Wesley Corpus

Till some way is found of stopping up these two great inlets of wickedness, we must expect to see our workhouses filled with aged parents forsaken by their prodigal children, with wives forsaken by their faithless husbands, and with the wretched offspring of lewd women and drunken men. Nay, we may expect to see the gaols, and even the gallows, largely stocked, to the perpetual reproach of our nation, with unhappy wretches ready to fall a sacrifice to the laws of their country. “It is a common observation,’ says Dr. Gibson, late Bishop of London, “that public criminals, when they come to their unhappy end, and make their dying declarations to the world, generally charge the sinful courses in which they have lived, to the neglect and abuse of the Lord’s day, as the first occasion of leading them into all other wickedness. And, considering how frequently these declarations are repeated, and how many other instances of the same kind, though less public, are notorious enough to those who will observe them, they may well be a warning to us, to consider a religious observation of the Lord’s day as the best preservative of virtue and religion, and the neglect and profanation of it as the greatest inlet to vice and wickedness.” 6. “A pious Clergyman farther observes: ‘The want of education in children is one of the principal causes of the misery of families, cities, and nations; ignorance, vice, and misery being constant companions. The hardest heart must melt at the melancholy sight of such a number of children, both male and female, who live in gross ignorance, and habitual profanation of the Lord’s day. What crowds fill the streets and fields, tempting each other to idleness, lewdness, and every other species of wickedness | Is it any wonder we should have so many undutiful children, unfaithful appren tices, disobedient servants, untrusty workmen, disloyal subjects, and bad members of society? Whence so much rapine, fornication, and blasphemy? Do not all these evils centre in ignorance and contempt of the Lord's day? And shall we do nothing to check these growing evils?’ 7. “Persons concerned for the welfare of the next genera tion, and well-wishers to Church and State, have already set us a fair example in Stroud, Gloucester, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, and many country parishes. They have attempted to remedy these evils by setting up.