Wesley Corpus

Have pity upon your own | Have pity upon yourselves, upon your children, and upon all that are near and dear to you ! Let us not bite and devour one another, lest we be consumed one of another ! O let us follow after peace | Let us put away our sins ! the real ground of all our calamities; which never will or can be thoroughly removed, till we fear God and honour the King! A SERMoN preached by Dr. Smith, in Philadelphia, has been lately reprinted in England. It has been much admired, but proceeds all along upon wrong suppositions. These are confuted in the preceding tract; yet I would just touch upon them again. Dr. Smith supposes, 1. They have a right of granting their own money; that is, of being exempt from taxation by the supreme power. If they “contend for” this, they contend for neither more nor less than independency. Why then do they talk of their “rightful Sovereign?” They acknowledge no Sovereign at all. That they contend for “the cause of liberty,” is another mistaken supposition. What liberty do you want, either civil or religious? Youhad the very same liberty we have in England. I say you had; but you have now thrown away the substance, and retain only the shadow. You have no liberty, civil or religious, now, but what the Congress pleases to allow. But you justly suppose, “We are by a plain original contract entitled to a community of privileges, with our trethren that reside in England, in every civil and religious respect.” (Page 19.) Most true. And till you appointed your new sovereigns, you enjoyed all those privileges. Indeed you had no vote for members of Parliament; neither have I, because I have no freehold in England. Yet the being taxed by the Parliament is no infringement either of my civil or religious liberty. And why have you no representatives in Parliament? Did you ever desire them? But you say again, “No power on earth has a right to grant our property without our consent.” (Page 22.) Then you have no Sovereign; for every Sovereign under heaven has a right to tax his subjects; that is, “to grant their property, with or without their consent.” Our Sove reign” has a right to tax me, and all other Englishmen, whether we have votes for Parliament-men or no.