Christian " night entertainments," till next month; when it is most likely, if I do not hear from you in the mean time, I shall resume the subject. Till then, I remain,

Your humble Servant,

LETTER X.

TO DR. ADAM CLARKE.

SIR,

I feel great pleasure in announcing to you, that this day completes the first of those three years, which the Christian Judge, Newman Knowlys, has allotted me to remain in "durance vile:" and, I trust, that before the other two years have expired, he will be made fully sensible, if he be not already, of the imprudence, as well as of the injustice, of persecuting and consigning to a gloomy prison honest men for matters of opinion. If not, let him beware of the "day of retribution." Think not, Sir, that an honest, undaunted, and injured man, who fears neither death, nor imaginary punishment, will, ever submit to bear such wrongs without indulging a hope of REVENGE. It is only this pleasing hope, I do assure you, Sir, that enables me to bear my imprisonment with any degree of fortitude, and stimulates within me a desire to prolong my existence, in this state of wretchedness and misery. Jesus said, love your enemies; but as this precept is not observed by his followers, it cannot be expected that I, who am no follower of his, should render to it any obedience. No, Sir, nature forbids it. I must, therefore, declare myself an irreconcileable enemy, not only to Newman Knowlys, my Christian Judge, but likewise to George Maule, my Christian persecutor; he being the known agent of an unknown power. The soldier receives honour and reward for taking away the lives of men who have never done him the least injury. Surely, man will at least be justified, in avenging himself on those who have done him the greatest possible injury that one man can do towards another, namely, unjustly depriving him of his liberty.

V

Had not the pretended believers in those fabulous tales, persecuted me into a prison, I doubt whether you would have been ever troubled with these my observations: a prison being the most convenient place that a mechanic can have for propagating his opinions. Hence, the production of almost all those works, which fools and interested men, have proclaimed so obnoxious; they having been either composed or translated within the walls of a prison.

The men who are persecuted, without being convinced, in general you find to be more pertinacious in maintaining their opinions, than those who are treated with contempt. Though neither the one nor the other are proper means to convince them of their error, or to instruct their ignorance. Nothing but fair argument and free discussion can, or ever will, distinguish truth from error. And to quarrel with a man because he does not think as you think, is as ridiculous, as one man wrangling with and ill-treating another, because his opponent is something shorter or taller than himself: neither case being at the discretion, nor under the controul of any man, as I have already shown you in my last letter. Man must think as his own ideas, notions, or sensations, resulting from his peculiar organization compel him.

We find that the age has now arrived, when the minds of men, being expanded, are become more susceptible to the finer feelings of humanity, than to deprive a fellow-creature of the use of pen, ink, and paper; although he may be incarcerated in a dungeon for the most detestable or atrocious crime: which privilege cannot be ascribed to the principles of Christianity, but to the rise and progress of the Arts and Sciences. For, prior to the knowledge and growth of these, when Christianity was in the plentitude of its power, we are informed from authenticated history, that nothing less than burning, or the most excruciating tortures were employed, to compel a man to say he believed in that which his reasoning faculties assured him was false. You may reply, that those cruelties were only practised by that sect of persons called

Catholics, which I acknowledge to be the prevailing opinion. But, have you not read of that monster of blood and sensuality, called Charles the Second? whose restoration to the crown of England, is commemorated every year by public thanksgivings, prayers, and tokens of rejoicing among the Protestant priests. He had the cruelty, as well as the ingratitude to oppress, and persecute, not only to a prison, but to the most cruel deaths, those men you call Catholics: notwithstanding the many obligations he was under to them, for preserving his life at the hazard of their own, during his concealment. Look at the fate of Edward Coleman, Ireland, Pickering, Grove, &c., who were led to an ignominious death, merely because they were Papists. And many others were charged with some fictitious crime or other, by the emissaries of this Protestant monarch; and, notwithstanding the palpable falsehood's of their accusers, and the undeniable evidence of their innocence, yet, because they were Papists, no law nor justice could they obtain; suffer they must. Witness the fate of Hill, Green, Berry, Whitbread, and a number of others, who suffered the most cruel deaths, in the reign of this Protestant monster.

That you may not think that I have no just ground for charging the Protestants with such cruelties towards the Catholics, I will take the liberty of digressing a little from the life of Jesus, by inserting a note which Samuel Butler, who was a contemporary of K. Charles II, has introduced into his historical Memoirs of the English Catholics; from Dr. Challoner's Memoirs of Missionary Priests, vol. xi. page 215, and which was copied into the Dorset County Chronicle, of May 19, 1825, as follows:

"This note contains the account of a martydom that took place near the town of Dorchester, in the reign of Charles II.; a martyrdom that, in the horrors of cruelty outhorrors all the horrible executions which the lying Fox has recorded, to disgrace the Catholic religion, and equals, if not surpasses, the blood-chilling tortures inflicted by the Pagan tyrants of Rome, on the Primitive Saints of the most High God.