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great a risk; but, with grandeur of spirit, she told me she would put her fortune on the issue; if any benefit resulted from it, it should be mine, and she would bear me harmless of all loss. She heard me a few times, and then wholly withdrew herself, and even took away her servants. Some of them would now and then steal in; but, as they reported that they got "no food," the report did but strengthen the prejudices of their mistress. She could not enter into my motives. I was obliged to regard her conduct as Huss did that of the man, who was heaping the faggots around him, O sancte simplicitas! She could not calculate consequences, and was unmoved even when I placed my conduct in its strongest light-Can you attribute any but the purest motives to me? Ought not the very circumstances to which I voluntarily subject myself by adhering to the plan you condemn, to gain me some credit for my intentions? Had Í preached here, in the manner I preached elsewhere, you know that the place would have been crowded by the religious world. I should then have obtained from it an income of 2001. or 300l. a year; whereas I now sit down with little or no advantage from it, though I have a family rising up about me. God sent me hither to preach to this people, and to raise a congregation in this place; and I am proceeding in that system and way, which seems to me best adapted under God to meet the states of this people; and, while I am doing this, I bring on myself temporal injury. I can have no possible motive to sacrifice the truth to a few blind pharisees, who will never while I live become my friends.'

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"I laboured under this desertion of my friends for a long time it was about seven years, before affairs began to wear such an aspect, that my protectress and others allowed that matters had certainly turned out as they could not have foreseen. Several witnesses rose up of undoubted and authentic character,

to testify the power of the grace of God. One circumstance will place the prejudice which existed against me in a strong light. A converted Jewess, who had been driven from her father's house on account of her sentiments, and was a woman of great simplicity and devotion, refused to accompany a friend to St. John's, because, as she said, she could not worship there spiritually, and rather chose to spend the afternoon among her friend's books; in which employment, I doubt not, she worshipped God in the spirit, and was accepted of him. For my own satisfaction, I wrote down at large the reasons on which I had formed my conduct, for I was almost driven into my own breast for support and justification. One friend, indeed, stood by me. He saw my

plan and entered fully into it; and said such strong things on the subject, as greatly confirmed my own mind. "The church of Christ," said he, 'must sometimes be sacrificed for Christ.' A certain brother preached a charity sermon; and in such a style, that he seemed to say to me, 'Were I here, you should see how I would do the thing.' What good he did, I know not; but some of the evil I know, as several persons forsook the Chapel, and assigned his sermon as the reason: and others expressed themselves alarmed at the idea of Methodism having crept into the place. It was ill-judged and unkind. He should have entered into my design, or have been silent."

About the middle of July, 1800, Mr. Cecil entered on the Livings of BISLEY and CHOBHAM in Surry. A few weeks after this I visited him with our dear and mutual friend, Dr. Fearon.

Here I saw him in a quite different situation from any in which I had seen him before, and was not a little curious to remark the manner in which he would treat a set of plain and homely villagers. Though he was repeatedly in great anguish during the day which we passed with him, yet his mind, in the intervals, was

so vigorous and luminous that I have scarcely ever gathered so much from him in an equal time.

On this occasion, among other things which are recorded in his "Remains," he stated to us his views and feelings respecting his new charge. "Bisley is a rectory. It is completely out of the world. The farmers are all so perfectly untaught, that, when they met me to settle the business of their tythes, there was not one of them able to write. The farmers in these parts are mostly occupiers of their own land.. They crowded round me when I first came, and were eager to make bargains with me for the tythe. I told them I was ignorant of such matters, but that I would propose a measure which none of them could object to. The farmers of Bisley should nominate three farmers of Chobham parish; and whatever those three Chobham farmers should appoint me to receive, that they should pay. This was putting myself into their power indeed, but the one grand point with me was to conciliate their minds, and pave the way for the Gospel in these parishes. And so far it answered my purpose. I had desired the three farmers to throw the weight, in dubious cases, into the farmers' scale. After we had settled the business, one of the three, to convince the Bisley farmers that they had acted in the very spirit of my directions, proposed to find a person who would immediately give them 50l. a year for their bargain with me. This has given them an idea that we act upon high and holy motives."

What a noble trait is this of his upright and disinterested mind! One might almost with confidence predict that such an introduction into his parishes was a presage of great usefulness. A minister has no right to wanton away the support of his family; but, having secured that, whatever sacrifices he may make with such holy motives as these, will be abundantly repaid; probably in the success of his ministry, certainly in his Master's approbation and the peace of

his own bosom. Those sacrifices of what may be strictly his due, which a narrow and worldly man will refuse to make though he entail discord and feuds on his parish, will be trifles to the mind of a true Christian minister. The reader will here recollect the conversation on this subject before recorded.

"I hardly think it likely that a man could have been received in a more friendly manner than I have been. About 500 people attend at Chobham, and 300 at Bisley. I find I can do any thing with them while I am serious. A baptist preacher had been some where in the neighbourhood before I came. He seems to have been wild and eccentric, and to have planted a prejudice in consequence of this in the people's minds, who appear to have had no other notion of Methodism than that it was eccentricity.

"While I am grave and serious they will allow me to say or do any thing. For instance: a few Sundays since it rained so prodigiously hard when I had finished my sermon at B. that I saw it was impracticable for any body to leave the church. I then told the people that as it was likely to continue for some time, we, had better employ ourselves as well as we could, and so I would take up the subject again. I did so; and they listened to me readily for another half-hour, though I had preached to them three quarters of an hour before I had concluded. All this they bear, and think it nothing strange; but one wild brother with one eccentric sermon would do me more mischief than I should in twenty months be able to cure."

A very strong instance of personal attachment to him occurred soon after he took Chobham. A stranger was observed to attend church every Sunday, and to leave the village immediately after service was over. Every strange face there was a phenomenon, and of course the appearance of this man, led to inquiry. He was found to be one of his own people at St. John's a poor, working man, whom 14*

VOL. I.

the advantages received under his ministry had so knit to his pastor, that he found himself repaid for a weekly journey of fifty miles. Mr. C. remonstrated with him on the inexpediency and impropriety of thus spending his Sabbath, when the pure word of God might be heard so much nearer home.

But we must approach the closing scene of this great man's life and labours.

No touches need to be added to the affecting picture which Mrs. Cecil has drawn of his gradual descent to the grave. I will only subjoin here some remarks on his VIEWS and FEELINGS with respect to that Gospel of which he had been so long an eminent and successful minister.

His VIEWS of Christianity were modified, as has been seen, by his constitution and the circumstances of his life. His dispensation was to meet a particular class of hearers. He was fitted, beyond most men, to assert the reality, dignity, and glory of religion-as contrasted with the vanity, meanness, and glare of the world. This subject he treated like a master. Men of the world felt that they were in the presence of their superior-of one who unmasked their real misery to themselves, and pursued them through all the false refuges of vain and carnal minds.

While this was the principal character of Mr. Cecil's ministry, for years at that place, for which he seems to have been specially prepared; yet he was elsewhere, with equal wisdom, leading experienced Christians forward in their way to heaven: and, latterly, the habit of his own mind and the whole system of his ministry were manifestly ripening in those views which are peculiar to the Gospel.

No man had a more just view of his own ministry than he had; nor could any one more highly value the excellence which he saw in others, though it was of a different class from his own. "I have been lately selecting," he said to me, "some of C's

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