heard the gospel, are justified by faith alone-in formal contradiction to St James, who says-Faith without works, is dead. Repentance, Wesley insists, is merely a conviction of sin: so that provided I am convinced I have done wrong, it matters little, it would seem, whether I be resolved to repeat the crime or not! The fruits of repentance may, he says, precede justification, or they may not; but they are not necessary: the only condition is faith, or a sure trust and confidence, that Christ died for me; yea even, quoth he, for me;-that he hath taken away my sins,-even mine. Surely this is a doctrine very commodious, and highly agreeable to flesh and blood, however irreconcileable with the gospel of Jesus Christ. The moment a sinner believes this, continues our new evangelist, he is justified; and immediately the spirit (of delusion, we presume, certainly not the spirit of truth) witnesses to his spirit, that he is a child of God. This is the beginning of the new birth; for Wesley acknowledges none in baptism, notwithstanding our Blessed Redeemer's expressly teaching the contrary, in the following words-Unless a person be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. (Jo. iii. 5.) Baptism, he proceeds, is an empty sign of future blessings; yet Methodists believe that all children, baptised or unbaptised, are saved: nay, Mr Fletcher, a celebrated Methodistic writer, maintains, that the guilt of original sin was actually taken from all men by Christ's redemption, and is found in none-evidently in opposition to the text just quoted. The fruits of faith, resumes Mr Wesley, are-joy, peace and love, that is felt by every righteous man;-a notion not warranted by scripture, which says-No man knoweth whether he be worthy of love or hatred. (Eccles. c. ix. 1.) The being of original sin termed by Methodists inbred sin, remains; but is not imputed. Perhaps it had escaped Mr Wesley's recollection-that all sin whatever, in a greater or a less degree, defiles the soul; and that nothing defiled can enter into heaven. (Rev. xxi.) Sanctification, recontinues our great divine, is a distinct work. Are we then to believe that christian justification may subsist without holiness? Sanctification is instantaneous, rejoins Mr Wesley, as well as justification; while authors as spiritual as this gentleman, and much more theologically accurate, affirm it to be, in general, attained but gradually. Works, says he, are no more the conditions of the one than of the other; for this plain reason, we presume, that they are the conditions equally-of both. By faith alone, Mr Wesley will have it, a man is sanctified; although St Paul assures us, that faith strong enough to remove mountains, will profit nothing without charity. Methodists, however, exhort their hearers to good works after justification; for before, they tell us, they are sinful, and that even duties in an unjustified person—are sins. Does then the prophet Daniel

advise the infidel king Nebuchodonosor-to redeem his sins by adding to their number? Sanctification is the extirpation of inbred sin, or concupiscence, says Mr Wesley; but what says St Paul?-I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind, (Rom. vii.) While Mr Wesley declares, that no concupiscence remains; and that the evil nature is gone:that a sanctified person may indeed be tempted from abroad, but not from within; It is sin which dwelleth in me, that doeth it, repeats the same apostle, ibid. Which of the two must a christian believe?

In general, Methodists admit, that a person may fall from a state of justification, and even of sanctification; although Wesley sometimes speaks of a state from which one cannot fall:-to such St Paul addresses himself to little purpose, when he says-If any one thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall. By reading Lord King's Account of the Primitive Church, Mr Wesley adopted the opinion, that bishops and presbyters are the same order. (Against this erroneous doctrine see the article Aerius.) When old, he ordained Dr Coke bishop, and two of his lay-preachers presbyters. Coke sailed immediately for America, where, he also, took upon himself to consecrate one of his fellows bishop; and thus was founded, in 1784, the Metho. distic pretended episcopal church of America. A new prayerbook was published for the use of that church, and of the Methodists in general, under the title-Sunday Service of the Methodist; from which the catechism, the Athanasian and Nicene creeds, the absolution in the morning and afternoon service, and for the visitation of the sick, are retrenched, and the thirty-nine articles reduced to twenty-five-with various other material alterations of the common Book of Prayer; and yet Methodists affect to make a part of the church of England, whose discipline and doctrines they so unequivocally discard!

The supremacy of the sect is lodged in the conference, or the collective body of the travelling preachers. They have superintendants, local preachers, exhorters and band-leaders. The classes are small companies of Methodists who meet weekly under their leader; whose office it is to enquire-how their souls prosper?-To advise, reprove, comfort or exhort, as may be needful: to receive their offerings for the relief of the poor; and to pay to the stewards of the society what is thus collected, and to inform the minister if any should be sick, or incorrigible in their disorders.

The bands are smaller companies of married or unmarried persons of each sex, apart; in order to confess to each other their sins of thought, word or deed,-together with their respective temptations, and behaviour under them; the leader of the band first setting the example, and then enquiring of each their particular failings, &c.

Love feasts are quarterly meetings, where, in token of brotherly love, each one receives a small bit of cake, and generally before they are dismissed that, say they, which endureth unto everlasting life.

The Conference is annually convened in order to consult about the affairs of the societies.

The office of a Helper is to preach morning and evening; to meet the Society and Bands weekly, and to see the Leaders also weekly.

The Assistant was the chief preacher in a circuit who immediately assisted Mr Wesley in the regulation of the societies. See Wesley's Life by Messrs Coke and Moore.

The two grand divisions consist of the Election or Calvinistic Methodists in Whitfield's Connexion, and the Wesleyan or Arminian Methodists. The latter hold that Christ died for all, and that justification and sanctification are an interior work of the Spirit, as observed above: the former maintain imputed righte ousness; that Christ died only for the elect;-and are Predestinarians. These two have branched into many other less considerable sects. For it often happens that a preacher turns independent, when he is popular enough to form a party and shake off the yoke of the Conference. The most noted of these parties is that of the Kilhamites, whose author Mr Kilham contended, that a proportionable number of lay-members and local preachers should be admitted to sit in the Conference with the travelling preachers; and that an account should be given to the Methodist society at large-of the sums lodged in their hands: this being refused, a division took place, and Kilham was excommunicated. For a more minute detail of Methodism, its various rules and discipline, Wesley's Life by Messrs Coke and Moore, Nightingale's Portraiture of the Methodists, the Rev. Nicholas Gilbert's tracts, together with Mr Slack's answers, &c. may be consulted. The latter gentleman by the bye, in his attempts at a reply to Mr Gilbert, has only exposed, still more apparently, to the intelligent reader, the weakness of the cause which he undertakes to advocate.

In the Methodist community, it will not be denied, that great numbers of well meaning persons are to be found, who are influenced by the best of motives: but their principles are wrong; they rest not on a sound foundation; they have abandoned the only criterion of truth. That authority which Christ hath most emphatically recommended, and the common creed of christians acknowledges, they have discarded as a treacherous rule: they refuse to hear that church which our blessed Saviour hath commanded all to hear-under pain of being looked upon as the heathen man or the publican;-that church which, as St Paul assures us, is the very pillar and firm support of the truth. Their prophets were self-commissioned; they undertook to preach the

faith to others, before they knew themselves what true faith was; before they so much as believed in Jesus Christ. (See Wesley's Journ. 1.) Of such, Almighty God himself heretofore complained:-They have prophesied falsly to you in my name, and I have not sent them, saith the Lord. (Jerem. xxix. 9.)

If it be objected, that much good has resulted from Mr Wesley's preaching; that great disorders have been reformed, and the morals of the people altered for the better;-all this we are willing to allow, and feel no reluctance in conceding to Mr Wesley the merit of so considerable a benefaction to society; nay, we will even give him credit in most instances, for the purity of his intentions. All this too, we are not less disposed to admit in favor of some other fellow sectarists; George Fox, for instance, and William Penn ;-and to extend it even to the whole body of the people called Quakers. But will this suffice to verify their doctrine; to make that orthodox which even Mr Wesley would allow to be unscriptural and fundamentally erroneous? If it be said:-Mr Wesley was a learned, and a good man:-so were thousands of those whose opinions in religious matters he despised;-the Cyprians, the Cyrils, the Ambroses, the Basils, the Chrysostoms, the Jeroms, the Augustines, the Gregories, and an innumerable phalanx of enlightened and most holy personages who have done honor to religion, and to human nature itself, in each succeeding age. Were these all wrong; and the founder of the Methodist persuasion,-a society, of but yesterday, the first discoverer of pure religion and the genuine truth? The supposition would imply blasphemy, and give the lie to the promises of Christ, whose sacred words shall not pass away, though heaven and earth, he says, shall pass away. (Mat. xxiv.)

Before we dismiss this article, we are free to acknowledge ourselves at a loss to know-what Mr Wesley means by faith alone. Does he mean to exclude the divine virtues of Hope and Charity? The former he seems absolutely to discard, as in his system all doubt and fear must be done away; and perfect security of our acceptance with God, and eternal salvation substituted in its place. Why then, we must ask again, does the great apostle of the Gentiles declare in his first epistle to the Corinthians, c. 13, that if he should have all faith even so as to remove mountains, and give his substance to the poor and his body to the flames, and have not charity;-it would avail him nothing? Right; says Mr Wesley: but justifying faith produces charity. Rather does not charity produce justifying faith? Independently of charity, St Paul assures us, faith cannot justify. Consequentlynot faith alone, but charity with the other two divine virtues conjointly; the greater of the three as we are informed by the same apostle (ibid) being charity. Does Mr Wesley mean all this? If not; his doctrine is evidently unscriptural: if he does;

why does he not speak intelligibly? Had he done so, neither Calvinism nor Antinomianism would have classed him among its patrons.

MILLENARIANS-those who in the second and third ages maintained, that at the end of the world Jesus Christ would descend upon earth to establish a temporal kingdom, in which the faithful should enjoy a temporary felicity-during the term of one thousand years before the last general judgment, and still more perfect bliss in heaven: the Greeks denominated these christians Chiliasts; an epithet synonymous with that of Millenarians. This opinion was grounded upon that passage in the twentieth chapter of the Apocalypse, where it is said, that the martyrs shall reign with Jesus Christ a thousand years. Some primitive fathers, among whom were Papias, bishop of Hierapolis and a disciple of St John the Evangelist, and after him-St Justin, St Ireneus, Lactantius, Tertullian, &c. understood this mysterious prophecy in the literal sense of the words. But they did not imagine with Cerinthus and his sectarians, that under the supposed reign of Jesus Christ-the just would be rewarded with sensual gratifications. So gross an idea never entered their mind: all sensual satisfactions they absolutely disavowed: nor did the greater part of them suppose the Millenarian system to be a point of faith. St Justin himself whom some have thought to incline that way from an ambiguous expression in his dialogue with Tryphon-declares in plain terms, (ibid.) that there were many pious and orthodox christians of a contrary opinion.

Some moderns have erroneously contended, that the fathers generally held the Millenarian doctrine as a point of catholic tradition. Nepos indeed, who was a zealous and learned bishop of Arsinoe and who died in the communion of the church, propagated that mistaken notion in his vicinity, and wrote in defence of it two books entitled On the Promises. This work St Dionysius of Alexandria confuted by his two books against the Millenarian heresy. He moreover undertook a journey to Arsinoë, and held a public disputation with Coracion the chief of the Millenarians, in which he confuted them with equal strength of reasoning and moderation; and-with such success-that Coracion publicly revoked his error. It was absolutely exploded in that country, and was unanimously condemned-upon mature examination into the sound and uniform catholic tradition; which could not be affected by the disagreement of some few persons or particular churches. The Millenarian system has been revived by several Lutherans in Germany; and-among the English protestants-by Dr Wells, in his Notes on the Apocalypse; and by some few others; Johanna Southcote, &c.

Another kind of Millenarianism is mentioned by some writers which consists in the fancy that once every thousand years there