believed by any Protestant of learning.* In fact, what ground is there for maintaining them? Have they been defined by our councils? No: they have been condemned by them, and par ticularly by that of Trent. Are they taught in our catechisms such as the Catechismus ad Parochos, the General Catechism of Ireland, the Douay Catechism; or in our books of devotion, for example, those written by an à Kempis, a Sales, a Granada and a Challoner? No: the contrary doctrine is, in these, and 2 our other books, uniformly maintained. In a word, the Catholic church teaches, and ever has taught, her children to trust for mercy, grace and salvation, to the merits of Jesus Christ; nevertheless she asserts that we have free will, and that this being prevented by divine grace, can and must co-operate to our justification by faith, sorrow for our sins, and other corresponding acts of virtue, which God will not fail to bestow upon us, if we do not throw obstacles in the way of them. Thus is all honour and merit ascribed to the Creator, and every defect and sin attributed to the creature. The Catholic church inculcates moreover, the indispensable necessity of humility as a virtue, by which, says St Bernard, " from a thorough knowledge of ourselves we become little in our own estimation," as the groundwork of all other virtues. I mention this Catholic lesson, in particular, because however strongly it is enforced by Christ and his disciples, it seems to be quite overlooked by Protestants, insomuch that they are perpetually boasting in their speeches and writings of the opposite vice, pride. In like manner, it appears from the above mentioned catechisms and spiritual works, what pains our church bestows in regulating the interior no less than the exterior of her children, by repressing every thought or idea, contrary to religion or morality; of which matter, I perceive little or no notice is taken in the catechisms and tracts of Protestants. Finally, the Catholic church insists upon the necessity of being perfect even as our heavenly Father i perfect, Mat. v. 48, by such an entire subjugation of our passions and conformity of our will with that of God, that our conversa. tion may be in heaven, while we are yet living here on earth. Philip v. 20. I am, &c. J. M.

The Norrisian Professor, Dr. Hey, says: "The reformed have depart ed so much from the rigour of their doctrine about faith, and the Romanists from theirs about good works, that there seems very little difference between them." Lect. vol. iii. p. 252. True, most of the reformers, after building their religion on faith alone, have now gone into the opposite hereSy of Pelagianism, or at least Semi-Pelagianism: but Catholics hold exactly the same tenets regarding good works, which they ever held, and which were always very different from what Dr. Hey describes them have been.

Vol iii. p 261.

140

POSTSCRIPT TO LETTER XIX.

THE Life of the late Rev. John Wesley, founder of the Me todists, which has been written by Dr. Whitehead, Dr. Coke, and others of his disciples, shows, in the clearest light, the errors and contradictions to which even a sincere and religious mind is subject, that is destitute of the clue to revealed truth the living authority of the Catholic church, as also the impiety and immorality of Calvanism. At first, that is to say, in the year 1729, Wesley was a modern church of England man, distinguished from other students at Oxford by nothing but a more strict and methodical form of life. Of course his doctrine then was the prevailing doctrine of that church; this he preached in England and carried with him to America, whither he sailed to corvert the Indians. Returning, however, to England in 1738, he writes as follows: "For many years I have been tossed about by various winds of doctrine," the particulars of which, and of the different schemes of salvation, which he was inclined to trust in, he details. Falling, at last, however, into the hands of Peter Bohler and his Moravian brethren, who met in Fetterlane, he became a warm proselyte to their system, declaring at the same time, with respect to his past religion, that hitherto he had been a Papist without knowing it. We may judge of his ardour by his exclamation when Peter Bohler left England: "O what a work hath God begun since his (Bohler's) coming to England; such a one as shall never come to an end till hea ven and earth shall pass away." To cement his union with this society, and to instruct himself more fully in its mysteries, he made a journey t Hernhuth in Moravia, which is the chief seat of the United Brethren. It was whilst he was a Moravian, namely, "on the 24th of May, 1738, a quarter of an hour before nine in the evening," that John Wesley, by his own account, was "saved from the law of sin and death." This all important event happened "at a meeting house, in Aldergatestreet, while a person was reading Luther's Preface to the Galatians." Nevertheless, though he had professed such deep obligations to the Moravians, he soon found out and declared that theirs was not the right way to heaven. In fact he found them, and "nine parts in ten of the Methodists" who adhered to them, "swallowed up in the dead sea of stillness, opposing the ordinances, namely, prayer, reading the Scripture, frequenting the sacrament and public worship, selling their Bibles, &c. in order to rely more fully on the blood of the Lamb.' In short, Wesley abandoned the Moravian connexion, and set up

6

that which is properly his own religion, as it is detailed by Nightingale, in his Portrait of Methodism. This happened in 1740, soon after which he broke off from his rival Whitfield : in fact they maintained quite opposite doctrines on several essential points still the tenet of instantaneous justification, without repentance, charity, or other good works, and the actual feeling and certainty of this and of everlasting happiness, continued to be the essential and vital principles of Wesley's system, as they are of the Calvinistic sects in general; till having witnessed the horrible impieties and crimes to which it conducted, he, at a conference or synod of his preachers, in 1744, declared that he and they had" leaned too much to Calvinism and Antinomianism." In answer to the question "What is Antinomianism?" Wesley, in the same conference, answers, "The doctrine which makes void the law through faith. Its main

pillars are that Christ abolished the moral law; that, therefore, Christians are not obliged to keep it; that Christian liberty, is liberty from obeying the commands of God; that it is bondage. to do a thing because it is commanded, or forbear it because it is forbidden; that a believer is not obliged to use the ordinances of God, or to do good works, that a preacher ought not to exhort to good works," &c. See here the essential morality of the religion which Wesley had hitherto followed and preached, as drawn by his own pen, and which still continues to be preached by the other sects of Methodists ! We shall hereafter see in what manner he changed it. The very mention, however, of a change in this ground-work of Methodism, inflamed all the Methodist connexions: accordingly, the Hon. and Rev. Mr. Shirley, chaplain to lady Huntingdon, in a circular letter, written at her desire, declared against the dreadful heresy of Wesley, which, as he expressed himself," injured the foundation of Christianity." He, therefore, summoned another conference, which severely censured Wesley. On the other hand, this patriarch was strongly supported, and particularly by Fletcher of Madeley, an able writer, whom he had destined to succeed him, as the head of his connexion. Instead of being offended at his master's change, Fletcher says, "I admire the candour of an old man of God, who, instead of obstinately maintaining an old mistake, comes down like a little child, and acknowledges it before his preachers, whom it is his interest to secure." The same Fletcher published seven volumes of Checks to Antinomianism, in vindication of Wesley's change in this essential point of his religion. In these he brings the most convincing proofs and examples of the impiety and immorality, to which the enthusiasm

Ha

of Antinomian Calvinism had conducted the Methodists. mentions a highwayman, lately executed in his neighbourhood, who vindicated his crimes upon this principle. He mentions other more odious instances of wickedness, which, to his knowledge, had flowed from it. All these, he says, are represented by their preachers to be "damning sins in Turks and Pagans, but only spots in God's children." He adds, "There are few of our celebrated pulpits, where more has not been said for sin than against it!" He quotes an Hon. M. P. "once my brother," he says, "but now my opponent," who, in his published treatise, maintains that "murder and adultery do not hurt the pleasant children, (the elected,) but even work for their good:" adding, "My sins may displease God, my person is always acceptable to him. Though I should outsin Manasses himself, I should not be less a pleasant child, because God always views me in Christ Hence, in the midst of adulteries, murders and incests, he can address me with, Thou art all fair, my love, my undefiled; there is not a spot in thee. It is a most pernicious error of the schoolmen to distinguish sins according to the fact, not according to the person. Though I highly blame those who say, let us sin that grace may abound; yet adultery, incets and murder, shall, upon the whole, make me hollier on earth and merrier in heaven!" It only remains to show in what manner Wesley purified his religious system, as he thought, from the defilment of Antinomianism. To be brief, he invented a two-fold mode of justification, one without repentance, the love of God, or other works; the other, to which those works were essential: the former was for those who die soon after their pretended experience of saving faith, the latter for those who have time and opportunity of performing them. Thus, to say no more of the system, according to it a Nero and a Robespierre might have been established in the grace of God, and in a right to the realms of infinite purity without one act of sorrow for their enormities, or so much as ar act of their belief in God!]

DEAR SIR,

LETTER XX.

To JAMES BROWN, Esq.

ON THE MEANS OF SANCTITY.

THE efficient cause of justification, or sanctity, according to the Council of Trent,* is the mercy of God through the merits of

Sess. vi cap. 7.

66

Jesus Christ; still, in the usual economy of his grace, he makes use of certain instruments or means, both for conferring and increasing it. The principal and most efficacious of these are THE SACRAMENTS. Fortunately, the established church agrees in the main sense with the Catholic and other Christian churches, when she defines a sacrament to be an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, given unto us, and ordained by Christ himself, as a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof."* But, though she agrees with other Protestant communions in reducing the number of these to two, baptism and the Lord's Supper, she differs with all others, namely, the Catholic, the Greek, the Russian, the Armenian, the Nestorian, the Eutychian, the Coptic, the Ethiopian, &c. all of which firmly maintain, and ever have maintained, as well since as before their respective defections from us, the whole collection of the seven sacraments. This fact alone refutes the airy speculations of Protestants concerning the origin of the five sacraments, which they reject, and thus demonstrates that they are deprived of as many divinely instituted instruments or means of sanctity. As these seven channels of grace, though all supplied from the same fountain of Christ's merits, supply, each of them, a separate grace, adapted to the different wants of the faithful, and as each of them furnishes matter of observation for the present discussion, so I shall take a cursory view of them.

Acts

The first sacrament, in point of order and necessity, is baptism. In fact, no authority can be more express than that of the Scripture, as to this necessity. Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, says Christ, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. John iii. 5. Repent, cries St. Peter, and be baptized every one of you, in the name of Jesus, for the remission of sins. ii. 38. Arise, answered Ananias to St. Paul, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins. Acts xxii. 16. This necessity was heretofore acknowledged by the church of England, at least, as appears from her Articles, and still more clearly from her liturgy, and the works of her eminent divines. Hence, as bap

• Catechism in Com. Prayer.-N. B. The last clause in this definition far too strong, as it seems to imply, that every person who is partaker of the outward part of a sacrament, necessarily receives the grace of it, whatever may be his dispositions; an impiety which the bishop of Lincoln calumniously attributes to the Catholics. Elements of Theol vcl. ii. p. 436

This important fact is incontrovertibly proved, in the celebrated work La Perpetuilé de la Foi, from original documents, procured by Louis XIV. and preserved in the king's library at Paris.

✰ Common Prayer.

See B. Pearson on the Creed. Art. x. Hooker, Eccl. Polit. B. v. p 60