PREFACE.

many views, if not his apostacy, his folly (we are - understood to mean his folly as an author) is palpable. We have in the edition of his Confessions, now before the reader, sought to do justice to the public, by the new-modelling of the subjects; by compressing what was extraneous, and abridging what was tedious: and, if having issued our labours, we shall be found to have accomplished that two-fold object, we shall not be much doubtful of not only at once greatly gratifying the public, but likewise the Confessionalist himself.

However this may be, having rendered the book less prolix, and far less egoistic, we shall not, in any event, think we have laboured in vain; extended usefulness being the motive of our publication. With which view, we have omitted nothing important; nor admitted any thing superfluous.

LACKINGTON'S

CONFESSIONS, &c.

"It is not much of any writer that is excellent."

WHOEVER has read the Confessions of Mr. Lackington is not unapprized of his marrying, on the 30th of January, 1776, Miss Dorcas Turton for his second wife. Dorcas was an uncommon being. Her virtues are set forth in the Memoirs; her habits in the first pages of the Confessions.

It is none of the objects of this work to expose these Confessions to ridicule; or, if it may be difficult to enter on the subject without indulging a smile, as it proceeds, the graver methods of the author shall be religiously observed. No levity, that is not the levity of the author, shall be suffered to creep in; and no licence, beyond what the author himself has taken, be given to imagination.

"Or Virtue, or her ways, alone can prove,

The just, and pure, and true in honest love."

Dorcas read novels. In the novel, Dorcas was an enthusiast. Many thought her influence over the mind of Lackington would occasion to him the loss of

B

the faith altogether; he confesses that it was even so. He lost his religion. This, Mr. Wesley's people, (that people whom he had scandalously and falsely traduced,) had, from affection towards him, prophesied; they saw his miserable condition, and generously bewailed his fall. He now quite neglected his shop, launched into fairy regions, and, instead of the first of volumes, thought nothing excellent but those books of novels which his Dorcas preferred.

With this introduction we take up the Confessions as what they are.

For several years before her marriage, Dorcas had' been a novel reader; indeed she occupied, with that and devotion, her spare hours. On the Sunday, having attended, perhaps, no less than three different congregations, and heard sermons at all, she filled up, by reading of novels, the intervals of public devotion: and no sooner returned from the Tabernacle, which she made her evening resort for worship, than the novel was again taken up, and often not set down until she saw the lovers happily married, or the morning had lighted her to bed. The confessionalist read novels as well as Dorcas. All relish for important subjects was lost in the passion for the novel, romance, and poem; for the visions of fairy regions, and the joys of the realms of fiction. In this manner months passed away, the idea of business scarce supportable. Happily these delusions in the end vanished. Roused from dreams of unreal bliss, trade became once more an object of his sober attention. In justice to his wife, it must not

be here forgotten, that she was by no means the only cause of his losing his religion; though undoubtedly she often prevailed upon him to hear her read the gay, frothy, vapid, absurd narratives of the novel and romance. Whoever was in fault, the preaching at the Foundry was neglected.

As one main object of these Confessions is, to show by what progress the confessionalist became not only religious, but devoutly and zealously religious; his acquaintance and friends are introduced, their sentiments revealed, and their opinions unfolded. For a different purpose, the same thing is done in the Memoirs. Among the characters of the Memoirs is Mr. Denis. Mr. Denis is a leading person in the Confessions. Where the Confessions inform us of the progress of Mr. Lackington to infidelity, this old acquaintance, friend, and partner is brought upon the stage. In the Memoirs, we read of Mr. Denis visiting Mr. Lackington in a great illness.

The confessionalist is again to be met with, in constancy of attendance, in his shop. Mr. Denis, an idle man, disputatious and wordy, seated on the counter, would frequently attack both Mr. Lackington and his customers on their opinions respecting Christianity and religion in general. Mr. Denis did the same at public houses, of which the chief was the Horse and Groom, in Moorfields. The confessionalist visited this public

house once.

Mr. Denis believed of the Bible only what he ap

proved. Mr. Denis was a great man for pulling systems to pieces, never establishing other or better systems in their stead. He was mystical; he had no faith in the gospel, disbelieving the divinity of Christ and the doctrine of the atonement. It was the example of Mr. Denis, his son, and other such that led astray the confessionalist; and so far was he led astray, that he grew to neglect the Sabbath altogether, as a day of religious worship. The favourites, in mysticism, of Mr. Denis were Jane Leed, Madam Bourignon, and Madam Guion; who had filled his head with such stuff as the nonsense of " pure love; rest in quietness; inexpressible sweetness; absorbed in silent spiritual pleasure; associating and concentring with the Divinity, which was the way to be all light, all eye, all love."

The doubts of Mr. Denis, Mr. Lackington quickly felt; like him he came to reject the doctrines of the atonement and the Trinity.

Whatever Denis had not succeeded in eradicating, the Memoirs of John Buncle accomplished. These Mr. Lackington read by the advice of a friend*: Methodism was now totally rejected.

He soon became acquainted with other notorious infidels beside Mr. Denis. In the year 1776, or about it, a person, otherwise of sense and shrewdness, (qualities in which the infidels of Mr. Lackington's party were not deficient), who was a down right infidel, ha

* Mr. R. T-nl-y.