If this be enthusiasm, the true Methodists confess themselves to be enthusiasts. But then, they humbly apprehend, that they cannot with any just propriety of speech be termed modern enthusiasts; for it is an enthusiasm which our blessed LORD earnestly insists upon, in that prayer which he put up when he was about to take his farewel of his disciples, and which is a pattern of that all-prevailing intercession which He is now making at the right hand of GOD, and demands that all his disciples may be possessed of; “Father, I will that those whom thou hast given me, may be with me where I am; that they may be one with me, even as thou, O Father, and I are one: I in them, and they in me, that they all may be made perfect in one.” An enthusiasm, with which _Peter_ and _John_ were fired, when _Annas_ the high-priest, and _Caiaphas_, and _John_, and _Alexander_, and as many as were of the kindred of the high-priest, seeing their boldness, and perceiving that they were unlearned and ignorant men, marvelled, and took knowledge of them that they had been with JESUS. An enthusiasm, with which the proto-martyr _Stephen_ was filled, when he cried, “Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost.” An enthusiasm, which _Ignatius_ supposed by some to be one of those little children which the LORD JESUS took up in his arms, was absorbed in, when he stiles himself _a bearer of_ GOD; and for witnessing of which good confession, in order to cure him of this enthusiasm, he was ordered by _Trajan_, the _Roman_ emperor, to be thrown to the lions. An enthusiasm, for which _Cranmer_, _Ridley_, and _Latimer_, those glorious lights of the reformation, those excellent compilers of our liturgy, articles, and homilies, were burnt alive near _Baliol_ college. And, to mention but one more, too too recent an example, an enthusiasm, for being only a little tinctured with which, six students, on _March_ 11th, in the year of our LORD 1768, were publicly expelled in _Edmund-Hall_ chapel.
But think you, Reverend Sir, that this is the way to stop the progress of this enthusiasm? Or rather, may we not imagine that this very act of expulsion will be a means of furthering and promoting its progress far and near? To speak my own thoughts, I am fully persuaded, that if such unscriptural methods of stopping this enthusiasm be pursued further, it will be only like cutting off the _Lyrnean_ head; instead of one, an hundred will spring up.
Indeed, if the picture of modern enthusiasts, drawn up and presented to the public by your Right Reverend Diocesan, be a just and proper one, supposing at the same time the Methodists are thereby referred to, no matter how soon they are banished out of the university, and out of the church also: for his Lordship is pleased to tell us “that they act in direct opposition to the perverse pharisees of old; these ascribed the works of the Holy Ghost to Beelzebub; and it is no uncommon thing for these modern enthusiasts, adds his Lordship, to ascribe the works of Beelzebub to the Holy Spirit.” Surely his Lordship, by these modern enthusiasts, cannot mean those who apply for holy orders, and profess before men and angels, that “they are inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost, to take upon them the office and administration of the church;” when the searcher of hearts knows that they are moved only by secular views and worldly hopes of preferment. This is ascribing the works of Beelzebub to the Spirit of GOD with a witness: or, to use the words of a no less learned, though less censorious prelate; I mean the moderate Bishop _Burnet_, “it is a committing the horrid crime of _Ananias_ and _Sapphira_ over again; it is lying, not only unto man, but unto GOD.”
This is a modern kind of enthusiasm, Reverend Sir, which the true old Methodists always did, and I trust always will abjure, detest and abhor. If worldly church preferments had been their aim, some of them at least might have had worldly ladders enough let down to them to climb up by: but having received a kind of apostolical commission at their ordination, when those who profess themselves _lineal successors_ of the Apostles, said unto them, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost now committed unto you by the imposition of our hands:” they would fain keep up and maintain something of the dignity of an apostolic character; and therefore, without ever so much as designing to enter into any political cabals, or civil or church factions whatsoever, without turning to the right hand or the left, or troubling the world with so much as one single sermon or pamphlet, on the bare externals of religion; they have endeavoured to have but one thing in view, namely, to determine to think of nothing, to know nothing, and to preach of nothing but JESUS CHRIST, and him crucified; to spend and be spent for the good of souls, and to glory in nothing save in the cross of CHRIST, by whom the world is crucified unto them and they unto the world.