a similar charge against the Leeds agitators: "A strong effort is making on the part of the preachers, both from the pulpit and the press, to induce the societies to believe that those who are resisting the arbitrary proceedings of Conference, are wishful to create a division, and to establish another religious body. Of all the vile insinuations employed by the preachers to calumniate them, not one is further from the truth than this." I am glad of that, Mr. Barr; for, since the event has shown that they spoke the truth in this instance, it follows, that all they have said of the Protestants is as true as the gospel. Mr. B. was so confident that the preachers were mistaken in surmising that his friends intended to establish another religious body," that he turned prophet upon it: "I tell the preachers in Leeds, and their bad advisers, that in all this they will be disappointed." Mr. B. wishes "the dissentients to be judged by their actions." Very proper, sir. But what can the most candid person in the world make of all these solemn and awful protestations, when he compares them with the facts, that a separation has actually been made by them, and that the new system differs essentially from every form which Methodism had ever previously assumed? I leave such professions and conduct to make their proper impression on your minds, and am,

66

Yours,

*

Affectionately and faithfully,

D. ISAAC.

LEEDS, May 28, 1830.

P. S. As the Protestants cannot answer the arguments contained in my former letter, they are trying to console themselves by defaming my character. They are now circulating, with the greatest

* Facts, p. 19.

impudence and indulgence, that I have abandoned the principles of church government contained in my " Ecclesiastical Claims." They have the assurance to represent me as denying, in that work, "that any order of men existed in the primitive church, superior to elders." Compare this with the following paragraph, which is in perfect accordance with the sentiments contained in the letter: "The presbyters were subject to the evangelists, or itinerant preachers, such as Timothy and Titus. And the Methodist leaders are subject to the itinerant preachers." Throughout that book, presbyters, elders, and bishops, are taken for the same class of officers; and there is, what I still think, a very conclusive argument to show, that the elders of the New Testament answer to the leaders of the Methodist connexion. My opponents would not invent and propagate such glaring falsehoods, if the desperate state of their cause did not, in their esteem, require it. I have crushed the head of the serpent; and I am not surprised that in his writings he attempts to bite my heel.

LETTER III.

Further Remarks on the Conduct of the Protestant Methodists, in a Third Letter to the Private Members of that Community; with a Postscript, in which some replies to the Former Letters are noticed.

RESPECTED FRIENDS,

IN my last, I showed that you had no just cause of separation from the old connexion. The real cause is stated by the apostle John; and he attaches blame to the dissentients. ""! 'They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us; but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us." (1 John ii. 19.) Alienation of affection was the seat of the disease which produced such baneful effects at Leeds. Could that leader love his brethren who scarcely ever, for years, attended a leaders' meeting, except when strife was stirring? Could those leaders love Methodism, who would rather abandon it than express their approbation of it? Could

Eccles. Claims, p. 104, new edition.

those preachers love either their divine Master, or their work, or the people, who abstain from their holy employment without any call from God or man, and endeavoured to deprive their congregations of the means of grace? Could your law-makers entertain any regard for the plan of discipline left by Mr. Wesley, when, having withdrawn from us, and being at liberty to follow the devices and desires of their own hearts, they composed an ecclesiastical code more at variance with Wesleyan Methodism than with Romanism? Had their hearts been right, there was nothing in the Leeds case at which they would have stumbled. "If they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us."

It may afford us some consolation to know, that your ringleaders were as much disaffected' to all other denominations of christians, as to us. There was not a

church in christendom with which they could unite. All were viewed in the spirit of bigotry, and their fellowship declined. The modesty of these super-eminently pious and learned divines permitted them to believe, that they could produce an ecclesiastical code superior to any which had hitherto been constructed since the days of the apostles; and which, of course, as some of them have since boasted, should eventually supercede all others, and work the conversion and salvation of the world. My first letter has considerably lowered their tone; and one of their advocates, not daring to encounter my objections, remarks, "I do not mean to say, that in every respect our regulations are perfect; for there are things which I am free to confess, I do not approve." The fact is, these humble souls possess the spirit of" Diotrephes, who loved to have the pre-eminence." (3 John ix. 10.) They have, therefore, contrived a scheme in which themselves are to be all in all. If the tyranny of the preachers were the principal cause of their secession, as they have so repeatedly affirmed, why did they not join the new connexion? Their preachers

* Glover's Address, p. 24.

are not accused of possessing, or exercising, too much power. If these would not suit them, they might have gone over to the Ranters, whose itinerants are in pretty much the same condition with their own. If they wanted to be free from an hired ministry, the door of the Independent Methodists was open to them. If church Methodism had any attractions,—and they recommend you to go to the clergy for the sacraments, the Hibernians would have received them with open arms. If a modification of church Methodism, suited to the atmosphere of England, could have satisfied them, a Beverley reformer, who had been employed for years in concocting such a scheme, and who, in his own conceit, at least, had brought it to perfection, would, no doubt, have cheerfully supplied their wants for a halfpenny-the price of many a constitution which was issued during the ferment of the French revolution. As this mighty genius thought himself clever enough to ride in a whirlwind and direct the storm, he visited Leeds during the tempest; but he found the saddle so crowded with other master spirits, that there was no room left for him, even on the tail; and he was obliged to retire, rather in dudgeon. Nothing less than a new sect, with themselves at the head of it, would satisfy these bashful Protestants; and I have shown, I hope, how admirably well they are qualified to legislate for the church of Christ. I have read much of the productions of ignorance and impudence; but I never saw the two united in perfection, till I read the "Rules of the Societies of the Wesleyan Protestant Methodists."

As a specimen of the assurance, incapacity, and bigotry of your legislators, take the following instance: "No ordination shall take place in our connexion, nor shall gowns or bands be used among us; nor the title of reverend be used at all. And if any brother shall break this rule, he thereby excludes himself from the connexion."*

Rules, p. 15.

Whatever a person's weaknesses and infirmities may be, he ought not to be expelled from the church, if they be not of sufficient magnitude to shut him out of heaven. The apostle requires the church to receive a man who is weak in the faith, because the Lord has received him. (Rom. xiv. 1-3.) From which it is manifest, that no church has authority to expel a member whom the Lord does not reject. To suppose the contrary, involves the monstrous absurdity, that a person may be good enough for the society of saints and angels in heaven, who is unfit for the fellowship of the church upon earth. This law, therefore, can only be defended on the supposition, that ordination to the ministry, the wearing of gowns and bands, and the giving or taking the title of reverend, are damnable sins. This consigns over to the devil at once all the clergy of the establishment. And how few of our dissenting brethren will escape! for many of them use ordination, and gowns, and bands; and all of them, I believe, use the word, reverend. But two considerations magnified these trifles into soul-destroying sins. 1. Some of the Wesleyan preachers have latterly manifested a liking to these things; and their traducers would run the risk, in order to throw an anathema at their heads, of sinking both churchmen and dissenters into the bottomless pit. 2. The legislators knew that, as secular men, the courtesy of the country would not allow them to indulge in these fine things: and as they were determined to rule their preachers, it must, of course, be an unpardonable offence for the servants to assume tokens of dignity which their masters could not use without being laughed at.

According to these profound divines, Mr. Wesley would have excluded himself from their heavenly society; for he was ordained, and used gowns and bands, and the shocking word, reverend. It is true he advised his preachers, as a matter of prudence, to abstain from the use of this term; but he had more sense and grace than to employ any threats of excommunication as the penalty of disobedience. He also ordained some of his