sympathize with it. And, sir, more of the ministers of
other denominations than you seem to be aware of, have either attached
themselves to this party, "in the mutations of parties," or act with it,
and endorse its aims and objects, than you have yet dreamed of! And "it
seems strange" to these ministers, and thousands of the purest and best
laymen in the Protestant ranks, "that any minister or professor of
religion should be willing longer" to oppose the principles of this
party, or array themselves under the black flag of Papal Rome, and of
the pauper emigrants with whom she is flooding our land! But, sir, the
object of your Address is, to persuade if you can, and if not, _to
drive_, by motives of fear, the Clergy of the Methodist Church from
their position on this great American and Protestant question. Alas, how
little does the "son of a sainted father" understand the material he
attempts to work upon! Methodist ministers are free men, the equals of
other moral and upright men in heroic virtues, and far in advance of
that of politicians in Tennessee who believe parties in religion, as in
politics, are only "held together by the cohesive power of public
plunder," and who assume to direct public opinion from a principle, of
which _selfishness_ is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end!
Sir, the violence, bitterness, and the very inflammatory tone, not to
say language, of your Gallatin, Lebanon, and Columbia speeches, are
enough, it seems to me, to _nauseate_ every good and conservative
citizen, and to disgust every "Bishop, Elder, and other Ministers,
Itinerant and Local, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South." Even in
this Address, you insult these ministers on every page. I see not how
any preacher, with a true Protestant and American heart in him, can read
this address of yours through, without rising up from his seat and
saying: "I have voted with this Anti-Protestant and Anti-American party
for the last time."

In warning Methodist ministers to withdraw their sanction and
approbation of Know Nothingism, you say:

"I therefore call upon them this day to come out of these
lodges, and never return to them: at all events, never return
to them until all _secrecy_, all their bits of red paper,
(indicating _blood_, even by the selection of color,) all their
signs and signals, are utterly abolished and dispensed with. I
call upon them to do this, and to do it forthwith--by their