Saul, King of Israel, intended to worship God in offering up a sacrifice. The Lord rejected him, because he offered it up against the law. His intention was good, but the action was criminal. Thus, the Lord would reject you, if, under pretence of a more free worship, you flocked to the standard of an enemy, rose up in rebellion against lawful authority, plundered your neighbour, and imbrued your hands in the blood of your fellow-subjects.

"Let none then say- We will have a Catholic king.' Subjects are little concerned in the religion of their governors. Thousands of Catholics lose their souls in Italy and France, after leading a loose and dissolute life; thousands of them work their salvation in the Protestant states of Holland and Germany. It is then equal to man what religion his neighbour or king be of, provided his own conscience be pure, and his life upright.

"The Prussian, Dutch, and Hanoverian Catholics live under Protestant governments, and join their sovereigns against Catholic powers. Their religion is the same with yours; and this religion enforces obedience to the king and magistrates under whom we live. Christ commanded tribute to be paid to a heathen prince, and acknowledged the temporal power of a heathen magistrate, who pronounced sentence of death against Him.

"Nero, sovereign of the world, rips open his mother's womb, and begins the first bloody persecution against the Christians, of whom seventeen thousand were slaughtered in one month, and their bodies, daubed over with pitch and tar, hung up to give light to the city. St. Paul, dreading that such horrid usage would force them to overturn the State, and join the enemies of the empire, writes to them in the following manner: 'Let every man be subject to the higher powers; and they that resist receive unto themselves damnation.' (Rom. xiii.) A strong conviction, then, that, in obeying

our rulers, we obey God (who leaves no virtue unrewarded, as He leaves no vice unpunished), sweetens the thoughts of subjection, and, under the hardest master, obedience is no longer a hardship to the true Christian.

"So great was the impression made by this doctrine on the minds of the primitive Christians-so great was their love for public order, that, although they filled the whole empire and all the armies, they never once flew out into any disorder. Under all the cruelties that the rage of persecutors could invent-amidst so many seditions and civil wars-amidst so many conspiracies against the persons of emperors, not a seditious Christian could be found.

"We have the same motives to animate our conduct; the same incentive to piety, godliness, and honesty; the same expectations that raise us above all earthly things, and put us beyond the reach of mortality. 'For here on earth,' says St. Paul, 'we have not a lasting city, but expect a better.' Let not public calamities, bloody wars, the scourges of heaven, and the judgments of God, be incentives to vice, plunder, rebellion, and murder, but rather the occasions of the reformation of our morals and spurs to repentance. Let religion, which, by patience, had triumphed over the Cæsars, and displayed the cross in the banners of kings, without sowing disorders in their realms, support itself without the accursed aid of insurrection and crimes. Far from expecting to enrich ourselves at the expense of justice and under the fatal shelter of clouds of confusion and troubles, let us seriously reflect that death will soon level the poor and the rich in the dust of the grave; that we are all to appear naked before the awful tribunal of Jesus Christ, to account for our actions; and that it is, by millions of times, more preferable to partake of the happiness of Lazarus, who was conveyed to Abraham's bosom, after a life of holiness and poverty,

than to be rich and wicked, and to share the fate of that unhappy man, who, dressed in purple, and after a life of opulence and ease, was refused a drop of water to allay his burning thirst. In expectation that you will comply with the instructions of your bishop and clergy, not only from dread of the laws, but, moreover, from the love and fear of God,

"I remain, my dear brethren,

"Your affectionate servant,

"ARTHUR O'LEARY.

CHAPTER IV.

O'Leary's Controversy with John Wesley-Their Subsequent Meeting at the House of a Mutual Friend-Wesley's Estimate of his Antagonist.

FEW men have ever displayed a more absorbing enthusiasm in the cause of religion, than the celebrated John Wesley. To that cause his whole life and labors were warmly and unreservedly devoted. He began in himself the culture of that piety which he would infuse into his followers. Such were his sincerity and energy and zeal, (unless, indeed, he was the profoundest of hypocrites,) that, had he belonged to the Catholic communion, it is the opinion of a great writer and profound thinker,* that he would have rivalled the Loyolas of that Church in the practices of piety and the veneration of the faithful. But it is our opinion that had he belonged to the Catholic Church, he would have learned to bear a milder and more charitable spirit than he is known to have manifested, towards the professors of a different religion from his own. True charity excludes arrogance and self-sufficiency, and coarse vituperation of those who refuse to coincide with one's peculiar views. In the history of our divine Redeemer, we find that He was never betrayed into the language of objurgation against any, save the hypocritical Pharisees. We should strive to win by gentleness rather than by coercion. The least

* "Place Ignatius Loyola at Oxford. He is certain to become the head of a formidable secession. Place John Wesley at Rome. He is certain to be the first general of a new society, devoted to the interests and honor of the Church."--Lord Macaulay's review of Ranke's Lives of the Popes.

convincing argument is abuse. To those maxims the conduct of Wesley was opposed. He allowed to himself the privilege, nay, he claimed for himself the conscientious obligation to depart from the fold of the Anglican Church; and yet, he could see no reason why his Catholic fellow-countrymen should refuse to belong to it. But reformers have ever been most intolerant of established opinions, and Wesley was no exception to the rule. The doctrines of the Catholic Church were beginning at this time to attract a greater share of attention than they had enjoyed since the Reformation. The growing mildness of legislation, and the relaxation of the penal laws, gave vent to the long pent-up influence of Catholic truth, and the friends of the Establishment began to fear for the results which that influence might exercise on their cherished institution. Far more just would have been their apprehensions of the wily devices and the stealthy inroads of Wesley; and, indeed, the effects of his moral invasion on the Anglican Church can be traced to the present day. Like an able general, he wished to divert popular attention from his secret projects, and to fix it on the manœuvres of a body whom the Anglicans and he regarded as a common enemy. There existed at this time in England a "Protestant Association," whose avowed object was, by all possible means, to deter the English Parliament from extending relief to the Roman Catholics. To promote their ends, they omitted no means that hatred or bigotry could suggest. They gathered to their assemblages the most violent fanatics of the day. Their cause had a most vociferous exponent in Parliament, in the person of the crack-brained Lord George Gordon. Strong in numbers only, they sadly needed some literary defence against able and learned antagonists, and the man who came forward to supply this want was no other than John Wesley. He published, in January, 1786, "A Letter