any franchise whatsoever, I cannot think
that the king would be perjured, if he gave his assent to any regulation
which Parliament might think fit to make with regard to that affair. The
king is bound by law, as clearly specified in several acts of
Parliament, to be in communion with the Church of England. It is a part
of the tenure by which he holds his crown; and though no provision was
made till the Revolution, which could be called positive and valid in
law, to ascertain this great principle, I have always considered it as
in fact fundamental, that the king of England should be of the Christian
religion, according to the national legal church for the time being. I
conceive it was so before the Reformation. Since the Reformation it
became doubly necessary; because the king is the head of that church, in
some sort an ecclesiastical person,--and it would be incongruous and
absurd to have the head of the Church of one faith, and the members of
another. The king may _inherit_ the crown as a _Protestant_; but he
cannot _hold it_, according to law, without being a Protestant _of the
Church of England_.

Before we take it for granted that the king is bound by his coronation
oath not to admit any of his Catholic subjects to the rights and
liberties which ought to belong to them as Englishmen, (not as
religionists,) or to settle the conditions or proportions of such
admission by an act of Parliament, I wish you to place before your eyes
that oath itself, as it is settled in the act of William and Mary.

"Will you to the utmost of your power maintain
1 2 3
the laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel,
4
and the Protestant Reformed Religion _established by_
5
_law_? And will you preserve unto the _bishops_ and clergy of this
realm, and to the churches committed to _their_ charge, all such rights
and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them, or any of
them?--All this I promise to do."

Here are the coronation engagements of the king. In them I do not find
one word to preclude his Majesty from consenting to any arrangement
which Parliament may make with regard to the civil privileges of any
part of his subjects.

It may not be amiss, on account of the light which it will throw on this
discussion, to look a little more narrowly into the matter of that
oath,--in order to discover how far it has hitherto operated, or how far
in futu