DOCTRINAL CHARACTER OF METHODISM. "The apostles' doctrine."-Acts ii, 42.

METHODISM was providentially distinguished as the instrument of reviving, in the church, the most important doctrines of spiritual religion. It called the attention of the Christian world anew to three great principles which comprehend the experimental divinity of the Scriptures, relating respectively to the nature, extent, and evidence of personal piety, viz., the doctrines of justification by faith, sanctification, and the witness of the Spirit. These were the great import of the ministry of Wesley and his coadjutors. They started not with the project of a new sect: this, with the disciplinary system upon which it was based, was an unexpected result: they were intent only upon shaking out of their slumbers existing sects, and replenishing the popular mind of Great Britain with the efficacious truths of the original faith.

The great truth of justification by faith, which, under Luther, startled Europe from its sleep of superstition, and produced the Reformation, was the head and front of Wesley's offending. The sermons of the day in the national church, taught baptism as the means of regeneration.

After the sacramental initiation to the church, all that was considered requisite for salvation was a theoretical belief, and an observance of the forms and moralities of religion. Hence, when Wesley preached regeneration as a real and conscious change, effected by a supernatural influence, and procured by faith alone, he was rejected from the pulpits of London, and driven to the streets and fields. The tenet of sanctification, so explicitly taught and distinguished in the Scriptures, was involved in confusion. Its real character was unknown, and it was represented as anterior to justification. The doctrine of the witness of the Spirit, in its legitimate form, was denounced as unscriptural, and the offspring of spiritual presumption.

These were the particular doctrines insisted on by Wesley; but in reviving these he aimed at a general restoration of every department of experimental and practical religion to its primitive efficacy and vigor. He distinguished true piety from forms and morals, by declaring it to be spiritual and miraculous: a principle of inward, fervid life, attesting its divine efficacy by effects so immediate, so profound, and so uniform, under every diversity of circumstances, as to be unquestionably preternatural. By scattering thus the elements of personal piety, he

expected to restore the life of public worship, and kindle afresh the smothered fires of the church altar.

In this supernatural character of Christianity consists its grand peculiarity; here is its contrast with all ethical systems, and with natural religion. They but teach the rules and present the motives of virtue; this affords the strength which is necessary for their practical use-a strength which is extraneous-which, in the sublime language of Scripture, "is sent down from heaven." It is this character of Christianity that mankind are most reluctant to concede, and most inclined to forget. This is its fanaticism, its "foolishness," and yet the rational consistency of the whole system depends upon this feature. Its fundamental truth, the inveterate depravity of our nature, which is likewise taught us by natural religion, requires this counterpart; the practical requirements of Christianity would be impracticable and absurd without it. While, therefore, the foolishly wise discover matter of scorn in this view of religion, to the wisely foolish it exhibits the wisdom as well as the power of God, and gives harmony to the whole analogy of faith. History has demonstrated that the forms of Christianity may exist, in general vogue, among a community whose

This was the case at the

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actual condition is hardly above that of the heathen that it may advance, almost to perfection, the civilization of a people, with scarcely any improvement of their morals; and in every such state of society it will be found that the purely spiritual traits of Christianity, those that particularly belong to experimental theology, are lost sight of. period of the origin of Methodism. Wesley's own testimony made to the age. He says, "A total ignorance of God is universal among us. The exceptions are exceeding few, whether among the learned or unlearned. High and low, cobblers, tinkers, hackney coachmen, men and maid-servants, soldiers, sailors, tradesmen of all ranks, lawyers, physicians, gentlemen, lords, are as ignorant of the true God as Mohammedans or pagans."

The chief reason for that great moral deterioration which followed the restoration of the Stuarts was the absence of the fundamental principles of experimental Christianity in the church. The vital doctrines of the Reformation were almost entirely omitted from the popular inculcation of religion. These doctrines are inwrought into the very texture of the national Liturgy; they were enunciated in its beautiful service weekly, and in many places daily.

They had consoled, in the fires of martyrdom, the fathers of the English Church; but they had become sounds without significance. They were not distinctly exhibited in the preaching of the day, and the devotions of the desk were counteracted by the discourses of the pulpit. The ignorance of the clergy in the knowledge of their profession was incredible, if we can receive Burnet's evidence.

Some of the best theologians of the English Church existed during the period under review; but they were exceptions to the general character of the ministry. The theological student cannot but observe the difference between the writings of even such men as Waterland, Bull, and Tillotson, on the one hand, and the Homilies, the wholesome evangelic productions of the reformers, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, and Jewel, on the other. Whitefield published a sermon on regeneration, which called forth numerous replies, all of which show that, however explicit the doctrine may be in the standards of the church, it was not known exerimentally, nor theoretically, by many of the clergy. One of these declares "that, to tell Christians they must be born again, who, in the soundest sense, were born again [i. e. baptized] in their infancy, is, to say the least, a great impropriety."