Its main pillars are, that Christ abolished the moral law;-that, therefore, Christians are not obliged to keep it; that Christian liberty, is liberty from obeying the commands of God;-that it is bondage to do a thing because it is commanded, or forbear it because it is forbidden;-that a believer is not obliged to use the ordinances of God, or to do good works;-that a preacher ought not to exhort to good works,' &c. See here the essential morality of Religion which Wesley had hitherto followed and preached, as drawn by his own pen, which still continues to be preached by the other sects of Methodists! (1) We shall hereafter see in what manner he changed it. The very mention, however, of a change in this ground-work of Methodism, startled all the other Methodist connexions. Accordingly, the Hon. and Rev. Mr. Shirley, Chaplain to Lady Huntingdon, in a circular letter, written at her desire, declared against the dreadful heresy of Wesley, which, as he expressed himself, injured the foundation of Christianity. He, therefore, summoned another conference, which severely censured Wesley. On the other hand, this Patriarch was strongly supported, particularly by Fletcher of Madeley, an able writer, whom he had destined to

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(1) The Wesleyan Methodists deny that the Whitfieldites, now called Lady Huntingdon's Connexion, the Kilhamites, &c. have a right to the name of Methodists; though certainly George Whitfield, when a fellow student with John Wesley at Oxford, was equally with him, termed a Methodist at their setting out. They also deny that the Rev. Mr. Coke is their head, or has any jurisdiction over them in England, though they allow him to be a Bishop over their brethren in America; having been consecrated, they say, for that department by their celebrated father, the Rev. John Wesley.

succeed him, as the head of his connexion. Instead of being offended at his master's change, Fletcher says: I admire the candour of an old man of God, who, instead of obstinately maintaining an old mistake, comes down like a little child, and acknowledges it before his preachers, whom it is his interest to secure.' The same Fletcher published seven volumes of Checks to Antinomianism, in vindication of Wesley's change in this essential point of his religion. In these he brings the most convincing proofs and examples of the impiety and immorality, to which the enthusiasm of Antinomian Calvinism had conducted the Methodists. He mentions a highwayman, lately executed in his neighbourhood, who vindicated his crimes upon this principle. He mentions other more odious instances of wickedness, which, to his knowledge, had flowed from it. (1) All these, he says, are represented by their preachers to be damning sins in Turks and Pagans, but only spots in God's children.' He adds, There are few of our celebrated pulpits, where more has not been said for sin than against it!' He quotes an Hon. M. P. once my brother,' he says, 'but now my opponent,' who in his published treatise, maintains, that murder and adultery do not hurt the pleasant children (the elected), but work even for their good:' adding, 'My sins may displease God, my person is always acceptable to him. Though I should out-sin Manasses himself, I should not be less a pleasant child, because God always views me in Christ.-Hence, in the midst

(1) See Fletcher, vol. 2.

of adulteries, murders, and incests, he can address me with: Thou art all fair, my love, my undefiled; there is no spot in thee. It is a most pernicious error of the schoolmen to distinguish sins according to the fact, not according to the person.-Though I highly blame those who say, let us sin that grace may abound; yet adultery, incest, and murder, shall, upon the whole, make me holier on earth and merrier in heaven!' (1) It only remains to show in what manner Wesley purified his Religious System, as he thought, from the defilement of Antinomianism. To be brief, he invented a two-fold mode of justification, one without repentance, the love of God, or other works; the other, in which these works are essential: the former is for those who die soon after their pretended experience of saving faith, the latter for those who have time and opportunity of performing them. Thus, to say no more of the system, a Nero and a Robespierre might, according to its doctrine, have been established in the grace of God, and in a right to the realms of infinite purity, without one act of sorrow for their enormities, or so much as an act of their belief in God!

(1) The Hon. Richard Hill in his Five Letters. See also Eaton's Honeycomb of Salvation.

LETTER XX.

To JAMES BROWN, Esq. &c.

ON THE MEANS OF SANCTITY.

DEAR SIR,

THE efficient cause of justification, or sanctity, according to the Council of Trent, (1) is the mercy of God, through the merits of Jesus Christ; still, in the usual economy of his grace, he makes use of certain instruments or means, both for conferring and increasing it. The principal. and most efficacious of these are THE SACRAMENTS. Fortunately, the Established Church agrees in the main sense with the Catholic and most other Christian Churches, when she defines a Sacrament to be An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, given unto us, and ordained by Christ himself, as a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof.' (2) But though she agrees with other Protestant communions in reducing the number of these to two, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, she differs with all the others in this particular, namely, with the Catholic, the Greek, the Russian, the Armenian, the Nestorian, the Eutychian,

(1) Sess. vi. cap. 7.

(2) Catechism in Com. Prayer.-N. B. The last clause in this definition is far too strong, as it seems to imply, that every person, who is partaker of the outward part of a Sacrament, necessarily receives the grace of it, whatever may be his dispositions: an impiety which the Bishop of Lincoln calumniously attributes to the Catholics. Elements of Theol. vol. ii. p. 436.

the Coptic, the Ethiopian, &c., all of which firmly maintain, and ever have maintained, as well since, as before their respective defections from us, the whole collection of the seven Sacraments. (1) This fact alone refutes the airy speculations of Protestants concerning the origin of the five Sacraments which they reject, and thus demonstrates that they are deprived of as many divinely instituted instruments or means of sanctity.-As each of these seven channels of grace, though all supplied from the same fountain of Christ's merits, supplies a separate grace, adapted to the Christians of different wants, and as each of them furnishes matter of observation for the present discussion, I shall take a cursory view of them.

The first Sacrament, in point of order and necessity, is Baptism. In fact, no authority can be more express than that of the Scripture, as to this necessity. Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, says Christ, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. John, iii. 5. Repent, cries St. Peter, and be baptized every one of you, in the name of Jesus, for the remission of sins. Acts ii. 38. Arise, answered Ananias to St. Paul, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins. Acts xxii. 16. This necessity was heretofore acknowledged by the Church of England, at least; as appears from her Articles, and still more clearly from her Liturgy (2) and the

(1) This important fact is incontrovertibly proved in the celebrated work La Perpétuité de la Foi, from original documents procured by Louis XIV. and preserved in the King's Library at Paris.

(2) Common Prayer.