Protest of the Commons against the Indulgence.
We your Majesty's most loyal and faithful subjects, the Commons assembled in Parliament do, in the first place, as in all duty bound, return your Majesty our most humble and hearty thanks for the many gracious promises and assurances which Your Majesty hath several times, during this present Parliament, given to us, that Your Majesty would secure and maintain unto us the true Reformed Protestant Religion, our Liberties, and Properties: Which most gracious assurances Your Majesty hath, out of your great Goodness, been pleased to renew unto us more particularly at the opening of this present session of Parliament.
And further we crave leave humbly to represent: That we have, with all duty and expedition, taken into our consideration several parts of your Your Majesty's last speech to us, and withal the Declaration therein mentioned, for Indulgence to Dissenters, dated the Fifteenth of March last, and we find ourselves bound in duty to inform Your Majesty that penal statutes in matters ecclesiastical cannot be suspended but by Act of Parliament.
We therefore, the ... House of Commons do most humbly beseech your Majesty that the said laws may have their free course until it shall be otherwise provided for by Act of Parliament.