That they do, and their Bible contains many books that yours does not contain.”

“Nonsense, sheriff!” said his enlightened honor.  “The Papists never read the Bible.  I have a boy, Thomas Noonan,—­you know him,—­and he neither will read it himself, nor listen to it read.  The priest won’t allow him.  No Catholic is allowed to have or read a Bible.”

“You state what is not true,” said a loud, emphatic voice from behind the stove.  It was the voice of Murty O’Dwyer.

“I guess, squire, you are in error there,” said the sheriff.  “My boy, you know, Patrick, a very strict Catholic, every month at confession with the priest, has a Bible with him in my house, which Bible the priest gave him.  I have read the book time and again.  Nay, I heard the priest preach out of our Bible last summer.”

“Is it not astonishing,” began Murty again, “that, though ye all differ in opinion, ye agree in hating and maligning the church of Christ?  Though ye can’t ‘join in love,’ ye know well how to ‘join in hate.’  Here are unbaptized Quakers, groaning Methodists, blaspheming Presbyterians, faithless Universalists and Unitarians, and humbug spiritual rappers; and yet ye not only coincide in hating the pope, but ye are all intolerant and cruel save this gentleman here,” said he, pointing to Mr. Walter.  “Now, will any body tell me whence is this hatred?” said the Irishman, pausing.  “Is it grounded on knowledge or well-formed opinion?  No; for ye are all grossly ignorant of the principles and facts of Catholicity, as ye have shown by your statements about the Bible.  In truth, it is impossible to evade the conclusion that ye hate the church for the same cause that the devil envied and hated our first parents; namely, because he saw them the heirs of that bliss which he and his rebellious crew had lost.”