versions and triumphant exits have been compiled, many of them published, and circulated with the greatest avidity, to the private emolument of the editors, and doubtless to the great edification of all sinners, long habituated to a course of villainous depredations on the lives and properties of the honest part of the community; and many such accounts as have not appeared in print, have been assiduously proclaimed in all the Methodist chapels and barns throughout the three kingdoms; by which the good and pious of every denomination have been scandalized, and notorious offenders encouraged to persevere, trusting sooner or later to be honoured with a similar degree of notice, and thus by a kind of hocus-pocus, be suddenly transformed into saints. The following remarks made by the compilers of the Monthly Review, for 1788, page 286, are so applicable to the present subject, that I hope my introducing the passage will not be deemed improper. After mentioning a couplet in one of the methodistical hymns, where it is said "Believe, and all your siu's forgiven;" They proceed thus: "Such doctrine no doubt must be comfortable to poor wretches so circumstanced as those were to whom this pious preacher had the goodness to address his discourse; but some (and those not men of shallow reflection) have questioned whether it is altogether right thus to free the most flagitious outcasts of society from the terrors of an after-reckoning; since it is too well known that most of them make little account of their punishment in this world. Instead of the "fearful looking for of (future) judgment;' they are enraptured with the prospect of a joyful flight to the expanded arms of a loving Saviour-longing to embrace his long-lost children.' Surely this is not the way, humanly speaking, to check the alarming progress of moral depravity; to which, one would think, no kind of encouragement ought to be given." I must observe farther, that the unguarded manner in which the Methodist preachers make tenders of pardon and salvation, has induced many to join their fraternity whose consciences wanted very large plaisters indeed! Many of those had need to be put under a course of mortification and penance, but they generally adopt another method; a few quack nostrums, which they call faith and assurance, dries up the wound, and they then make themselves as hateful by affecting to have squeamish consciences, as they really have been obnoxious for having consciences of very wide latitude indeed. And, notwithstanding the affected change, they often are as bad or worse than Butler says, ever. -That which owns the fairest pretext, Is often found the indirect'st. Hence 'tis that hypocrites still paint And knaves appear more just and true Than honest men, who make less show." As a friend permit me to advise you never to purchase anything at a shop where the master of it crams any of his pious nonsense into his shop bill, &c. as you may be assured you will nine times out of ten find them, in the end, arrant hypocrites, and as such make no scruple of cheating in the way of trade, if possible. This puts me in mind of one of those pious brethren in Petticoat lane, who wrote in his shopwindow, "Rumps and Burs sold here, and baked Sheep's-heads will be continued every night, if the Lord permit." The Lord had no objection, so rumps, burs, and baked sheep's-heads were sold there a long time. And I remember, to have seen on a board, near Bedminster down, “Tripe and Cow-heels sold here, as usual, except on the Lord's-day, which the Lord help me to keep holy." And on my enquiring about the person who exhibited this remarkable show-board at the inn just by, I was informed that the pious tripeseller generally got drunk on Sundays, after he returned from the barn-preaching; which accounts for his not selling tripe on that day, having full employment, though possibly not so inoffensive, elsewhere. I also saw, in a village near Plymouth in Devonshire, “Roger Tuttel, by God's grace and mercy, kills rats, moles, and all sorts of vermin and venomous creatures." But I need not have gone so far for pious cant, as, no doubt you must remember that a few years since, a certain pious common-councilman of the metropolis, advertised in the public papers for a porter that could carry three hundred weight, take care of horses, and serve the Lord. Of the same worthy personage I have heard it asserted, so very conscientious is he, that he once staved a barrel of beer in his cellar because he detected it working on the sabbath-day, which brought to my recollection four lines in drunken Barnaby's Journey: "To Banbury came I; O prophane one! Hanging of his cat on Monday, For killing of a mouse on Sunday." Mr L- -e, a gentleman of my acquaintance, informs me, that a Methodist neighbour of his, in St Martin's lane, who keeps a parcel of fowls, every Saturday night makes a point of conscience of tying together the legs of every cock he has, in order to prevent them from breaking the sabbath, by gallanting the hens on Sundays; as colonel Lambert says, doctor Cantwell used to do by the turkey-cocks. I have a few more observations to make on this remarkable sect, but, fearing I have already tired you, shall reserve them for my next. "Seeming devotion doth but gild the knave, WALLER. 1 am, dear friend, yours. LETTER XXIX. "Under this stone rests Hudibras, He pray'd and preach'd, and preach'd and pray'd." DEAR FRIEND, Ir is very remarkable that while I was writing the last five lines of my former letter to you, on Wednesday the 2nd of March 1791, I received the news of the death of Mr John Wesley, who, I am informed, died that morning at his own house, in the City road, Moorfields, in the eighty-eighth year of his age. He had no illness, but the wheels of the machine being worn out, it stopped of course. As I am on the subject of Methodism, I hope you will not deem it impertinent if I devote a few lines to this great parent of a numerous sect, whom I well knew, and feel a pleasure in speaking of with some respect. Several days preceding his interment, being laid in his coffin, in his gown and band, he was exposed to the view of all his friends who came, and the public, and I suppose that forty or fifty thousand persons had a sight of him. But the concourse of people was so great that many were glad to get out of the crowd without seeing him at all, and although a number of constables were present, yet the pickpockets contrived to ease many of their purses, watches, &c. To prevent as much as possible the dreadful effects of a mob, he was interred on Wednesday, March the 9th, between five and six o'clock in the morning, in the burial ground behind his own chapel in the City road. After which Dr Whitehead (the physician) preached his funeral sermon; but notwithstanding the early hour many thousands attended more than the chapel would hold, although it is very large. As soon as it was known that Mr Wesley was deceased, a number of needy brethren deemed it a fair opportunity of profiting by it, and each immediately set his ingenuity to work, to compose what he chose to call a life of him; and for some weeks since the funeral, the chapel-yard and its vicinity has exhibited a truly ludicrous scene, on every night of preaching, owing to the different writers and venders of these hasty performances exerting themselves to secure a good sale; one bawling out that his is the right life; a second with a pious shake of the head, declares his the real life; a third protests he has got the only genuine account; and a fourth calls them all vile cheats and impostors, &c.; so that between all these competitors, the saints are so divided and perplexed in their opinions that some decline purchasing either, others willing "to try all and keep that which is good," buy of each of these respectable venders of the life and last account of that celebrated character, while the uninterested passenger is apt to form a conclusion that the house of prayer is again become a den of thieves. Thus we see those holy candidates for heaven are so influenced by self-interest that it "Turns meek and secret sneaking ones HUDIBRAS. |