freeborn Englishmen," by urging that to him "the preachers had engaged themselves, to submit to serve him as sons in the Gospel ;" that to him "the people in general would submit ;" and that " every preacher and every member might leave him when he pleased."* How solicitous Mr. Wesley was to attach this authority to every thing he wrote, is evinced even by that instruction to his assistants, contained in his Minutes, to take care that every society be duly supplied with books, particularly with Kempis, Instructions for Children, and the Primitive Physic, which ought to be in every house. Oh! why is not this regarded?"* It really is not to excite a smile, that I make such a quotation; but, if possible, to excite your attention to a fact, melancholy in its consequences. I pretend not to decide on Mr. Wesley's character in the sight of God. He was actively laborious in his life; and, I am informed, was most amiable in his manners and winning in his address. That, no doubt, contributed to the overgrown influence which he possessed. But this I know, that an apostle would not have attempted to usurp such dominion over you, as he established over his Societies. Nor has his authority died with him. His name and his writings still enable persons, much inferior to him in talents, to maintain that dominion. But judge ye how far a Christian is warranted by Scripture, in becoming a member of any society, upon such terms of absolute submission to the authority of a man, even to the best and wisest of

men.

But, brethren, besides your party-spirit and your idolatrous veneration of men, there are other evils, to which I desire to call your attention. Looking at the general aspect of Methodism, and comparing it with the Christianity of the Gospel, I see a striking contrast indeed,-between the obtrusive, tumultuous bustle of the one, and the calm and sober, though happy and heavenly, character of the other. You hold, indeed, scriptural and important phrases; but in the sense in which you hold them, and the manner in which you apply them, (as a body) they appear quite different things from what I discover in the Scripture. Faith, grace, justification, sanctification, &c. are terms in frequent use among you; but they seem all perverted, and employed to sanction a system of human feelings, strongly wrought on, either in the way of distressing terror or joyful emotion. These you call experience; and any man who maintains the precariousness and insufficiency of these, you are too ready to pronounce an enemy to experimental religion.

Brethren, I hold as strongly as any of you, that all true religion begins and is carried on by the power of God experienced in the heart; but I know that this is perfectly distinct from the natural agitation of the passions, into which it seems the object of the Methodistic system to lash the minds of its members. I can see no divine power in the mechanical groan, and the periodical Amen, without which you think your religious meetings lifeless. I can see no divine power in those tumultuous assemblies, which have at various times been encouraged among you, and are now encouraged, where two or three, or more, are at the same moment uttering petitions to Ibid, page 28.

God with stentorian voices, and others are going about among the people urging them to cry out, till their nerves are wrought upon to screeching, swooning, and various hysterical affections, which you are taught to consider as the power of God. When attempts are made to impose this on the world for religion, serious Christians will be disposed to weep, and the rest of mankind to laugh. I know that you do not all take a part in these meetings to which I allude; that they are not yet universal among you. But there must be some awful delusion on the minds of a society, which not only tolerates, but countenances and approves of such practices.

But do I not see the principle of them sanctioned by the highest authority among you, in the return made by your leaders of the specific numbers who were convinced, who were justified, who were sanctified at the several places at which they preached? i. e. of the numbers who, under sudden feelings of terror, feelings of joy, or feelings of what they call holiness, cried out in language corresponding to these instantaneous impressions. Indeed, brethren, there must be a radical error in the system upon which such a fabric can be built. I restrain myself from expressing what I fear of the men, who lead you into such a quagmire of blasphemous absurdity. But I call on you not to be deterred by the weight of their names or the number of their followers, from looking at the delusion in its naked deformity.

Having mentioned in general, what you call your experience, I am led to say a few words on those meetings in which you speak of this experience with each other, your class-meetings and love-feasts. I think I know something of the blessedness of free intercourse and unreserved communication between Christians. But I am persuaded that meetings, conducted as yours are, must prove in many instances highly injurious; and perhaps they are most injurious to those who like them most. At them, each member of your society is weekly called on to declare the state of his soul, in the presence of others, to the number of twelve or twenty. The most truly experienced Christian is best able to say, how nice and trying a matter it is, to speak before others of himself, and of his walk with God. It is not at all times or at any periodical intervals, that he will dare to attempt it; and when he does see it expedient to speak upon the subject, it will be with holy fear, whether he speaks of his sorrows or of his joys. But among you the weakest are every week put upon this exercise: those who have no real experience in religion at all, are brought forward to declare their experience, and drilled either into hypocrisy or self-deceit. They hear one and another around them speaking the language of complaint or of rejoicing, of distressing anxiety or assured confidence; and they, in their turn, retail the gleanings of the phraseology they have heard. They utter, perhaps, the most humiliating complaints of themselves, and are secretly filled with a proud satisfaction at the thought of having complained so well and spoken so humbly. Set in motion by this gust of self-complacency, they are ready to receive the exhortation which their class-leader gives them, to work out, strenuously what is wanting of their salvation. They report progress at the next meeting, for which they

have been preparing in the interval. They have now to say, (as they have heard others say) that they are thirsting, wrestling, on the stretch, for justification. They are sent away with encouragement, perhaps, to win it that night by violence; and in all probability, by the following meeting, they will have to declare that they have obtained that which they are taught to call justification—a lively impression on their minds of some words of Scripture, as if a voice from heaven told them that their sins were forgiven. The poor creature is then rejoiced over, and rejoices over himself, as having experienced the blessing;-talks of this experience with delight; and mistakes his fondness of talking of it for zeal and spiritual fervour. He is given to understand, that all he needs now is to keep up those feelings, and to go on in the same way, to attain what is called sanctification. He is questioned weekly as to his progress in this effort, or perhaps is employed to question others; and if he only continue regular in attending his class, and precise in the observation of Methodist discipline, no doubt is entertained by himself or others of his Christianity; while he has only exchanged, perhaps, the sins of drunkenness and swearing, for the sins of spiritual pride, censoriousness, and hypocrisy. If he can only deceive himself then sufficiently to imagine that all sin is at some instant exterminated from within him, the course is finished; and his experience held up as a pattern to all the Society.

Let me not be understood to mean that all run such a course, who talk of their experience at your class meetings. God forbid! I trust many attend them who are kept honest and simple in heart; though such, I believe, are often made miserable by them. But you have a very different idea from me of the human heart, its deceitfulness and corruption; if you do not think such a course is the natural consequence of such meetings. Yet I am aware that these meetings are a favourite part of your system; and I do not wonder at it, for they are peculiarly adapted to keep you together as a body. I know to what imputations the declaration of my opinion about them will expose me; but I shall be thankful, if what I have said shall even excite any of you, in attending them, to use more caution, more secret prayer, more inward watchfulness, than formerly.

But some of you perhaps are ready to say," what right has this man to suppose, that any among us walk in such a self-deceiving course, or make such a false profession of experience, as he has just now described?" I candidly own, that I have met some Methodists, and read of others, who to my judgment gave evidence of being in various stages of that course; but indeed I am not fond of deciding on the state or character of individuals, where there is any room for doubt. But I must add, that there are some among you, of whom I can have no doubt that they are in the last and most awful stage of it: I mean all those who avow that they have attained that same perfection in holiness, in consequence of which they live without sin in thought, word, or deed. "Ay,"-methinks I hear some exclaim,"now what we suspected appears he is a CALVINIST-an advocate for sin-an enemy to holiness." Well, brethren! as one said long ago, "strike, but hear me;" so would I say, think of me as ill as you

please, but reject not what I offer without a serious and candid examination. To the charge of being a Calvinist I shall say a few words by-and-by. But whatever I be, I believe as firmly, and declare as explicitly, as any Methodist, that "without holiness no man shall see the Lord." But I believe the nature of that holiness is awfully mistaken by many Methodists, and misrepresented in your system; and while I believe the Bible, I must be certain that any man, who says he has no sin, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; and my reverence for the divine authority will not allow me to be deterred from avowing that certainty, by the names or estimation of any men who have told that lie, or countenanced others in telling it. The methodistic idea of sanctification is, in plain English, this: that the corrupt nature of man becomes in believers less and less corrupt, through the influence of divine grace aiding their exertions; till at length it becomes wholly good, perfectly purified from all evil; and this of course instantaneously;-for, as Mr. Wesley observes, "If sin cease before death, there must in the nature of the thing be an instantaneous change-there must be a last minute wherein it does exist, and a first minute wherein it does not."-Ib. Wesley's Minutes, p. 39. So that a man, under the work of grace, becomes first, in Mr. Fletcher's phraseology, a carnal penitent, then a christian believer, then a perfect Christian.-Fletcher's Last Check, p. 115, 116.

Now I scruple not to pronounce the whole of this idea unscriptural, from first to last, though very natural, and harmonizing, more than its supporters are aware, with the popular ideas of Christianity, which prevail among the carnal world. According to Scripture, I am not warranted to consider it any part of the work of grace to mend our fallen nature. That nature is as bad-as wholly evil-in a believer as in an unbeliever,-as bad in the most established believer as in the weakest ;;-as bad in Paul the apostle, just finishing his course, and ready to receive the crown of righteousness, as in Saul of Tarsus, a blasphemer, and a persecutor of the church of Christ. Indeed, if that old nature, called in Scripture the Flesh, became during our Christian course less and less evil, the believer would have less and less occasion to watch against the flesh, "to deny himself, to mortify the flesh with its affections and lusts, to walk not after the flesh," &c. And if, at any period, it became purged from all evil, it would then become a Christian duty "to fulfil the desires of the flesh and of the mind." But the Scriptures declare, and the experience of every believer to the end confirms it, that "the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh;" that these two are 'contrary the one to the other;" that the carnal mind, or flesh, or corrupt nature, is not only at enmity with God;-(if it were only so, it might perhaps in time become a friend)—but is in itself "enmity against God;" that it not only "is not subject to the law of God," but indeed "cannot be." The Scriptures represent the whole course of the believer here below, as a warfare, not only against the world and the devil, but against the flesh, that most dangerous ally of both: and give us no reason to suppose that any part of this warfare ceases, but with the present

mortal life. The opposite view which you are taught, is certainly much more self-complacent; but that will not recommend it to the better mind of a believer. It would be much more gratifying to the pride of our hearts, to think that, however bad we may be naturally, yet we are not so bad but that we may be mended; and it is the general idea of all men, the most careless and the most profane. But, indeed, our most strenuous exertions to effect that object, are but spending our strength in vain; and it is worse than in vain, when any flatter themselves they have attained it.

What difference then, it may be asked, is there between the believer and the unbeliever? Is it only that the former subscribes to a creed which the latter disbelieves? and can a difference, so small as this, constitute the one accepted in the sight of God, as righteous, and bind the other under condemnation ? My brethren, by no means. The difference between them is infinitely great. The believer is, by the rich mercy and saving power of God, brought out of that state of nature, in which all lie originally since the fall of man, -children of that world "which lieth in the wicked one,"children of disobedience, in whose hearts "the God of this world reigneth,"-children of wrath, under the curse annexed as the immutable penalty to every transgression of the divine law. Out of this guilty and corrupt mass, dead in trespasses and sins, the believer is brought, not by the merit of his faith, but by the mercy and power of God, into a state of union with the Lord Jesus Christ, the head of his mystical body, of that church which he has redeemed, and to every member of which HE is "made of GOD, wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification and redemption.

Consider well, brethren, that passage (1 Cor. i. 30.) from which the latter words are taken. Observe in it a declaration of the author of the change which has taken place in the state of believers, Godthat God against whom we all have sinned, and by whose grace alone any sinner can be saved: "of him are ye in Christ Jesus," not of yourselves, of your faithfulness or your works, but "of him." Observe in it a declaration of the new state in which believers are placed; they are "in Christ Jesus." Here is that union of Christ and his church, which the apostle pronounces to be "a great mystery," (Ephes. v. 32.) but which is a glorious truth pervading the Old Testament and the New ;-that union, the closeness of which is shadowed out to us in Scripture, by the union of husband and wife, who are "no more two but one flesh," of a tree and its branches, of a body and its members, &c. Observe, again, in the same passage, a declaration of all the blessed consequences which accrue to believers from this union: "Christ is made unto themwisdom and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." And observe well, that their sanctification is declared to be among these consequences, distinct indeed from their righteousness or justification, but equally resulting from their being in Christ, agreeably to that description which is given of them in the beginning of the same chapter, (1 Cor. i. 2.) as sanctified in Christ Jesus."

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But what are we to understand by being sanctified, or made holy? I answer in a word-separated unto God, so as to be brought into a