his sister Anne was twelve months old; so that the tale of his father's absence from home for a whole year falls to the ground. The strength and tenacity of Mrs. Wesley's political feelings is shown by passages in her "Occasional Papers," written two or three years later. The country was at war, and the object of Marlborough's campaigns was to break the power of France, though there were some special pleaders who declared that their end and aim was the preservation of Protestantism. "As for the security of our religion," she writes, "I take that to be a still more unjustifiable pretence for war than the other. For, notwithstanding some men of a singular complexion may persuade themselves, I am of opinion that as our Saviour's Kingdom is not of this world, so it is never lawful to take up arms merely in defence of religion. It is like the presumption of Uzzah, who audaciously stretched out his hand to support the tottering ark ; which brings to mind those verses of no ill poet:
In such a cause 'tis fatal to embark,
Like the bold Jew, that propped the falling ark;
With an unlicensed hand he durst approach,
And, though to save, yet it was death to touch.
And truly the success of our arms hitherto has no way justified our attempt; but though God has not much seemed to favour our enemies, yet neither hath He altogether blest our forces. But though there is often many reasons given for an action, yet there is commonly but one true reason that determines our practice, and that, in this case, I take to be the securing those that were the instruments of the Revolution from the resentments of their angry master, and the preventing his return and settling the succession in an
