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with the sincere milk of the word, of putting their tears into a bottle, of bearing testimony against lying vanities, of taking the veil from men's hearts, and of building up one another; they speak the common, yet proper and pertinent phraseology of their country; and not the least imputation of fanaticism can stick upon these original expressions. But when we see our own countrymen reprobate their native idiom, and affect to employ only scripture phrases in their whole conversation, as if some inherent sanctity resided in the Eastern modes of expression, we cannot choose but suspect such men far gone in the delusions of a heated imagination. The same may be said of significative actions.

(From The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated.)

HOW TO MEET ATTACKS

As to the manner in which I have answered some of my adversaries their insufferable abuse, and my own love of quiet, made it necessary. I had tried all ways to silence an iniquitous clamour by neglect of it; by good words; by an explanation of my meaning; and all without effect. The first volume of this obnoxious work had not been out many days, before I was fallen upon by a furious ecclesiastical news-writer, with the utmost brutality. All the return I then made, or then ever intended to make, was a vindication of my moral character, wrote with such temper and forbearance as seemed affectation to those who did not know that I only wanted to be quiet. But I reckoned without my host. The angry man became ten times more outrageous. What was now to be done? I tried another method with him. I drew his picture; I exposed him naked ; and showed the public of what parts and principles this tumour was made up. It had its effect; and I never heard more of him. On this occasion, let me tell the reader a story. As a Scotch bagpiper was traversing the mountains of Ulster, he was, one evening, encountered by a hunger-starved Irish wolf. In this distress, the poor man could think of nothing better than to open his wallet, and try the effects of his hospitality. He did so and the savage swallowed all that was thrown him with so improving a voracity, as if his appetite was but just coming to him.

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whole stock of provision, you may be sure, was soon spent. And now, his only recourse was to the virtue of the bagpipe; which the monster no sooner heard, than he took to the mountains with the same precipitation that he had come down. The poor piper could not so perfectly enjoy his deliverance, but that, with an angry look at parting, he shook his head, and said, “Ay! are these your tricks ?—Had I known your humour, you should have had your music before supper.”

But though I had the caduceus of peace in my hands, yet it was only in cases of necessity that I made use of it. And therefore I chose to let pass, without any chastisement, such impotent railers as Dr. Richard Grey, and one Bate, a zany to a mountebank. On the other hand, when I happened to be engaged with such very learned and candid writers as Dr. Middleton and the Master of the Charter-house, I gave sufficient proof how much I preferred a different manner of carrying on a controversy, would my answerers but afford me the occasion. But alas! as I never should have such learned men long my adversaries, and never would have these other my friends, I found that, if I wrote at all, I must be condemned to a manner, which all, who know me, know to be most abhorrent to my natural temper. So, on the whole, I resolved to quit my hands of them at once; and turn again to nobler game, more suitable, as Dr. Stebbing tells me, to my clerical function, that pestilent herd of libertine scribblers, with which this island is overrun; whom I would hunt down, as good King Edgar did his wolves; from the mighty author of Christianity as old as the Creation, to the drunken blaspheming cobbler, who wrote against Jesus and the Resurrection.

(From Remarks on Several Occasional Reflections.)

GOD'S MORAL GOVERNMENT

"Lord, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him! or the son of man, that thou makest account of him!"-PSALM cxliv. 3.

THUS the holy prophet, seized with a sacred horror at an universe stretched out through the immensity of boundless space; and with a rapturous gratitude for that Goodness who has graced his favourite, man, with so tender and so intimate a regard.

Meditations of this kind are, indeed, most obvious and affecting. The religionist and the man of the world have equally employed them to reduce humanity to its just value; though for very different purposes: the first to excite religious gratitude in others; the second, to encourage himself in an impious naturalism.

When the Religionist compares this small spot of earth to the whole of its system; and sees a number of primary and secondary planets, habitations like his own, if he may judge by probable analogy, rolling round with it, and performing their various revolutions about one central fire, the common source of light and warmth to all, he is abashed at the mean and diminished rank his own world bears in this solemn and august assembly.

When, by the aid of improved astronomy, he compares this subastral economy with the systems of the fixed stars; every one of which reigns a sun, directing and influencing the revolutions of its attendant planets; and sees that, as the earth is but a point compared to the orb of Saturn, so the orb of Saturn itself grows dimensionless when compared to that vast extent of space which the stellar-solar systems possess and occupy; this lord of the creation shrinks suddenly from his height, and mingles with the lowest crowd of unheeded and undistinguished beings.

But when, by the further aids of science, he understands, that a new host of heaven, too remotely stationed for the naked sight to draw out and review, hath been made to issue into day; each of which shining strangers is the leader of a troop of others, whose borrowed lustre, too weakly reflected, no assistance of art can bring forward; and that still, when sense stops short, science pursues the great discovery, and reason carries on the progress through the mighty regions of boundless space; the fatigued imagination, tracing system after system, as they rise to light in endless succession, turns frightened back upon itself, and overwhelms the labouring mind with terror and astonishment: whence, it never can disengage itself till it rises on the wings of faith, which bear this humbled creature from himself, and place him before the throne of God; where he sees the mysteries of that Providence laid open, whose care and bounty so magnificently provides for the meanest of his creatures.

Thus piously affected is the religionist with the sacred horrors of this amazing scene; an universe stretched out through the wide regions of space, and terminated on all sides by the depths of infinity.

But let us turn now to the man of the world, whom this view of things rather degrades than humbles. Calmly contemplative in the chair of false science he derides the mistaken gratitude of the benighted religionist; a gratitude rising not on reason, but on pride. "For whether," says he, "we consider this earth, the mansion of evil, or man, its wretched inhabitant; what madness is it to suppose, that so sordid a corner, and so forlorn an occupant, can be the centre of God's moral government? What but the lunacy of self-love could make this short-lived reptile, shuffled hither as it were by fate, and precariously sustained by fortune, imagine himself the distinguished care, and the peculiar favourite of Heaven? "As well," says he, "might the blind inhabitants of an ant-hill, which chance had placed on the barren frontier of an extended empire, flatter themselves with being the first object of their monarch's policy, who had unpeopled those mighty deserts only to afford room and safety for their busy colonies. The most that reasoning pride can tempt us to presume is, that we may not be excluded from that general providence governing by laws mechanical, and, once for all, impressed on matter when it was first harmonised into systems. But to make God the moral, that is the close, the minute and immediate inspector into human actions, is degrading him from that high rank in which this philosophy of enlarged creation hath so fitly placed him and returning him to the people, travestied to the mortal size of local godship; under which idea, the superstitious vulgar have been always inclined to regard the Maker and Governor of the world."

(From a Sermon on the Governor of the World.)

JOHN WESLEY

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[John Wesley (1703-1791), was born 17th June (0.s.) 1703, at Epworth, in Lincolnshire, where his father was rector. He owed his early training chiefly to his mother (née Susanna Wesley). In 1709 the rectory was burnt down and John was with great difficulty rescued from the flames. narrow escape made a life-long impression upon him, and many years later he described himself as "a brand plucked out of the burning." In 1713 he received, through the Duke of Buckingham, a nomination to the Charterhouse, and there he received his education until his entrance at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1720. In 1725 he was ordained by the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Potter), and in 1726 he was elected Fellow of Lincoln College. He retained his Fellowship until his unfortunate marriage with the widow Vazeille in 1791. In 1727 he became his father's curate at Epworth and Wroot. In 1729 he was summoned back to Oxford to take part in the college tuition. At Oxford he found a religious society, founded by his brother Charles, then a student of Christ Church. Of this society John became the head. The Oxford Methodists" were ascetics of a markedly church type, and they were warmly encouraged in their lives of devotion and practical work by the Rector of Epworth. In 1735 Samuel Wesley died, and in the same year John went out as a missionary of the S. P.G. to the newly founded colony of Georgia. He was deeply impressed with the piety of some Moravians he met on the voyage out and in the Colony. He met with many difficulties in Georgia, and returned home, bitterly disappointed, in 1738. He then fell under the influence of another Moravian, Peter Böhler. He visited the Moravian settlement at Herrnhut, and on his return commenced that career of incessant activity, physical and mental, in the cause of what he believed to be the truth, which ended only with his death. He founded societies, itinerated in all parts of the kingdom, preaching wherever he went, and arranging the elaborate organisation of his societies, of which he was the absolute master. He visited Scotland and Ireland frequently, and at last died in harness, 2nd March 1791. Long before his death, he had outlived all the opposition (sometimes amounting to actual violence) which he had encountered in his earlier career. He was generally respected in the church of his baptism, to which he never ceased to affirm his adherence, while by his own followers he was regarded with a veneration, to which there is scarcely a parallel in the history of religious leaders.]

IT is not, of course, as a writer of English Prose that John Wesley is best known. Nevertheless he could and did write

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