Sir Henry Wotton, writing from Vienna in 1590, says, "I am now at two florins a week, chamber, stove and table: lights he finds me; wood I buy myself; in which respect I hold your Honour right happy that you came in the summer, for we can hardly come by them here without two dollars the clofter, though we border upon Bohemia. Wine I have as much as it pleaseth me for my friend and self, and not at a stint, as the students of Altorph. All circumstances considered, I make my account that I spend more at this reckoning by five pounds four shillings yearly, than a good careful scholar in the Universities of England."

NOTE XI. Page 48.

Scheme of Self-examination.

This paper is too curious in itself, and in its style too characteristic of Wesley, to be omitted here. It is entitled,

Love of God and Simplicity; means of which are Prayer and Meditation.

Have I been simple and recollected in every thing I said or did? Have I, 1. Been simple in every thing, i. e. looked upon God as my good, my pattern, my one desire, my disposer, parent of good; acted wholly for him; bounded my views with the present action or hour? 2. Recollected? i. e. Has this simple view been distinct and uninterrupted? Have I done any thing without a previous perception of its being the will of God? or without a perception of its being an exercise or a means of the virtue of the day? Have I said any thing without it?

2. Have I prayed with fervour? At going in and out of church? In the church? Morning and evening in private? Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with my friends? At rising? Before lying down? On Saturday noon? All the time I was engaged in exterior work? In private? Before I went into the place of public or private prayer, for help therein? Have I, wherever I was, gone to church morning and evening, unless for necessary mercy? and spent from one hour to three in private? Have I in private prayer frequently stopt short, and observed what fervour? Have I repeated it over and over, till I adverted to every word? Have I at the beginning of every prayer or paragraph owned, I cannot pray? Have I paused before I concluded in his name, and adverted to my Saviour now interceding for me at the right hand of God and offering up these prayers?

3. Have I daily used ejaculations? i. e. Have I every hour prayed for humility, faith, hope, love, and the particular virtue of

the day? Considered with whom I was the last hour, what I did, and how? With regard to recollection, love of man, humility, self-denial, resignation, and thankfulness? Considered the next hour in the same respects, offered all I do to my Redeemer, begged his assistance in every particular, and commended my soul to his keeping? Have I done this deliberately, (not in haste,) seriously, (not doing any thing else the while,) and fervently as I could?

4. Have I duly prayed for the virtue of the day? i. e. Have I prayed for it at going out and coming in? Deliberately, seriously, fervently?

5. Have I used a collect at nine, twelve, and three; and grace before and after eating? Aloud at my own room, deliberately, seriously, fervently?

6. Have I duly meditated? Every day, unless for necessary mercy? 1. From six, &c. to prayers? 2. From four to five, what was particular in the providence of this day? How ought the virtue of the day to have been exerted upon it? How did it fall short? (Here faults.) 3. On Sunday, from six to seven with Kempis? from three to four on redemption, or God's attributes ? Wednesday and Friday from twelve to one on the Passion? After ending a book, on what I had marked in it?

Love of Man.

i. e.

1st. Have I been zealous to do and active in doing good? 1. Have I embraced every probable opportunity of doing good, and preventing, removing, or lessening evil?

2. Have I pursued it with my might?

3. Have I thought any thing too dear to part with, to serve my neighbour?

4. Have I spent an hour at least every day in speaking to some one or other?

5. Have I given any one up till he expressly renounced me?

6. Have I, before I spoke to any, learned, as far as I could, his temper, way of thinking, past life, and peculiar hindrances, internal and external? Fixed the point to be aimed at? Then the means to it?

7. Have I, in speaking, proposed the motives, then the difficulties, then balanced them, then exhorted him to consider both calmly and deeply, and to pray earnestly for help?

8. Have I, in speaking to a stranger, explained what religion is not, (not negative, not external,) and what it is; (a recovery of the image of God;) searched at what step in it he stops, and what makes him stop there? Exhorted and directed him? 9. Have I persuaded mons, and sacraments?

all I could to attend public prayers, serAnd in general to obey the laws of the

Church Universal, the Church of England, the State, the University, and their respective Colleges?

10. Have I, when taxed with any act of obedience, avowed it, and turned the attack with sweetness and firmness?

11. Have I disputed upon any practical point, unless it was to be practised just then?

12. Have I, in disputing, (1.) desired my opponent to define the terms of the question: to limit it: what he grants, what denies (2.) delayed speaking my opinion; let him explain and prove his then insinuated and pressed objections?

I

13. Have I, after every visit, asked him who went with me, Did say any thing wrong?

14. Have I, when any one asked advice, directed and exhorted him with all my power?

2dly. Have I rejoiced with and for my neighbour in virtue or pleasure? Grieved with him in pain, for him in sin?

3dly. Have I received his infirmities with pity, not anger ?

4thly. Have I thought or spoke unkindly of or to him? Have I revealed any evil of any one, unless it was necessary to some particular good I had in view? Have I then done it with all the tenderness of phrase and manner consistent with that end? Have I any way appeared to approve them that did otherwise?

5thly. Has good-will been, and appeared to be, the spring of all my actions towards others?

6thly. Have I duly used intercession? 1. Before, 2. After speaking to any? 3. For my friends on Sunday? 4. For my pupils on Monday? 5. For those who have particularly desired it, on Wednesday and Friday? 6. For the family in which I am every day?

NOTE XII. Page 51.

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Behmen.

Jacob Behmen's books made some proselytes in England during the great rebellion. Dr. Pordage and his family were of this sect, who lived together in community, and pretended to hold visible and sensible communion with angels, whom they sometimes saw and sometimes smelt."— Calamy's Life of Baxter.

NOTE XIII. Page 51.

William Law.

I am obliged to my old friend Charles Lloyd (the translator of Alfieri's Tragedies) for the following note concerning William Law. The peculiar opinions which this extraordinary man entertained

in the latter part of his life were these: That all the attributes of the Almighty are only modifications of his love; and that when in Scripture his wrath, vengeance, &c. are spoken of, such expressions are only used in condescension to human weakness, by way of adapting the subject of the mysterious workings of God's providence to human capacities. He held therefore that God punishes no one. All evil, according to his creed, originates either from matter, or from the free-will of man *; and if there be suffering, it is not that God wills it, but that he permits it, (for the sake of a greater overbalance of good that could not otherwise possibly be produced,) as the necessary consequence of the existence of an inert instrument like matter, and the imperfection of creatures less pure than himself. Upon his system, all beings will finally be happy. He utterly rejects the doctrine of the Atonement, and ridicules the supposition that the offended justice of the One Perfect Supreme Being requires any satisfaction. His theory is, that man, by withdrawing himself from God, had lost the divine life in his soul, and that all communication between him and his Maker was nearly lost. In order to remedy this; in order in some mysterious way to re-open an intercourse between the Deity and the soul of man; and finally, in order to afford the soul a more near and, as it were, sensible perception of its Maker, the Second Person in the Trinity became man. Law alleges that St. Paul, when he speaks of Redemption, says, God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. Now, he adds, had the Almighty required an atonement, the converse of this proposition would have been the truth, and the phrase would have been reconciling Himself to the world. †

The narration of the Fall of Man he regards as an allegory. He believes that the first human being was a creature combining both sexes in its own perfect nature, and possessing an infinite capacity of happiness: the Fall, he thinks, consisted, not in tasting of any forbidden fruit, but in turning from God as the sole source of joy, and in a sensual desire for a second self. And in support of this notion he adduces the text, And God made man of the dust of the earth-male and female created he them, a text which occurs before the formation of the woman is mentioned. Had it not been for this fault, Law supposes that the human race would have increased in number as much as it has done, by a certain delegated

Who could

* But what is matter, according to Law, or rather, to Behmen? suspect, from C. Lloyd's statement, that this matter- yàp kal vλn ảσwμаTOS— is itself the suppressed and fettered chaos of wills, who, by the act of self-willing, had destroyed their freedom? This was Law's notion. -S. T. C.

† And (be it Behmen's, be it W. Law's) is this a whimsy? I put the question earnestly, solemnly. I can conceive nothing more to the purpose, or more home, than this citation from Paul.-S. T. C.

power which would have enabled man to create others after his own image.

These whimsies, which Law derived from Jacob Behmen, are entirely confined to his two tracts entitled "The Spirit of Love," and "The Spirit of Prayer, or The Soul rising out of Time into the Riches of Eternity." Whatever inference may be drawn from them with regard to his judgement, or his sanity, as a practical religious writer, (in which character he exclusively appears in his "Serious Call" and his "Christian Perfection,") there are few men whose writings breathe a more genuine spirit of gospel love, and whose sentiments and mode of inculcating them, at once simple and manly, appeal more forcibly to the heart.

NOTE XIV. Page 82.

He insisted upon baptizing Children by Immersion.

Wesley would willingly have persuaded himself that this practice was salutary, as well as regular. His Journal contains the following entry at this time.

66

Mary Welch, aged eleven days, was baptized according to the custom of the first Church and the rule of the Church of England, by immersion. The child was ill then, but recovered from that hour."

NOTE XV. Page 84.

Members of the New Colony.

The following curious passages are extracted from that part of Wesley's Journal which relates to his abode in Georgia.

"I had a long conversation with John Reinier, the son of a gentleman, who being driven out of France on account of his religion, settled at Vevay in Switzerland, and practised physic there. His father died while he was a child. Some years after he told his mother he was desirous to leave Switzerland, and to retire into some other country, where he might be free from the temptations which he could not avoid there. When her consent was at length obtained, he agreed with the master of a vessel, with whom he went to Holland by land; thence to England, and from England to Pennsylvania. He was provided with money, books, and drugs, intending to follow his father's profession. But no sooner was he come to Philadelphia, than the captain, who had borrowed his money before, instead of repaying it, demanded the full pay for his passage, and under that pretence seized on all his effects. He then