fun fhine on the good and bad.' The light of the fun, the brilliancy of the stars, the sweetnefs of the fruit, the balfamic effluvia of flowers, are dispensed with a liberal hand to the Heathen and Idolater. Muft you deprive your neighbours of gifts common to all Adam's children, because they stick to a religion which all your forefathers profeffed, and which, if wrong, can hurt no man but themselves?

In vain do you attempt to impofe upon the public, with extracts of fpurious canons, obfolete decrees, patches of councils, and legends of maffacres, in order to fix a creed on us. The world knows that Roman Catholics fway the fceptre of authority in kingdoms and republics. The very nature, then of civil fociety is a manifeft contradiction to the creed you impute to us: for, if we are no more than machines veering at the breath of popes and priests, whom neither confcience, religion, the facred ties of an oath, nor the fear of God's judgment, can reftrain, patentees of guilt, and fure of impunity, we could not form a fociety for the space of one year for, in such a society, the notions of vice and virtue would be confounded; the blackest crimes and the pureft virtue reduced to the fame level; the difcipline of morals deftroyed; the harmony of the body politic diffolved; the brother armed against the brother;

and.

and if, by a kind of miracle, in fuch a curfed number of men, a fecond Abel could be found, the earth would foon groan with the cries of his blood. If divines have attempted to demonftrate the existence of God from the nature of civil fociety, the very nature of civil fociety demonftrates the falsehood of the creed with which you compliment us. And, if the gloomy plan of fuch a horrid republic pleases your imaginations, go and lay the foundations of it, in fome diftant part of the earth. Be yourselves its members and governors; for no Chriftian could live there.

When the delicate pencils of the Gibbons, Reynalds, and Marmontels, will paint the political scenery of the eighteenth century,-when on the extensive canvas, they will represent the gloom of long-reigning prejudice scattering, as the clouds of night, at the approach of the rifing fun, when they will paint the poniard, drenched in human blood, fnatched from the hand of ftern PERSECUTION,-the French praying in concert with the Americans,-the Armenians invited into Ruffia,-the order of Military Merit established in favour of Proteftants, in the palace of a Catholic king,-Ireland rifing from the fea, covered with her Fabii and Scipios, pointing their fpears to distant shores, and holding forth the olive and sheaf of corn to their neighbours of all denominations,when

they will contrast the present to former times, -shew the happy result of a change of system, and prove that the world is refined,—You, painted in as frightful attitudes as the group of figures in Raphael's Judgment, with ftern fanaticism in your countenances, a bible in one hand and a fagot in the other,-you, I fay, will be an exception to the general rule the world will read with furprise, that, in feventeen hundred and eighty, there have been fanatics in England and Scotland, that gave birth to for many illuftrious writers. Your transactions shall be recorded in the appendix to the hiftory of Jack Straw and Wat Tiler; and your chaplains and apologists shall be ranked with James Nailer and Hugh Peters.

And thus, Gentlemen, I finish my Apostrophe.

SHOULD Mr. Wefley, or any of his affociators, think it worth their while to make any remarks on these letters, they cannot justly expect a rejoinder. They have started forth the unprovoked aggreffors; and, not fatisfied with attempting to deprive the Roman Catholics of their rights as fubjects, they have flandered and afpersed their characters. I am no stranger to the ground on which they will attack me either the rufty weapons of old councils, or a catalogue

talogue of old maffacres, will be drawn out of their mouldering arsenals: arms as ill fuited to the eighteenth century, as Saul's helmet was to David's head. I will be attacked with the council of Lateran, the wars of the Albigenfes, the maffacre of St. Bartholomew, &c. I am a Chriftian, and deny the tranfmigration of fouls. I am nowife concerned in paft tranfactions; or if my religion be charged with them, I have in my hands the cruel arms of retaliation:

I shall divide the charge into two branches, -barbarous actions, and barbarous doctrine. If Mr. Wesley reckons all thofe who are not, or have not been, in communion with the fee of Rome, in the number of heretics, and himself amongst them, as doubtless he does, I fhall then lay at his door, all the abominable and feditious doctrines taught by those whom he ftyles heretics, from the time of Simon the Magician, down to our days,-the impurities of the Gnoftics; the enchantments of the Ophites; the perjury and frauds of the Prifcillianifts; the errors of the Albigenfes, and millions befides. If, from these diftant times, I make a transition to a nearer æra, I fhall prove to him, from the works, not only of infignificant writers of the reformed religion, but of the very founders of the reformation, who affumed as much power over their followers, as the pope affumes over

the

the Catholics, that they taught doctrines cruel, immoral, and feditious; and that the most horrid barbarities were committed in confequence of those doctrines. Calvin not only commits heretics to the flames, but moreover writes a book in juftification of his proceedings; and in his commentaries on the fcriptures, he teaches, that "Ufury * is lawful." Luther, Malancton, and Bucer, have authorized polygamy, and permitted a prince to marry a fecond wife during the life of the firft. The decrees of the fynod of Dort, caufed great perfecutions in Holland. Knox and his followers propagated the gospel with fire and fword. I have already mentioned the doctrine of John Hufs, and his mafter Wickliff, fo inimical to fovereigns.

If I take a review of the greateft champions who, within these four hundred years, have undertaken the Herculean task of overthrowing the kingdom of Antichrift, I fee them all claiming a miffion from Heaven, as well as Mr.

In the news-paper this word is made venery, by an error of the Prefs, which Mr. O'Leary alludes to, at the conclufion; and for which, and fome other errors of smaller note, the printer made the following apology:

"The printer affures Mr. O'Leary, that the errors of the prefs, which he complains of, were not occafioned by any defign or wilful neglect, but by the latenefs of the "night, and the hurry unavoidably attendant on news-paper publications."

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Wesley,