and from the power of _Satan_ to
the living GOD' [_Acts_, xxvi. 18]. BOSWELL. Wesley wrote on Nov. 11,
1775 (_Journal_, iv. 56), 'I made some additions to the _Calm Address to
our American Colonies_. Need any one ask from what motive this was
wrote? Let him look round; England is in a flame! a flame of malice and
rage against the King, and almost all that are in authority under him. I
labour to put out this flame.' He wrote a few days later:--'As to
reviewers, news-writers, _London Magazines_, and all that kind of
gentlemen, they behave just as I expected they would. And let them lick
up Mr. Toplady's spittle still; a champion worthy of their cause.'
_Journal_, p. 58. In a letter published in Jan. 1780, he said:--'I
insist upon it, that no government, not Roman Catholic, ought to
tolerate men of the Roman Catholic persuasion. They ought not to be
tolerated by any government, Protestant, Mahometan, or Pagan.' To this
the Rev. Arthur O'Leary replied with great wit and force, in a pamphlet
entitled, _Remarks on the Rev. Mr. Wesley's Letters_. Dublin, 1780.
Wesley (_Journal_, iv. 365) mentions meeting O'Leary, and says:--'He
seems not to be wanting either in sense or learning.' Johnson wrote to
Wesley on Feb. 6, 1776 (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 475), 'I have thanks to
return you for the addition of your important suffrage to my argument on
the American question. To have gained such a mind as yours may justly
confirm me in my own opinion. What effect my paper has upon the public,
I know not; but I have no reason to be discouraged. The lecturer was
surely in the right, who, though he saw his audience slinking away,
refused to quit the chair while Plato staid.'

[86] 'Powerful preacher as he was,' writes Southey, 'he had neither
strength nor acuteness of intellect, and his written compositions are
nearly worthless.' Southey's _Wesley,_ i. 323. See _ante_, ii. 79.

[87] Mr. Burke. See _ante_, ii. 222, 285, note 3, and iii. 45.

[88] If due attention were paid to this observation, there would be more
virtue, even in politicks. What Dr. Johnson justly condemned, has, I am
sorry to say, greatly increased in the present reign. At the distance of
four years from this conversation, 21st February, 1777, My Lord
Archbishop of York, in his 'sermon before the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,' thus indignantly describes
the then state of parties:--'Parties once had a _principle_ belonging
to them, absurd perhaps,