The answer to these questions is to be found in the fact. which, it may be remembered, led to these remarks. There is but one clue to the right understanding of Wesley's career. It is this that his one great object was to promote the love of God and the love of man for God's sake. Everything must give way to this object of paramount importance. His tastes led him in one direction, but it was a direction in which very few could follow him. Not only was there absolutely nothing congenial to this taste either inside or outside the Church in the eighteenth century, but it would have been simply unintelligible. If he had followed out this taste, he would have been isolated.

Moreover, it is fully admitted that Wesley was essentially a many-sided man. Look at him from another point of view, and he stands in precisely the same attitude in which his contemporaries and successors of the Evangelical school stood as the homo unius libri, referring everything to Scripture, and to Scripture alone. There would be in his mind no inconsistency whatever between the one position and the other; but he felt he could do more practical good by simply standing upon Scriptural ground, and therefore he was quite content to rest there.

It was precisely the same motive which led Wesley to the various separations which, to his sorrow, he was obliged to make from those who had been his fellow-workers. He has been accused of being a quarrelsome man, a man with whom it was not easy to be on good terms. The accusation is unjust. Never was a man more ready to forgive injuries, more ready to own his failings, more firm to his friends, and more patient with his foes.

Nevertheless it is an undoubted fact that he was frequently brought into collision with men whom he would have been. the first to own as God's faithful servants-with William Law, with the Moravians, with Whitefield and the Calvinists, and with several of the Evangelical parish clergymen. It also cannot be denied that he showed some abruptness-nay, rudeness-in his communications with some of these.

identical with those of the mystic codes of monastic piety.'—Historical Sketches of the Reign of George II., vol. ii. sketch vii., The Reformer.'

1 See Gledstone's Life of Whitefield, p 465.

But in each and all of these cases the clue to his conduct is still the same; his one desire was to do all the good he could to the souls of men, and to that great object friends, united action, and even common politeness must give way. To come to details. In 1738 he wrote an angry letter, and in 1756 an angry pamphlet, to William Law. Both these effusions were hasty and indiscreet; but, in spite of his indiscretion and discourtesy, it is easy to trace both in the letter and the pamphlet the one motive which actuated him.

Let us look at the facts of the case. In 1738 Wesley experienced a change in his soul, which filled him with a joy in believing and a sense of God's fatherhood to him as a believer, which he had never felt before. He had previously sat at the feet of Law as his Gamaliel; and Law, he thought, had never put him in the way of attaining what, through the instrumentality of Peter Böhler, he had now attained. Turning upon his old teacher, he upbraided him in terms which laid him open to a crushing rejoinder, which an accomplished controversialist like Law was not slow to give. Wesley got more than he gave, and he richly deserved it. But, after all, Wesley's rude letter was the outspoken utterance of an honest heart; he thought he had been misled himself, and he feared that others might also be misled by the same fascinating teacher, and therefore he wrote as he did.1

It is the same with the pamphlet of 1756. He thought that Law's treatise on The Spirit of Prayer' was inadequate

The letter ran thus:-'Why did I scarcely hear you name the name of Christ; never so as to ground anything upon faith in His blood? If you say you advised other things as preparatory to this, what is this but laying a foundation below the foundation? Is not Christ the first and the last?' And he then goes on to speak of Law's rude behaviour. On this letter Mr. Tyerman, Wesley's honest biographer, remarks, 'To charge William Law with the guilt of Wesley's want of faith, and to accuse him of extremely rough, morose, and sour behaviour, was a deplorable outrage against good manners.'—Life and Times of J. Wesley, by the Rev. L. Tyerman, vol. i. p. 188. Law replied by referring to Thomas à Kempis, which Wesley had translated, and asked very pertinently, 'Did you take upon you to restore the true sense of that divine writer, and instruct others how they might best profit by reading him, before you had so much as a literal knowledge of the most plain, open, and repeated doctrine in his book? You cannot but remember what value I always expressed for à Kempis, and how much I recommended him to your meditation. You have had a good many conversations with me, and I dare say you never was with me for half an hour without my being large upon that very doctrine which you make me totally silent and ignorant of. As to my rough behaviour, &c.- say on.'

and erroneous, and calculated to lead men astray-an opinion in which many who, like the present writer, have the deepest admiration for Law's character and abilities, will still agree. He therefore wrote in reply a pamphlet which Whitefield designated as 'most unchristian and ungentlemanly,' and Law himself as a juvenile composition of emptiness and pertness,'' below the character of any man who had been serious in religion but half a month.' It is not to the present purpose to defend the pamphlet any more than the letter. Law was quite able to take care of himself. Wesley was an able writer, but Law was an abler, and he was far more than a match for Wesley in any purely intellectual dispute. But Wesley's fault, whatever it may have been, was a fault of the head, not of the heart. It is thoroughly characteristic of the generous and forgiving nature of the man that, in spite of their differences, Wesley constantly alluded to Law in his sermons, and always in terms of the warmest commendation.

The same motive which led Wesley to dispute with Law actuated him in his separation from the Moravians. In justice to that exemplary body it must be remembered that they were not well represented in London when Wesley split from them. The mischievous notion that it was contrary to the Gospel for a man to search the Scriptures, to pray, to communicate-in fact, to use any ordinances-before he had faith, that it was his duty simply to sit still and wait till this was given him, would, if it had gained ground, have been absolutely fatal to Wesley's efforts. He could not even tacitly countenance those who held such tenets without grievous hindrance to his work. One is thankful to learn that he resisted his besetting temptation, and did not send to the Herrnhut brethren a rude letter which he had written,2 and thankful also to find that he did full justice to the good qualities of Count Zinzendorf.3 But as to his separation from

1 'You have often,' said Wesley to the Moravians in Fetter Lane, affirmed that to search the Scriptures, to pray, or to communicate before we have faith, is to seek salvation by works, and that till these works are laid aside no man can have faith. I believe these assertions to be flaily contrary to the word of God. I have warned you hereof again and again, and besought you to turn back to the law and to the testimony.'

2 Do you not neglect joint fasting? Is not the Count all in all? Are not the rest mere shadows?... Do you not magnify your Church too much ?' &c. &c.

I labour everywhere to speak consistently with that deep sense which is

the London Moravians, Wesley could not have acted otherwise without seriously damaging the cause which he had at heart.

His dispute with Whitefield will come under our notice in connexion with the Calvinistic controversy, which forms a painfully conspicuous feature in the Evangelical movement. It is sufficient in this place to remark that the Antinomianism which, as a plain matter of fact, admitted even by the Calvinists themselves, did result from the perversion of Calvinism, was, if possible, a more fatal hindrance to Wesley's work than the Moravian stillness itself. This was obviously the ground of Wesley's dislike of Calvinism,' but it did not separate him from Calvinists; so far as a separation did ensue the fault did not lie with Wesley."

His misunderstanding with some of the Evangelical clergy of his day arose from the same cause as that which led him into other disputes. An overpowering sense of the paramount importance of the great work which he had to do. made him set aside everything which he considered to be an obstacle to that work without the slightest hesitation. Now, much as Wesley loved the Church of England, he never appreciated one of her most marked features, the parochial system. Perhaps under any circumstances such a system would have found little favour in the eyes of one of Wesley's temperament. To a man impatient of immediate results the slowly but surely working influence of a pastor resident in the midst of his flock, preaching to them a silent sermon every day and almost every hour by his example among them, would naturally seem flat, tame, and impalpable when compared with the more showy effects resulting from the rousing preaching of the itinerant. Such a life as that of the parish priest would have been to Wesley himself simply settled in my heart, that you are (though I cannot call you, Rabbi, infallible, yet) far, far, better and wiser than me.'

1 And also his strong feeling that the doctrine of reprobation was inconsistent with the love of God. 'I could sooner,' he wrote, 'be a Turk, a Deist—yea, an atheist-than I could believe this. It is less absurd to deny the very existence of a God than to make Him an almighty tyrant.'

2 In March 1741 Mr. Whitefield, being returned to England, entirely separated from Mr. Wesley and his friends, because he did not hold the decrees. Here was the first breach which warm men persuaded Mr. Whitefield to make merely for a difference of opinion. Those who believed universal redemption had no desire to separate,' &c.-Wesley's Works, vol. viii. p. 335.

unbearable. Even in the early days of his ministerial life, before he had experienced any of the striking effects which the itinerancy of himself and his fellow-workers could produce, he could not be induced to undertake the care of a parish even by the strongest motives which could be offered to a man of his devoted family affection--the prospect of keeping an honoured mother and three much-loved sisters from poverty. The inactivity of many of the parochial clergy of his day confirmed Wesley's belief in the enervating effects of residence in one place. He was of opinion-surely a most erroneous opinion—that if he were confined to one spot he should preach himself and his whole congregation to sleep in a twelvemonth. He never estimated at its proper value the real, solid work which others were doing in their respective parishes. He bitterly regretted that Fletcher would persist in wasting his sweetness on the desert air of Madeley. He had little faith in the permanency of the good which the apostolic Walker was doing at Truro. Much as he esteemed Venn of Huddersfield, he could not be content to leave the parish in his hands. He expressed himself very strongly to Adams of Winteringham on the futility of his work in his parish. He utterly rejected Walker's advice that he should induce some of his itinerant preachers to be ordained and to settle in country parishes. He thought that this would not only narrow their sphere of usefulness, but also cripple their energies even in that contracted sphere. Mistaken as we may believe him to have been in these opinions, we cannot doubt his thorough sincerity. In the slight collision into which he was necessarily brought with the Evangelical clergy by acting upon these views he was actuated by no vulgar desire to make himself a name by encroaching upon other men's

It is only fair to Wesley to give his own account of the matter. 'Several years,' he writes, before Mr. Venn came to Huddersfield some of our preachers went thither, carrying their lives in their hands, and with great difficulty established a little earnest society. These eagerly desire them to preach to them still, not in opposition to Mr. Venn (whom they love, esteem, and constantly attend), but to supply what they do not find in his preaching. It is a tender point. Where there is a Gospel ministry already we do not desire to preach; but whether we can leave off preaching because such an one comes after is another question.' The matter was settled amicably; it was agreed that the itinerants should come once a month.