O’Leary’s quaint jocularity and rounded periods are amusing; but they furnish not the slightest answer to Wesley’s allegations. On March 23, Wesley replied to O’Leary, in a letter addressed to the editors of the _Freeman’s Journal_, and from which the following is extracted. “Mr. O’Leary’s remarks are no more an answer to my letter, than to the Bull _Unigenitus_. His manner of writing is easy and pleasant; but might it not as well be more serious? The subject we are treating of is not a light one; it moves me to tears, rather than to laughter. I plead for the safety of my country; yea, for the children that are yet unborn. I would not have the Roman Catholics persecuted at all. I would only have them hindered from doing hurt: I would not put it in their power to cut the throats of their quiet neighbours.”[356] O’Leary published a “Rejoinder to Mr. Wesley’s Reply,” in which he was less jocular, but not more logical. Of Wesley’s three reasons why it is not safe to tolerate papists, two were left untouched, and one was played with and evaded. Such a controversialist scarcely deserved an answer; and, yet, Wesley supplemented his second letter by a third, dated Chester, March 31, 1780. After recapitulating his three reasons, Wesley writes: “Nine parts in ten of Mr. O’Leary’s remarks are quite wide of the mark. Not that they are wide of _his_ mark, which is to introduce a plausible panegyric upon the Roman Catholics, mixed with keen invectives against the protestants, whether true or false it matters not. All this is admirably well calculated to inspire the reader with aversion to these heretics, and to bring them back to the holy, harmless, much injured Church of Rome! Close arguing he does not attempt; but he vapours, and skips to and fro, and rambles to all points of the compass, in a very lively and entertaining manner.” Wesley thus concludes his long letter: “What security for my life can any man give me, till he utterly renounces the council of Constance? What security can any Romanist give a protestant, till this doctrine is publicly abjured? If Mr. O’Leary has anything more to plead for this council, I shall follow him step by step. But let him keep his word, and ‘give a serious answer to a serious charge.’ ‘Drollery may come in when we are talking of roasting fowls’; but not when we talk of ‘roasting men.’