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. The aspect of the CHURCH is scarcely less alarming. The “Oxford Tracts” are said to represent the sentiments of a considerable number of our devout clergy and laity. Of these very remarkable productions, enforcing the practices of a superstitious devotion, and denouncing, with a papistical jealousy of free enquiry, every manly exercise of the human mind, when religion is the subject of investigation, it is sufficient to say that they have been read with grief and astonishment by many of the most sound divines of the Anglican Church, and hailed by papists with a sneer of triumph. For the principles of the Protestant faith, they are by far “Too ceremonious and traditional.” And, if the spirit of servile superstition which some of these tracts breathe,—if the gloomy intolerance they sanction,—can be shown to harmonize with the doctrines and usages of our Church, _dissent_ needs no better vindication. Happily these noxious principles are the growth of another soil; but they who embrace them are not far from the worst dogmas of Popery. They are already in the vestibule—a few more steps will carry them to the altar of that desecrated temple. It has been suggested, and the suggestion is not at variance with Christian courtesy and candour, that these Tracts have originated in a Jesuitical conspiracy to pollute the stream of orthodox truth at the fountain head. Looking only at the _internal_ evidence, the suspicion is fully justified. At any rate, they prepare the way in a manner most satisfactory to the Papists, for a close alliance with the apostate church, whose spirit and whose errors they so nearly resemble. They are indefensible as the productions of Protestant divines.