Note 70 — INTRODUCTION.

While quite indisposed to attempt defending in the Puritans what is indefensible, I would add, they inherited many of their faults from the early Protestants. On the whole, I should say, the Puritans of the seventeenth century will bear favourable comparison with their fathers of the sixteenth, some of whose worst failings arose from the bad education received in the Church of Rome before they abjured her errors.