stone. Some of the tracts noted in the list for 1747 are, A Word of Advice to Saints and Sinners ;' one hundred copies, at one penny each. Swear not at all;' forty copies, at the rate of three for a penny. Remember the Sabbath;' price one halfpenny. Advice to a Methodist; one penny. The Christian Pattern,' abridged. Mr. Grimshaw's Answer to a Sermon published by Mr. White, which appeared the first time before the public, and identified its author with the Methodist body. There are also other works; such as Law's Serious Call, Gloria Patri, &c.; calculated either to promote internal piety, or the public worship of God. There is also another small publication, which appears to have had considerable circulation; a publication which is now scarcely known in Methodism; namely, Letters by the Rev. Charles Wesley;' the selling price of which was threepence. The distribution of these tracts at so small a price, answered all the purposes of the Tract Societies which are now established; and it is no little honour which rests upon the early Methodists, that they led the way."

Poor Franks," to use the sympathizing expression of Mr. Wesley, was succeeded in his office by Mr. John Atlay, who discharged the duties of Book-Steward until 1788; when-after having encouraged the Trustees of the Dewsbury chapel in their claim for full power to exclude Mr. Wesley and all whom he might appoint, at their sole pleasure, from that place of worship,-to be the disposers of that property as they might judge expedient, and to possess authority to cause the building to be occupied by any individual they might see fit to invite-he resigned his connexion with Mr. Wesley, and joined the seceding party, as their Minister; according to an engagement made with them, in case Mr. Wesley refused their claims, and withdrew the Preachers.

Mr. George Whitfield, who was the successor of Mr. Atlay, entered

* Methodism in Sheffield, page 70.

upon his office in 1789; having for some time previous travelled with Mr. Wesley as his companion; and continued at the Book-Room until 1804; when, retiring from want of health, he was succeeded by the Rev. Robert Lomas, who held the office of Book-Steward four years. On his retirement, in 1808, he received “the thanks of the Conference, for his very laborious, faithful, and successful services;" and the Rev. Thomas Blanshard was appointed, who continued in this responsible situation until 1823, when the office was filled, for the ensuing four years, by the Rev. John Kershaw; and afterwards, in 1827, by the Rev. John Mason, our present indefatigable and efficient Steward.

It will be obvious to all, that Mr. Wesley was intent upon raising an intelligent, as well as a spiritual, people; and therefore made the noblest and most unwearied efforts to place the various branches of useful information within the reach of all, among both the middle and lower ranks of society, by his numerous abridgments of important works, his expurgated editions of several classic authors, his plain and excellent Grammars of the dead languages, together with his small and cheap treatises on various branches of science; thus rendering comparatively smooth and easy the path to knowledge. Hence the publication of the Christian Library, a Compendium of Natural Philosophy, an Ecclesiastical History, a History of England, Grammars in five different languages, Poems, School-books, &c., together with various others on religious subjects. His Magazine was commenced in self-defence, when he was attacked from all quarters; from the Bishop, and every grade of ecclesiastical dignity, down to the humble Curate; from Peers of the realm, to the country Justice, and town-crier; from merchants, tradesmen, and mechanics; whose arguments were as diversified as the character of those who were engaged against him, and were addressed to the understanding and to the passions, by means of the press, the pulpit, and even club-law;

as mobs, stones, eggs, and other missiles, have again and again testified. To all these assailants the Magazine administered salutary, although unwelcome, rebuke; while it has rendered, and is still affording, good service to the Wesleyan Methodists, as a permanent and sacred record of practical truth, personal piety, and religious intelligence.

Since the death of the Rev. John and Charles Wesley, and their sainted coadjutor, Mr. Fletcher, the literature of the body has been greatly enriched by the writings of Benson, Clarke, Watson, Edmondson, Treffry, Sutcliffe, Jackson, and others; and never was the sound and Protestant theology of Wesleyanism more loudly called for, than in the present day, when the most undisguised attempts are made to introduce a religion of gloom and terror, and to prepare the way for the theology and ceremonial of the Schoolmen and of the Papacy. To accomplish this abominable and soul-destroying project, poetry is employed, such as is found in what is termed the Lyra Apostolica,-a production which the Apostles, to a man, would have disowned, and again have rent their garments, rather than have sanctioned. Novels, forsooth, are written we allude specially to one from the pen of a venerable Archdeacon; which, had it emanated from the press during the life-time of his worthy father, would have brought his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. Periodicals, grave treatises on subjects of divinity, sermons, Bishops' Charges, tracts; and, will it be credited, with a trickery at once as Jesuitical as it is dishonest and wicked, tales for the nursery are composed, to pour this "leprous distilment" into the ears of the rising generation: all, all are put in

requisition to exterminate the blessed truths of the Reformation, with the religious liberty to which they gave birth, and to establish an iron despotism over the understandings and consciences of mankind. Such are the doings of men who are eating the bread and pocketing the reve nues of the Protestant Establishment of England!

During the year 1839, the Wesleyan Book-establishment was considerably enlarged: the buildings are now extensive and substantial, and afford every facility for supply. ing the Connexion, at home and abroad, with books which are caleulated and designed at once to check error, establish the truth, and, above all, to promote personal religion. Let the friends of Methodism, those supporters of the principles of the glorious Reformation, for which Craniner, Hooper, Latimer, and Ridley, bled,-who view with horror and detestation the base and insidious attempts which are now making to Romanize this professedly Protestant country, and who have often expressed a readiness, should circumstances require it, to take the field, or be led to the stake, to show themselves in no degree the degenerated sons of those who trampled on the Bull of a Pope, and committed it to the flames,-let them adopt the method which, under God, may avert an evil so much to be dreaded,-let them speak with the enemy while he is at the gate, by distributing with both hands the publications issuing from this Wesleyan depôt, strongly saturated as they are with that fundamental doctrine, salvation by faith, which, to use the language of our venerable Founder, "first drove Popery out of these kingdoms, and which alone can keep it out."

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doctrines of the school, but of the actual Jesuitism of at least some of its members. Of the former, it has

never been possible to entertain any doubts: the latter we have never been willing to believe. We knew enough, indeed, of the character of the

Society of Jesus," to know that it would not be difficult for them to obtain such dispensations as might be necessary to enable them to assume the character of Protestants, if so the interests of the Pope, to whose service they have been devoted from the beginning, might be promoted; but yet we hoped that the guards of a Protestant University, and their careful administration, would be sufficient to prevent the introduction of the most dangerous, because the most subtle and unprincipled, enemies of the Protestant faith. And we were reluctant to believe that English honour could be reconciled to the adoption of the principles of Popery, along with the possession of the emoluments of Protestantism. But we confess that our feelings have undergone an extensive change. Many of the statements and practices of the party which has obtained such notoriety, are utterly irreconcilable with any other character than that of a real, though disguised Popery. We can no longer talk of the semi-Popery of the school. Its published opinions go a great way beyond this; and, perhaps, never more obviously than in the British Critic for last October. We shall, in the first place, copy the sentences which have particularly fixed our attention, and then offer to the reader some observations upon them.

"The very first aggression then of those, who labour to revive some degree at least of vital Christianity, (in the room of those gross corruptions and superstitions, which have in these latter days among ourselves overlaid and defaced the primitive and simple truth,) their very first aggression must be upon that strange congeries of notions and practices, of which the Lutheran doctrine of justification is the origin and representative. Whether any heresy has ever infested the church so hateful and unchristian as this doctrine, it is not perhaps necessary to deter

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mine none certainly has ever prevailed so subtle and extensively poisonous. It is not only that it denies some one essential doctrine of the Gospel; as, e. g., inhe rent righteousness: this all heresies do. It is not only that it corrupts all sound Christian doctrine, nay, the very principle of orthodoxy itself; though this also it certainly does: but its inroads extend further than this; as far as its formal statements are concerned, it poisons at the very root, not Christianity only, but natural religion. That obedience to the will of God, with whatever sacrifice of self, is the one thing need. ful; that sin is the one only danger to be dreaded, the one only evil to be avoided; these great truths are the very foundation of natural religion; and inasmuch as this modern system denies these to be essential and necessary truths; yea, counts it the chief glory of the Gospel that under it they are no longer truths, we must plainly express our conviction that a religious Heathen, were he really to accept the doctrine which Lutheran language expresses, so far from making any advance, would sustain a heavy loss, in exchanging fundamental truth for fundamental error."

We do not know whether the italics in the above passage are designed for leaving open a door of retreat, by such a disgraceful quibbling on words as would render the writer unworthy of further notice. But they would be of no service. The passage must be taken as a whole, and in its plain and obvious meaning. And it asserts, that the Lutheran doctrine-besides evil consequences which it rather insinuates than expresses-directly denies the evangelical doctrine of inherent righteousness; denies, that is, its necessity. It likewise asserts, that this doctrine denies two other truths, truths which are said to be the very foundation of natural religion; that is, that it asserts it to be the chief glory of the Gospel that, under it, it is not true "that obedience to the

* British Critic, October, 1842, page 391.

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will of God, with whatever sacrifice of self, is the one thing needful; " nor that sin is the one only danger to be dreaded, the one only evil to be avoided." Our readers will have heard of the celebrated Romanist champion, Bellarmine, who wrote against the Protestant doctrine of justification, asserting the doctrine of the Council of Trent, that man is justified by his own inherent righteousness. It is reported that, on one occasion, a sturdy, plain-speaking Protestant, controverting his statements, met with some which led him, with indignant honesty, to exclaim, Bellarmine, thou liest." We should think it was some statement to the same effect as that given above by his English follower,some assertion that the Protestant denied inherent righteousness,which led his opponent to meet what could be only the argument of the mere advocate, and what Bellarmine must have known to be utterly groundless, by a warm-hearted rejection, rather than by any laboured refutation. When we read the language of the British Critic, immediately recollected the reply given to the older Papist. And we have not a reader who does not know, from what he has repeatedly heard, in the course of numberless ministrations which have had this same doctrine of justification, in all its essential principles, for their theme, how totally-we had almost written, how visibly-void of truth, are the assertions of the Critic. It is a mere repetition of the old Popish slander, a thousand times put forth, and as often refuted as put forth. But the language shows its source. The very use of the term inherent righteousness, proves the writer to be neither more nor less than a thorough-going Bellarminist, issuing, nevertheless, his attacks on Protestantism-and on a portion of Protestantism in which the Church of England is deeply involved-in a professedly Church publication! Was this the time for the Bishop of London to come forward, denying the ministry of all who are not Episcopally or

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dained, and asserting the doctrine of sacramental justification?

The Protestant doctrine of justification is this: Its nature consists in the gracious pardon of sin, for the alone sake of the infinite merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. Its sole condition, or instrument, is, lively faith in Christ. Without this, man is not justified: as soon as he exercises it, he is. Faith always does justify: nothing but faith justifies. Over and over again did the early Reformers speak to this effect. They attributed the office of justifyingas an instrument or condition-to faith, and to nothing else. Their Papal adversaries,—the servants of the Papal court, so notorious for its purity!-these men, forsooth, must come forward and charge the Protestant doctrine with licentious tendencies. "You deny," they said, “that we are justified by our inherent righteousness; ergo, you deny inherent righteousness.' And this slander, we really must speak strong words-the charge is, substantially, that the holders of a certain doctrine deny the necessity of holiness, deny the very foundation of morality, we say, then, this shameless slander the British Critic has ventured to repeat. Our comfort is, that no Protestant writers have spoken so explicitly on the subject, as the Anglican Reformers in those Homilies which the Articles declare to contain "godly and wholesome doctrine." With honest boldness one of them says, "For as men, that be very men indeed, first have life, and after be nourished; so must our faith in Christ go before, and after be nourished with good works. And life may be without nourishment, but nourishment cannot be without life. A man must needs be nourished by good works, but first be must have faith. He that doth good deeds, yet without faith, he hath no life. I can show a man that by faith without works lived, and came to hea ven; but without faith never had life. The thief that was hanged when Christ suffered, did believe only, and the most merciful God justified him. And, because no man

shall say again, that he lacked time to do good works, for else he would have done them; truth it is, and I will not contend therein; but this I will surely affirm, that faith only saved him. If he had lived, and not regarded faith, and the works thereof, he should have lost his salvation again. But this is the effect that I say, that faith by itself saved him, but works by themselves never justified any man." So says the Homily; and every Clergyman has declared, in the literal and grammatical sense of the words, that the Homilies "contain a godly and wholesome doctrine." Luther never went farther than this. The thief did believe only, and the most merciful God justified him. Works by themselves never justified any man. Faith only saved him. And is this denying inherent righteousness? Is this saying, that the Gospel does not teach the necessity of obedience, at whatever sacrifice of self? that sin is not to be avoided as the greatest of all evils, dreaded as the greatest of all dangers? So says the British Critic! And the British Critic professes to be a Church publication! After this we shall not wonder to find Dr. Pusey describing the Methodists as heretics, nor the Christian Remembrancer, another CHURCH publication, abusing Mr. Jackson's pamphlet, and describing justification by faith as an invention of Luther. But are not these gentlemen speaking out too soon? Do they fancy the public is prepared to submit to all this? Or that they have Episcopal sanction to carry them through?

For our own part, recollecting that Luther was only a man, and that he had seen so much of the Papal doctrines of inherent righteousness, and good works, our wonder is, that he walked so steadily on so narrow a path; and in stating the true doctrine of justification by faith, so clearly explained not only its consistency, but its inseparable connexion with the doctrine of evangelical holiness.

And this has always been done by those who have written on this sub

ject, excepting here and there a wild and obstinate Antinomian, against whose perversions the most solemn protests have been pronounced and published. And never was it more decidedly the case than with Mr. Wesley. The great theme of his preaching was justification. Wherever he could collect hearers, he called them, not to believe that their sins were forgiven; we leave such palpable contradictions of fact with the Christian Remembrancers; we will dispute with them when they argue; but we take our leave of writers whose articles rest on assertions of the thing that is not,he called them to believe, in order that they might be forgiven; and yet no modern Divine has either carried the details of practical holiness, inward and outward, further, or more asserted its unchanged, its unchangeable, obligation.

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No reader of the Wesleyan Magazine is ignorant of this fact. We will, however, give an extract or two, for the purpose of illustrating it. Thus, in his Fifth Discourse on "the Sermon on the Mount," he says, among much to the same purpose, "On the one hand, the law continually makes way for, and points us to, the Gospel; on the other, the Gospel continually leads us to a more exact fulfilling of the law. The law, for instance, requires us to love God, to love our neighbour, to be meek, humble, or holy we feel we are not sufficient for these things; yea, that with man this is impossible.' But we see a promise of God to give us that love, and to make us meek, humble, and holy we lay hold of this Gospel, of these glad tidings: it is done unto us according to our faith; and 'the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us, through faith which is in Christ Jesus.' And in another part of the same discourse: "It is impossible, indeed, to have too high an esteem for the faith of God's elect.' And we must all declare, By grace ye are saved, through faith; not of works, lest any man boast.' We must cry aloud to every penitent sinner, Believe in the Lord