Veclars. CONTENTS. The Founders of Methodism: the two Wesleys Early Stages of Wesley's religious Course 95 - • 109 118 121 - 130 143 - 155 - 181 THE FORM OF (WESLEYAN) METHODISM. The Form of (Wesleyan) Methodism Wesleyan Methodism, a Scheme of Evangelic Aggression THE engraving which accompanies this volume has been executed, PREFACE. THE METHODISM of the last century, even when considered apart from its consequences, must always be thought worthy of the most serious regard. But, in fact, that great religious movement has, immediately or remotely, so given an impulse to Christian feeling and profession, on all sides, that it has come to present itself as the starting-point of our modern religious history. The field-preaching of WESLEY and WHITEFIELD, in 1739, was the event whence the religious epoch, now current, must date its commencement. Back to the events of that time must we look, necessarily, as often as we seek to trace to its source what is most characteristic of the present time. Yet this is not all, for the METHODISM of the past age points forward to the next-coming development of the powers of the Gospel; and it is especially as thus involving what may be called a predictive meaning, that the reader's attention is now invited to the subject. It is also with a view to the future-that is to say, in relation to those changes, a silent preparation for which is now in progress, that I venture upon the task of reviewing, as announced on the last page of this volume, the course and the principles of the NONCONFORMISTS of the past age. Assuredly it is with no thought of setting in a disadvantageous light the good and great men who ranged themselves on that side of the Protestant movement of the times, that I enter upon such a service. Should this task be completed, one that must be accounted still more venturous and difficult, would present itself as next in order; if, indeed, it should be permitted me to complete a plan which should embody those views that seem to give coherence to the past history of Christianity, considered as a preparation for its destined universality. Stanford Rivers, November, 1851. METHODISM, AS RELATED TO THE PRESENT TIME. A FORTY or FIFTY YEARS has been the term, more or less clearly defined, within which each of those revolutions that mark the history of the human mind has had its rise, has passed its climax, and has gone forward, commingled with other moral forces, and having its own abated. Some reasons that are quite obvious, and some that are occult, and perhaps not cognisable by science, might be assigned in explanation of a fact which obtrudes itself as we follow the luminous track of those outbursts of light and warmth which take place in the lapse of centuries. It might seem enough to say, that, as every such time of renovation and movement takes its rise in the bosoms of two or three individual men, and as these, for the most part, occupy nearly the same level as to age, a term of forty or fifty years gives the extreme limits of the personal energy and influence of any such band of men; and never hitherto has any new impulse, or any strenuous moral movement, been taken up and B |