Page images
PDF
EPUB

1

REMARKS

ON THE FOREGOING,

LETTER AND DEFENCE.

1

REMARKS

ΟΝ THE FOREGOING

LETTER AND DEFENCE.

Addreffed to the CONDUCTORS of the FREE-PRESS.

GENTLEMEN,

I KNOW that it is lofs of time, and a lofs to the public,-impatient for a paper in which they real firft discovered the outlines of their country's rights, and from whence they daily expect new illuftrations, on the most important fubjects,-to take up the Freeman's Journal with idle controverfy. Were controversy alone the subject, I fhould be the laft to enter the lift.

In your paper, which has already made its way to the continent, on account of the late exertions of the Irish, and which fhould contain nothing unworthy the nervous eloquence and liberal principles of your numerous and learned

corre

correfpondents, Mr. Wesley, in a fyllogiftical method, and the jargon of the schools, has arraigned the Catholics all over the world, with their kings and fubjects, their prelates and doctors, as liars, perjurers, patentees of guilt and perjury, authorized by their priests to violate the facred rules of order and juftice; and unworthy of being tolerated even by Turks and Pagans. Such a charge carries with it, its own confutation. But are there not prejudiced people ftill in the world? The nine fkins of parchment, filled with the names of petitioners against the English Catholics, owe the variety of their fignatures, to pulpit declamations and inflammatory pamphlets, teeming with Mr. Wefley's false affertions: and, to the difgrace of the peerage, in this variety of fignatures, is not the lord's hand-writing ftretched near the scratch of the cobler's awl? For the parchment would be profaned, if the man who does not know how to write, made the fign of the t.

I am a member of that communion which Mr. Wesley afperfed in fo cruel a manner. I difclaimed upon oath, in prefence of judge Henn, the creed which Mr. Wesley attributes to me. I have been the first to unravel the intricacies of that very oath of allegiance proposed

* See Mr. Wefley's letter, page 193.

1

« PreviousContinue »