BOSWELL AND JOHN WESLEY

SIE,-The choice of Barabbas has a precedent, even, one supposes, as a pen-name. Your correspondent quotes James Boswell writing that Fr. O'Leary gave Wesley 'a hearty drubbing." So far as it goes the quotation is true. But Batabbas omits the reservation Boswell placed upon the report : "But 1 should think myself very unworthy, if I did not at the same time acknowledge Mr. John Wesley's merit. as a veteran 'Soldier of Jesus Christ,' who has. I do believe, turned many from darkness into light, and from the power of Satan to the living God." The remarks occur in a note upon Johnson's opinion that "Wesley thought only of religion."
If your correspondents, who appear to wish that Catholics and their fellow-Christians confront each other like opposing gangs, care to read a little of the history of the religioud condition of the English poor in the 17th and 18th centuries, they may come to agree that Wesley attempted out of darkness to reform the reformers' work. He was a great man and devoted to God.
He must rest in peace when those who assault his memory choose the masks of Torquemada and Barabbas.
Igoe.
60 Frith Street, London, W.I.