MEMOIRS OF THE WESLEY FAMILY; COLLECTED PRINCIPALLY FROM ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS. BY ADAM CLARKE, L.L. D., F. A. S. NEW-YORK: PUBLISHED BY N. BANGS AND T. MASON, FOR THE METHODIST John C. Totten, Printer, 9 Bowery. INTRODUCTION. DURING the time in which men, eminent for their literary, diplomatic, or military talents flourish, the Public is rarely led to examine by what slow gradations their powers became matured; or what evidence their infancy and youth afforded of that high celebrity which they afterwards attained. The great utility of their literary labours, or the splendour of their public services, occupies and dazzles the mind, so that all minor considerations become absorbed; and it is only when the Public is deprived by death of such illustrious characters, that posterity feel disposed to trace them up to their earliest period; and inquire by what means these luminaries, so small at their rising, attained to such a meridian of usefulness and glory, and appeared so broad and resplendent at their setting. This is equally the case both with states and men : hence the Historian as well as the Biographer, influenced by the maxim.-Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, endeavours to investigate those philosophic and intellectual principles which gave birth and being to such physical, political, and mental energies. THAT Divine Providence, which arranges and conducts the whole, and under whose especial guidance and controul the course of the present state is ordered, so that all operations in the natural, civil, and moral world issue in manifesting the glory, justice, and mercy, of the Supreme Being, lies farther out of the view of men, and by most is little regarded: hence a multitude of events appear to have either no intelligent cause, or none adequate to their production; and because the operations of the Divine hand are not regarded, Historians and Biographers often disquiet themselves in vain to find out the causes and reasons of the circumstances and transactions which they record. In the dispensations of mercy to the world, and the effects produced by them, the principles from which all originated, the agencies employed, and the mode of working, are still more difficult of apprehension, particularly to those minds which regard earthly things, and see nothing in the natural and moral world but general laws, of which they do not appear to have any very distinct view; and which never can account for the endlessly varied occurrences in a single human life, -much less in a state, and still less in the government of the Church. By the government of the Church, I mean the continuation of that energetic and supernatural principle by which pure and undefiled religion, consisting in piety to God and benevolence to man, is maintained in the earth. There has been an unhappy propensity in all times to deny the existence of this principle, and its operations on the minds and hearts of men; and this has been the fruitful source both of irreligion and false doctrine: and hence the Church of God often feels the necessity of contending earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. This has a greater extension of meaning than is generally allowed it does not merely apply to the denial of the existence of one Supreme Being, but also to His influences and operations, even where his being is allowed. When moral effects, the purest, the most distinguished, and the most beneficial to society, are attributed to natural causes, human passions, and the inquietudes of |