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ford the leaft occafion for cavil, will be eternally held forth, whilft the decrees of the fame council, liable to no misconstruction, where fraud and perjury, even for the fake of religion, are condemned, will be overlooked. Bellarmin, Becanus, and thofe other Knoxes and Buchanans of the Catholic religion, whofe works are burned by the hands of the executioner in Catholic countries, are dragged from their shelves, whilft the decifions of the most learned univerfities in the world, that condemned the falfe doctrine of thofe incendiaries, are buried in filence. The bee pitches on flowers but the beetle falls upon nuisances.

They will be eternally teafing their hearers and readers with the word beretic, without explaining its sense or acceptation. They will erect it as a kind of ftandard to which all the fanatics of the world will flock to fight the battles of the Lord against Antichrift and in this confederate army, they will confound the archbishop of Cafhel, who fills his fee after a long fucceffion of Proteftant bifhops, with John. Hufs, who ftarts up on à fudden, flying in the faces of kings and bishops. They will confound the bishop of Cork, with Theodorus Sartor, ftretching himself naked before a number of prophets and propheteffes, who burn their clothes, and run naked through the streets of Amfterdam, denouncing their woes, and foreB telling

telling the destruction of Antichrist. They will put the archbishop of Canterbury on a level with the Patarini, who exclaimed against Popery, and held that no fin could be committed with the lower parts of the body.

In fine, all those monsters that started up from time to time, and whom our magiftrates would doom to the rope or fagot, are made good Proteftants, because they exclaimed against Popery: an enumeration of their fufferings from Papifts, is enlarged upon; and the Proteftant bishop, or the Proteftant king has no mercy to expect from Papists: for sure they are held in the fame light, by them, with James Nailer, who, after fighting against Papists and Malignants, in Cromwell's army, turned prophet, and rode into Bristol, mounted on an ass, on a Palm Sunday, attended with numbers of women, spreading their aprons before him, and making the air re-echo to loud hofannahs:

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Holy, holy, holy; hofanriah to James Nailer: "bleffed is James Nailer, who comes in the "name of the Lord!"* Those gentlemen never mention heretics excommunicated by Protestant churches, and put to death by Protestant magiftrates. They never mention the description given of heretics by Proteftant writers; by Godolphin, the Proteftant canonist, and fir Ed

* Swell's life of James Nailer.

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ward Coke, the Proteftant lawyer, who both

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call herefy, lepram animæ "-the leprofy of the foul. No. Herefy is the Papift's favourite theme. No Proteftant ever made any commentaries on it.

The fame uncandid fallacy that lurks under the word heretic, with which the Catholics are always taunted, is manifeft in the ftrained conftruction of the canon of the council of Constance. A fpiritual caufe is to be tried by ecclefiaftical judges. They declare that " no "fafe-conduct granted by princes, shall hinder "heretics from being judged and punished," (with ecclefiaftical cenfures and degradation, for their power to punish can extend no farther)" and that when the person who has pro"mised them security" (from this ecclefiaftical punishment, for no other can be meant by a fpiritual tribunal), "has done all that is in his

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power to do, fhall not, in this cafe" (the cafe of fecuring from a fpiritual or ecclefiaftical punishment inflicted by a lawful fuperior,) "be

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obliged to keep his promife:" because a promife of the kind, made to one of their rebellious clergymen, who corrupts and falfifies their doctrine, is an unjust ufurpation of their rights, and fubverfive of their fpiritual jurifdiction, And an unjust promife, injurious to the rights of another, is not binding, let the tie be what it will. Herod promifed upon oath to give his daughter

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daughter whatever fhe would ask for. He was not bound to give her the head of John the Baptift. If the king of England, without even depriving a fingle man of his eftate, bound himself by oath, to arrogate to himself the legiflative as well as the executive power; every antagonist of popery, from the prelate down to the tub-preacher, would cry out, with the fathers of the council of Conftance: "He is not, "in this cafe, obliged to keep his promife."

In this fenfe, the canon of the council is to be understood. In this fenfe, the fathers themfelves, the best interpreters of their own meaning, understood it. In this fenfe, the Catholic doctors, all over the world, understand it they who are more competent judges of their own creed, than either Mr. Locke or Mr. Wesley. Such of them as are of opinion, that the fupreme power of the state can make berefy a capital crime, rife up with indignation against the false accufers who fay that the council authorifed breach of faith with beretics. They write in Catholic ftates where they have nothing to fear, and lefs to expect, from Mr. Wesley and his London rioters.

If Mr. Wefley conftrues this canon in a different fenfe, it is no reason for obtruding his tortured construction on me, as an article of orthodoxy. An Arian may as well perfuade

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the public, that I do not believe in the Divinity of Chrift; because he does not believe in it himself, and tortures the fcriptures in support of his errors. John Hufs was a priest, ordained in the Church of Rome, and faid mass until the day of his confinement. I suppose Mr. Wesley will not allow, that a temporal prince could deprive his fpiritual fuperiors from cenfuring and degrading him, if found guilty of an erroneous doctrine.

Every church claims to herself the power of inflicting fpiritual punishments independent of the civil magiftrate-The church of Rome, the confiftories of Scotland, and all others. When the council of two hundred arrogated to themfelves, the power of denouncing and abfolving from cenfures, and in consequence intended to absolve one Bertelier, Calvin afcended the pulpit, and, with outftretched hands, threatened to oppose force to force; exclaimed with vehemence of voice against the profanation, and forced the fenate to refign their fpiritual com'miffion. Bertelier was punished in fpite of the promise of the civil power. When Mr Wefley refused the facrament to Mrs. Williamfon in Georgia, for oppofing the propagation of the gospel, in giving the preference tò Mr. Williamson, the layman, at a time when the clergyman intended to light Hymen's torch with a Spark of grace: a conflict of jurifdiction

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