other ministers? This is the very point wherein we desire advice, being afraid of leaning to our own understanding." An inclination to episcopize was evidently shown in this language; but Wesley did not yet venture upon the act, in deference, perhaps, to his brother's determined and principled opposition. Many of his preachers, however, were discontented with the rank which they held in public opinion, thinking that they were esteemed inferior to the dissenting ministers, because they did not assume so much; they, therefore, urged him to take upon himself the episcopal office and ordain them, that they might administer the ordinances; and, as he could not be persuaded to this, they charged him with inconsistency, for tolerating lay-preaching, and not lay-administering. This charge he repelled: "My principle," said he, "is this; I submit to every ordinance of man, wherever I do not conceive there is an absolute necessity for acting contrary to it. Consistently with this, I do tolerate lay-preaching, because I conceive there is an absolute necessity for it, inasmuch as, were it not, thousands of souls would perish everlastingly. Yet I do not tolerate lay-administering; because I do not conceive there is any such necessity for it, seeing it does not appear that one soul will perish for want of it." This was, of course, called persecution, by those whom his determination disappointed; and they accused him of injustice in denying them the liberty of acting according to their own conscience. They thought it quite right that they should administer the Lord's Supper, and believed it would do much good: he thought it quite wrong, and believed it would do much hurt. "I have, no right over your consciences," he said, "nor you over mine; there fore, both you and I must follow our own conscience. You believe it is a duty to administer: do so, and therein follow your own conscience. I verily believe it is a sin which, consequently, I dare not tolerate, and herein I follow mine." And he argued, that it was no persecution to separate from his society those who practised what he believed was contrary to the will and destructive of the word of God. It does not appear that any of his preachers withdrew from him on this account; the question was not one upon which, at that time, a discontented man could hope to divide the society; and, if they did not assent to Mr. Wesley's arguments, they acquiesced in his will. Secessions, however, and expulsions from other causes, not unfrequently took place and once he found it necessary to institute an examination of his preachers, because of certain scandals which had arisen. The person with whom the offence began was one James Wheatley. At first he made himself remarkable, by introducing a luscious manner of preaching, which, as it was new among the Methodists, and at once stimulant and flattering, soon became popular, and obtained imitators. They who adopted it assumed to themselves the appellation of Gospel preachers, and called their brethren, in contempt, legalists, legal wretches, and doctors in divinity. Wesley presently perceived the mischief that was done by these men, whose secret was, to speak much of the promises, and little of the commands. "They corrupt their hearers," said he: "they feed them with sweetmeats, till the genuine wine of the kingdom seems quite insipid to them. They give them cordial upon cordial, which makes them all life and spirits for the present; but, meantime, their appetite is destroyed, so that they can neither retain nor digest the pure milk of the word. As soon as that flow of spirits goes off, they are without life, without power, without any strength or vigour of soul; and it is extremely difficult to recover them, because they still cry out cordials! cordials! of which they have had too much already, and have no taste for the food which is convenient for them. Nay, they have an utter aversion to it, and this confirmed by principle, having been taught to call it husks, if not poison. How much more to those bitters, which are previously needful to restore their decayed appetite!" Wheatley was a quack in physic as well as in divinity, and he was soon detected in fouler practices. Complaint being at length made of his infamous licentiousness, the two brothers inquired into it, and obtained complete proof of his guilt. Upon this they delivered into his hands a written sentence of suspension, in these terms: "Because you have wrought folly in Israel, grieved the Holy Spirit of God, betrayed your own soul into temptation and sin, and the souls of many others, whom you ought, even at the peril of your own life, to have guarded against all sin; because you have given occasion to the enemies of God, wherever they shall know these things, to blaspheme the ways and truth of God; we can in no wise receive you as a fellow-labourer, till we see clear proofs of your real and deep repentance: the least and lowest proof of such repentance which we can receive is this,-that, till our next Conference, you abstain both from preaching and from practising physic. If you do not, we are clear: we cannot answer for the consequences." They were not aware at the time of the extent of this hypocrite's criminality; but enough was soon discovered to make it necessary for them to disclaim him by public advertisements. The matter became so notorious at Norwich, that the affidavits of the women whom he had endeavoured to corrupt, were printed and hawked about the streets. The people were ready to tear him to pieces, as he deserved; and the cry against the Methodists was such, in consequence, that Charles Wesley said Satan, or his apostles, could not have done more to shut the door against the Gospel in that place for ever. This was a case of individual villany, and produced no other injury to Methodism than immediate scandal, which was soon blown over. But it is the nature of mental, as well as of corporeal diseases, to propagate themselves, and schism is one of the most prolific of all errors. Oue separation had already taken place between the Methodists and the Moravians, the Calvinistic question had made a second. A minor schism was now made, by a certain James - Relly, who, having commenced his career under the patronage of Whitefield, ended in forming a heresy of his own, which had the merit, at least, of being a humaner scheme than that of his master, however untenable in other respects. Shocked at the intolerable notion of reprobation, and yet desirous of holding the tenet of election, he fancied that sin was to be considered as a disease, for which the death of our Redeemer was the remedy; and that, as evil had been introduced into human nature by the first Adam, who was of the earth, earthly, so must it be expelled by the second, who is from heaven, and therefore heavenly. Pursuing this notion, he taught that Christ, as a Mediator, was united to mankind, and, by his obedience and sufferings, had as fully restored the whole human race to the divine favour, as if all had obeyed or suffered in their own persons. So he preached a finished salvation, which included the final restitution of all fallen intelligences. Sin being only a disease, could not deserve punishment: it was in itself, and in its consequences, a sufficient evil; for, while it existed, darkness and unbelief accompanied it, and occasioned a privation of that happiness which the Almighty designed for all his creatures; but, in the end, all would be delivered, and the elect were only chosen to be the first fruits,-the pledges and earnest of the general harvest. Relly had for his co-adjutor one William Cudworth, of whom Wesley observed, after an interview with him, "that his opinions were all his own, quite new, and his phrases as new as his opinions that all these opinions, yea, and phrases too, he affirmed to be necessary to salvation; maintaining, that all who did not receive them worshipped another God; and that he was as incapable as a brute beast of being convinced, even in the smallest point." On another occasion he remarks, that Cudworth, Relly, and their associates, abhorred him as much as they did the pope, and ten times more than they did the devil. *James Relly should have read an old treatise upon the Sinfulness of Sin, which, notwithstanding its odd title, is the work of a sound and powerful intellect. If I remember rightly, it is by Bishop Reynolds. The devil, indeed, was no object of abhorrence with them like Uncle Toby, they were sorry for him; and, like Origen, they expected his reformation.— They formed a sect, which continues to exist in America, as well as in England, by the name of the Rellyan Universalists; and it is said, that Washington's chaplain was a preacher of this denomination. The tendency of these opinions was to an easy and quiet latitudinarianism. Antinomianism, with which they were connected, was far more mischievous when combined with enthusiasm,-and this was the evil to which Methodism always perilously inclined. There is in the Antinomian scheme, and, indeed, in all predestinarian schemes, an audacity which is congenial to certain minds. They feel a pride in daring to profess doctrines which are so revolting to the common sense and feelings of mankind. Minds of a similar temper, but in a far worse state, maintain the notion of the necessity of human actions, but reject a first cause. It is from a like effrontery of spirit that this last and worst corruption proceeds; and as the causes are alike, so also the practical consequences of antinomianism and atheism would be the same, if men were always as bad as their opinions; for the professors of both have emancipated themselves from any other restraint than what may be imposed by the fear of human laws. * Wesley was mistaken in supposing the doctrine, that there is no sin in believers, was never heard of till the time of Count Zinzendorf. It is as old in England as the † Reformation, and might undoubtedly be traced in many an early heresy. The Moravians had the rare merit of sometimes acknowledging their errors, and correcting them; on this point, they modified their language till it became reasonable; but the Methodists had caught the error, and * Archbishop Sancroft, says well of the fatalist: "he uses necessity as the old philosophers did an occult quality, though for a different purpose; that was their refuge for ignorance; this is his sanctuary for sin.” + Burnet speaks of certain "corrupt Gospellers, who thought, if they magnified Christ much, and depended on his merits and intercession, they could not perish, which way soever they led their lives. And special care was taken in the Homilies to rectify this error." |