Wesley’s arguments are irrefutable; and terrible is England’s danger, at the present day, because such arguments, instead of being answered, have been dexterously, but disastrously, ignored by England’s statesmen. Wesley’s letter will probably be treated, by many, as they would treat an old almanack, out of date; but, on February 17, 1780, it evoked the unanimous thanks of the Protestant Association; and, in the same month, was published in the pages of Wesley’s bitterest antagonist,--the _Gospel Magazine_,--with an editorial note, that it had “been almost universally approved of,” and that it was a “production of real merit.” Wesley’s letter was too damaging to the disloyalty and preposterous assumptions of popery, to pass unnoticed. His chief antagonist was the Rev. Arthur O’Leary, the son of peasant parents, and now a popish priest, in the fiftieth year of his age. O’Leary’s remarks on Wesley’s letter made an octavo pamphlet of 101 pages. The friar tells the Methodist, that the temperature of Ireland’s climate and the quality of its soil had cleansed the veins of its papists “from the _sour_ and _acid_ blood of the Scythians and Saxons.” He writes: “We are tender hearted, we are good natured, we have feelings. We shed tears on the urns of the dead; deplore the loss of hecatombs of victims slaughtered on the gloomy altars of religious bigotry; cry in seeing the ruins of cities over which fanaticism has displayed the funeral torch; and sincerely pity the blind zeal of our Scotch and English neighbours, whose constant character is to pity none, for erecting the banners of persecution, at a time when the inquisition is abolished in Spain and Milan, and the protestant gentry are caressed at Rome, and live unmolested in the luxuriant plains of France and Italy. We are too wise to quarrel about religion. The Roman Catholics sing their psalms in Latin, with a few inflections of the voice. Our protestant neighbours sing the same psalms in English, on a larger scale of musical notes. We never quarrel with our honest and worthy neighbours, the quakers, for not singing at all; nor shall we ever quarrel with Mr. Wesley for _raising his voice to heaven_, and warbling forth his canticles on whatever tune he pleases. We like _social harmony_; and, in _civil_ music, hate _discordance_. Thus, when we go to the shambles, we never inquire into the butcher’s religion, but into the quality of his meat. We care not whether the ox was fed in the pope’s territories, or on the mountains of Scotland; provided the joint be good; for, though there be many _heresies_ in old books, we discover neither _heresy_ nor _superstition_ in beef and claret. We divide them cheerfully with one another; and, though of different religions, we sit over the bowl with as much cordiality as if we were at a _lovefeast_.”