"If Wesley were alive, what would he think of your midnight plots, and open tirades against Papists? But a letter of his has been going the rounds of the newspapers, which the Know Nothings obviously think gives the sanction of that good man to their movement. Not so. Mr. Wesley was not the man to write as inconsistently as their version of this letter makes him write." Why, sir, Mr. Wesley goes much further in his political opposition to Roman Catholics than the American party have ever proposed to go. The American party say only that they will not vote for Catholics, or put them in office, because their principles are antagonistic to the spirit of Republican institutions. Mr. Wesley lays down the comprehensive, but _true doctrine_, in this very letter, that "_no government not Roman Catholic ought to tolerate men of the Roman Catholic persuasion_." And to show how fully and clearly he sustains this position, I quote from his letter at length. You will find the letter in Vol. 5, page 817, of Wesley's Miscellaneous Works, dated January 12th, 1780. It was originally addressed to the Dublin Freeman's Journal. Here is what Mr. Wesley says, in the very letter you seek to _deny out of_: "I consider not whether the Romish religion is true or false: build nothing on one or the other supposition. Therefore, away with all your common-place declamation about intolerance and persecution for religion! Suppose every word of Pope Pius's creed to be true! Suppose the Council of Trent to have been infallible; yet I insist upon it that no government not Roman Catholic ought to tolerate men of the Roman Catholic persuasion. "I prove this by a plain argument--let him answer it that can--that no Roman Catholic does or can give security for his allegiance or peaceable behavior. I prove it thus: It is a Roman Catholic maxim, established not by private men, but by public council, that 'No faith is to be kept with heretics.' This has been openly avowed by the Council of Constance; but it has never been openly disclaimed. Whether private persons avow or disavow it, it is a fixed maxim of the Church of Rome. But as long as it is so, nothing can be more plain than that the members of that Church can give no reasonable security to any government for their allegiance and peaceable behavior. Therefore, they ought not to be tolerated by any government, Protestant, Mohammedan, or Pagan. You say, 'Nay, but they take an oath of allegiance.' True, five hundred oaths; but the maxim, 'No faith is to be kept with heretics,' sweeps them all away as a spider's web. So that still no governors that are not Roman Catholics can have any security of their allegiance.