—­a swarm of new Evangelists who are every where teaching the people
  that no reliance is to be placed on holiness of life as a ground of
  future acceptance.

I am weary of repeating that this is false.  It is only denied that mere acts, not proceeding from faith, are or can be holiness.  As surely (would the Methodist say) as the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son, so surely does sanctification from redemption, and not vice versa,—­much less from self-sanctifiedness, that ostrich with its head in the sand, and the plucked rump of its merits staring on the divine [Greek:  Atae] ‘venatrix’!

Ib. p. 102.

‘He that doeth righteousness is righteous’.  Since then it is plain that each must ‘himself’ be righteous, if he be so at all, what do they mean who thus inveigh against ’self’-righteousness, since Christ himself declares there is no other?

Here again the whole dispute lies in the word “himself.”  In the outward and visible sense both parties agree; but the Methodist calls it “the will in us,” given by grace; the Barrister calls it “our own will,” or “we ourselves.”  But why does not the Barrister reserve a part of his wrath for Dr. Priestley, according to whom a villain has superior claims on the divine justice as an innocent martyr to the grand machinery of Providence;—­for Dr. Priestley, who turns the whole dictionary of human nature into verbs impersonal with a perpetual ‘subauditur’ of ‘Deus’ for their common nominative case;—­which said ‘Deus’, however, is but another ‘automaton’, self-worked indeed, but yet worked, not properly working, for he admits no more freedom or will to God than to man?  The Lutheran leaves the free will whining with a broken back in the ditch; and Dr. Priestley puts the poor animal out of his misery!—­But seriously, is it fair or even decent to appeal to the Legislature against the Methodists for holding the doctrine of the Atonement?  Do we not pray by Act of Parliament twenty times every Sunday ’through the only merits of Jesus Christ’?  Is it not the very nose which (of flesh or wax) this very Legislature insists on as an indispensable qualification for every Christian face?  Is not the lack thereof a felonious deformity, yea, the grimmest feature of the ‘lues confirmata’ of statute heresy?  What says the reverend critic to this?  Will he not rise in wrath against the Barrister,—­he the Pamphagus of Homilitic, Liturgic, and Articular orthodoxy,—­the Garagantua, whose ravenous maw leaves not a single word, syllable, letter, no, not one ‘iota’ unswallowed, if we are to believe his own recent and voluntary manifesto? [3] What says he to this Barrister, and his Hints to the Legislature?

Ib. p. 105.

  If the new faith be the only true one, let us embrace it; but let not
  those who vend these ‘new articles’ expect that we should choose them
  with our eyes shut.

Let any man read the Homilies of the Church of England, and if he does not call this either blunt impudence or blank ignorance, I will plead guilty to both!  New articles!!  Would to Heaven some of them at least were!  Why, Wesley himself was scandalized at Luther’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, and cried off from the Moravians (the strictest Lutherans) on that account.