shall I do! I have a fire within me - I cannot bear it. Lord Jesus help!"

Charles was not so credulous in such cases as his brother. That the body would sometimes partake of the violent emotions of the soul, and sink under the passion which the preacher had raised he could not doubt, because it often occurred under his own eyes to persons whose sincerity could not be impeached; but he saw that this was not always involuntary, he frequently attempted to check it with success, and he sometimes detected imposition. A woman at Kingswood was distorting herself and crying out loudly while he preached; she became quite calm when he assured her that he did not think the better of her for it. A girl at Bristol being questioned judiciously concerning her frequent fits and trances, confessed that what she did was for the purpose of making Mr. Wesley take notice of her.

"To-day," he says in his journal," one came who was pleased to fall into a fit for my entertainment. He beat himself heartily : I thought it a pity to hinder him; so instead of singing over him as had often been done, we left him to recover at his leisure. A girl as she began her cry, I ordered to be carried out: her convulsions were so violent as to take away the use of her limbs till they laid her without at the door, and left her; then she immediately found her legs and walked off. Some very unstill sisters, who always took care to stand near me and tried who could cry loudest, since I have had them removed out of my sight, have

been as quiet as lambs. The first night I preached here, half my words were lost through the noise of their outcries; last night before I began, I gave public notice that whosoever cried so as to drown my voice, should without any man's hurting or judging them, be gently carried to the farthest corner of the room : but my porters had no employment the whole night."

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CHAPTER IX.

WESLEY'S VIEWS. STATE OF RELIGION IN ENGLAND.

WESLEY had now proposed to himself a clear and determinate object. What had from time to time been effected in the monastic families of the Romish establishment, when the laws of those institutions were relaxed and the spirit had evaporated, he wished to do upon a wider theatre and with a nobler purpose. He hoped to give a new impulse to the Church of England, to awaken its dormant zeal, infuse life into a body where nothing but life was wanting, and lead the way to the performance of duties which the State had blindly overlooked, and the Church had scandalously neglected: thus would he become the author of a second Reformation, whereby all that had been left undone in the former would be completed. And here it will be convenient to look back upon the causes and cir- ̧cumstances which prepared the way for him, and made it desirable, even according to human perceptions, that such an agent in the moral world should be raised up. This will be rendered more intelligible by a brief retrospect of the religious history of England.

Christianity at its beginning was preached to the poor, and during the first centuries gradually made

its way up; yet even then it was the religion of towns and cities, so that after its triumph was established the same word came at length to signify a villager and a heathen. When the Roman empire was broken up, the work of conversion, especially in these northern countries, was to begin again; the missionaries then looked for proselytes in courts, they converted queens and kings who had good political reasons for accepting their instructions, and Christianity made its way down. Intellect was never more beneficially employed, and never obtained a more signal triumph. Bloody idolatries were overthrown; all that remained of literature and of science was rescued from destruction; and the comforts, arts and elegancies of social and refined life were introduced among the humanized barbarians. Miracles have been largely invented to exaggerate the wonder of a change which not improbably was sometimes promoted by fraud; still it is a beautiful part of the annals of mankind. The great actors have been magnified into demi-gods by their own church, but they have been, not less unduly, consigned to neglect and forgetfulness in ours; for if ever men were entitled to the lasting gratitude and admiration of those for whom they lived and laboured, these are they.

The conversion of Britain had not been completed when the island ceased to be a part of the Roman empire. There can be little doubt that the Roman idolatry was still subsisting: the Picts were apparently an unconverted tribe of indigenous savages, still tattooed and woaded; and it is certain

that the Druidical superstitions were cherished in a later age. After the Saxons had become a Christian people, a fresh flood of heathenism came in with the Danes; and from the time of Alfred there existed a heathen party in the country, which continued sometimes in strength and always in hope, till the Conquest: after that time it received no recruits from Scandinavia, and therefore it disappeared; but it may rather be said to have died away for want of support, than to have been eradicated by the care of the government, or the exertions of the clergy.

During the first centuries of the Saxon church there were no parochial divisions. The clergy resided' in episcopal monasteries under the superintendence of the bishop as they had been brought up: they were sent from thence to instruct the country people and administer the offices of religion in the few churches which existed, or where there was no church at a cross in the open air; when they had executed their commission they returned, and others went out to perform the same course of duty. The means of instruction were few and precarious under such a system, and those lords who were desirous of having spiritual aid always at hand for themselves, or who saw the advantage of having their vassals trained in a faith which inculcated obedience, industry, patience and contentment, built churches and endowed them for the maintenance of a resident priest. The bishops promoted such establishments: parishes were thus formed which were usually co-extensive with the