General Thorntonrose, pursuant to notice, to move for leave to bring in a bill to repeal such parts of the acts of the 25th and 30th of Charles the 2d, as require declarations, in certain cases, to be made against the belief of transubstantiation, and asserting the worship of the church of Rome to be idolatrous. The acts in question had been made at the end of the reign of Charles 2d, when the duke of York, the next heir to the crown, was a declared papist, and when the country was agitated by rumours of popish plots. Bishop Burnet, in the History of his own Times, stated, that while examinations were going on, and preparation was making for the trial of the prisoners, a bill was brought 1158 into the House of Commons, requiring all members of either House, and all such as might come into the king's court, or presence, to take a test against popery, in which not only transubstantiation was renounced, but the worship of the Virgin Mary and the Saints, as it was practised in the church of Rome, was declared to be idolatrous. This passed in the House of Commons without any difficulty. But in the House of Lords, Gunning, bishop of Ely, maintained that the church of Rome was not idolatrous. The lords did not much mind Gunning's arguments, but assed the bill. And though Gunning ad said that he could not take that test with a good conscience, yet as soon as the bill was passed, he took it in the crowd with the rest. The general said, his motion was not to interfere with the oaths of allegiance, supremacy, and abjuration, which would remain in force, and which he thought would be a sufficient security to the Protestant interest. The present seemed to him to be a proper time for the repeal of those laws, as there no longer existed any political necessity for them— He thought it was hard on Protestants, to make them declare the worship of the church of Rome to be idolatrous, as most of those who were so called upon, he conceived, did not know enough of the subject to be satisfied of the truth of the declaration, and some might know it to be an unfounded calumny. It was for another reason a proper time, as there was at present no clamour amongst the Catholics, which had formerly been thought a sufficient reason for not granting any thing to them.
Lord Castlereaghwas not disposed to provoke any discussion then upon the subject, He thought it would be more expedient to postpone the consideration of the measure to another session, and should therefore move the previous question; which was carried.