A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.  People soon forget the meaning, but the impression and the passion remain.  The word Protestant is the charm that looks up in the dungeon of servitude three millions of your people.  It is not amiss to consider this spell of potency, this abracadabra, that is hung about the necks of the unhappy, not to heal, but to communicate disease.  We sometimes hear of a Protestant religion, frequently of a Protestant interest.  We hear of the latter the most frequently, because it has a positive meaning.  The other has none.  We hear of it the most frequently, because it has a word in the phrase which, well or ill understood, has animated to persecution and oppression at all times infinitely more than all the dogmas in dispute between religious factions.  These are, indeed, well formed to perplex and torment the intellect, but not half so well calculated to inflame the passions and animosities of men.

I do readily admit that a great deal of the wars, seditions, and troubles of the world did formerly turn upon the contention between interests that went by the names of Protestant and Catholic.  But I imagined that at this time no one was weak enough to believe, or impudent enough to pretend, that questions of Popish and Protestant opinions or interest are the things by which men are at present menaced with crusades by foreign invasion, or with seditions which shake the foundations of the state at home.  It is long since all this combination of things has vanished from the view of intelligent observers.  The existence of quite another system of opinions and interests is now plain to the grossest sense.  Are these the questions that raise a flame in the minds of men at this day?  If ever the Church and the Constitution of England should fall in these islands, (and they will fall together,) it is not Presbyterian discipline nor Popish hierarchy that will rise upon their ruins.  It will not be the Church of Rome nor the Church of Scotland, not the Church of Luther nor the Church of Calvin.  On the contrary, all these churches are menaced, and menaced alike.  It is the new fanatical religion, now in the heat of its first ferment, of the Rights of Man, which rejects all establishments, all discipline, all ecclesiastical, and in truth all civil order, which will triumph, and which will lay prostrate your Church, which will destroy your distinctions, and which will put all your properties to auction, and disperse you over the earth.  If the present establishment should fall, it is this religion which will triumph in Ireland and in England, as it has triumphed in France.  This religion, which laughs at creeds and dogmas and confessions of faith, may be fomented equally amongst all descriptions and all sects,—­amongst nominal Catholics, and amongst nominal Churchmen, and amongst those Dissenters who know little and care less about a presbytery, or any of its discipline, or any of its doctrine.  Against this new, this growing, this exterminatory system, all these churches have a common concern to defend themselves.  How the enthusiasts of this rising sect rejoice to see you of the old churches play their game, and stir and rake the cinders of animosities sunk in their ashes, in order to keep up the execution of their plan for your common ruin!