What then can be thought of the first-rate reformers before alluded to,
who are going to emancipate every body without the least offence to any
body's superstition? It should be borne in memory that other people are
superstitious as well as the Irish, and that the churches of all
countries are as much parts of 'a wicked political system' as are the
churches of Ireland. The judges of our own country frequently remind us
that its laws have a religious sanction; nay they assure us Christianity
is part and parcel of those laws. Do we not know that orthodox
Christianity means Christianity as by law established? And can any one
fail to perceive that such a religion must needs be political? The
cunning few, who make a market of delusion, and esteem nothing apart
from their own aggrandisement, are quite aware that the civil and
criminal law of England is intimately associated with Christianity--they
publicly proclaim their separation impossible, except at the cost of
destruction to both. They are sagacious enough to perceive that a people
totally untrammelled by the fears, the prejudices, and the wickedness of
religion would never consent to remain in bondage.

Hence the pains taken by piety-mongers to perpetuate the dominion of
that ignorance which proverbially is 'the mother of devotion.' What care
they for universal emancipation? Free themselves, their grand object is
to rivet the chains of others. So that those they defraud of their hard
earned substance be kept down, they are not over scrupulous with respect
to means. Among the most potent of their helps in the 'good work' are
churches, various in name and character, but in principle the very same.
All are pronounced true by priests who profit by them, and false by
priests who do not. Every thing connected with them bears the mark of
despotism. Whether we look at churches foreign or domestic, Popish or
Protestant, that mark of the 'beast' appears in characters as legible
as, it is fabled, the hand writing on the wall did to a tyrant of old.