me of their own folks! An
oath, then, is nothing with strict Roman Catholics, who believe their
Priests can absolve them from the obligations of any and all oaths. For
notwithstanding your denial of the fact, it is notoriously true, that
the members of the Catholic Church believe their Priesthood to exercise,
by Divine right, the power to fix and determine their eternal destiny.
Nay, every Roman Catholic in the known world is under the absolute
control of the Catholic Priesthood, by considerations not only of a
temporal, but an eternal weight. This is what gives their Priesthood
such power and influence in elections; an influence they are using in
every State, against the American party. And it is this faculty of
concentration, this political influence, this power of the Priesthood to
control the Catholic community, and cause a vast multitude of ignorant
foreigners to vote as a _unit_, and thus control the will of the
American people, that has engendered this opposition to the Catholic
Church. It is this aggressive policy and corrupting tendency of the
Romish Church; this organized and concentrated political power of a
distinct class of men; foreign by birth; inferior in intelligence and
virtue to the American people, and not their religion and form of
worship, objectionable as these are known to be, which have called forth
the opposition of the American party to the Catholic Church.

But, sir, you occupy several pages in copying and commenting upon the
several oaths administered to the members of the American party--oaths
which, as you tell us, are revolting in their character, and lead to the
indiscriminate proscription of all foreigners. I meet all your
conjectures and wild speculations in reference to these several oaths
and obligations, by saying, just here, that I have taken them all, and
that they express my sentiments and feelings to the very letter; and I
am willing, for the remainder of my days, to go before an acting Justice
of the Peace, for the county of Knox, and have all three of these oaths
administered every Monday morning, upon the "Holy Bible and Cross."

You have failed, in your zeal to advocate Romanism and oppose the
American party, to tell the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," whom
you address, that we resort to our oaths and obligations to combat
successfully the most powerful oath-bound organization the world ever
knew. The oath of every _Roman Catholic Bishop_ and _Archbishop_ binds
him