begat Deism, and Deism begat Atheism; and living and dying in the embracement of every of the above evils or isms, where Christ is, they never can come. Thus I consider that Arminianism is the original of all the pernicious doctrines that are propagated in the world, and Destructionism will close the whole of them."-Gospel Magazine, 1807, p. 16.

"Of the two (says Hunt-ington the S. S.) I would rather be a Deist than an Arminian; for an established Deist sears his own conscience, so that he goes to hell in the easy chair of insensibility; but the Arminian who wages war with open eyes against the sovereignty of God, fights most of his battles in the very fears and horrors of bell."-Hunt-ington's Works, vol. i. p. 363.

"The sons of bondage," says a red hot Antinomian, who signs himself Rufus, "like Satan and his compeers, are unsatisfied with slavery themselves, unless they can entice others into the same dilemma. They are for ever forging their accursed fetters for the sons of God in the hot flames of Sinai's fiery vengeance; and in the hypocritical age of the nineteenth century, pour forth whole troops of work-mongers, commonly known by the name of Moderate Calvinists, who, under an incredible profession of sanctity, lie in wait to deceive; and by their much fair speeches entrap the unwary pilgrims into the domains of Doubting castle, binding them within those solitary ruins to the legal drudgery of embracing the moral or preceptive law, as the rule of their lives."

Upon the subject of election, there is a tremendous rant by a writer who calls himself Ebenezer. "Before sin can destroy any one of God's elect it must change the word of truth into a lie-strip Jesus Christ of all his merit-render his blood inefficacious-pollute his righteousness-contaminate his nature-conquer his omnipotence-cast him from his throne-and sink him in the abyss of perdition; it must turn the love of God into hatred-nullify the council of the Most High-destroy the everlasting covenant-and make void the oath of Jehovah-nay, it must raise discord amongst the divine attributes-make Father, Son, and Spirit, unfaithful to each other, and set them at variancechange the divine nature-wrest the sceptre from the hand of the Almighty-dethrone him-and put a period to his existence. Till it has done all this, we boldly say unto the redeemed, fear not, for we shall not be ashamed; neither be dismayed, for you shall not be confounded."-Gospel Magazine, 1804, p. 287.

"He too," says

NOTE XXXII. Page 180.

Young Grimshaw.

Mr. Wesley," is now gone into eternity! So, in a few years, the family is extinct. I preached in a meadow, near the house, to a numerous congregation; and we sang with one heart

Let sickness blast and death devour,

If Heaven will recompense our pains;
Perish the grass, and fade the flower,
Since firm the word of God remains.

NOTE XXXIII. Page 235.

Wesley's Doctrine concerning Riches.

Upon this subject, Mr. Wesley has preserved a fine anecdote. "Beware," he says, " of forming a hasty judgment concerning the fortune of others. There may be secrets in the situation of a person, which few but God are acquainted with. Some years since, I told a gentleman, Sir, I am afraid you are covetous. He asked me, What is the reason of your fears? I answered, A year ago, when I made a collection for the expense of repairing the Foundry, you subscribed five guineas. At the subscription made this year, you subscribed only half a guinea. He made no reply; but after a time asked, Pray, Sir, answer me a question:why do you live upon potatoes, (I did so between three and four years.) I replied, It has much conduced to my health. He answered, I believe it has. But did you not do it likewise to save money? I said, I did, for what I save from my own meat, will feed another that else would have none.-But, Sir, said he, if this be your motive, you may save much more. I know a man that goes to the market at the beginning of every week. There he buys a pennyworth of parsnips, which he boils in a large quantity of water. The parsnips serve him for food, and the water for drink the ensuing week, so his meat and drink together cost him only a penny a week. This he constantly did, though be had then two hundred pounds a year, to pay the debts which he had contracted, before he knew God !—And this was he, whom I had set down for a covetous man."

To this affecting anecdote, I add an extract from Wesley's Journal, relating to the subject of property.

"In the evening one sat behind me in the pulpit at Bristol, who was one of our first masters at Kingswood. A little after he left the school, he likewise left the society. Riches then flowed in upon him; with which, having no relations, Mr. Spencer designed to do much good-after his death. But God said unto him, Thou fool! Two hours after he died intestate, and left all his money to be scrambled for.

"Reader! if you have not done it already, make your will before you sleep."-Journal, xix. 8. I know a person, who upon reading this passage took the advice.

NOTE XXXIV. Page 231.

The Covenant.

If proof were wanting to confirm the opinion which I have advanced of the perilous tendency of this fanatical practice, William Huntington, S. S. a personage sufficiently notorious to his day, would be an unexceptionable evidence. He thus relates his own case, in his "Kingdom of Heaven taken by Prayer.”

"Having got a little book that a person had lent me, which recommended vows to be made to God, I accordingly stripped myself naked, to make a vow to the Almighty, if he would enable me to cast myself upon him. Thus I bound my soul with numerous ties, and wept over every part of the written covenant which this book contained. These I read naked on my knees, and vowed to perform all the conditions that were therein proposed. Having made this covenant, I went to bed, wept, and prayed the greatest part of that night, and arose in the morning pregnant with all the wretched resolutions of fallen nature. I now manfully engaged the world, the flesh, and the devil in my own strength; and I had bound myself up with so many promised conditions, that, if I failed in one point, I was gone for ever, according to the tenor of my own covenant, provided that God should deal with me according to my sins, and reward me according to mine iniquity.

"But before the week was out, I broke through all these engagements, and fell deeper into the bowels of despair than ever I had been before. And now, seemingly, all was gone: I gave up prayer, and secretly wished to be in hell, that I might know the worst of it, and be delivered from

the fear of worse to come. I was now again tempted to believe that there is no God, and wished to close in with the temptation, and be an established or confirmed atheist; for I knew, if there was a God, that I must be damned; therefore I laboured to credit the temptation, and fix it firm in my heart. But, alas! said I, how can I? If I credit this, I must disbelieve my own existence, and dispute myself out of common sense and feeling, for I am in hell already. There is no feeling in hell but what I have an earnest of Hell is a place where mercy never comes: I have a sense of none. It is a separation from God: I am without God in the world. It is a hopeless state: I have no hope, It is to feel the burthen of sin: I am burthened as much as mortal can be. It is to feel the lashes of conscience: I feel them all the day long. It is to be a companion for devils: I am harassed with them from morning till night. It is to meditate distractedly on an endless eternity: I am already engaged in this. It is to sin and rebel against God: I do it perpetually. It is to reflect upon past madness and folly; this is the daily employ of my mind. It is to labour under God's unmixed wrath; this I feel continually. It is to lie under the tormenting sceptre of everlasting death: this is already begun. Alas! to believe there is no God, is like persuading myself that I am in a state of annihilation."-Huntington's Works, vol. i. P. 193.

NOTE XXXV. Page 233.

The Value of a good Conscience.

Upon this subject the Methodist Magazine affords a good illustration. A poor Cornishman, John Nile by name, had been what is called under conviction twelve months,-in a deplorable state, walking disconsolate, while his brethren were enjoying their justification. One night, going into his fields, he detected one of his neighbours in the act of stealing his turnips, and brought the culprit quietly into the house with the sack which he had nearly filled. He made him empty the sack, to see if any of his seed turnips were there, and finding two or three large ones which he had intended to reserve for that purpose, he laid them aside, bade the man put the rest into the sack again, helped him to lay it on his back, and told him to take them home, and if at any time he was in distress, to come and ask and he should have; but he exhorted him to steal no more. Then shaking him by the hand, he said, I forgive you, and may God for Christ's sake do the same. What effect this had upon the thief is not stated; but John Nile was that night" filled with a clear evidence of pardoning love, with an assurance, that having forgiven his brother his trespasses, his heavenly Father also had forgiven him.”—Did the feeling proceed from his faith, or his good works?

"The Scriptures," says Priestley, "uniformly instruct us to judge of ourselves and others, not by uncertain and undescribable feelings, but by evident actions. As our Saviour says, 'by their fruits shall ye know men. For where a man's conduct is not only occasionally, but uniformly right, the principle upon which he acts must be good. Indeed the only reason why we value good principles, is on account of their uniform operation in producing good conduct. This is the end, and the principle is only the means."-Preface to Original Letters by Wesley and his Friends.

He was the founder of the Methodist Societies;
The Patron and Friend of the Lay-Preachers,
By whose aid he extended the Plan of Itinerant Preaching
Through Great Britain and Ireland,
The West Indies and America,

With unexampled Success.
He was born June 17th, 1703,
And died March 2d, 1791,

In sure and certain hope of Eternal Life,

Through the Atonement and Mediation of a Crucified Saviour.
He was sixty-five years in the Ministry,
And fifty-two an Itinerant Preacher:
He lived to see in these Kingdoms only,
About three hundred Itinerant,

And a thousand Local Preachers,

Raised up from the midst of his own People;

And eighty thousand Persons, in the Societies under his care.
His Name will ever be had in grateful Remembrance

by all who rejoice in the universal Spread

Of the Gospel of Christ.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Not long after Mr. Wesley's death a pamphlet was published, entitled, An Impartial Review of his Life and Writings. Two Love Letters were inserted as having been written by him to a young lady in his eighty-first year; and, " to prevent all suspicion of their authenticity," the author decla red that the original letters, in the handwriting of Mr. Wesley, were then in his possession, and that they should be open to the inspection of any person who would call at a given place to examine them. "With this declaration," says Mr. Drew, "many were satisfied; but many who continued incredulous, actually called. Unfortunately, however, they always happened to call, either when the author was engaged, or when he was from home, or when these original letters were lent for the inspection of others! It so happened, that though they were always open to examination, they could never be seen." In the year 1801, however, the author, a Mr. J. Collet, wrote to Dr. Coke, confessing that he had written the letters himself, and that most of the pretended facts in the pamphlet were equally fictitious.

The Ex-Bishop Gregoire has inserted one of these forged letters in his History of the Religious Sects of the last Century. He reckons among the Methodists Mr. Wilberforce, who, he says, has defended the principles of Methodism in his writings, and le poete Sir Richard Hill, Baronnet. But the most amusing specimen of the Ex-Bishop's accuracy is, where enumerating among the controverted subjects of the last century, La Reforme du Symbole Athanasien, he adds, a cette discussion se rattache la Controverse Blagdonienne entre le cure de Blagdon, pres de Bristol, et Miss Hannah More.

ADDITIONAL NOTES

CONCERNING MR. WESLEY'S FAMILY.

BARTHOLOMEW WESLEY is said to have been the fanatical minister of Charmouth, in Dorset, shire, who had nearly been the means of delivering Lord Wilmot and Charles II. to their enemies. and had Lord Clarendon's account, however, differs from this; he says that the man was a weaver, been a soldier; but Mr. Wesley had received a University education.

Samuel Wesley, the elder, was a student in a dissenting academy, kept by Mr. Veal, at Stepney; and, according to John Dunton, was "educated upon charity" there; an invidious expression, meaning nothing more than that the friends of his parents assisted in giving him an education which his mother could not have afforded. He distinguished himself there by his facility in versifying; and, the year after his removal to Oxford, published a volume entitled, "Maggots, or poems on several subjects never before handled." A whimsical portrait of the anonymous author was prefixed, representing him writing at a table, crowned with laurel, and with a maggot on his forehead: underneath are these words:

In 's own defence the author writes,
Because, when this foul maggot bites,
He ne'er can rest in quiet,
Which makes him make so sad a face,
He'd beg your worship or your grace
Unsight, unseen to buy it.

It was by the profits of this work, and by composing elegies, epitaphs, and epithalamiums, for his friend John Dunton, who traded in these articles, and kept a stock by him ready made, that Mr. Wesley supported himself at Oxford; not as I have erroneously stated, (after Dr. Whitehead) by what he earned in the University itself. "He usually wrote too fast," says Dunton, "to write well. Two hundred couplets a day are too many by two thirds to be well furnished with all the beauties and the graces of that art. He wrote very much for me both in prose and verse, though I shall not name over the titles, in regard I am altogether as unwilling to see my name at the bottom of them, as Mr. Wesley would be to subscribe his own."

Dunton and Wesley were brothers-in-law, and when the former wrote his "Life and Errors," they were not upon amicable terms. Dunton could not forgive him for having published a letter concerning the education of the Dissenters in their private academies. It appears, however, by his own account, that Mr. Wesley, little as he had to spare, had lent him money in his distresses; and Dunton, even while he satírises him, acknowledges that he was a generous, good humoured, and pious

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Mr. Nichols (Literary Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 84) says that Mr. Wesley's house was burnt twice, John, however, only says, that the villains several times attempted to burn it. He had made great

progress in his laborious work upon the Book of Job, having collated all the copies he could meet. with of the original, and the Greek and other versions and editions. All these labours were destroyed; but, in the decline of life, he resumed the task, though oppressed with gout and palsy through long habit of study. Among other assistances, he particularly acknowledges that of his three sons,

and his friend Maurice Johnson.

The book was printed at Mr. Bowyer's press. How much is it to be wished that the productions of all our great presses had been recorded with equal diligence!

The Dissertationes in Librum Jobi, I have never seen; but I learn from Mr. Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, (vol. v. p. 212,) that a curious emblematical portrait of the author is prefixed to the volume. It" represents Job in a chair of state, dressed in a robe bordered with fur, sitting beneath a gateway, on the arch of which is written Job Patriarcha. He bears a sceptre in his hand, and, in the back ground, are seen two of the Pyramids of Egypt. His position exactly corresponds with the idea given us by the Scriptures, in the book of Job, chap. xxxix. 7.: 'When I went out to the gate through the city, when I prepared my seat in the street;' according to the custom of those times of great men sitting at the gate of the city to decide causes. The subscription on a tablet beneath his feet, An. atat. circiter LXX. Quis mihi tribuat? mark it out as the quaint device of a man in years who thought himself neglected."

Garth and Swift have mentioned Wesley with contempt; and Pope introduced him in the Duneiad in company with Watts. Both names were erased in the subsequent editions. Pope felt ashamed of having spoken injuriously of such a man as Dr. Watts, who was entitled not only to high respect for his talents, but to admiration for his innocent and holy life; and he had become intimate with Samuel Wesley, the younger. That excellent man exerted himself in every way to assist his father, when the latter had lost all hope of the preferment which he once had reason to expect. "Time," says Mr. Badcock, "had so far gotten the better of his fury against Sir Robert, (Walpole,) as to change the satirist into the suppliant. I bave seen a copy of verses addressed to the great Minister, in behalf of his poor and aged parent. But I have seen something much better. I have in my possession a letter of this poor and aged parent, addressed to his son Samuel, in which he gratefully acknowledges his filial duty in terms so affecting, that I am at a loss which to admire most, the gratitude of the parent, or the affection and generosity of the child. It was written when the good old man was nearly fourscore, and so weakened by a palsy as to be incapable of directing a pen, unless with his left hand. I preserve it as a curious memorial of what will make Wesley applauded when his wit is forgotten." Literary Anecdotes, vol. v. p. 220.

The only works of the elder Wesley which I have met with, are the two following, which were probably his most successful publications.

The History of the Old Testament in Verse, with one hundred and eighty Sculptures, in two volames, dedicated to her most sacred Majesty. Vol. i. From the Creation to the Revolt of the Ten Tribes from the House of David. Vol. ii. From that Revolt to the End of the Prophets.-Written by Samuel Wesley, A. M. Chaplain to his Grace John, Duke of Buckingham and Marquis of Normandy, Author of the Life of Christ, an Heroic Poem. The Cuts done by J. Sturt, London: Printed for Cha. Harper, at the Flower-de-luce, over against St. Dunstan's Church, in Fleet-street. 1704. 12mo. The History of the New Testament, representing the Actions and Miracles of our Blessed Saviour and his Apostles; attempted in Verse, and adorned with 152 Sculptures. Written by Samuel Wesley, A. M. Chaplain to the Most Honourable the Lord Marquis of Normandy, and Author of the Life of Christ, an Heroic Poem. The Cuts done by J. Sturt. London: printed for Cha. Harper, at the Flower-de-luce over against St. Dunstan's Church, in Fleet-street. 1701. 12mo.

The elder Wesley had a clerk, who was a Whig, like his master, and a Poet also, of a very origimal kind. "One Sunday, immediately after Sermon, he said with an audible voice, Let us sing to the praise and glory of God, a hymn of my own composing. It was short and sweet, and ran thus;

King William is come home, come home,
King William home is come!

Therefore let us together sing

The hymn that's call'd Te D'um."

Wesley's Remarks on Mr. Hill's Farrago Double Distilled.
Works, vol. xv. p. 109.

THE END.