he had not for many years, thought a consciousness of acceptance to be essential to justifying faith. And how uncertain and how transient is the comfort which, even in the present life, such rapturous persuasions usually afford, may be learned from his own example. So far was he from being really assured by his fancied assurance, so far was he from being set free from all troublesome doubts and filled with all joy and peace in believing, that we find him first flying to Germany, to get rid, at the springhead of Moravianism, of the uneasy thoughts by which he was 'sawn asunder,' and thence returning to England still dissatisfied. Nor was it till his mind had become fully occupied with a great and novel enterprize, of which the object, whether wisely pursued or no, was God's glory and the good of mankind, that his ambition and his talents found the vent which they required, and that, amid the varied stimulants of opposition and success, persecution and popularity, his character recovered its cheerful tone, and he went on his way rejoicing. Let us not be suspected of undervaluing that comfort and internal peace which the world cannot give, and which are, generally speaking, the portion of men so sincerely pious as Wesley was. But it is of consequence that all pious persons should be aware that, if we are idle, even religion cannot make us happy, and that the most certain cure for low spirits and constitutional dejection is the zealous discharge of our active and social duties, in conjunction with and springing from religion.

During his visit to Germany, Wesley saw some reasons to withdraw his confidence from his Moravian teachers. Of that religious community, Mr. Southey, we understand, has been accused of speaking with undue severity. We know not how he has deserved this charge. The peculiarities of their doctrine and discipline were necessarily to be mentioned as connected with the life of Wesley. He was bound, in fairness, as an historian, to notice whatever was blameable in either, and we do not see how he could do otherwise than reprobate institutions, which, when carried into effect to their utmost strictness, had a natural tendency to dissolve the relation between parents and children, brothers and sisters, and to substitute the discipline of a convent for the graces and charities of social and domestic life. We think, however, that he refines too far on the consequences of that system by which human beings were sorted like cabbage plants, and shut up in different wards of the same vast hospital, according to their ages, sexes and conditions; when he ascribes to this cause those fanatical expressions and indecent images which, in the last generation, polluted the devotional works of the Moravians, and which have been subjects of shame and sorrow to their more enlightened descendants. It is true that, in a society where the youth of both sexes seldom

B 4

saw

saw and never conversed with each other, where mutual inclination, even where it was excited, was not consulted in their marriages, and where man and wife were coupled by the selection of the clergy, or by the decision of a lot, there could be nothing resembling love in its ideal sense. And it is probable that, wherever this separation of the sexes is found, a certain grossness of feeling and expression will be found also. But, on the other hand, that this separation does not necessarily lead to those filthy refinements in imagery of which the early Moravians were guilty, is proved by the fact that the modern Moravians, though living under the same discipline, are free from the offence; and that other sects to whom that discipline is unknown have fallen into the same error. The young lady whose orgasm of amorous piety is mentioned by Mr. Southey, vol. i. p. 225, was no Moravian, neither was the author of the nauseous ballad, of which he has given an extract, addressed to ‘virgins and widows.' Nor should it be omitted that the devout Mrs. Rowe, in her poems published before the appearance of either Wesley or the Moravians, has talked, if we are not mistaken, in a manner little less objectionable, of her passion for Him whom angels adore; nor that similar flights occur continually in the hagiology of the Romish church. The truth is that, at a certain stage of enthusiasm, a temptation to grossness always supervenes, and, by whatever means the spirits are raised beyond their moderate level, their exaltation must necessarily border on that which is produced by the strongest of our animal passions. The language of Solomon's song is a precedent but too easily laid hold of by persons thus situated. But, however it may be supposed to apply to the mutual affection and relation between Christ and the Universal Church, (allegorically represented as a single virgin,) it is the most perilous and deadly downfal to which piety can be led by enthusiasm, to apply such images and such language to cases of individual conversion, or to use them as patterns and guides of individual devotion and meditation,

But though the Moravians, more than most other sects with which we are acquainted, were at one time guilty of this abuse, (an abuse which their patron, Count Zinzendorf, was himself too prone to encourage in them,) it would be a great mistake to suppose either that their morals were corrupt or that they are still chargeable with the faults of their fathers.

Fortunately for themselves, and for that part of the heathen world among whom they have laboured, and still are labouring with exemplary devotion, the Moravians were taught by their assailants to correct this perilous error in time. They were an innocent people, and could therefore with serenity oppose the testimony of their lives to the tremendous charges which, upon the authority of their own

writings,

writings, were brought against them. And then first seeing the offensiveness, if not the danger of the loathsome and impious extravagancies into which they had been betrayed, they corrected their books and their language; and from that time they have continued not merely to live without reproach, but to enjoy in a greater degree than any other sect, the general good opinion of every other religious community.— vol. i. pp. 204, 205.

But it is remarkable that, though the Moravians in Wesley's time were in the high tide of their enthusiasm, yet it was neither this abuse nor their other reprehensible customs which offended him. Mr. Southey attributes this to his ignorance of German; but he had acquired, one would think, in Georgia, a sufficient acquaintance with that language to detect a fault which lay on the surface of all their writings and daily conversation. The truth seems to be, that he was himself at that time in a state of mind which symbolized too well with such expressions to be much offended at them; though, in his latter days, and when mutual opposition had made him think ill of every thing which belonged to his former friends, he, with the same dismal want of candour which distinguished Augustine in his contest with the Manichees, added the weight of his own knowledge and authority to the calumnies circulated by Rimius. But, be this as it may, his complaints against them related chiefly to the supremacy exercised by Zinzendorf, a supremacy which Wesley was likely to brook in no man, though he afterwards, in his own person, was guilty of the very fault which he reprobated in another. The breach once made was widened after his return to London by the spirit of Mysticism which at that time prevailed among the Moravian congregation there, (a spirit of which Wesley justly complained,) and by the still stranger notion, which Wesley himself imbibed, of the possibility of sinless perfection being attained by man in his present state of existence. Zinzendorf, in a visit which he paid to England, laboured to convince him of this error with more learning and acuteness than success. They parted with mutual recriminations, and Wesley never afterwards mentioned the Count without some scornful allusion to his family pride or Jesuitical policy, though he always did justice to his talents and the variety

of his attainments.

But while Wesley was thus gradually shaking off all dependance on any other religious leader, circumstances were rapidly preparing the way for the establishment of a society of which he himself was to be the founder and dictator. His brother Charles, of whom we have so long lost sight, had quitted America before him with dispatches from General Oglethorpe. His stay in Georgia had been chiefly remarkable for his quarrel with this last

named

named personage; who treated him, during a dangerous illness, with a brutal tyranny of which there are few examples. Yet shortly afterwards, when Oglethorpe was setting out on a military expedition, he evinced his regard for his secretary in an interview singularly characteristic of both parties.

"The governor began by saying he had taken some pains to satisfy his brother, but in vain. "It matters not," said he. "I am now going to death : you will see me no more. Take this ring, and carry it to Mr. V.: if there be a friend to depend on, he is one. His interest is next to Sir Robert's: whatever you ask within his power, he will do for you, your brother and family. I have expected death for some days. These letters show that the Spaniards have long been seducing our allies, and intend to cut us off at a blow. I fall by my friends on whom I depended to send their promised succours. But death is nothing to me he will pursue all my designs, and to him I recommend them and you." He then gave him a diamond ring. Charles Wesley, who had little expected such an address, took it, and replied, "If I am speaking to you for the last time, hear what you will quickly know to be a truth, as soon as you are entered on a separate state. This ring I shall never make use of for myself. I have no worldly hopes: I have renounced the world: life is bitterness to me; I came hither to lay it down. You have been deceived as well as I. I protest my innocence of the crimes I am charged with, and think myself now at liberty to tell you what I thought never to have uttered." The explanation. into which he then entered, so satisfied Oglethorpe, that his feelings were entirely changed: all his old love and confidence returned; and he embraced Charles and kissed him with the most cordial affection. They went together to the boat, where he waited some minutes for his sword: a mourning sword was twice brought him, which he twice refused to take; at last they brought his own: it had been his father's. ،، With this sword,” said he, "I was never yet unsuccessful." When the boat pushed off, Charles Wesley ran along the shore to see the last of him. Oglethorpe seeing him and two other persons run after him, stopt the boat, and asked if they wanted any thing. One of them, the officer, whom he had left with the command, desired his last orders: Charles then said, "God is with you: go forth Christo duce et auspice Christo." Oglethorpe replied, you have some verses of mine: you there see my thoughts of success." The boat then moved off, and ̧ Charles remained praying that God would save him from death, and wash away all his sins.

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On the fifth day, Oglethorpe returned in safety. An enemy's squadron of three large ships, and four smaller, had been for three weeks endeavouring to make a descent, but the wind continued against them till they could wait no longer. Charles returned him the ring. "When I gave it you," said the governor, "I never expected to see you again, but I thought it would be of service to your brother and you. I had many omens of my death, but God has been pleased to preserve a life which was never valuable to me, and yet in the conti

nuance

nuance of it, I thank God, I can rejoice." He then talked of the strangeness of his deliverance, when betrayed, as it appeared, on all sides, and without human support; and he condemned himself for his late conduct, imputing it, however, to want of time for consideration, and the state of his mind. "I longed, Sir," said Charles, "to see you once more, that I might tell you some things before we finally parted: but then I considered that if you died, you would know them all in a moment." Oglethorpe replied, "I know not whether separate spirits regard our little concerns; if they do, it is as men regard the follies of their childhood, or I my late passionateness." -pp. 104—106.

Charles was even an earlier convert to the doctrine of Boehler than his brother, and preceded him in obtaining those feelings of 'assurance' for which they both sighed so earnestly. He had, during John's absence in Germany, attended some condemned criminals in Newgate, and given to them that comfort and spiritual help which the ordinary (such as ordinaries were in those days) was not likely to administer.* And in London, as formerly in Oxford, he had collected a small society of devout persons who were sufficiently disposed to place themselves under his brother's spiritual direction. But a far mightier instrument had also been at work to open the path before him. Among the original Methodists of Oxford was a youth named George Whitefield, of humble parentage in Bristol, whose mother had been enabled to gratify his zeal for learning, and ardent desire to become a minister of the church, through the help of the little profits afforded by a servitorship at Pembroke College, and some presents made him from time to time by a kind-hearted tutor. During the continuance of that society in the university which we have already described, he surpassed them all in the greatness of his austerities, the intensity of his devotion, and the vehemence with which he laboured after that religious peace, which, in one so truly pious as he was, would have been his portion from the beginning, but for the erroneous notion which he had formed of its nature.

'He describes himself as having all sensible comforts withdrawn from him, overwhelmed with a horrible fearfulness and dread, all power of meditation, or even thinking, taken away, his memory gone, his whole soul barren and dry, and his sensations, as he imagined, like those of a man locked 66 in iron armour. up Whenever I knelt down," he says, "I

It is, we believe, one of the Wesleys who is represented in Hogarth's execution of the idle apprentice, with long lank hair, praying in the cart with the criminal, while the ordinary follows in a hackney-coach. The poor ordinary, when Charles Wesley thus officiated, seems to have been willing to do his duty if he had known how. He would read prayers,' says Charles, and he preached most miserably.' And when he offered to get on the cart at the place of execution, the prisoners begged he would not and the mob prevented him. 'What kind of machine,' says Mr. Southey, a Newgate ordinary was in those days, may be seen in Fielding: the one who edifies Jonathan Wild with a sermon before the punch comes in, seems to have been drawn from the life.'

felt