re it ought to operate, as a bar to any proceedings of the crown
and Parliament in favor of those against whom it may be supposed that
the king has engaged to support the Protestant Church of England in the
two kingdoms in which it is established by law. First, the king swears
he will maintain to the utmost of his power "the laws of God." I suppose
it means the natural moral laws.--Secondly, he swears to maintain "the
true profession of the Gospel." By which I suppose is understood
_affirmatively_ the Christian religion.--Thirdly, that he will maintain
"the Protestant reformed religion." This leaves me no power of
supposition or conjecture; for that Protestant reformed religion is
defined and described by the subsequent words, "established by law"; and
in this instance, to define it beyond all possibility of doubt, he
swears to maintain the "bishops and clergy, and the churches committed
to their charge," in their rights present and future.

The oath as effectually prevents the king from doing anything to the
prejudice of the Church, in favor of sectaries, Jews, Mahometans, or
plain avowed infidels, as if he should do the same thing in favor of the
Catholics. You will see that it is the same Protestant Church, so
described, that the king is to maintain and communicate with, according
to the Act of Settlement of the 12th and 13th of William the Third. The
act of the 5th of Anne, made in prospect of the Union, is entitled, "An
act for securing the Church of England as by law established." It meant
to guard the Church implicitly against any other mode of Protestant
religion which might creep in by means of the Union. It proves beyond
all doubt, that the legislature did not mean to guard the Church on one
part only, and to leave it defenceless and exposed upon every other.
This church, in that act, is declared to be "fundamental and essential"
forever, in the Constitution of the United Kingdom, so far as England is
concerned; and I suppose, as the law stands, even since the
independence, it is so in Ireland.

All this shows that the religion which the king is bound to maintain has
a positive part in it, as well as a negative,--and that the positive
part of it (in which we are in perfect agreement with the Catholics and
with the Church of Scotland) is infinitely the most valuable and
essential. Such an agreement we had with Protestant Dissenters in
England, of those descriptions who came under the Toleration Act of King
Wil