You have not stated the nature or the grounds of those scruples which prevent your immediate adhesion to our recently-formed association;—nor will I attempt to conjecture what they may be; especially since you avow your cordial approbation of every well-timed effort in defence of our Protestant faith and liberties against the malignant aggressions of Popery. I am not able to imagine any substantial objection on the part of a truly Protestant mind.
Believing, as I firmly do believe, that our National Church is founded on truth, and that the Protestant ascendancy involves the temporal and spiritual welfare of the people of these realms,—believing also that the agents and emissaries of Popery have, for a series of years, been actively employed in embroiling the affairs of this kingdom, with an ultimate view to the restoration of the popish priesthood, together with their dark superstitions and inhuman despotism,—believing that new and unwonted energies must be called into action, in defence of our national religion, or that, by secret undermining and open assault, “our holy and beautiful house where our fathers worshipped” will soon be levelled with the dust, “and all our pleasant things laid waste,”—I hail the formation of the Protestant Association as a propitious event, and deliberately, from the religious conviction that I am in the path of duty, enrol my name as a member.
In stating thus freely my own forcible impressions, I disclaim any intention of impugning the motives of those who are not, equally with myself, convinced of the expediency or utility of this association. Whatever may be the ground of your hesitation, I have entire confidence in the purity and integrity of your principles.
Nevertheless, allow me to say, with deference, that your indecision, in this case, does not for a moment cause me to waver in my own convictions, since I cannot but suspect that your doubts originate in an imperfect conception of the perils to which our religion and our country are exposed. Were these dangers of less appalling magnitude, I also should have strong scruples against this or any similar association. They are justifiable on no other ground than that of absolute necessity. They bring with them many incidental evils.—They lead into collision adverse parties, and produce impassioned controversies; they create evils which no man can be right in abetting, even indirectly, but with a view to ward off others which are more injurious to the public welfare. Besides which, no man of feeling would rashly hazard the obloquy which will be cast upon him by his opponents in this age of low-minded invective and scurrilous defamation. Nor is it a small evil to lose the favourable regards of upright and conscientious persons who take an opposite view of the exigencies and the duties of the times. For myself, I have no sickly ambition for this species of martyrdom. I sacrifice with painful reluctance the esteem of the wise and the good, from whom it is my misfortune, at any time, to be separated by conflicting opinions and irreconcileable interests. But there are occasions which call for higher duties than those of conciliation or friendship,—when private affections must be merged in a holy patriotism, and when the strength of our principles must be proved, not by the extinction of our finer sensibilities,—God forbid!—but by their yielding, with whatever bitterness of grief, to a commanding sense of Duty. I am strongly impressed with the conviction, that such an occasion presents itself in “this day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy.”
Far from having my own apprehensions allayed by the numbers of those who are insensible to the pressure of great and imminent danger, my fears are awakened by nothing so much as by that very consideration; by no other fact am I so deeply convinced of the extreme necessity of supporting the Protestant Association, as one means, among others, of diffusing information, and thus arousing in our countrymen a spirit of determined resistance to Popery, corresponding with the power and the artifice of that unrelenting adversary.
The policy of the Papists has ever been, to the last degree, subtle, profound, and unscrupulous,—varying with the changeful phases of society, and adapting itself with fiend-like sagacity to the peculiar character of individuals and of nations. But never did that policy show itself more triumphantly than in the late rapid march of Popery towards a paramount dominion in this kingdom; and in the skill, the cunning, the profound strategy by which it has covered its progress, lulling into false security the people of this betrayed and devoted country.
I lay comparatively little stress on the number of converts openly professing themselves to be proselytes to Popery: the report may be exaggerated or it may not. I am not startled, as some are, by the increase of popish chapels, monasteries, and colleges. I fear nothing from the open teachers of popish doctrine, nor would I enter into a fiddle faddle controversy with a Jesuitical priesthood, who are not bound by the laws of honourable warfare, and who, when defeated in argument, always take refuge in their insolent assumption of infallibility. The naked dogmas of Popery carry with them their own refutation. They originated in the dark ages of barbarian ignorance and public confusion, when the Roman empire had been swept by the northern hordes, and savage warfare left no leisure, no disposition, to cultivate those departments of knowledge which expand and invigorate the human mind. Popery can never make converts in an enlightened nation like England, but from among the most feeble in intellect or sordid in character, the uninstructed vulgar, nervous women, or intellectual profligates. True, she has advocates both subtle and learned; but they are men who were cradled in her errors, and whose early discipline and youthful associations—designed for the suppression of the manly mind—have combined, with the interested motives of after-life, to fix them in her faith. I give no credit to the more notorious of popish agitators for sincerity in their religious attachment to the cause they serve. Popery is their stepping-stone to distinction and power. They laugh in their sleeve at that lucrative fable while they derive power, as political incendiaries, from the distresses and superstitions of an abject people.
But while naked Popery is simply despicable for its absurdities or detestable for its intolerance, I fear every thing from the unwearied and versatile genius of Romish policy, which, without having proselyted to the popish faith Protestant England, has contrived, by a series of manœuvres, so to dislocate the frame of British society, that instead of combining to crush, as they might easily do, the common foe, Protestant is arrayed against Protestant, while the only party really to be dreaded by all, is looked upon without suspicion and without fear. If the present course of events is suffered to proceed,—while one class of Protestants is tamely looking on, and another section is actively and zealously employed in seconding the designs of the papacy,—I see no impossibility that is to prevent the entire power of the State from falling, at no distant period, into the hands of the popish faction. And what use they will make of that power is not a matter of difficult conjecture. History is not “an old almanack,” unless to fools and desperadoes; and history denounces papal intolerance in characters of horror and of blood.
Allow me to repeat it,—for this is the very gist of the argument,—from naked and avowed Popery little was to be feared; but from Popery carrying on its wily projects through the means of Protestant agency, or, under Protestant colours, conducting a piratical warfare, every thing is to be dreaded. And this is exactly the way in which we are now assailed.
If you look to the State, you behold the ministers of a Protestant Queen, who are sworn to uphold the Protestant religion, bound hand and foot by popish demagogues and traitorous agitators, and impotent to carry any great measure against the assent of their masters, who can on any day effect their dismissal from office. Their policy is entirely popish. The Privy Council is thrown open to popish intrigue; the army is largely recruited from the popish peasantry of Ireland; popish bishops are appointed and salaried by government in the colonies; the popish faction holds the balance of parties in the Commons house of Parliament.