Part 34 (2/2)

[Footnote 711: In the Minutes of Conference, 1747, 'What instance or ground is there in the New Testament for a ”_national_” Church? We know none at all,' &c. 'The greatest blow,' he said, 'Christianity ever received was when Constantine the Great called himself a Christian and poured in a flood of riches, honour, and power upon the Christians, more especially upon the clergy.' 'If, as my Lady says, all outward establishments are Babel, so is this establishment. Let it stand for me.

I neither set it up nor pull it down.... Let us build the city of G.o.d.']

[Footnote 712: But he a.s.serts the rights of the civil power in things indifferent, and reminds a correspondent that allegiance to a national Church in no way affects allegiance to Christ.--(Letter in answer to Toogood's _Dissent Justified_, 1752. _Works_, x. 503-6.)]

[Footnote 713: See Bogue and Bennett's _History of Dissenters_, vol. i.

p. 73.]

[Footnote 714: Bishop Horsley, in his first Charge to the Diocese of St.

David's, 1790, expressly distinguishes between a High Churchman in the sense of 'a bigot to the secular rights of the priesthood,' which he declares he is not, and a High Churchman in the sense of an 'upholder of the spiritual authority of the priesthood,' which he owns that he is; and he adds, 'We are more than mere hired servants of the State or laity.']

[Footnote 715: To the same effect in 1777.]

[Footnote 716: So late as 1780 he wrote, 'If I come into any new house, and see men and women together, I will immediately go out.' This was, therefore, no youthful High Church prejudice, which wore off with years.]

[Footnote 717: See Southey's _Life of Wesley_, ii. 85.]

[Footnote 718: Id. 101.]

[Footnote 719: _John Wesley's Place in Church History_, by R. Denny Urlin, p. 70.]

[Footnote 720: 'You have often,' said Wesley to the Moravians in Fetter Lane, 'affirmed that to search the Scripture, to pray, or to communicate before we have faith, is to seek salvation by works, and that till these works are laid aside no man can have faith. I believe these a.s.sertions to be flatly contrary to the word of G.o.d. I have warned you hereof again and again, and besought you to turn back to the law and to the testimony.']

[Footnote 721: 'Do you not neglect joint fasting? Is not the Count all in all? Are not the rest mere shadows?... Do you not magnify your Church too much?' &c., &c.]

[Footnote 722: 'I labour everywhere to speak consistently with that deep sense which is settled in my heart that you are (though I cannot call you, Rabbi, infallible, yet) far, far, better and wiser than me.']

[Footnote 723: And also his strong feeling that the doctrine of reprobation was inconsistent with the love of G.o.d. 'I could sooner,' he wrote, 'be a Turk, a Deist--yea, an atheist--than I could believe this.

It is less absurd to deny the very existence of a G.o.d than to make Him an almighty tyrant.']

[Footnote 724: In March 1741 Mr. Whitefield, being returned to England, entirely separated from Mr. Wesley and his friends, because he did not hold the decrees. Here was the first breach which warm men persuaded Mr.

Whitefield to make merely for a difference of opinion. Those who believed universal redemption had no desire to separate, &c.--Wesley's _Works_, vol. viii. p. 335.]

[Footnote 725: 'If there be a law,' he wrote in 1761, 'that a minister of Christ who is not suffered to preach the Gospel in church should not preach it elsewhere, or a law that forbids Christian people to hear the Gospel of Christ out of their parish church when they cannot hear it therein, I judge that law to be absolutely sinful, and that it is sinful to obey it.']

[Footnote 726: See Tyerman's _Life of Wesley_, ii. 545.]

[Footnote 727: See Tyerman's _Life of Wesley_, ii. 334.]

[Footnote 728: Southey, ii. 71. In 1780 Wesley wrote, 'You seem not to have well considered the rules of a helper or the rise of Methodism. It pleased G.o.d by me to awaken first my brother, then a few others, who severally desired of me as a favour to direct them in all things. I drew up a few plain rules (observe there was no Conference in being) and permitted them to join me on these conditions. Whoever, therefore, violates these conditions does _ipso facto_ disjoin himself from me.

This Brother Macnab has done, but he cannot see that he has done amiss.

The Conference has no power at all but what I exercise through them'

(the preachers).]

[Footnote 729: Letter of Mr. J. Hampson, jun., quoted by Rev. L.

Tyerman, _Life of Wesley_, vol. iii. p. 423.]

[Footnote 730: Robert Southey, _pa.s.sim_.]

[Footnote 731: In a letter to Mr. Walker, of Truro, 1756.]

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