of rank and the love of dress both in his charity school and in his adult congregation; and though a clergyman who does his duty faithfully, may always lay his account to meet with occasional opposition and disappointment amid the motley crowd of a new colony, it is probable that he might have done abundant good, had he been content to attempt it in an usual manner, and had he borne in mind the wise counsel of Dr. Burton, to consider his parishioners as babes in their progress, and therefore to feed them with milk instead of strong meat.

But Wesley was now a high churchman of the most intolerant character. In his zeal for the letter of the rubric he insisted on baptizing children by immersion instead of sprinkling. He refused to read the burial service over a dissenter, and repelled from the communion one of the most pious men in the colony, because he had been brought up a nonconformist, and would not submit to be rebaptized by an episcopally ordained minister. Following the original appointment of the church rather than its modern practice, he separated the morning service from the communion, performing them at different hours; but what gave most offence, was his making his sermons so many satires on particular persons. All the quarrels of the town were, at length, imputed to his intermeddling conduct, and his scruples and peculiarities so perplexed the people, that they said (as a plain speaker told Wesley) that they could not tell whether he were Protestant or Papist, having never heard of such a religion before.

The strangest, however, of all his actions, either in Georgia or during the whole course of his life, was his behaviour respecting a certain Miss Causton, the niece of the chief magistrate of the colony, to whom, after a long religious flirtation originally promoted by Oglethorpe, Wesley proposed marriage against the advice of most of his religious friends in the colony. Unexpectedly the lady rejected him, and was, shortly after, married to a Mr. Williamson. Wesley, however, still seems to have watched over her spiritual welfare with a peculiar and jealous anxiety, till, after some little quarrels, the result of advice obtruded on the one hand, and rejected, perhaps indignantly, on the other, he thought fit to repel her from the communion, till she should openly declare herself to have repented of certain faults which, without publicly stating them, he professed to have observed in her conduct. This unusual procedure set the whole colony in a flame. The lady miscarried; and though she had the justice or the generosity to impute the accident to another cause, her friends were anxious to have it believed the consequence of the chaplain's bigotry. She was induced, however, to make an affidavit that Wesley had repeatedly offered her marriage, which was couched in language well calculated to produce a suspicion beyond what it absolutely

VOL. XXIV. NO. XLVII.

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asserted.

asserted. Her uncle, the recorder, till now the firm friend of Wesley, resorted to all means, fair or unfair, to blacken and destroy his character. Parts of the letters which had passed between him and Mrs. Williamson, during the long course of their affection and intimacy, were publicly read in different companies, with such comments as were most likely to produce an effect unfavourable to the writer; and a grand jury was induced by Causton's influence, to find a bill of indictment against him, containing ten counts, of which the first was for speaking and writing to Mrs. Williamson without her husband's consent,-the others related to his repelling her from the communion, his division of the service, and his conduct respecting baptisms and burials.

Wesley met these hostilities with spirit and dignity. Such parts of the charge as referred to his ecclesiastical conduct he refused to give an account of before any tribunal but that of his ecclesiastical superiors. That which related to his correspondence with Mrs. Williamson he desired might be tried as soon as possible. Nor was it till after four months had elapsed without any progress being made, that he finally determined, with the general concurrence of his friends in the colony, to leave a place where he had no longer any hope of rendering service to religion.

But whatever credit may be given to Wesley's firmness and disinterested zeal, it will hardly be denied that his conduct in Georgia was marked by a want of sound judgment, which would have argued, if we had not known his subsequent history, a person actually frantic. We will not lay any particular stress on his bigotry towards dissenters. There have always been some few of the high church party (though the great majority of learning and authority has been uniformly on the other side) who have denied the validity of baptism when administered by persons not episcopally ordained. But, in repelling Mrs. Williamson from the communion for an offence not specified, the rubric by which he professed to be guided, no less than the reason of the case, and the general practice of the Christian church, was decidedly against him. The power of repelling open and notorious evil livers' from the sacrament is given to the priest, lest the congregation be offended.' It is only for faults which may be made public, that spiritual censures of any kind may be pronounced. The priest has no right, for he has no opportunity or occasion, to interfere between man and his Maker, except where the openness of the offence makes the church a party aggrieved, or where the criminals, as in the case of auricular confession, submit themselves to his judgment and correction. But Mrs. Williamson does not appear to have stood in either of these predicaments; and, whatever Wesley might have individually known or believed to her disadvantage, though it might

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be his duty, in point of charity, to exhort her, in private' to repent her of her sins, or else come not to that holy sacrament,' yet if she still chose to attend, as the risque was hers alone, so she was answerable to no other master than Him by whom Judas himself was not openly repelled from that mystery. That it was not Wesley's piety alone which rendered him obnoxious in Georgia, is, indeed, apparent from the fact that Whitefield, immediately after him, enjoyed more peace and popularity here than in any other scene of his labours. And it is strange and revolting to see Wesley, on leaving a place which he had himself, by his own want of judgment, made too hot to hold him, assuming the air of an apostle persecuted for the sake of the gospel, and going through that ceremony of shaking the dust from his feet,' which even an apostle dared not have done without a divine commission, and which, if he meant any thing by it at all, was to devote the inhabitants of Savannah to everlasting destruction!

As yet Wesley has been seen in the character of an over-zealous high churchman only. But, during his stay in the Western Continent, the beginning had been laid of an influence foreign to the church of England, which for several years continued to produce very remarkable effects on his conduct and opinions. In the vessel which conveyed himself and his associates to America were several families of the Moravians, or (as they call themselves) the United Brethren, who, under the patronage of government, were proceeding to join some of their society already established in Georgia. During the voyage, which was tedious and stormy, Wesley had been greatly impressed and affected by their humility, meekness, and patience.

'Those servile offices, which none of the English would perform for the other passengers, they offered themselves to undertake, and would receive no recompense; saying, it was good for their proud hearts, and their Saviour had done more for them. No injury could move their meekness; if they were struck or thrown down, they made no complaint, nor suffered the slightest indication of resentment to appear. Wesley was curious to see whether they were equally delivered from the spirit of fear, and this he had an opportunity of ascertaining. In the midst of the psalm with which they began their service, the sea broke over, split the main-sail, covered the ship, and poured in between the decks, as if, he says, the great deep had already swallowed us up. A dreadful screaming was heard among the English colonists: the Moravians calmly sung on. Wesley afterwards asked one of them, if he was not afraid at that time. He replied, "I thank God, no." He was then asked if the women and children were not afraid. His answer was, “No; our women and children are not afraid to die.” —vol. i. p. 81. This good opinion was confirmed by all which he observed in their conduct and manners after his arrival in the new world. The simplicity

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simplicity and solemnity of their forms of worship, more particularly on the election and ordination of a bishop, appeared to him a lively image of primitive Christianity. He reckoned a temporary absence from his English friends richly overpaid by being admitted to the fellowship of the Moravian church; and he shewed in a remarkable manner his high respect for them, by referring to their decision, though he was, after all, not able to give up his inclinations to their authority, whether or no he should seek the fair Sophia Causton in marriage. From them, even now, he had adopted the most absurd and presumptuous of their peculiarities, the practice of referring important questions in faith, in piety, or worldly prudence, to the decision of a lot, or of a passage in Scripture fortuitously opened: and he was still more disposed to become their pupil on his arrival in England, from certain conclusions, which he formed during his homeward voyage, as to his present state of blindness and imperfection. There was, necessarily, much on his mind, during that voyage, to depress and agitate his spirits, in the recollection of the obloquy he had lately passed through, in the doubt which could not but arise as to the wisdom or correctness of many circumstances of his behaviour, and in the disappointment of the schemes which he had laid down, and the hopes with which he had quitted England. He had done nothing of all those things which had been the objects of his voyage; and, with talents of which he well knew the value, and a zeal which, if left without employment, was sure to devour its possessor, he had no regular channel of utility before him sufficiently extensive and conspicuous to gratify his ardent and ambitious character. To do good in the usual way was not what suited him. He desired (as William Law once told him) to convert the world;' and he had not paid sufficient attention to the wise counsel with which Law had followed up this picture of his character, that it became him to wait God's time,' and to be content to serve him with thankfuluess in whatever situation, however obscure and lowly, he might please to make use of his services.

But, while thus labouring under the uneasiness of ambition without a proper vent, he had other causes of disquietude. Like many other men of ardent imagination, he was constitutionally timorous and subject to strong impressions of bodily fear, for which, in his situation on ship board, where he had little to do but to watch his own sensations, (a morbid habit at the best,) he seems to have found frequent occasion. During these times it is singular that he was sometimes afflicted with uneasy doubts, not only as to his own spiritual state, but as to the truth of the religion for which he had made so many sacrifices. His natural good sense, indeed, at first, reminded him that this fear of death was a trial, not a sin,

that

that he was · to look upon it as his cross, when it came, to let it humble him and quicken all his good resolutions, especially that of praying without ceasing; and at other times to take no thought about it, but quietly to go on in the work of the Lord.' But his nerves were not in a fit state to be governed by his better reason : he compared his present uneasiness with the tranquillity of the Moravians, and, forgetting that these Moravians had been occupied, and therefore tranquil, he began to fancy that his faith was to blame, and that it was not enough to believe that Christ died for the sins of all men, and, therefore, of the man John Wesley; but that he needed a personal and perfect assurance of his own acceptance with God, which was to free him at once from all sin, all doubt, and all fear. Such an assurance was taught by some of the Moravian preachers of that time, (though the present leaders of that people have got rid of much which was absurd or obnoxious in the tenets of their founders,) and it was taught by none with greater zeal or eloquence than by a German named Peter Boehler, whose constant auditor and humble disciple Wesley became on his arrival in London. When Boehler, however, told him that this faith must be an instantaneous, as well as a free and direct operation of God's spirit on the mind, the reason of Wesley still revolted and provoked from the Moravian the reproof. Mi frater, mi frater, excoquenda est ista tua philosophia.' But by this time, the impression was made, and, after a little longer selftorment, by seeking a degree of confidence in his soul which he could not find there, he felt, as he himself tells us, ' his heart strangely warmed, he felt that he did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given him that he had taken away his sins.'

This is pretty nearly the process of what Wesley himself called his conversion, a term to which, even on his own shewing, it had apparently very little claim. From what was he converted? and to what? From a dissolute course of life? That no one would have ventured to lay to his charge. From wrath, envy, malice? This he does not so much as insinuate. From a trust in his own merits? His own previous self-condemnation is a proof that he placed no confidence in them. From doubts of the truth of the Christian religion? These he already knew how to conquer, by regarding them as temptations, and making them additional motives for humility, watchfulness, and prayer. What new truths did he now acquire or assent to ? That Christ died for his sins? Christ died for the sins of all who seek salvation through him; and, if his heart condemned him not, but bore witness, as it must have done, that he did thus seek it, then the spirit of God, undoubtedly, bore witness with his spirit, that he was one of those to whom