AN

EXPOSTULATORY ADDRESS,

&c.

* BRETHREN, -I have long wished to address you; and have long been prevented by other engagements, as well as deterred by the difficulty of addressing you as I wish. If my object were to write for one party against another, to expose your errors for the sake of pleasing those who differ from you, I would find no difficulty in the task; and I have not wanted occasions for undertaking it. But I trust I have a much higher aim. While I would candidly mark what I consider dangerous errors in your body, I would do this, not for the sake of victory, but of truth. While I would address you with all the simplicity of reproof, where I think it needful, I would rather win you by conviction, than triumph over you by argument. While I would attempt to rectify your misconceptions and remove your prejudices, I would desire to exercise all patience and tenderness, towards those who labour under them. While I would boldly contend

I have got a series of letters, published in Scotland, under the signature of "Simplex;" which I mention here, for the purpose of acknowledging my obligations to the writer. I perceive he gives me a severe castigation for the unscriptural manner in which I occasionally expressed myself of the Methodists, in my Expostulatory Address to them, and Letters to Mr. Knox. His rebukes upon

that subject are most just; and though I have been long sensible of the error 1 I was betrayed into, and anxious for an opportunity of correcting it; I am not the less indebted to him for publicly animadverting on an evil which was publicly committed. If ever I should be able to republish the work in which it appeared, I shall express myself more fully on the subject.-Extract from Preface to Observations on a Reply to Thoughts on Baptism, 1809.

Your remarks on the inconsistency of my Address to the Methodists perfectly accords with the views of it I have been led to for some years past, and have since, as far as opportunity served, avowed. My sin (for there can be no sin greater than unfaithfulness to the truth of God) I cannot palliate by the plea of mitigation you suggest, that I used the word "brethren" only as indicative of the common brotherhood subsisting between man and man. I fear I meant Christian brotherhood; and was led away by a vague hope that there were a few in the society, who did not really hold the principles which, as a society, they all profess. While men profess sentiments contrary to the truth of the Gospel, we have no right to suppose that they do not believe what they profess; or that they believe what they deny. Indeed, when I wrote that piece and my letters to Mr. Knox, the inconsistency of my language was even exceeded by the inconsistency of my practice. I held the awful character of a clergyman in the establishment, even while I was latterly attempting, with a few others, to meet on the first day of the week in Christian fellowship. I may truly own with shame that I have been a most slow and wayward scholar, while I may own with thankfulness the mercy and patience of the Heavenly teacher.—Letter to Mr. Howe, 1821.

for the most important truth, I am anxious to be kept under the blessed influence of that truth, for which I contend.

To combine these things is no easy matter: it is impossible to man. But I look to him, without whom I can do nothing; beseeching him to keep my spirit throughout this address under his gracious control. Brethren, look ye also to him, as many of you as open these pages; that you may read them with candour, that you may not be suffered to shut your minds against seasonable admonition or reproof: but may examine for yourselves, and "prove all things"not by human authority, but by that divine word which abideth for

ever.

* I have long wished for an opportunity of brotherly intercourse and free communication with real Christians in your society. Such, I am persuaded, differ less from real Christians of other denominations, than they are taught to imagine. I wish that we should know each other, understand and impart to each other. The people of God are all his workmanship, and all taught of him. His work and teaching are the same in them all, as to their leading characters; and where they seem to differ, their difference arises from the mixture of man's work and teaching with the divine. Amidst all that mixture, I can from the heart join in the apostle's prayer, Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity!" And I rejoice in the appearances, which have for some time past indicated a more general diffusion of the truly catholic spirit expressed in that prayer.

But suffer me to remonstrate with you on the opposite temper of party-spirit, which seems increasingly to prevail in your body. The Methodist Society in Ireland appears alarmed at the growing union of other Christians, who have lately been stirred up to co-operate in spreading the glorious Gospel of God through the country; and in the magnitude of that one object (in which their hearts feel a common interest) are forgetting the subordinate differences, which before kept them asunder. Is it not a party-spirit, that makes the Methodist Society not only stand aloof from this blessed union, but oppose it? and that in many instances by acts the most unwarrantable, and misrepresentations the most groundless? Those whose exertions you oppose have no object, but to be instruments of turning sinners from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. Is it not a party-spirit which suggests a fear, that the Methodist interest will be injured by their exertions? I know that those who have been most violent in the opposition of which I speak, would assign various

As to the Address to the Methodists of Ireland, I have mentioned in my reply to Mr. Haldane, that I am willing that any one should reprint that and my Letters to Mr. Knox, (they must go together) provided he print along with them castigatory notes, which I shall be ready to furnish. With these I should be glad of the republication; for there is much important matter, particularly in the Letters to Knox. But without the antidote of the notes I protest against the reprint. Could I, for instance, now countenance the pages of wicked nonsense, in which I expostulate with the Wesleyan Methodists for their bigotry in not cooperating with the Calvinistic Evangelicals in spreading the Gospel? There are strange inconsistencies in that piece, a conflict between light and darkness. I get more clear towards the close of the controversy with Mr. Knox; and I could not agree to the separation of the Address from the Letters.-Letter to J. L-m. 1818.

But let them take

reasons why they are in this doing God service. heed: Saul thought the same when he persecuted the early Christians. They ought to take more pains to examine into the principles and conduct of those whom they oppose, before they represent them as hostile to the true Gospel. Some of your Society who professed to have lived for years without sin, in thought, word, or deed, will sooner or later find that they have been living in that most awful sin, of speaking all manner of evil falsely against others, who— though not following with you-are following Christ, and serving him in the Gospel. Far am I from intimating, that all of you alike are influenced by this spirit. I have met among you individuals, who were blessedly delivered from it. I call on such to oppose the growth of it in your Society.

But it is not only your opposition to the present union of Christians in various churches, for the purpose of advancing the interest of the universal church of Christ,-it is not only your opposition to this that marks a too general party spirit in the Methodist Society: other evidences of the same have long existed. The principal concern of many among you has long appeared to be about the increase of your own body. Numbers-numbers to be added to your Society, that has seemed their great object; short of which nothing satisfies them; and with which, and a strict adherence to the discipline of METHODISM, they are, indeed, easily satisfied without any thing else. Hence, when they deal with a person under the influence of divine grace, no evidence of its reality can content them, till he become a METHODIST. Hence their representations to him, that he can never be completely right, till he join in their class-meeting. Hence their industrious arts to blacken in his view other Christians, to connexion with whom he may seem disposed. Hence their endeavours to entangle his conscience, by insinuating that his indisposition to become a Methodist arises from worldly fear or shame,-from aversion to the reproach of the Cross of Christ; as if that reproach were exclusively attached to their Society. Hence the manifestations of affectionate attention and solicitude which are heaped upon him, while any hope remains of attaching him to their body. Hence the indifference and uncharitable surmises which succeed, as soon as that hope is done away.

But the moment any one-however little acquainted with himself or with God, with the law or with the Gospel-gives in his name to the society, how easily are they satisfied! Immediately he is considered as in the way of salvation; and if he only continue to speak the language and observe the forms of Methodism, all is well.

Brethren, be more solicitous to consider, whether there is not too just room for these observations, than to refute them. I do not expect that mere party-men among you, while they continue such, will receive these admonitions, and I can anticipate their answers; but let others attend to them, and beware of the evil. I desire to acknowledge but two great parties-those who through grace are "on the Lord's side," and those who are of the world. The former are scattered through various outward churches, under various names : but they are all one body, having one Lord, one faith, one hope.

Nothing but blind bigotry suggests that they are to be found only under one denomination; or leads any to act as if they thought so. That bigotry, blessed be God, is lessening among lively Christians of all denominations. They are daily discovering themselves to be brethren, and acting in brotherly concert for the advancement of that one cause, which alone will certainly prevail. That is not the cause of any human party, or outward denomination in the Church of Christ. It is the cause of Christ's Kingdom. And shall you be alarmed by their union, or jealous of their exertions? *

I pass to another evil among you, closely connected with the former; and that is, an idolatrous attachment to men and submission to human authority in matters of religion. I conceive some of you already startled, lest I should touch the reputation of Wesley or of Fletcher. Brethren, to them it is of little consequence what you or I think of them: but it is of the utmost consequence to you to remember that divine rule, "call no man master or father upon earth:

This paragraph may be said to comprise in it the greatest part of the unscriptural sentiments so severely condemned by Mr. Walker in the preceding notes. His obscurity at this period on the nature of Christian Union he avows to have been great. Intent on exposing the errors with which the truth of the Gospel was corrupted, and aiming to produce such an intercourse between "lively Christians of all denominations," as he hoped would promote" the inquiry after truth," "the test of all things, not by human authority, but by the divine word," and the manifestation of "who were on the Lord's side," he was not yet awakened to that closeness of union among themselves, and separation from all other religious connexion, which the apostolic commands enjoin on disciples. Although there was sufficient in this language to alarm, not the Methodist alone, but all other societies of the kind, it betrays the influence exercised over his mind by the specious pretensions of counterfeit charity; it betrays the leaven of that false principle, which, professing to unite "Christians of all denominations," on the ground of some generally acknowledged doctrines, does really establish an Anti-christian confederacy bound together by a mutual compact to disregard and disobey various laws of Christ's Kingdom. But he was soon led to discover and renounce all such "religious connexion and co-operation," as among "the specious devices of the father of lies for scattering the Lord's flock; and concealing from their view the importance, simplicity, and glory of the rules by which the first Christians walked; and by which the disciples are called to walk to the end of the world' [See Address to Believers.] "The word of God discovered to him a religious world that is just as opposite to Him as the most irreligious. That word calls disciples to come out from the whole of this world that knows not the true God, and to be separate from it, not by declining the necessary intercourse of civil life with any, but by declining every kind of religious connexion or co-operation with it, as tending, on the part of disciples, to obscure the distinctive characters of the Church of Christ to shade off the strong outlines of her portrait as marked in the Scriptures, and blend them into a coalescence with the various religions of the world.”—[Ibid.] He admitted "that the principles of separation which he maintained did tend to divide existing religious bodies called churches, to disturb their tranquillity, and to call away every disciple from among them; but that it held out the only means for uniting disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ." [See Essay on the Divine Authority of the Apostolic Traditions.] He shewed" that the most such bodies aimed at was but perpetuating the disunion of disciples, by contending for it as a harmless thing; and concealing the magnitude of the evil, by drawing over it a flimsy veil of occasional and partial fellowship or co-operation. That the peace and tranquillity, which they were afraid to have disturbed, is a treacherous peace, in which disciples are taught to agree to differ about what God had determined in his word, and to compromise with each other their several departures from scriptura) rule, by making these things matters of mutual forbearance." [Ibid.]—ED.

for one is your master, even Christ-one is your father which is in heaven." I do think that the Methodist society has awfully forgotten this rule; and under the mask of following these men as they followed Christ, has set them up in the place of Christ; implicitly adopting their sentiments, and regulating its faith and practice by theirs. The more any of you are shocked or offended at this observation, as derogatory to their character, the more is the justice of the observation evinced. Even though they were less deeply erroneous than I think they were, yet it would be surprising if men who had written so much, and done so much, had not erred. But will Methodists, in general, bear the idea of imputing error to those men? Is it not generally enough to impose any maxim or opinion upon them, that Wesley or Fletcher said it? Are not their writings treated by you as paramount to the Scriptures? Is it the Scriptures you put into the hands of those, whom you have made or want to make converts to Methodism ? No, you send them for the most part to Fletcher's Checks; and stuff their poor heads with bad metaphysics and worse divinity, before they have rightly learned the first principles of the Gospel of Christ. And if they be directed to the Scriptures at all, they must read them accompanied by Wesley's notes, for fear they should imbibe from the Scriptures any thing contrary to Methodism. This is the way to make Methodistszealous, bigotted Methodists; but indeed it is not the way to make simple and devoted Christians. It is the way to inflame their minds against the persons whom Mr. Wesley and Mr. Fletcher opposed, and to make them bitter controversialists; but it is not the way to combat their natural prejudices against the truths of God, or to feed them with the sincere milk of his word.

Ask yourselves, brethren, how many of your present opinions have you adopted from a serious, diligent, and humble examination of the Scriptures, in the spirit of prayer, waiting on the Father of Lights for that wisdom which cometh from above; and how many from a rash submission to the authority of human teachers? I know so much of this spirit among you, that I am aware many, into whose hands this address will come, are likely to think me worse than an infidel, for even hinting a doubt of the excellence of Mr. Wesley's and Mr. Fletcher's writings. Yes, I know that some will not endure the man, who shall venture to drop a hint derogatory to their honour; while they easily bear in their writings, and readily adopt from them sentiments, the most derogatory to the honour of God our Saviour.

The root of this evil lies deep, even in the conformation of your society. According to its original constitution, none could be members of it but those who paid an absolute submission to Mr. Wesley's authority in matters great and small. He claimed and exercised uncontrolled power over his numerous societies; and vindicates himself from the charge of "making himself a Pope," and "shackling

"Give no tickets to any that wear calashes," nor to any man or woman who does not promise to leave off snuff and tobacco."-Minutes of several Conversations between the Rev. Mr. Wesley and others. London: printed by G. Paramore, 1791, pages 13 and 29.

† Ibid, page 20.