These high-strained pretenders to godliness, who deny the power of the sinner to help himself, take good care always to attribute his saving change to the blessed effect of some sermon preached by some one or other of their Evangelical fraternity. They always hold themselves up to the multitude as the instruments producing all those marvellous conversions which they relate. No instance is recorded in their Saints' Calendar of any sinner resolving, in consequence of a reflective and serious perusal of the Scriptures, to lead a new life. No instance of a daily perusal of the Bible producing a daily progress in virtuous habits. No, the Gospel has no such effect. —It is always the Gospel Preacher who works the miracle, &c.
Excellent and just. In this way are the Methodists to be attacked:—even as the Papists were by Baxter, not from their doctrines, but from their practices, and the spirit of their Sect. There is a fine passage in Lord Bacon concerning a heresy of manner being not less pernicious than heresy of matter.
Ib. p. 118.
But their Saints, who would stop their ears if you should mention with admiration the name of a Garrick or a Siddons;—who think it a sin to support such an infamous profession as that through the medium of which a Milton, a Johnson, an Addison, and a Young have laboured to mend the heart, &c.
Whoo! See Milton's Preface to the
Samson Agonistes
.
Ib. p. 133.