s of Methodist, and other
Ministers, are very wicked and unpromising men; and it is equally true,
and certainly notorious, that where they turn out to be sinners, they
are sinners above all offenders, dwelling either at Jerusalem or
elsewhere! I have no hesitancy in pronouncing you as _hard a case_, in a
moral point of view, as ever came before the Church, and the only
appropriate reply her ecclesiastical dignitaries can make to your
address, is to appoint a day of fasting and prayer to God, for your
conversion, to be observed throughout her borders. I now, as the
appointed organ of the Church, set apart the first day of January, 1856,
and I pray you, as one desiring the salvation of your soul, to be in the
spirit and in a proper frame of mind on that day! Humble yourself before
God--tell him that you were in error in stealing the livery of Heaven to
serve the Devil in! Tell him that you are an old worn-out political
hack--that you have grown gray in the service of sin--that during the
whole of a somewhat eventful life, your labors have been in the dirtiest
pools of party politics--that you have been insincere and unscrupulous
in all your teachings and acts--that you stand before the people of
Tennessee publicly branded by _eight_ respectable and reliable citizens
of Wilson county, as a _falsifier_ in the Know Nothing controversy of
the past summer--and that you are sorry for having come forth steeped to
the nose and chin in political profligacy, to lecture grave Clergymen
upon subjects you ought to set at their feet and learn lessons about!
Tell your God, what he doubtless knows, that though the "son of a now
sainted father," you are as full of devils as ever Mary Magdalene
was--that like the "Imps of Sin," in Milton, these "yelp all around"
you--that this is no reflection upon a "now sainted father," whose
seeming neglect of your early training grew out of his continual absence
from home, as is the case with most Methodist Preachers,--aye, tell your
God, that once out of this scrape, you will never be caught in another
of the kind! You say,

"From the foundation of our government, it has been a conceded
and settled doctrine, that the various religious denominations
should not, as such, intermeddle with the political contests of
the day. No instance is now remembered where they have done
so!"

This is a remarkable sentence, and partakes of the nature of your Wilson
county assertions! The hist