recently been our chance to peruse the Life of the great Frederic of Prussia, by Lord Dover. At the close of that narrative we have before us the death of an infidel philosopher: and a more astounding contrast between the weakness and the strength of man's unsanctified nature, never, we verily believe, was exhibited to mankind. Frederic, it is true, in a certain sense, was victorious over infirmity and pain. His last years were beset by an almost intolerable complication of maladies. And yet, the severest bodily suffering seldom extorted from him an expression of impatience; and never was allowed to furnish an excuse for the interruption of bis duties as a king. And so far, all is noble and admirable. In the midst, however, of all this magnanimous firmness, the power of self-will was rampant. There was, indeed, the inflexible strength of purpose,-the commanding force of intellect,-in short, the spirit which prompts man to exclaim, Dextra mihi Deus! But where was the heroism of resignation? Where was the unconquerable might of meekness? Where was the glorious manifestation of strength made perfect in weakness? Why, the very man whose mind had stood erect in the midst of a deluge of calamity -the man whose genius had dissipated to the winds the onset of nearly all the combined strength of Europe-the man, too, who could defy the worst extremities of physical anguish,——that very man was unable to overcome-what?-his passion for polenta and eel-pie? Yes-the indomitable Frederic--the invincible captain, -the over-ruling military genius of the age,-while tottering on the verge of the sepulchre, was a slave to sensualities which, in the common estimation of mankind, degrade our nature below that of the brutes. It was vain for his physicians to remonstrate. drove them from his presence, if their interpretation of his symptoms was at variance with his own royal caprices. And so he continued, to the last, to gorge himself with his favourite poisons

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(sometimes even to vomiting and convulsions)—and to inflame his stomach, and to corrupt his blood, and to light up for himself the fires of a most sordid martyrdom. It is true-he endured all, without complaint and without flinching; such was the supremacy and the might of a stubborn philosophy. But surely, angels might weep, and demons might laugh, to witness such a triumph; -to behold a man who, in the very jaws of death, could defy torment with the courage of a hero; and, at the same time, indulge his palate like one whose only God was his belly!

And now let us turn to the contemplation of the life and death of them, who serve their God and their Saviour, in the midst of weakness, and fear, and much trembling; with the thorn in their flesh, but with the love of God shed abroad upon their hearts. We have here the same superiority over pain-the same victory

of mind over matter-but all this dignified and hallowed by communion of the soul with Him, who is the only source of strength, and holiness, and purity. We recommend the comparison to the worshippers of Reason, and the despisers of Faith.

Such being our notions of Richard Watson as an individual, it will hardly be imagined that we address ourselves to the consideration of his life and opinions, with the slightest shadow of unkind or uncharitable feeling hovering over us, to darken our judgment. When we reflect on what he was, and what he accomplished, we cannot, indeed, suppress an emotion of sadness and regret, that such a man should have remained, to the end of his days, in separation from the Church, out of whose bosom his own communion originally came forth. But we cannot get rid of a strong conviction, that, had his theological training for the ministry been more profound and more complete, we should have numbered him among us. We can scarcely conceive it possible that a man, gifted, as he appears to have been, with mental capacities of a high order, could have deliberately surveyed the history of the primitive Catholic Church, without trembling at the thoughts of a defection from that branch of it, which has been, for so many ages, planted in this land. He must-surely he must-then have perceived the danger, to say the very least, of rushing into the sacred ministry, merely under the impulse of certain personal feelings and convictions. Surely he must have perceived that, (to adopt the view of Hooker), Episcopacy is either a divine institution; or else that it had the subsequent sanction of the Divine approbation. He must have seen the rashness of rending asunder the chain of succession, which was bound to the Apostolic chair, and has been continued onward, from age to age, through a long unbroken line of consecrated men. He must have discerned that the Bishops of Christ's Church, have formed, as it were, a series of Lampadéphori, who have delivered from hand to hand-(unworthy as those hands may sometimes have been)-the sacred torch of ecclesiastical authority, from one generation to another. That our God is not the God of confusion, but of order, was well known to him and his brethren; and, to no man that ever lived, was it better known, than to the founder of his sect. For where, in all Christendom, shall we find a communion,-we might say, indeed, a hierarchy,-more carefully and elaborately organized, than the Wesleyan Connection? If, then, from his youth up, Richard Watson had been familiar with the monuments of the Church, and the writings of her earliest and purest Fathers,-it is scarcely possible that he could have endured the thought of breaking that order, which has been handed down to us from the days of her infancy to the present hour. But, unhappily, his

mental discipline was most irregular and desultory. When he obeyed the Divine call, (as he doubtless imagined it,) he was a mere boy. He "knew, and cared, nothing" about Church authority and discipline. His brain was a chaos of crude and miscellaneous reading. His heart, the seat of pure and zealous, but wild and disorderly, impulses. And when, in after life, he looked into the Fathers, he was deeply and irrevocably committed to the cause which had been dear to him from childhood. His prepos sessions were all formed. His principles had become fixed, and solid, and incapable of re-moulding. And thus, we doubt not, it has been, with many other devoted and estimable men. They have hastened, in early life, into the ministry, we question not, from very pure and conscientious motives; but, most generally, with consciences extremely ill-informed; and, in many instances, with consciences not informed at all, upon the great questions of Church authority and discipline. At the outset of their course, they had known nothing, or next to nothing, of the history of the Church, or of her claims upon their obedience. The possibility that separation from her should be sinful, had never occurred, for an instant, to their thought. And when such men are once engaged in the labours of their sacred vocation, it is in vain to ply them with an appeal to Christian antiquity. They have either no leisure for the inves tigation; or they have no patience for it; or else, their faculties have acquired, almost imperceptibly, the power of making both Scripture and antiquity correspond to the " form and pressure" of their own peculiar habits and opinions. We, surely, may be allowed to deplore that this should be so, without exposing ourselves to the charge of illiberal and uncharitable rigour. At all events, we suppose the Wesleyans will hardly feel much exasperation against us, when we say, that we wish nothing worse for such men as Richard Watson, than that they should be faithful members and ministers of the Church of England. We are quite sure that their zeal, and their talents, and their acquirements, would find, in our communion, at least as ample a sphere of usefulness, as can be found any where in the regions of Nonconformity. And we trust that we may add, without offence, the expression of our own firm belief, that their exertions would then be in much more strict conformity, than they now are, with the primitive and apostolic ordinances of the Christian Church.

It would be a very needless work for us to plunge into a minute examination of the peculiarities of the Wesleyan doctrinal theology. The intelligent portion of the public are already familiar with them. It is sufficient for us to state that they are all reflected, with full orb, from the mind of Richard Watson. For instance, he contended earnestly for the full, distinct, infallible, testimony

of the Spirit of God, with the spirits of all true believers. He maintained that

"We must, first, be persuaded of God's pardoning love to us, personally, before we can, in the Scriptural sense, love God; and that such a persuasion is, therefore, a pre-requisite to what is properly termed Christian holiness; that the theory which requires men to ascertain the fact of their personal acceptance with God, from the actual conformity of their temper and conduct to the precepts of the Gospel, is directly calculated to produce a spirit of bondage unto fear, rather than that filial disposition which characterized the Christians of the Apostolic age, and which is, indeed, a believer's strength."-(p. 373).

And in another place he recommends a correspondent to "rest not a moment, without the felt presence of God."-(p. 258.) He conceived that a true believer might be, and indeed must be, under an entire conviction of his being personally accepted in the beloved. And yet, in spite of all this, it would seem that the doctrine of indefectible grace forms no part of the Wesleyan creed. For Watson's biographer mentions it as

"A sad fact, that several persons (at Leeds), who were under religious impressions at the time of their secession (from the Connection), yielding to the soul-destroying influence of clamour and party-spirit, lost their gracious convictions, and abandoned altogether the profession of religion." -(p. 476).

To the whole of the Calvinistic system, indeed, Richard Watson was conscientiously and firmly opposed. He regarded it as presumptuous

"To limit the divine mercy in the redemption of mankind, upon philosophic grounds, and in the teeth of the most express declarations of Scripture; he held that the peculiarities of the Calvinistic theory impose very serious restraints on Christian ministers in the discharge of their official duties; and that the moral tendency of its tenets was far from salutary."

His notion on this subject received a remarkable confirmation from a quarter in which any thing like concession was least to be expected. He once saw Rowland Hill at a large meeting of dissenting ministers; who, supposing Watson to belong to the Independent Denomination, said to him, "What shall we do, Sir, to prevent the spread of Antinomianism, which is making such dreadful havoc of many of our country churches. Don't you think, Sir, that there really is something in our Calvinistic doctrines which is calculated to produce these terrible evils?" Watson was considerably embarrassed by a question like this from the aged Apostle of Calvinism; but, nevertheless, he assented to the suggestion. Upon which Rowland exclaimed, with his own peculiar emphasis of manner," I spent my younger days

in fighting the Arminian Devil; but I will spend the rest of my life in fighting the Devil Antinomianism." And even so old Rowland did! For, from that moment, the gorgon countenance of the Calvinistic theology was a good deal veiled in his public ministrations. The snakes, at least, were hidden, and nothing but the softer features disclosed; so that the petrifying influence of the doctrine, it may be presumed, was somewhat mitigated, if not wholly intercepted. But, to return to Watson. He was greatly delighted and satisfied with a Tract on God's Decrees, by Thomas Pierce, a learned Episcopal Divine, who flourished during the Commonwealth and the reign of Charles II. This performance did much to strengthen him in the persuasion, that the Almighty may, by an act of mere sovereignty, elect nations and bodies of people to the enjoyment of church privileges on earth; while his decrees touching their eternal condition will have respect to individual character. From all this it seems that Richard Watson, like all his Wesleyan brethren, regarded the Calvinistic scheme as unsound and unscriptural. And yet we confess that we find it extremely difficult to distinguish between the Wesleyan doctrine of a distinct and indubitable internal witness, which tells the believer of his certain acceptance, and the Calvinistic doctrine of a perfect assurance of salvation. For if a man has once received from the Spirit a positive and irrevocable assurance that he is a child of God, one hardly sees how he can stop short of the conclusion that his calling and election is already made sure, and that his name is indelibly written in the book of life. But, however this may be, Watson was undoubtedly right in protesting against the introduction of philosophy and metaphysics into these discussions. From the ground of philosophy and metaphysics, however, nothing will ever prevail upon the argumentative Calvinist to retire. For he must know very well that it is the only ground which does not sink under his feet. He knows, too, that this is the ground from which mere human logic will never be able to drive him. As Waterland himself confesses, there is no discernible flaw in the predestinarian reasoning. The only way of answering it is, to appeal to human nature; or rather to appeal to the whole tenor of the scriptures of God. St. Louis recommended all good and unlearned Catholics not to argue with heretics, but to draw their sword, and to drive it into the bowels of the misbelievers, as far as it would go. Even so say we. Never argue metaphysically with a Fatalist of any class or description. But draw forth the sword of the Spirit, even the word of God; and thrust, not a part of the weapon, but the whole of it, up to the very hilt, into the heart of your antagonist's logic.

There is another of the Wesleyan doctrines which has always