nd
professors of it as such.]

[Footnote 2: Besides the above instances of that unholy, tyrannical, and
church-robbing policy, which has been exercised by the supreme civil
powers in these nations with reference to religion and the worship of
God, all of which existed when the presbytery first published their
testimony, there has, of late, a very singular instance of the same kind
occurred, in the course of administration, which the presbytery cannot
forbear to take notice of, but must embrace the present opportunity to
declare their sense of, and testify against; and especially, as it is
one that carries a more striking evidence than any of the former, of our
public national infidelity and licentiousness, and of our being
judicially infatuated in our national counsels, and given up of heaven
to proceed from evil to worse, in the course of apostasy from the cause
and principles of the reformation. We particularly mean the instance of
a late bill or act, which has been agreed upon by both houses of
parliament, and which also, June, 1774, was sanctioned with the royal
assent, entitled "An act for making more effectual provision for the
government of the province of Quebec in North America." By which act,
not only is French despotism, or arbitrary power, settled as the form of
civil government, but, which is still worse, Popery, the _Religion of
Antichrist_, with all its idolatries and blasphemies, has such security
and establishment granted it, as to be taken immediately under the legal
protection of the supreme civil authority of these nations in that vast
and extensive region of _Canada_, lately added to the British dominions
in North America--a province so large and fertile, that it is said to be
capable of containing, if fully peopled, not less than thirty millions
of souls. This infamous and injurious bill, before it passed into a law,
was publicly reprobated and declaimed against by sundry members of both
houses. It has been petitioned and remonstrated against by the most
respectable civil body corporated in Britain, or its dominions, the city
of London; by all the provinces of North America south of Quebec; and
even by the inhabitants of the city of Quebec itself. It has been, in
the most public manner, in open parliament, declared to be "a most
cruel, oppressive, and odious measure--a child of inordinate power," &c.
All which are sufficient indications how scandalous, offensive, and
obnoxious this act was. There w