raan of mark, the celebrated Dr. Thomas Fuller, the Church historian. It is an interesting fact that the father of Susanna Wesley's mother was named John White, also. He entered Oxford at seventeen. In 1640 he was elected Member of Parliament, and joined in all the proceedings which led to the overthrow of the Established Church. He was appointed chairman of the Committee for Religion, and was also a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. In a speech of his, made in the House of Commons and published in 1641, he contends that the office of bishop and presbyter is the same; and that the offices of chancellors, vicars, surrogates, and registrars are all of human origin and ought to be abolished, as being altogether superfluous and of no service to the Church; that episcopacy had been intrusted with the care of souls for more than eighty years; and now, as a consequence, nearly four-fifths of the churches throughout the kingdom were held by idle or scandalous ministers. And what though such ministers be reported to their bishops? The most they got, he said, was a mild reproof; whereas the same bishops were quick-sighted and keen-scented to hunt down any man that preached the true gospel, and to silence or expel him.-These two John Whites do not appear to have been akin to each other, but their blood met in the founder of Methodism.

The first home of Samuel and Susanna Wesley was South Ormsby. Withdrawn from London, and settled down to the seclusion of a small country village, he had ample opportunity to study, read, write, and preach. He was then twenty-eight years old, and his wife was in her twenty-second year, with their infant son Samuel just turned four months old. The rectory-house was little better than a mud-built hut, and in that hovel Samuel Wesley and his noble young wife lived five years. Here the rector's wife brought him one child additional every year, and did her best to make £50 per annum go as far as possible; and here he wrote some of the most able works he ever published. The work by which he is best known was published in 1693, and entitled, "The Life of our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. A heroic poem in ten books, dedicated to her Most Sacred Majesty Queen Mary." The queen, to whom it was dedicated, conferred on him the living of Epworth, in the county of Lincoln, "without any solicitation on his part, or without his

once thinking of such a favor." The living was in itself a good one, being worth, in the currency of those times, about £200 a year, and Samuel Wesley's family was already large. He was in debt, and the fees necessary to be paid before entering on the living added to his debt. On his tombstone it is. inscribed that he was thirty-nine years rector of that parish.

John Wesley was born there, June 17, 1703, and his brother Charles, December 18, 1708. It was a great advantage to have had such an ancestry; the laws of heredity could hardly present a richer and finer combination. Greater still was the advantage of being born and brought up under the influences of the Epworth parsonage. It was a household that seems to have been providentially constituted for preparing chosen instruments. The moral elevation and intellectual vigor of the father and an elder brother, the refining power of variously gifted sisters, the uncommon mother, the honest struggles with poverty, and the opportune openings for such higher education as could not be imparted at home, all conspired to prepare instruments "fit for the kingdom of God."

[This Chapter is compiled from The Wesley Memorial Volume; Memorials of the Wesley Family; Smith's History of Wesleyan Methodism; Taylor's Wesley and Methodism; and Tyerman's Life and Times of Rev. Samuel Wesley, M.A.]

CHAPTER II.

Moral Condition of England at the Rise of Methodism: Causes of It-Testimony of Secular and Religious Writers-The Effect of the Methodist Revival on the Churches; Its Influence on the State.

HE beginning of the Reformation was Justification by

THE

Faith; but this truth was, to a lamentable degree, soon lost sight of in the struggle it brought on with the power of popery. Ecclesiastical revolution, more than evangelical revival, occupied men's minds. There was a relapse into formalism, of which the best that could be said was-it was not papal formalism. The Lutheran movement, to its great spiritual disadvantage, was complicated with State-churchism. It lacked gospel discipline. To a deputation from Moravia, urging upon him the necessity of combining scriptural discipline and Christian practice with sound doctrine, Luther replied: "With us things are not sufficiently ripe for introducing such holy exercises in doctrine and practice as we hear is the case with you. Our cause is still in a state of immaturity, and proceeds slowly; but do you pray for us."

This imperfection in the Reformation on the Continent was not lessened by the manner of its introduction into England. That libidinous and cruel monarch, Henry VIII., was probably not much attracted by its spiritual aspect; but he was well pleased with a doctrine that justified him in repudiating the pope. Thus he himself became head of the Established Church in his own. realm, and got good riddance of a horde of foreign ecclesiastics hard to govern and greedy of revenues.

The truth of God will make its way even under many and heavy disadvantages. Two years later (1536) an English version of the Bible was first printed; and the doctrines of the Reformation were about this time faithfully preached by Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, and other pious ministers. During the short reign of Edward VI. the reformed doctrines obtained extensive influence, and copies of the Scriptures were circulated as freely as the state of learning and the circumstances of the people would allow. Thirty-five editions of the New Testament and fourteen of the complete Bible were printed and published in England during the six years and a half of the young king's reign.

The dawning hope which these propitious circumstances justified was obscured by the death of this prince and the accession of Mary (1553). She restored the papal authority. Hooper, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, and many others, were burned; and hundreds more perished in loathsome prisons and by various other hardships and tortures.

Mary died, and Elizabeth ascended the throne (1558). Her grand purpose appears to have been to reëstablish the Reformation; and so far as legislation can change the religion of a country, this was accomplished, and the whole form of religion was established substantially as it is found at present in the English Church.* With the accession of Elizabeth gospel truth was again preached; but on the settlement of the national Church, not a few of the most pious and spiritually-minded of the Protestants were lost to her pulpits, because so many rites and usages, which they deemed remnants of popery, were retained. A high Puseyite authority says: "The Protestant confession was drawn up with the purpose of including Catholics; "+ and thus two wrongs were perpetrated: elements of antichristian error were retained, and conscientious followers of Christ were excluded. Notwithstanding this, there was a great circulation of gospel truth, which germinated and produced fruit during that and the following generations.

The rapid growth of Puritanism during this reign greatly contributed to the events which afterward occurred. Much popular discontent prevailed with the but partial purification of the Church from papal errors, and Puritanism began its work of protest, reformation, and honest rebellion.

The death of Elizabeth (1603) ended the Tudor dynasty and placed James I., of the house of Stuart, on the throne of England, and brought it and Scotland under the same king. This reign gave the world the present English Bible-an incalculable benefit to the advancement of religion. It also furnished the Book of Sports by royal declaration (1618), for the purpose of

*But the depth of this outward change is best seen in the fact that out of nine thousand four hundred beneficed clergymen in the kingdom, only fifteen bishops, twelve archdeacons, fifteen heads of colleges, fifty canons, and eighty parochial priests--in all one hundred and seventy-two persons-quitted their preferments rather than change their religion from the extreme popery of Mary's reign tɔ what is called the thorough Protestantism of that of Elizabeth.

†Oxford Tracts for the Times, No. XC. George Smith, F.A.S.

Moral Condition of England.

25

promoting Sunday amusements. By this means free and full liberty and encouragement were given for the "dancing of men and women, archery for men, leaping, vaulting, May-games, Whitsun-ales, morris-dancers, May-poles, and other sports, after the Church services on Sundays." And his majesty's pleasure was declared to be that the bishops should take measures for constraining the people to conform to these practices.

Charles I. succeeded his father (1625); weak in judgment, passionate in temper, and obstinate in disposition. Like all his family, he was fond of arbitrary government, and had an evident partiality for popery. His queen was a papist. This king found himself an heir to huge debts, and all the embarrassments which royal wants involve. Unskillful in government, he soon became embroiled in difficulties with his Parliament. That typical Highchurchman, Archbishop Laud, was his trusted counselor and his chief calamity. Through the piety and energy of the Puritans, and the zeal for Calvinistic tenets with which they now began to be inflamed, the people were to a greater extent than ever hostile to the State Church, and disposed to regard the government which patronized and sustained it as partial and unjust. Laud urged his royal master to exasperating persecutions and conscientiously encouraged his popish proclivities. The civil wars began, and both lost their heads.

The House of Commons was now the government. The Presbyterians were paramount in it, and proceeded to remodel the Church on the plan of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. It was ordered that the Solemn League and Covenant should be taken by all persons above the age of eighteen; and, as this instrument bound all who received it to endeavor to extirpate Episcopal Church government, its enforcement led to the ejection of one thousand six hundred beneficed clergymen from their livings. But if we may rely on the testimony of Burnet, Baxter, and others, all the ejections of the period did not take place on political or sectarian grounds, many having been occasioned by the gross ignorance, shameful neglect of duty, or notorious immorality of the ministers.

Puritanism, with all its virtues, had strong and persistent vices. It early created a High-churchism of its own, and claimed as exclusive scriptural authority for presbytery as its Episcopal antagonists, "the judicious Hooker" and others, have asserted for prelacy. There was, indeed, scarcely any part of ecclesiastical