JOHN WESLEY'S SUPERSTITIONS.* IN this little volume, Dr. Rigg has

done his best, indirectly, to justify the position of the Wesleyans towards the Church of England, but he has wholly failed to convince us that John

Wesley was not to the close of his life, and despite a few irregular

acts, a sincere and stedfast member of that Church. That he was an extreme Ritualist in early life, and held all or nearly all the tenets of modern Anglicans, Dr. Rigg is willing to acknowledge, but he affirms that afterwards Wesley escaped from this bondage and from the servile spirit it produced, and attained true Christian liberty, which means, of course, that Wesley came eventually to hold the views held by Dr. Rigg. Quoting from a paper written by him in the

London Quarterly Review, he says :—" With Wesley's Ritualism, his High-Churchmanship could not but also wither away. A number of

old and long customary prejudices and predilections—habits of thought and feeling which had become a second nature—still slave to him for a while ; but these dropped off one by one, until scarcely a vestige of them was left. All the irregularities of the Methodist deader, his renunciation of Church bigotry and exclusiveness ; his partial, but progressive and fundamental separation from the Church, which imposed shackles on his evangelical activities and frowned upon his converts, and the ultimate separation in due sequence of the Church he had founded from the Church in which he was nurtured ; all these results were involved in the change. Newman renounced justification by faith, and clung to Apostolic succession, therefore, he went to Rome ; Wesley embraced justi- fication by faith, and renounced Apostolic succession, therefore his people are a separate people from the Church of England."

Elsewhere in the volume, Dr. Rigg repeats this assertion, and evi- dently holds, that accepting the doctrine of salvation by faith in- volves the rejection of what are generally regarded as Church principles. We do not propose to discuss this question here, but we may observe that Wesley's view of justification seems to be that held by devout High Churchmen in our day :—

", We have received it as a maxim,' he wrote in his old age, that a man is to do nothing in order to justification ; nothing can be more false. Whoever desires to find favour with God should cease from evil, and learn to do well. Whoever repents, should do " works meet for repentance." And if this is not in order to find favour, what does he do them for ? Is not this "salvation by works?" not by the merit of works, but by works as a condition. What have we, then, been disputing about for these thirty years ? I am afraid, about words. As to merit itself, of which we have been so dreadfully afraid, we are rewarded "according to our works," yea, because of our works. How does this differ from "for the sake of our works ?" And how differs this from secundum merita operwn,—as our works deserve? Can you split this hair ? I doubt I cannot.'" It may be fairly questioned, too, whether Wesley did in mature or old age renounce the belief in Apostolic succession which he

bad held so firmly in his early manhood. Only a year or two before his death, he strongly rebuked some of his preachers for wishing to administer the Sacraments. Many years previously, and nearly twenty years after what Dr. Rigg calls his " evangelical conversion," he had written that he regarded it as a sin for any non-ordained preachers to administer the Lord's Supper, and affirmed that it would be a renunciation of the first principle of Methodism, so that it is not very clear when he cast off, as the writer says he did, " the sacramental ritualism that had held him in bondage." It is quite possible that Wesley's teaching may have legitimately led his followers much further than he was prepared to go himself, but there can be no doubt, to use his own words, that he lived and died a member of the Church of England ; and that the Wesleyans, in separating from that Church, have dis- regarded his judgment and advice. We fail, therefore, to see on

what grounds Dr. Rigg asserts that Wesley did all he could to meet the views of those who demanded separation.

In his portrait of Wesley, Dr. Rigg does fair justice to some of his intellectual characteristics, but there are sides of his char- acter which he passes over slightly, or fails to recognise at all.

His love of knowledge is pointed out and illustrated. On this

* The Living Wesley, as He was in his Youth and in his Prune. By James H. Rigg, -D.D. London: Wesleyan Conference Office. 1875. subject we need not dwell, having given full credit to Wesley's intellectual activity in a recent article. But there is another phase of character quite as remarkable, and this is scarcely noticed by Dr. Rigg,—we allude to Wesley's credulity. The writer appar- ently accepts all the demonstrations that occurred after Wesley's

preaching as the operation of the Spirit, without any attempt to discriminate. To question such an explanation of the phenomena may appear, therefore, like irreverence. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and it is impossible for us to say bow far a vivid sense of spiritual realities may affect the physical frame. Still, even on so high a matter, we must exercise judgment and com- mon-sense. Wesley has left behind him a remarkable journal, and from that book alone, apart from other sources of intel-

ligence, it would be easy, we think, to show that his faith in the unseen world was strangely blended with superstition, and that

his sagacity often failed him when he attempted to investigate spiritual phenomena. In the early and fruitful days of Methodism, many strange manifestations occurred, which Wesley encouraged, and which he evidently regarded as great spiritual facts. While he was preaching, his hearers appeared to be moved by an unseen power. They raved, they shouted, they foamed at the mouth, they fell upon the ground, they seemed to be contending with in- visible foes, they even uttered foul blasphemies, until at length the evil demon was exorcised, and they arose in a sound mind.

No doubt there was much in this disturbance which was not due to imposture. Great excitement in a great crowd has again and again produced results which would be unaccountable under or- dinary circumstances, and it is quite possible that the call to re- pentance, heard for the first time by rude, rough men and women,

might have powerfully affected the physical frame. These mani- festations happened generally within doors, and Wesley alludes more than once to the extreme heat of the rooms in which he preached, but it is evident that he paid no attention to common- place circumstances like these, and regarded the effects caused by his preaching as indubitable evidences of its power. Several re-

markable instances of this are to be met with in Wesley's Journal, as well as of superstition quite as extravagant as that which

originated the touching for the King's Evil. Thus he records how a dog began howling under his window in a most uncommon manner about two o'clock in the morning, and how just then a certain William B—r died ; how a decent woman who had suffered a violent pain in the head for some weeks begged him to put his hand on her cheek, and was cured from that moment ; how a young woman whose breasts were " quite hard, and black as soot," upon being prayed for, became perfectly well in a moment ; how, in answer to prayer, the rain ceased and the wind blew when required, and his lame horse became sound. The last-mentioned incident is thus recorded :—

" When Mr. Shepherd and I loft Smeton, my horse was so exceeding lame that I was afraid I must have lain by too. We could not discern what it was that was amiss, and yet he could scarce set his foot to the ground. By riding thus seven miles I was thoroughly tired, and my head ached more than it had done for some months (what I here aver is the naked fact, let every man account for it as he sees good). I then thought, ' Cannot God heal either man or beast, by any means or with- out any ?' Immediately my weariness and headache ceased, and my horse's lameness in the same instant. Nor did he halt any more either that day or the next."

Wesley visits a man in a violent fever, who revives directly he sees him, and begins to recover from that time ; and he tells the story of an Irish woman he knew, a zealous Papist, who became blind for three months, until casting her eyes one day on a New Testament, she discovered that she could see clearly :-

" I said to myself, won't road this Protestant book, I will read my own book.' Accordingly I opened the Mass-Book, but could not see one word ; it appeared all dark and black. I made the trial thrice over, holding the Mass-Book in one hand and the Testament in the other. I could net see anything in the Mass-Book, but could read the Testament as well as ever. On this I threw away the Mass-Book, fully resolved to meddle with it no more."

This story, and others still more outrageous, Wesley notes down,

without a doubt or question as to the truthfulness and accuracy of the narrator.

The faith of Wesley's acquaintances led sometimes to rather inconvenient results. " I talked," he writes, " with one who, by the advice of his pastor, bad very calmly and deliberately beat his wife with a large stick, till she was black and blue almost from head to foot ; and he insisted it was his duty so to do, because she was surly and ill-natured, and that he was full of faith all the time he was doing it, and had been so ever since." It should be observed that some of the most extravagant stories related by Wesley came to him by hearsay, the truth of others he endea- voured to investigate for his own satisfaction, but he was always readily satisfied when the statements were made by pious people, or by people who simulated piety. Frequently he gives long ex- tracts from the letters or journals of eye-witnesses, who describe manifestations more remarkable than any witnessed by Wesley himself. One of these relates how, at the preaching of a Mr. B—, he saw a fresh, healthy countryman drop down with a violence inconceivable, and heard "the stamping of his feet ready to break the boards, as he lay in strong convulsions at the bottom of the pew." Then a girl was seized, then a boy of about eight years old, who " roared above his fellows " ; a little later, a stranger fell backward to the wall, then forward on his knees, " wringing his hands, and roaring like a bull. His face at first turned quite red, and then almost black. He screamed out, Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do ? 0 for one drop of the blood of Christ !' As he spoke, God set his soul at liberty, and the rapture he was in seemed too great for human nature to bear." The same writer relates that while another man was preaching, fifteen or sixteen persons dropped down, and some little children lay as dead, or struggled with all their might, and cried out so that the loudest singing could scarce be heard. So violent was the struggling, that several pews and benches were broken. Others dropped

down on their way home, and were found lying as dead in the road. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, and the student of psychology is probably acquainted with phenomena similar to those which we have mentioned. Wesley's mistake lay in re- garding them invariably as signs of divine interposition, which

were to be expected and given thanks for ; he appears to have en- couraged the excitement, instead of endeavouring to moderate it. There are proofs that much in these demonstrations was spurious, and might have been suppressed by Wesley, and no one in our day will doubt that his influence in that case would have been greater, and the opposition which he met with less violent. His brother Charles set Wesley an admirable example in this respect :—

" To-day [he says in his Journal; the passage is aptly quoted by Southey] one came who was pleased to fall into a fit for my entertain- ment. He beat himself heartily ; I thought it a pity to hinder him ; BO instead of singing over him, as had often been done, we left him to recover at his leisure. A girl, as she began to cry, I ordered to be carried out ; her convulsions were so violent as to take away the use of her limbs, till they laid her without at the door, and left her ; then she immediately found her legs, and walked off. Some very unstill sisters, who always took care to stand near me, and tried who could cry loudest, since I have had them removed out of my sight have been as quiet as lambs. The first night I preached here, half my words were lost through the noise of their outcries ; last night, before I began, I gave public notice that whosoever cried so as to drown my voice should, without any man's hurting them, or judging them, bo gently carried to the farthest corner of the room ; but my porters had no employment the whole night."

The sound sense of Charles failed to influence his brother, whose credulity was insatiable. When one of his preachers de- clared that he had gone through the whole service of the meeting in his sleep, he accepts the statement, and undertakes to reason about it. When a sick man accuses Wesley falsely, he writes :—

" If he acknowledges his fault, I believe he will recover ; if not, his sickness is unto death." When a woman who had totally lost the sight of one eye relates that the Saviour appeared to her in a dream, put his hand upon her eye and immediately cured it, he

credits the narrative, because of her " unblamable character." When he visits the hospital, and finds a patient there who has had several pins extracted from her body, which the physicians believed she had swallowed, he asks :—" Which is the greater credulity, to believe this is purely natural, or to ascribe it to pre- ternatural agency ?" When his horses fall lame or are otherwise disabled on a journey, he attributes the misfortune to Satan, "the old murderer ;" and when a young woman tells him that she is in constant communication with a female angel, who informs her of many things before they come to pass, he writes :—" When we were alone, there was a wonderful power in her words. I was soon convinced that she was not only sincere, but deep in grace, and therefore incapable of deceit."

Truly does Southey say that there was nothing more remark- able about this remarkable man than his readiness to believe any strange tale that might be told him :—" He accredited and repeated stories of apparitions, and witchcraft, and possession, so silly as well as monstrous, that they might have nauseated the coarsest appetite for wonder ; this, too, when the belief on his part was purely gratuitous, and no motive can be assigned for it except the pleasure of believing." We may add, in Wesley's own words, " there is no folly too great even for a man of sense, if he resolve to follow his own imagination."

To return for a moment to Dr. Rigg's portrait of " The Living Wesley." It will be judged from what we have said, that we re- gard it as one-sided and incomplete. The most interesting chapter is that which describes Wesley's early love-affairs, for it illus. trates a susceptibility to female charms for which few would give I him credit. Among the ladies with whom he was smitten was Mrs. Pendarves, afterwards well known as Mrs. Delany ; and there is a pious, but most grotesque love-letter from the young man, written in 1731, which Dr. Bigg regards as opening the way skil- fully and clearly for future advances. It is to be feared that the girl's sense of humour overpowered her gravity, on reading this solemn epistle.