Wesley Corpus

not even endeavouring to read it as the word of God, but rather as an old song! Such a layman as this, meddling at all with the word of God, I grant, is a scandal to the English nation. To go a step farther: Do not the fundamental constitutions of the University of Oxford, the statutes, even as revised by Archbishop Laud, require every Bachelor of Arts, nine in ten of whom are laymen, to read three public lectures in moral philosophy, on whatever subject he chooses? My subject, I well remember, was, “the love of God.” Now, what was this but preaching?- Nay, may not a man be a Doctor of Divinity even in Oxford, though he never was ordained at all ? The instance of Dr. Atwell, (late) Rector of Exeter College, is fresh in cvery one's memory. These are a few of the considcrations that may readily occur to any thinking man on this head. But I do not rest the cause on these. I believe it may be defended a shorter way. 14. It pleased God, by two or three Ministers of the Church of England, to call many sinners to repentance; who, in several parts, were undeniably turned from a course of sin, to a course of holiness. The Ministers of the places where this was done ought to have received those Ministers with open arms; and to have taken them who had just begun to serve God into their pecu liar care; watching over them in tender love, lest they should fall back into the snare of the devil. Instead of this, the greater part spoke of those Ministers as if the devil, not God, had sent them. Some repelled them from the Lord’s table; others stirred up the people against them, representing them, even in their public discourses, as fellows not fit to live; Papists, heretics, traitors; conspirators against their King and country. And how did they watch over the sinners lately reformed? Even as a leopard watcheth over his prey. They drove some of them also from the Lord’s table; to which till now they had no desire to approach. They preached all manner of evil concerning them, openly cursing them in the name of the Lord. They turned many out of their work; persuaded others to do so too, and harassed them all manner of ways.