“Being informed, that there have sprung up, and still are springing up, daily in our realm, a great number of preachers, whose sole business is to stir up the people to rebellion, and to dissuade them from the practice of the _Roman_ catholic and apostolic religion; we do command that all preachers, who shall call assemblies, preach in them, or discharge any other function, be put to death; the punishment appointed by the declaration in _July 1686_, for the minister of the pretended reformed religion, which we would not, for the future, have any one esteem a mere threatening, which will not be put in execution. We do likewise forbid our subjects to receive the said ministers or preachers, to conceal, aid, or assist them, or have, directly or indirectly, any intercourse or correspondence with them. We farther enjoin all those, who shall know any of the said preachers, to inform against them to the officers of the respective places; the whole under pain, in case of trespass, of being condemned to the gallies for life, if men; and, if women, of being shorn, and shut up the remainder of their days in such places as our judges shall think expedient; and whether they be men or women, under pain of confiscation.”
After perusing this, read, read also, I beseech you, the shocking accounts of the horrid butcheries, and cruel murders committed on the bodies of many of our fellow-subjects in _America_, by the hands of _savage Indians_, instigated thereto by more than _savage popish priests_.¹ And if this be the beginning, what may we suppose the end will be, should a _French_ power, or popish Pretender, be permitted to subdue either us or them? Speak, _Smithfield_, speak, and by thy dumb, but very persuasive oratory, declare to all that pass by and over thee, how many _English_ protestant martyrs thou hast seen burnt to death in the reign of a cruel popish Queen, to whom the present Pretender to the _British_ throne at least claims a kind of a distant kindred? Speak _Ireland_, speak, and tell if thou canst, how many thousands, and tens of thousands of innocent unprovoking protestants were massacred in cold blood by the hands of cruel papists within thy borders, about a century ago? Nay, speak _Paris_, speak, (for though popish, on this occasion we will admit thy evidence) and say, how many thousands of protestants were once slaughtered, on purpose, as it were, to serve up as a bloody dessert, to grace the solemnity of a marriage-feast. But why go we back to such distant æras? Speak, _Languedoc_, speak, and tell if thou canst, how many protestant ministers have been lately executed; how many more of their hearers have been dragooned and sent to the gallies; and how many hundreds are now, in consequence of the above-mentioned edict, lying in prisons, and fast bound in misery and iron, for no other crime than that unpardonable one in the _Romish_ church, “hearing and preaching the pure gospel of the meek and lowly JESUS.”
¹ See a pamphlet, intitled, _A brief View of the Conduct of |Pensylvania|, for the Year 1755_.
And think you, my dear countrymen, that _Rome_, glutted as it were with protestant blood, will now rest satisfied, and say, “I have enough!” No, on the contrary, having, through the good hand of GOD upon us, been kept so long fasting, we may reasonably suppose, that the popish priests are only grown more voracious, and (like so many hungry and ravenous wolves pursuing the harmless and innocent flocks of sheep) will with double eagerness pursue after, seize upon, and devour their wished-for protestant prey; and, attended with their bloody red-coats, those gallic instruments of reformation, who know they must either fight or die, will necessarily breathe out nothing but threatening and slaughter, and carry along with them desolation and destruction in all its various shapes and tortures, go where they will.