Does any one who hears me approve this scheme of things, or think there is common justice, common sense, or common honesty in any part of it?  If any does, let him say it, and I am ready to discuss the point with temper and candor.  But instead of approving, I perceive a virtuous indignation beginning to rise in your minds on the mere cold stating of the statute.

But what will you feel, when you know from history how this statute passed, and what were the motives, and what the mode of making it?  A party in this nation, enemies to the system of the Revolution, were in opposition to the government of King William.  They knew that our glorious deliverer was an enemy to all persecution.  They knew that he came to free us from slavery and Popery, out of a country where a third of the people are contented Catholics under a Protestant government.  He came with a part of his army composed of those very Catholics, to overset the power of a Popish prince.  Such is the effect of a tolerating spirit; and so much is liberty served in every way, and by all persons, by a manly adherence to its own principles.  Whilst freedom is true to itself, everything becomes subject to it, and its very adversaries are an instrument in its hands.

The party I speak of (like some amongst us who would disparage the best friends of their country) resolved to make the king either violate his principles of toleration or incur the odium of protecting Papists.  They therefore brought in this bill, and made it purposely wicked and absurd that it might be rejected.  The then court party, discovering their game, turned the tables on them, and returned their bill to them stuffed with still greater absurdities, that its loss might lie upon its original authors.  They, finding their own ball thrown back to them, kicked it back again to their adversaries.  And thus this act, loaded with the double injustice of two parties, neither of whom intended to pass what they hoped the other would be persuaded to reject, went through the legislature, contrary to the real wish of all parts of it, and of all the parties that composed it.  In this manner these insolent and profligate factions, as if they were playing with balls and counters, made a sport of the fortunes and the liberties of their fellow-creatures.  Other acts of persecution have been acts of malice.  This was a subversion of justice from wantonness and petulance.  Look into the history of Bishop Burnet.  He is a witness without exception.

The effects of the act have been as mischievous as its origin was ludicrous and shameful.  From that time, every person of that communion, lay and ecclesiastic, has been obliged to fly from the face of day.  The clergy, concealed in garrets of private houses, or obliged to take a shelter (hardly safe to themselves, but infinitely dangerous to their country) under the privileges of foreign ministers, officiated as their servants and under their protection.  The whole