Wesley Corpus

14. But let not his Lordship, or any other, continue to put persecution in the place of reason; either private perse cution, stirring up husbands to threaten or beat their wives, parents their children, masters their servants; gentlemen to ruin their tenants, labourers, or tradesmen, by turning them out of their farms or cottages, employing or buying of them no more, because they worship God according to their own conscience; or open, barefaced, moonday, Cork persecution, breaking open the houses of His Majesty’s Protestant subjects, destroying their goods, spoiling or tearing the very clothes from their backs; striking, bruising, wounding, murdering them in the streets; dragging them through the mire, without any regard to either age or sex; not sparing even those of tender years; no, nor women, though great with child; but, with more than Pagan or Mahometan barbarity, destroying infants that were yet unborn. 15. Ought these things so to be? Are they right before God or man? Are they to the honour of our nation? I appeal unto Caesar; unto His gracious Majesty King George, and to the Governors under him, both in England and Ireland. I appeal to all true, disinterested lovers of this their native country. Is this the way to make it a flourishing nation? happy at home, amiable and honourable abroad? Men of Ireland, judge | Nay, and is not there not some weight in that additional consideration,--that this is not a concern of a private nature? Rather, is it not a common cause ? If the dams are once broken down, if you tamely give up the fundamental laws of your country, if these are openly violated in the case of your fellow-subjects, how soon may the case be your own | For what protection then have any of you left for either your liberty or property? What security for either your goods or lives, if a riotous mob is to be both judge, jury, and executioner? 16. Protestants! What is become of that liberty of conscience for which your forefathers spent their blood? Is it not an empty shadow, a mere, unmeaning name, if these things are suffered among you? Romans, such of you as are calm and candid men, do you approve of these proceedings? I cannot think you yourselves would use such methods of convincing us, if we think amiss.