er to disqualify them from "persisting in such pernicious practices."

WESLEY, COKE, and ASBURY, &c. are the next points in the text to which we turn our attention. And we take the liberty to say, that we felicitate ourselves in the consciousness, that for thirty years, whenever we have had occasion to think or to speak of the principles or practices of those venerable men, either in their presence or absence, we have thought and spoke above the influence of fear or favour. We are conscious too, of an inclination and effort to analyze their character more critically, than if our relation to them had been less intimate. They certainly never suspected us of a disposition to become their flatterers. There was a time when we were slow of heart to believe in the sincerity of Mr. Wesley's confessions of his lack of theory, or in other words, his attributing so many of his plans to accident; but we have long since felt no doubt on that score, and now think that few men ever lived of the same natural and acquired abilities, who was less of a political theorist. There are two kinds of theorists-one kind theorise in anticipation, the other upon facts or experiments. The former are called projectors, and the latter practical. Mr. Wesley, as it related to religious government or polity, excelled in neither of these respects; but nevertheless, it may have accidently happened that the plan he adopted for the new church in this country approached nearer to practicability, than if he had attempted to give us a theory. It would be next to miraculous, if the most profound European theorist could strike out a plan of church government best suited to the character and conditions of Americans. All the men who were to become the immediate agents in the new order of things had been formed under the regime of the old school. They had seen nothing, and heard little else, but the discipline of the Methodist societies as members of the national church of England. This was certainly small stock to begin an independent church government. Could they have gone to other independent churches in this country to obtain loans? The new church we are inclined to think did better with its old experience than it would have done with a new theory, for the more perfect such theory might have been, the fewer would have immediately understood it or knew how to reduce it into practice. The only real cause of complaint that we have, all things considered, is, perhaps, that while

our church rulers and legislators have remained almost as destitute of theory as our great founder, they possess none of his capacity to profit by facts. May we not safely affirm, that the man who was led by accident to employ lay preachers, to form classes, and many other things, in the same accidental way, might have been led to make many accommodating changes in this independent church government in this new world? Yes we verily believe that the man, who could perceive the nature and excellence of experimental religion, in his fellow passengers on board a ship, and be thereby induced to perform a journey to Hernhurth to acquire a more perfect knowledge of it, would by this time, had he lived among us, have learned from the trees of the forest or the beasts of the field, or by some other means, that the freest form of church government in the United States, is most subservient to the interests of true religion. Of Dr. Coke we can say nothing, as it relates to this country, as he cannot be considered even as a bird of passage, for he never stayed long enough among us at any one time to hatch a brood; but we can say that we wished it, and sought by private entreaties and other means to effect it. Now concerning the father of us all-The fault of his habits rendered the fault of his nature or rather the virtue of his nature a fault. Mr. Wesley went over in a year a circuit about a little island or two, and therefore he must needs encompass a continent. The one went from town to town, and therefore the other must go from wilderness to wilder ness; and thus did he stretch and strain himself not only beyond another man's line of things but beyond all human bounds and measures: Such over doing ought not to be called imitation. There was nothing in this world he so much dreaded as a preacher who was not always in motion. The natural and unavoidable consequences of such a boundless system of itinerating are, that the private members and class leaders know more about the internal state of a society, than a circuit preacher, a circuit preacher than a presiding elder, a presiding elder than a bishop; and that in the course of a few years, he that has the oversight of all, becomes an almost universal stranger to every thing and every body: but while preachers are thus deprived of leisure to theorise, and of opportunities to acquire practical knowledge, power remains stationary in their hands. The preacher gets his information from the leader, the presiding elder from the preacher, and the bishop from the presiding elder. Does

the light of knowledge suffer no deflection, no decomposition, nor imbibe any coloring in its passage through so many bodies? Does it grow clearer and finally lose all the foreign particles that might have been originally mixed with it? What is spoken in the text "to the shame of majorities" grows out of this itinerant legislation run_mad-this fatal segregation of knowledge from power. Presiding elders who have almost literally lived for four years in the wilderness, come to General Conference to legislate for thousands whom they never knew, and with whose condition they can feel no sympathy. Is it wonderful that men so situated, so entirely cut off from all intercourse with the great body of the connection, who it may be, imbibe almost all their ideas and impressions through those who feel an interest in all they speak and write on matters of discipline. Is it wonderful, or rather would it not be passing strange, if men so circumstanced could legislate for the good of the whole! If the majority of the Genereal Conference could be composed of men who best knew the people and are best known by them, the people would still have a right to complain of the present mode of their election; but we do not think they need to fear. What our church has most to dread, is the ignorance of the many, and the prejudice of the few. To hear and see preachers brow beating and voting down those in General Conference, whose only aim is to curb power and to diffuse knowledge, as enemies to Methodism and innovators who aim to destroy the travelling plan, is very painful to our feelings. If report say true, the frontier preachers and some others who were opposed at the last General Conference to the election of presiding elders, are in the habit of representing the other moiety of the General Conference, as the common enemies of the travelling plan. Let those whose duty it is to see that these men behave well, and to call them to account for "improper words," look to the consequence. Will not such grievous words stir up strife? This is more like slander than argument; it neither confutes nor establishes any principle. How much more correct would it be for the larger number of these strangers and pilgrims, to acknowledge, that they know next to nothing of such matters, that they have had neither time, place, nor opportunity for the acquisition of theory or practice.

No. 3.

Vol. i. October 12, 1821, No. xiv. page 211.

Reflections on the History of Methodism.

To purify a system of doctrine from all grounds and sources of speculative Antinomianism, and to retain the doctrine of justification by faith alone in the day of conversion-to preserve the principles of experimental religion, and to avoid mysticism, was a task to which none but the genius of Wesley seems to have been fully competent. This extraordinary man not only exhibited a system of doctrine new in the above respects in its combinations and associations, having no exact model among the writings of theologians; but he purified his society from speculative and practical antinomianism and from mysticism also, and by the aid of unordained preachers extended and enlarged it, and left at his death means and instruments sufficient to render it commensurate with the habitable earth. The separation of the Moravians, and of Mr. Whitefield and his followers, were critical and eventful eras in the history of Methodism, and presented difficulties which must have overwhelmed any but first rate talents for doctrine and government. The manner of the Moravians at that period in England-the number of the primitive Methodist society who had imbibed their smooth, easy, and quiet plan of explaining the gospel, and reducing it to practice, when the hour of segregation arrived, produced a fearful diminution of their members, and opposed an influence diametrically opposite to the Wesleyan economy, which nothing but time and unwearied labor could overcome. On the other hand the advantages of Mr. Whitefield were great indeed, and sufficient to appall a mind of no ordinary fortitude. The conversion of such a colleague into a rival, for a time well nigh eclipsed the rising importance of Wesley and his small and feeble band of followers. The calvinistic form in which Mr. Whitefield announced his doctrines, was congenial to the opinions of a number in the establishment; to most of the dissenters; and to the presbyterians and congregationalists, in Scotland, Ireland, and the then provinces in North America. His popularity in the pulpit was unrivalled, and in zeal and diligence he was not a whit behind his indefatigable rival in doctrine himself. The wealth and the learning which he enlisted in his cause, enabled him to give

a dignity and consequence to the majority of his preachers to vie with the clergy (as they are called) which they seldom omitted in outward appearances or intellectual exercises. Meanwhile the roots and the seeds of the decrees were well nigh eradicated and extracted from the Wesleyan societies; the ordained and unornained preachers and the private members began to see eye to eye and to think and speak the same thing. The employment of lay preachers (so called) in the judgment of every body but their patron was sufficient to ruin his cause. How desperate! how mad! must the attempt have appeared, to make head against a kingdom of opponents with such raw and undrilled recruits. But the members of the establishment at length beheld with amazement the progress of Wesleyan Methodism; they were perplexed and confounded at the ground its intrepid leader had taken in renouncing all affinity to seceders, and proclaiming himself and his proselytes as members of the national church. It is our business said he not to show how fallen the church is, but how fallen its members themselves are. The days of persecution had gone by; in vain did the zealous members of the establishment exert all their learning and ingenuity to free the body and the branches of the church from this parasitical plant, as they considered Methodism, and prevent it from twining around its trunk and feeding upon its substance. What could be done with men who would neither expatriate nor unchurch themselves in order to become religious? The sword had grown rusty in its scabbard, and could not be withdrawn; with them ridi cule was no test of truth; and as far as arguments are concerned, they took the liberty to judge that the advantage was on their side. Any attempt to out do them in zeal was utterly hopeless. To buy them in, was equally out of the question, for, if a price could have been bidden for their preachers, there was no place to employ them. The unordained preachers, with fewer exceptions than might have been expected, maintained themselves in the confidence and affection of their patron and of the societies. An unusual number of them lived to a good old age, and died in the fulness of faith and hope. The government of their chief was patriarchal and monarchial; his ruling maxim was, "if you do not help me as I direct, you shall not help me at all;" but these directions were early reduced to the form of written laws or statutes. He divided the preachers into assistants and helpers; the former of whom were the