it. To overcome the obstinacy and violence of those prejudices, nothing less than the power of the Holy One was sufficient.' Good! And, thirdly and lastly, there was a time when the powers of this world were combined together for its destruction. At such a period, nothing but superior aid from above could support humanity in sustaining so great a conflict as that which the holy martyrs encountered with joy and rapture, the horrors of death and torment.' Excellent! But what follows?According to our author,

'Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis,'

'But now,' (a dreadful but it is!) 'the profession of christianity is attended with ease and honour;' and we are now, it seems, so far from being rude and uninformed, and utterly averse to the dictates of the everlasting gospel, that whatever there may be of prejudice, it draws another way. Consequently, a rule of faith being now established, the conviction which the weight of human testimony, and the conclusions of human reason, afford us of its truth, are abundantly sufficient to support us in our religious perseverance; and therefore it must certainly be a great mark of fanaticism, to expect such divine communications, as though no such rule of faith was established; and also as highly presumptuous or fanatical to imagine, that rule to be so obscure, as to need the further assistance of the Holy Spirit to explain his own meaning.'

"This, you will say, my dear friend, is going pretty far; and indeed, supposing matters to be as this writer represents them, I do not see what great need we have of any established rule at all, at least in respect to practice, since corrupt nature is abundantly sufficient of itself, to help us to persevere in a religion attended with ease and honour. And I verily believe, that the deists throw aside this rule of faith entirely, not barely on account of a deficiency in argument to support its authenticity, but because they daily see so many who profess to hold this established, self-denying rule of faith with their lips, persevering all their lives long in nothing else but an endless and insatiable pursuit after worldly ease and honour. But what a total ignorance of human nature, and of the true, unalterable genius

of the everlasting gospel, doth our author's arguing discover! For supposing, my dear friend, that this or any other writer should undertake to prove, that the ancient Greeks and Romans were born with sickly, disordered, and crazy bodies, but that we in modern days, being made of a firmer mould, and being blessed with the established rules of Galen and Hippocrates, need now no further assistance from any present physician, either to explain or apply those rules to our present ails and corporeal distresses, though we could not, without the help of some linguist superior to ourselves, so much as understand the language in which those authors wrote.-Supposing, I say, any one was to take it into his head to write in this manner, would he not be justly deemed a dreaming enthusiast or real fanatic? And yet this would be just as rational as to insinuate with our author, that we who are born in these last days, have less depravity in our natures, less enmity to, and less prejudice against, the Lord Jesus Christ, and less need of the divine teachings of the Blessed Spirit to help us to understand the true spiritual meaning of the holy Scriptures, than those who were born in the first ages of the gospel. For as it was formerly, so it is now, the natural man discerneth not the things of the Spirit; and why? Because they can only be spiritually discerned.' But when is it that we must believe this author? for, p. 73, he talks of some of the first christians, who were in the happy circumstance of being found innocent, when they were led into the practice of all virtue by the Holy Spirit.' And what occasion for that, if found innocent? But how innocent did the Holy Spirit find them? Doubtless, just as innocent as it finds us, 'conceived and born in sin.'

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But, by this time, my dear friend, I imagine you would be glad to know against whom these bruta fulmina, this unscriptural artillery, is levelled. Our author shall inform you: “All modern pretenders to divine influence in general;' and you may be assured, the poor methodists (those scourges and eye-sores of formal, self-righteous, letter-learned professors) in particular.' To expose and set these off in a ridiculous light, (a method that Julian, after all his various tortures, found most effectual,) this writer runs from Dan to Beersheba; gives us

quotation upon quotation out of the Rev. Mr. John Wesley's journals; and to use his own simile upon another occasion, by a kind of Egyptian husbandry, draws together whole droves of obscene animals of his own formation, who rush in furiously, and then trample the journals, and this sect, already every where spoken against, under their feet. In reading this part of his work I could not help thinking of the papists dressing John Huss in a cap of painted devils, before they delivered him up to the secular arm. For our author calls the Rev. Mr. John Wesley 'paltry mimic, spiritual empiric, spiritual martialist, meek apostle, new adventurer.' The methodists, according to him, are ، modern apostles, the saints, new missionaries, illuminated doctors, this sect of fanatics. Methodism itself is modern saintship. Mr. Law begat it, and Count Zinzendorff rocked the cradle; and the devil himself is man-midwife to their new birth.' And yet this is the man, my dear friend, who in his preface to this very book, lays it down as an invariable maxim, 'That truth is never so grossly injured, or its advocates so dishonoured, as when they employ the foolish arts of sophistry, buffoonery, and personal abuse in its defence.' By thy own pen thou shalt be tried, thou hapless, mistaken advocate of the christian cause. Nay, not content with dressing up this meek apostle, this spiritual empiric, these new missionaries, in bear-skins, in order to throw them out to be baited by an illnatured world, he proceeds to rake up the very ashes of the dead; and, like the witch of Endor, as far as in him lies, attempts to bring up and disquiet the ghosts of one of the most venerable sets of men that ever lived upon the earth; I mean, the good old puritans: For these,' (says our author,) 'who now go under the name of methodists, in the days of our forefathers, under the firm reign of Queen Elizabeth, were called precisians; but then, as a precious metal which had undergone its trial in the fire, and left all its dross, the sect, with great propriety, changed its name' (a very likely thing, to give themselves a nick-name, indeed) from precisian to puritan. Then in the weak and distracted times of Charles I. it ventured to throw off the mask, and under the new name of independent, became the chief agent of all the dreadful disorders

which terminated that unhappy reign.' So that, according to this author's heraldic, genealogical fiction, methodism is the younger daughter to independency, and now a methodist is an apostolic independent,' (God grant he may always deserve such a glorious appellation,) but an independent was then a Mahometan methodist.' Pages 142-144. What! an independent a Mahometan methodist? What! the learned Dr. Owen, the great Dr. Goodwin, the amiable Mr. Howe, and those glorious worthies who first planted the New England churches, Mahometan methodists? Would to God, that not only this writer, but all who now profess to preach Christ in this land, were not only almost, but altogether such Mahometan methodists in respect to the doctrine of divine influence, as they were! For I will venture to affirm, that if it had not been for such Mahometan methodists, and their successors, the free-grace dissenters, we should some years ago have been in danger of sinking into Mahometan methodism indeed; I mean, into a christianity destitute of any divine influence manifesting itself in grace and knowledge, and void of any spiritual aid in spiritual distresses. But from such a christianity, good Lord, deliver this happy land! The design our author had in view in drawing such a parallel, is easily seen through. Doubtless, to expose the present methodists to the jealousy of the civil government. For, says he, p. 142, 'We see methodism at present under a well-established government, where it is obliged to wear a less audacious look. To know its true character, we should see it in all its fortunes.' And doth this writer then, in order to gratify a sinful curiosity of seeing methodism in all its fortunes, desire to have the pleasure of seeing the weak and distracted times of Charles I. brought back again? Or dares he insinuate, that because, as he immediately adds, our country hath been productive of every strange thing,' that we are in the least danger now of any such distracting turn, since we have a king upon the throne who, in his first most gracious speech to both houses of parliament, declared he would preserve the Act of Toleration inviolable? And that being the case, blessed be God, we are in no danger of any return of such weak and distracted times, either from the apostolic independents, Maho

metan methodists, or any religious sect or party whatsoever.' My dear friend, if this is not gibbeting up names with unregenerate malice, to everlasting infamy,' I know not what is. But it happens in this, as in similar cases, whilst men are thus busy in gibbeting up the names of others, they unwittingly, like Haman, when preparing a gallows for that apostolic independent, that Mahometan methodist, Mordecai, all the while are only erecting a gibbet for their own.

"But, methinks, I see you now begin to be impatient to know (and indeed I have neither inclination nor leisure at present to pursue our author any further) who this can be, that takes such gigantic strides? I assure you he is a perfect Goliath in the retinue of human learning.-Will you guess?-Perhaps Dr. Taylor of Norwich.-No-he is dead. Certainly not a churchman? Yes; a member, a minister, a dignitary, a bishop of the church of England;—and, to keep you no longer in suspense, it is no less a man than Dr. Warburton, the author of "The Divine Legation of Moses," and now William Lord Bishop of Gloucester. I know you are ready to say, 'Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon.' But, my dear friend, what can be done? His Lordship hath published it himself: nay, his book hath just gone through a second impression; and that you may see and judge for yourself, whether I have wronged his Lordship or not, (as it is not very weighty,) I have sent you the book itself. Upon the perusal, I am persuaded you will at least be thus far of my opinion, that however decus et tutamen is always the motto engraven upon a bishop's mitre, it is not always most certain, though his Lordship says it is, p. 202, that they are written on every prelate's breast? And how can this prelate, in particular, be said to be the ornament and safeguard of the church of England, when his principles are as directly contrary to the offices of that church, over which he is by divine permission made overseer, as light is contrary to darkness? You know, my dear friend, what our ministers are taught to say, when they baptize: I beseech you to call upon God the Father, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that of his bounteous goodness he will grant to this child that thing which by nature he cannot have.' But what says his Lordship? All