with me in this. Our good old father neglected every opportunity of selling our souls to the devil."

One of these brothers became a papist, to the sore grief of his parents. Upon this occasion John addressed a letter to them, saying, he doubted not that they were in great trouble, because their son had "changed his religion;" and, deducing a topic of consolation from the inaccuracy of that expression," Nay," said he, "he has changed his opinions, and mode of worship, but that is not religion; it is quite another thing. Has he then, you may ask, sustained no loss by the change? Yes; unspeakable loss: because his new opinions and mode of worship are so unfavourable to religion, that they make it, if not impossible to one that knew better, yet extremely difficult. What, then, is religion? It is happiness in God, or in the knowledge and love of God. It is faith working by love;' producing righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.' In other words, it is a heart and life devoted to God; or communion with God the Father and the Son; or the mind which was in Christ Jesus, enabling us to walk as he walked. Now, either he has this religion, or he has not: if he has, he will not finally perish, notwithstanding the absurd unscriptural opinions he has embraced, and the superstitious and idolatrous modes of worship. But these are so many shackles which will greatly retard him in running the race that is set before him. If he has not this religion; if he has not given God his heart, the case is unspeakably worse: I doubt if he ever will; for his new friends will continually endeavour to hinder him, by putting something else in its place, by encouraging him to rest in the form, notions, or externals, without being born again; without having Christ in him, the hope of glory; without being renewed in the image of Him that created him. This is the deadly evil. I have often lamented that he had not this holiness, without which no man can see the Lord. But though he had it not, yet, in his hours of cool reflection, he did not hope to go to heaven without it but now he is, or will be taught, that, let him

only have a right faith, (that is, such and such notions,) and add thereunto such and such externals, and he is quite safe. He may indeed roll a few years in purging fire, but he will surely go to heaven

at last."

The father felt this evil so deeply, that, it is asserted, one of the last things he said upon his deathbed was to declare his forgiveness of the person by whose means his son had been perverted. To Mr. Wesley it was a mortification as well as a grief; for he had exposed the errors of the Romanists in some controversial writings, perspicuously and forcibly. One of those writings gave the Catholics an advantage, because it defended the Protestant Association of 1780; and the events which speedily followed, were turned against him. But, upon the great points in dispute, he was clear and cogent; and the temper of this, as of his other controversial tracts, was such, that, some years afterwards, when a common friend invited him to meet his antagonist, Father O'Leary, it was gratifying to both parties to meet upon terms of courtesy and mutual good will.

Before Mr. Wesley submitted to the operation, he considered himself as almost a disabled soldier; so little could he reconcile himself to the restriction from horse exercise. So perfectly, however, was he re-established in health, that, a few months afterwards, upon entering his seventy-second year, he asked, "How is this, that I find just the same strength as I did thirty years ago; that my sight is considerably better now, and my nerves* firmer than they were then; that I have none of the infirmities of old age, and have lost several I had in my youth? The grand cause is the good pleasure of God, who doth whatsoever pleaseth him. The chief means are, my constantly rising at four for about fifty years; my generally preaching at five in the morning-one

* Mr. Wesley believed that the use of tea made his hand shake so, before he was twenty years old, that he could hardly write. He published an essay against tea-drinking, and left off during twelve years; then at the close of a consumption," by Dr. Fothergill's directions, he used it again, and probably learnt how much he had been mistaken in attributing ill effects to so refreshing and innocent a beverage.

of the most healthy exercises in the world; my never travelling less, by sea or land, than four thousand five hundred miles in a year." Repeating the same question after another year had elapsed, he added to this list of natural means," the ability, if ever I want, to sleep immediately; the never losing a night's sleep in my life; two violent fevers, and two deep consumptions; these, it is true, were rough medicines; but they were of admirable service, causing my flesh to come again as the flesh of a little child. May I add, lastly, evenness of temper: I feel and grieve; but, by the grace of God, I fret at nothing. But still, the help that is done upon earth, He doth it himself; and this he doth in answer to many prayers."

He himself had prayed that he might not live to be useless; and the extraordinary vigour which he preserved to extreme old age, might well make him believe, that, in this instance, his heart's desire had been granted. The seventy-eighth year of his age found him, he says, " by the blessing of God," just* the same as when he entered the twenty-eighth ; and, upon entering his eightieth, he blessed God that his time was not labour and sorrow, and that he found no more infirmities than when he was in the flower of manhood. But though this uncommon exemption from the burthen of age was vouchsafed him, it was not in the nature of things that he should be spared from its feelings and regrets. The days of his childhood returned upon him when he visited Epworth; and, taking a solitary walk in the church yard of that place, he says, "I felt the truth of one generation goeth, and another cometh. See how the earth drops its inhabitants, as the tree drops its leaves!" Wherever he went, his old disciples had past away, and other generations had succeeded in their stead; and, at the houses to which he looked on with pleasure in the course of his yearly rounds, he found more and more frequently, in every succeeding year, that death had been before him.

* "In the year 1769," he says, "I weighed a hundred and twentytwo pounds. In 1783, I weighed not a pound more or less."

Whole families dropt off one by one, while he continued still in his green old age, full of life, and activity, and strength, and hope, and ardour. Such griefs were felt by him less keenly than by other men; because every day brought with it to him change of scene and of persons; and because, busy as he was on earth, his desires were in heaven. "1 had hopes," says he, in his Journal," of seeing a friend at Lewisham in my way: and so I did; but it was in her coffin. It is well, since she finished her course with joy. In due time I shall see her in glory." To one of his young female correspondents he says, with melancholy anticipation, " I sometimes fear lest you also, as those I tenderly love generally have been, should be snatched away. But let us live to-day!" Many of his most ardent and most amiable disciples seem to have been cut off, in the flower of their youth, by consumption-a disease too frequently connected with what is beautiful in form, and intellect, and disposition.

Mr. Fletcher, though a much younger man, was summoned to his reward before him. That excellent person* left England, under all the symptoms of advanced consumption, to try the effect of his

66

*In the year 1788, Mr. Wesley printed a letter written to him from France in 1770, by Mr. Fletcher, in which the following remarkable passage occurs: A set of Free-thinkers (great admirers of Voltaire and Rousseau, Bayle, and Mirabeau) seem bent upon destroying Christianity and government. With one hand, says a lawyer, who has written against them, they shake the throne, and, with the other, they throw down the altar. If we believe them, the world is the dupe of kings and priests; religion is fanaticism and superstition; subordination is slavery and tyranny; Christian morality is absurd, unnatural, and impracticable; and Christianity is the most bloody religion that ever was. And here it is certain, that, by the example of Christians, so called, and by our continual disputes, they have a great advantage. Popery will certainly fall in France in this or the next century; and God will use those vain men to bring about a reformation here, as he used Henry VIII. to do that great work in England: so the madness of his enemies shall turn at last to his praise, and to the furtherance of his kingdom. If you ask what system these men adopt, I answer, that some build, upon deism, a morality founded upon self-preservation, selfinterest, and self-honour. Others laugh at all morality, except that which violently disturbs society; and external order is the decent cover of fatalism; while materialism is their system." He invites all Christians "to do what the herds do on the Swiss mountains, when the wolves make an attack upon them: instead of goring one another, they unite, form a close battalion, and face the enemy on all sides."

native air; and, in the expectation of death, addressed a pastoral letter at that time to his parishioners. "I sometimes," said he, "feel a desire of being buried where you are buried, and having my bones lie in a common earthen bed with yours. But I soon resign that wish; and, leaving that particular to Providence, exult in thinking, that neither life nor death shall ever be able (while we hang on the Crueified, as He hung on the cross) to separate us from Christ our head, nor from the love of each other his members." His recovery, which appears almost miraculous, was ascribed by himself more to eating plentifully of cherries and grapes, than to any other remedies. His friends wished him to remain among them at Nyon: "they urge my being born here," said he," and I reply, that I was born again in England, and therefore that is, of course, the country which to me is the dearer of the two." He returned to his parish, and married Miss Bosanquet; a woman perfectly suited to him in age, temper, piety, and talents. "We are two poor invalids," said he, "who, between us, make half a labourer. She sweetly helps me to drink the dregs of life, and to carry with ease the daily cross." His account of himself, after this time, is so beautiful, that its insertion might be pardoned here, even if Mr. Fletcher were a less important personage in the history of Methodism. "I keep in my sentry-box," says he, "till Providence remove me: my situation is quite suited to my little strength. I may do as much or as little as I please, according to my weakness; and I have an advantage, which I can have no where else in such a degree: my little field of action is just at my door, so that, if I happen to overdo myself, I have but a step from my pulpit to my bed, and from my bed to my grave. If I had a body full of vigour, and a purse full of money, I should like well enough to travel about as Mr. Wesley does; but, as Providence does not call me to it, I readily submit. The snail does best in its shell.'

This good man died in 1785, and in the 56th year of his age. Volumes have been filled, and are per