forms. Unhappily, while it was in this temper, a fashion of speculative impiety was imported from France, where it had originated in a corrupt church, and in a literature more infamously licentious than that of any other country. England was in but too apt a state to receive the poison. Some of the leading Commonwealths-men had been infidels, and hated the clergy of every denomination with a bitterness which, if the age had been ripe for it, would have produced an Anti-christian persecution; for infidelity has shown itself in a triumph to be not less intolerant than superstition. It was in this school, that some of the leading statesmen, in Charles the Second's reign, had been trained; and the progress of the evil was accelerated, unintentionally indeed, but not less effectually, by a* philosophy of home-growth, the shallowest that ever imposed upon the human understanding. The schools of dissent also soon became schools of unbelief; this disposition is the natural consequence of those systems which call upon every man to form his own judgment upon points of faith, without respect to the authority of other ages or of wiser minds, without reference to his own ignorance or his own incapacity; which leave humility out of the essentials of the Christian character, and when they pretend to erect their superstructure of rational belief, build upon the shifting sands of vanity and self-conceit.

A great proportion of the Protestants in France, following too faithfully the disgraceful example of Henry the Fourth, had passed through unbelief to Popery, the easy course which infidels will always take when it may suit their interest. Our Church was shaken to the foundation by the same cause it was built upon a rock; but had the fabric fallen, the constitution would not long have remained standing. A sense of the danger from which we had escaped, and of the necessity of guarding against its recurrence, animated our clergy against the Romanists, and they exerted themselves to expose the errors and the evils of the Romish superstition. This they victoriously effected; but another, and not less essential duty, was as much neglected as ever, the duty of imbuing the people, from their youth up, with the principles of that pure faith which had been obtained for them at such cost, and preserved for them through such afflictions, with such difficulty, and from such peril. In reality, though the temporal advantages of Christianity extended to all classes, the great majority of the populace knew nothing more of religion than its forms. They had been Papists formerly, and now they were Protestants, but they had never been Christians. The Reformation had taken away the ceremonies to which they were attached, and substituted nothing in their stead. There was the Bible, indeed, but to the great body of the labouring people the Bible was, even in the letter, a sealed book. For that system of general education which the fathers of the English church desired, and which saintly King Edward designed, had never been provided.

conducting these public fasts, which were frequent in those miserable days, was as follows: He began at nine o'clock with a prayer of a quarter of an hour, read and expounded Scripture for about three quarters of an hour, prayed an hour, preached another hour, then prayed half an hour: the people then sung for about a quarter of an hour, during which he retired and took a little refreshment; he then went into the pulpit again, prayed an hour more, preached another hour, and then with a prayer of half an hour, concluded the service.

* See the Lay Sermons of Mr. Coleridge, and particularly the last note to the Statesman's Manual, where this subject is treated with consummate knowledge and consummate ability.

Nevertheless, the Reformation, though thus injurious in some respects, and imperfect in others, had proved in its general consequences, the greatest of all national blessings. It had set the intellect of the nation free. It had delivered us from spiritual bondage. It rid the land of the gross idolatry and abominable impostures of the Romish Church, and of those practices by which natural piety is debased, and national morals are degraded. It saved us from that infamous casuistry of the confessional, the end of which was to corrupt the conscience, and destroy the broad distinction between right and wrong. All that was false, all that was burdensome, all that was absurd, had been swept away, like chaff before the wind. Whatever was retained would bear the light, for it was that pure faith which elevates the understanding and purifies the heart; which strengthens the weakness of our nature; which, instead of prescribing a system of self-tormenting, like that of the Indian Yoguees, heightens all our enjoyments, and is itself the source of the highest enjoyment to which we can attain in this imperfect state, while it prepares us for our progress in eternity.

The full effects of this blessed Reformation were felt in those. ranks where its full advantages were enjoyed. The Church of England, since its separation from Rome, had never been without servants who were burning and shining lights; not for their own generations only, but for ages which are yet to come the wisest and the most learned may derive instruction from their admirable works, and find in them a satisfaction and a delight by which they may estimate their own progress in wisdom. Among the laity also, the innate sense of piety, wherever it had been fostered by those happy circumstances which are favourable to its developement and growth, received a right direction. No idols and phantoms were interposed between man and his Redeemer; no practices were enjoined as substitutes for good works or compensations for evil; no assent was demanded to propositions which contradict the senses and insult the understanding. Herein we differ from the Romanists. Nor are the advantages inconsiderable which we enjoy over our Protestant brethren who walk in the by-paths of sectarianism. It has been in the error of attributing an undue importance to some particular point, that sects have generally originated: they contemplated a part instead of the whole they split the rays of truth, and see only one of the prismatic colours, while the members of the national church live in the light.

The evil was, that among the educated classes, too little care was taken to imbue them early with this better faith; and too little exertion used for awakening them from the pursuits and vanities of this world, to a salutary and hopeful contemplation of that which is to come. And there was the heavier evil, that the greater part of the nation were totally uneducated; Christians no further than the mere ceremony of baptism could make them, being for the most part in a state of heathen, or worse than heathen, ignorance. In truth, they had never been converted; for at first one idolatry had been substituted for another in this they had followed the fashion of their lords; and when the Romish idolatry was expelled, the change on their part was still a matter of necessary submission ;-they were

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left as ignorant of real Christianity as they were found. has never yet seen a nation of Christians.

The world

The ancient legislators understood the power of legislation. But no modern government seems to have perceived, that men are as clay in the potter's hands. There are, and always will be, innate and unalterable differences of individual character; but national character is formed by national institutions and circumstances, and is whatever those circumstances may make it-Japanese or Tupinamban, Algerine or English. Till governments avail themselves of this principle in its full extent, and give it its best direction, the science of policy will be incomplete.

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Three measures then were required for completing the Reformation in England that the condition of the inferior clergy should be improved; that the number of religious instructors should be greatly increased; and that a system of parochial education should be established and vigilantly upheld. These measures could only be effected by the legislature. A fourth thing was needful,-that the clergy should be awakened to an active discharge of their duty; and this was not within the power of legislation. The former objects never for a moment occupied Wesley's consideration. He began life with ascetic habits and opinions; with a restless spirit, and a fiery heart. Ease and comfort were neither congenial to his disposition nor his principles: wealth was not necessary for his calling, and it was beneath his thoughts: he could command not merely respectability without it, but importance. Nor was he long before he discovered what St. Francis and his followers and imitators had demonstrated long before, that they who profess poverty for conscience sake, and trust for daily bread to the religious sympathy which they excite, will find it as surely as Elijah in the wilderness, and without a miracle. As little did the subject of national education engage his mind his aim was direct, immediate, palpable utility. Nor could he have effected any thing upon either of these great legislative points: the most urgent representations, the most convincing arguments, would have been disregarded in that age, for the time was not come. The great struggle between the destructive and conservative principles,-between good and evil,-had not yet commenced; and it was not then foreseen that the very foundations of civil society would be shaken, because governments had neglected their most awful and most important duty. But the present consequences of this neglect were obvious and glaring the rudeness of the peasantry, the brutality of the town populace, the prevalence of drunkenness, the growth of impiety, the general deadness to religion. These might be combated by individual exertions, and Wesley felt in himself the power and the will both in such plenitude, that they appeared to him a manifestation, not to be doubted, of the will of Heaven. Every trial tended to confirm him in this persuasion; and the effects which he produced, both upon body and mind, appeared equally to himself and to his followers miraculous. Diseases were arrested or subdued by the faith which he inspired, madness was appeased, and, in the sound and sane, paroxysms were excited which were new to pathology, and which he believed to be supernatural interpositions, vouchsafed in furtherance of his efforts by the Spirit

of God, or worked in opposition to them by the exasperated Principle of Evil. Drunkards were reclaimed; sinners were converted; the penitent who came in despair was sent away with the full assurance of joy; the dead sleep of indifference was broken; and oftentimes his eloquence reached the hard brute heart, and opening it, like the rock of Horeb, made way for the living spring of piety which had been pent within. These effects he saw,-they were public and undeniable; and looking forward in exultant faith, he hoped that the leaven would not cease to work till it had leavened the whole mass; that the impulse which he had given would surely, though slowly, operate a national reformation, and bring about, in fulness of time, the fulfilment of those prophecies which promise us that the kingdom of our Father shall come, and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

With all this there was intermingled a large portion of enthusiasm, and no small one of superstition; much that was erroneous, much that was mischievous, much that was dangerous. But had he been less enthusiastic, of an humbler spirit, or a quieter heart, or a maturer judgment, he would never have commenced his undertaking. Sensible only of the good which he was producing, and which he saw produced, he went on courageously and indefatigably in his career. Whither it was to lead he knew not, nor what form and consistence the societies which he was collecting would assume; nor where he was to find labourers as he enlarged the field of his operations; nor how the scheme was to derive its temporal support. But these considerations neither troubled him, nor made him for a moment foreslack his course. God, he believed, had appointed it, and God would always provide means for accomplishing his own ends.

CHAPTER X.

WESLEY SEPARATES FROM THE MORAVIANS.

Bur the house which Wesley had raised was divided in itself. He and the Moravians had not clearly understood each other when they coalesced. Count Zinzendorf moreover looked upon the society which had been formed in London, as a colony belonging to his spiritual empire; and if he was incapable of bearing with an equal, Wesley could as little brook a superior. A student of Jena, by name Philip Henry Molther, having been detained by various causes in London, on his way to Pennsylvania, took upon himself the care of the brethren. The Moravians had their extravagancies, and of a worse kind than any into which Methodism had fallen; but these extravagancies bad not been transplanted into England: their system tended to produce a sedate, subdued habit of mind, and nothing could be more contrary to this than the paroxysms which were exhibited under Wesley's preaching, and the ravings to which he appealed exultingly as proofs of the work of grace. Molther maintained that there was delusion in these things; that the joy and love which

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were testified in such glowing language were the effect of animal spirits and imagination, not joy in the Holy Ghost, and the real love of God shed abroad in their hearts. They who, whether owing to their strength of mind or of body, had not experienced such emotions, were disposed to listen to his opinion, and congratulate themselves that they had escaped a dangerous delusion; and it was yet more willingly embraced by those who had become languid and spiritless in consequence of over-excitement, felt in themselves an abatement of zeal, had relaxed in any degree from the rule of life which they had begun, or returned to any of those practices which were really sinful, or which they had been taught to think so. " I observed," says Wesley, "every day more and more the advantages Satan had gained over us. Many of those who once knew in whom they had believed were thrown into idle reasonings, and thereby filled with doubts and fears from which they now found no way to escape. Many were induced to deny the gift of God, and affirm they never had any faith at all, especially those who had fallen again into sin, and, of consequence, into darkness."

That which has so often happened in theological disputes, and sometimes with such lamentable effects, occurred in this. In opposing Wesley's error, the Moravian advanced opinions equally erroneous; he maintained that there are no degrees of faith; that no man has any degree of it before he has the full assurance; that there is no justifying faith short of this; that the way to attain it is to wait for Christ and be still, but not to use the means of grace, by frequenting church, or communicating, or fasting, or engaging much in private prayer, or reading the Scriptures, or doing temporal good, or attempting to do spiritual good, because, he argued, no fruit of the Spirit can be given by those who have it not, and they who have not faith themselves, are utterly unable to guide others. These positions were strenuously opposed by Wesley; and when Molther maintained that since his arrival in England he had done much good by unsettling many from a false foundation and bringing them into "true stillness," Wesley insisted, on the contrary, that much harm had been done by unsettling those who were beginning to build good works upon the right foundation of faith, and bewildering them in vain reasonings and doubtful disputations.

Molther however produced a great effect, while he had the field to himself; and Wesley was informed that the brethren in London had neither wisdom enough to guide, nor prudence enough to let it alone; that the Moravians seemed to consult about things as if they were the whole body, that they made a mere jest of going to church or to the sacrament, and that many of the sisters were shaken, and grievously torn by reasonings, and that there seemed to be a design of dividing the society. Accordingly, he repaired to London with a heavy heart. "Here," says he, "I found every day the dreadful effects of our brethren's reasoning and disputing with each other. Scarce one in ten retained his first love, and most of the rest were in the utmost confusion, biting and devouring one another. I pray God ye be not consumed one of another !-One came to me by whom I used to profit much, but her conversation was now too high for me. It was

far above, out of my sight. My soul is sick of this sublime divinity!