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1581-2.] THE 'JESUIT INVASION. 115 could absolve them from their obligations of obedience. He overshot his mark. Denunciation could not alter fact, and religion was not permitted to consecrate re- bellion. The hostility of the English people, which was originally confined to the temporal pretensions of the Roman Bishop, became extended to his creed ; and if one result of the mission of the Jesuits was the form- ation of a dangerous conspiracy, another was the alien- ation and wafting over into Protestantism of many a knight and gentleman who had continued Catholic, till to be a Catholic was to cease to be an Englishman.
