(1) ... For many Years past, a most wicked Design and Contrivance has been formed and carried on, to subvert the ancient and established Government, and the good Laws of these Kingdoms; to extirpate the true Protestant Religion therein established, and to destroy its Professors; and, instead thereof, to introduce and settle Popery and arbitrary Power; in which unnatural and horrid Conspiracy, great Numbers of Persons, of different Degrees and Qualities, have concerned themselves, and acted; and many Protestants, pretending an uncommon Zeal for the Church of _England_, have join'd themselves with professed Papists, uniting their Endeavours to accomplish and execute the aforesaid and traitorous designs. (2) The Pretender return! What Flames will this kindle? What burning of Towns, and ransacking of Cities? What Plunder and Rapine? And what Blindness, Superstition; Ruin of all Religion, and utter Waste of Conscience, would be the Issue of his Success!... That this is not mere Declamation, and design'd for Amusement, a little Inspection into that _Mystery of Iniquity_, we call Popery, wou'd convince the Reader, even to Amazement: But these Papers must be confin'd to a narrower compass, and shall only fix upon one single Point of Popery, that of _Persecution and Cruelty_, so natural, and even essential to it: I shall make it appear that _Popery_ is a Religion _set on fire of Hell_, the true Molock and Tophet that devours and consumes all Protestants thro'out the Earth, that are not by interposing Providence rescu'd from its Jaws. THE SEPTENNIAL ACT (1716). +Source.+--Danby Pickering, _The Statutes at Large_, 1764. Vol. xiii., pp. 1713-1717. Cambridge.