charges, supposing they were true, but to show that they are not founded. If I admitted the premises, I should readily agree in all the consequences drawn from them. Vanity, indeed, is a venial error, for it usually carries its own punishment with it;—but if I thought Junius capable of uttering a disrespectful word of the religion of his country, I should be the first to renounce and give him up to the public contempt and indignation. As a man, I am satisfied that he is a christian, upon the most sincere conviction: as a writer, he would be grossly inconsistent with his political principles, if he dared to attack a religion, established by those laws, which it seems to be the purpose of his life to defend. Now for the proofs.—Junius is accused of an impious allusion to the holy sacrament, where he says, that, if Lord Weymouth be denied the cup, there would be no keeping him within the pale of the ministry. Now, sir, I affirm, that this passage refers entirely to a ceremonial in the Roman Catholic Church, which denies the cup to the laity. It has no manner of relation to the protestant creed; and is in this country as fair an object of ridicule as transubstantiation, or any other part of Lord Peter's History, in the Tale of a Tub.
