and man? As if the council of Conftance meant to authorize me to buy my neighbour's goods, and after a folemn promise to pay him, ftill to keep his fubftance, and break my word. The church and ftate are two diftinct and independent powers, each in its peculiar line.-A man is to be tried by the church for erroneous doctrines: a temporal prince grants this man a fafe-conduct, to guard his perfon from any violence which may be offered him on his journey; and to procure him a fair and candid trial, on his appearance before his lawful judges. Has not this prince done all that is in his power to do? Doth his promife to fuch a man authorize him to interfere with a foreign and independent jurifdiction, or to ufurp the rights of another? the very words of the council, "Becaufe he "has done all that is in his power to do," prove that lawful promises are to be fulfilled?

Do not

Such jurifconfults, whether Catholics or Proteftants, fuch as Prenus, Speklam, and others, as I have accidentally read, concerning the nature of safe-conducts, lay down for a general rule, that they are never granted to fufpend the execution of the laws. Salvus conductus contra jus non datur. It were nugatory in the emperor Sigifmund, prefumptive heir to a kingdom, which Hufs's doctrine had

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changed into a theatre of inteftine wars, to grant a fafe-conduct, the meaning and fenfe whereof would be equivalent to the following país: "Although you have fet kingdoms in a "blaze, by ftriking at the vitals of temporal authority, and overthrown the established "religion of the land; yet go to Conftance "and come back, without appearing before

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your lawful judges, or retracting doctrines "which have caufed fuch difturbances in "church and ftate." Safe-conducts then are not granted to fcreen delinquents from punishment, when legally convicted; much less, to countenance disobedience to the laws, and diforder, by impunity.

The council was the most competent judge of Hufs's doctrine, in which he stedfaftly perfevered. Neither king nor emperor could deprive the bishops of privileges infeparably annexed to their characters, viz. fpiritual jurifdiction, and the right of judging doctrines. Hufs was degraded, and retrenched, according to the ufual formalities, from a communion from which he had separated himself before. This is all the bifhops could have done: this they acknowledge after the fentence of Hufs's degradation was pronounced. "This facred

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fynod of Conftance, confidering that the "church of Chrift has nothing further that it

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દર can do, decrees to leave John Hufs to the judgment of the ftate." His execution was in confequence of the imperial laws, enforced by the civil magiftrate, as the execution of heretics in England and other Protestant states, has been in confequence of the Imperial laws adopted by fuch powers. The Proteftant clergy, as well as the clergy of Conftance, decided upon points of doctrine, and went no farther.

Thus we fee, that this fuperannuated charge of violation of faith with heretics, resembles thofe nightly spectres which vanish upon a nearer approach. We find nothing in this council, relative to fuch a charge, but a difpute about a pass granted to a man who goes to take his trial before judges whofe jurifdiction could not be fuperfeded. Or if we intend to do juftice to men with the fame eagerness that we are difpofed to injure them, we must acknowledge that the fathers of that council condemned lies, frauds, perjury, and those horrors which Mr. Wefley would fain fix upon the Roman Catholics. The foundations then on which Mr. Wesley has erected his aërial fabric, being once fapped, the fuperftructure must fall of courfe; and his long train of falfe and unchriftian affertions are swept away as a Spider's web, before the wind of logi

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cal

cal rules. From abfurd premises follows an ab furd conclufion.

What greater abfurdity than Mr. Wesley's infifting upon a general council's disclaiming a doctrine it never taught. If Mr. Wesley be fo credulous as to believe that the pope has horns, must we convene a general council to declare that his forehead is fmooth? Is it not fufficient to difclaim the truth of the odious imputation, when the falfe creed is fixed on us? We are really of opinion, that whoever believes us capable of harbouring fuch fentiments, is capable of putting the horrid maxims in practice. He must have ftudied the human heart, not in the books of nature, but in Hobbes's Leviathan ; and fhould curfe his fate that Providence has been fo unkindly partial to him.

Rouffeau declares, that if he had been prefent at the refurrection of Lazarus, he would not have believed it. "The apparition," says he, "would have made a fool of me, by fright"ening me out of my fenfes, but it would C6 never have made a convert of me."

If a general council were held in order to difclaim the ridiculous and abominable creed imputed to Roman Catholics; the fceptic, who gives no credit to their doctors and universities,

to

to the oaths and declarations of millions, would give no credit to a convention of bifhops with the pope at their head.

Let the appeal be made, not to stubborn fceptics, but to those who listen to the voice of reason, and confult the heart. This interior monitor, when paffion and prejudice are hushed into filence, is feldom confulted in vain. Let us not travel to Catholic ftates where perjury is punished with death, and every argument tending to prove that the pope can abfolve fubjects from oaths, and grant a dispensation to commit all kinds of crimes, is confuted with a halter. Let us look nearer home, and compare what we see on one hand, with what is fupposed on the other.

We fee a million and half of Roman Catholics fmarting under the most oppreffive laws that the human heart could ever devife. When they were enacted, our ancestors had the lands of their fathers and the religion of their education. If perjury had been an article of their belief, they could have fecured their inheritance, by taking an oath of abjuration. If papal difpenfations were, in their opinion, lenitives to an ulcerated confcience, when, or where could they have been more seasonably applied, than at that time and place, where