There God hath been pleased more clearly to reveal himself, than anywhere besides. There we have the great mystery of divine love, in the redemption of the world by Christ Jesus our Lord made known to us; the excellencies of piety and virtue described in the most affecting language; the truest perfection, and the extremest misery, of man explained; rules for obtaining eternal life and blessedness laid down; and most gracious promises and unspeakable rewards, to encourage us in our endeavours after it. All which things even the angels desire to look into, and admire the divine goodness which impregnates all. And if we would but make this word of God our study, and be diligently conversant in reading the Scriptures, we should more and more be sensible that there is no book like this; and that an excellent expedient to keep wicked thoughts out of our hearts, would be to read the Scriptures much and often, with meekness, prayer, and attention, instead of those vain, foolish, and unprofitable, or else profane, wicked, or obscene, writings, of such as call themselves the wits of the age.— Chilcot.

METHODISM IN FORMER DAYS.

No. XXXII.-THE OXFORD METHODISTS.

(Concluded from page 763.)

BEING thus abundantly satisfied in whatever I desired to know relating to these gentlemen, after having made sincere acknowledgments for his frankness and candour, I left the gentleman and the city, not without assuring him of my hearty prayers for the success of their pious designs, and for their perseverance therein, and prudent conduct amidst so many opponents and gainsayers. Not forgetting to drop a small largess towards promoting their pious and charitable design.

Give me leave, Sir, now to make a few observations on the premises, and on the letter in "Fog's Journal," which gave occasion to this inquiry; which has ended so much to my (as, I doubt not, it will to your) satisfaction.

As to the first, though it cannot be expected, that these young gentlemen should gain any number to join them, in such an age as this; † yet if they do nothing but what is strictly their duty, who shall venture to condemn them? By the plain account I have given of their proceedings, the truth of which I cannot find disputed by their warmest opponents at Oxford, we perceive them to be well justified by the rules of the Gospel. And, if this be the case, it is no great credit to the persons, or compliment to the age, that so great a number treat them on the foot of enthusiasts and zealots. It looks as if the strict rules of primitive Christianity were removed a great

* See Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine, vol. i., p. 237. Fourth Series.

Little did the writer conceive what a century would produce. Here was the germ of a luxuriant vegetation; the acorn rising out of the earth, which, in the fulness of time, was to spread its branches and overshadow idolatrous nations.

Mr. Morgan placed his surviving son under the care of Mr. Charles Wesley, at Christ-Church, Oxon. He was neither pious nor governable, so that Charles was glad to transfer him to the care of John. And he wrote to Mr. Law for advice how to act in his case. See Wesley's Works, vol. xii., p. 48. Third Edition.

way out of sight, that we are not able to behold the least attempt towards reviving them without wonder and offence. The letter charges them with observing Wednesdays and Fridays every week, as fasts;* but if they observe the Wednesday as matter of prudence, and the Friday as matter of duty, enjoined by our own Church, where is the offence, where the crime, where the cause for all this clamour? Have they not a title to act with the same freedom, in their own case, as any one has to differ from them, and to be of a contrary opinion? But, what is still more in their favour, we find by what I have related, that they are not governed by caprice and whimsy, by their own opinions and fancies only: they have submitted their conduct, and taken the advice of men of noted piety, good sense, riper years, and experience, and have had their approbation and prayers too, in every material step they have taken; which is, perhaps, a point that if their adversaries had known, they would have been a little more sparing of their reproaches and raillery, at least, of that part which lays to their charge opinionatry and singularity. The knowledge of this might have made them silent and reflect.

As for the letter which gave birth to the inquiry that has occasioned these lines, I will bestow a few remarks upon it; though I am persuaded, that, for the writer's sake, it were much better it were entirely forgotten; for I am sorry to say, that it discovers a want of good sense, good manners, and Christian charity, and shows as much zeal in a bad cause, as those gentlemen express in a good one.

He compares them to the Pietists in Saxony and Switzerland, and to the Essenes among the Jews. By this he discovers his ignorance; and let him (for I have not room, nor do you want, Sir, to be informed in this case) recollect the rules of those sectaries, and compare them not with what he says is thought, but what he may inform himself really is, and what I have related to be, these gentlemen's method, and he will find the vast disparity between them. He will find that the "Methodists," as he calls them, set up no new doctrines, but only endeavour to follow such as they find already laid down in the holy Gospel; no rules but what are conformable to that; and pretend only to govern themselves by such methods as they find prescribed to them in common with all Christians, and not which they themselves prescribe and impose on one another, as several new sects have done with great singularity and affectation. Indeed, thus far, perhaps, they may be compared to the Essenes among the Jews: that is, in the simplicity of their diet, and regularity of their life; by which, as Josephus witnesses, (cap. viii. De Bell. Jud.,) "it was usual for many of that sect to attain to an hundred years of age.' And, if it shall please God to give these gentlemen the grace to persevere, and the blessing of so long a life, they may be a means of reforming a vicious world, and may rejoice in the good they have done, perhaps half a century after most of their social opponents, the gay scoffers of the present generation, are laid low, and forgotten, as if they had never been. But, you will agree with me, Sir, that the letter-writer intended them not this fairest side of the comparison; but was willing to show his reading, though at the expense of his judgment and his charity.

* "Two points," says Mr. Wesley, "we had before observed,-doing what good we could, and communicating as often as we had opportunity. To these, by the advice of Mr. Clayton, we added a third, the observing the fasts of the Church." (Wesley's Works, 3d edit., vol. i., p 13.)

"They avoid," says he, "as much as is possible, every object that may affect them with any pleasant and grateful sensation." I am sorry this ungenerous writer is unable to judge of the pleasing and grateful sensations (if one may use so low a word for so high a purpose) that arise from the conscience of having relieved the miserable. What can inspire a nobler and more exalted pleasure, than to see, by what is spared from our luxury and superfluities, the hungry fed, the sick relieved, the naked clothed, the oppressed mind cheered and made glad, the prisoner enlarged, and the mouths of even the profligate taught to overflow with praises, and to sing thanksgivings to that gracious Providence which has put it into the hearts of these generous youths to comfort and relieve them, both with regard to temporals and spirituals? Who can hear the lisping children of the poor taught to acknowledge the God that made them, and to instruct, by the repetition, even their abject and untaught parents, in the principal duties of the Christian religion, without being affected with joy and transport, far exceeding that which results from the short-lived pleasures which this grovelling writer appears to esteem so grateful and pleasing? I will venture to affirm, and I am sorry the letter-writer is unable to judge of it, that there is more true and solid satisfaction arising to a generous mind, from the doing a kind and beneficent action to his fellow-creatures that want his assistance, and languish in the absence of the common comforts of life, than from all that can be found from the most affecting pleasures of sense. He knows nothing of the seraphic pleasure of having cheered the drooping spirit, and comforted the desponding heart; a pleasure which makes the eye of the generous man to glisten with joy, and his enlarged heart to bound in his bosom, and overflow in praises to the divine power which has enabled him to do the good he rejoices in. How falsely, how perversely are such persons as these called "sons of sorrow," and men who doom themselves to an absurd and perpetual melancholy! Or rather, how much are these scoffers to be pitied, who cannot rise to a capacity of comprehending the ecstatic pleasures which hourly fill the minds of those they so rashly condemn, and which are inseparable from the consciousness of having done some part of the duty required of them by the Author of their being, in acts of beneficence to their fellow-creatures!

He proceeds, "All social entertainments and diversions are disapproved of." How can that be, when they themselves are a society; and the diversions and entertainments which they choose, are of the noblest nature, and must be heightened by communication? But may we venture to judge what the letter-writer means by social entertainments and diversions? Are they not those of the social bottle, and what flows from the company and conversation of persons of such a ludicrous turn of mind as his own? But let him remember, that every one is not entertained or diverted alike. One man may think very meanly of that which is the highest gratification to another, as this writer finds in the present case. I will answer for it, that these gentlemen think they enjoy all social entertainments and diversions in as high a degree, at the least, as the letter-writer, though perhaps they would not care to take them at his choice, and it is likely could not in his company. They think it, doubtless, a great pleasure to save money from such social entertainments and diversions as he speaks of, to bestow on the much more noble purposes, which the letter-writer disapproves, ridicules, and does his utmost endeavour to disparage, and render ineffectual; and this, without provocation, for his entertainment and diversion only. A noble diversion, truly, to sport with the reputation of others, and to

ridicule the good intentions of persons it would much better become him to endeavour to imitate!

“And, in endeavouring to avoid luxury," pursues he, "they not only exclude what is convenient;" that is, what the letter-writer thinks convenient, but what these gentlemen perhaps think superfluous. And who is the properest judge in this case; he for them, or they for themselves? But if they are not superfluous in the esteem of either, suppose they think they spare what they can, and therefore ought to do without, for the sake of supplying with necessaries those who are in actual want: ought they, for this, to be made the subject of licentious raillery? "They not only exclude what is convenient, but what is absolutely necessary for the support of life." Absurd railer! how then do they live, if they deny themselves what is absolutely necessary for the support of life? But, it will be said, this expression is to be taken with allowance: but shall he be entitled to allowance, who makes none, where all manner of allowances are due, and where the best intention must, at least, be granted, and his acknowledged the worst, that of ridiculing acts of piety and charity? He goes on: "Fancying" (as is thought) "that religion was designed to contradict nature." A strange fancy truly! that nature, which is averse from all evil, and inclined to all good, ought to be contradicted! that the Christian religion should raise us above it, and make our nature such as it came out of the hands of its Creator! He adds, "They neglect and voluntarily afflict their bodies, and practise several rigorous and superfluous customs, which God never required of them. All Wednesdays and Fridays are strictly to be kept as fasts,* and blood let once a fortnight to keep down the carnal man," says this abandoned droll. But let us proceed with his barbarous and ill-timed levity, and let the repetition of it make the scoffer blush, if he be capable of it: "And at dinner they sigh for the time they are obliged to spend in eating; every morning to rise at four o'clock, is supposed a duty; and to employ two hours a day in singing of psalms and hymns," (dreadful charges these, were they true!) "is judged as an indispensable duty, requisite to the being of a Christian. In short, they practise every thing contrary to the judgment of other persons, and allow none to have any, but those of their own sect, which" (says this round assertor)" is farthest from it." Half this censure, though from a professed enemy, is real praise; and the rest is so contrary to truth, such shameful and low scurrility, and is so sufficiently contradicted by what I have related, that the farther notice of it is entirely unnecessary.

The pattern which he says they propose to take from Origen, and the whole paragraph thereupon, is too foolish and absurd to merit observation; but only as it serves to show what manner of spirit this writer is of, and that he has not, if one may judge by that and another virulent hint he gives, a capacity sufficient to qualify him so much as for a tolerable buffoon. This abominable hint is a mark of the most detestable spirit of calumny and detraction that was ever seen; and I would refer it to the conscience of the writer, since he can thus stab in the dark, and dares not fix his name to the horrid scandal, how he would be content to bear this sort of usage himself. By such a spirit as this man's were the first opposers of Christianity acted. Their enemies reported, that the primitive Christians were guilty of incests, and the most abominable pollutions, in their assemblies; that they killed and ate young infants, &c. And let both

* Wesley's Works, 3d edit., vol. vii., p. 288.

parts of the parallel have due force: this detractor's, to that of the malignant Heathen; theirs, to the innocent and stigmatized first Christians; to which both bear so near a resemblance.

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But hear another instance of the absurdity and folly of the letter-writer: Some," says he, are apt to ascribe their gloomy and disconsolate way of life to want of money: thus being denied the enjoyment of those pleasures they chiefly desire, they are weighed down by an habitual sorrow." Was ever anything more absurd? Their gloomy way of life is owing to want of money, and therefore they throw it away, (as this author would be thought to reckon it, in good books, Bibles, Catechisms, Whole Duty of Man, &c.,) and give it to the poor, to the prisoners, to the sick, &c. The matter of fact is, First, They do not think their way of life either disconsolate or gloomy; but, as religion itself, as is before observed, is the most cheerful thing in the world, both as to cause and effects, so they enjoy so happy a serenity of mind, that even the undeserved calumnies of such an adversary, and the unprovoked ill-treatment of their more significant opposers, cannot disturb it; though, as far as I can find, they would be glad to be otherwise thought of. Secondly, They have a constant enjoyment of those pleasures they chiefly desire, and are under no other concern, than that they have not a capacity as large as their inclinations, to do still more good to those that want it. And, Thirdly, They are so far from being weighed down with an habitual sorrow, that he himself accuses them, in another place, of bestowing two hours every day in singing of psalms and hymns* to the Almighty; which, no doubt, if they do, is from a cheerful sense of the blessings He heaps upon them, and for influencing them by his divine grace to do all the good which is in their power. And this, according to this writer, is to be weighed down by an habitual sorrow.

He thinks, yes, even this detractor thinks, it would be too presumptuous to tax their character with hypocrisy; though he absurdly makes this concession introduce the vile insinuation I have hinted at, and which is really too shocking to be repeated.

As to the character into which he resolves the matter at last, to wit, of "enthusiastic madness," of "superstitious scrupulousness," of "folly," &c., that has been taken notice of already in the course of the narration, and I shall say nothing to it here. They must be content to tarry for a better character from such persons as this writer, till time, and their own continued good conduct, and perseverance in the same laudable duties, have worn off the imputation, and given the world a better and juster opinion of them.

But to throw away one moment more upon this judicious writer. We find his charge, in the main, of the same nature with that of the angry gentleman above mentioned, to his son, who makes their virtues their faults; namely, "That the young gentlemen frequently went into poor people's houses, called their children together, instructed them in their duty to God, taught them their prayers and catechism, and gave them money," &c. This indeed, to our modern Christians, who place all religion, as well as prayer, in a dead indifference, or, at best, in mere harmlessness, cannot but seem extremely odd and strange. But to those who but look into the Bible, or have ever dipped into Cave's "Primitive Christianity," it will, at first sight, appear plain to a demonstration, that the method practised by

*They some years after published a small pocket edition of them, 1738. See Jackson's Life of Charles Wesley, vol. i., p. 118.