Thus are many who before possessed "consciences void of offence towards God and mankind” tricked out of their peace of mind, by the ignorant application of texts of scripture. Their fears being once so dreadfully alarmed, they often become insupportable to themselves and all around them; many in this state have put a period to their existence, others run mad,. &c.

Oh! would mankind but make great truths their guide,
And force the helm from prejudice and pride;

Were once these maxims fix'd, that God's our friend,
Virtue our good, and happiness our end;

How soon must reason o'er the world prevail,

And error, fraud, and superstition fail I

None would hereafter then with groundless fear,
Describe th' Almighty cruel and severe."

SOAME JENYNS's Epistle to Hon. P. York.

If the above terror of conscience was only to take place in knaves and rascals, there would be no reason for blaming the Methodists on that head; "the wretch deserves the hell he feels." A terrible instance of this kind happened near London bridge about two years since; a person in a lucrative branch of business had put unbounded confidence in his head shopman, and well rewarded him for his supposed faithfulness. One morning, this man not coming down stairs so soon as usual, the servant maid went up to call him, and found him hanging up to the bed-post: she had the presence of mind to cut him down, but he being nearly dead, it was some days before he perfectly recovered.

On his master coming to town, he was informed of what had happened to his favourite shopman; he heard the relation with the utmost astonishment, and took great pains to discover the cause of so fatal a resolution, but to no purpose. However, he endeavoured to reconcile this unhappy man to life, was very tender towards him, and gave him more encouragement than ever; but the more the master did to

encourage and make him happy, the more the poor wretch appeared to be dejected; in this unhappy state of mind he lived about six months, when one morning not appearing at his usual time, the servant maid went to see if he was well, and found him very weak in bed; a day or two after, his master came to town, and being told of his situation, went up to see him, and finding him in bed, and apparently very ill, proposed sending for a physician, but the poor devil refused to take anything, and rejected every assistance, saying his time was nearly come. Soon after this the servant informed her master that he would not have the bed made, and that she had just observed some blood on one corner of the sheet. The master then went up stairs again, and by lifting up the bed-clothes found that he had stabbed himself in several places, and that in this state he had lain three or four days. "When innocence and peace are gone, How sad, how teazable to live!"

SECUNDUS.

On the surgeon's appearance, he refused to have the wounds inspected, and the surgeon being of opinion that it was too late to render him any kind of service, they let him lie still. The master soon after this pressed him much to know the mysterious cause of so much misery, and so unnatural an end. The dying wretch exclaimed, "a wounded conscience, who can bear." The master then endeavoured to comfort him, and assured him that his conscience ought not to wound him. "I know you (continued he) to be a good man, and the best of servants." "Hold! hold!" exclaimed the wretch, "your words are daggers to my soul! I am a villain, I have robbed you of hundreds, and have long suffered the tortures of the damned for being thus a concealed villain; every act of kindness shewn to me by you has been long like vultures tearing my vitals. Go, sir, leave me, the sight of you causes me to suffer excruciating tortures; he then shrunk under the bed-clothes, and the same night

expired in a state of mind unhappy beyond all description.

Terrible as the above relation is, I assure you that I have not heightened it: when an ungrateful villain is punished by his own reflections, we acknowledge it to be but just. In Morton's History of Apparitions are several shocking stories of persons, who, by their abandoned practices, have brought on themselves all the horrors of a guilty conscience.

"O treacherous conscience; while she seems to sleep
On rose and myrtle, lull'd with syren song;
While she seems nodding o'er her charge to drop
On headlong appetite the slacken'd rein,

And gives up to licence unrecall'd,

Unmarked; see from behind her secret stand,
The sly informer minutes every fault,
And her dread diary with horror fills.
A watchful foe! the formidable spy,
List'ning, o'erhears the whispers of our camp:
Our drawing purposes of heart explores,
And steals our embryos of iniquity.

As all-rapacious usurers conceal

Their doomsday book from all-consuming heirs,
Thus with indulgence most severe she treats,

Writes down our whole history, which death shall read,
In every pale delinquent's private ear."

NIGHT THOUGHTS.

But the case is otherwise amongst the Methodists; they work on the fears of the most virtuous; youth and innocence fall victims daily before their threats of hell and damnation, and the poor feeble-minded, instead of being comforted and encouraged, are often by them sunk into an irrecoverable state of gloomy despondency and horrible despair.

It is true that many of their hearers are not only

F

methodistically convinced, or alarmed, but are also hocus-pocusly converted, for as some of their preachers employ all their art and rhetoric to alarm and terrify, so others of them use their utmost skill to give them assurance of their sins being pardoned; which reminds us of the law-suit, where one party sued for a forged debt, and the other produced a forged receipt. But with thousands that is not the case, even with those who join their society, where so much of divine love, assurance, and extasies are talked of, where enthusiastic, rapturous, intoxicating hymns are sung; and besides the unhappy mortals in their own community, thousands there are who have lost their peace of mind by occasionally hearing their sermons.

And even those among them who have arrived to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, and who at times talk of their foretaste of heaven, and of their full assurance of sins forgiven, and of talking to the Deity as familiarly as they will to one another; (all which, and much more, I have heard a thousand times) yet even those very pretended favourites of heaven are (if we believe themselves) miserable for the greatest part of their time, having doubts, fears, horrors of mind, &c. continually haunting them wherever they are. "The superstitious man (says Cicero) is miserable in every scene, in every incident of life; even sleep itself, which banishes all other cares of unhappy mortals, affords to him matter of new terror, while he examines his dreams, and finds in those visions of the night, prognostication of future calamities." Between twenty and thirty years since, some thousands of them in London took it into their heads that the world would be at an end on such a night, and for some days previous to this fatal night, nothing was attended to but fasting and praying, and when it came, they made a watch-night of it, and spent it in prayer, &c. expecting every moment to be the last; and it is remarkable, that thousands who were not Methodists gave credit to this

ridiculous prophecy, and were terribly alarmed; but the next morning they were ashamed to look at one another, and many durst not appear in their shops for sometime afterwards. But others of them said that God had heard the prayers of the righteous, and so spared the world a little longer. Some years after that, Mr Wesley alarmed his people all over England with the tale of a comet; great numbers were dreadfully apprehensive lest this comet should scorch the earth to a cinder; but the saints by prayer made the comet keep a proper distance.

Charnock, of the last century, in his discourse on Providence, has proved (in his way) that the universe was created and is kept agoing for the sake of the elect, and that as soon as their number is complete, the whole will be destroyed. This is genuine Calvinism.

The fanatics in every age have found their account in making their followers believe the end of the world was at hand. In some of the wills and deeds by which estates have been given to monasteries, &c. in France, they have expressed their belief of the world's being nearly at an end, as a reason for making such liberal donations to the church. But it is happy for us that in England such wills would be set aside. A case of this nature occurred while lord Northington was at the head of the law department. Reilly the preacher had wheedled, or frightened, an old woman (Mrs Norton) out of a deed of gift of fifty pounds per year, but after the old woman's panic and fear of damnation were over, she had recourse to chancery, and his lordship annulled the deed of gift. His lordship's remarks on such kinds of impositions are very curious, and worth your reading. See Collectanea Juridica, vol. i. p. 458.

In fact, the very best of the Methodists are like children, elated or depressed by mere trifles; and many who joined them while young and ignorant,