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 vanity, and not to the Author of all good, the Father of lights, then we may safely assert, that the person who so views them is one of those unwise men of whom the Psalmist speaks. He excludes God from His own peculiar work; gives to nature what belongs to grace; to human passions, what belongs to the Divine Spirit; and to secondary causes what must necessarily spring from the First Cause of all things. Were not the subject too grave, it would be sufficient to excite something more than a smile to see men both of abilities and learning, in their discussion of spiritual subjects which they have never thoroughly examined, because they have never experimentally felt them, labour to account for all the phænomena of repentance, faith, and holiness, by excluding the Spirit of God from His own proper work; and, to the discredit of their understanding and the dishonour of religion and sound philosophy, search for the principle that produces love to God and all mankind, with all the fruits of a holy life, in some of the worst passions of the human heart. In reference to a great and manifest revival of religion in the land we have heard the following concessions:"It is granted, (say such men) that multitudes of the most profligate of the people have been morally changed; and, from being a curse to their respective neighbourhoods, have become a blessing to the whole circle of their acquaintance; the best of servants, sons, and husbands; obedient subjects to the state, and a credit to humanity." But how was this change effected? "Why," say they, "by the persuasive arguments of a powerful orator; who, to the love of power and the lust of ambition, added extraordinary address and general benevolence. With a strong tincture of enthusiasm in himself, which found a tractable disposition in the fanaticism of the age, and the credulity of the common people; he succeeded in raising, organizing, and rendering permanent, a society of increasing influence and importance; the principles of which deserve the investigation of the statesmen and the philosopher, and their economy and progress the pen of the historian." Thus the good done is reluctantly acknowledged; while the Cause of it is either entirely unnoticed, or unknown. A fountain is pointed out which produces sweet waters and bitter; brambles which produce figs, and thorns which produce grapes; or in other words, that work which neither might nor power, but the Spirit of the Lord of hosts alone can effect, is attributed to a certain mechanical operation on the minds of the multitude by the agency of worldly ambition, lust of power, self-interest, and hypocrisy ! Thus has the world been often abused in reference to the work of God by ignorant, irreligious, and prejudiced men, from the foundation of Christianity to the present time: but never more, and never more grossly, than in relation to the Rev. John Wesley and that great revival of Scriptural Christianity which it has pleased the world to call Methodism, and the subjects of which it terms Methodists,-appellatives which the members of that religious Society bear, not because they have either chosen or approved of them, but because the public will have it so. The fame of Mr. Wesley's labours, writings, and success in the Ministry, has reached most parts of the habitable globe; and wherever his name has been heard, a desire has very naturally been excited to know something of his origin and personal history, and of the rise and progress of that Work of which he was, under God, the Author, and for more than half a century the great superintendent and conductor. To meet this desire, various Lives and Memoirs, possessing different degrees of merit and accuracy, have been published: but in most cases by Authors either ill-informed, or pre |