Wesley made on a more ample stage, it ceased to speak when he began to act.

"The dawn of Mr. Wesley's public mission was clouded with Mysticism that species of it which affects silence and solitude; a certain inexplicable introversion of the mind, which abstracts the passions from all sensible objects, and, as the French Quietists express it, perfects itself by an absorption of the will and intellect, and all the faculties into the Deity. In this "palpable obscure" the excellent Fenelon lost himself when he forsook the shades of Pindus to wander in quest of "pure love" with Madam Guyon! Mr. Wesley pursued for a while the same ignis fatuus with Mr. William Law and the Ghost of De Renty-A state, however, so torpid and ignoble ill suited the active genius of this singular man. His elastic mind gained strength by compression; thence bursting glorious, he passed (as he himself somewhere says) the immense chasm upborne on an eagle's wings.'

"His system of Divinity, indeed, was relaxed; or rather, I would say, it was made more commodious for general use. The speculations of the Mystics were too abstracted and too much sublimated for the conceptions of the gross herd of mankind. Refined maxims, that have little connexion with the general sentiments and habits of the human race, were not calculated to make proselytes by the common engines of hope and fear. The million could neither be amused nor alarmed by principles in which the heart could feel no interest. A few minds of a peculiar texture might possibly take a fancy to them. But Mr. Wesley's business was with minds of every composition; and though the Poet says,

Oderunt hilarem tristes, tristemque jocosi; yet he employed himself to search for some common band, by which dispositions the most heterogeneous, and sects the most discordant, might

have a centre of union. He studied mankind beyond the walls of his college; and the fellow of Lincoln became, in a certain sense, a man of the world. His penetration is wonderfully acute; and his dexterity in debate hath been so long known, that it is almost become proverbial. He was ever more attentive to reason and prudence than his great rival, George Whitefield. He was more calm in his address; more candid in his sentiments; and more reasonable in his doctrines. He had all Whitefield's zeal and perseverance, with double his understanding, and ten times more learning and science. Though prudence was his Pole-star, yet imagination was frequently his card. He gave it all the play that was necessary to establish the credit of his mission.

"Mr. John Wesley's prudence hath been frequently imputed to some sinister motives; and what appeared to his friends as the wisdom of the serpent,' was pronounced by his enemies to be 'the craft of the wicked one.' The zealots of the second house of Methodism speak this with a full mouth. I was at Bristol some years since, when the Hon. Mr. Shirley, by the order of my Lady Huntingdon, called him to a public account for certain expressions which he had uttered in some charge to his clergy, which savoured too much of the Popish doctrine of the merit of good works. Various speculations were formed as to the manner in which Mr. Wesley would evade the charge. Few conjectured right; but all seemed to agree in one thing; and that was, that he would somehow or other bafile his antagonist: and baffle him he did; as Mr. Shirley afterwards confessed in a very lamentable pamphlet, which he published on this redoubted controversy. In the crisis of the dispute, I heard a celebrated preacher, who was one of Whitefield's successors, express his suspicion of the event; for,' says he, I know him of old: he is an eel; take him where you will, he will slip through your fingers.' "A poem

"A poem, intituled Religious Discourse, and published by him in one of his earlier collections, was pointed out to me, by his own niece, as a very striking delineation of his disposition and character. She said, her father regarded it in the same unfavourable light. I have some doubt of this; for I have the original copy† now before me, with marginal corrections (chiefly verbal) in the hand-writing of Samuel Wesley. Had he thoroughly disapproved of it, he would have drawn his pen across the whole. His correction of particular passages was a tacit acknowledgement of his approbation of the rest.

"At the beginning of the poem are these lines : "But who must talk? not the mere formal sage Who speaks the obsequious echo of the age, To Christian lives who brings the Gospel down, A Gospel moderniz'd by

"On this hiatus Samuel Wesley notes in the margin-If T-n, too hard.' Tillotson was undoubtedly meant. He was equally the object of dislike to Methodists and High-churchmen. His Theology was too rational for the former; and his Politicks were too moderate for the latter. The wonder is not that John Wesley should have shewn an inclination to insult the memory of a sober Divine; but the wonder is, that Samuel Wesley should have been disposed to shew lenity to a Low-churchman, and a Whig of the Revolution: especially when it is considered, that he himself hath made this same renowned and amiable Prelate the object of bitter satire, both in his Parish Priest,' and in a poem

*"This Poem was not written by any of the Mr. Wesleys, but by the late learned and mystic Mr. John Gambold (the very model, in person and mien, of the celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson). He was one of the first clergymen at Oxford who joined the four or five others under the then ignominious name of Methodists; but, leaving that corps, he became a disciple and fellow-labourer with the late Count Zinzendorff, in Fetterlane." A Correspondent in Gent. Mag. 1784, p. 353. ↑ An autograph of Mr. John Wesley.

VOL. V.

Q

to

"to the memory of Dr. South.' In the former his name is mentioned, and very invidiously contrasted with Stilling fleet's; in the latter he is plainly alluded to, as a secret abettor of 'Socinus and his followers;'

And yields up points their favour to engage, Transcribing Episcopius by the page.'

"The Archbishop hath been also charged with too free a use of the Fratres Poloni, the great Codex of the Socinians; though he never condescended to acknowledge the obligation to such obscure writers; for who ever heard of Schlichtingius, Pscipcovius, or Wolzogenius? In the oblivion into which they were sunk, he might fancy himself to be secure from detection. Or possibly he might think that whatever he could glean from their works, that had any intrinsic value in it, should be left to itself, to make its own way in the world, well knowing that it could receive no assistance or recommendation from the Brethren of Poland.

"But to return from this digression to the characteristic Poem of our sagacious and wary Apostle.

"There are passages in it which might give occasion to Mr. John Wesley's enemies to represent him as a man of more art than integrity; and perhaps it would puzzle the most subtle of his Proselytes to reconcile his maxims with that "child-like and dove-like simplicity" which he teaches, and they profess. As the poem is very curious, and but little known, I think you will be pleased with a few extracts from it:

ba:

To the pert Reas'ner, if you speak at all,
Speak what within his cognizance may fall,
Expose not Truths divine to Reason's rack,
Give him his own belov'd ideas back.
Your notions, till they look like his, dilute;
Blind he must be, but save him from dispute.
But when we are turn'd of Reason's noon-tide glare,
And things begin to shew us what they are,
More free to such your true conceptions tell,
Yet graft them on the arts where they excel.

If sprightly sentiments detain their taste,
If paths of various learning they have trac'd,
If their cool judgment longs, yet fears, to fix,
Fire, erudition, hesitation mix.'

"It is this accommodating method which hath brought on Mr. Wesley the opprobrium of Jesuitism. I hope his ends were Catholic and disinterested; though I must acknowledge, that such means have the suspicious complexion of selfish and sectarian cunning.

To positive adepts, insidious yield,

To gain the conquest, seem to quit the field. Large in your grants-Be their opinion shewn, Approve, amend, and wind it to your own.' "The following lines have spirit and humour in them:

"There are who watch to adore the dawn of Grace,
And pamper the young proselyte with praise.
Kind, humble souls! they with a right good-will
Admire his progress-till he stands stock-still!
So fond, so smooth, so loving and so civil,
They praise the cred'lous saint into a devil?'

"Sectaries and enthusiasts of all descriptions have frequent opportunities of contemplating characters of this unsteady make. A religion that is founded more on passion than judgment; which applies its criteria to certain feelings which have no fixed principle in the understanding; a religion which consists of singularities that are beyond the habits of common life and general custom, will be ever subject to ridiculous and untoward vicissitudes.

"Dr. Warburton hath been thought profane in the ridicule he hath so repeatedly thrown on Mr. Wesley's account of the pains and throws of the second birth.' He considered the whole as a com pound of credulity and imposture. The learned Bishop was not always delicate in the choice of his allusions. If his ideas were gross, he never gave himself the trouble to refine them down by the