Читать книгу Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; - Brownlow William Gannaway - Страница 6

Sir: – I have received by mail a pamphlet copy of your "Letter to the Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers, Itinerant and Local, of the Methodist Episcopal Church South," covering twenty-eight octavo pages. I thank you for a copy of your Pastoral address; and I am happy to be able to infer from its teachings that you have made a profession of religion, before taking upon yourself "Holy Orders." I suppose the time of your conversion, you date back to the memorable period when you "saw sights" on Mount Pisgah, and had conferred on you the degree of Modern Seer, and entered upon the duties of "High Priest" of Democracy! As I am one of the parties addressed, and the customs of the Church and the country require a response to so grave a document, I have felt it incumbent upon me to perform the task. I may style this the Last epistle of Aaron, the Priest, and illustrious Chief of Foreign Catholic Sag Nicht Locofocoism!

My first impulses were, upon reading your address, to call for your credentials, and to examine into your authority for assuming to dictate to the entire Ministry of the Southern portion of the Methodist Church. You must either enter the Ecclesiastical ring under the imposition of the hands of Bishop Soule or Andy Johnson. If Bishop Soule ordained you for the Ministry, and set you apart as the Lieutenant-General of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, the presumption is that he examined you on doctrinal points, and upon all questions affecting the government of the Church, as was his duty, and is our custom, and that he found you orthodox! It follows, as a matter of course, that you renounced your heresy you advocated in the Hartford Convention, held at Nashville, and that you obtained forgiveness for that and numerous other "sins of omission and commission" – aye, for the whole catalogue of your inward and outward iniquities, which so eminently disqualified you for the work of the Ministry! But if Andy Johnson ordained you for the work, of which there is no sort of doubt, the Church South, through me, protests against your authority, and utterly refuses to submit to your teachings. Our Church does not agree with Johnson on the "White Basis" issue, or the great question of slavery; and in proof of this, I cite to the fact of her separation from the North, in 1844, upon this very question. She has within her bounds of communion, rich men and poor, educated and uneducated, and is unwilling to unite with him in arraying the poor against the rich, or the unlearned against the learned. Nor does our Church believe that Jesus Christ was a Locofoco, as Johnson asserts in his Inaugural, and held that Christianity and Democracy, in converging lines, led to the foot of Jacob's Ladder, and thence to heaven, via Mount Pisgah, from whose lofty summit you first beheld the promised land!

It therefore follows, that, in presenting yourself as a spiritual leader in the Church, called to the work, as you have been, by Andy Johnson, your case is fully met by a quotation from Job:

"Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them."

A second passage, from the Book of Jeremiah, meets your case, and leaves no doubt that the inspired Prophet had you in his eye:

"We have heard the pride of Moab, (he is exceedingly proud,) his loftiness, and his arrogance, and his pride, and his haughtiness of heart.

"I know his wrath, saith the Lord; but it shall not be so; his lies shall not so effect it."

To be candid with you, Gov. Brown, I regard your address, under all the circumstances, as a display of the most brazen-faced assurance and the most unmitigated impudence I ever met with in my life! I have known for years that you were capable of great presumption, but in this insolent and dictatorial address you surpass yourself– you positively out-Herod Herod! In the whole history of the country, and of parties, I venture the assertion, that a parallel piece of impudence, and downright bold-faced assurance, cannot be pointed to, as the act of any partisan. It is really past all belief, if I had not your production before me. But more of this hereafter.

Copies of your pamphlet were distributed through the aisles and seats of the Annual Conference room in Nashville, and have been sent all over the South, to members of other Conferences. Your proof-sheet was seen ten days before the meeting of the Middle Tennessee Conference, and your "work of faith and labor of love" was ready for distribution when the Conference first convened, but you held it back till the Conference was ready to adjourn, and to a period so late, that a reply, if one had been deemed necessary, could not be made. This was cowardly, and in keeping with your political tactics and code of morals. In saying that this was in keeping with your code of morals, I allude to the Woodberry affair.

I shall now take up your address, Governor, and wade through its twenty-eight pages of double-distilled Sag Nichtism, sublimated impudence, and concealed advocacy of Romanism, mixed up with contradictions, false assertions, and glaring absurdities, as it is, from beginning to end. In the opening paragraph, you predicate your right to instruct the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers" of the entire Church, South, upon the real or assumed fact, that you are "The son of a now sainted father, who for forty years ministered at your altars, the co-laborer of that noble band of Christian ministers, who, under Asbury and Coke, founded your Church in America!"

Alas, that any "sainted Father" should be represented by so degenerate a son – an irreligious son – not a member of any Church – but having the hardihood, in the face of those who know the facts, to disguise himself in the priestly robes of a "sainted Father" – like an ass in a lion's skin, to bray out against better men than himself, or, like a wolf in sheep's clothing, to steal into the fold, where that Father was accustomed to minister in holy things, and with soft and honeyed words, and hypocritical teachings, and Satan-like misrepresentations, seek whom he may devour! You tell the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," that you really "approve" their "creed," and, what is still more soul-cheering, you have "witnessed their growth and progress for years, with the highest satisfaction." This is very condescending in the "son of a now sainted father!" It is quite flattering! But these "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," would receive all this with a greater degree of allowance, if they did not believe that your generous patronage, so lavishly bestowed upon them and their "creed," was prompted by a principle of which selfishness is the soul! They believe, and so express themselves in conversation, that your forced smile of approbation, your reluctant eulogy, have both been wrung from you, because you are a sycophantic partisan suitor for patronage, in the way of votes for your party. These Clergymen whom you address, think it a great pity that the "son of a now sainted father" should exhibit so much "satisfaction" at witnessing their prosperity, in theory, and manifest not one particle in practice. They think that you would be in your proper place, to be found among the mourners, instead of the teachers in their Church; and that it is high time, considering your age in life, and the extent of your iniquities, that you should be found upon your knees, in an altar full of fresh straw, at an old-fashioned Camp-Meeting, asking the pious to pray for you, and God, for the sake of the forty years labors of "a now sainted father," to have mercy upon you, and save your sinful old soul from that death that never dies.

Why, Sir, the Devil himself would blush to perpetrate such an act of arrogance as you have done, in thus volunteering your advice to the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," of the Methodist Church. An old political party hack, who is not now, and never was, a member of any Church – an intriguing old sinner, who never even attends Church, and who, in this respect, shows that he neither fears God, respects the Christian Sabbath, nor "approves the creed" of any orthodox denomination, to be lecturing a numerous body of Clergymen, as to what they ought or ought not to do, it is the culmination of all that is called effrontery! The "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers" of the Methodist Church, wish the evidence of your conversion to God, before they consent to obey you, as "having the rule over them." Your approval of their "creed," and the "satisfaction" with which you have witnessed their progress, is not sufficient to satisfy their doubting minds, as long as you continue to ride into Nashville on Sabbath, and retail political slang at the Inn, or read Sag Nicht papers at the Union Office, to the neglect of the house of God, and the evil example set before young men, against the statute in such cases made and provided! We must, as Ministers, hear you relate your experience, in a regular class-meeting. Nay, more, knowing your raising, and your ability to "deceive, even the very elect," we must see you down upon your marrow-bones, surrounded by noisy and zealous officials, pounding you on the back, and exclaiming, as in the days of your "sainted father," Pray on, Aaron! We must hear you groan– we must see your sinful old bosom heave– we must witness the falling of big tears, as you publicly confess and manfully repent of your misdeeds – of the whole catalogue, of all the inward and outward iniquities of your past life – your sins of omission and commission, which God knows are more numerous than the hairs upon your old sinful head! I say we must see all this, and even more, before we can have faith in your teachings, as big as even a grain of mustard seed!

But you are the "son of a now sainted father" – you derive great "satisfaction" from the "growth and progress" of Methodism – you "approve" the Methodist "creed" – and hence, a glorious future awaits the Methodist Church: provided always, that her "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers" hearken to and obey your teachings, a thing they are very certain not to do, in the matter under consideration. It is a melancholy fact, that many of the sons of Methodist, and other Ministers, are very wicked and unpromising men; and it is equally true, and certainly notorious, that where they turn out to be sinners, they are sinners above all offenders, dwelling either at Jerusalem or elsewhere! I have no hesitancy in pronouncing you as hard a case, in a moral point of view, as ever came before the Church, and the only appropriate reply her ecclesiastical dignitaries can make to your address, is to appoint a day of fasting and prayer to God, for your conversion, to be observed throughout her borders. I now, as the appointed organ of the Church, set apart the first day of January, 1856, and I pray you, as one desiring the salvation of your soul, to be in the spirit and in a proper frame of mind on that day! Humble yourself before God – tell him that you were in error in stealing the livery of Heaven to serve the Devil in! Tell him that you are an old worn-out political hack – that you have grown gray in the service of sin – that during the whole of a somewhat eventful life, your labors have been in the dirtiest pools of party politics – that you have been insincere and unscrupulous in all your teachings and acts – that you stand before the people of Tennessee publicly branded by eight respectable and reliable citizens of Wilson county, as a falsifier in the Know Nothing controversy of the past summer – and that you are sorry for having come forth steeped to the nose and chin in political profligacy, to lecture grave Clergymen upon subjects you ought to set at their feet and learn lessons about! Tell your God, what he doubtless knows, that though the "son of a now sainted father," you are as full of devils as ever Mary Magdalene was – that like the "Imps of Sin," in Milton, these "yelp all around" you – that this is no reflection upon a "now sainted father," whose seeming neglect of your early training grew out of his continual absence from home, as is the case with most Methodist Preachers, – aye, tell your God, that once out of this scrape, you will never be caught in another of the kind! You say,

"From the foundation of our government, it has been a conceded and settled doctrine, that the various religious denominations should not, as such, intermeddle with the political contests of the day. No instance is now remembered where they have done so!"

This is a remarkable sentence, and partakes of the nature of your Wilson county assertions! The history of the Church, and of the world, contradicts every word of the foregoing, and demonstrates that the "settled doctrine" of the Catholic Church, has ever been, as it still is, to "intermeddle with the political contests of the day." I will trouble you with two instances in which "religious denominations, as such," have been guilty of what you deny. The Albany (N. Y.) State Register, a paper which usually does not say what it cannot maintain, states that Archbishop Hughes has issued a mandate, commanding all Catholics in the Albany District, in the exciting State election now coming off, to cast their votes for Mr. Crosby for the Senate. But Roman Catholics, you falsely tell us, never "intermeddle with the political contests of the day: " O no!

The other "instance now remembered," is the one in which you were a candidate for a seat in the Legislature of Tennessee, in the county of Giles: this was, according to my recollection, in 1831, or a quarter of a century ago. At that time, there was a small Manual Labor School in Giles, which had been incorporated by the Legislature, and at the head of which was a Presbyterian. The gentleman who ran against you, if not a member of the Presbyterian Church, "approved" their "creed," and "witnessed their growth and progress for years with the highest satisfaction." You charged upon the stump that the Presbyterians were seeking to establish their religion by law, to unite Church and State – appealed to the Methodist and Baptist to put them down by electing you, with a promise that you would check their march by counter-legislation – and you were elected upon this issue. At the same time, as the oldest inhabitants of Giles know, there were not fifty Presbyterians in the county! But "no instance is remembered" in which one sect has intermeddled with another – O no! You say:

"In the mutations of parties in this country, a new one has lately arisen, to which, I apprehend, more of the Methodist ministers have attached themselves, at least in the State of Tennessee, than might have been expected. This party, known as the Know Nothings, is so peculiar in its organization, that it seems strange to me that any minister or professor of religion should be willing longer to continue in it."

Your apprehensions are well-founded, when you suppose that a very large proportion of the Methodist ministers in Tennessee are either members of this new party or sympathize with it. And, sir, more of the ministers of other denominations than you seem to be aware of, have either attached themselves to this party, "in the mutations of parties," or act with it, and endorse its aims and objects, than you have yet dreamed of! And "it seems strange" to these ministers, and thousands of the purest and best laymen in the Protestant ranks, "that any minister or professor of religion should be willing longer" to oppose the principles of this party, or array themselves under the black flag of Papal Rome, and of the pauper emigrants with whom she is flooding our land! But, sir, the object of your Address is, to persuade if you can, and if not, to drive, by motives of fear, the Clergy of the Methodist Church from their position on this great American and Protestant question. Alas, how little does the "son of a sainted father" understand the material he attempts to work upon! Methodist ministers are free men, the equals of other moral and upright men in heroic virtues, and far in advance of that of politicians in Tennessee who believe parties in religion, as in politics, are only "held together by the cohesive power of public plunder," and who assume to direct public opinion from a principle, of which selfishness is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end! Sir, the violence, bitterness, and the very inflammatory tone, not to say language, of your Gallatin, Lebanon, and Columbia speeches, are enough, it seems to me, to nauseate every good and conservative citizen, and to disgust every "Bishop, Elder, and other Ministers, Itinerant and Local, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South." Even in this Address, you insult these ministers on every page. I see not how any preacher, with a true Protestant and American heart in him, can read this address of yours through, without rising up from his seat and saying: "I have voted with this Anti-Protestant and Anti-American party for the last time."

In warning Methodist ministers to withdraw their sanction and approbation of Know Nothingism, you say:

"I therefore call upon them this day to come out of these lodges, and never return to them: at all events, never return to them until all secrecy, all their bits of red paper, (indicating blood, even by the selection of color,) all their signs and signals, are utterly abolished and dispensed with. I call upon them to do this, and to do it forthwith – by their hopes of heaven – by their obedience to the word of God – by their allegiance to the Constitution and laws of their country – to come out from any party which has adopted a mode and plan of organization so fatal to the peace of society, and the progress of true religion."

What egotism! You call upon them! You make a freer use of the personal pronoun I, than even old Parson Longstreet, the Know Nothing slayer of Mississippi. To parse your different sentences syntactically, nothing else is necessary but to understand the first person singular, and to repeat the rule. Not only your verbiage but your sentiment is thus egotistic throughout!

Your appeal to the ministers to come out of this organization, on the ground of its secrecy, is a species of demagoguism, the more disgusting when it is considered that you are a Free Mason, and have, by all the arts and blandishment of your nature, sought to induce ministers to go into that organization. But, then, there is no violation of law or the Constitution in Masonry– "fatal to the peace of society and to the progress of true religion" – no, nothing! Understand me: I am not opposed to Masonry.

On this subject of the Romish creed, which you excuse, and even advocate, you admit that there are "alleged abuses," which have prompted the Protestant Churches to unite themselves with this new Order! Then you insultingly tell these Churches this tale:

"But they ought to have remembered, that even a virtuous indignation can never justify proscription and persecution: these bring no remedy to the real or supposed evils, but are sure to increase and aggravate them. These errors in faith, and abominations in practice, if they really exist, were known to the Wesleys, and Cokes, and Asburys, who founded your Church: to the Lees, the Bruces, the Capers, the Logan Douglasses, the Summerfields, and the Bascoms, who subsequently extended and adorned it. But they never proposed to kindle, in this enlightened age of Christianity, the consuming fires of religious persecution."

Now, sir, every distinguished "founder" of the Methodist Church you have named, from Wesley to Bascom, has written and preached against the "errors in faith, and abominations in practice," of the Romish Church, and they each and all have taken this very ground upon the religious issues. I have heard three of these men preach, and I am familiar with the writings of the rest, and know whereof I speak.

You intentionally deceive and misrepresent the American party, when you charge that they seek to proscribe one class of our citizens – that they desire to interfere with the rights of conscience – and to say how men should worship God. Why don't you inform your readers that Archbishop Hughes, and other Catholic Bishops, were the first to introduce religion into political discussion in this country? This would not suit your purposes – it suits your objects, taste, and inclination better, to slander the American party by wholesale, and to charge upon its members the atrocities committed by your foreign and pauper allies. We only choose to vote against them, and to vote for American-born citizens and Protestants: which is as much our right, as it is the right of these foreign Catholics to vote against and proscribe American Protestants. For this, you and your villainous associates exhaust the whole vocabulary of Billingsgate upon the American party. What is their offence? Why, they simply place certain questions before persons desiring to act with them, which they think, at least, may affect the national welfare, and before the people of the Union, and ask their opinion of these questions at the ballot-box. The American party has always denied, and I again reiterate the denial, that we do, at all proscribe, or in any way interfere with, any class of our foreign citizens, save that we propose to send convicts from European prisons back to their own native and infamous dens, as fast as they land here – but these are not citizens of ours. I appeal to our Platform, and our Book of Constitutions, and I offer to any man a handsome reward – any man who will produce in either a statement containing the proscription you falsely charge against us. I now say, Gov. Brown, either do this, or cease your empty vaporing against the proscriptive features of our system, as you are pleased to style it. You declaim most lustily in favor of religious liberty for Catholics, which you know we do not propose as a party to interfere with; and this you plead for at the altar of Methodist "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," who know there is no religious liberty for Protestants where Catholics have the power to prevent it! You plead in the most plaintive tones for the rights of foreign Catholics to be sworn into good citizens in less than one year after they land here, but do not seem to remember the American Protestant wives and children, who have to subsist on charity during our severe winters, in consequence of their husbands and fathers being elbowed out of employment by the competition of foreign pauper laborers!

Sir, the American party, if in power, would put a stop to that proscription from office that has always characterized the party with which you act, and which has made the present Administration so very and so justly odious to the country. Proscription, indeed! Was there ever such glaring and actual proscription for the sake of religious and political creeds committed as by the present Administration? The infamous Sag Nicht party with which you act, and of which you are a leader and a High Priest, though the "son of a now sainted father," has applied the political guillotine to almost every man in office who has dared to differ with them in their high estimate of foreign paupers and Catholic vagabonds, in many instances turning out native-born Protestants, and filling their places with foreign Catholics. And yet, with a degree of effrontery that throws the Devil far into the shade, you turn round and charge the American party with proscription, and ask the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," of the Methodist Church, "by their hopes of heaven – by their obedience to the word of God – and by their allegiance to the Constitution and laws of their country," to come out from a party so proscriptive! Why, sir, you out-Herod old Herod himself! Your teachings contrasted with your practice, would cause a crimsoned negative to settle on the cheeks of old Pilate! And still you are the "son of a now sainted father" – you "approve" the "creed" of Methodism, and have "witnessed its growth and prosperity for years, with the highest satisfaction!"

You quote from the Declaration of Independence, to show that toleration should be extended to Catholics and foreigners, and then insultingly add, as if you supposed no Methodist minister had ever perused the writings of Mr. Jefferson:

"These are the words of Mr. Jefferson, but the immortal sentiment springs directly from the word of the living and true God. No: persecution at the stake, or by exclusion of Catholics from office, is not the weapon to be wielded by the Protestant Churches."

You know that the notes of warning given to his countrymen by the sage of Monticello, and the great APOSTLE of American Democracy, are in harmony with the doctrines of the Know Nothing party. But you choose to conceal this fact from the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers" of the Methodist Church, in the vain hope that their numerous pressing and official engagements will not allow them time to look up the documents. In Mr. Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, written in 1781, and published in 1794, pages 124-5, I find the following Know Nothing doctrine:

"But are there no inconveniences to be thrown into the scale against the advantage expected from a multiplication of numbers by the importation of foreigners? It is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize, as much as possible, in matters which they must of necessity transact together. Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent. Every species of government has specific principles. Ours, perhaps, are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchs. Yet from such we are to expect the greatest number of immigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the government they leave, imbibed in early youth: or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion with their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its directions, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass. I may appeal to experience during the present contest for a verification of these conjectures. But if they be not certain in event, are they not possible? are they not probable? Is it not safer to wait with patience twenty-seven years and three months longer for the attainment of every degree of population desired or expected? May not our government be more homogeneous, more peaceable, more durable?"

Again, Mr. Jefferson, whilst our Minister to the Court of St. Cloud, addressed a letter to John Jay, dated November 14, 1788, in which he uses this language:

"With respect to the Consular appointments, it is a duty on me to add some observations, which my situation here has enabled me to make. I think it was in the spring of 1784, that Congress (harassed by multiplied applications from foreigners, of whom nothing was known but on their information, or on that of others as unknown as themselves) came to the resolution that the interest of America would not permit the naming of any person, not a citizen, to the office of Consul, or Agent, or Commissary. Native citizens, on several valuable accounts, are preferable to aliens, or citizens alien-born. Native citizens possess our language, know our laws, customs and commerce, have general acquaintance in the United States, give better satisfaction, and are more to be relied on in a point of fidelity. To avail ourselves of our native citizens, it appears to me advisable to declare, by standing law, that no person but a native citizen shall be capable of the office of Consul. This was the rule of 1784, restraining the office of Consul to native citizens."

In 1797, Mr. Jefferson drafted a petition to the Legislature of Virginia, on behalf of the citizens of Amherst, Albemarle, Fluvana, and Gouchland Bounties, in which he uses the following language:

"Your petitioners further submit to the two Houses of Assembly, whether the safety of the citizens of this Commonwealth, in their persons, their property, their laws and government, does not require that the capacity to act in the important office of Juror, Grand or Petty, civil or criminal, should not be restrained in future to native citizens, or such as were citizens at the date of the Treaty of Peace which closed our revolutionary war; and whether ignorance of our laws, and natural partiality to the countries of their birth, are not reasonable causes for declaring this to be one of their rights incommunicable in future to adopted citizens." —Jefferson's Writings, Vol. IX., page 453.

Now, Sir, answer me in candor, are you not ashamed of having quoted Mr. Jefferson, and of having so basely misrepresented his position on this great American question? Did not Mr. Jefferson propose to carry his opposition to foreigners much farther than the American party now do?

But, you vile old demagogue, though "son of a now sainted father," I am determined you shall not escape the indignant powers of those "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," whom you have wickedly sought to deceive. It is known to you, and to the world, in what veneration all American Democrats hold the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and '99, and the fame of Mr. Madison, who was the ruling spirit of that session of the Legislature. That Legislature passed the following Resolution, which you may find by consulting Henning's Statutes at Large, Vol. 2, New Series, page 194:

"That the General Assembly, nevertheless, concurring in opinion with the Legislature of Massachusetts that every Constitutional barrier should be opposed to the introduction of foreign influence into our National Councils, —Resolved, That the Constitution ought to be so amended that no foreigner, who shall have acquired the right, under our Constitution and laws, at the time of making the amendment, shall hereafter be eligible to the office of Senator or Representative, in Congress of the United States, nor to any office in the Judiciary or Executive. Agreed to by the Senate, Jan. 16, 1799."

I shall next consider two extracts from your Address, under one general head, relating to the temporal power of the Pope. You say:

"But the genius of sophistry may fly to the rescue of Know-Nothingism, by pretending that it is not on account of his religion that the Catholic is to be excluded from office, but because he is subjected, not merely to the spiritual but the temporal dominion or jurisdiction of the Pope. No error has been wider spread than this."

Again:

"A late distinguished Senator from Georgia, (Mr. Berrien,) in a recent address to the public, has copied a letter of Mr. Wesley, which may require a few observations. That letter was dated in January, 1780. All its conclusions were founded on the assumed and popular opinion of that day, that the Pope did claim a civil jurisdiction beyond his own dominions – that he could absolve the subjects of other governments from their oaths of allegiance, and that there was a principle in one of the tenets of that Church, that Catholics were justified in not keeping faith with heretics. Against these assumed and popular opinions, the Catholics of England in that day, as they now do in this country, were solemnly protesting."

This is a modest way of giving Mr. Wesley the lie, but it is nevertheless quite direct, and is the more surprising, as it comes from the "son of a now sainted father," who was a follower of Wesley, a "co-laborer of that noble band of Christian ministers" he was instrumental in starting out into the world – aye, the son of a "father who, for forty years, ministered at the altars" this same Wesley erected! In holding up John Wesley as the vile calumniator of the Catholic Church in England, it is well enough, Governor, to be modest about it, and cautious in the selection of your words, as you are addressing a class of men who believe in John Wesley, as a faithful man of God, and one incapable of misrepresenting the Catholics of England, the Pope of Rome, or any other sect or individual! John Wesley ministered at the sacred altars of religion for more than sixty years; he had with him the power of God, and the witness that he pleased Him; and the last words he uttered, with his hands clasped, and his eyes raised toward heaven, were these: "The best of all is, God is with us!" And yet the sons and grandsons in the gospel, of this venerated and sainted man of God, are insulted in Tennessee, by being told by an impertinent old sinner, and a vile old party hack, that he was A LIAR, while living, and the slanderer of the Catholic Church, now that he is no more! If Mr. Wesley "assumed" falsehoods in reference to the Romish Church in England, he either did it in ignorance, or with a guilty knowledge of the fact. He was a man of too much learning and information for his friends to get him out of such an indictment under a plea of ignorance. He is therefore, though dead, a wilful liar, according to "Ex-Gov. A. V. Brown," for the Governor goes on to argue the cause against him, and, on page 19 of his address, quotes Catholic authority to prove him a liar! Shame on the "son of a now sainted father," and on the holy seer of Pisgah! O! Aaron, thou priest of corrupt Democracy, you need not endeavor to gull "bishops, elders, and other ministers," with your whining cant, while you thus traduce their great spiritual head, who, under God, taught them the lessons of salvation!

Gov. Brown, go with me, as one of the admirers of John Wesley, to the humble dwellings of the miners of Cornwall, to the homely tents of the colliers of Kingswood and Newcastle, and to the equally humble workshops of the manufacturers of Yorkshire, in England, who are rejoicing in God their Saviour that a Wesley was ever born into the world, and ask them if they believe him capable of slandering the Catholics! Go with me among the backwoodsmen of North America, and examine them in their lone tents – go among the honest and virtuous settlers on our Western frontiers, amid the interminable forests of the far off West, whose thousands are brought into the fold of Christ, through the instrumentality of Wesleyan ministers, and ask them if they think the founder of their Church was a wilful liar!

Go with me to the rich pastures and luxuriant harvest-fields of your own native Middle Tennessee: enter the neat cottages and stately mansions of that glorious division of our State, and ask the intelligent and educated females, who are rejoicing in God, in hope of future and eternal life, through the prayers and sermons of Wesleyan ministers, as instruments in the hands of God, if they believe the founder of their Church was a wicked calumniator! Go to the islands of the sea, to the burning sands of Africa, and ask the benighted converts from heathenism, through the instrumentality of Wesleyan ministers, if they believe the venerable founder of their Church was a man of truth!

Enter the dwellings of the rich and fashionable planters of the South – ride around their sugar and cotton plantations, among the sable sons and daughters of Africa, and witness the blessed fruits of the pious life, Christian integrity, and triumphant death of John Wesley! Come over to East Tennessee, Governor, and enter the log-cabins of the virtuous, happy peasantry of the "hill country," and ask them whether they believe Mr. Wesley or your Catholic authorities, touching the temporal power of the Pope of Rome!

Alas! Gov. Brown, the Reformation dawned with Luther in Germany, but the sun of its glory rose with Methodism in England; the first streaks of Protestant light were seen on the horizon of the sixteenth century, but the meridian sun of the Reformation dawned in all his brightness on the Wesleys and Whitefield! But America has been the land of the glory and triumph of the doctrines of the man you labor to convict of the awful sin of lying!

But you deny that the Pope of Rome, in temporal matters, claims what Mr. Wesley attributed to him in the letter copied by Senator Berrien. You also deny that the Popes claim and have exercised the right to interfere with matters of government, and the right to absolve their followers in other countries, and under other governments, from their allegiance to such rulers and governments. I will proceed to vindicate Mr. Wesley, and, by the proof, saddle the lie on you! Whilst John was King of England, he had the "Magna Charta," the great charter securing, among other things, the right of trial by jury, wrung from him at the point of the bayonet. This great charter was annulled by Pope Innocent. Here is the proof:

"While the king was employed in the siege of Rochester, he received the pleasing intelligence, that according to his request the charter had been annulled by the pontiff. Innocent, enumerating the grounds of his judgment, insists strongly on the violence employed by the barons. If they really felt themselves aggrieved, they ought, he observes, to have accepted the offer of redress by due course of law. They had preferred, however, to break the oath of fealty, which they had taken, and had appointed themselves judges to sit upon their lord. They knew, moreover, that John had enrolled himself among the crusaders; and yet they had not scrupled to violate the privileges which all Christian nations had granted to the champions of the cross. Lastly, England was become the fief of the holy see; and they could not be ignorant that if the king had the will, he had not at least the power, to give away the rights of the crown, without the consent of his feudal superior. He was therefore bound to annul the concessions which had been extorted from John, as having been obtained in contempt of the holy see, to the degradation of royalty, the disgrace of the nation, and to the impediment of the crusade. At the same time he wrote to the barons, re-stating his reasons, exhorting them to submit, requesting them to lay their claims before him in the council to be held at Rome; and promising that he would induce the king to consent to whatever might be deemed just or reasonable, to take care that all grievances should be abolished, that the crown should be content with its just rights, and the clergy and people should enjoy their ancient liberties." —Lingard's History of England, vol. ii., page 71.

Will it be said that this was not interfering with temporal matters? Will it be said that the right of trial by jury was a spiritual matter? Will it be said that the tyranny of King John, and his oppressions, of which the barons justly complained, were spiritual matters? No sensible advocate of Romanism will say this!

The next instance of an interference by the Pope in temporal affairs, to which I shall call your attention, Governor, is his excommunication of Elizabeth, Queen of England. She was immediately preceded on that throne by her sister Mary, who was a Catholic. For no other reason than that Elizabeth was a Protestant, and would not submit her rights and kingdom to the control of the Pope, Pius V. thundered forth at her devoted head the following anathema, from his throne at the Vatican, situated at the foot of one of the seven hills upon which Rome is built:

EXCOMMUNICATION AND DEPOSITION Of QUEEN ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND

"Pius, etc., for a future memorial of the matter. He that reigneth on high, to whom is given all power in heaven and on earth, committed one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, out of which there is no salvation, to one alone upon the earth, Peter the Prince of the Apostles, and to Peter's successor, the Bishop of Rome, to be governed in fulness of power. Him alone he made prince over all people, and all kingdoms, to pluck up, destroy, scatter, consume, plant and build, etc. But the number of the ungodly hath gotten such power, that there is now no place left in the whole world which they have not essayed to corrupt with their most wicked doctrines. Amongst others, Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England, a slave of wickedness, lending thereunto her helping hand, with whom, as in a sanctuary, the most pernicious of all men have found a refuge; this very woman having seized upon the kingdom, and monstrously usurping the place of the supreme Head of the Church in all England, and the chief authority and jurisdiction thereof, hath again brought back the same kingdom to miserable destruction, which was then newly reduced to the faith, and to good order. For having by strong hand inhibited the true religion, which Mary, the lawful queen, of famous memory, had, by the help of this See, restored, after it had been formerly overthrown by King Henry VIII., a revolter therefrom, and following and embracing the errors of heretics, she hath removed the royal council, consisting of the English nobility, and filled it with obscure men, being heretics; hath oppressed the embracers of the Roman faith, hath placed impious preachers, ministers of iniquity, and abolished the sacrifice of the mass, prayers, fastings, distinction of meats, a single life, and the rites and ceremonies; hath commanded books to be read in the whole realm, containing manifest heresy, etc. She hath not only contemned the godly requests and admonitions of princes concerning her healing and conversion, but also bath not so much as permitted the Nuncios of the See to cross the seas into England, etc. We do, therefore, out of the fulness of our apostolic power, declare the aforesaid Elizabeth, being heretic, and a favorer of heretics, and her adherents in the matter aforesaid, to have incurred the sentence of anathema, and to be cut off from the unity of the body of Christ. And, moreover, we do declare her to be deprived of her pretended title to the kingdom aforesaid, and of all dominion, dignity, and privilege whatsoever; and also the nobility, subjects, and people of the said kingdom, and all others which have in any sort sworn unto her, to be for ever absolved from any such oath, and all manner of duty or dominion, allegiance and obedience; as we also do, by the authority of these presents, absolve them, and do deprive the same Elizabeth of her pretended title to the kingdom, and all other things aforesaid. And we do command and interdict all and every one of the noblemen, subjects, people, and others aforesaid, that they presume not to obey her, or her admonitions, mandates, and laws; and those who shall do the contrary, we do innodate with the like sentence of ANATHEMA.

"Given at St. Peter's at Rome, in the year 1569, and the fifth of our pontificate." —Dowling's History of Romanism, p. 564.

One more: Sixtus V. thunders his bull of excommunication at this same Queen of England – incites Philip of Catholic Spain to make war against her country – and graciously gives the British Isles to Philip! Here is the bull of Pope Sixtus:

"We, Sixtus the Fifth, the universal shepherd of the flock of Christ, the supreme chief, to whom the government of the whole world appertains, considering that the people of England and Ireland, after having been so long celebrated for their virtues, their religion, and their submission to our see, have become putrid members, infected, and capable of corrupting the whole Christian body, and on account of their subjection to the impious, tyrannical, and sanguinary government of Elizabeth, the bastard queen, and by the influence of her adherents, who equal her in wickedness; and who refuse, like her, to recognize the power of the Roman Church: regarding that Henry VIII. formerly, for motives of debauchery, commenced all these disorders by revolting against the submission which he owed to the Pope, the sole and true sovereign of England; considering that the usurper Elizabeth has followed the path of this infamous king, we declare that there exists but one mode of remedying these evils, of restoring peace, tranquillity, and union to Christendom, of re-establishing religion, and of leading back the people to obedience to us, which is, to depose from the throne that execrable Elizabeth, who falsely arrogates to herself the title of Queen of the British Isles. Being then inspired by the Holy Spirit for the general good of the Church, we renew, by the virtue of our apostolic power, the sentence pronounced by our predecessor, Pius the Fifth and Gregory the Thirteenth, against the modern Jezebel: we proclaim her deprived of her royal authority, of the rights, titles, or pretensions to which she may lay claim over the kingdoms of Ireland and England, affirming that she possesses them unlawfully and by usurpation. We relieve all her subjects from the oaths they may have taken to her, and we prohibit them from rendering any kind of service to this execrable woman; it is our will, that she be driven from door to door like one possessed of a devil, and that all human aid be refused her; we declare, moreover, that foreigners or Englishmen are permitted, as a meritorious work, to seize the person of Elizabeth and surrender her, living or dead, to the tribunals of the inquisition. We promise to those who shall accomplish this glorious mission, infinite recompenses, not only in the life eternal, but even in this world. Finally, we grant plenary indulgence to the faithful who shall willingly unite with the Catholic army which is going to combat the impious Elizabeth, under the orders of our dear son Philip the Second, to whom we give the British Isles in full sovereignty, as a recompense for the zeal he has always shown toward our see, and for the particular affection he has shown for the Catholics of the Low Country." —De Cormenin's History of the Popes