put an end to the useless conversation by promising that he would consider, with the help of God, what Zinzendorf had said to him.

These last words of Zinzendorf are repeated in a pamphlet written by him in 1755 in English, with the spirit of which Wesley no doubt would have agreed. 'It was no self-denial to my Saviour, nor any mortification, to lead a holy life in this world. When He, dying for us, abolished our guilt and pain, He obtained for all partakers of His merits the privilege to sin no more, and to live in this world as He would have lived Himself, had He lived in our station and in our times. So I also scorn heartily the doing good by way of self-denial and mortification.'

Comparing these words with Wesley's letter, it is not difficult to see what Zinzendorf meant by Wesley having changed his religion. Wesley, when he first wrote from Georgia to Zinzendorf, and when he afterwards visited him at Marienborn, was a seeker. He was looking for a spirit beyond himself; he was desiring to be submitted to an influence that he had not yet felt. When he wrote to rebuke the Moravians for what he thought their self-indulgence, all this had passed away: he had taken up the attitude most exactly opposite to that of a seekera censor of others for not feeling exactly the same as himself. To Zinzendorf, the change in his point of view looked like a change in his convictions.

One remark must be made in excuse of what appears so censorious in Wesley's attitude to the Moravians. They sought to live by an inward rule, and he by an outward one; and the reader will probably feel more sympathy with them than with him:

but his rebuke, however arrogant, had in it nothing of that rejoicing in evil which is the root of a censorious spirit. He would have been unfitted for the work he had to do if he had copied the Moravians. To fight against gross outward forms of wickedness, and raise up a religious order among the classes addicted to them, an outward ideal of goodness is necessary; and if it does not seem to us that a censorious attitude of mind to those who neither need nor adopt this code is also necessary, we must ask ourselves whether any one has ever accomplished a great work without under-estimating those who took no share in it.

After this time Wesley's feeling to the Moravians went through many vicissitudes. He was at first and at last just to them, as far as it is possible to be just to people whom one does not understand. It is not often that a religious leader can be as generous to a colleague who blurs the distinction he is anxious to retain as to an avowed opponent. Wesley defended the men who were dragging him into an association with Dissent, at the time when such association was most injurious to all he cared about. This accusation, which was constantly brought against him about the time of his separation from the Moravians, was a serious hindrance to his powers of usefulness. It was about this time that he was excluded from the gaol at Bristol, in spite of the earnest desire of the prisoners under sentence of death,-doubtless upon this pretext. Now, though the United Brethren' were not necessarily Dissenters, in the most reasonable sense of that word-for they held all the doctrines of the Church of England,

and adhered to its form of government-still, when they took to declaiming against the ordinances of that Church, and speak of the folly of attending its services, they could not be regarded as its members. And the endeavour of those who attacked him was to identify him and them, so as to make him answerable for all the real and fancied extravagances of a body which at this time would have been unpopular merely from its foreign name. This endeavour was not met by Wesley, at the time when such a course would have been most to his interest by any denunciation of the Moravians. For some years he was certainly most unjust to them, we may use this epithet, whether the injurious narratives and still more injurious hints which he included in his published journals are true or false, for there is no trace of his ever having investigated these reports; and he was indeed not the person to do so. He never seems to have sifted stories told him, though he sometimes disbelieved them. But this is the injustice of one who readily believes whatever strongly impresses his imagination, whether it be good or bad, and not of one who is glad to think ill of an enemy.

Towards the close of his life, though there was nothing of that tenderness with which more personal natures would have reverted to an early and interrupted sympathy, Wesley's tone was gentle and reverent. His latest notice of Zinzendorf occurs in a sermon preached at Plymouth Dock, on knowing Christ after the flesh. It is a direct attack on that kind of religion which was most prevalent among the Moravians, and pre-eminently in Zinzendorf, and

which some of the earlier Moravian hymns illustrate in a manner which shocks other feelings than those of reverence. Yet Zinzendorf is mentioned as 'a late great man, whose memory I love and esteem ;' and the Moravian hymns, disfigured as they are, receive his warmest commendation.

CHAPTER X.

SEPARATION FROM WHITEFIELD.

IT has been seen that the subject of predestination had occasioned Wesley some perplexity even during his college days, and that he was led, apparently by the arguments of his mother, to interpret the Article which treats of that subject in what is called (by many who never heard of the Dutchman who Latinized his name into Arminius) an Arminian sense; a sense, that is, which supposes the predestination of some to salvation and others to damnation to be not the cause, but the effect, of something God foresees in them. Whitefield, on the other hand, was always a Calvinist ; and during his second visit to America (1739-41) he became convinced that the great truth that Christ did not die for all mankind was 'children's bread,' and could not afterwards in conscience refrain from publishing it. A division between the two Methodist leaders hence became inevitable; and the same year which separated Wesley from his spiritual guides separated him also from his spiritual pupil. A few preliminary words must be given to the question which separated them. What is ordinarily, and somewhat unfortunately, called Calvinism may be stated in a form plainly repugnant to many declarations of