Well did such sentiments harmonise with the spirit and the life of Wesley’s old and faithful friend; and mournful is the fact, that they were so soon utterly ignored by the party of which Whitefield had been the chief. No sooner was Wesley’s sermon preached and published, than it was attacked, because he had omitted to mention the election and final perseverance of the saints. His doctrines of “the new birth and justification by faith” were a defective, precarious scheme, and abortive as to saving purposes; because, according to his tenets, a man may be justified by faith, and be born again, and yet never enjoy eternal life, unless he does more for himself, to make his salvation effectual, than has been done for him by the blood and righteousness of Christ.⁠[113]

Whitefield bequeathed his orphan house estate in Georgia, with all its “buildings, lands, and negroes,” “to that elect lady, that mother in Israel, that mirror of true and undefiled religion, the Right Honourable Selina, Countess Dowager of Huntingdon.” His two chapels in London, with his books and furniture in the Tabernacle house, were left to his “worthy, trusty, tried friends, Messrs. Daniel West and Robert Keen.” Within the last three years, he had become possessed, by legacies, of about £1700, including £700 accruing to him at his wife’s decease; and this amount he bequeathed to a whole host of friends, the largest share falling to the Countess of Huntingdon; while, in an addendum to his will, he says: “I also leave a mourning ring to my honoured and dear friends and disinterested fellow labourers, the Rev. Messrs. John and Charles Wesley, in token of my indissoluble union with them, in heart and Christian affection, notwithstanding our differences in judgment about some particular points of doctrine. Grace be with all them, of whatever denomination, that love our Lord Jesus, our common Lord, in sincerity.”⁠[114]

Thus died one of the greatest Christian orators that ever lived,—a man who, though often heavily afflicted, preached, in four-and-thirty years, upwards of eighteen thousand sermons,⁠[115] many of them in the open air, and often to enormous crowds, and in the teeth of brutal persecution.⁠[116]

Space forbids enlargement; but, perhaps, two unpublished letters, belonging to this period, may be welcome. The first was addressed to Matthew Lowes, and the second to Miss Foard, who afterwards became Mrs. Thornton, of 86, Blackman Street, Southwark.

Little more, in reference to 1770, remains to be related. To a great extent, mob violence was ended; but Wesley was still the target at which literary malice shot its shafts. The aid of the Muses was again invoked, and some unknown poetaster issued an octavo pamphlet of 39 pages, entitled, “The Perfections of God,—a standing Rule to try all Doctrines and Experience. A Poem humbly offered to the consideration of Mr. John Wesley and his followers.” This was evidently the production of one of his Calvinistic friends. Hence the following⁠—

Again, in reference to the “Hymn on God’s Everlasting Love,” we have the following choice morceau.

In addition to the above, there was published a sermon of 32 pages, 8vo, entitled “Methodistical Deceit: a Sermon preached in the parish church of St. Matthew, Bethnal Green, by Haddon Smith, curate of the said church.”

It is right to say that Mr. Smith’s discourse is levelled against the Calvinistic Methodists, of whom, however, he unfortunately speaks as though they were all the Methodists that existed. Remembering the recent origin of the Methodist movement, and the unparalleled opposition it had been its lot to encounter, it is somewhat amusing to find the Bethnal Green curate describing the Methodists as “the overbearing sect”; perhaps it was a lapsus linguæ; or perhaps the Rev. Mr. Smith began to see, that crushing the system with the iron heel of persecution only diffused its fragrance wider; and that, after all, Methodism, instead of dying, was every year more vigorous than ever. Mr. Smith was severely handled in a pamphlet of 40 pages, with the title, “Letters to the Rev. Mr. Haddon Smith, occasioned by his Curious Sermon entitled Methodistical Deceit; by Philalethes.”

Wesley’s own publications, in 1770, were as follows.

1. “An Extract from Dr. Young’s Night Thoughts, on Life, Death, and Immortality.” 12mo, 241 pages. Wesley professed to have left out all the lines in Young, which he “apprehended to be either childish, or flat, or turgid, or obscure”; and appended brief explanations of the words and phrases, which he thought would be scarcely understood by unlearned readers.

2. “Minutes of several Conversations between the Rev. Messrs. John and Charles Wesley and others.” 8vo, 60 pages. This was a new and enlarged edition of the minutes published in 1763, embracing minutes of all the conferences held from that period to the year 1770.

3. “A Sermon on the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield.” 8vo, 32 pages.

4. “Free Thoughts on the Present State of Public Affairs.” 8vo, 47 pages. This was published in the midst of the terrible national confusion, produced by the dissolute and unprincipled anarchist,—the infamous John Wilkes. The pamphlet has been already noticed in a previous chapter.⁠[117]

5. It was Wesley’s purpose to leave Augustus Toplady in the hands of Walter Sellon. He did this, in one respect, but not in another. For instance, he published a small 12mo tract of eight pages, with the title, “What is an Arminian?” He writes: “To say, ‘this man is an Arminian,’ has the same effect on many hearers as to say, ‘this is a mad dog.’ It puts them into a fright at once; they run away from him with all speed and diligence; and will hardly stop, unless it be to throw a stone at the dreadful and mischievous animal.” He then proceeds to show, that the differences between an Arminian and a Calvinist may all be reduced to a single sentence,—the Calvinist believes that God has eternally and absolutely decreed to save such and such persons, and no others; that these cannot resist the saving grace that He imparts; and that they cannot finally fall from that grace, which they are not able to resist. An Arminian holds doctrines just the opposite of these. Wesley concludes his tract by advising both Arminian and Calvinist preachers never to use, either in public or private, the word “Calvinist,” or “Arminian,” as a term of reproach, seeing this was neither better nor worse than calling names,—a practice as inconsistent with good sense and good manners as it is with Christianity itself.

6. Besides this, Wesley issued another tract, entitled, “The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination Stated and Asserted. By the Rev. Mr. A.—— T——.” 12mo, 12 pages. This was a faithful abridgment of Toplady’s translation of Zanchius, without note or comment, except a short advertisement at the beginning, and a paragraph at the end, both of which we give verbatim.

This was stinging; especially when compared with the concluding paragraph⁠—

This was the whole of Wesley’s offending. His tract, we again affirm, was an honest, faithful abridgment of Toplady’s pretended translation; but the truth is, by divesting the work of Toplady of its cloudy verbiage, the Calvinistic theory was presented in a form enough to horrify every man of reason and religion. What was the result? Wesley’s Abridgment was issued in the month of March, 1770. Poor Toplady seems to have become insane with anger; and, before the same month expired, had completed his answer, which was published forthwith, under the title of “A Letter to the Rev. Mr. John Wesley: relative to his pretended Abridgment of Zanchius on Predestination.” 8vo, 30 pages. The most charitable excuse for this angry writer is, that he had, in a paroxysm of mortified vanity, lost his balance, and was now non compos mentis. Wesley had honestly abridged his work; and had written the two brief paragraphs already quoted. That was all: and, for this, the irate young man of thirty, who in former years had written to Wesley in terms of the most filial respect, now tells him that, “for more than thirty years past he has been endeavouring to palm on his credulous followers his pernicious doctrines, with all the sophistry of a jesuit, and the dictatorial authority of a pope.” Wesley is charged with acting “the ignoble part of a lurking, sly assassin.” He is exhorted to “renounce the low, serpentine cunning, which puts him on falsifying what he finds himself unable to refute; to dismiss those dirty subterfuges (the last resources of mean, malicious impotence), which degrade the man of parts into a lying sophister, and sink a divine into the level of an oyster woman.” Wesley is told, “that it once depended on the toss of a shilling whether he should be a Calvinist or an Arminian. Tails fell uppermost, and he resolved to be an universalist.” The elect Toplady continues: “possessed of more than serpentine elability, you cast your slough, not once a year, but, almost, once an hour. Hence, your innumerable inconsistencies, and flagrant self contradictions; the jarring of your principles, and the incoherence of your religious system. Somewhat like the necromantic soup in the tragedy of ‘Macbeth,’ your doctrines may be stirred into a chaotic jumble, but witchcraft itself would strive in vain to bring them into coalition.” The gentlemanly polemic then informs Wesley, that he shall not hold himself obliged to again enter the lists with him, if he “descends to his customary recourse of false quotations, despicable invective, and unsupported dogmatisms. An opponent,” continues this model of polite behaviour, “an opponent, who thinks to add weight to his arguments by scurrility and abuse, resembles the insane person who rolled himself in the mud, in order to make himself fine. I would no more enter into a formal controversy with such a scribbler, than I would contend, for the wall, with a chimney sweeper.”

Is it surprising that, after this, Calvinism was discussed at the conference of 1770; and that, just before it commenced its sittings, Wesley wrote the following unpublished letter to his friend, Mr. Merryweather, at Yarm?