CXL

The rise and progress of Methodism is as marked a feature of the reign of George II., as the spread of Puritanism is of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The Puritans were called into being by the injudicious activity of the Queen and her prelates against a body of men whose religious zeal rejected the superstitious ceremonies which were retained in order to win over the English Roman Catholics to the reformed faith; the Methodists supplied a want; their purpose was to infuse a little enthusiasm and discipline among the slack and lifeless regular clergy. Both Bishop Burnet, the Whig, and Bishop Atterbury, the Tory, coincide in their estimate of the sorry state of public worship at this period. If field-preaching was common in many popular districts, it was because there were no churches in them. No wonder then, that, as the Puritans grew from being an insignificant sect into a powerful political faction, the followers of John Wesley, in England alone, should have numbered 71,000 the year of their founder's death.

John Wesley to a Friend.

London: December 20, 1751.

My dear Friend,—I think the right method of preaching is this. At our first beginning to preach at any place, after a general declaration of the love of God to sinners, and His willingness that they should be saved, to preach the law, in the strongest, the closest, the most searching manner possible.

After more and more persons are convinced of sin, we may mix more and more of the gospel, in order to beget faith, to raise into spiritual life those whom the law hath slain. I would not advise to preach the law without the gospel, any more than the gospel without the law. Undoubtedly, both should be preached in their turns; yea, both at once, or both in one. All the conditional promises are instances of this. They are law and gospel mixed together.

In this manner, not only my brother and I, but Mr. Maxfield, Nelson, James Jones, Westall, and Reeves, all preached at the

beginning. By this preaching, it pleased God to work those mighty effects in London, Bristol, Kingswood, Yorkshire, and Newcastle. By means of this, twenty-nine persons received remission of sins, in one day, at Bristol only; most of them, while I was opening and enforcing our Lord's sermon on the mount. In this manner John Downes, John Bennet, John Haughton, and all the other Methodists, preached, till James Wheatley came among them. The change he has introduced has done great harm to David Tratham, Thomas Webb, Robert Swindells, and John Maddern; all of whom are but shadows of what they were. It has likewise done great harm to hearers as well as preachers, diffusing among them a prejudice against the scriptural Methodist manner of preaching Christ, so that they can no longer hear the plain old truth, with profit or pleasure, nay hardly with patience. The gospel preachers, so called, corrupt their hearers, and they vitiate their taste. They feed them with sweetmeats, till the genuine wine of the Kingdom seems quite insipid to them. They give them cordial upon cordial, which make them all life and spirit for the present; but, meantime, their appetite is destroyed, so that they can neither retain nor digest the pure milk of the word.

According to the constant observations I have made, in all parts both of England and Ireland, preachers of this kind spread death, not life, among their hearers. This was the case when I went last into the north. For some time before my coming, John Downes had scarce been able to preach at all; the three others, in the round, were such as style themselves gospel preachers.' When I came to review the societies, with great expectation of finding a vast increase, I found most of them lessened by one third. One was entirely broken up. That of Newcastle was less by a hundred members than when I visited it before; and, of those that remained, the far greater number, in every place, were cold, weary, heartless, and dead. Such were the blessed effects of this gospel-preaching! of this new method of preaching Christ.

On the other hand, when, in my return, I took an account of the societies in Yorkshire, chiefly under the care of John Nelson, one of the old way, I found them all alive, strong, and vigorous of oul, believing, loving, and praising God their Saviour; and increased in number from eighteen or nineteen hundred to upwards

of three thousand. These had been continually fed with wholesome food. From the beginning they had been taught both the law and the gospel. God loves you; therefore love and obey Him. Christ died for you; therefore die to sin. Christ is risen ; therefore rise in the image of God. Christ liveth evermore; therefore live to God, till you live with Him in glory.

So we preached; and so you believed. This is the scriptural way, the Methodist way, the true way. God grant we may never turn therefrom, to the right hand or to the left. I am, my dear friend, your ever affectionate brother,

JOHN WESLEY.

CXLI.

Would that a few 'gospel-preachers' would take this bit of advice to heart.

John Wesley to John King (one of his Preachers in America). Near Leeds: July 28, 1775. My dear Brother,-Always take advice or reproof as a favour : it is the surest mark of love.

I advised you once, and you took it as an affront; nevertheless I will do it once more.

Scream no more, at the peril of your soul. God now warns you by me, whom He has set over you.

Speak as earnestly as you can, but do not scream. Speak with all your heart, but with a moderate voice. It was said of our Lord,' He shall not cry'; the word properly means, He shall not scream. Herein, be a follower of me, as I am of Christ. I often speak loud, often vehemently, but I never scream, I never strain myself. I dare not. I know it would be a sin against God and my own soul. Perhaps one reason why that good man, Thomas Walsh, yea, and John Manners too, were in such grievous darkness before they died, was, because they shortened their own lives.

O John, pray for an advisable and teachable temper! By nature you are very far from it: you are stubborn and headstrong. Your last letter was written in a very wrong spirit. If you cannot take advice from others, surely you might take it from your affectionate brother,

JOHN WESLEY.

CXLII.

But John Wesley was an autocrat. He did not wish to secede from the Church of England, but to kindle a little ardour in the ranks of a sluggish ministry. To this end he drew his travelling preachers chiefly from the workshop and the plough, and satisfied himself of their fitness to be his lieutenants. These men he shifted about from city to city, and insisted on their implicit obedience to his wishes and injunctions. The following letter was written at a time when there were symptoms of insubordination in regard to Wesley's claims to have the sole and exclusive power of making appointments. A conference of preachers had appointed a man to a vacant pulpit and 'pious John' immediately expelled him; but Wesley seems to have forgotten that the THEN flourishing condition of Methodism was not the consequence of his own individual energy, and that his 160 itinerant preachers counted for something in a vast success. Horace Walpole wrote as early as 1749: Methodism in the metropolis is more fashionable than anything but brag; the women play very deep at both.'

John Wesley to Charles Wesley.

January, 1780.

My dear Brother,-You seem not to have well considered the Rules of a Helper, or the rise of Methodism. It pleased God, by me, to awaken, first my brother, and then a few others; who severally desired of me, as a favour, that I would direct them in all things. After my return from Georgia, many were both awakened and converted to God. One and another, and another of these desired to join with me as sons in the gospel, to be directed by me. I drew up a few plain rules (observe there was no conference in being!) and permitted them to join me on these conditions. Whoever, therefore, violates these conditions, particularly that of being directed by me in the work, does, ipso facto, disjoin himself from me. This brother M'Nab has done (but he cannot see that he has done amiss): and he would have it a common cause; that is, he would have all the preachers do the same. He thinks they have a right so to do.' So they have. They have a right to disjoin themselves from me whenever they please. But they cannot, in the nature of the thing, join with me any longer than they are directed by me. And what if fifty of the preachers disjoin themselves! What should I lose thereby? Only a great deal of labour

and care, which I do not seek; but endure, because no one else either can or will.

You seem likewise to have quite a wrong idea of a conference. For above six years after my return to England, there was no such thing. I then desired some of my preachers to meet me, in order to advise, not control, me. And you may observe, they had no power at all, but what I exercised through them. I chose to exercise the power which God had given me in this manner, both to avoid ostentation, and gently to habituate the people to obey them when I should be taken from their head. But as long as I remain with them, the fundamental rule of Methodism remains inviolate. As long as any preacher joins with me, he is to be directed by me in his work. Do not you see then, that brother M'Nab, whatever his intentions might be, acted as wrong as. wrong could be? and that the representing of this as the common cause of the preachers was the way to common destruction, the way to turn their heads, and to set them in arms? It was a blow at the very root of Methodism. I could not, therefore, do less than I did; it was the very least that could be done, for fear that evil should spread. I do not willingly speak of these things at all; but I do it now out of necessity; because I perceive the mind of you, and some others, is a little hurt by not seeing them in a true light.

I am, your affectionate brother,

JOHN WESLEY.

CXLIII.

When Lord Lyttleton followed Henry Fielding's example by marrying a second time, this congratulatory note was written by the once needy novelist to his patron. Fielding was indebted for his post of Justice of the Peace for Middlesex to Lord Lyttleton, and he was ever sensible of the benefaction. To the same kind patron he appealed successfully for his friend Edward Moore, known to us as the writer of the tragedy entitled 'The Gamester;' for when Dodsley appointed Moore editor of the 'World,' Lyttleton beat up several fashionable contributors for him. With all his faults and eccentricities, Fielding was a generous and affectionate friend, and was as careless of the malicious prattle of Horace Walpole and the misrepresentations of his rival Richardson, as in early life he had been in choosing his company.