but his rebuke, however arrogant, had in it nothing. of that rejoicing in evil which is the root of a censorious spirit. He would have been unfitted for the work he had to do if he had copied the Moravians. To fight against gross outward forms of wickedness, and raise up a religious order among the classes addicted to them, an outward ideal of goodness is necessary; and if it does not seem to us that a censorious attitude of mind to those who neither need nor adopt this code is also necessary, we must ask ourselves whether any one has ever accomplished a great work without under-estimating those who took no share in it.

After this time Wesley's feeling to the Moravians went through many vicissitudes. He was at first and at last just to them, as far as it is possible. to be just to people whom one does not understand. It is not often that a religious leader can be as generous to a colleague who blurs the distinction he is anxious to retain as to an avowed opponent. Wesley defended the men who were dragging him into an association with Dissent, at the time when such association was most injurious to all he cared about. This accusation, which was constantly brought against him about the time of his separation from the Moravians, was a serious hindrance to his powers of usefulness. It was about this time that he was excluded from the gaol at Bristol, in spite of the earnest desire of the prisoners under sentence of death,-doubtless upon this pretext. Now, though the United Brethren' were not necessarily Dissenters, in the most reasonable sense of that word-for they held all the doctrines of the Church of England,

and adhered to its form of government-still, when they took to declaiming against the ordinances of that Church, and speak of the folly of attending its services, they could not be regarded as its members. And the endeavour of those who attacked him was to identify him and them, so as to make him answerable for all the real and fancied extravagances of a body which at this time would have been unpopular merely from its foreign name. This endeavour was not met by Wesley, at the time when such a course would have been most to his interest by any denunciation of the Moravians. For some years he was certainly most unjust to them, we may use this epithet, whether the injurious narratives and still more injurious hints which he included in his published journals are true or false, for there is no trace of his ever having investigated these reports; and he was indeed not the person to do so. He never seems to have sifted stories told him, though he sometimes disbelieved them. But this is the injustice of one who readily believes whatever strongly impresses his imagination, whether it be good or bad, and not of one who is glad to think ill of an enemy.

Towards the close of his life, though there was nothing of that tenderness with which more personal natures would have reverted to an early and interrupted sympathy, Wesley's tone was gentle and reverent. His latest notice of Zinzendorf occurs in a sermon preached at Plymouth Dock, on knowing Christ after the flesh. It is a direct attack on that kind of religion which was most prevalent among the Moravians, and pre-eminently in Zinzendorf, and

which some of the earlier Moravian hymns illustrate in a manner which shocks other feelings than those of reverence. Yet Zinzendorf is mentioned as 'a late great man, whose memory I love and esteem ;' and the Moravian hymns, disfigured as they are, receive his warmest commendation.

CHAPTER X.

SEPARATION FROM WHITEFIELD.

IT has been seen that the subject of predestination had occasioned Wesley some perplexity even during his college days, and that he was led, apparently by the arguments of his mother, to interpret the Article which treats of that subject in what is called (by many who never heard of the Dutchman who Latinized his name into Arminius) an Arminian sense; a sense, that is, which supposes the predestination of some to salvation and others to damnation to be not the cause, but the effect, of something God foresees in them. Whitefield, on the other hand, was always a Calvinist; and during his second visit to America (1739-41) he became convinced that the great truth that Christ did not die for all mankind was 6 Ichildren's bread,' and could not afterwards in conscience refrain from publishing it. A division between the two Methodist leaders hence became inevitable; and the same year which separated Wesley from his spiritual guides separated him also from his spiritual pupil. A few preliminary words must be given to the question which separated them. What is ordinarily, and somewhat unfortunately, called Calvinism may be stated in a form plainly repugnant to many declarations of

Scripture and to the instincts of humanity, while it has yet been held by many not only with intense belief, but with the deepest satisfaction of their whole nature. It must therefore be capable of being seen. from very different points of view, and an attempt to exhibit these will not be out of place as an introduction to this controversy.

It appears to many persons a sufficient answer to the question why some men are good and some bad to assert that man has the power of resisting the divine influence, and that the division of good and bad is the division of those who have and have not responded to the prompting of His Spirit. But, passing over the difficulty that it is impossible to look round at the world we live in and assert that all are placed in circumstances equally favourable to make this response, it is surely evident to a logical mind that what is thus made the cause of goodness is goodness. To yield ourselves up to the influence of God means to love all things holy and pure, so that we come round to the question we began with, 'Why have some human beings this love and not others?' It is not easy to see how this question can be answered to the satisfaction of a logician otherwise than in the sense, if not the words, of Calvin, to choose the theologian usually associated with the doctrine of predestination. 'God in His secret counsel freely chooses whom He will, and rejects others,' he says in his 'Institutes:' as He has made oxen and asses and human beings, so He has made a distinction among human beings, giving some the spirit which receives His law, to others denying it.' And as the brute animals have no right to expostulate with God for not being made men, so the