In concluding the chapter with the usual list of Wesley’s publications during the current year, there must be noticed:—
1. The continuation of his “Christian Library.” Twelve volumes had been given to the public already; seven more were issued in 1752, containing extracts from the writings of Thomas Manton, Isaac Ambrose, Jeremy Taylor, Ralph Cudworth, Nathaniel Culverwell, John Owen, and others.
2. “Some Account of the Life and Death of Matthew Lee.” 12mo, 24 pages.
3. “Serious Thoughts concerning Godfathers and Godmothers.” 12mo, four pages. The tract was written at Athlone in Ireland, but was hardly worth publishing. Of course, Wesley approves of godfathers and godmothers; but acknowledges that baptism is valid without them.
4. “Predestination calmly Considered.” 12mo, 83 pages. We have already seen, that three of the preachers, present at the Irish conference, expressed their belief, that some persons are absolutely elected, but that thousands are saved who are not elected. It was also rumoured, that Charles Wesley inclined to Whitefield’s predestinarian views. Under such circumstances, Wesley’s “Predestination calmly Considered” was a needed and opportune production. He writes (page 6): “There are some who assert the decree of election, and not the decree of reprobation. They assert, that God hath, by a positive, unconditional decree, chosen some to life and salvation; but not that He hath, by any such decree, devoted the rest of mankind to destruction. These are they to whom I would address myself first.” This is one of Wesley’s most cogent and exhaustive pamphlets, written in a most loving spirit, and yet utterly demolishing the Calvinistic theory. He shows conclusively, that no man can consistently hold the doctrine of election without holding the cognate doctrine of reprobation,—a doctrine wholly opposed to the plainest teachings of holy Scripture, dishonouring to God, overthrowing the scriptural doctrines of a future judgment, and of rewards and punishments, and “naturally leading to the chambers of death.” It is difficult to conceive how any one can read Wesley’s treatise, and still remain a Calvinist. None of his Methodistic friends tried to answer it; but Dr. John Gill, the pastor of a Baptist church in Southwark, published, in the same year, the two following pamphlets:—“The Doctrine of the Saints’ Final Perseverance, asserted and vindicated. In answer to a late pamphlet, called Serious Thoughts on that subject.” 8vo, 59 pages. And, “The Doctrine of Predestination stated and set in the Scripture light; in opposition to Mr. Wesley’s Predestination Calmly Considered. With a reply to the exceptions of the said writer to the Doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints.” 8vo, 52 pages. In the latter production, Dr. Gill says, that Wesley, in noticing his former one, had “contented himself with low, mean, and impertinent exceptions, not attempting to answer one argument, and yet having the assurance, in the public papers, to call this miserable piece of his, chiefly written on another subject, ‘A full answer to Dr. Gill’s pamphlet on Final Perseverance.’” This, on the part of Dr. Gill, was the wincing whine of a defeated man. It was not worthy of him. Dr. Gill was now fifty-five years of age, and a man of vast learning and research. Before his twentieth year, he had read all the Greek and Latin authors that had fallen in his way, and had so studied Hebrew as to be able to read the Old Testament in the original with pleasure. Besides other works, he was the author of “A Body of Divinity,” in three quarto volumes; and of “An Exposition of the Old and New Testament,” in nine volumes, folio. The university of Aberdeen had conferred upon him the degree of a doctor of divinity, “on account of his great knowledge of the Scriptures, of the oriental languages, and of Jewish antiquities, of his learned defence of the Scriptures against deists and infidels, and the reputation gained by his other works”; but, in terse, powerful, conclusive argument, John Gill was not a match for John Wesley. He was a man of excellent moral character; but he was an ultra Calvinist. He was a man of unwearied diligence, of laborious research, of vast learning; but his immense mass of valuable materials were comparatively useless, for he had neither talent to digest, nor skill to arrange them. We think it was Robert Hall who not inaptly described his voluminous productions as “a continent of mud.” He died in 1771.
5. Another of Wesley’s publications in 1752 was, “A Second Letter to the Author of ‘The Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists compared.’” This was published in the month of January; and, at the same time, was issued, “A Third Letter to the Author of the Enthusiasm of Methodists,” etc. By Vincent Perronet, A.M.; price sixpence.”[178]
Lavington published the second part of his lampooning work in 1749;[179] and part third in 1751. Of Part II., Whitefield wrote, in a letter to Lady Huntingdon, dated August 24, 1749:—“I have seen the bishop’s second pamphlet, in which he serves the Methodists, as the Bishop of Constance served John Huss, when he ordered painted devils to be put round his head, before they burnt him. His preface to me is most virulent. Everything I wrote, in my answer, is turned into the vilest ridicule. I cannot see that it calls for any further answer from me. Mr. Wesley, I think, had best attack him now, as he is largely concerned in this second part.”[180]
Whitefield was not a match for an episcopal buffoon like Lavington; and hence he hands him over to his trenchant friend Wesley. The preface, of more than thirty pages, addressed to Whitefield, was full of banter; and in Part II., following it, he is treated with the same coarse rudeness. He and Wesley and the Methodist preachers in general are accused of assuming “the ostentation of sanctified looks,” “fantastical oddities,” “affectation of godly and Scripture phrases,” “and high pretensions to inspiration.” “Their great swelling words of vanity, and proud boastings, had been carried to a most immoderate and insufferable degree.” “They were either innocent madmen, or infamous cheats.” As for Whitefield, “no man ever so bedaubed himself with his own spittle. His first Account of God’s Dealings with him was such a boyish, ludicrous, filthy, nasty, and shameless relation of himself, as quite defiles paper, and is shocking to decency and modesty. It is a perfect jakes of uncleanness.” Wesley had “so fanaticised his own followers, and given them so many strong doses of the enthusiastic tincture, as to turn their brains and deprive them of their senses.” “The mountebank’s infallible prescriptions must be swallowed, whatever be the consequence, though they die for it.” The Methodists are charged with “the black art of calumny, with excessive pride and vanity, with scepticisms and disbeliefs of God and Christ, with disorderly practices, and inveterate broils among themselves, and with a coolness for good works, and an uncommon warmth for some that are very bad.” “In their several Answers and Defences, a strain of jesuitical sophistry, artifice and craft, evasion, reserve, equivocation, and prevarication, is of constant use.”
Lavington’s Part III., a volume in itself, is addressed “to the Reverend Mr. Wesley”; who is made the almost exclusive object of its virulent attack. He is told, that he is “an arrant joker, a perfect droll.” “Go on,” says the ribald bishop, “and build chapels. One may be dedicated to the god Proteus, famous for being a juggling wonder-monger, and turning himself into all shapes; another to the god called Catius, because he made men sly and cunning as cats. The people with whom you have to do, you know, will adore you; for the same reason that the Egyptians did their bull Apis; because renowned for miracles, and every hour changing its colour.” He adds: “your Letter to the author of Enthusiasm is a medley of chicanery, sophistry, prevarication, evasion, pertness, conceitedness, scurrility, sauciness, and effrontery. Paper and time should not be wasted on such stuff.” And this was all the answer his lordship furnished.
We are afraid to make our pages, what Lavington has made his book, “a perfect jakes of uncleanness,” by further quotations. Suffice it to say, that the whole of this scurrility was anonymous.