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letter-I have fwelled it into a pamphlet. In dignation flows in prose as well as in poetry, When the feelings are roused by such interesting objects as have passed in review before me, the difficulty is where to ftop. I have spoken out: I have dealt plainly and roundly with you: the events of every day threaten us with it: The events of every day threaten us with increasing danger. A fpirit is now on foot, and indefatigable are the pains that are taken to speed its progress, wilder, and of a more terrible tendency than has deluged this unhappy land with blood, from the day that a war of religion was first roused from its fleep of one hundred years. The chord that has never failed to mad den our populace into rebellion, is now strung to its highest pitch; it is struck by the mafter hand, that gives it all its frenzy. You, Sir, and your Brethren, and the Clergy over whom you prefide, of every order and degree, must act a commanding part, either in repreffing or encouraging this spirit. It will bring your principles and your difpofitions to a teft, that can no longer leave room for doubt in either way: half meafures will no longer do. No anti-room conversations, no closet whispers, no vague declarations, meaning any thing or nothing, will meet the exigency: any thing short of a declaration from the whole body of your Clergy, published at your altars, as the unanimous decision of the whole Prelature and Priesthood, and forming the Creed of the Irish Catholic Church, will only ferve to confirm the representation of our mortal enemies, that the Catholic Churches in France and Ireland are in unifon, that the reconciliation between Bonaparte and the Pope can no longer suffer the true fons of the church to confider the ufurper as an enemy, and that this triumph of the Catholic religion in France, under his aufpices, is the signal of a general revolt, the moment his apoftolic army shall touch these shores. It will not be enough for you, Sir, to come forward with those paftoral letters, in which the text and the notes are in the most amicable variance; which revive the art that was supposed to have been lost, with the difappearance of the fons of Loyola-the art of blowing hot and cold with the same breath; which remind us of the monster with two voices, in the Tempest, the "forward voice" breathing nothing but loyalty and union, and social harmony, and boundless and unexcluding charity and good-will; the "backward voice" uttering no other sounds but religious enmity, neceffarily creating civil dissentions, exclusive salvation, jealoufies and envyings, and heart-burnings, and an inexhaustible. theme of mutual distrusts and hatred.

In conveying these opinions to you, I speak the fentiments of every loyal Proteftant in the kingdom; I might almost venture to say, of the great majority of the loyal Catholics of the kingdom. If adding my name to them, would give them any weight with you, or with the public, I should not hesitate to add it; but moving in a retired walk of life, with no public character;

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unknown to the great world of politics; a plain unpretending friend to my King and to my Country; attached to all my fellow-subjects, in proportion to their loyalty, and to the manly and open part they contribute to promote religion and morals, peace and harmony, and fubmiffion to the laws; detesting popery, as the old standing curse of this unhappy land, as the household dæmon, through whose malignant influence the nation has been for so many ages prevented from coalefcing and blending into one people, contrary to all examples, ancient and modern, except that of the Jews, with whom alone its votaries agree in maintaining your exclusive doctrine; no otherwise adverse to Catholicism than because as a general concern it has engrafted popery, with all its evils, on its stock, and as a private one, and looking only to myself, because my confcience cannot approve of many of its religious tenets, or fuffer me to confider them as confonant to the revealed word of God. Bearing you, Sir, with whom I have never had the least acquaintance, no personal enmity, and not meaning you the least personal offence by any thing that I have in this letter fubmitted to you, I shall assume the name of the mildest of the reformers, who laboured most strenuously to footh the animofities between the Protestants and Catholics, and compose their differences, and shall subscribe myself,

SIR,

Your Humble Servant,

MELANCTHON.

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PRINTED BY GRAISBERRY AND CAMPBELL, 10, BACK-LANE,

PRINTERS TO THE SOCIETY.

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