the consequences: Lord, suitably affect my heart with the consideration, and never let me set my affections upon the perishable things of this transitory world: by grace preserve me from falling from my steadfastness, and establish my heart with all thy weight of love." This shews a gracious disposition in feeling and mourning for the sins of others, and a consciousness that her help was only in the Lord.--She adds, "I should have gone with much pleasure to the house of God to-day, had my health permitted: may the gracious Lord strengthen me, if it be his blessed will, to appear there soon, to offer him my thanks and praises, and to perform my vows; I feel a desire to enjoy health again, I think, with a view to usefulness: I pray God my present indisposition may be sanctified by his grace, that I may produce greater de grees of holiness and usefulness; I would do something for him who has done so much for worthless me." These are the breathings of a truly pious soul: and it appears that the Lord did hear and answer her requests; for, on Sunday the 17th of January, she writes, "Through infinite mercy I was permitted this day to go to the house of God, to join with those who kept holy day. I felt it a privilege, and trust my heart gratefully bowed before the God of all my mercies, for his unspeakable goodness to me a sinner. I felt bound by additional ties to that Saviour who carried my sins, bore my sorrows, and sympathizes with his unworthy creatures in their afflictions and temptations; his precious grace has supported me under my trials and afflictions, and I desire, by the same grace, to devote my little all to his service and glory: and, O! that he would perfect what is lacking in my soul, that he would sanotify me wholly, and seal me his unto redemption's day."

[To be concluded in the next.]

THE TRUTH OF GOD DEFENDED.

A Letter of the Rev. Mr. FLETCHER, to the Rev. Mr. PROTHERO, in Defence of Experiemental Religion.*

Rev. Sir, Madeley, July 25, 1761. The elegant sermon you preached at the Visitation, got you, no doubt, the thanks of your known hearers; permit an unknown

• We find this letter referred to in a letter of Mr. Fletcher to the Rev. Charles Wesley, dated August 18, 1761, and recorded in page 73 of his Life, octavo edition, in the following words, "I do not know whether I mentioned to you a Sermon preached at the Archdeacon's Visitation. It is almost all levelled at the points which are called The Doctrines of Methodism,' and as the preacher is minister of a parish near mine, it is probable he had me in his eye. After the sermon, another VOL. XLIV. JANUARY, 1821.

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one to add his to theirs, and to pay to merit a just tribute. It gave me exceeding great satisfaction to see you stand up so boldly in defence of revealed religion against Deists and Infidels, and by ingenious observations and cogent arguments force them out of their strong hold, a blind confidence in reason. I could not help wishing that they did every where meet with opponents so able to fight them with their own weapons: were this the case, there would not be so much room to lament the overflowings of Deism among men of reason and learning.

The second part of your discourse, wherein you endeavoured to guard the truth from the other extreme, superstition and enthusiasm, deserves no less to be commended, on account of the goodness of your design. It is the duty of a preacher to keep the sacred truths committed to him, as well from being perverted by enthusiasts, as crushed by infidels. The rocks on which both split are equally dangerous, and we see daily that nothing exposes so much the mysteries of Christianity to the scorn of freethinkers, as the words and behaviour of those who suppose themselves under the inspiration of God's Spirit, when, it appears, that they are led only by the weakness of their mind and nerves, by spiritual pride, and the warmth of their imagination. Boasting of communion with God, and peculiar favours from heaven, is no less hurtful to the cause of Christ, when people's lives show them to be actuated by a spirit of delusion. And setting up impulses in the room of repentance, faith, hope, charity, obedience, has done no small mischief in the Church of God.

These are the counterfeits and bane of inward religion:-these the tares that the enemy sows in the night of ignorance and superstition; and, I repeat it again, you cannot be too much commended, Sir, for endeavouring to detect and stop him in this work of darkness. But did you act with all the caution necessary in so important an undertaking, and, while you were pulling out the tares, did not you root up, unawares, some of the wheat also?

I had some fear of it, Sir, while I was hearing you; and I beg leave to lay before you the ground of this fear in the following observations, which I humbly entreat you to weigh in the balance of the sanctuary.

I. Is the representing, in general, virtue, benevolence, good nature, and morality, as the way to salvation, agreeable to either Clergyman addressed me with an air of triumph, and demanded what answer I could make. As several of my parishioners were present, besides the church-wardens, I thought it my duty to take the matter up; and I have done so, by writing a long letter to the preacher, in which I have touched the principal mistakes of his discourse, with as much politeness and freedom as I was able : but I have as yet had no answer. (And, it seems, he never had any.) I could have wished for your advice before I sealed my letter; but as I could not have it, I have been very cautious, entrenching myself behind the ramparts of Scripture, as well as those of our Homilies and Articles."

the word of God, or the doctrine of our Church? Both shew us no other way but Christ alone, Christ "the Way, the Truth, and the Life;" Christ the door, the only door to come to the . Father, and receive grace and glory. "If justification comes by obeying the law," says Paul, Gal. ii. 21, "then Christ died in vain;" and to the Ephesians, ii. 8, he says, "By grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast."

The only means and instrument, on our part, required for salvation, (according to our Church, second sermon on the Passion,) of mercy is faith, that is to say, a sure trust and confidence in the God, whereby we persuade ourselves that God both has forgiven and will forgive our sins; that he has taken us again into his favour; that he has released us from the bonds of damnation, and received us again into the number of his elect people, not for our merits and deserts, but only and solely for the merits of Christ's death and passion.

This faith is so far from superseding morality and good works, that it works infallibly by love, and love infallibly by obedience, and consequently produces morality and good works truly so called. "Do we make void the law through faith?" says Paul, "nay, we establish the law."

Nevertheless, faith unfeigned alone justifieth, if the Word of God and the Articles of our Church stand for any thing; the eleventh of which runs thus: "We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for own works and deservings; wherefore, that we are justified by faith only, is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort, as is more largely expressed in the homily on Justification:" to which I refer you, Sir, or to the inclosed extract of our homilies on this point, if you please to peruse it.

II. Does what you said, Sir, of reason and free-agency, in the second part of your discourse, perfectly agree with what you said in the first?

You told us first, (if I understood you rightly,) that since the fall, man's reason is so darkened, that the greatest philosophers staggered even at the fundamental truths of religion, the being of a God, the immortality of the soul, &c. that his passions are so disorderly and impetuous, as to hurry him down the paths of error and vice; that reason, so far from bringing him back, redoubles the cheat, and makes him ingenious to excuse and satisfy his unruly appetites; that Paul's words painted his helplessness with true colours-"The good that I would, I do not, and the evil I would not that I do," &c.

This, Sir, was a superstructure worthy of the foundation: this "We are not agreed with your text with the utmost exactness:

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sufficient of ourselves to think any thing," (truly good before God) "as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God."

Who would have expected after this, to hear you place again reason and free-will to good upon the throne out of which you had but just forced them; I humbly presume, Sir, that this candle of the Lord, shining in the breast of man, did not de- & serve to be set up quite so high again, since the light it gives can hardly hinder a philosopher, a man who makes it all his business to collect and follow that light, from stumbling at the being of a God.

As for free-agency to good, you appealed to experience, Sir, (if I am not mistaken) whether a man has not the same power to enter the paths of virtue as to walk across a room: Let then experience decide.

The heathen says, Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor. The prophet says, "Turn us, and so we shall be turned." "Draw me, and I shall run after thee." You say yourself, Sir, "The good that I would I do not, and the evil I would not that I do." Our Church says, (Col. for Easter) "We humbly beseech thee, that, as by thy special grace preventing us, thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect." The Bible says, (Phil. ii. 13,) "It is God that worketh in you both to will and to do" that which is truly good in his sight: and the tenth of those articles, which we solemnly took for the rule of our preaching, next to the Word of God, says, "The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God, wherefore, we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God without the grace of God, by Christ, preventing us, that we may have a good-will, and working with us when we have that good-will."

What Is man, then, a mere machine? No, Sir, he has a will, but it is contrary to the will of God; his carnal mind, his natural wisdom, is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be, says St. Paul-he is a free-agent to do evil. Yet, when God prevents him with convictions of sin and good desires, as says our Church, which he always does sooner or later, he may, through the grace of God, yield to them and enter into life, or through his stubbornness resist them, and remain in his fallen

state.

III. You objected, in your discourse, that the insisting upon these, and the like doctrines, tended to breed disturbances, strife, and confusion: This is accidentally true, Sir; but what do you infer from thence? that the doctrines are false, or the preachers in the wrong, because offences arise?

We cannot do this without giving up the Bible: What strife and confusion, yea, what jeering and cruel mockings, attended the ministry of the prophets among the Israel of God; witness Micaiah, Elias, Jeremiah, &c. Yea, who was so great a disturber as that Jesus of Nazareth, of whom some of his friends said, "He is mad," whom all Jerusalem, in uproar, brought to Pilate, and accused, saying, Luke xxiii. 2, 5, "We found this fellow perverting the nation; for he stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place."' Or that Saul of Tarsus, who was well nigh torn in pieces by his offended hearers, yea, and by those that had never heard him, while the general cry was, "This is the pestilential fellow, who turneth the world upside down-Brethren, help!"

The same causes will produce the same effects. The doctrines of the fall, the new birth, and free justification by faith alone; and their fruits in those that embrace them, godly sorrow, peace; righteousness and joy in a believing heart, will stir up the hearers in proportion to the clearness, constancy, and power, with which they are preached. And this will be the case in all ages, because in all ages men are born in sin, and children of wrath; yea, and in all places too: those that are born on the banks of the Thames, or Severn, are no better, by nature, than those that drink the water of Jordan or of the Ganges.

When a medicine operates by stirring up the peccant humours in order to evacuate them, is it a sign that it is not a good one? Not at all, it must work if it be good. I shall conclude this paragraph by a few words of him who had in his breast all the treasures of Divine wisdom and knowledge. John vii. 7, "The world hateth me, because I testify of it that the works thereof are evil." And "shall the servant be above his master?" "I am come to send fire upon the earth-to set [occasionally] a man at variance with his father," &c. While the gospel gives inward peace, even a peace that the world knoweth not, to those that really embrace it, it declares war, an eternal war, against sin, and must, of course, disturb the peace of the prince of this world and his subjects.

IV. It is agreeable enough to the doctrine of free-agency to good, not to insist upon the necessity of being born again of the Spirit of God; but is the discountenancing of the preaching of it, agreeable to the tenour of that Revelation you did so well defend in the beginning of your discourse? If Ezekiel preached it, (ch. xi. 19, and xviii. 31, and xxxvi. 26;) if John speaks so often, as well as David, and St. Paul, of being born of God, of being quickened by his Word and Spirit, of the new heart, the new creature, the renewing of the mind, the life of God, the eternal life, the life of Christ in a believer, &c. if Jesus himself enforced this doctrine in the strongest manner to Nicodemus; if