the van, and try if the general Council of Constance, whichr Mr. Wesley places at the head of his legions, be impenetrable to the sword of truth. After reading the ecclesiastical history concerning that council, and Doctor Hay's answer to Archibald Drummond, I have gone through the drudgery of examining it all over in St. Patrick's library, when Mr. Wesley's letters made their appearance. The result of my researches is, a conviction, that there is no such doctrine as violation of faith with heretics,' authorized by that Council. Pope Martin V. whom the fathers of that Council elected, published a bull, wherein he declares that it is not lawful for a man to * perjure himself, on any account; even for the faith.' Subsequent pontiffs have lopped off the excrescence of relaxed casuistry. The Pope's horns, then, are not so dangerous, as to induce Mr. Wesley to sing the Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet, deploring the loss of Jerusalem: or to send us from London an Hebrew elegy, to be modulated on the key of the Irish Ologone. Their souls are pained, and ⚫ their hearts trembling for the ark of God.* Tell it not in Gath; publish it not in the streets of Askelon: lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice: lest the daughters of *the uncircumcised triumph.' This same elegy resounded through Great Britain a little before the ark of England was destroyed, the sceptre wrested out of the hands of her king, her pontiffs deprived of their mitres, and her noblemen banished from the Senate. Thus, as the Delphian sword slaughtered the victim in honour of the Gods, and dispatched the criminal on whom the sentence of the law was passed; the scripture is made subservient to profane, as well as sacred purposes. It recommends and enforces subordination; and, at the same time, becomes an arsenal from whence faction takes its arms. Like Boileau's heroes, in the Battle of the Books, we ransack old councils; we disturb the bones of old divines, who, wrapped up in their parchment blankets, sleep at their ease on the shelves of libraries, where they would snore for ever, if the noise of the gunpowder, upon an anniversary day, or the restless hands of pamphlet-writers, industrious in inflaming the rabble, did * Defence of the Protestant Association, p. 116. not rouse them from their slumbers. Peace to their manes! The charity sermon preached in Dublin, by Doctor Campbell-the anniversary sermon preached in Cork, last November, by Doctor la Malliere-and the discourse to the Echlinville volunteers, by Mr. Dickson-have done more good in one day, either by procuring relief for the distressed, or by promoting benevolence, peace, and harmony amongst fellow-subjects of all denominations, than the folios written on Pope Joan have done in the space of two hundred years. 6 I must now sound the retreat, with a design to return to the charge, and to attack Mr. Wesley's first battery, on which he has mounted the canons of the Council of Constance. If I cannot succeed (from want of abilities, but not from want of the armour of truth,) I am sure of making a retreat, in which it is impossible to cut me off. For, in the very supposition that the Council of Constance, and all the councils of the world, had defined violation of faith with •heretics,' as an article of faith, and that I do not believe it; violation,' then, of faith with heretics,' is no article of my belief. For, to form one's belief, it is not sufficient to read a proposition in a book: interior conviction must captivate the mind. The Arian reads the divinity of Christ in the New Testament, and still denies it. Would Mr. Wesley assert that the divinity of Christ is an article of the Arian faith? If, then, 'violation of faith with heretics,' be the tessera fidei, the badge of the Roman Catholic religion, the Roman Catholics are all Protestants, and as well entitled to sing their psalms, as Mr. Wesley his canticles. I would not be one hour a member of any religion that would profess such a creed as Mr. Wesley has sent us from London. You may, perhaps, be surprised, Gentlemen, that the introduction to a serious subject should savour so little of the gloom and sullenness so familiar to polemical writers; or that the ludicrous and serious should be so closely interwoven with each other. But remark a set of men who tax the nobility, gentry, and head clergy of England with degeneracy, for not degrading the dignity of their ranks and professions. Remark them exposing their parchments in meeting-houses and vestries, begging the signatures of every peasant and mendicant, who comes to hear the gospel: Wrong no man; ' he that loves his neighbour fulfils the law,' &c. and those pious souls' pained and trembling for the ark of God,' running with the faggot to kindle the flames of sedition, and to oppress their neighbours. Remark, in seventeen hundred and eighty, a lord with his hair cropped, a bible in his hand, turned elder and high-priest at the age of twenty- three, and fainting for the Ark of Israel. In the fore-ground of this extraordinary picture, remark a Missionary, who has reformed the very reformation; separated from all the Protestant churches, and in trimming the vessel of religion, which he has brought into a new dock, has suffered as much for the sake of conscience, as Lodowick Muggleton or James Nailer could register in their martyrology. Remark that same gentleman inflaming the rabble, dividing his Majesty's subjects, propagating black slander, and throwing the gauntlet to people who never provoked him. Is not fanaticism, the mother of cruelty, and the daughter of folly, the first character in this religious masquerade? Is it not the first spring that gives motion to these extraordinary figures, so corresponsive to Hogarth's Enraged Musician? And in fencing with folly, have not the gravest authors handled the foils of ridicule? To the modern Footes and Molieres, or to the young student in rhetoric, who employs irony in enlarging on his theme, should I for ever leave the 'pained souls and trembling hearts,' of the Scotch Jonathan and the English Samuel, with their squadrons of Israelites fighting for the ark of the Lord,' if what they style in England the Gordonian Associations, had not voted their thanks to Mr. Wesley, for what they call his excellent letter. Such a performance is worthy the approbation of such censors: and in their holy shrines the sacred relic should be reposited. In examining a performance which contains in a small compass, all the horrors invented by blind and misguided zeal, set forth in the most bitter language, I shall confine myself to the strict line of an apologist, who clears himself and his principles from the foulest aspersions. To the public and their impartial reason, the appeal shall be made: to the sentiments implanted in the human breast, and to the conduct of man, not to the rubbish of the schools, Mr. Wesley should have made application, when he undertook to solve the interesting problem, whether the Roman Catholics should be tolerated, or persecuted? But inspired writers partake of the spirit of the seers, and copy as much as possible after the prophets; the prophet Ezekiel breathed on a pile of bones, and lo! a formidable army starting from the earth and ranging itself in battle array. Mr. Wesley blows the dust of an old book, and lo! squadrons of religious warriors engaged in a crusade for the extirpation of the infidels. The loyalty, the conduct, the virtues common to all, the natural attachment of man to his interest and country, the peaceable behaviour of the Roman Catholics, have no weight in the scale of candour and justice. An old Council, held four hundred years ago, is ransacked and misconstrued; a Roman Catholic is unworthy of being tolerated amongst the Turks, because Mr. Wesley puts on his spectacles to read old Latin. I have the honour to remain, Gentlemen, Your humble, and obedient Servant, ARTHUR O'LEARY. Mary's-Lane, Dublin, LETTER II. (Addressed as the Former.) GENTLEMEN, FANATICISM is a kind of religious folly. We laughed at it in a former letter. Whoever has a mind to indulge his humour at our expence, is heartily welcome. You now expect a serious answer to a serious charge. I send you such as occurs. The Council of Constance has openly avowed violation ' of faith with heretics: but it has never been disclaimed.'Therefore,' concludes Mr. Wesley, the Roman Catholics 'should not be tolerated amongst the Turks or Pa 'gans.' A Council so often quoted in anniversary sermons, parliamentary debates, and flying pamphlets, challenges peculiar attention. We shall examine it with as much precision as possible, and with the more impartiality, as strict justice shall be done to all parties. Mr. Wesley knows that we are all Adam's children, who feel the fatal impressions of our origin, and that ambition which took its rise in heaven itself, often lurks in a corner of the sanctuary where the ministers of religion offer up their prayers, as well as in the cabinets of kings, where shrewd courtiers form their intrigues. At a |
