1830.] The Wellington and the Grey Administrations. 025 



Against this knowledge we nationally sinned, by giving to the 

 Roman Catholics the only thing that Popery ever asked, Power, and 

 by giving a national sanction to practices which we know to be ob- 

 noxious. The Papist worship of the dead, of the statue, of the wafer, 

 which we know to be idolatrous, or we know nothing of Christianity; is 

 now no longer a matter of toleration, but a matter of equal right with the 

 pure worship ; no longer conceded for the indulgence of conscience, but 

 conceded for the sake of a guilty policy, as it was demanded in the 

 spirit of a haughty and rebellious pride. 



We state, once for all, the ground of Protestant opposition to the 

 political claims of the Roman Catholic. The Protestant, taking the 

 Scriptures for his guide, sees that the Roman Catholic doctrines are 

 adverse to Scripture, and therefore dangerous and fatal to those who 

 believe them. He, therefore, feeling it to be a solemn duty to warn his 

 fellow men of errors which involve their eternal peace, feels himself 

 bound to refuse every means by which those errors can be propagated 

 and made a temptation to the weak. We all know that political power 

 can do much with a feeble conscience ; therefore it is the duty of the 

 Christian to refuse all that kind of power which can make men overlook 

 untruths in the glare of worldly honours, or make zeal in the propa- 

 gation of those untruths a passport to worldly distinction, or give their 

 professors an actual means of injuring the immediate quiet and gene- 

 ral frame of Protestantism. Now all those dangerous results must be 

 contemplated in making Roman Catholics an equal part of the Pro- 

 testant legislature. 



There is in the first instance, the semblance that the Protestant 

 does not consider the Popish doctrines so obnoxious as the Scriptures 

 declare them to be, when he intimately associates their avowed 

 champions with himself in the highest affairs of life, in the defence 

 of his liberties, and even in the care and support of his religion. In 

 the next, he adds to the allurements of a religion which eminently 

 appeals to the senses, the attractions of public influence, and even the 

 certainty of attaining that influence by exhibiting a more than common 

 zeal in the cause ; and lastly by making the Roman Catholic a party in 

 the legislature, he directly gives a power of impeding and injuring the 

 tranquillity of that Protestantism, against which Popery declares per- 

 petual war, which it pronounces to be a criminal revolt from its allegiance, 

 and which it with still more formidable vengeance declares, is to be 

 reclaimed by the fire and the sword. These are the acknowledged 

 doctrines of the Romish church. The heretic must be converted, or 

 must atone for his belief, at the stake. 



If the comparative weakness of the Papal throne, or the improved 

 moderation of Europe, prevent those frightful doctrines from having 

 their full execution ; the doctrines are still in existence. Their church 

 prides itself in their being unchanged. In this world of revolutions 

 the time may come, and come soon, when Popery shall be armed once 

 again with the means of inflicting general misery ; and what but the 

 most criminal neglect of common prudence, would depend for the 

 religious and civil liberties of ourselves or our children, upon things 

 so fluctuating as popular opinion, the supremacy of England, or the 

 tender mercies of Popery. And yet by placing the Roman Catholic in 

 the legislature, we have, as far as we could, given him this power. If 

 we are to be told that hitherto no harm has been done, and that only 



M.M. New Scries. VOL. X. No. 60. 4 K 



