INTRODUCTION.
PART I.
Man, amidst an almost infinite variety of circumstances, and modified, both in body and mind, by a thousand accidental influences, is, in every age and country, essentially the same. The os sublime and the mens alta alike distinguish him from the other inhabitants of the earth, and show, whatever may be his complexion and mental training, that God has made him to have dominion over the works of his hands—has put all things in subjection under him. Nor is there less of identity in man’s moral propensities than in his corporeal and instinctive powers. Bent from his original rectitude, he stoops towards earth and the things of earth, and gives sad proof of having lost affection for the Source of his existence, and of being inclined to worship the creature more than the Creator. The rude savage, the superstitious devotee, and the intellectual sceptic do not like to retain God in their knowledge—that God who is “glorious in holiness,” who is partially made known to his creatures by the works of his hands, and more fully revealed, and in a more encouraging light, by the words of his mouth.
This Atheistic spirit laboured with a giant’s strength to deface the character of Deity impressed on the world before the flood; had cursed the earth with abominable idolatry, or with heartless superstition, before the coming of our Lord in the flesh; and, not satisfied with the mischief effected under dispensations of mercy less intelligible and distinct, has, to a most awful extent, corrupted a Church, professedly Christian, as it had polluted both the Jewish temple and the Patriarchal tent. To educe good out of evil is the province of the Supreme Good; to pervert the good, and, so far as it relates to his own perceptions and conduct, to abuse and prostitute it to the worst of purposes, is, alas! the work of man.
Nothing can more affectingly evince the truth of this remark than the contrast of the Church of Rome with the Church of the Apostles; than the pomp and mummery, the dogmatism and tyranny, the secularity, the superstition, and the heathenism of Popery, with the simplicity, the spirituality, and the divinity of that religion which the writers of the New Testament advocated, for which they all suffered, and for which most of them died. The vapour which, rising from the twofold shores of Corinth and the province of Galatia, annoyed St. Paul, continued to spread itself and to increase in density, till the true Church of Jesus Christ became scarcely perceptible, and ultimately was totally obscured by the thick and dark cloud. Let the mind proceed from the apostles to Eusebius, thence to Augustine, and the next advance is to settled darkness, rendered visible by a few solitary rays of piety—real, though faint and sickly—and the transient scintillations of scholastic wit and learning. The page of ecclesiastical history, though inscribed by persons less evangelical than the Milners, will show that even superstition was only one shade in the dark ages; that vital godliness, as if in disgust, had fled from the Church, as she was pleased to call herself, to deserts, and mountains, and dens, and caves of the earth; that justification before God, by faith alone in Jesus Christ, the “Articulus stantis aut cadentis Ecclesiæ,” as Luther termed it, was buried beneath the records of Councils and the volumes of Fathers; and that men, having renounced the Lord as their RIGHTEOUSNESS, were without him as their STRENGTH. Like Samson, the Church was shorn of her energy and deprived of sight—the sport of the Philistines.
It was the glory of the Reformation that it struck at the root of the evil. The Church of Rome, not satisfied with seeking righteousness by the works of the law, must needs arrogate to herself a property in works of supererogation, and impudently bring it into the market; but for this daring imposition on common sense, the fire of Luther might have been employed rather in consuming the drapery of the Man of Sin than in the destruction of his person. The sale of indulgences, however, was such an outrage on the principle of the Gospel, that it roused his powerful mind, even when only partially enlightened, to bring all its united force against the blighting and unholy doctrine of human merit. Thus, in the process of resuscitation, the Holy Spirit, by the agency of the Reformers, instead of restoring vital heat by friction at the extremities, breathed into the dead Church the breath of life, and restored to her a living soul. Animation diffused itself through a vast range of nominal Christians, converting them into living members of the body of Christ; and the life, which was felt to be redeemed, was consecrated to Him “who loved his Church, and gave himself for it.”
The number of truly converted persons was, no doubt, very considerable in the days of the Reformers, and the hallowed work progressed under their survivors, both on the continent of Europe and in Great Britain. It would, however, be false charity to conclude that all Protestants, even during the warmth and freshness of the Reformation, were true Christians: an acquaintance with the history of the times and with human nature, as well as with the subsequent condition of Protestant Christendom, will compel us to say, “that all were not Israel who were of Israel;” that multitudes, from political and secular motives, and from the force of custom, or from a conviction of the truth rather as an intellectual than as a moral proposition, protested more against the errors of the Man of Sin than against his iniquities, and were more anxious for emancipation from the thraldom of superstition, than from the bondage of corruption. The easy transition, indeed, of the majority from one state to another, under Henry the Eighth and the youthful Edward; their coming back again to Popery under Mary; and their ready return to Protestantism under her sister, proves that, however many loved the truth, even unto the death, more were indifferent to its divine claims, and accommodated themselves to the times. The Vicar of Bray was only one of many who ebbed and flowed with the ocean, and of those who will always show that a national religious improvement may be effected where the renewal of the mind in the great body of society does not take place. Worldly men will preserve the element of their character amidst great external modifications—an element as decidedly opposed to the holy and humbling truths of the Gospel in the Protestant as in the Papist, though exhibited under different forms.
This was the case in the reign of Elizabeth. We hail, indeed, with feelings kindred with those of Milton when he escaped “the Stygian Pool,” the settling of a better order of ecclesiastical affairs, the liberty of prophesying given to the ministers of Christ, and the eminent piety, learning, and zeal of many of the clergy. Her reign is as illustrious for men devoted to the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ as it is for patriots and politicians: the preaching and the writings of those men, some of whom were the survivors of the martyrs, and of whom others seemed to grow out of their ashes, tended much to instruct the people in the great principles of the Gospel. These labourers, however, were few, compared with the extent and population of their spheres of action, and they could not fail to leave the mass of the people without the knowledge of true religion, and, consequently, unrenewed by its power. Nay, the majority of those who professed to guide the blind were themselves, it is to be feared, destitute of the wisdom that cometh from above, and thus unqualified to show to others the way of salvation; for we are informed that, “by the Report of the visitors to the Queen, it was found that comparatively very few of the Popish Bishops, Clergy, and Heads of Colleges, resigned their preferments on account of the new order of things; and it was remembered that the greatest part of them went with the tide in Edward’s reign, and veered about as readily with the wind on the accession of Mary.” (Custance’s Reformation). It would have been ex fumo dare lucem, indeed, if such men had done much towards the evangelizing of the nation. The Queen, herself a genuine Tudor, aiming at absolute sovereignty, wished to encircle her throne with clouds of darkness, admitting only so much light as might show that she, and not the Bishop of Rome, was seated on it. She chose, and with reason, men of powerful minds to assist her in working the State machine; but she by no means wished that society at large should be enlightened with principles which, raising the intellectual as well as the moral character, and cherishing a consciousness of this elevation, would probably lead her subjects to question, where it was more convenient to her that they should obey. “One preacher is enough for a county,” was the recorded expression of her sentiment on this most important subject.
We must, therefore, conclude, that under this extraordinary ruler—for one does not like to contemplate her as a woman—the nation, as a whole, with all its improvements, was dark, or, at best, only relieved with a dim religious light. Under James, the Bible was re-translated, copies of it were multiplied, and ministers sincerely Protestant greatly increased in number; but there was a re-action in theological sentiments, which tended to lower the tone of piety in those even who were truly religious. Calvinism, as it is called, had, before this reign, in numerous instances, assumed an appearance of harshness, in the employment of supralapsarian terms, though so generally and ably supported by men of the most holy character and kindly hearts; but now the influence of Arminius was experienced. A large part of the clergy went over from scholastic terms and metaphysical notions, more speculative than practical, to doctrines which, as they reject the grace by which we are saved, necessarily leave the soul, amidst all its moral boastings, in the bonds of iniquity. This obscuration of the glorious Gospel of the blessed God by low, self-righteous instructors, more than by any affectation of godliness, in the time of the Protector, prepared the nation for that laxity, both of morals and of creed—that licentiousness and infidelity, which stamp infamy on the reign of the second Charles. The ribaldry of Rochester, the wit of Butler, and the buffoonery of South, all had a baneful influence on the court and the nation, and obscured the holy light which had appeared to radiate from the stake of the martyrs.
Morals and religious principles have perhaps never been at a lower ebb in our nation, since the Reformation, than during this period—a period, the true character of which it is one of the most difficult studies in English history to determine. Even the best men of the age, in their joy for a restored monarchy, and bewilderment at the splendour and politeness of the Court, were led to give a false colour to their records of these times, and to merge the all-important considerations of morals and truth in the theoretic speculations of a civil and religious establishment. Whatever may be said on the question of equity, there can, we imagine, be no doubt in an unprejudiced Christian, that the ejecting of the Nonconformists, and the patronizing of a very different class of men, taken as a whole, both ecclesiastic and secular, was a heavy blow inflicted on true piety, and introduced a style of preaching which operates as a soporific on the moral sense, and as a cloud on the moral vision. Most victories are costly, and the triumph of monarchical principle, however desirable, by overlaying the living and evangelical spirit with a uniform machinery, in too many instances worked by careless hands, was gained at an expense which it is not easy to calculate, but which must qualify the pleasure suggested to a loyal heart by the return of the twenty-ninth of May.
England may well be proud of the science and literature of the subsequent age, and call it Augustan. Newton and Locke, in the worlds of matter and of mind; Dryden, Pope, and Thomson, in that of the imagination; and Addison, with a host of prose writers, on subjects of taste and morals—have given it claims to distinction, and illuminated its pages in intellectual history. These writers obtained great influence over the nation, and whatever good they effected, by giving currency to thought, they directed it in channels leading from evangelical piety, to sentiment, and ethics, and taste, or to physical knowledge. The waters were indeed clear and beautiful, but they were unhealthy, and, in some respects, the opposite of the prophetic stream, of which it is predicated, “Everything shall live whither the river cometh.” The most chaste and moral of these popular works, though recognizing Christianity, are unvivified by its spirit; and while they advocate the claims of virtue, found not their argument on the principles of the Gospel, and teach, often not otherwise than as a heathen would have taught, social duties and graces, rather than “the obedience of faith.” The founder of Methodism was not far from the truth when he said that few things were more unfriendly to the progress of the Gospel than the national fondness for Addison’s Spectator.
Nor was the political feeling without its baneful influence on the religious character of the people. As the fashion of the Court, under the profligate Charles, had raised up many wits, like Butler, to caricature true piety, by confounding it with hypocrisy, so the repeated efforts made to restore the Stuarts filled Protestants with a dread of change, and induced the High Church party, most unjustly, to consider all Dissenters, however attached to the House of Brunswick, and however excelling in all the virtues of true religion, as confederate with the Scottish Nonjurors and Jacobites; and thus, by an easy though fallacious transition, to identify evangelical doctrine with revolutionary propensities.
This, as the following work will show, was a reason assigned by the local magistrates of the day for their leaving the Methodist preachers unprotected to the mal-treatment of the mob, in opposition to royal pleasure directly expressed; and this, too, was the pretext under which the magistrates themselves avowedly and ostensibly excited the ignorant to violence and outrage. Let us not be deemed illiberal if we notice, as one cause of the general apathy, the great popularity of Tillotson. It would, indeed, be uncandid and unjust not to recognize his numerous excellences, both as a man and as a writer, and his merit of giving a more popular character to pulpit addresses in the Established Church; but whatever other good his sermons may have effected, there was little in them to send the people home imbued with the great principles of the Gospel, and sympathizing with St. Paul, when he exclaims, “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”
An almost total absence of evangelical doctrine—the blood of sprinkling—and an evident carelessness about the great object of the Christian ministry, even where there may not be gaiety and immorality of conduct, are so palpably inconsistent and reprehensible in a professed minister of the Gospel, that the evil, in a great degree, neutralizes itself; but when moral excellence combines with truth indeed, animated with zeal and affection, yet lacking that prominence of the all-important doctrines of revelation which the Holy Ghost has in all ages been pleased to bless to the glorifying of Christ, a sort of quietus is ministered to the conscience, and decorum and formality take the place of “repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ.” Such writers as Tillotson, and his older friend, Barrow, will be studied with advantage by men spiritually minded, because such readers will give an evangelical cast to the strong reasoning and beautiful illustrations of these writers; but where the tone of feeling is to be received from the authors themselves, we cannot but think that it will be cold. English literature, from Steele to Johnson, though its period has become an era in the history of morals, has had the same tendency. Amusement and instruction, taste and decorum, were circulated among a people now denominated “a reading nation;” but who ever heard of a sinner being brought to true repentance, and to rejoice in Christ Jesus, having no confidence in the flesh, by a paper of the Spectator or of the Rambler? All these movements, indeed, had a beneficial influence on society, in preparing the way for a revival in religion, by exciting the attention and teaching the mind how to think; but the direct effect, in most cases, of such instruction, was either to lull the moral sense altogether, or to awaken it to a class of feelings of a self-righteous character, and, as such, opposed to the Gospel—the righteousness which is of God by faith.
Thus the slumbering embers of the martyr-flame had died out, and a degeneracy of doctrine and profligacy of manners had spread a chilling and destructive influence over a partially enlightened community; and infidelity, political convulsions, and even literature itself, had each contributed its quota to form a national soporific. Happily, there were a few in the national pulpits who had not drank of this cup, and among the Dissenters some holy men, such as Watts and Doddridge, well represented those who had suffered for conscience sake after the Restoration. Theological writings, too, had accumulated, which will continue to instruct and bless the Church of Christ till she shall know even as she is known: but there was a heaviness in those folios, and too much of evenness in the public ministrations of the word, for an age which needed a moral disturbance to prevent its sleeping the sleep of death. Arguments against infidelity, and ethics cold though beautiful, were the usual themes of the parochial desk; and the withering influence of Arianism, or of a heartless orthodoxy, produced death in many of the Dissenting congregations. England and Wales, therefore, in an improved condition of politics and literature, and perhaps also of morals, was generally benumbed by the torpedo of formality; and the vital feeling and zealous activity of Christianity were known to the few only, and these rather mourned over the state of things in secret, than exerted themselves in public to effect an alteration.
It is not for us to hazard even a conjecture respecting the number of persons who truly loved our Lord Jesus in this country at the earlier part of the last century. Piety is essentially a quiet and secret thing, and, though it labours to do good at all times, is greatly dependent on circumstances for the platform on which it acts—that may be the domestic hearth, or it may be “a spectacle to the world.” At this period, as if wearied with political distractions and disgusted with the impertinence of infidelity, the pious of all denominations very much sought retirement. We may hope, therefore, that the number of those who loved the Gospel was much greater than at first, and by comparison with the present age, it seems to have been; and perhaps no documents furnished greater proofs of this delightful fact than the early correspondence of the Countess of Huntingdon. This gives the most satisfactory evidence that “honourable women not a few,” and some men also in the highest walks, were quietly exercising the Christian graces, and waiting and longing for better days, before the Methodists had obtained publicity. Christians in the lower ranks of the community, though less conspicuous, were not likely to be far behind the rich and the noble in true religion; from which we infer that a goodly number, even in those seasons of visible lifelessness, was reserved by himself for the God of all grace, especially to hail and to aid the new era which was about to rise on the Church. Extending charity, however, to the utmost point which correct judgment will allow, we must look back on that period with feelings far from pleasurable. The Church is not likely to be in a healthy state when she is without exercise, and when she makes little or no aggressions on the world; nor can she richly enjoy those blessings herself which she is not anxious to distribute to others. But there are speculations which may not become us: “the day shall declare it.”
Happy was it for the world that this slumbering did not continue—that men arose, who, instead of enquiring about the number who should be saved, themselves strove to enter in at the strait gate, and zealously endeavoured to excite others to follow their example. The rise of Methodism now took place, in a band of brothers who studied at Oxford. Mr. John Wesley, in point of time as well as of talent, may be considered the first, though it is evident that He, who brings the blind by a way they know not, was simultaneously preparing the hearts of many for a most efficient co-operation in the blessed work about to be performed. Such were Whitefield, Charles Wesley, Ingham, and Hervey. The piety of these great men was deep and energetic, and it clothed them with so much boldness, that, although their pretensions were humble, and they were in a great degree the creatures of circumstances, as well as of divine grace, yet they were distinguished from their contemporaries—even from the best of them—and appeared the representatives of the ancient prophets and apostles. Men felt that they were the servants of the Most High, and earnest in declaring unto them the way of salvation. Like the ministry of John the Baptist, theirs was a voice in the wilderness, and while it proclaimed the kingdom of heaven, it was heard with no ordinary attention.
The reader who, piously curious, desires to trace the movements of the Holy Spirit on the heart, will find no common gratification in the following records: he will behold, in so many parts of the great deep, numerous symptoms of life, and will conclude that they are not to be attributed to any artificial or partial heat, but to divine power. “The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” There is, perhaps, no error to which we are more exposed than that of supposing that the originators of a series of movements, à priori, saw the whole process from the beginning, and acted from plan rather than from circumstances. We see the connexion which an event has with its antecedent, and therefore imagine the agent was well acquainted with the tendency of the one to effect the other. Universal experience, however, contradicts this inference: even in the history of men of this world, whose plans are often sagaciously formed, and whose object is more definite, we see that the ultimate success is more owing to a skilful and prompt use of accidents than to the guidance of an original design. No philosophy, independently of experience, could foresee the branching and stately oak in the acorn.
To assert, therefore, that the founders of Methodism began their career by chalking out their future operations, is to pay a compliment to their foresight at the expense of truth, and of the continued superintendence of that Being who apportions to his servants their daily work, as much as he does their daily bread. God has a plan, but he does not expose it to the workmen of the temple: it is enough that each knows what he has to do, and how to perform it, at the present moment.
The following history will abundantly verify these sentiments. Can a sober man, however systematized, imagine that anything like the impression which was made would have been effected, both in our own country and in America, if the leaders of the cause—all of whom were attached to the Established Church—had maintained what is called regularity, and a tame canonical obedience to men who had no spirit of enterprise in their character? Would the highways and hedges have been visited? Would the various branches of orthodox Dissenters have been roused to co-operation? Would lay agency have been made available to the furtherance of the cause? Would the more regular clergy themselves have been so active and useful within the pale of their own community, if there had been no pressure and provocation from without?
Now, nothing is more evident than that this irregularity was unintended. Zeal, indeed, was enkindled, but it would have continued to warm the churches had it not been dislodged by ecclesiastical power. The fire, however, was inextinguishable; and being forbidden to burn on the usual altar, it sought every avenue of escape, and visited and blessed other places. Field-preaching succeeded rejection from the churches; and the Countess of Huntingdon, who thought only of chaplains for her preachers, and of Episcopal ordination for her students, was at length compelled, very much against her will, to violate ecclesiastical order, and shelter herself and her companions in zeal under the Act of Toleration. This growth in the cause of the Gospel, and extension of their original design, characterize these “workers together with God,” and secure all the glory of the plan, as it does that of the execution, to Him: while this view of the economy meets a thousand objections urged by the enemies of vital godliness against this labour of mercy.
If, turning from the more general to the more particular instance, we contemplate the chief subject of the following biography, we shall recognize the same characteristic of divine guidance. How steadily and beautifully does grace advance in the Countess! We follow her, in the present history, from the girl of nine years of age, impressed with solemn thought and purposes on witnessing a funeral, through a series of changes, till we mark an elevation of spirit truly and sublimely Christian, which rises above the splendour of a court—which dares to allow zeal to act, first in visiting the poor—then in opening the drawing-room for noble hearers of the Gospel—then in the employment of laymen and in providing chapels for the accommodation of the multitude, even although those chapels were to be denominated conventicles! The CHILD becomes a MOTHER in Israel indeed, and theologians of the first-rate powers feel it a privilege to learn the way of God more perfectly from the lips and the pen of this saintly woman.
No contemplative mind will peruse The Life and Times of the Countess of Huntingdon without noticing the power and the beauty of divine grace, when brought in contact with a vigorous mind, elevated in society by nobility and fortune. That energy which, unsanctified, gives obstinacy to prejudice and pride to vanity, when under the control of “the meekness of wisdom” leads to boldness of investigation, the avowal of Evangelical truth, and to humility, which, in the sight of God, is of great price.
It will be difficult, indeed, to find an instance of the power of God unto salvation brighter than that here exhibited. A woman, a noble personage, a favourite at Court, the wife of a nobleman who only tolerated and aided her zeal as he was won over by her chaste conversation; a widow, and at times much afflicted in her children—living, too, in an age when the gaiety and superstition of the nation were scarcely disturbed by the sober and reasonable voice of truth—every disadvantage overcome, and a meek yet firm profession made of love to our Lord Jesus Christ.
Nor is the providence less conspicuous than the grace of God in the Life of the Countess, as related to her Times. There was needed a hallowed work in progress among the poor and middle classes in society, but the means of reaching these, which the necessity of the case directed, such as preaching in fields and in barns, were not likely to command the attention of the rich and the noble. There needed, therefore, an instrument to bring the Gospel into friendly contact with the highest ranks. This instrument was the Countess. There was an attraction and an influence about her which were felt by many of the great in an extraordinary degree; and not only the courtly Chesterfield, the political Duchess of Marlborough, the gay and frivolous Nash, but the infidel Bolingbroke paid her marked and sincere homage, and listened to the preachers whom she patronized and commended. Many will, doubtless, be astonished, on reading the following pages, to find so large a number of distinguished personages brought by this zealous woman to hear the word of truth, as well in the despised conventicle as in her own habitation. It was thus, by applying the discharging-rod to the two extremes, that a shock was given, and that circulation and sensibility were effected in the social body. Many of the rich and more of the poor met together, and their place of meeting was the foot of the cross. How wisely God adapts his agents to his work!
The personal character of the Countess of Huntingdon will be best seen in the general history of her Life and Times: she stands, indeed, so connected with almost all which was good in the last century, that the character of the age, so far as religion is concerned, was in some measure her own. It is not insinuated that she alone impressed that character on the Church, but that she entirely sympathized with it, and was not a whit behind the foremost in affection for souls and zeal for God—in spirituality of mind and fervour of devotion—in contrivance and energy for the extension of the Gospel—in a large and disinterested soul. If she did not appear as the public advocate of the cause, it was because a woman is forbidden to speak in the Church; and if she did not more excel in literary productions, it was because she knew her proper talent—that she was rather fitted to think with vigour and comprehensiveness, than to marshal words to please a critical review. She never, indeed, seems to have thought of the manner and structure of her sentences, but only of giving utterance to the sentiments—always pious, frequently burning—which filled her breast. Those who may be inclined to blame her letters, as deficient in smoothness and perspicuity, will do well to remember that they were not intended for the public eye; they will also admit that some minds of a high order and especially endowed with a power over others, are remarkable for an abruptness of expression which sometimes involves confusion: of this Cromwell was a striking instance. The mental powers of Lady Huntingdon were anything but feeble. No lady, however pious and exalted by rank, could have commanded such respect as she did, unless in the possession of intellectual superiority. The sincerity of her piety and the ardour of her zeal were felt by the first personages of the land, as they were combined with the force of her understanding; and it is believed that the recognition of this fact, in the following work, will, by all impartial readers, be considered a sufficient refutation of Dr. Southey’s poetic imaginings of her mental weakness, and, indeed, insanity!
It will, likewise, be seen that the vigour of the Countess’s mind and the boldness of her zeal were in perfect keeping with the feminine graces. She was not an Elizabeth. The lady, the friend of the poor, the wife, the mother, the sister, the widow—all private and domestic relations—were adorned by her elegance and affection, her meekness of wisdom and boundless kindness, her chaste and winning conversation. The reader will find it difficult to judge whether she appears to the greater advantage when co-operating with the spirits which were effecting a change throughout the moral world, or when quietly moving in domestic and social life.
The circumstances, too, in which she was placed, were favourable to the development of her character. Light enough shone on the professing Church to render the darkness visible; the efforts of the Oxford band, with those of other pious ministers of various denominations, both in England and in Scotland, had brought the deadness of merely formal Christianity into juxtaposition with the living truth of the Gospel, and the Countess saw the contrast, and her eye affected her heart. She wept, she vowed, she acted. She determined to throw all the weight of her influence into the scale of the Gospel; and while considerations of sex, of the disposition and views of her beloved lord, of the rank she held, and which she was so well qualified to support, would have restrained an ordinary mind of common piety from public interference, these very circumstances to her appeared to be talents of great worth, and she was excited to employ them to the greatest advantage. She beheld the rude and cruel treatment which holy men endured, as well from the educated and wealthy as from the ignorant and poor—from magistrates and ecclesiastics as much as from private individuals; and for what? For promulgating the truth—truth which she felt was essential to human salvation—and she generously stepped forward to their defence and encouragement. She had magnanimity enough to break the ranks of her order, and attraction enough to induce many to follow her example. She was as persevering as she was courageous; and you see her, having passed the rubicon, steadily advancing to the capitol. She remembered Lot’s wife; and no opposition—no unforeseen difficulty—no associations necessary to the furtherance of her work, however plebeian, could induce her to look backward. When, therefore, it was necessary to remove out of the drawing-room into the chapel, she did remove; and when she could no longer conduct the services with an ecclesiastical regularity, to which she was attached to the utmost reasonable extent, she braved the reproach of the conventicle; and as the demand for help increased, while clerical labourers were few, she went before even Wesley in taking advantage of lay agency. She followed where, in her judgment, God was pleased to direct; and, secluded from her former elegant associations, she ultimately gave up herself entirely to the direction of her college and of her more immediate Connexion, and to the most really Catholic co-operation with all who loved the Lord Jesus in sincerity.
The world has, perhaps, never seen a finer instance of the power of divine grace, in enabling the mind to rise above all the unchristian restraints of State etiquette, the prejudice of early ecclesiastical associations, and the spirit of party and sectarianism. The last triumph will be viewed by some who understand human nature as the greatest of the three; for it is easier to shake off the trammels of rank and of education, than to merge the individuality of selfishness in the general cause of souls and of Christ. In this fine characteristic, to the glory of her age let it be recorded, the Countess met with much sympathy. Her Life and Times will prove how grand, how sublime, were the views of most of the distinguished agents in the work of God at that stirring period. With the exception of the leader of the great section of Methodism—whose intention to organize a distinct body we do not blame—all seemed to be so intent on the general good of the Church, that they overlooked the advantage of their own particular denominations, and were too eager to pluck men as brands from the burning, to spend time and energy in discussing questions of comparative non-importance. It was, indeed, to be expected that a time of greater leisure and calmness would follow, and that then an opportunity would be furnished of investigating the merits of the respective modes of worship and forms of government. We blame not this exercise when kept in a subordinate station; but who, possessed of a shred of the Countess’s mantle, does not weep over the state of truly Evangelical parties in the present day of strife? So far from combining their powers to oppose and overturn infidelity and idolatry, they more than waste a large portion of them in direct contention with each other. This is an unholy warfare indeed—a species of fratricide. What, indeed, is Churchmanship or Dissent compared with the salvation of the soul? The spirits of the noble group encircling the truly Catholic Selina return an answer—“What indeed!”
Should the perusal of the following pages enkindle no breast into zeal for Christ, they will certainly fail of their reward; for we can scarcely conceive of anything, next to the history of our blessed Lord and his apostles, more likely, under the divine blessing, to set the heart on fire than the facts here recorded. Zeal, glowing, active, untiring zeal, animates all the story, and forms the living soul of the entire body: and while, on the one hand, we behold how God honours zeal in his servants, in making it tell so powerfully on the world; on the other hand, we see the proper workings of the doctrines of the cross, and how they consecrate the affections and form the true philanthropist. Let the world be brought under the action of the same principles, and what a scene of brotherly kindness and charity, of mutual zeal, of millennial happiness, will it exhibit!
The publication of the Life and Times of the Countess of Huntingdon will appear to many very opportune, as a spirit of missionary enterprize has been conferred on the Churches, and success has attended, in an extraordinary degree, the efforts which have been made in the South Sea Islands,[1] so dear to the heart of this zealous and almost prophetic woman; and as the Lord has put it into the hearts of many to seek, with growing earnestness, the revival of this work at home. Those who look upon meetings of Christians for especial prayer for the Holy Ghost, or upon public exertions in endeavouring to impress the conscience and win over the heart to Christ, with surprise, as though some new thing had happened, will stand corrected as they find how the present movements were anticipated by those holy personages whose lives are here recorded. Had their successors in the great work been warmed with their zeal, and secured the aid of the Almighty with prayer, united and continuous as theirs, the Church would have presented a different appearance. We only, therefore, seem to be returning to the piety and fervour of the days of old, when we become most anxious to work out our principles and to win souls to our divine Redeemer. The rise and success of Methodism, in all its sections, are the models of revival meetings, and an encouragement to engage in them.
Those persons who may look on the gracious principle of the Gospel with fear or disapprobation will remember, that if the sacred band to which these pages refer did, in their zeal for the Gospel of the grace of God, ride over the forms of dull and lifeless ethics, which had been so generally adopted, and if they did offend the vicious and the self-righteous, their object was as pure as it was benevolent. They carried with them “letters of commendation” in the holiness of their own conduct, and personified the apostolic sentiment, that “grace reigns through righteousness.” Let any man of impartial mind read the following biography, and then say that the tendency of a gratuitous salvation is licentious. Nor could such a leader, however attached to one of the great sections of Methodism, with any fairness, charge the followers of the other leader, as a body, either with an undermining of moral requirements, or with a rejection of the righteousness which is of God by faith. Let facts, and not à priori reasoning, guide the judgment, and it will decide that the doctrines of faith are doctrines which purify the heart; and that the essential, plain, scriptural statements and belief of those doctrines, and not scholastic and metaphysical refinements, are the great instruments, in the economy of our salvation, of transforming the mind and of adorning the character with the Christian graces. The day is gone by, we trust, or at least it ought to have passed away, when either party shall condemn the other for deductions which are not admitted; when the Calvinist shall charge the Wesleyan with denying a sinner’s justification in the sight of God by faith alone in Jesus Christ; and when the Wesleyan shall teach his hearers to identify the Calvinistic scheme, as it is generally received, with the monstrous practical error of Antinomianism. “My little children, love one another.” Perhaps few, since the days of the catholic and amiable Apostle John, have repeated these words with more sincerity and emphasis than Selina, Countess of Huntingdon. She chose her side of the controversy—and, we think, with reason; but however strongly those writers might have expressed themselves, whom, on the whole, she approved, and whatever transient alienations may have taken place, they were clouds passing before the sun: the habit of her mind was Christian affection, and her prayer was for grace to be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.
A rigid examiner and critic of the following papers may, perhaps, be able to detect some variations, at different periods of her life, in the minuter parts of the Countess’s creed, as well as in her attachments—a temporary leaning towards mysticism, or towards legality, or towards hyper-Calvinism; but these aberrations were kept within bounds, and mutually corrected each other. He will, however, never find a want of true Catholicity, or the temperament of piety low and frigid. The fervour of her Christian affections would not allow her to be indifferent and heartless; her strong sense and reverence for the holy Scriptures preserved her from the practical errors of the mystics; and her views of the Saviour were too enlarged to admit of self-righteous pride; while her concern for the glory of God and the salvation of mankind was too abiding and active to suffer her to be otherwise than “zealous of good works.” She practically as well as theoretically confessed her imperfection and sinfulness, whilst she rejoiced in the all-sufficiency of God her Saviour; and of no one perhaps whose name adorns the history of the Church of Christ can it be said with greater propriety than of this extraordinary Lady—“Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all. Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.”
J. K. FOSTER.
Cheshunt College,
April 15th, 1839.