God and to our fellow-creatures. If reviled we shall not revile again; our object is not to give offence, but to speak the truth, and to speak it plainly and distinctly, and to defend the Church of Christ from the attack's daily made upon it. We are of the company of those who have vowed to be ever "ready with all faithful diligence to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God's word," and we have no intention of violating this solemn vow to please all the men in the world; and we believe that we are rendering the best service which mortal can render to mortal in pointing out the truth to mankind, and warning our fellow-sinners against the bold and insidious errors which abound on every hand. We have no personal feelings or enmity of any kind to gratify in reference to the Wesleyans; but we believe them to hold dangerous errors, and to follow dangerous practices; and we have certainly quite as good a right to expose and oppose what we do, in the sight of God, conscientiously believe to be wrong, as they have to oppose what they think to be wrong. We wish them every thing that is good; and our heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be led to renounce their dangerous errors and to embrace the truth as it is in Jesus, and enter his Church, and be everlastingly saved. And we cannot better evince our sincerity than by the course which we are pursuing. It is charity of the highest and noblest kind to show people their errors, and to rescue them from danger, if even against their will and at the risk of one's own peace and comfort. We may get no thanks for our pains, but that alters not our duty to God and to our neighbour.

Now

But our course may also be thought, if not wrong, at least unadvisable by some few Churchmen, who will urge that as the Wesleyans are conservatives in politics, friendly to the Church, enemies of the government scheme of education, and are generally taking our part against the Papists and some other enemies, it is good policy not to oppose them, at least just now. if all this were perfectly true of the Wesleyans, we should nevertheless feel it to be our duty, as servants of God, to oppose their unscriptural errors and practices, and their schismatical conduct. It is certainly true that they have opposed the infidel and Popish education scheme of the Ministers, but we have strong reasons to believe that their opposition arose from considerations of self-interest, and not from friendly feelings towards the Church. They are constantly encouraging each other with the notion that at no very distant time they will possess themselves of our Churches and our property and privileges; and it is therefore not very likely that they will allow the Papists or any others to take that which they have marked out for themselves, when they shall have become strong enough, as they soon hope to be, to take possession of it. If the Church places the slightest reliance upon the Wesleyan sect, she will find it, like Egypt of old, a broken reed which will pierce her hand. So far are the Wesleyans from being friendly to the Church, except occasionally, and to suit a temporary purpose, that we confidently appeal to the country clergy and churchmen in general, whether they be not really the most indefatigable and unscrupulous enemies with which we have to contend. We speak of them generally there are still remaining some very honourable and exemplary exceptions, but generally they are more bitter against the Church and the Clergy, and are doing more real mischief than any other sect, or any other two sects of dissenters in the country. Nor is their hostility the less successful because it is occasionally attempted to be concealed under a few gratuitous and often evidently-affected professions of friendship. All this is well known to the Clergy in the country villages and small towns where Wesleyans are seen at work, and cannot throw a cloak over their designs and operations. But in large towns, where

their real character and proceedings are not so easily seen, Churchmen more readily credit their professions, and lay too much stress upon two or three votes vauntedly given to a conservative candidate; whereas, if the matter be fairly examined, it will be found that they in general vote for the enemies of the Church and Constitution of the country. This was notoriously the case at the last general election at Leeds, Nottingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool, Norwich, Lynn, Knaresborough, and other places. But the most glaring case was that of Sheffield, where the Wesleyans brought forward a member of their own sect on Conservative principles, and having induced Churchmen to support him with their money and influence, they actually deserted their own brother, and voted for the radical enemies of the Church. Even of those who signed the requisition calling upon their brother Wesleyans to come forward, very few indeed gave him their votes. This we believe to be a correct and genuine specimen of Wesleyan friendship for the Church. Then again the works which are constantly being published by the Wesleyan Conference, and the Wesleyan preachers in their individual capacity distributed over the face of the country, all proclaim, as with one voice, positive, indisputable, and bitter hatred against the Church. "The Centenary of Wesleyan Methodism" now before us, written as we have already said, by the president of the Conference, who is known to be one of the least bigoted and most moderate of the whole sect, contains much direct hostility to the Church, besides a vast number of insinuations and implications, which leave an impression upon the ignorant and bigoted mind, quite as unjust and mischievous as direct assertions of enmity. Every Number issued of "the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine," which is the authorized organ of the sect, and edited by the President of the Conference, is fraught with indirect, direct, and not unfrequently unchristian and bigoted hostility to the Church. In the memoirs, of which this periodical contains a considerable number, it is remarkable how frequently it is recorded of the subjects of them, that they were brought up in the Church, and either remained ignorant of the truth or walked according to the light they had; but found no rest until something of the miraculous led them amongst the Wesleyans, when all that was made right in a very short space of time, which the Church had signally failed to accomplish in some instances in the course of a long period of strict attention to all that she enjoins. In short, Churchmen are miserably dark and groping formalists, and the Wesleyans perfection itself. We cannot now enter at length into this matter, but we will soon bring an abundance of facts and quotations from the works of Wesleyans, to prove all and much more than we have stated. And we therefore request those who may still have doubts as to the enmity of the Wesleyan dissenters, for dissenters they expressly state they are, to suspend their judgment until they shall have had an opportunity of seeing the proofs which we will shortly produce. It cannot be any pleasure to us to be able to produce proofs of the hostility of any body of men to the Church; as it would be delightful to us to find it easy and simple to prove all men not only friends, but actually living and holy members of the Church; we must, however, speak of men and things as we find them, and if we find them opposed to us, how much soever we may for their sakes lament it, we must not deceive ourselves and trust to the friendship of enemies in a day of trial. It behoveth us, especially at the present time, to know who are our enemies, and who are not, that we may be prepared to act accordingly, in defending and protecting the inestimable treasure with which Almighty God has hitherto signally blessed our country.

We will now take a brief review of the contents of the " Centenary of Wesleyan Methodism," with which we set out. The work comprises seven

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Chapters and an Appendix; we will take it as it comes, beginning with the title, the spirit of which is followed up throughout. "The Centenary of Wesleyan Methodism," as we have already intimated, is an open, published, broad and authoritative avowal of the fact, on the part of the Wesleyan Conference and the whole body, that " Wesleyan Methodism" is only a hundred years old; that it had no sort of existence until it was invented and propagated by John Wesley; and that it is therefore an entire novelty, a new religion. And if what the learned and pious Bishop Jewell says, be true, that- Certainly there can nothing of more weight be said against religion than that it is new," (Apology, chap. v. sect. 2,) then that which is most weighty can certainly be said against Wesleyanism, which its own disciples declare to be new. We shall not attempt to impugn the judgment of the great Jewell, who had more wisdom and learning than ourselves and all the Wesleyans together; especially as his observation is most clearly founded upon truth, as any man of the commonest understanding and the least thought will easily perceive. For if a religion be new it cannot be of God, for he has never instituted more than one religion, and that was all determined and settled by his beloved Son Our Saviour Jesus Christ, eighteen hundred years ago. Then it was that our blessed Lord founded his Church, and committed to it that which is emphatically THE TRUTH, with positive commands to preserve it and propagate it, and with precious promises that he would dwell in his Church for ever, that the gates of hell might never prevail against it. And to suppose that Almighty God has instituted other churches or societies since for the accomplishment of the same object is little short of blasphemy, because it implies that He is not all-wise; that His attribute of wisdom is like that of short-sighted, erring man, imperfect.

We must believe one of two things, with the consequences which inevitably flow from them. If we believe that the Church was designed and framed by Infinite wisdom, and fully and perfectly adapted to the accomplishment of that for which Almighty God intended it, we must believe that He has had nothing at all to do in the raising up of the various churches, societies, or sects, which have since come into existence. But if we believe that Almighty God has really raised up the various churches, societies, or sects, which have arisen of late years, as the members of all of them declare, then, we must inevitably believe that the Church has failed of accomplishing the objects for which it was instituted, and stands a lamentable instance of a want of wisdom and foresight on the part of Almighty God, who, finding his work turn out so defective and so differently from what he supposed when he contrived it, is now driven to the human expedient of raising up other churches or societies to make up the deficiencies of His original Church. This latter cannot possibly be believed by any reasonable being, and the former position is therefore true that the Church, instituted by Christ eighteen hundred years ago, was so wisely and perfectly contrived that no other churches of sects have since been needed to make up its deficiencies, and consequently Almighty God, not needing them, has had nothing to do in raising the new churches, societies, or sects which now surround us. And as God had nothing to do in raising them up, they are not of divine institution; and as they are not of divine institution, they are of human institution, and meré human invention. This is, indeed, acknowledge by the teachers and members of the various sects. The independents acknowledge Robert Brown as their father and founder," and the Wesleyans are constantly designating John Wesley, after whom they have called tlieinselves, as their "father and founder" and whatever their respective followers may say of either of those gentlemen, we are not much inclined to believe that they were at all

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more than human, or that they were even the best specimens of humanity that might be selected.

It is quite clear that neither of the two sects just named, or any one of the others which might be named, has any foundation whatever in the word of God, nor were they ever heard of in the world until the days of their respective "fathers and founders." Of this fact, as it regards Wesleyanism, the book before us furnishes abundant evidence, even from its title, which declares that Wesleyanism is a new religion, a mere invention contrived by John Wesley, and now precisely a hundred years old, whilst the Church of Christ is eighteen hundred years of age.

It may not be unprofitable to notice here also that while the various dissenters in general oppose the keeping of the fasts and festivals of the Church, and refuse to keep them, they hesitate not to appoint and keep festivals of their own. But surely Good Friday, Christmas Day, and other similar days are quite as worthy of being observed as the " anniversaries" of the opening of meeting-houses, or the "Centenaries" of the foundation or commencement of sects. While, however, truth is single and all of a piece throughout, error invariably leads into inconsistencies and palpable self-contradictions.

Mr. Jackson has placed upon the title-page of his book the following passage of holy writ: Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well, whose branches run over the wall; the archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him; but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob;" Genesis 49, 22-24. This is a part of the prophetic and beautiful language of the patriarch Jacob, when giving his dying blessing to his beloved son Joseph. And whether Mr. Jackson intends it to be considered as applicable either to John Wesley or to Wesleyan Methodism, we must say that we never saw a grosser perversion of the word of God in our lives. And if such be the way in which the scriptures are perverted by the president of the conference, who is a sort of temporary pope of Methodism, what can be expected from the less informed teachers in the Wesleyan connexion, many of whom are utterly ignorant of the Bible, as well as extremely illiterate? It is awful to contemplate the mischief that is doing to the souls of men by the perversions of the Scriptures, which the teachers of dissent, and more especially the lower teachers of Wesleyanism and its several off-shoots, put forth in their preachings. The remedy lies chiefly with the Clergy, who ought long ago to have opposed the various heresies which have taken root in the land, and to have supplied the people with a sufficiency of that sound wholesome spiritual food of which the Church contains so ample a store. When an error or a sect has taken hold of the public mind, and become strong, people do not like to oppose it on account of the trouble and annoyance which they would have to encounter; and even the Ministers of Christ, and especially the time-serving and the timid, are seen to shrink from their duty, and to prefer peace and quietness to faithfulness and truth. But the more popular an error has become the more mischief it will do, and so much greater is the necessity for opposing it and putting it down. If Wesleyanism was wrong fifty years ago, it is equally wrong now; and was then manfully opposed by several of our Prelates and Clergy, it ought to be more courageously and faithfully opposed now that it is more prevalent and doing very much more mischief. The late learned and able Dr. Magee, Archbishop of Dublin, considered it full of spiritual evil, and wrote very strongly against it; as did also Bishop Lavington, of Exeter, and many others of the Clergy. And if it really does, as they declared, and we firmly believe and can prove, contain erroneous and

as it

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strange doctrines contrary to God's word," we have most solemnly vowed in the presence of God at our ordination, to use our utmost endeavours "to banish and drive" them away. May God give us grace and courage to fulfil our solemn vow faithfully and fully as in his sight, and as looking to him only, regardless of the frowns and persecutions of the world, or of any of its favourite sects. With the spirit of faithfulness towards God, and love to the souls of our deceived fellow-creatures, animating us and impelling us to a zealous defence and propagation of the truth and the whole truth, we shall have the blessing of God accompanying our faithful labours, and find multitudes flocking to the Church like doves to their windows; and even her enemies verifying the truth of the beautiful language of the Evangelical prophet-" The sons also of them that afflicted these shall come bending unto Thee; and all they that despised Thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel."-(Isaiah, lx. 14.)

The first Chapter of this "Centenary of Wesleyan Methodism," is on the "State of religion in England before the rise of Methodism;" and our Clerical brethren and many of our lay readers, who have neither read nor heard a word of its contents, will at once correctly judge as to the aim and object of it. The country is, of course, represented as enveloped in the grossest spiritual darkness, in order that the glories of John Wesley and Wesleyan Methodism may shine forth with the greater brightness. Indeed, like almost every other work put forth by the Wesleyans, this book is filled, usque ad nauseam, with the most fulsome adulation of John Wesley and the religion which he started. He is, in short, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning, middle, and end, the sum and substance, the life and soul, the very pope and idol of Wesleyan Methodism and of this book. If he had been an angel or an archangel sent from God, the Wesleyans could not have said and sung higher laudations to his honour and glory than are to be found in this work, and many others coined at the same mint. We blame the Papists for the adulatory, if not idolatrous, strains in which they write and speak of some of their saints, but we challenge all the world to produce any thing more gross than what we can produce from the writings of Wesleyans about their "father and founder." Nor have the Papists claimed more or many greater wonderments and miracles for any of their saints than the Wesleyans have for John Wesley. He has been compared to the prophets and apostles of the Old and New Testament, and to the great and good men of every age of the Church, and we have more than once heard some of the victims of his delusion declare that he was far superior to the Apostle St. Paul himself, And we have been astonished to find even men of reading and ability influenced by the popular notions which are now afloat respecting him; and we believe that no man's real character is, all things considered, less known than that of the remodeller and reviver of the old Pelagian heresy. And as it regards his writings, they are so various and contradictory, that whatever any person might produce from them, we might safely engage to produce something else from them flatly contradictory. We stated as much to a Clerical friend three or four years ago, and he entertained quite different ideas on the subject, and expressed his dissent, but afterwards he took the trouble to wade through Mr. Wesley's works, and then declared to us that he could make nothing of them, nor tell what he really believed or meant, so contradictory are different parts of his writings, not a few of which are indebted to other and abler hands for whatever they possess of originality. His Journal, however, contradictory as many parts of that also is, has as much originality about it as any