He stated that: ‘If the Crown in Parliament decreed to put Ulster into a United Ireland, we would be disloyal to her Majesty if we did not resist such a surrender to her enemies.’35 His anti-Catholicism was the purest and most virulent available: ‘Through Popery the Devil has shut up the way to our inheritance. Priestcraft, superstition and papalism with all their attendant voices of murder, theft, immorality, lust and incest blocked the way to the land of gospel liberty.’
