man hath seen, or can see; either by reason of their nature, which (though they surround us on every side) is not perceivable by these gross senses; or by reason of their distance, as being yet afar off in the bosom of eternity. It showeth what eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither could it before enter into our heart to conceive; and all this in the clearest light, with the fullest certainty and evidence. For it does not leave us to receive our notice by mere reflection from the dull glass of sense, but resolves a thousand enigmas of the highest concern, by giving faculties suited to things invisible. It is the eye of the new-born soul, whereby every true believer seeth Him who is invisible." It is the ear of the soul, whereby the sinner "hears the voice of the Son of God and lives;" the palate of the soul, (if the expression may be allowed,) whereby a believer "tastes the good word and the powers of the world to come;" the feeling of the soul, whereby, "through the power of the Highest overshadowing him,' he perceives the presence of Him in whom he lives, and moves, and has his being, and feels the love of God shed abroad in his heart. It is the internal evidence of Christianity, a perpetual revelation, equally strong, equally new, through all the centuries which have elapsed since the incarnation, and passing now, even as it has done from the beginning, directly from God into the believing soul. Do . you suppose time will ever dry up this stream? Oh no! It shall never be cut off

Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum.

It flows, and as it flows, for ever will flow on.

The historical evidence of revelation, strong and clear as it is, is cognizable by men of learning alone; but this is plain, simple, and level to the lowest capacity. The sum is," One thing I know: I was blind, but now I see: an argument of which a peasant, a woman, a child, may feel all the force. The traditional evidence gives an account of what was transacted far away and long ago. The inward evidence is intimately present to all persons, at all times, and in all places. "It is nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, if thou believest in the Lord Jesus Christ." This, then, is the record, this is the evidence, emphatically so called, that God hath given unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

Why then, have not all men this faith? Because no man is able to work it in himself: it is a work of omnipotence. It requires no less power thus to quicken a dead soul, than to raise a body that lies in the grave. It is a new creation; and none can create a soul anew, but He who at first created the heavens and the earth. May not your own experience teach you this? said Wesley. Can you give yourself this faith? Is it in your power to see, or hear, or taste, or feel God? to raise in yourself any perception of God, or of an invisible world? to open an intercourse between yourself and the world of spirits to discern either them or Him that created them? to burst the veil that is on your heart, and let in the light of eternity? You know it is not. You not only do not, but cannot (by your own strength) thus believe. The more you labour so to do, the more you will be convinced it is the gift of God. It is the free gift of God, which he bestows not on those who are worthy of his favour, not on such as are previously holy, and so fit to be crowned with all the bless

ings of his goodness; but on the ungodly and unholy; on those who, till that hour, were fit only for everlasting destruction; those in whom was no good thing, and whose only plea was, God be merciful to me a sinner! No merit, no goodness in man, precedes the forgiving love of God. His pardoning mercy supposes nothing in us but a sense of mere sin and misery; and to all who see and feel, and own their wants, and their utter inability to remove them, God freely gives faith, for the sake of him" in whom he is always well pleased." Whosoever thou art, O man, who hast the sentence of death in thyself, unto thee saith the Lord, not," Do this, perfectly obey all my commands, and live ;” but “believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.'

Without faith, a man cannot be justified, even though he should have every thing else; with faith, he cannot but be justified, though every thing else should be wanting. This justifying faith implies not only the personal revelation, the inward evidence of Christianity, but likewise a sure and firm confidence in the individual believer that Christ died for his sins, loved him, and gave his life for him. And at what time soever a sinner thus believes, God justifieth him. Repentance, indeed, must have been given him before; but that repentance was neither more nor less than a deep sense of the want of all good, and the presence of all evil; and whatever good he hath or doth from that hour when he first believes in God through Christ, faith does not find, but bring. Both repentance, and fruits meet for repentance, are in some degree necessary to justification: but they are not necessary in the same sense with faith, nor in the same degree. Not in the same degree, for these fruits are only necessary conditionally, if there be time and opportunity for them. Not in the same sense; for repentance and its fruits are only remotely necessary-necessary in order to faith; whereas faith is immediately and directly necessary to justification. In like manner, faith is the only condition of sanctification. Every one that believes is sanctified, whatever else he has, or has not. In other words, no man can be sanctified till he believes; every man when he believes is sanctified. Here Wesley came upon perilous ground.-We must be holy in heart and life, before we can be conscious that we are so. must love God before we can be holy at all. We cannot love Him till we know that He loves us; and this we cannot know till his Spirit witnesses it to our spirit. The testimony of the Spirit of God must therefore, he argued, in the very nature of things, be antecedent to the testimony of our own spirit. But he perceived that many had mistaken the voice of their own imagination for this witness of the Spirit, and presumed that they were children of God, while they were doing the works of the devil. And he was not surprised that many sensible men, seeing the effects of this delusion, should lean toward another extreme, and question whether the witness of the spirit whereof the apostle speaks, is the privilege of ordinary Christians, and not rather one of those extraordinary gifts, which they suppose belonged only to the apostle's age. Yet, when he asks, "How may one, who has the real witness in himself, distinguish it from presumption?" he evades the difficulty, and offers a declamatory reply," How, I pray, do you distinguish day from night? How

But we

do you distinguish light from darkness? or the light of a star or of a glimmering taper, from the light of the noon-day sun. This is the ready answer of every one who has been crazed by enthusiasm. But Wesley regarded the doctrine as one of the glories of his people, as one grand part of the testimony which God, he said, had given them to bear to all mankind. It was by this peculiar blessing upon them, confirmed by the experience of his children, that this great evangelical truth, he averred, had been recovered, which had been for many years well nigh lost and forgotten.

These notions led to the doctrine of Assurance, which he had defended so pertinaciously against his brother Samuel. But upon this point his fervour had abated, and he made a fairer retraction than was to be expected from the founder of a sect. "Some," said he, "are fond of the expression; I am not I hardly ever use it. But I will simply declare (having neither leisure nor inclination to draw the sword of controversy concerning it) what are my present sentiments with regard to the thing which is usually meant thereby. I believe a few, but very few Christians, have an assurance from God of everlasting salvation: and that is the thing which the apostle terms the plerophory, or full assurance of hope. I believe more have such an assurance of being now in the favour of God, as excludes all doubt and fear and this, if I do not mistake, is what the apostle means by the plerophory, or full assurance of faith. I believe a consciousness of being in the favour of God (which I do not term plerophory, or full assurance, since it is frequently weakened, nay, perhaps interrupted by returns of doubt or fear) is the common privilege of Christians, fearing God, and working righteousness. Yet I do not affirm there are no exceptions to this general rule. Possibly some may be in the favour of God, and yet go mourning all the day long. (But I believe this is usually owing either to disorder of body, or ignorance of the gospel promises.) Therefore I have not, for many years, thought a consciousness of acceptance to be essential to justifying faith. And after I have thus explained myself once for all, I think, without any evasion or ambiguity, I am sure without any self-contradiction, I hope all reasonable men will be satisfied: and whoever will still dispute with me on this head, must do it for disputing's sake."

The doctrine of Perfection is not less perilous, sure as the expression was to be mistaken by the ignorant people to whom his discourses were addressed. This too, was a doctrine which he had preached with inconsiderate ardour at the commencement of his career; and which, as he grew older, cooler, and wiser, he modified and softened down, so as almost to explain it away. He defined it to be a constant communion with God, which fills the heart with humble love; and to this, he insisted, that every believer might attain. Yet, he admitted, that it did not include a power never to think a useless thought, nor speak a useless word. Such a perfection is inconsistent with a corruptible body, which makes it impossible always to think right: if, therefore, Christian perfection implies this, he admitted that we must not expect it till after death :-to one of his female disciples, who seems to have written to him under a desponding sense of her imperfection, he replied in these terms: "I want

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you," he added, "to be all love. This is the perfection I believe and teach; and this perfection is consistent with a thousand nervous disorders, which that high-strained perfection is not. Indeed my judgment is, that (in this case particularly) to overdo is to undo; and that to set perfection too high, is the most effectual way of driving it out of the world." In like manner he justified the word to Bishop Gibson, by explaining it to mean less than it expressed; so that the Bishop replied to him, "Why, Mr. Wesley, if this is what you mean by perfection, who can be against it ?" Man," he says, "in his present state, can no more attain Adamic than angelic perfection.The perfection of which man is capable, while he dwells in a corruptible body, is the complying with that kind command, My son, give me thy heart!' It is the loving the Lord his God, with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind.” But these occasional explanations did not render the general use of the word less mischievous, or less reprehensible. Ignorant hearers took it for what it appeared to mean; and what, from the mouths of ignorant instructors, it was intended to mean. It flattered their vanity and their spiritual pride, and became one of the most popular tenets of the Methodists, precisely because it is one of the most objectionable. Wesley himself repeatedly finds fault with his preachers, if they neglected to enforce a doctrine so well adapted to gratify their hearers. one place he says, "the more I converse with the believers in Cornwall, the more am I convinced that they have sustained great loss for want of hearing the doctrine of Christian Perfection clearly and strongly enforced. I see wherever this is not done, the believers grow dead and cold. Nor can this be prevented, but by keeping up in them an hourly expectation of being perfected in love. I say an hourly expectation; for to expect it at death, or some time hence, is much the same as not expecting it at all." And on another occasion he writes thus : "Here I found the plain reason why the work of God had gained no ground in this circuit all the year. The preachers had given up the Methodist testimony. Either they did not speak of perfection at all, (the peculiar doctrine committed to our trust,) or they spoke of it only in general terms, without urging the believers to go on to perfection, and to expect it every moment: and wherever this is not earnestly done, the work of God does not prosper. As to the word perfection," said he, "it is scriptural, therefore neither you nor I can, in conscience, object to it, unless we would send the Holy Ghost to school, and teach Him to speak who made the tongue.' Thus it was that he attempted to justify to others, and to himself also, the use of language, for persevering in which, after the intemperance of his enthusiasm had abated, there can be no excuse, seeing that all he intended to convey by the obnoxious term might have been expressed without offending the judicious, or deluding the ignorant and indiscreet.

"The

Wesley was not blind to the tendency of these doctrines. true gospel," said he, "touches the very edge both of Calvinism and Antinomianism, so that nothing but the mighty power of God can prevent our sliding into the one or the other." Many of his associates and followers fell into both. He always declared himself clearly and strongly against both; though at the expense of some inconsisten

cy, when he preached of a sanctification which left the subject liable to sin, of an assurance which was not assured, and of an imperfect perfection. But his real opinion could not be mistaken; and few men have combated these pestilent errors with more earnestness or more success. He never willingly engaged in those subtle and unprofitable discussions which have occasioned so much dissention in the Christian world; but upon those points in which speculation is allowable, and error harmless, he freely indulged his imagination.

It was his opinion that there is a chain of beings advancing by degrees from the lowest to the highest point,-from an atom of unorganized matter, to the highest of the archangels; an opinion consonant to the philosophy of the bards, and confirmed by science, as far as our physiological knowledge extends. He believed in the ministry both of good and evil angels; but whether every man had a guardian angel to protect him, as the Romanists hold, and a malignant demon continually watching to seduce him into the ways of sin and death, this he considered as undetermined by revelation, and therefore doubtful. Evil thoughts he held to be infused into the minds of men by the evil principle; and that" as no good is done, or spoken, or thought by any man, without the assistance of God working together in and with those that believe in him;" so there is no evil done, or spoken, or thought, without the assistance of the devil, "who worketh with energy in the children of unbelief. And certainly," said he, "it is as easy for a spirit to speak to our heart, as for a man to speak to our ears. But sometimes it is exceedingly difficult to distinguish the thoughts which he infuses from our own thoughts, those which he injects so exactly resembling those which naturally arise in our own minds. Sometimes, indeed, we may distinguish one from the other by this circumstance: the thoughts which naturally arise in our minds are generally, if not always, occasioned by, or, at least, connected with some inward or outward circumstance that went before ; but those that are preternaturally suggested, have frequently no relation to, or connexion (at least none that we are able to discern) with, any thing which preceded. On the contrary, they shoot in, as it were, across, and thereby show that they are of a different growth." His notions of diabolical agency went further than this: he imputed to it many of the accidents and discomforts of life-disease, bodily hurts, storms and earthquakes, and nightmare: he believed that epilepsy was often, or always, the effect of possession, and that most madmen were demoniacs. A belief in witchcraft naturally fol lowed from these premises; but, after satisfying his understanding. that supernatural acts and appearances are consistent with the order of the universe, sanctioned by Scripture, and proved by testimony too general and too strong to be resisted, he invalidated his own authority, by listening to the most absurd tales with implicit credulity, and recording them as authenticated facts. He adhered to the old opinion, that the devils were the gods of the heathen; and he maintained, that the words in the Lord's Prayer, which have been rendered evil, mean, in the original, the wicked one, "emphatically so called, the prince and god of this world, who works with mighty power in the children of disobedience."

One of his most singular notions was concerning the day of judg