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Peter Plymley's Letters, and selected essays by Sydney Smith
page 7 of 166 (04%)
infantry in Ireland! . . . They interpret the Epistle to Timothy in
a different manner from what we do! . . . They eat a bit of wafer
every Sunday, which they call their God!" . . . I wish to my soul
they would eat you, and such reasoners as you are. What! when Turk,
Jew, Heretic, Infidel, Catholic, Protestant, are all combined
against this country; when men of every religious persuasion, and no
religious persuasion; when the population of half the globe is up in
arms against us; are we to stand examining our generals and armies
as a bishop examines a candidate for holy orders; and to suffer no
one to bleed for England who does not agree with you about the
second of Timothy? You talk about the Catholics! If you and your
brotherhood have been able to persuade the country into a
continuation of this grossest of all absurdities, you have ten times
the power which the Catholic clergy ever had in their best days.
Louis XIV., when he revoked the Edict of Nantes, never thought of
preventing the Protestants from fighting his battles; and gained
accordingly some of his most splendid victories by the talents of
his Protestant generals. No power in Europe, but yourselves, has
ever thought for these hundred years past, of asking whether a
bayonet is Catholic, or Presbyterian or Lutheran; but whether it is
sharp and well-tempered. A bigot delights in public ridicule; for
he begins to think he is a martyr. I can promise you the full
enjoyment of this pleasure, from one extremity of Europe to the
other.

I am as disgusted with the nonsense of the Roman Catholic religion
as you can be: and no man who talks such nonsense shall ever tithe
the product of the earth, nor meddle with the ecclesiastical
establishment in any shape; but what have I to do with the
speculative nonsense of his theology, when the object is to elect
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