It is a remarkable fact, not generally known, that John Wesley’s “Treatise on Baptism,” published in the tenth volume of his collected works, and dated November 11, 1756, is nothing less or more than his father’s “Short Discourse of Baptism,” published fifty-six years before. It is true that the son has very slightly abridged and verbally altered his father’s essay, but that is all. He thus makes all the opinions of his father, on baptism, his own; but it is somewhat strange that he should republish the treatise without the least reference to its original author. It is hardly fair that the treatise should be published as his own. In more respects than one, John Wesley was a courageous man.
In the same year in which Samuel Wesley published his “Pious Communicant,” he also gave to the public a poem, entitled, “An Epistle to a Friend concerning Poetry, by Samuel Wesley. London: Printed for Charles Harper, 1700.” The poem is a folio of thirty pages, and consists of 1083 lines.
The preface is an earnest—almost furious—production, stating his design, and dwelling on the strong tendency to infidel principles evinced by some of the chief literary men then living. He writes:—“The direct design of a great part of this poem is to serve the cause of religion and virtue. My quarrel is with those that rank themselves among atheists, and impudently defend and propagate the ridiculous opinion of the eternity of the world, and of that fatal, invincible chain of things which is now made use of to destroy the faith, as our lewd plays are to corrupt the morals, of the nation;—an opinion big with more absurdities than transubstantiation itself, and of far more fatal consequences. Besides weakening, if not destroying, the belief of the being and providence of God, it utterly takes away freedom in human actions, reduces mankind beneath the brute creation, perfectly excuses the greatest villainies, and entirely vacates all retribution hereafter. One would wonder with what face or conscience such a set of men should hope to be treated by the rules of civility, when they themselves break through those of common humanity. How can they expect any fairer quarter than wolves or tigers; or, what reason can they give why a price should not be set upon their heads as well as on the others; or, at least, why they should not be securely hampered and muzzled, and led about for a sight like other monsters? It is the fatal and spreading poison of these men’s principles and example which has extorted these warm expressions from me. I cannot with patience see my country ruined by the prodigious increase of infidelity and immorality, nor forbear crying out, with some vehemence, when it is in greater and more imminent danger than it would have been formerly if the Spanish Armada had made a descent among us. If things go on as they now are, we are in a fair way to become a nation of atheists. It is now no difficult matter to meet with those who pretend to be lewd on principle. They attack religion in form, and batter it from every quarter; they would turn the very Scriptures against themselves, and labour hard to remove a Supreme Being out of the world; or, if they do vouchsafe Him any room in it, it is only that they may find fault with His works, which they think, with that blasphemer of old, might have been much better ordered had they themselves stood by and directed the architect.
“What would these men have? Why cannot they be content to sink single into the bottomless pit without dragging so much company with them? Can they grapple with Omnipotence? Can they thunder with a voice like God, and cast abroad the rage of their wrath? Could they annihilate hell they might be tolerably happy, more quietly rake through the world, and sink into nothing.
“There is too great reason to apprehend that this infection is spread among persons of almost all ranks, though some may think it decent still to keep on a religious masque. This is hypocrisy with a witness, the basest and meanest of vices. The cowards will not believe a God, because they dare not; for woe be to them if there be one, and consequently any future punishment! From such as these I desire no favour, but that of their ill word; as their crimes must expect none from me. If I could be ambitious of a name in the world, it should be that I might sacrifice it in so glorious a cause as that of religion and virtue. If none but generals must fight in this sacred war, when there are such infernal hosts on the other side, they could never prevail without one of the ancient miracles. If little people can but discharge the place of a private sentinel, it is all that is expected from us. I hope I shall never let the enemies of God and my country come on without firing, though it serve but to give the alarm; and, if I die without quitting my post, I desire no greater glory. I have no personal pique against any whose characters I may have given in this poem, nor think the worse of them for their thoughts of me. I hope I have everywhere done them justice, and have given them commendation where they merit it.”
This is strong language respecting the chief writers of the day; but it was not unneeded. It is true, that, there were honourable exceptions—such as Addison, who was now enjoying his pension of £300 a year for his complimentary poem on one of the campaigns of King William; Sir Richard Steele, who was writing his “Christian Hero;” Dean Swift, who, having published his poetical essays, was now pondering his “Tale of a Tub;” Pope, who, as a boy twelve years old, was writing, in Windsor Forest, his “Ode on Solitude;” Parnell, who was just made M.A., and ordained a deacon; and Edward Young, who was now completing the first part of his education at Winchester. Of these and others we say nothing; but contemporaneous with them were William Wycherley, who attacked vice, it is true, but attacked it with the severity of a cynic, and the language of a libertine; Matthew Prior, who, notwithstanding his poetic fame, cohabited with a despicable drab of the lowest kind; William Congreve, “the ultimate effect of whose plays,” says Dr Johnson, “is to represent pleasure in alliance with vice, and to relax those obligations by which life ought to be regulated;” Lord Bolingbroke, whom Johnson designated “a scoundrel, who charged a pop-gun against Christianity; and a coward, who left half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman (David Mallet) to fire it off;” Anthony Collins, the infidel, who, notwithstanding his abilities as a writer, was detected in so many instances of false quotations, and other unfair modes of controversy, that he must ever be regarded as one of the most flagrant instances of literary disingenuousness; Matthew Tindall, some of whose infidel productions were, by a vote of the House of Commons, ordered to be burned by the common hangman; John Toland, the “miserable sophist,” as Swift calls him, whose sceptical writings were ordered to be burned by the Irish Parliament, and who discussed the mysteries of Christianity in coffee-houses and other public places, until at last he wanted a meal of meat, and fell to borrowing a few pence from any one that would lend to him; and John Dryden, with his sometimes Popish, and sometimes latitudinarian creed—a man of splendid talents, but whose writings, while flashing with the highest genius, are often soaked and loathsome with the foulest vice.
Macaulay, in reference to a period a few years earlier, writes:—“The profligacy of the English plays, satires, songs, and novels of that age is a deep blot on our national fame. The evil may easily be traced to its source. The wits and the Puritans had never been on friendly terms. From the Reformation to the civil war, almost every writer had taken some opportunity of assailing the straight-haired, snuffling, whining saints, who christened their children out of the Book of Nehemiah, who groaned in the spirit at the sight of Jack in the Green, and who thought it impious to taste plum-porridge on Christmas-day. At length a time came when the laughers began to look grave in their turn. The rigid, ungainly zealots, after having furnished much good sport during two generations, rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly smiling, trod down under their feet the whole crowd of mockers. At the Restoration the old fight recommenced, and the war between wit and Puritanism soon became a war between wit and morality. Whatever the canting Roundhead had regarded with reverence was insulted; whatever he had proscribed, was favoured. As he never opened his mouth except in Scriptural phrase, the new breed of wits and fine gentlemen never opened theirs without uttering ribaldry of which a porter would now be ashamed. It is not strange, therefore, that our polite literature, when it revived with the old civil and ecclesiastical polity, should have been profoundly immoral. A few eminent men, who belonged to an earlier and better age, were exempt from the general contagion. The verse of Waller still breathed the sentiments which had animated a more chivalrous generation. Cowley, distinguished as a loyalist and as a man of letters, raised his voice courageously against the immorality which disgraced both letters and loyalty. A mightier poet, tried at once by pain, danger, poverty, obloquy, and blindness, meditated, undisturbed by the obscene tumult which raged all around him, a song so sublime and so holy that it would not have misbecome the lips of those etherial virtues whom he saw, with that inner eye which no calamity could darken, flinging down on the jasper pavement their crowns of amaranth and gold. But these were men whose minds had been trained in a world which had passed away. They gave place to a younger generation of wits; and of that generation, from Dryden down to D’Urfey, the common characteristic was hard-hearted, shameless, swaggering licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman.”
Samuel Wesley’s “Epistle concerning Poetry” is ingenious and able. The editor of Dr Adam Clarke’s Miscellaneous Works observes: “Such a poem as this may be supposed to have suggested Lord Byron’s ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.’” We would add, that perhaps it suggested a much earlier work, the “Dunciad” of Alexander Pope, which was first published in 1727, twenty-seven years after the publication of Wesley’s “Epistle.” At all events, both Pope and Byron would have acted better if, like Samuel Wesley, they had been guided by justice, instead of being goaded by spleen, and if their works, like his, had contained more of criticism and less of spite.
It is difficult, without giving extracts, to furnish a just idea of Mr Wesley’s poem. The following are some of the topics that are taken up and sketched—viz., Genius, Wit, Judgment, Invention, Memory, Learning, Conversation, Style, Reading, Measure, Numbers, Pauses, Quantity, Rhyme, Epic poetry, Tragedy, the Ode, and Satire. In dwelling on these points, Wesley takes the opportunity of referring to the most popular writers of poetry to illustrate his meaning. Chaucer’s lines are so rough and so unequal in their flow, that to describe their measure is impossible. Spencer, with his “vast genius” and “noble thoughts,” is a master of English quantity; but his stanzas are cramped, and his rhymes affected by antique words. Dryden, with his “matchless skill,” is highly praised; but, at the same time, Wesley charges him with having “made vice pleasing, and damnation shine;” and entreats him, after “sixty years of lewdness,” to repent and seek God’s forgiveness. Blackmore is eulogised by Wesley, at the time when all the wits were treating him with ridicule; for few excelled him in writing poetic fables, and each of his pages is “big with Virgil’s manly thought.” But, instead of giving quotations descriptive of men, we give the following, which, to say the least, is thoughtful and ingenious. The reader will perceive that the lines are intended to be a description of the human head:—
“A cave there is, wherein those nymphs reside,