"A CORRESPONDENT'S" COMMUNICATION.

Southland Times, Issue 1696, 31 January 1873, Page 3

"A CORRESPONDENT'S" COMMUNICATION.

♦ (to the editob of the times.) Fib,— ln further noticing a letter entitled "John Wesley and the Church of England," which, at the request of " A Correspondent," yon published a few weeks ago, I have to express my surprise that the sender of the article in question has not deemed it necessary to correct the utterly untrue statement contained in the preamble, that it was a " hitherto unpublished letter," since he has been made aware of the fact. If this important correction bad been made, it would have been followed immediately by my own admission that I was mistaken in supposing that the letter complained of was not authentic. This suspicion was excited in my own mind from the fact that some of the expressions and sentiments were quite foreign to Mr Wesley's usual style of writing. To examine nearly seven hundred letters in order to ascertain whether this particular one was or was not genuine, I felt it to be no part of my duty, but only to deal with the article on its own pretensions. After all the letter is by no means a faithful reprint, but is so marked by an apparent and designing unfairness, consisting of omissions, alterations, and additions, as justly to be stigmatised as garbled. Before proceeding further, I would remind your readers that this controversy has been provoked by the action of " A Correspondent," and no one can regret it more than myself. If he deems it to be his duty to publish everything which does or is supposed to reflect on other denominations than bis own, he must not complain if the aggrieved body follow suit. Personally I feel no unfriendliness towards the Episcopalian Church. In to far as she maintains Protestant doctrine and teaching, I wish her laborers God speed in every part of the world's wide field. In disclaiming sympathy with her bigotry and intolerance, Romanising and rationalistic tendencies, 1 only express those convictions and conclusions at which I have arrived after many years of thoughtful observation. As a State-provided and maintained establishment, her days are numbered, and she will do well to set her house in order. In the Colonies, she stands side by side with other churches which have as a rule more efficient organisations, religious institutions, and evangelistic appliances. I shall now revert to the question, why have the Wesleyans separated from " the Church by law established in England?" As tuch a wide subject can only be briefly glanced at in the columns of a general newspaper, I shall content myself with a few short and pertinent quotations. I may, however, state that the undermentioned works have been Written on the question :— " Methodism and the Established Church," by the Rev. William Arthur, K.A.; "Essays for the Times," by James H. Bigg, D.D. ; " The Question, are the Methodists Dissenters ? Fairly Examined," by Rev. Samuel Bradburn ; " History of Wesleyan Methodism," 3 vola.. by G. Smith, L.L.D. ; " History of Methodism," by Abel Stevens, DD., 3 vol#., New York; "The State Church and the Wesleyans : their Difference shown to be Essential," Oxford, J. H. Parker. There are also a number of other valuable works on this important question, which I need not name here. The Bey. W. Arthur and Dr Rigg have written especially for the information of Episcopalians, as for the most part they are profoundly ignorant of the main points at issue. A contributor to the London Quarterly Review writes as follows :— " We recommend churchmen is general, who feel any interest in this subject, for their own sales, to procure Mr Jackson's and Mr Arthur's excellent publications. We advise churchmen also to weigh well the deliberate testimony of Dr Rigg in his Essays for the Times. * I have no hesitation,' says Dr Rigg, writing in 1566, 'in saying that there is not the remotest possibility of the Wealejan Methodist Church everbeing absorbed in the Church of England. And I doubt whether out of the many hundreds of Wesleyan Ministers, and of the hundreds of thousands of Wesleyan communicants, there are altogether a score of persons who would not smile with supreme amusement if such a pro* posal were presented to them.' Apart, indeed, from the political questions involved in the consection of Church and State, we have no doubt that it is much harder to transmute a Methodist into an Episcopalian than a 'Protestant Dissenter.' ' Speaking generally,' says Dr Rigg, ' the repugnance of Wesleyan Methodists to join the Church of England is stronger than that of Dissenters." The reasons which caused the Weßleyans to separate from the State Church are explicitly stated by the Rev. Richard Watson, the learned author of " Theological Institutes." He writes as follows : — " Nor have the true causes which led to the separation of the Methodists from the Church been in general right!/ stated. Some of the violent adherents of ' the old plan,' as it was called, among ourselves, have ignorantly, or in a party spirit, attributed this to the ambition and intrigues of the Ministers ; but the true causes were, that the clergy, generally, did not preach the doctrines of their own Church and of the Reformation, and that many of them did not adorn their profession by their lives. It may be added, that in no small number of cases, the clergy were the persecutors and calumniators of the Wesleyan Societies ; that the sermons in the churches were often intemperate attacks upon their characters and opinions ; and that the Methodists were frequently regarded as intruders at the table of the Lord, rather than as welcome communicants. These were the reasons why, long before Mr Wesley's death, a great number of his societies were anxious to have the sacrameets from the hands of their owb preachers, under whose ministry they were instructed and edified, in whose characters they had confidence, and with respect to whom they knew, that if any one disgraced his profession he would not be suffered long to exercise it. Such were the true causes which led to the partial separation of the Methodist Societies from the communion of the Church, after the death of Mr Wesley ; and this is an answer to the objection, repeated a thousand times, that we have departed from Mr Wesley's principles." In confirmation of the foregoing I will quote the testimony of the Rev. S. Minton (who is himself a minister of the State Church) contained in a sermon preached on Sunday evening, August 4th, 1872: — "Two hundred years ago she deliberately and intentionally cast the salt out of her by doing that which she knew would compel, and by which she meant to compel, many of her best ministers to quit her service. 'The Act of Uniformity has been pronounced by a living prelate of the English Church to have been *as malignant in its intention as it has been disastrous in its results.' A century later, when Wesley and Whitefield, and Rowland Hill were called of God to unfurl the almost forgotten banner of the cross, she adopted a somewhat different though equally fatal policy. Except here and there— as at Oxford, where several undergraduates were expelled from the University for holding prayer-meeting in

r their own rooms — her efforts were directed ; rather to stifle than to expel the truth. 1 but to stifle the truth is to expel it, for i the word «f God will not be bound. And as Congregational Nonconformity, such as we now gee it — for of course it existed then — it the fruit i of our aational blindness in the seventeenth , century, so is the Methodist Nonconformity i the fruit of our blindness in the eighttenth , century. Truly, the Established Church is reaping that which she sowed. She now sees 1 the descendants of those whom she drove from her pale, demanding that she shall be deposed from her exalted worldly position, and placed on a level with the churches that hare grown up ■ around her. And she ii prevented by the fetters wherewith she bound henelf in 1662 from admitting to her pulpits a whole army of some of the best evangelists, pastorp, and teachers in the world. Ought Ito gloss over these things because I am 'myself one of her ministers, an !, as far at I can tee at present, intend to remain •o P No more than I oueht, as an Englishman, to maintain th» impeccability of my own nation, or as a Londoner, to deny the existence of metropolitan mismanagement. The first thing needed for the remedy of an evil is to confess it. In this case the tore it deep, and requires to be probed. If it were only the Episcopal Church that suffered loss from the present state of things, it would be ft small matter. God can work in one church as well as in another. But the chief sufferer is Christianity. Men see the very Church which professes to be the Church of the nation, standing aloof from her sister Churches in proud isolation, and practically refusing to recognise them as Churches at al 1 . I speak of her as she is in her laws and constitution, at she was until recently in her whole conduct, and as to a very lamentable extent she still remains. What must be the effect of this ? Can it do otherwise than confirm the world in its unbelief? And as to ourselves, if it does not make us mount and weep, must it not be because our consciences have become stupefied by the ' atmosphere we have so long breathed ? Thank God that unmistakeable signs are beginning to appear of a better state of feeling. An earnest desire is being shown by men who are substantially like-minded within and without the Established Church, to draw closer together, and to enjoy more open, unrestricted fellowship with one another, so that all men may know that we are Christ's disciples by the love which we manifest one towards another." — I am, &c, JOHK S. RISHWOBTH.

P.S.— Owing to other pressing duties this letter has been unavoidably delayed.