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236 our superiors at Forest Gate seceded or ‘apostatised.’ My colleagues deliberately told our parishioners that he had gone on the foreign missions; some of them even specifying, under pressure, the district he was seeking. I was myself kept under that impression for a week, so that I could be relied upon not to spoil the story. I believe that even the cardinal was ignorant of the event, for a year afterwards his brother and one of the canons made a suspicious effort to learn from me the fate of the friar in question, of which they were evidently ignorant.

Hence it is that the fiction of the preternatural integrity of the Catholic clergy is successfully maintained. How many seceders there are it is impossible to say, but they are certainly more numerous than is usually supposed. I am at present acquainted with a dozen, but they are widely separated and frequently unaware of each other’s existence, so that there may be a still greater number. Many of them are names which were once in honour in the Church of Rome, and are now equally and more widely honoured in Unitarian pulpits or in other spheres of life: many of them being men of recognised literary or scientific ability.