ADVERTISEMENT.

VARIOUS Lives, or Memoirs, of the founder of Methodism have already been laid before the public. But it has been frequently remarked that such of these as contain the most approved accounts of Mr. Wesley, have been carried out to a length which obstructs their circulation, by the intermixture of details comparatively uninteresting beyond the immediate circle of Wesleyan Methodism. The present Life, therefore, without any design to supersede larger publications, has been prepared with more special reference to general readers. But, as it is contracted within moderate limits chiefly by the exclusion of extraneous matter, it will, it is hoped, be found sufficiently comprehensive to give the reader an adequate view of the life, labors and opinions of the eminent individual who is its subject; and to afford the means of correcting the most material errors and misrepresentations which have had currency respecting him. On several points the author has had the advantage of consulting unpublished papers, not known to preceding biographers, and which have enabled him to place some particulars in a more satisfactory light. LONDON, May 10. :$7.

LIFE OF THE REV. JOHN WESLEY.

CHAPTER I.

JOHN and CHARLES WESLEY, the chief founders of that religious body now commonly known by the name of the Wesleyan Methodists, were the sons of the Rev. Samuel Wesley, rector of Epworth, in Lincolnshire.

Of this clergyman, and his wife, Mrs. Susannah Wesley, who was the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Annesley, as well as the ancestors of both, an interesting account will be found in Dr. Adam Clarke's "Memoirs of the Wesley Family," and in the "Life of Mr. John Wesley," by Dr. Whitehead, and in the more recent one by Mr. Moore. They will be noticed here only so far as a general knowledge of their character may be necessary to assist our judgment as to the opinions and conduct of their more celebrated sons.

The rector of Epworth, like his excellent wife, had descended from parents distinguished for learning, piety, and non-conformity. His father dying whilst he was young, he forsook the Dissenters at an early period of life; and his conversion carried him into high church principles, and political toryism. He was not, however, so rigid in the former as to prevent him from encouraging the early zeal of his sons, John and Charles, at Oxford, although it was even then somewhat irregular, when tried by the strictest rules of church order and custom; and his toryism, sufficiently high in theory, was yet of that class which regarded the rights of the subject tenderly in practice. He refused flattering overtures made by the adherents of James II., to induce him to support the measures of the court, and wrote in favor of the revolution of 1688; admiring it, probably, less in a political view, than as rescuing a protestant church from the dangerous influence of a popish head. For this service, he was presented with the living of Epworth, in Lincolnshire, to which, a few years afterwards, was added that of Wroote, in the same county.

He held the living of Epworth upwards of forty years, and was distinguished for the zeal and fidelity with which he discharged his parish duties. Of his talents and learning, his remaining works afford honorable evidence.

the non-conformists, whose views of discipline they had renounced. They had parted with Calvinism; but, like many others, they renounced with it, for want of spiritual discrimination, those truths which were as fully maintained in the theology of Arminius, and in that of their eminent son, who revived, and more fully illustrated it, as in the writings of the most judicious and spiritual Calvinistic divines themselves. Taylor, Tillotson, and Bull, who be came their oracles, were Arminians of a differen class.

The advantage of such a parentage to the Wes leys was great. From their earliest years they had an example in the father of all that could render a clergyman respectable and influential; and, in the mother there was a sanctified wisdom, a masculine understanding, and an acquired knowledge, which they regarded with just deference after they became men and scholars. The influence of a piety so steadfast and uniform, joined to such qualities, and softened by maternal tenderness, could scarcely fail to produce effect. The firm and manly character, the practical sense, the active and unwearied habits of the father, with the calm, reflecting, and stable qualities of the mother, were in particular inherited by Mr. John Wesley; and in him were most happily blended. A large portion of the ecclesiastical principles and prejudices of the rector of Epworth was also transmit ed to his three sons; but whilst Samuel and Charles retained them least impaired, in John, as we shall see, they sustained in future life considerable modifications.

Samuel, the eldest son, was born in 1692; John, in 1703; and Charles, in 1708.

Samuel Wesley, junior, was educated at Westminster School; and in 1711 was elected to Christ Church, Oxford. He was eminent for his learning, and was an excellent poet, with great power of satire, and an elegant wit. He held a considerable rank among the literary men of the day, and finally settled as head master of the free school of Tiver ton, in Devonshire, where he died in 1739, in his forty-ninth year.

Mrs. Wesley was the instructress of her children in their early years. "I can find," says Dr. WhiteMrs. Susannah Wesley, the mother of Mr. John head, "no evidence that the boys were ever put to Wesley, was, as might be expected from the emi- any school in the country; their mother having a nent character of Dr. Samuel Annesley, her fa- very bad opinion of the common methods of instructther, educated with great care. Like her husband, ing and governing children." She was particularly she also, at an early period of life, renounced non-led, it would seem, to interest herself in John, who, conformity, and became a member of the established church, after, as her biographers tell us, she had read and mastered the whole controversy on the subject of separation; of which, however, great as were her natural and acquired talents, she must, at the age of thirteen years, have been a very imperfect judge. The serious habits impressed upon both by their education, did not forsake them;they feared God, and wrought righteousness" but we may perhaps account for that obscurity in the views of each on several great points of evangelical religion, and especially on justification by faith, and the offices of the Holy Spirit, which hung over their minds for many years, and indeed, till towards the close of life, from this early change of their religious connections. Their theological reading, according to the fashion of the church people of that day, was now directed rather to the writings of those divines of the English church who were tinctured more or less with a Pelagianized Arminianism, than to the works of its founders; their successors the puritans, or of those eminent men among

when he was about six years old, had a providential and singular escape from being burned to death, upon the parsonage house being consumed. There is a striking passage in one of her private meditations, which contains a reference to this event; and indicates that she considered it as laving her under a special obligation "to be more particularly careful of the soul of a child whom God had so mercifully provided for." The effect of this special care on the part of the mother was, that, under the divine blessing, he became early serious; for at the age of eight years, he was admitted by his father to partake of the sacrament. In 1714, he was placed at the Charter House, " where he was noticed for his diligence and progress in learning." "Here, for his quietness, regularity, and application, he became

preserved in one of his early portraits, which has, beThe memory of his deliverance, on this occasion, is low the head, the representation of a house in flames, with the motto, "Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?"

Whitehead's Life.