guilt of one sin you perish; and if through grace you repent of the sins of "numerous years," you will obtain mercy.

One moment you think your past convictions, sorrow, prayers, hopes, and joys, must have been the effects of the grace of God.

Then you review the number, extent, duration, and aggravations of your sins, and conclude, you could not possibly have been converted to God. You cannot decide the question; nor will I attempt it, because I neither know, nor desire to know, how far it is possible for a converted soul to wander from God. The judgment day alone will disclose this. If you, with all your past feelings and purposes, were deceived, how can any soul that backslides, frequently, or for a long time, be sure of his conversion? How, indeed! If sin does not produce doubts of our sincerity; and fears of divine displeasure, it must produce blindness and hardness of heart.

If under all your profession you have sinned against both knowledge and experience of the grace of God; or have deceived your soul by familiarity with sin, and the means of grace, without being "renewed in the spirit of your mind," you are a sinner of the deepest dye. In either case," none but a power divinely strong, can turn the current of your soul :" yet, you will add sin to sin, by thinking or acting, as if your salvation were "too hard for the Lord." Say not, "there is no hope;" for despair is the deathwound to relief, or even an attempt to obtain it. I will consider "you a sinner, a great sinner, a self-condemned and lost sinner. I will view you as in the class of the greatest sinners; and of these, "the chief." In this condition, you are a helpless sinner; but not a hopeless one. It is possible you may be saved. You are the greatest sinner on earth-in your own apprehension; but you are on earth, within the sphere of saving mercy. You are not in hell. "A brand," indeed; but God can "pluck you out of the fire!"

You are yet" in the body,"-you are yet a man; and the "voice" of grace" is to the sons of men." You ask, if I ever knew one with the same views of himself, recovered? Yes, and with the addition of a heart, so hard, as not to be able to pray for mercy! But you object, "if God will be inquired of," and they could not inquire of, and pray to him, what then? Then, I have read the word of God to them-conversed with them-inquired, and prayed with, and for them, as opportunity presented itself; and God has heard my prayer for them, as he did the prayer of Job for his friends; and although some

of them have never recovered health, but suffered greatly,—“ thou, O God, wast a God that forgavest them, though thou didst take vengeance on their inventions."

Your's, &c.

J. COOKE.

LETTER LXXVI.-TO THE SAME.

My dear Sir,

If you considered yourself as an unconverted sinner, awakened to a solicitude for salvation, or as a partaker of the grace of God, under the guilt of aggravated backslidings, you admit there would be scriptural warrants for hope. But you fear that you are neither the one nor the other. Suppose your complaint to be just, so far as relates to the description of your character, still you are unconverted, and awakened to a sense of your danger; and danger increased by sinning for a long season against convictions, concern, resolutions, and encouragements under the means of grace, and the operations of many afflictions. What shall I say to you? Rather, “what saith the scriptures?" They say, "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts,"-his thoughts of continuing in sin, his despairing thoughts of divine mercy and grace; " let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; to our God, and he will abundantly pardon."

Are you not an unrighteous and wicked man, by your own description? Wicked beyond any heathen, or newly awakened sinner under the Christian dispensation? Nevertheless, a gracious God allows, yea commands you to return, with the assurance of your finding mercy; reject your own thoughts,-dwell on the thoughts of God. Let them become your thoughts, and under their influence return, seek the Lord, and "believe on him that justifieth the oxGODLY." Yes, let the wicked, the chief of sinners, return. "HIM!” you exclaim. Yes, let even HIM return, and mercy "waiteth to be gracious." God makes no exception to you. He exhorts, invites, encourages you. If you are enabled to comply, though your “sim has abounded," his grace will much more abound towards you, in pardon, acceptance, peace, and consolation. "Grace be with you," and your's,

JOHN COOKE.

LETTER LXXVII. TO A FRIEND.

(On Mr. Wesley's Character and Labours.)

My dear Sir,

I HAVE read Mr. Wesley's Life and Works, in general, which are all in my study. I am thankful that my mind has not been moved by those parts of his works in which he writes so obscurely on the doctrine of justification; and, as it appears to me, in which he quibbles on the phrases" the imputed righteousness of Christ," which he preached twelve years, and then renounced, for the phrase "the righteousness of faith." They both mean the same thing, are both liable to equal abuse; but Mr. Wesley thought otherwise.

He preached perfection, as attainable in this life; but always said he had not attained it. On this subject, he does not edify me. He writes on justification like a Calvinist, when he contends with a Baptist; but when he contends with Mr. Hervey, he is the Arminian. There are many peculiarities in his volumes, some trifling, some contradictious; others rash, arbitrary, and savour of bigotry.

But I make great allowance for his hasty manner of writing. He wrote fast, wrote much. Had he written less, he had written better. His journals contain much affected, dull, detail and repetition: too much display, too much of-I and me, which amounts to worse than nothing in a great man. Yet, I abhor" the gall of bitterness," with which Mr. Toplady has written against Mr. Wesley. You admire Toplady; so do I; but not his cruel, degrading censures against Mr. Wesley. When he reasons against Arminianism, I approve; but when he rails against the person and character of Mr. Wesley, I loathe his writings. You speak very freely of "John Wesley"-of "Wesley”—and of "old John." My dear Sir, render honour to whom honour is due. And is none due to the minister who preached the gospel through England and Ireland; preached it in the West Indies, and in America? The man who was sixty-five years in the ministry; fifty-two years an itinerant preacher; and from his own societies in these kingdoms, raised 300 itinerant, and 1000 local preachers, and governed, by a mind that could comprehend and combine, 80,000 persons in his different societies!

For fifty-two years, preaching two, three, and four sermons a day! and giving to the necessitous, 25,000l. "His own hands were his executors."

For fifty years, he travelled 4500 miles every year; one year with another.

Taking a mere glance at the character and talents, the voyages and journies, the labours and success, of Mr. John Wesley, greatly as I differ from him on some points of doctrine and discipline, I dare not speak lightly of him-a man who has been such a blessing to the world. No! Sir; I blush for Mr. Toplady, I blush for you, I blush for myself. You have not read his works,-I have; and I bless God for the gift of such a man to the world.-I feel my own insigniacance by his side, in many respects, and rejoice in those GRAND, ESSENTIAL truths which he taught by his tongue and his pen.

Did you, my young brother, ever teach the fall of man,-the doctrine of ORIGINAL SIN,-free and full pardon through faith in the atonement of Christ,-the necessity and sufficiency of the Holy Spirit for regeneration, sanctification and comfort, with more precision, simplicity and effect, according to the sphere of your labour' Did you ever exalt the merit of the Saviour and the grace of the Father, as the medium and source of all spiritual good more than he? Pause, read, consider, and then, if in reality you in some points think you are more evangelical than Mr. Wesley,-be humble and thankful. If, in other respects, you should think he excelled you,-think it not beneath you, to imitate one by whom "Christ was magnified in his life and in his death.”

Your's faithfully,

J. COORE.

LETTER LXXVIII.-TO THE SAME.

My dear Sir,

You allow that I have rendered you more moderate against the Methodists; more rational; but you think Mr. Wesley was an enemy to the sovereignty of God. This is your mistake. He allows the sovereignty of God in the creation,-the time it was brought into existence, its duration,-its situation, in the immensity of space,

the number and magnitude of the stars,-the earth, with its properties and furniture,--the constitution and faculties of man,— the time, place, and circumstances of his birth,-the varieties of human intellect.

Yea, that he acts as a sovereign with irresistible power, in the moment of conversion. Yea, he allows "irresistible touches, during the course of our Christian warfare." Perhaps you think this is very partial, but it proves you not impartial. I am glad to agree with this great and good man, so far; but he does not go far enough for me. I adore the wise and gracious sovereignty of God, in the whole of man's salvation.

Your's truly,

JOHN COOKE.

My dear Sir,

LETTER LXXIX.-TO THE SAME.

You say I have rendered you cautious; but you think I cannot vindicate Mr. Wesley in removing his ministers at pleasure, even from places where they have been most useful. I do not pretend to it. Mr. Wesley says, in his fifteenth volume of Journals and Letters, "I know, that were I, myself, to preach one whole year, in one place, I should preach both myself, and most of my congregation, asleep. Nor can I believe that it was ever the will of the Lord, that any congregation should have one teacher only."

This appears to me an error. If he were not qualified for one congregation, it is no proof that others are not. It also contradicts matter of fact; as it is clear, that some congregations find their own pastor's talents more edifying to them for forty years successively, than those of any other man. Mutual knowledge of each other, qualifies the minister to preach, and the hearers to receive, truths peculiarly adapted to their state, frame, trials, and obligations.

The shepherd knows his flock better than a stranger, and regulates his pastoral duties according to their exigencies. And it is no small advantage to a church and congregation, to "KNOW those that labour among them, and are over them in the Lord."