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 William and Queen Mary:  an act coeval with the Revolution; and which ought, on the principles of the gentlemen who oppose the relief to the Catholics, to have been held sacred and unalterable.  Whether we agree with the present Protestant Dissenters in the points at the Revolution held essential and fundamental among Christians, or in any other fundamental, at present it is impossible for us to know:  because, at their own very earnest desire, we have repealed the Toleration Act of William and Mary, and discharged them from the signature required by that act; and because, for the far greater part, they publicly declare against all manner of confessions of faith, even the Consensus.