tians, it supports spontaneously, and without the aid of false excitement, the same tone of feeling, the same system of motives, and the same course of action. But as the qualities of this faith are not cognizable, except by its possessors, it must happen, that while Christians of later ages feel, speak, and act like Christians of the primitive age, they are involuntarily deemed, and freely reproached as hypocrites, enthusiasts, fanatics, by men whose conviction of the truth of Christianity is not only lower in degree, but different in its source and in its nature. But those who feel that their own faith in the truth of Christianity is neither sufficiently vivid nor stable, nor so associated with the affections of the heart as to carry them forward into eminent services, and to sustain them under privations and reproaches, or even to put them in sympathy and intelligence with much of the language of the New Testament,-might convince themselves of the radical defect in their religious feelings, by observing the many instances in which a genuine faith, even though low in its degree, and always struggling with constitutional scepticism, is seen to produce nearly the same results as in individuals of a happier temperament. Some of the most devoted champions or martyrs of the Christian Church have never enjoyed the comfort of undistracted conviction. But in these instances, faith, if not happy, has been efficient; and it would have carried its possessors to the stake, firmly, though not joyfully.

Declaimers against enthusiasm would do well, then, to fix their attention upon instances where a cold, phlegmatic, or melancholic temperament has rendered the individual insusceptible of that exaltation of mind to which the term is properly applied, and yet, where, in steady renunciation of personal interests and comfort, and in sustained activity, he has differed in no perceptible degree from his more sanguine and happy brethren. So true is the principle, that he who has a true faith, "though it be but as a grain of mustard seed, is able to say unto the mountain, Be "thou removed and cast into the sea; and it shall obey him." But we return to the Life of Wesley. Highly cultivated minds are often not less effectually barred against the access of truth and reason, in some single direction, than the most stupid and ignorant of mankind. Nothing can be more likely to generate a partial, yet injurious obstruction of this sort in the understanding, than the having made, for a length of time, some particular body of men the subject of supercilious speculation. In this way it may happen, that Mr. Watson's "Observations" on the Life of Wesley, may produce 'neither shame nor conviction in the mind of Mr. Southey. But, we must say, that it is only a most preposterous conceit which will incline him, merely because Richard Watson is one of the fanatics, to treat the sound and perfectly temperate argument of this Pamphlet with real or

affected contempt. He perhaps may please himself in the persua sion that none but the Methodists will read this reply; and perhaps he reckons safely: for, no doubt, many of his readers will not put themselves in the way of being despoiled of the treasure of common places with which he has furnished them. But such a probability ought to afford very smail consolation to a mind truly ingenuous and open to conviction. Nor should it exonerate him from the obligation openly to acknowledge the refutation, if not of his general reasoning, at least of his more palpable misrepresentations.

We have felt with Mr. Watson, that the impression made by the Life of Wesley is equally as unfavourable to Christianity itself, as to the views of that particular Society, through whom some of its vital principles are assaulted.'

• Religion itself, if not only Mr. Wesley was right in his views of its nature and influence, but if the Church of England has rightly exhibited it in her formularies, and in the writings of her greatest divines, is very incautiously and generally resolved into enthusiasm, and other natural causes; and every stirring of religious feeling which may appear new and irregular to a cold and torpid formality, has a ready designation in the equally undefined term fanaticism. There are, it is true, occasional admissions on these subjects, which indicate respect and veneration for what is sacred; but they often prove no more than a convenient medium through which to convey impressions of a contrary kind with greater force. It is with no reluctance that I admit, that this was not always intended; but if any thing more than experience has already furnished were necessary to show the mischievousness of writing on subjects of religion, without steady and digested principles, it would be supplied by this publication. On all such topics Mr. Southey is extremely flippant and assuming, without any qualification to support the pretension. Educated, as it is reported, in the Socinian school; afterwards allured farther from the truth by the glare of a false philosophy, he has corrected many of his former errors, and is now a professed orthodox member of the Church of England. I am happy to see him in that fold; it would be illiberal to remember the aberrations of his youth, and not to allow him the praise of having for several years employed his talents well and usefullyHis, is evidently, an amiable and elevated, as well as a highly cultivated mind; but his views are yet too dim, and his theological attainments far too scanty, to give him a right to all that authority which he claims on many of those vital and solemn subjects which he decides with so censurable a confidence.'

There are few readers of the Life of Wesley, we believe, who will not at times have felt disposed to put the question,' Is Mr. Southey a believer in Christianity?'

If so,' says Mr. Watson, waiving for the present a minuter consideration of the following points, he must believe in the providential designation of distinguished characters to produce great and benefi

cial effects upon society;-he must believe in the influence of the Holy Spirit upon the minds of men, exciting them to their duty, and assisting them in it; he must believe that the work of renewing a corrupt heart, and giving real effect to the Christian Ministry, is the work of God, though carried on by human agents-he is not a Christian if he admits not these doctrines, he is not a Churchman; his Christianity is a name, a pretence and if, in reality he admits them, they were, unhappily, too often absent from his mind, and too often confused by the lingering traces of former erring sentiments, when he applied himself to determine the questions which presented themselves in the course of his late researches into Methodism.'

Referring to Wesley's account of his own religious feelings, Mr. Watson remarks:

Even in Mr. Southey's caricatured representation, and in despite of the frequent recurrence of flippant and fatuous observations, it has an awe which frowns down ridicule, or kindles indignation at its intrusion on scenes so hallowed, The heart is not to be envied, even if it be that of an affected philosophist, which can suffer itself to be so far misled by those minor circumstances of the case, which, by forgetting times and circumstances, may appear somewhat singular and extravagant, as to overlook those great considerations which force themselves upon all but the lightest minds, when the history of a heart so impressed and influenced, is candidly and honestly laid open. These are inward conflicts which many besides have felt, but which are seldom brought forth from the recesses of the bosoms they have so variously agitated. Yet they are not cases of merely individual concern. We all have errors to be dissipated, a natural corruption to be overcome, a peace to make with God, a relation to an eternal world to render sure or hopeful. The careless may smile at the accounts of Conversion; but the serious mind which, in the wilderness of its thoughts, eagerly looks out for a guiding hand and a directive star, cannot be uninterested in them. Others are seen, in the early stages of their religious experience, in the same bewildered paths as ourselves, and the process of their deliverance points out that desired track which may lead us also into the light and peace for which we seek. To the dictates of the Holy Scriptures all such accounts are to be carefully subordinated, but they are often instructive and invaluable comments upon them.'

Mr. Wesley's personal experience connects itself with several points of theological doctrine.

But Mr. Southey has never enquired whether they are true or false. If he thinks them only substantially true, the manner in which he has treated Mr. Wesley's early history is unworthy a serious and religious man if he think them false, then the colouring which he has thrown over this part of Mr. Wesley's life is in character. It has in it all the guile, though not the usual grossness of infidelity. The truth appears to be, that Mr. Southey gave himself not the least concern to ascertain whether these principles were true or false. For Christianity he is now an advocate, and for the Church of England

too; but under either character he ought to have known that the doctrines which Mr. Wesley's conversion implies, are the doctrines of each.'

I should call several passages, insidious attacks upon religion, did I not conceive them to be the result of some blinding system: of at least partial unbelief, which he has hastily taken up, and per severed in, because he has never seriously investigated its evidences. A solemn examination of his religious opinions, is an exercise for which I heartily wish him leisure, or a determination to make it. This necessary, and all-important act to himself, may be the more confidently urged upon him, because his views on many religious subjects are not opposed merely to what is peculiar in Methodism, but to opinions we hold in common with every orthodox Church in Christendom.'

The following observations are forcible and perfectly just: they' are applicable to a very large portion of the Life of Wesley, or, rather, to the spirit of the whole work.

In the introductory chapter, Mr. Southey indulges a sneer at all religious sects, for supposing their leaders raised up by a special Providence. This might have escaped notice, from the gentle manner in which it is expressed, were not his incredulity on this subject cor-: roborated by the spirit of the whole book, in which there is a total absence of any admission of the agency of Providence in the appearance, labours, and the effects produced in the world by eminent men, though, when soberly applied, that doctrine affords a key to many particulars in their lives, not otherwise easily explained. In many of its passages also, other causes are resorted to, in order to account for such effects, as though for the express purpose of excluding the interposition of the Governor of the World. The doctrine of Providence may be ill applied; its special favours and designation may be claimed: for men very ill entitled to it. One may be a powerful agent of evil, permitted in the course of judicial visitation; another may be raised up, to enlighten and benefit mankind. The result setties this point, without weakening the general principle of providential government on which even a false application rests. It can scarcely be now a matter of doubt whether Loyola or Luther was the agent designated by Providence for good. Providence must be allowed in both cases; but in one there was permission of evil, in the other the application of means to benefit and bless mankind. There is a philosophy which, though not professedly infidel, excludes Almighty God as much as possible, without betraying itself, from the material universe, and sub stitutes in his place, some sounding, but unmeaning phrase, as "na❤ "ture," and "the laws of nature." It is, however, a worse error when the same habit of thinking is applied to cases which fall under the moral government of God. The design of the Holy Scriptures is to bring the Almighty near to us; the object of this wretched philosophy is to hide him from our sight, by surrounding us with innumcrable second causes, and ascribing to them an efficiency, which assuredly of themselves they do not possess. These Scriptures, and this philosophy, cannot both be true; and he who refers to providen

tial design and interposition in almost every thing, and carries truth into error by excess, provided there be nothing selfish and egotistic in the practice, thinks more nobly, and much more in the spirit of the sacred revelations, than he who regards nature and the moral system as vast machines possessed of self moving powers, and places the Author of All at the head, as an idle spectator, never to interpose but when some great disorder is likely to happen, or when, having occurred, it is to be so rectified that all may again go on self-animated, and self-impelled.'

He who acknowledges a providential agency in the overthrow and elevation of human thrones; in wars which abstract a few leagues of land from one power to add to the territories of another; in the invention of arts, which advance civilized life; and the diffusion of commerce, which gives the strength and power of matured nations to those which are but in the infancy of the social state; and yet denies it in the lives and actions of men to whom the reformation of corruptions in religion, and the revival of its true spirit are, as instruments, owing; in the case of those who have established and conducted the Bible Societies, and the Missionary Societies of the day; and of many modern Missionaries who are planting the imperishable principles of truth and godliness in Pagan countries, and laying there the wide and deep foundations of their future order, happiness, and salvation, suffers his judgment to be influenced by very false measures of what is great, and what is little. He is like the peasant, whose dull attention is raised to God when the storm of winter howls round his hut, and the thunder-cloud darts its bolt upon the neighbouring tree, but sees him not in the soft showers of spring, and in that diffusive vegetative life which is taken up by every root, ascends every fibre, and on every stem forms, by a process at once the most beautiful and wonderful in nature, the fruit upon which millions are to subsist. Separate from their connection with the grand scheme of human recovery, a point of view in which such reasoners do not consider them, the revolutions of states and kingdoms, do not present those great occasions for Divine interposition which are pretended; and in comparison of the effects produced by the Wesleys, the Whitefields, the Eliots, and Brainerds; the Cokes and the Careys; the Buchanans and the Martyns; they are as the idle play, and the mischievous pastime of children. By these men, whose names the world will not deign to register in its kalendar, and to whom its historians will not devote one of their pages, have those great and peaceful revolutions been commenced, which will not end till "the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of "the glory of the Lord." If then we are to acknowledge the interposition of Providence in great affairs only, it is impossible to exclude it when such men come forth to purify and bless our world.'

Mr. Southey's eagerness to catch at incidental causes whereby to account for the effects produced by the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield, leads him not seldom into puerilities very derogatory to his sound judgement. After remarking pertinently upon some instances of this sort, Mr. Watson says: