Page:History of england froude.djvu/220

 An inactive imagination may readily picture to itself the indignation likely to have been felt by a highminded people, when they were forced to submit their lives, their habits, their most intimate conversations and opinions, to a censorship conducted by clergy of such a character; when the offences of these clergy themselves were passed over with such indifferent carelessness. Men began to ask themselves who and what these persons were who retained the privileges of saints, and