gious enthusiasm." "Law is a powerful writer; it is said that few books have ever made so many religious enthusiasts as his Christian Perfection, and his Serious Call." On Mr. Wesley's way from America to England, with a firmer conviction of his sinfulness and guilt than when he left his native country; and now taught, that by faith alone he could obtain remission of sins, he was oppressed with the fear of death, and made the following observations on the state of his mind, which Mr. Southey has quoted from his Journal.

"Let us observe hereon: 1. That not one of those hours ought to pass out of my remembrance till I attain another manner of spirit, a spirit equally willing to glorify God, by life or by death. 2. That whoever is uneasy on any account, (bodily pain alone excepted,) carries in himself, his own conviction that he is so far an unbeliever. Is he uneasy at the apprehension of death? Then he believeth not that to die is gain. At any of the events of life? Then he hath not a firm belief that all things work together for his good. And if he bring the matter more close, he will always find, besides the general want of faith, every particular uneasiness is evidently owing to the want of some particular temper."

Mr. Southey thinks there was no reason for these fears, and that Mr. Wesley's feelings might have been accounted for by referring to "the state of his pulse or stomach." It does not appear that either were disordered; and if they had, the solution can only prove satisfactory to those, who either neglect to take the doctrines of Scripture into their conside ration, or wilfully reject them. Is it surprising, that

a person on a sea voyage should be impressed with his liability to danger; and is it not most natural, if any belief in God, and his own relations to an eternal world, exist in his mind; if he is any thing more than a trifler in the concerns of his salvation, that he should seriously examine his degree of preparation for an event, which no wise man will treat with indifference? If the force of Mr. Wesley's reasoning on the fear of death, in the passage just quoted, has escaped Mr. Southey, it is because he has not so carefully studied the New Testament as literature of another kind. He would otherwise have learned, that one of the great ends of the coming of Christ was, to "deliver them who had been all their life-time subject to bondage through the fear of death;" and that an oppressive and gloomy apprehension of our last hour is utterly inconsistent with a true and lively faith in Him, who is "the resurrection and the life."

Mr. Wesley, however, had discovered the possibility of this great deliverance; and for such a faith as might bring to his mind the assurance of the favour of God, at all times, and in all circumstances, he most earnestly and constantly prayed. What he sought he found; but Mr. Southey's dexterity never fails him, and he can as easily detect the fallacy of his joys as of his sorrows, of his faith as of his fear. The account of Mr. Wesley's conversion is cited from his journal.

"I felt I did trust in Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me, that he had taken away all my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. But it was not long before

the enemy suggested, This cannot be faith," &c. On this Mr. Southey remarks, "How many a thought arising from instinctive logic, which is grounded on common sense, has been fathered upon the personified principle of evil!" This is sufficiently indicative of Mr. Southey's religious system. We are in fact told that this change from doubt to confidence, and from disquiet to peace, was, in the whole process, a delusion, carried on in opposition to common sense; which, however, would occasionally revolt, and throw in its counter plea, of "instinctive logic." But the ci devant Socinian is suffered to come forth here without a vail. Mr. Wesley referred his subsequent visitation of doubt "to the enemy;" but there is no such being; and what we call his temptations, arise from the instinctive logic of common sense! Thus the tempter, with whom our Lord conflicted forty days; and the "God of this world," whose agency is said by the Apostle to have been so constantly employed to counteract the Gospel; and "the Devil whom we are to resist, that he may fly from us;" and our 66 adversary the Devil," to whose wiles we are exhorted to oppose a constant sobriety and vigilance, is, by a true Socinian interpretation, resolved into a personification" the personified principle of · evil."

But Mr. Southey meets the case with logic, though we cannot call it the "instinctive logic of common sense.” He would prove, that on Mr. Wesley's own showing, his doctrine of assurance cannot be sustained. Mr. Wesley doubted, was assured, and doubted again. Here, says Mr. Southey, triumphantly, was a plain contradiction in terms→

an assurance, which had not assured him. A true logic would have reminded him, that contraries may at different times be predicated of the same thing without a contradiction. Mr. Wesley does not say that he was assured, and not assured, at the same time; and as certainly as assurance may succeed to doubt, so may doubt follow assurance. But Mr. Southey has not been just to the case. Mr. Wesley does not affirm that he was unassured at any period after this. There may be visitations of doubtful suggestion, which do not destroy the habit of assurance; and this is what he in substance says, and no more. The rest is perversion, not logic. Even in the quotation which follows, Mr. Southey might have discovered this; "Now," says Mr. Wesley, "I was always conqueror." Nor were those agitations of mind of long continuance. Mr. Wesley's journal from this time presents the undisturbed picture of a mind calm, confiding, animated and solaced with the fulness of faith, and peace, and hope. The bendings of the tree under the wind, whilst the stem is yet tender, is surely no proof that it is uprooted; by its very agitations it often acquires a deeper grasp, and owes to them its future firmness.

From this account of Mr. Wesley's early religious history, Mr. Southey's unfitness to judge of his whole character, and of the work he was appointed by Providence to perform, may be justly estimated. One cannot but regret that a writer who presents himself often under very amiable views as to temper and candour, and who is so respectable in literary ability, should be destitute of that knowledge, and of those principles, which alone could qualify him

to write on subjects, with respect to which his views will be greatly altered if ever he is made to understand, that the kingdom of God is not "in word only, but in power;" that there is in the religion of the New Testament, more than a sublime doctrine, an ethical purity, and a theological system; that it is intended to effect something deeper, more permanent and holy, than the excitement of a poetic sentimentalism; that, in a word, the gospel makes provision for the pardon of human guilt, for the restoration of conscious friendship between man and his Maker, that it has the promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit to all who sincerely ask it; and that, under his agency, the heart is comforted, and renewed, in order to the production of fruits of obedient righteousness. Mr. Southey ought, also, to have reflected, that Mr. Wesley's conversion to what he, on the best grounds, believed to be a vital and efficient Christianity, was not an individual case, peculiar to himself. Take away the mere circumstances, and it is substantially the same process through which all have gone, whether the learned or unlearned good of every Church, and of every age. Had Mr. Southey been better acquainted with the writings of the best divines, and with religious biography, he would have known this. All the observations he has bestowed upon the conversion of Mr. Wesley lie, therefore, against conversion itself; for of the sincerity of Mr. Wesley he has no doubt: all is resolved into this,whether there is carried on in the hearts of obedient men, by the agency of the Spirit of God, his word, and his ordinances, a process of moral recovery and renewal,