ravian church on their side: and recurring, according to his custom, to the Testament for a chance text, he opened upon these words, What is that to thee? Follow thou me. Four months before this bibliomancy came in aid of his meditated purpose, he had taken a large building in Moorfields which had been the foundry for cannon during the civil wars and for some time after the Restoration; he felt himself in a minority in Fetter-lane which had hitherto been their chief place of meeting; and foreseeing that it would ere long be necessary for him to secede, unless he waited to be expelled, he thus provided for the alternative in time.

After a short stay at Bristol, therefore, he returned to London, fully prepared for the decisive. step. The first measure was to muster his own adherents, by new-modelling the bands, and thus relieving them from that perpetual disputation by which they were wavered if not weakened. In this the Wesleys were assisted by Ingham. " We gathered up our wreck," says Charles, "rari nantes in gurgite vasto, floating here and there on the vast abyss; for nine out of ten were swallowed up in the dead sea of stillness. Oh why was not this done six months ago! How fatal was our delay and false moderation!" Molther was too ill for any more conferences, if any amicable result could have been expected from such measures, always more likely to widen differences than to adjust them. But though Molther was thus disabled from bearing a part, Wesley could make no impression upon the " poor, confused, shattered

society," when he plainly told them wherein they had erred from the faith." It was as I feared," says he.

They could not receive my saying. However I am clear from the blood of these men:" and "finding there was no time to delay without utterly destroying the cause of God, I began to execute what I had long designed, to strike at the root of the grand delusion." Accordingly, every day for a week in succession he preached in the strongest language against the tenets by which the majority of his former followers were now weaned from him. But easy as he had found it to subdue the hearts and imaginations of men, he found them invincible when they were attacked in the strong-hold of their self-conceit. They told him that he was preaching up the works of the law, which as believers they were no more bound to obey than the subjects of the King of England were bound to obey the laws of the King of France.

One of the spurious treatises ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite was a favourite book among the Moravianized members. Some extracts were annexed to it in a style of what Wesley calls the same super-essential darkness. Wesley took the volume to Fetter-lane, and read these words before the jarring society, "The Scriptures are good; prayer is good; communicating is good; relieving our neighbours is good: but to one who is not born of God none of these are good, but all very evil. For him to read the Scriptures, or to pray, or to communicate, or to do any outward work is deadly

poison. First let him be born of God. Till then let him not do any of these things. For if he does, he destroys himself." Having twice read these words, distinctly, that all might hear and understand, he asked, "My brethren, is this right, or is it wrong?" One of them replied, "It is right: it is all right. It is the truth; it is the very truth; it is the inward truth. And to this we must all come, or we never can come to Christ." Another said, "I used the ordinances twenty years, yet I found not Christ. But I left them off only for a few weeks and I found Him then: and I am now as close united to Him as my arm is to my body." Many voices were now raised against Wesley; it was asked whether they would any longer suffer him to preach at Fetter-lane; and after a short debate it was answered, "No, this place is taken for the Germans." But Wesley knew how important it was that the separation should appear to be an act of his own authority and will; and going to their love-feast on the Sunday following, at the -close of the meeting he stood up, and read from a written paper a brief statement of the doctrines which he condemned. It concluded with these words: "You have often affirmed that to search the Scriptures, to pray, or to communicate before we have Faith, is to seek salvation by works, and that till these works are laid aside no man can have Faith. I believe these assertions to be flatly contrary to the Word of God. I have warned you hereof again and again, and besought you to turn back to the Law and the Testimony. I have

borne with you long, hoping you would turn. But as I find you more and more confirmed in the your ways, nothing now remains but that You that are of the

I should give you up to God. same judgement, follow me!"

A few persons and but a few withdrew with him. When they met at the Foundry for the first time after the separation, the seceders were found to be about twenty-five men; but of the fifty women that were in bands, almost all adhered to Wesley. Just at this time a curious letter was received from one of the German brethren; he advised the Wesleys no longer to take upon themselves to teach and instruct poor souls, but to deliver them up to the care of the Moravians who alone were able to instruct them. "You," said he, “only instruct them in such errors that they will be damned at last. St. Paul justly describes you who have eyes full of adultery and cannot cease from sin, and take upon you to guide unstable souls and lead them in the way of damnation." This letter seems to have produced another epistle from "John Wesley, a presbyter of the Church of God in England, to the Church of God at Hernhuth in Upper Lusatia." Wesley never returned railing for railing; he had his temper entirely under command, and therefore he was always calm and decorous in controversy. His own feelings had not been of the most charitable kind: he had ascribed the illness of his chief antagonist to the arm of the Lord; in arguing with the Moravians against their errors he had expressed himself as

delivering his own soul, as being clear from the blood of those men; and when he withdrew from tnem he gave them up to God; phrases these which are of no equivocal indication. But the coarseness of his German monitor taught him now to avoid an error, which when applied to himself he saw in all its absurdity and all its grossness, and he began his Epistle in a better and wiser spirit. "It may seem strange that such a one as I am should take upon me to write to you. You, I believe to be dear children of GOD, through faith which is in JESUS. Me you believe, as some of you have declared, to be a child of the devil, a servant of corruption. Yet whatsoever I am, or whatsoever you are, I beseech you to weigh the following words: if haply God, who sendeth by whom He will send, may give you light thereby, although the mist of darkness, as one of you affirm, should be reserved for me for ever."

He proceeded to state temperately what were the things which he disapproved in their tenets and in their conduct, and gave some instances of the indiscretion of the English brethren, to whom he more particularly alluded. One of them had said when publicly expounding Scripture, that as many went to hell by praying as by thieving. Another had said, "You have lost your first joy; therefore you pray that is the Devil. You read the Bible: that is the Devil. You communicate that is the Devil." For these extravagancies he justly blamed the community in which they were uttered, and by which they were suffered, if not sanctioned. "Let