can." Your may find a few that observe the second, "Save all you can:" but how many have you found that observe the third rule, "Give all you can?" Have you reason to believe, that five hundred of these are to be found among fifty thousand Methodists? And yet nothing can be more plain, than that all who observe the first two rules without the third, will be twofold more the children of hell than ever they were before.

9. O that God would enable me once more, before I go hence, and am no more seen, to lift up my voice like a trumpet to those who gain and save all they can, but do not give all they can. Ye are the men, some of the chief men, who continually grieve the Holy Spirit of God, and in a great measure stop his gracious influence from descending on our assemblies. Many of your brethren, beloved of God, have not food to eat; they have not raiment to put on; they have not a place where to lay their heads. And why are they thus distressed? Because you impiously, unjustly, and cruelly detain from them what your Master and theirs lodges in your hands, on purpose to supply their wants! See that poor member of Christ, pinched with hunger, shivering with cold, half naked! Mean time you have plenty of this world's goods, of meat, drink, and apparel. In the name of God, what are you doing? Do you neither fear God, nor regard man? Why do you not deal your bread to the hungry? And cover the naked with a garment? Have you laid out in your own costly apparel what would have answered both these intentions? Did God command you so to do? Does he commend you for so doing? Did he entrust you with his (not your) goods for this end? And does he now say, "Servant of God, well done?" You well know he does not. This idle expense has no approbation, either from God or your own conscience. But, you say, You can afford it!" O be ashamed to take such miserable nonsense into your mouths. Never more utter such stupid cant, such palpable absurdity! Can any steward afford to be an arrant knave? To waste his Lord's goods? Can any servant afford to lay out his

Master's money, any otherwise than his Master appoints him? So far from it, that whoever does this, ought to be excluded from a Christian Society.

10. "But is it possible to supply all the poor in our Society with the necessaries of life?" It was possible once to do this, in a larger Society than this. In the first Church at Jerusalem, there was not any among them that lacked, but distribution was made to every one, according as he had need." And we have full proof that it may be so still. It is so among the people called Quakers. Yea, and among the Moravians so called. And why should it not be so with "Because they are ten times richer than we.' ." Perhaps fifty times. And yet we are able enough, if we be equally willing, to do this.

us ?

A gentleman (a Methodist) told me some years since, "I shall leave forty thousand pounds among my children." Now suppose he had left them but twenty thousand, and given the other twenty thousand to God and the poor, would God have said to him, "Thou fool?" And this would have set all the Society far above want.

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11. But I will not talk of giving to God, or leaving half your fortune. You might think this to be too high a price for heaven. I will come to lower terms. Are there not a few among you that could give a hundred pounds, perhaps some that could give a thousand, and yet leave your children as much as would help them to work out their own salvation? With two thousand pounds, and not much less, we could supply the present wants of all our poor, and put them in way of supplying their own wants for some time to come. Now suppose this could be done, are we clear before God, while it is not done? Is not the neglect of it one cause why so many are still sick and weak among you? And that both in soul and in body? That they still grieve the Holy Spirit, by preferring the fashions of the world to the commands of God? And, I many times doubt, whether we Preachers are not in some measure partakers of their sin. I am in doubt whether it is not a kind of partiality. 'I doubt, whether it is not a great sin to keep them in our

Society. May it not hurt their souls, by encouraging them to persevere, in walking contrary to the Bible? And may it not, in some measure, intercept the salutary influences of the blessed Spirit upon the whole Community?

12. I am distressed. I know not what to do. I see what I might have done once. I might have said peremptorily and expressly, "Here I am: I and my Bible. I will not, I dare not vary from this book, either in great things or small. I have no power to dispense with one jot or tittle of what is contained therein. I am determined to be a Bible-Christian, not almost, but altogether. Who will meet me on this ground? Join me on this, or not at all." With regard to dress in particular I might have been as firm (and I now see it would have been far better) as either the people called Quakers, or the Moravian Brethren ;-I might have said, "This is our manner of dress, which we know is both scriptural and rational. If you join with us, you are to dress as we do: but you need not join us unless you please." But, alas! the time is now past. And what I can do now, I cannot tell.

13. But to return to the main question. Why has Christianity done so little good, even among us? Among the Methodists? Among them that hear and receive the whole Christian doctrine, and that have Christian Discipline added thereto, in the most essential parts of it? Plainly, because we have forgot, or at least not duly attended to those solemn words of our Lord, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." It was the remark of a holy man, several years ago, "Never was there before a people in the Christian Church, who had so much of the power of God among them, with so little self-denial." Indeed the work of God does go on, and in a surprising manner, notwithstanding this capital defect; but it cannot go on in the same degree, as it otherwise would: neither can the word of God have its full effect, unless the hearers of it "deny themselves, and take up their cross daily."

14. It would be easy to shew, in how many respects the VOL. X. E e

Methodists, in general, are deplorably wanting in the practice of Christian self-denial: from which indeed they have been continually frighted by the silly outcries of the Antinomians. To instance only in one: While we were at Oxford, the rule of every Methodist, was (unless in case of sickness) to fast every Wednesday and Friday in the year, in imitation of the Primitive Church, for which we had the highest reverence. Now this practice of the Primitive Church is universally allowed. "Who does not know," says Epiphanius, an ancient writer, "that the fasts of the fourth and sixth days of the week (Wednesday and Friday) are observed by the Christians throughout the whole world? So they were by the Methodists for several years; by them all, without any exception. But afterwards, some in London carried this to excess, and fasted so as to impair their health. It was not long before others made this a pretence for not fasting at all. And I fear there are now thousands of Methodists so called, both in England and Ireland, who, following the same bad example, have entirely left off fasting: who are so far from fasting twice in the week, (as all the stricter Pharisees did,) that they do not fast twice in the month. Yea, are there not some of you who do not fast one day, from the beginning of the year to the end? But what excuse can there be for this? I do not say for those that call themselves members of the Church of England; but for any who profess to believe the Scripture to be the Word of God? Since, according to this, the man that never fasts, is no more in the way to heaven, than the man that never prays.

15. But can any one deny that the members of the Church of Scotland fast constantly? Particularly on their sacramental occasions. In some parishes they return only once a year, but in others, suppose in large cities, they occur twice, or even thrice a year. Now it is well known there is always a fast-day in the week preceding the administration of the Lord's Supper. But occasionally looking into a book of accounts in one of their vestries, I observed, "So much set down, for the dinners of the Ministers, on

the fast-day!" And I am informed there is the same article in them all. And is there any doubt, but the people fast just as their Ministers do? But what a farce is this! What a miserable burlesque upon a plain Christian duty! O that the General Assembly would have regard to the honour of their nation! Let them roll away from it this shameful reproach, by either enforcing the duty, or removing that article from their books. Let it never appear there any more! Let it vanish away for ever.

16. But why is self-denial in general so little practised at present among the Methodists? Why is so exceedingly little of it to be found even in the oldest and largest Societies? The more I observe and consider things, the more clearly it appears, what is the cause of this in London, in Bristol, in Birmingham, in Manchester, in Leeds, in Dublin, in Cork. The Methodists grow more and more selfindulgent, because they grow rich. Although many of them are still deplorably poor, ("Tell it not in Gath; publish it not in the streets of Askelon!") yet many others, in the space of twenty, thirty, or forty years, are twenty, thirty, yea, a hundred times richer than they were when they first entered the Society. And it is an observation which admits of few exceptions, that nine in ten of these, decreased in grace, in the same proportion as they increased in wealth. Indeed, according to the natural tendency of riches, we cannot expect it to be otherwise.

17. But how astonishing a thing is this! How can we understand it? Does it not seem, (and yet this cannot be,) that Christianity, true, scriptural Christianity, has a tendency, in process of time, to undermine and destroy itself? For, wherever true Christianity spreads, it must cause diligence and frugality, which, in the natural course of things, must beget riches. And riches naturally beget pride, love of the world, and every temper that is destructive of Christianity. Now if there be no way to prevent this, Christianity is inconsistent with itself, and of consequence cannot stand, cannot continue long among any people: since, wherever it generally prevails, it saps its own foundation.