Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 1).djvu/370

322 that shews its piety in good works, and not in ceremonies, or confessions, or burials, or processions, or wonders. Take care then, that you are not led away. Doubt every thing that leads you not to charity, and think of the word "heretic" as a word which some selfish knave invented for the ruin and misery of the world, to answer his own paltry and narrow ambition. Do not inquire if a man be a heretic, if he be a Quaker, or a Jew, or a Heathen; but if he be a virtuous man, if he loves liberty and truth, if he wish the happiness and peace of human kind. If a man be ever so much a believer and love not these things, he is a heartless hypocrite, a rascal, and a knave. Despise and hate him, as ye despise a tyrant and a villain. Oh! Ireland, thou emerald of the ocean, whose sons are generous and brave, whose daughters are honorable, and frank, and fair; thou art the isle on whose green shores I have desired to see the standard of liberty erected, a flag of fire, a beacon at which the world shall light the torch of Freedom!

We will now examine the Protestant Religion. Its origin is called the Reformation. It was undertaken by some bigotted men, who showed how little they understood the spirit of Reform, by burning each other. You will observe that these men burnt each other, indeed they universally betrayed a taste for destroying, and vied with the chiefs of the Roman Catholic Religion, in not only hating their enemies, but those men, who least of all were their enemies, or any body's enemies. Now, do the Protestants, or do they not hold the same tenets as they did when Calvin burnt Servetus, they swear that they do. We can have no better proof. Then with what face can the Protestants object to Catholic Emancipation, on the