That there is an answer to this I
am very willing to believe, but I cannot at present find out what it
is; and this attack upon the Revenues and Members of Canterbury is not
obedience to an Act of Parliament, but the very Act of Parliament,
which takes away, is recommended, drawn up, and signed by the person
who has sworn he will never take away; and this little apparent
inconsistency is not confined to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but is
shared equally by all the Bishop-Commissioners, who have all (unless I
am grievously mistaken) taken similar oaths for the preservation of
their respective Chapters. It would be more easy to see our way out of
this little embarrassment, if some of the embarrassed had not
unfortunately, in the parliamentary debates on the Catholic Question,
laid the greatest stress upon the King's oath, applauded the sanctity
of the monarch to the skies, rejected all comments, called for the
oath in its plain meaning, and attributed the safety of the English
Church to the solemn vow made by the King at the altar to the
Archbishops of Canterbury and York.
* * * * *
"Nothing can be more ill-natured among politicians, than to look back
into Hansard's Debates, to see what has been said by particular men
upon particular occasions, and to contrast such speeches with present
opinions--and therefore I forbear to introduce some inviting passages
upon taking oaths in their plain and obvious sense, both in debates on
the Catholic Question and upon that fatal and Mezentian oath which
binds the Irish to the English Church.
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