he 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