Page images
PDF
EPUB

It is freely admitted, however, that learning may be useful to a pious minister, though it is not necessary to a profitable discharge of his duties. On a review, it will appear, that literature has done more harm than good in the church. If it be said that the mischief has been owing to the bad hands into which it has fallen, I reply, that there is still danger lest it should injure the cause it is intended to support; on which account we should be cautious not to over-rate its importance.

But, admitting learning to be of all the importance that many pretend, what right have the clergy of the church of England, to speak contemptuously of the literary attainments of the ministers among the sectaries? A very great number of the officiating clergy never saw an university, and, of course possess no advantages of education superior to their dissenting brethren. Many of those who visit Cambridge and Oxford pay but little attention to their books; and the few that are industrious, read more heathen than christian authors; hence the best educated among them possess but few qualifications for the ministry of the gospel. At the academies of the dissenters, the young gentlemen are kept to their books, and every branch of their education has reference to their future destination; hence, in general, they have more solid christian learning than churchmen. Add to this, that many of the clergy, after having finished their education, seldom apply to their books, but spend their time in hunting, shooting, card-playing, etc., while dissenting ministers are generally shut up in their studies for several hours every day, and it can no longer be problematical which has the advantage in point of literature.

Though many of the itinerant preachers among the Wesleyan Methodists, commence their career with few other attainments than those of a purely religious nature, yet most of them soon rise to literary eminence. The itinerants are selected from among the local preachers, and many of these are men of parts as well as piety. If an uneducated man, therefore, did not possess very

superior natural abilities, he could not attain to that distinction among his brethren, which is necessary to obtain an appointment to a more extensive field of action. This man is put under the care of a senior, who superintends his studies, and his progress in learning is astonishing; hence it is, that a youth, taken from the ploughtail, soon rises superior to his calumniators.

The societies of the sectaries are so constituted, that all the talent they possess is called into action; and the most honourable and lucrative situations among them are at the command of superior abilities; here is a stimulus to exertion! The church is the reverse of all this. It is become proverbial, and certainly has much truth in it, that a gentleman who has several sons, will select the greatest dunce and send him to college to make him a parson. Great abilities are not necessary to secure the best situations in the church. Reading and writing are sufficient to qualify a man to discharge clerical duties. To obtain a living, he must dance attendance on patrons; and to obtain a bishopric, let him "preach before royalty." Where is the wonder, when these things are considered, that the conventicle should possess more literature than the church?

66

"Men in general," says Mr. Wesley, are under a great mistake with regard to what is called the learned world. They do not know, they cannot easily imagine, how little learning there is among them. I do not speak of abstruse learning, but what all divines, at least of any note, are supposed to have, namely, the knowledge. of the tongues, at least, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and of the common arts and sciences.

"How few men of learning, so called, understand Hebrew, even so far as to read a plain chapter in Genesis! Nay, how few understand Greek! Make an easy experiment. Desire that grave man who is urging this objection, only to tell you the English of the first paragraph that occurs in one of Plato's Dialogues. I am afraid we may go farther still. How few understand Latin! Give one of them an epistle of Tully, and see how readily he will explain it without

his dictionary. If he can hobble through that, 'tis odds but a Georgic in Virgil, or a Satire of Persius sets him fast.

"And with regard to the arts and sciences, how few understand so much as the general principles of Logic! Can one in ten of the clergy, or of the masters of arts in either university, when an argument is brought, tell you even the mood and figure wherein it is proposed, or complete an Enthymeme? Can one in ten of them demonstrate a problem or theorem in Euclid's Elements? or define the common terms used in Metaphysics? or intelligibly explain the first principles of it? Why then will they pretend to that learning, which they are conscious to themselves they have not?”*

As to any display of learning by the clergy in public prayer, that is out of the question: all the learning exhibited, is a bare ability to read. And as to the liturgy itself, however it may be admired for the devotional spirit which runs through it, no man of taste will commit himself so far as to affect to applaud it for the elegance of its composition. Numerous examples of vulgarity might be given. Churchmen supplicate victory over the great enemy of their salvation, in such terms as these: "Beat down Satan under our feet." Had these words not been in the liturgy, and had a Methodist preacher used them in the meeting, it would soon have been published in the newspapers, that "an enthusiast, in the heat of his devotions, conceived of the supreme Being as engaged in pugilistic warfare with his sable majesty, and piously besought the Almighty to knock the devil down."

It is difficult to conceive how a churchman has disposed of his modesty, when he has the assurance to call the extempore prayers of the Methodists enthusiastic rant. When did a company of fanatics at the meeting, rave one against another in such language as the following: "We beseech thee to hear us good

Lord!

Son of God, we beseech thee to hear us!

*Wesley's Appeals, part iii., pp. 252, 253,

Son of God, we beseech thee to hear us! O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace! O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us! O Christ hear us! O Christ hear us! Lord have mercy upon us! Lord have mercy upon us! Christ have mercy upon us! Christ have mercy upon us! Lord have mercy upon us! Lord have mercy upon us!" This language indicates a state of feeling bordering on distraction; it is abominably hypocritical when used by a cold frozen-hearted formalist; it cannot suit the states of a whole congregation; and the greatest extravagances of Methodism may be pronounced sober and rational when compared with it.*

As to preaching, it must require greater abilities to deliver a discourse extempore, than to read it; in the pulpit, therefore, a dissenter appears to greater advantage than a churchman. Besides, when a clergyman happens to read a decent sermon, he has very little credit of it; for there are so many advertisements in the papers, of sets of fashionable discourses for the accommodation of the idle, that it is often shrewdly suspected he did not come honestly by it. That dissenters preach much the best sermons, is proved by their getting much the largest congregations. People in general have a partiality for the church, and run in crowds to it when the pulpit is occupied by a man of abilities; but this is seldom the case, and hence the general complaint, that the conventicle is filled and the church deserted.

Objection 1. The dissenters are followed, not because they are learned, but because they pretend to superior sanctity, and thereby impose upon and delude the ignorant.

Dissenters do not, and cannot, make greater profes

*There is some force in this remark, as it must be a rare case indeed, that can make such language applicable to a whole congregation; yet still, Mr. Isaac's view is too strong, as many eminent for their devotion, taste and learning, look on these passages in a very different light.-EDIT.

66

Is a dissenter inspired?

A

sions than churchmen. churchman is "moved by the Holy Ghost." Is the society constituted according to the institutions of Christ? The church of England is the most pure and apostolical church in Christendom." Do dissenters promise great spiritual helps? Churchmen are all pardoned and regenerated in baptism; they receive a sign of the divine favour from the bishop in confirmation, and a pledge of it in the Lord's supper; they receive absolution from all their sins, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, when sick; and, no matter what their lives have been, they all die "in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.” If the people, therefore, were guided by professions and promises, our good and venerable old mother would not have to weep over one lost or disobedient

son.

Objection 2. The dissenters draw people from the church by railing against the clergy.

Let facts speak upon this subject. Look over the monthly catalogues of new publications, for many years past, and to one work written against the establishment, you will find, perhaps, fifty written. against the different sects. At the meeting you will seldom hear the church mentioned, except to cite with approbation her articles and homilies. But go and hear the clergy: it is no matter whether the preacher be evangelical or rational in his creed, good or bad in his conduct, he must have a blow at Methodism. If railing, therefore, is to carry the day, the meeting may be shut up immediately; the dissenters stand no better chance in contending with churchmen, than Michael did in disputing with the devil. Sterne

has wittily remarked, that the reason why he dare not bring a railing accusation was, had they got to railing, Beelzebub would have been more than a match for the archangel.

Objection 3. They are generally the poor and ignorant who are seduced from the church, and these are not qualified to judge of the abilities of the clergy.

« PreviousContinue »