the evening all the maids, and many of the boys, not having been used to so long and violent speaking, (for this had lasted from Tuesday till Saturday!) were worn out as to bodily strength, and so hoarse, that they were scarce able to speak." But it was added that they were "strong in the Spirit, full of love, and of joy and peace in believing." Most of them were admitted to the Lord's Supper the next day, for the first time: and Wesley inserted the whole monstrous account, with all its details, in his journal; and, in a letter written at that time, affirms that God had sent a shower of grace upon the children! Thirteen," he says, "found peace with God, and four or five of them were some of the smallest there, not above seven or eight years old!" Twelve months afterwards, there is this notable entry in his journal: "I spent an hour among our children at Kingswood. It is strange! How long shall we be constrained to weave Penelope's web? What is - become of the wonderful work of grace which God wrought in them last September? It is gone! It is lost! It is vanished away! There is scarce any trace of it remaining!-Then we must begin again; and, in due time, we shall reap, if we faint not." On this subject he was incapable of deriving instruction from experience.

Neither did Wesley ever discover the extreme danger of exciting an inflammatory state of devotional feeling. His system, on the contrary, enjoined a perpetual course of stimulants, and lest the watch-nights and the love-feasts, with the ordinary means of class-meetings and band-meetings, should be insufficient, he borrowed from the Puritans one of the most perilous practices that ever was devised by enthusiasm; the entering into a covenant, in which the devotee promises and vows to the "most dreadful God," (beginning the address with that dreadful appellation!) to become his covenant servant; and, giving up himself, body and soul, to his service, to observe all his laws, and obey him before all others, "and this to the death!" Mr. Wesley may perhaps have been prejudiced in favour of

this practice, because he found it recommended by the non-conformist Richard Allein, whose works had been published by his maternal grandfather. Dr. Annesley; so that he had probably been taught to respect the author in his youth. In the year 1755, he first recommended this covenant; and, after explaining the subject to his London congregation during several successive days, he assembled as many as were willing to enter into the engagement, at the French church in Spitalfields, and read to them the tremendous formula, to which eighteen hundred persons signified their assent by standing up. "Such a night," he says, "I scarce ever saw before: surely the fruit of it shall remain for ever!" From that time it has been the practice among the Methodists, to renew the covenant annually, generally on the first night of the new year, or of the Sunday following. They are exhorted to make it not only in heart, but in word; not only in word, but in writing; and to spread the writing with all possible reverence before the Lord, as if they would present it to him as their act and deed, and then to set their hands to it. It is said, that some persons, from a fanatical and frightful notion of making the covenant perfect on their part, have signed it with their own blood!

A practice like this, highly reprehensible as it would always be, might be comparatively harmless, if absolution were a part of the Methodistic economy, as well as confession; and if the distinction between venial and deadly sins were admitted; or if things, innocent in themselves, were not considered sinful in their morality. The rules of a monastic order, however austere, are observed in the convent, because there exists an authority which can compel the observance, and punish any disobedience; moreover, all opportunities of infraction or temptation are, as much as possible, precluded there, and the discipline is regularly and constantly enforced. But they who take the Methodistic covenant, have no keeper except their own conscience; that, too, in a state of diseased irritability, often unable to prevent them from lapsing into offences, but sure to exagge

rate the most trifling fault, and to avenge even imaginary guilt with real anguish. The struggle which such an engagement is but too likely to produce, may well be imagined; nor can its consequences be doubtful: some would have strength of nerves enough to succeed in stifling their conscience, or, at least, in keeping it down; and they would throw off all religion as burdensome, because they had taken upon themselves a yoke too heavy to be borne: others would lose their senses.

Methodism has sometimes been the cure of madness, and has frequently changed the type of the disease, and mitigated its evils. Sometimes it has obtained credit by curing the malady which it caused; but its remedial powers are not always able to restore the patient, and overstrained feelings have ended in confirmed insanity or in death. When Wesley instructed his preachers that they should throw men into strong terror and fear, and strive to make them inconsolable, he did not consider that all constitutions were not strong enough to stand this moral salivation. The language of his own sermons was sometimes well calculated to produce this effect."Mine and your desert," said he to his hearers, “is hell and it is mere mercy, free undeserved mercy, that we are not now in unquenchable fire." "The natural man," said he, lies in the valley of the shadow of death. Having no inlets for the knowledge of spiritual things, all the avenues of his soul being shut up, he is in gross stupid ignorance of whatever he is most concerned to know. He sees not that he stands on the edge of the pit; therefore he fears it not: he has not understanding enough to fear. He satisfies himself by saying, God is merciful; confounding and swallowing up at once, in that unwieldy idea of mercy, all his holiness and essential hatred of sin-all his justice, wisdom, and truth. God touches him, and now first he discovers his real state. Horrid light breaks in upon his soul-such light as may be conceived to gleam from the bottomless pit, from the lowest deep, from a lake of fire burning with brimstone." The effect of such sulphurous language

may be easily conceived, especially when it was enforced by his manner of addressing himself personally to every individual who chose to apply it to himself; "Art thou thoroughly convinced that thou deservest everlasting damnation ? Would God do thee any wrong if he commanded the earth to open and swallow thee up?-if thou wert now to go down into the pit-into the fire that never shall be quenched ?"

The manner in which he insisted upon the necessity of the new birth, was especially dangerous: without this he affirmed that there could be no salvation. "To say that ye cannot be born again,” said he, "that there is no new birth but in baptism, is to seal you all under damnation-to consign you to hell, without help, without hope. Thousands do really believe that they have found a broad way which leadeth not to destruction. What danger, (say they,) can a woman be in, that is so harmless and so virtuous ? — What fear is there that so honest a man, one of so strict morality, should miss of heaven? Especially if, over and above all this, they constantly attend on the church and sacrament." One of these will ask with all assurance, What! shall I not do as well as my neighbours?" Yes; as well as your unholy neighbours; as well as your neighbours that die in their sins; for you will all drop into the pit together, into the nethermost hell. You will all lie together in the lake of fire, the lake of fire burning with brimstone.' Then at length you will see (but God grant you may see it before!) the necessity of holiness in order to glory, and, consequently, of the new birth; since none can be holy, except he be born again." And he inveighed bitterly against all who preached any doctrine short of this. "Where lies the uncharitableness," he asked; "on my side, or on yours? I say he may be born again, and so become an heir of salvation; you say he cannot be born again; and, if so, he must inevitably perish: so you utterly block up his way to salvation, and send him to hell, out of mere charity."-" They who do not teach men to walk in the narrow way,-who encou

rage the easy, careless, harmless, useless creature, the man who suffers no reproach for righteousness sake, to imagine he is in the way to heaven; these are false prophets in the highest sense of the word; these are traitors both to God and man; these are no other than the first-born of Satan, and the eldest sons of Apollyon the destroyer. These are above the rank of ordinary cut-throats; for they murder the souls of men. They are continually peopling the realms of night; and, whenever they follow the poor souls whom they have destroyed, hell shall be moved from beneath to meet them at their coming."

The effect of these violent discourses was aided by the injudicious language concerning good works, into which Wesley was sometimes hurried, in opposition even to his own calmer judgment upon that contested point. "If you had done no harm to any man," said he, "if you had abstained from all wilful sin, if you had done all the good you possibly could to all men, and constantly attended all the ordinances of God, all this will not keep you from hell, except you be born again." And he attempted to prove, by a syllogism, that no works done before justification are good, because they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done."Wherewithal," said he, "shall a sinful man atone for any the least of his sins? With his own Works? Were they ever so many or holy, they are not his own but God's. But indeed they are all unholy and sinful themselves; so that every one of them needs a fresh atonement."-"If thou couldst do all things well; if from this very hour till death thou couldst perform perfect uninterrupted obedience, even this would not atone for what is past. Yea, the present and the future obedience of all the men upon earth, and all the angels in Heaven, would never make satisfaction to the justice of God for one single sin."Wesley has censured the error of reposing in what he calls the unwieldy idea of God's mercy,-is such an idea of his justice more tenable? If such notions were well founded, whereon would the value of a good conscience consist?-or why should we have