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Lord, I call heaven and earth to record against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing, therefore choose life, that thou and thy seed may live.' Thus Ezekiel (to cite one prophet for all,) The soul that sinneth, it shall die; the son shall not bear (eternally) the iniquity of the father. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.' Thus our blessed Lord,‘If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink!' Thus his great apostle St. Paul, God commandeth all men, every where, to repent.' All men, every where; every man, in every place, without any exception, either of place or person. Thus St. James, If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him!' Thus St. Peter, The Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.' And thus St. John, If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father; and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.' "O hear ye this, ye that forget God! ye cannot charge your death upon him. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die ? saith the Lord God. Repent and turn from all your transgressions, so iniquity shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; for why will die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God. Wherefore, turn yourselves, and live ye.' As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?" "

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A history of Wesley's life would be imperfect, unless it contained this memorable passage,-the most remarkable and the most powerful in all his works. It exasperated, beyond measure, those who, in their own conceit, had taken out their patent of election, and considered themselves, in Mr. Toplady's language, (himself one of the number,) as "kings incog., travelling, disguised like pilgrims, to their dominions above." Even temperate Calvinists were shocked, and have said, that Mr. Wesley's "horrid appeal to all the devils in hell gave a sort of infernal tone to the controversy." It is, indeed, in a tremendous strain of eloquence, and shows with what indignation the preacher, in his zeal for God, and in his love for his fellow creatures, regarded a doctrine so injurious to both. In an evil hour did the restless mind of man devise for itself the perilous question of fatalism; and in a more unhappy one, was it introduced into Christian theology. The fathers of our church perceived the danger on both sides, and endeavoured to keep the golden mean. "All men," said they, "be to be monished, and chiefly preachers, that, in this high matter, they, looking on both sides, so attemper and moderate themselves, that neither they so preach the grace of God, that they take away thereby free-will, nor, on the other side, so extol free-will, that injury be done to the grace of God." And in the directions for preachers, which were set forth in the latter years of James I., it was enjoined, "that no preacher, of what title soever, under the degree of a bishop, or dean at the least, should, from thenceforth, presume to preach, in any popular auditory, deep points VOL. II.

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of predestination, election, reprobation, or of the universality, efficacy, resistibility, or irresistibility of God's grace; but leave those themes rather to be handled by learned men, and that moderately and modestly, by way of use and application, rather than by way of positive doctrines, being fitter for the schools than for simple auditories."-The puritans exclaimed against this prohibition, whereby, they said, man made that the forbidden fruit, which God appointed for the tree of life. But, upon this point, even the popes themselves, in the plenitude of their power, were not able to impose silence.

Wesley had once a whimsical proof of the horror with which the high-flying Calvinists regarded him. One afternoon, on the road from Newport-Pagnel to Northampton, " I overtook," says he, " a serious man, with whom I immediately fell into conversation. He presently gave me to know what his opinions were; therefore I said nothing to contradict them. But that did not content him; he was quite uneasy to know whether I held the doctrine of the decrees as he did but I told him, over and over, we had better keep to practical things, lest we should be angry at one another. And so we did for two miles, till he caught me unawares, and dragged me into the dispute before I knew where I was. He then grew warmer and warmer, told me I was rotten at heart, and supposed I was one of John Wesley's followers. I told him ' no, I am John Wesley himself!' Upon which,

Improvisum aspris veluti qui sentibus anguem
Pressit,

he would gladly have run away outright; but being the better mounted of the two, I kept close to his side, and endeavoured to show him his heart, till we came into the street of Northampton."

CHAPTER XXVI.

WESLEY'S CLERICAL COADJUTORS. MR. GRIMSHAW.-DR. COKE. -THE GREEK BISHOP.-WESLEY'S CREDULITY.

A FEW years before this final and irreparable breach with the Calvinists, Wesley had attempted to form an open and active union between all such clergymen as have more recently arrogated to themselves the appellation of Evangelical, or Gospel ministers. With this hope he sent round a circular letter, to some fifty ministers of the Church of England, wherein he proposed that, leaving free the disputable points of predestination on one side, and perfection on the other; laying no stress upon expressions, and binding themselves to no peculiar discipline, but some remaining quite regular, others quite irregular; and others, again, partly the one and partly the other, they should think and speak kindly of each other, form, as it were, a defensive league, and each help the other on in his work, and enlarge his influence by all rightful means. If any thing

more were meant by this than that each should occasionally accommodate the others with his pulpit, and that they should countenance his itinerant lay preachers, the meaning is not obvious. On this occasion, also, Mr. Wesley looked for an omen, and relates, with evident complacency, at the end of the letter, that, one of his friends having objected to him the impossibility of effecting such a union, he went up stairs, and, after a little prayer, opened Kempis on these words: Expecta Dominum; viriliter age; noli diffidere; noli discedere; sed corpus et animam expone constanter pro gloria Dei.

The greater part of the methodizing clergy adhered to Lady Huntingdon's party in the dispute. Among those who remained attached to Mr. Wesley, Vincent Perronet, the vicar of Shoreham, was one who was, either by birth or extraction, a Swiss, and who, in the Romish church, would have been beatified or canonized, for what, in mystical language, would be called his rapts, as well as for the uniform piety of his life. William Grimshaw, who held the perpetual curacy of Haworth, in one of the wildest parts of the West Riding was a more active associate. In his unconverted state, this person was certainly insane; and, had he given utterance at that time to the monstrous and horrible imaginations, which he afterwards revealed to his spiritual friends, he would deservedly have been sent to Bedlam. His change of mind, which was not till he had been ten years in holy orders, was preceded by what he supposed to be a miraculous impression upon his senses, and which may possibly have been an electrical* or galvanic effect: and, in the course of his ministry, he was favoured with a vision in a trance; that is to say, he mistook delirium for reality. He became, however, a very zealous parish priest; and his oddities, which procured him the name of Mad Grimshaw, did not prevent him from being very useful among a set of parishioners, who are said to have been as wild as the bleak barren country which they inhabited, and to have had little more sense of religion than their cattle.

The parish contained four hamlets, in each of which he made it a rule to preach three times a month, partly for the sake of the old and infirm, but chiefly for those who scarcely ever attended the church because of the distance. As he found that people were willing to hear him, he extended his preaching into his neighbour's parishes, without troubling himself to ask the consent of the minister, or caring whether he liked it or not. In this way he established two circuits of his own, which he went round every fortnight: in the more populous, he preached from four-and-twenty to thirty times in the week; and, in the other, about half as often, wherefore he called this his idle week. While he was at home he had a morning meeting for prayer and exhortation at his own house, at five o'clock in the summer, and at six in winter. At church he would stop

* Mr. Joseph Williams, of Kidderminster, relates the fact from Grimshaw's own testimony. "At last the time of his deliverance came. At the house of one of his frends he lays his hand on a book, and opens it with his face towards a pewter shelf. Instantly his face is saluted with an uncommon flash of heat. He turns to the title-page, and finds it to be Dr. Owen on Justification. Imme diately he is surprised with such another flash. He borrows the book, studies it, is led into God'e method of justifying the ungodly, bath a new heart given him, and now, behold, he prayeth !"

The case seems to have been an apoplectic affection of the slightest kind: the detail may be seen in his life by Mr. Myles (p. 14.) as given by himself to Mr. Williams, of Kidderminster. A more remarkable case of the same kind is noticed in the Quarterly Review, vol. x. pp. 117, 11 &.

in the midst of the prayers, if he saw any person inattentive, and rebuke the offender; and, while the psalms were singing before sermon, he would go out to see if any persons were idling in the churchyard, or in the street, or in the alehouses, and drive as many as he could find into the church before him. These were not the only means which he used for bringing his parishioners into order. Having taken up the dismal puritanical notion, that it is sinful to walk in the fields for recreation on the Sabbath day, he would set out himself, in order to reprove such persons as he detected in the fact. This odd humour led him also, like the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, in the Arabian Tales, to go out in disguise, and see in what manner his instructions were observed, and how far the people were in reality, what they made themselves appear to him. Thus he went to the door of

a great professor of charity, and begged a night's lodging, in the character of a poor man, and was turned away with abuse. And he teased a purblind woman by touching her repeatedly with a stick, like a mischievous boy, till, taking him for one, and finding threats insufficient, she gave her tongue the reins, and began to swear.— Neither of these were fair trials: but discretion was no part of his character. Such, however, was the effect which he produced by his zeal, his vigilance, and his real worth, that a man who, being on his way for a midwife one Sunday, wanted his horse shod in the village, could not prevail upon the blacksmith to do the job, till they had gone together to Mr. Grimshaw, and he had granted permission, being satisfied of the necessity of the case. And it was believed long

after his death, that he had put a stop to the races at Haworth by his prayers, because when he had often and vainly attempted to dissuade the people from subscribing and promoting these meetings, for the benefit of the publicans, he prayed at length that the Lord would be pleased to put a stop to the evil proceedings in his own way, a heavy rain during the whole three days spoiled the sport, and, after that time, the mischievous custom was not revived.

Grimshaw entered entirely into Mr. Wesley's views, acted as assistant in the circuit wherein he resided, and attended the Conference every third year, when it was held at Leeds. When Whitefield or Wesley came to visit him, a scaffold was erected for them in the churchyard, the church not being large enough to hold the concourse that assembled. Prayers, therefore, were read in the church, the preaching was in the open air, and the sacrament was afterwards administered to successive congregations, one church full after another. Whitefield happened, in one of his sermons, to speak as if he believed his hearers had profited much by the exertions of the faithful pastor who had so long laboured among them: but Grimshaw stood up, and interrupted him immediately, saying, with a loud voice, Oh, Sir, for God's sake do not speak so! I pray you, do not flatter them I fear the greater part of them are going to hell with their eyes open." His admiration of the itinerants was very great; his house was their home, they preached in his kitchen, and he always gave notice at church when this was to be; and, that their flock might not be scattered after his death, when a more regular and less zealous minister should succeed him, he built a chapel and dwelling-house at his own expense, and settled it upon the Methodist plan. He not only re

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ceived the preachers as his guests, but as many visiters as his house would hold; giving up his own bed, and sleeping, unknown to them, in the hayloft. No office appeared to him too humble on such occasions, no mark of respect too great for a successful preacher of the Gospel. He was once found cleaning the boots of an itinerant : once he embraced a preacher after his sermon, and said, "the Lord bless thee, Ben, this is worth a hundred of my sermons!" and he fell down before another, saying, he was not worthy to stand in his presence. The only son of this singular man was educated at Kingswood, and became a drunkard, “notwithstanding he had been favoured with a religious education," says his father's biographer," and had been prayed for by some of the holiest men in the land." The severe and injudicious system under which he had suffered at school, and the eccentricities which he had seen at home, may easily explain the wonder. The poor fellow, however, had a sense of his own worthlessness and degeneracy; and when he was riding home, in a state of intoxication, would sometimes say to his horse, the one which Grimshaw had ridden his circuits, upon Once thou carried a saint, but now thou carriest a devil." Disease and strong pain, the bitter consequences of his course of life, brought him to repentance and to the grave; and some of his last words were, "what will my father say, when he sees that I am got to heaven!"

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Of the few clergymen who entered into Mr. Wesley's views, and heartily co-operated with him, Mr. Grimshaw was the most eccentric; Mr. Fletcher the most remarkable for intellectual powers; the one who entered most entirely into the affairs of the Society was Thomas Coke. This person, who held so distinguished a place among the Methodists, and by whose unwearied zeal, and indefatigable exertions, that spirit, which Mr. Wesley had kindled in England, was extended to the remotest parts of the world, was born at Brecknock, in the year 1747, the only child of respectable and wealthy parents. The father died during his childhood, and the youth, in his seventeenth year, was entered as a gentleman commoner at Jesus' College, Oxford. He escaped from the university with fewer vices than in those days were generally contracted there; but he brought away a taint of that philosophical infidelity which was then beginning to infect half-learned men. The works of Bishop Sherlock reclaimed him he entered into holy orders, and being in expectation of some considerable preferment, took out his degree of doctor of laws. The disappointment which he experienced from certain persons in power, to whom he had looked as patrons, was of little consequence to him, being possessed of a fair patrimony. He accepted the curacy of South-Petherton, in Somersetshire, and entered upon the duties of his office with more than ordinary zeal. His preaching soon filled the church; more room was wanting for the congregation; and, as the vestry would not be persuaded to erect a gallery, he built one at his own expense. This, and the style of his discourses, raised a suspicion that he was inclined to Methodism. The growing inclination was strengthened by conversation with Maxfield, who happened then to be residing in the neighbourhood, and confirmed by the perusal of *Alleine's Alarum to the Uncon

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"A book, which multitudes will have cause for ever to be thankful for," says Calamy. "No

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