Chapter XIV: Part I: p. 49

It is enough, it seems, that all the disorderly classes of mankind,
prompted as they are by their worst passions to trample on the public
welfare, should 'know' that they are, what every one else is convinced
they are, the pests of society, and the evil is remedied. They are not
to be exhorted to honesty, sobriety, or the observance of any laws,
human or divine--they must not even be entreated to do their best.
"Just as 'absurd' would it be," we are told, "in a physician to send
away his patient, when labouring under some desperate disease, with a
recommendation to do his utmost towards his own cure, and then to come
to him to finish it, as it is in the minister of the 'Gospel' to
propose to the sinner 'to do his best', by way of healing the disease
of the soul--and then to come to the Lord Jesus to perfect his
recovery. The 'only' previous qualification is to 'know' our misery,
and the remedy is prepared." See Dr. Hawker's Works, vol. vi. p. 117.

For "know," let the Barrister substitute "feel;" that is, we know it as we know our life; and then ask himself whether the production of such a state of mind in a sinner would or would not be of greater promise as to his reformation than the repetition of the Ten Commandments with paraphrases on the same.--But why not both? The Barrister is at least as wrong in the undervaluing of the one as the pseudo-Evangelists in the exclusion of the other.

Ib. p. 51.

Whatever these new Evangelists may teach to the contrary, the present
state of public morals and of public happiness would assume a very
different appearance if the thieves, swindlers, and highway robbers,
would 'do their best' towards maintaining themselves by honest labour,
instead of perpetually planning new systems of fraud, and new schemes
of depredation.

That is, if these thieves had a different will--not a mere wish, however anxious:--for this wish "the libertine" doubtless has, as described in p. 50,--but an effective will. Well, and who doubts this? The point in dispute is, as to the means of producing this reformation in the will; which, whatever the Barrister may think, Christ at least thought so difficult as to speak of it, not once or twice, but uniformly, as little less than miraculous, as tantamount to a re-creation. This Barrister may be likened to an ignorant but well-meaning Galenist, who writing against some infamous quack, who lived by puffing and vending pills of mercurial sublimate for all cases of a certain description, should have no stronger argument than to extol 'sarsaparilla', and 'lignum vitæ', or 'senna' in contempt of all mercurial preparations.

Ib. p. 56.

Not for the revenues of an Archbishop would he exhort them to a duty
'unknown in Scripture', of adding their five talents to the five they
have received, &c.

All this is mere calumny and wilful misstatement of the tenets of Wesley, who never doubted that we are bound to improve our 'talents', or, on the other hand, that we are equally bound, having done so, to be equally thankful to the Giver of all things for the power and the will by which we improved the talents, as for the original capital which is the object of the improvement. The question is not whether Christ will say, 'Well done thou good and faithful servant', &c.;--but whether the servant is to say it of himself. Now Christ has delivered as positive a precept against our doing this as the promise can be that he will impute it to us, if we do not impute it to our own merits.

Ib. p. 60.

The complaints of the profligacy of servants of every class, and of
the depravity of the times are in every body's hearing:--and these
Evangelical tutors--the dear Mr. Lovegoods of the day--deserve the
best attention of the public for thus instructing the ignorant
multitude, who are always ready enough to neglect their moral duties,
to despise and insult those by whom they are taught.

All this is no better than infamous slander, unless the Barrister can prove that these depraved servants and thieves are Methodists, or have been wicked in proportion as they were proselyted to Methodism. O folly! This is indeed to secure the triumph of these enthusiasts.

Ib.

It must afford him (Rowland Hill) great consolation, amidst the
increasing immorality * * * that when their village Curate exhorts
them, if they have 'faith' in the doctrine of a world to come, to add
to it those 'good works' in which the sum and substance of religion
consist, he has led them to ridicule him, as 'chopping a
new-fashioned' logic.

That this is either false or nugatory, see proved in The Friend.

Ib. p. 68.

Tom Payne himself never laboured harder to root all virtue out of
society.--Mandeville nor Voltaire never even laboured so much.

Indeed!

Ib.

They were content with declaring their disbelief of a future state.

In what part of their works? Can any wise man read Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, and not see that it is a keen satire on the inconsistency of Christians, and so intended.

Ib. p. 71.

When the populace shall be once brought to a conviction that the
Gospel, as they are told, has neither terms nor conditions * * *, that
no sins can be too great, no life too impure, 'no offences too many or
too aggravated', to disqualify the perpetrators of them for
--salvation, &c.

Merely insert the words "sincere repentance and amendment of heart and life, and therefore for" salvation,--and is not this truth, and Gospel truth? And is it not the meaning of the preacher? Did any Methodist ever teach that salvation may be attained without sanctification? This Barrister for ever forgets that the whole point in dispute is not concerning the possibility of an immoral Christian being saved, which the Methodist would deny as strenuously as himself, and perhaps give an austerer sense to the word immoral; but whether morality, or as the Methodists would call it, sanctification, be the price which we pay for the purchase of our salvation with our own money, or a part of the same free gift. God knows, I am no advocate for Methodism; but for fair statement I am, and most zealously--even for the love of logic, putting honesty out of sight.

Ib. p. 72.

"In every age," says the moral divine (Blair), "the practice has
prevailed of substituting certain appearances of piety in the place of
the great 'duties' of humanity and mercy," &c.

Will the Barrister rest the decision of the controversy on a comparison of the lives of the Methodists and non-Methodists? Unless he knows that their "morality has declined, as their piety has become more ardent," is not his quotation mere labouring--nay, absolute pioneering--for the triumphal chariot of his enemies?

Ib. pp. 75-79.

It is but fair to select a specimen of Evangelical preaching
from one of its most celebrated and popular champions * *.

He will preface it with the solemn and woful communication of the
Evangelist John, in order to show how exactly they accord, how clearly
the doctrines of the one are deduced from the Revelation of the other,
and how justly, therefore, it assumes the exclusive title of
evangelical. 'And I saw the dead * * * and the dead were judged out of
those things which were written in the books, according to their
works. And the sea gave up the dead * * and they were judged every man
according to his works'. Rev. xx. 12, 13. Let us recall to mind the
urgent caution conveyed in the writings of Paul * * 'Be not deceived;
God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
reap'. And let us further add * * the confirmation * * of the Saviour
himself:--'When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, * * * but the
righteous into life eternal'. Matt. xxv. 31, 'ad finem'. Let us now
attend to the Evangelical preacher, (Toplady). "The Religion of Jesus
Christ stands eminently distinguished, and essentially differenced,
from every other religion that was ever proposed to human reception,
by this remarkable peculiarity; that, look abroad in the world, and
you will find that every religion, 'except one', puts you upon 'doing
something', in order to recommend yourself to God. A Mahometan * * A
Papist * * * It is only the religion of Jesus Christ that runs counter
to all the rest, by affirming--that we are 'saved' and called with a
holy calling, 'not' according to our works, but according to the
Father's own purpose and grace, which was 'not' sold to us 'on certain
conditions to be fulfilled by ourselves', but was given us in Christ
before the world began." Toplady's Works: Sermon on James ii. 18.

'Si sic omnia'! All this is just and forcible; and surely nothing can be easier than to confute the Methodist by shewing that his very 'no-doing', when he comes to explain it, is not only an act, a work, but even a very severe and perseverant energy of the will. He is therefore to be arraigned of nonsense and abuse of words rather than of immoral doctrines.

Ib. p. 84.

The sacred volume of Holy Writ declares that 'true' (pure?) 'religion
and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the
fatherless and widow in their affliction, and to keep himself
unspotted from the world'. James i. 27

This is now at least, whatever might have been the meaning of the word 'religion' in the time of the Translators, a false version. St. James is speaking of persons eminently zealous in those public or private acts of worship, which we call divine service, [Greek: thraeskeía]. It should be rendered, 'True worship', &c. The passage is a fine burst of rhetoric, and not a mere truism; just as when we say;--"A cheerful heart is a perpetual thanksgiving, and a state of love and resignation the truest utterance of the Lord's Prayer." St. James opposes Christianity to the outward signs and ceremonial observances of the Jewish and Pagan religions. But these are the only sure signs, these are the most significant ceremonial observances by which your Christianity is to be made known,--'to visit the fatherless', &c. True religion does not consist 'quoad essentiam' in these acts, but in that habitual state of the whole moral being, which manifests itself by these acts--and which acts are to the religion of Christ that which ablutions, sacrifices and Temple-going were to the Mosaic religion, namely, its genuine [Greek: thraeskeía]. That which was the religion of Moses is the ceremonial or cult of the religion of Christ. Moses commanded all good works, even those stated by St. James, as the means of temporal felicity; and this was the Mosaic religion; and to these he added a multitude of symbolical observances; and these formed the Mosaic cult, ('cultus religionis', [Greek: thraeskeía]). Christ commands holiness out of perfect love, that is, Christian religion; and adds to this no other ceremony or symbol than a pure life and active beneficence; which (says St. James) are the 'true cult'. [2]

Ib. p. 86.

There is no one whose writings are better calculated to do good, (than
those of Paley) by inculcating the essential duties of common life,
and the sound truths of practical Christianity.

Indeed! Paley's whole system is reducible to this one precept:--"Obey God, and benefit your neighbour, because you love yourself above all." Christ has himself comprised his system in--"Love your neighbour as yourself, and God above all." These "sound truths of practical Christianity" consist in a total subversion, not only of Christianity, but of all morality;--the very words virtue and vice being but lazy synonymes of prudence and miscalculation,--and which ought to be expunged from our vocabularies, together with Abraxas and Abracadabra, as charms abused by superstitious or mystic enthusiasts.

Ib. p. 94.

Eventually the whole direction of the popular mind, in the affairs of
religion, will be gained into the hands of a set of ignorant fanatics
of such low origin and vulgar habits as can only serve to degrade
religion in the eyes of those to whom its influence is most wanted.
Will such persons venerate or respect it in the hands of a sect
composed in the far greater part of bigotted, coarse, illiterate, and
low-bred enthusiasts? Men who have abandoned their lawful callings, in
which by industry they might have been useful members of society, to
take upon themselves concerns the most sacred, with which nothing but
their vanity and their ignorance could have excited them to meddle.

It is not the buffoonery of the reverend joker of the Edinburgh Review; not the convulsed grin of mortification which, sprawling prostrate in the dirt from "the whiff and wind" of the masterly disquisition in the Quarterly Review, the itinerant preacher would pass oft' for the broad grin of triumph; no, nor even the over-valued distinction of miracles, --which will prevent him from seeing and shewing the equal applicability of all this to the Apostles and primitive Christians. We know that Trajan, Pliny, Tacitus, the Antonines, Celsus, Lucian and the like,--much more the ten thousand philosophers and joke-smiths of Rome,--did both feel and apply all this to the Galilean Sect; and yet--'Vicisti, O Galilæe'!

Ib. p. 95.

They never fail to refer to the proud Pharisee, whom they term
self-'righteous'; and thus, having greatly misrepresented his
character, they proceed to declaim on the arrogance of founding any
expectation of reward from the performance of our 'moral
duties':--whereas the plain truth is that the Pharisee was 'not
righteous', but merely arrogated to himself that character; he had
neglected all the 'moral duties' of life.

Who told the Barrister this? Not the Gospel, I am sure.

The Evangelical has only to translate these sentences into the true statement of his opinions, in order to baffle this angry and impotent attack; the self-righteousness of all who expect to claim salvation on the plea of their own personal merit. "Pay to A. B. at sight--value received by me."--To Messrs. Stone and Co. Bankers, Heaven-Gate. It is a short step from this to the Popish. "Pay to A. B. 'or order'." Once assume merits, and I defy you to keep out supererogation and the old 'Monte di Pietà'.

Ib. p. 97.

--and from thence occasion is taken to defame all those who strive to
prepare themselves, during this their state of trial, for that
judgment which they must undergo at that day, when they will receive
either reward or punishment, according as they shall be found to have
'merited' the one, or 'deserved' the other.

Can the Barrister have read the New Testament? Or does he know it only by quotations?

Ib.

--a swarm of new Evangelists who are every where teaching the people
that no reliance is to be placed on holiness of life as a ground of
future acceptance.

I am weary of repeating that this is false. It is only denied that mere acts, not proceeding from faith, are or can be holiness. As surely (would the Methodist say) as the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son, so surely does sanctification from redemption, and not vice versa,--much less from self-sanctifiedness, that ostrich with its head in the sand, and the plucked rump of its merits staring on the divine [Greek: Átae] 'venatrix'!

Ib. p. 102.

'He that doeth righteousness is righteous'. Since then it is plain
that each must 'himself' be righteous, if he be so at all, what do
they mean who thus inveigh against 'self'-righteousness, since Christ
himself declares there is no other?

Here again the whole dispute lies in the word "himself." In the outward and visible sense both parties agree; but the Methodist calls it "the will in us," given by grace; the Barrister calls it "our own will," or "we ourselves." But why does not the Barrister reserve a part of his wrath for Dr. Priestley, according to whom a villain has superior claims on the divine justice as an innocent martyr to the grand machinery of Providence;--for Dr. Priestley, who turns the whole dictionary of human nature into verbs impersonal with a perpetual 'subauditur' of 'Deus' for their common nominative case;--which said 'Deus', however, is but another 'automaton', self-worked indeed, but yet worked, not properly working, for he admits no more freedom or will to God than to man? The Lutheran leaves the free will whining with a broken back in the ditch; and Dr. Priestley puts the poor animal out of his misery!--But seriously, is it fair or even decent to appeal to the Legislature against the Methodists for holding the doctrine of the Atonement? Do we not pray by Act of Parliament twenty times every Sunday 'through the only merits of Jesus Christ'? Is it not the very nose which (of flesh or wax) this very Legislature insists on as an indispensable qualification for every Christian face? Is not the lack thereof a felonious deformity, yea, the grimmest feature of the 'lues confirmata' of statute heresy? What says the reverend critic to this? Will he not rise in wrath against the Barrister,--he the Pamphagus of Homilitic, Liturgic, and Articular orthodoxy,--the Garagantua, whose ravenous maw leaves not a single word, syllable, letter, no, not one 'iota' unswallowed, if we are to believe his own recent and voluntary manifesto? [3] What says he to this Barrister, and his Hints to the Legislature?

Ib. p. 105.

If the new faith be the only true one, let us embrace it; but let not
those who vend these 'new articles' expect that we should choose them
with our eyes shut.

Let any man read the Homilies of the Church of England, and if he does not call this either blunt impudence or blank ignorance, I will plead guilty to both! New articles!! Would to Heaven some of them at least were! Why, Wesley himself was scandalized at Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, and cried off from the Moravians (the strictest Lutherans) on that account.

Ib. p. 114.

The catalogue of authors, which this Rev. Gentleman has pleased to
specify and recommend, begins with Homer, Hesiod, the Argonautics,
Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, Theognis, Herodotus,
Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus. * * *. 'This
catalogue,' says he, 'might be considerably extended, but I study
brevity. It is only necessary for me to add that the recommendation of
these books is not to be considered as expressive of my approbation of
every particular sentiment they contain.' It would indeed be grievous
injustice if this writer's reputation should be injured by the
occasional unsoundness of opinion in writers whom it is more than
probable he may never have read, and for whose sentiments he ought no
more to be made answerable than the compiler of Lackington's
Catalogue, from which it is not unlikely that his own was abridged.

Very good.

Ib. p. 115-16.

These high-strained pretenders to godliness, who deny the power of the
sinner to help himself, take good care always to attribute his 'saving
change' to the blessed effect of some sermon preached by some one or
other of 'their' Evangelical fraternity. They always hold 'themselves'
up to the multitude as the instruments producing all those marvellous
conversions which they relate. No instance is recorded in their
Saints' Calendar of any sinner resolving, in consequence of a
reflective and serious perusal of the Scriptures, to lead a new life.
No instance of a daily perusal of the Bible producing a daily progress
in virtuous habits. No, the 'Gospel' has no such effect.--It is
always the 'Gospel Preacher' who works the miracle, &c.

Excellent and just. In this way are the Methodists to be attacked:--even as the Papists were by Baxter, not from their doctrines, but from their practices, and the spirit of their Sect. There is a fine passage in Lord Bacon concerning a heresy of manner being not less pernicious than heresy of matter.

Ib. p. 118.

But their Saints, who would stop their ears if you should mention with
admiration the name of a Garrick or a Siddons;--who think it a sin to
support such an 'infamous profession' as that through the medium of
which a Milton, a Johnson, an Addison, and a Young have laboured to
mend the heart, &c.

Whoo! See Milton's Preface to the Samson Agonistes.

Ib. p. 133.

In the Evangelical Magazine is the following article: "At----in
Yorkshire, after a handsome collection (for the Missionary Society) a
poor man, whose wages are about 28s. per week, brought a donation of
20 guineas. Our friends hesitated to receive it * * when he answered *
*--'Before I knew the grace of our Lord I was a poor drunkard: I never
could save a shilling. My family were in beggary and rags; but since
it has pleased God to renew me by his grace, we have been industrious
and frugal: we have not spent many idle shillings; and we have been
enabled to put something into the Bank; and this I freely offer to the
blessed cause of our Lord and Saviour.' This is the second donation of
this same poor man to the same amount!" Whatever these Evangelists may
think of such conduct, they ought to be ashamed of thus basely taking
advantage of this poor ignorant enthusiast, &c.

Is it possible to read this affecting story without finding in it a complete answer to the charge of demoralizing the lower classes? Does the Barrister really think, that this generous and grateful enthusiast is as likely to be unprovided and poverty-stricken in his old age, as he was prior to his conversion? Except indeed that at that time his old age was as improbable as his distresses were certain if he did live so long. This is singing 'Io Pæan'! for the enemy with a vengeance.