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which you recommend to others, in one of your sermons: Why doth the narrow heart of man pursue with malice or rashness those who presume to differ from him?" Yea, and what is more extraordinary, those who agree with him in all essential points?

I. When, in an intricate case, a prudent judge is afraid to pass an unjust sentence, he inquires, as I observed, into the general conduct of the person accused, and by that means frequently finds out the truth which he investigates. As that method may be of service in the present case, permit me, sir, to lay before you a general view of Mr. Wesley's doctrine.

1. For above these sixteen years I have heard him frequently in his chapels, and sometimes in my church: I have familiarly conversed and corresponded with him, and have often perused his numerous works in verse and prose: and I can truly say that, during all that time, I have heard him, upon every proper occasion, steadily maintain the total fall of man in Adam, and his utter inability to recover himself, or take any one step toward his recovery, "without the grace of God preventing him, that he may have a good will, and working with him when he has that good will."

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The deepest expressions that ever struck my ears on the melancholy subject of our natural depravity and helplessness, are those which dropped from his lips and I have ever observed that he constantly ascribes to Divine grace, not only the good works and holy tempers of believers, but all the good thoughts of upright heathens, and the good desires of those professors whom he sees "begin in the Spirit and end in the flesh :" when, to my great surprise, some of those who accuse him of "robbing God of the glory of his grace, and ascribing too much to man's power," directly or indirectly maintain that Demas and his fellow apostates never had any grace; and that if once they went on far in the ways of God, it was merely by the force of fallen nature; a sentiment which Mr. Wesley looks upon as diametrically opposite to the humbling assertion of our Lord, "Without me ye can do nothing;" and which he can no more admit than the rankest Pelagianism.

2. I must likewise testify, that he faithfully points out Christ as the only way of salvation; and strongly recommends faith as the only mean of receiving him, and all the benefits of his righteous life and meritorious death and truth obliges me to declare, that he frequently expresses his detestation of the errors of modern Pharisees, who laugh at original sin, set up the powers of fallen man, cry down the operation of God's Spirit, deny the absolute necessity of the blood and righteousness of Christ, and refuse him the glory of all the good that may be found in Jew or Gentile. And you will not without difficulty, sir, find in England, and perhaps in all the world, a minister who hath borne more frequent testimonies, either from the pulpit or the press, against those dangerous errors. All his works confirm my assertion, especially his sermons on Original Sin, and Salvation by Faith, and his masterly Refutation of Dr. Taylor, the wisest Pelagian and Socinian of our age. Nor am I afraid to have this testimony confronted with his Minutes, being fully persuaded that, when they are candidly explained, they rather confirm than overthrow it.

His manner of preaching the fall and the recovery of man is attended with a peculiar advantage: it is close and experimental. He not only points out the truth of those doctrines, but presses his hearers to cry to God that they may feel their weight upon their hearts, Some open those great truths very clearly, but let their congregations rest, like the stony ground hearers, in the first emotions of sorrow and joy which the word frequently excites. Not so Mr. Wesley: he will have true penitents "feel the plague of their own hearts, travail, be heavy laden," and receive "the sentence of death in themselves," according to the glorious "ministration of condemnation:" and according to "the ministration of righteousness and of the Spirit which exceeds in glory," he insists upon true believers knowing for themselves, that Jesus "hath power on earth to forgive sins ;" and asserts, that they taste the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come," and that they are made partakers of the Holy Ghost and the Divine nature; the Spirit itself bearing witness with their spirits that they are the children of God."

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3. The next fundamental doctrine in Christianity is that of holiness of heart and life; and no one can here accuse Mr. Wesley of leaning to the Antinomian delusion, which "makes void the law through" speculative and barren "faith" on the contrary, he appears to be peculiarly set for the defence of practical religion: for, instead of representing Christ" as the minister of sin," with Ranters, to the great grief and offence of many, he sets him forth as a complete Saviour from sin. Not satisfied to preach holiness begun, he preaches finished holiness, and calls believers to such a degree of heart-purifying faith, as may enable them to triumph in Christ, as being made to them of God, sanctification as well as righteousness.”

It is, I grant, his misfortune (if indeed it be one) to preach a fuller salvation than most professors expect to enjoy here; for he asserts that Jesus can "make clean" the inside as well as the outside of his vessels unto honour; that he hath power on earth "to save his people from their sins ;" and that his blood "cleanses from all sin," from the guilt and defilement both of original and actual corruption. He is bold enough to declare, with St. John, that "if we say we have no sin, either by nature or practice, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us but if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." He is legal enough not to be ashamed of these words of Moses: "The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live." And he dares to believe that the Lord can perform the words which he spoke by Ezekiel: "I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean: from ALL your filthiness and from ALL your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you: I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh; and I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes; and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. I will also save you from all your uncleannesses." Hence it is that he constantly exhorts his hearers "to grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Saviour;" till by a strong and lively faith they can continually

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"reckon themselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." He tells them, that "he who committeth sin, is the servant of sin "that" our old man is crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin ;"-that "if the Son shall make us free, we shall be free indeed;"—and that although the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" will not deliver us from the innocent infirmities incident to flesh and blood, it will nevertheless make us "free from the law of sin and death," and enable us to say with holy triumph, "How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein ?" In a word, he thinks that God can so "shed abroad his love in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost given unto us," as to "sanctify us wholly, soul, body, and spirit ;" and enable us to "rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, and in every thing give thanks." And he is persuaded, that He who "can do far exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think,” is able to fill us with the "perfect love which casts out fear; that we, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies," may have "the mind which was in Christ;" be righteous as the man Jesus was righteous; "walk as he also walked," and be in our measure, 66 as he was in the world" he as the stock of the tree of righteousness, and we as the branches, "having our fruit" from him "unto holiness," and " serving God without fear in true holiness and righteousness all the days of our life,"

This he sometimes calls full sanctification, the state of "fathers in Christ," or the "glorious liberty of the children of God" sometimes "a being strengthened, stablished, and settled;" or "being rooted and grounded in love;" but most commonly he calls it Christian perfection: a word which, though used by the apostles in the same sense, cannot be used by him without raising the pity or indignation of one half of the religious world; some making it the subject of their pious sneers and godly lampoons; while others tell you roundly "they abhor it above every thing in the creation."

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Tantæne animis cœlestibus ira!

On account of this doctrine it is that he is traduced as a Pharisee, a papist, an antichrist; some of his opposers taking it for granted that he makes void the priestly office of Christ, by affirming that his blood can so completely wash us here from our sins, that at death we shall "be found of him in peace, without spot, wrinkle, or any such thing;" while others, to colour their opposition to the many scriptures which he brings to support this unfashionable doctrine, give it out, that he only wants the old man to be so refined in all his tempers, and reguJated in all his outward behaviour, as to appear perfect in the flesh; or, in other terms, that he sets up Pharisaic SELF, instead of "Christ completely formed in us as the full hope of glory." But I must (for one) do him the justice to say he is misapprehended, and that what he calls perfection is nothing but the rich cluster of all the spiritual blessings promised to believers in the Gospel; and, among the rest, a continual sense of the virtue of Christ's atoning and purifying blood, preventing both old guilt from returning and new guilt from fastening upon the conscience; together with the deepest consciousness of our

helplessness and nothingness in our best estate, the most endearing discoveries of the Redeemer's love, and the most humbling and yet ravishing views of his glorious fulness. Witness one of his favourite hymns on that subject:

Confound, o'erpower me with thy, grace;

I would be by myself abhorr'd:
(All might, all majesty, all praise,
All glory be to Christ my Lord!)
Now let me gain perfection's height,
Now let me into nothing fall;
Be less than nothing in my sight,

And feel that Christ is all in all.

4. But this is not all: he holds also general redemption, and its necessary consequences, which some account dreadful heresies. He asserts with St. Paul, that "Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man ;" and this grace he calls free, as extending itself freely to all. Nor can he help expressing his surprise at those pious ministers who maintain that the Saviour keeps his grace, as they suppose, he kept his blood, from the greatest part of mankind, and yet engross to themselves the title of preachers of FREE grace!

He frequently observes, with the same apostle, that "Christ is the Saviour of all men, but especially of them that believe ;" and that "God will have all men to be saved," consistently with their moral agency, and the tenor of his Gospel.

With St. John he maintains that God is love," and that "Christ is the propitiation not only for our sins, but also for the sins of the whole world." With David he affirms that "God's mercy is over all his works" and with St. Peter, that "the Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance;" yea, that God, without hypocrisy, "commandeth all men, every where, to repent." Accordingly he says with the Son of God, "Whosoever will, let him come and take of the water of life freely;" and after his blessed example, as well as by his gracious command, he "preaches the Gospel To every creature" which he apprehends would be inconsistent with common honesty, if there were not a Gospel FOR every creature. Nor can he doubt of it in the least, when he considers that Christ is a king as well as a priest; that we are under a law to him; that those men who will not have him to reign over them, shall be brought and slain before him ;" yea, that he will "judge the secrets of men," according to St. Paul's Gospel, and take vengeance on all them that obey not his own Gospel, and be the author of eternal salvation to none but them that obey him. With this principle, as with a key given us by God himself, he opens those things which are "hard to be understood," in the Epistles of St. Paul, and "which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do some other scriptures, if not to their own destruction, at least to the overthrowing of the faith of some" weak Christians, and the hardening of many, very many infidels.

As a true son of the Church of England, he believes that "Christ redeemed him and all mankind;" that "for us men," and not merely for the elect," he came down from heaven, and made upon the cross a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the

sins of the whole world." Like an honest man, and yet a man of sense, he so subscribed the seventeenth article as not to reject the thirty-first, which he thinks of equal force, and much more explicit; and, therefore, as the seventeenth article authorizes him, he "receives God's promises in suchwise as they are generally set forth in holy Scripture" rejecting, after the example of our governors in Church and state, the Lambeth articles, in which the doctrine of absolute unconditional election and reprobation was maintained, and which some Calvinistic divines, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, vainly attempted to impose upon these kingdoms, by adding them to the thirty-nine articles. Far, therefore, from thinking he does not act a fair part in rejecting the doctrine of particular redemption, he cannot conceive by what salvo the consciences of those ministers, embrace it, can "The blood of Christ was shed for thee;" and to baptize promiscuously all children within their respective parishes, "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," when all that are unredeemed have. no more right to the blood, name, and Spirit of Christ, than Lucifer himself.

permit them. to say to each of their commun who

Thus far Mr. Wesley agrees with Arminius, because he thinks that illustrious divine agreed thus far with the Scriptures, and all the early fathers of the Church. But if Arminius, (as the author of Pietas Oxoniensis affirms, in his letter to Dr. Adams,) "denied, that man's nature is totally corrupt; and asserted, that he hath 'still* a freedom of will to turn to God, but not without the assistance of grace," Mr. Wesley is no Arminian; for he strongly asserts the total fall of man, and constantly maintains that by nature man's will is only free to evil, and that Divine grace must first prevent, and then continually farther him, to make him willing and able to turn to God.

I must, however, confess, that he does not, as some real Protestants, continually harp upon the words FREE grace, and FREE will; but he gives reasons of considerable weight for this. (1.) Christ and his apostles never did so. (2.) He knows the word grace necessarily implies the freeness of a favour; and the word will, the freedom of our choice and he has too much sense to delight in perpetual tautology. (3.) He finds, by blessed experience, that when the will is touched by Divine grace, and yields to the touch, it is as free to good, as it was before to evil. He dares not, therefore, make the maintaining free will, any more than free breath, the criterion of an unconverted man. On the contrary, he believes none are converted but those who have a free will to follow Jesus; and, far from being ashamed to be called a "free-willer," he affirms it as essential to all men to be "free-willing creatures," as to be "rational animals ;" and he supposes he can as soon find a diamond or a flint without gravity, as a good or bad man without free will.

Nor will I conceal that I never heard him use that favourite expression of some good men, Why me? Why me? though he is not

*This is worded in so ambiguous a manner, as to give readers room to think that Arininius held man hath a will to turn to God before grace prevents him, and only wants some Divine assistance to finish what nature has power to begin. In this sense of the words it is I deny Mr. Wesley is an Arminian.