he broke from it early one instance shows. He revolted from predestination when in college, and his mother confirmed him. in his detestation of it. "The doctrine was shocking," she said, "and ought utterly to be abhorred." This was written. to him, in answer to his objections, when he was but twentytwo years old. Her father being a Puritan minister, this revolt is the more noticeable. Perhaps she thought wiser than she was taught, in this as in so many other directions. Soon after, John Wesley became Fellow of Lincoln, and pursued his studies in logic, metaphysics, and theology. The metaphysics were necessarily Locke's; the theology was equally unspiritual and hard-bound-the God of Hobbes then ruling soul and body, time and eternity-Church and State, with equal authority and with equal lack of goodness or reason. Wesley presided over debates every day in the week, on literature, philosophy, and theology, and continued these exercises, more or less regularly, for six years. This position gave him great power of discrimination, perhaps greater than of discernment. Yet he could not be a dialectician for so long a time without investigation, and possibly, and probably, the basis was laid in these years for his departure from the field of fatalism and materialism in philosophy and doctrine. He might have taught, he must have read, Descartes, and thus began to differ with his mighty predecessor, who was a Master of Oxford, who had even been a student of his own college, Christ Church, where he had long resided as tutor. In Locke's day, his biographer tells us, "Descartes' new books began to be read." Wesley may have accepted what Locke had rejected, and been a teacher of "innate ideas" over against Locke and Hobbes' materialistic sensationalism. How desirable is information on this point. Is it impossible to obtain it? He might have seen thus early what Mr. Lewes declares to be the fact, that "Skepticism, gulflike, yawns as the terminal road of all consistent metaphysics."* It surely does of all materialistic and utilitarian metaphysics, which proves that they are not metaphysics nor utilitarian, but spurious counterfeits of spiritual, true, divine philosophy. Professor Shairp declares of Wesley and his age: "How *Lewes' "History of Philosophy," p. 478. entirely the mechanical philosophy had saturated that age may be seen from the fact that Wesley, the leader of the great spiritual counter-movement of the last century, the preacher of divine realities to a generation fast bound in sense, yet in the opening of his sermon on faith indorses the sensational theory, and declares that to man in his natural condition sense is the only inlet to knowledge."* Isaac Taylor, who more than any other writer discerned the spiritual and philosophic work of Wesley, though his Scotch leanings prevented complete discernment, says: "He led this revolution by appealing to principles that have their root in philosophy." Such praise could never be ascribed to materialism; nay, could never be ascribed to fatalism, much as it might be connected with faith. It was the materialism in Locke and Hobbes, and all the expounders of his own time, against which he made vigorous warfare. And he made this warfare, not so much by philosophic forms and phrases, as by a philosophic spirit and principle that gave birth to forms and phrases. We are led to ask, Did Mr. Wesley find this path by his own faculties, by grace, by necessities of his work, or from schools? Mr. Isaac Taylor attributes it to his own being. Erring, as a Calvinist and pupil of the Scotch philosophy might, concerning the true basis of philosophy, he still assigned to Wesley the original faculty out of which true philosophy springs-the intuitions. He says: "Not one of the founders of Methodism was gifted with the philosophic faculty-the abstractive and analytic power. More than one was a shrewd and exact logician, but none a master of the higher reason." But he denies himself when he adds: "Wesley's instinct of belief, which was a prominent characteristic of his mind, met with no counteractive force in its structure," though, he adds, this instinct "was not at all of the philosophic cast." Again, in spite of these declarations that he was not master of the higher reason, he adds: "He reasoned more than he thought. Might we not say that it (the Jeffry ghost) so laid open his faculty of belief that the right of way for the supernatural was opened through his mind." And again: "Wesley was thus *S. T. Coleridge," in the "North British Review," December, 1865. The analysis of that age in this article is worthy of attention. almost intuitively master of arts," though he must belittlingly add, “or of all but the highest, to which the predominance of secondary faculties bars the way." Again he compliments him with the "energy of the intuitive reason," and again, unphilosophically, declares this "precludes the philosophic faculty." He still is blinded to the true philosophic faculty, while he happily recognizes Wesley's faculty when he declares he possessed "the irresistible force, or, one might say, the galvanic instantaneousness, of the intuitions,” though, with his old falseness of view, he adds that "this forbids and excludes the exercise of the abstractive and analytic power." He, however, concedes a point bearing on our exposition of the current philosophies of his age, when he says: "At the time when Wesley was acting as moderator in the disputations at Lincoln College, there was no philosophy abroad in the world-there was no thinking-that was not atheistical in its tone and tendency." Hear that, ye materialistic and empirical schools! This declaration disagrees with his previous statement, that philosophy consists in abstraction and analysis; for these qualities were certainly abroad in the world when Wesley began to teach. We shall accept Mr. Taylor's concessions, and show that from them John Wesley was one whom Wordsworth truly describes : "That best philosopher, who yet dost keep His heritage, the eye amongst the blind, On whom those truths do rest Which we are toiling all our lives to find." He had the basis in his nature of the real, spiritual philosophy, Platonic and Coleridgian-intuitive, whose "irresistible force, galvanic instantaneousness," is the life and soul of real philosophy. If" he reasoned more than he thought," he had the higher reason, which Taylor confusedly denies him. He grasped it, held it, enjoyed it, preached it, and with it made steadfast and successful warfare against all false forms of fatalism and naturalism, in school, and Church, and society. That was the philosophy he initiated successfully against its antagonist. Hobbes, Locke, Hume, were mastered by the spirit that never sought to assail them, and by practices they never dreamed of examining or opposing. We are thus led to our next queries: How did it rise in him, and what is its result in the realm of philosophic thinking? These questions will be considered in a subsequent article. ART. II.-CHRISTIAN LIFE AND PRACTICE IN THE EARLY CHURCH. The Early Years of Christianity. By E. DE PRESSENSÉ, D.D. Vol. I, Apostolic Era. Vol. II, Martyrs and Apologists. Vol. III, Heresy and Christian Doctrine. Vol. IV, Christian Life and Practice in the Early Church. New York: Nelson & Phillips. yes WHAT a fascination there is in the study of primitive Christianity! As we examine the records, monumental or bibliographic, of the early Church, our sympathies overleap the intervening centuries, and we feel our spiritual kinship with the persecuted yet triumphant community of believers, who conquered the old Roman world for Christ. "We are but of terday," writes Tertullian at the close of the second century, "yet we fill every city, town, and island of the empire. We abound in the very camps and castles, in the council chamber and the palace, in the senate and the forum; only your temples and your theaters are left." The grandeur of that victory against such tremendous odds is one of the sublimest proofs of the divine energy of the Gospel, and of its perfect adaptation to the profoundest needs of humanity. In the noble volumes of Pressensé we have probably the best apparatus extant for the study of this most interesting and important period of human development. We are greatly mistaken in our judgment, also, if the last volume, just published, will not be considered the most valuable and interesting of the series. The learned author has worthily crowned the labors of a long and studious life by this important work. For over twenty years it has been growing under his hand, and it is enriched with the fruits of his ripened scholarship and mature judgment. While based, after the strictest historical method, upon an extensive and careful study of the best contemporary * Apol., cap. 37. authorities and evidences, it is not the work of a cold critic or a formal annalist. The author is instinct with sympathy with his subject, and his style, therefore, glows with animation; yet he is not the blind partisan nor sectarian advocate. He maintains a judicial mental equipoise. He detects the germs of nascent error, and traces the divergence of early heresies from the norm of truth. The charm of the present volume to the Christian reader will be the vivid insight it gives into early' Christian life and character. As we read its pages we are present at the worship of the primitive Church, we study its ecclesiastical organization, we listen to the prayers and hymns of the persecuted flock of Christ, and to the homilies of the faithful pastors and bishops who shepherded that flock in those troublous times. The subject of this volume is treated under three divisions. The first of these discusses ecclesiastical life in the second and third centuries. This includes, as sub-sections, the admission of converts into the Church, the organization of authority, discipline in the local Church, and the mutual relations of the Churches at the beginning of the third century. We are struck with the wise care observed in excluding the formalist, the hypocrite, and the unworthy from the communion of saints. "Holy things to the holy," was the watchword of the Church in that period of unspeakable moral pollution of the pagan world. According to the "apostolical constitutions," converts from heathenism must continue for three years to receive instruction as catechumens before they were admitted to the full privileges of the community of believers. Sacramentarian theories find no support from the investigation of the offices and institutions of the primitive Church. The simplicity and parity with their fellows of the early elders and bishops was the furthest possible remove from the sacerdotalism of the Church of Rome or of high Anglicanism. So, also, the utter baselessness of the Romish assumptions of authority is clearly shown. The spiritual supremacy of the great Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, and Rome-those mighty centers of thought-was a supremacy of intellectual and moral influence, not of ecclesiastical authority. It was only after long struggles against strenuous opposition, and through many fortuitous circumstances, that the self seekFOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXI.-2 |