Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 1).djvu/401

Rh Catholics unite in a common interest, and that whatever be the belief and principles of your countryman and fellow-sufferer, you desire to benefit his cause, at the same time that you vindicate your own, be strong and unbiassed by selfishness or prejudice—for Catholics, your religion has not been spotless, crimes in past ages have sullied it with a stain, which let it be your glory to remove. Nor Protestants, hath your religion always been characterized by the mildness of benevolence, which Jesus Christ recommended. Had it anything to do with the present subject I could account for the spirit of intolerance, which marked both religions; I will, however, only adduce the fact, and earnestly exhort you to root out from your own minds every thing which may lead to uncharitableness, and to reflect that yourselves, as well as your brethren, may be deceived. Nothing on earth is infallible. The Priests that pretend to it, are wicked and mischievous impostors; but it is an imposture which every one, more or less, assumes, who encourages prejudice in his breast against those who differ from him in opinion, or who sets up his own religion as the only right and true one, when no one is so blind as to see that every religion is right and true, which makes men beneficent and sincere. I therefore, earnestly exhort both Protestants and Catholics to act in brotherhood and harmony, never forgetting, because the Catholics alone are heinously deprived of religious rights, that the Protestants and a certain rank of people, of every persuasion, share with them all else that is terrible galling and intolerable in the mass of political grievance.