Popery

The enmity between the Irish cavaliers and the Irish roundheads was almost forgotten in the fiercer enmity which raged between the English and the Celtic races.

The interval between the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian seemed to vanish, when compared with the interval which separated both from the Papist.

During the late civil troubles the greater part of the Irish soil had been transferred from the vanquished nation to the victors.

To the favor of the crown, few either of the old or the new occupants had any pretensions.

The King, thus deserted by his ally and by his Chancellor, yielded, cancelled the declaration, and solemnly promised that it should never be drawn into precedent.

even this concession was insufficient the commons not content with having forced their sovereign to annul the indulgence next extorted his unwilling assent to a celebrated law which continued in force down to the reign of george the fourth This law, known as the Test Act, provided that all persons holding any office, civil or military, should take the oath of supremacy, should subscribe a declaration against transubstantiation, and should publicly receive the sacrament according to the rights of the Church of England.

The preamble expressed hostility only to the Papists.

but the enacting clauses were scarcely more unfavorable to the papists than to the rigid puritans the puritans however terrified at the evident leaning of the court towards popery and encouraged by some churchmen to hope that as soon as the roman catholics should have been effectually disarmed relief would be extended to protestant nonconformists made little opposition nor could the king who was in extreme want of money venture to withhold his sanction the act was passed and the duke of york was consequently under the necessity of resigning the great place of lord high admiral Hitherto the Commons had not declared against the Dutch war, but when the King had, in return for money cautiously doled out, relinquished his whole plan of domestic policy, they fell impetuously on his foreign policy.

If the religion of any church become therefore true and saving because the head of that sect, the prelates and priests and those of that tribe do all of them with all their might extol and praise it, What religion can ever be accounted erroneous, false, and destructive? I am doubtful concerning the doctrine of the Socinians.

I am suspicious of the way of worship practiced by the Papists or Lutherans.

Will it be ever a jot safer for me to join either unto the one or the other of those churches, upon the magistrate's command, because he commands nothing in religion but by the authority and counsel? of the doctors of that church? But, to speak the truth, we must acknowledge that the church, if a convention of clergymen making canons must be called by that name, is for the most part more apt to be influenced by the court than the court by the church.

How the church was, under the vicissitude of Orthodox and Aryan emperors, is very well known.

Thus, Turks and Christians are of different religions, because these take the Holy Scriptures to be the rule of their religion, and those the Alcoran.

And for the same reason, There may be different religions also, even amongst Christians.

The Papists and Lutherans, though both of them profess faith in Christ and are therefore called Christians, yet are not both of the same religion, because these acknowledge nothing but the Holy Scriptures to be the rule and foundation of their religion.

Those take in also traditions and the decrees of popes, and of these together make the rule of their religion.

And it's all along the lines of, you know, let's stop being horrible to each other.

Why are we calling each other heretic and Anabaptist and Papist and Pharisee? You know, all these names that come from the devil.

He comes up with this phrase that, you know, some of us are too stuck in our old mumpsimus And others are too forward in their new sumptuous.

So these are sort of jokey names for old fashioned Catholics and new thinking evangelicals.

And James's Parliament contained a most unusual proportion of new members, who had brought from their country seats to Westminster no political knowledge and many violent prejudices.

These gentlemen hated the Papists, but hated the Whigs not less intensely, and regarded the King with superstitious veneration.

To form an opposition out of such materials was a feat which required the most skillful and delicate management.

Some men of great weight, however, undertook the work and performed it with success.

The acquittal of Delamere marks the close of another.

The crimes which had disgraced the stormy tribuneship of Shaftesbury had been fearfully expiated.

The blood of innocent Papists had been avenged more than tenfold by the blood of zealous Protestants.

Another great reaction had commenced.

If I should renounce these, I would be the only man on earth to damn the truth confessed by friends and foes alike.

The next class of my works on earth to damn the truth confessed by desolate the Christian world by the evil lives and teachings of the Papists.

Should I recant at this point, I would open the door to more tyranny and impiety, and it would be all the worse than it should appear that I had done so at the insistence of the Holy Roman Empire." The third class attacks on private individuals.

I confessed I should have been more caustic with my profession, but I am being judged not of my life, but for the teachings of Christ, and I cannot renounce these works either without increasing tyranny and impiety and ungodliness.