paradise, and the devils in hell;—­dogmas common to all religions, and to all ages and sects of the Christian religion;—­concerning which Brahmin disputes with Brahmin, Mahometan with Mahometan, and Priestley with Price;—­and all this to be laid on the shoulders of the Methodists collectively:  though it is a notorious fact, that a radical difference on this abstruse subject is the ground of the schism between the Whitfieldite and Wesleyan Methodists; and that the latter coincide in opinion with Erasmus and Arminius, by which latter name they distinguish themselves; and the former with Luther, Calvin, and their great guide, St. Augustine?  This I say is intolerable,—­yea, a crime against sense, candour, and white paper.

Ib. p. 50.

“For so very peculiarly directed to the sinner, and to him only (says the evangelical preacher) is the blessed Gospel of the Lord Jesus, that unless you are a sinner, you are not interested in its saving truths.”

Does not Christ himself say the same in the plainest and most unmistakable words?  ’I come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.  They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick’.  Can he, who has no share in the danger, be interested in the saving?  Pleased from benevolence he may be; but interested he cannot be.  ’Estne aliquid inter salvum et salutem; inter liberum et libertatem?  Salus est pereuntis, vel saltem periditantis:  redemptio, quasi pons divinus, inter servum et libertatem,—­amissam, ideoque optatam’.

Ib. p. 52.

  It was reserved for these days of ‘new discovery’ to announce to
  mankind that, unless they are sinners, they are excluded from the
  promised blessings of the Gospel.

Merely read ’that unless they are sick they are precluded from the offered remedies of the Gospel;’ and is not this the dictate of common sense, as well as of Methodism?  But does not Methodism cry aloud that all men are sick—­sick to the very heart?  ’If we say we are without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us’.  This shallow-pated Barrister makes me downright piggish, and without the stratagem of that famed philosopher in pig-nature almost drives me into the Charon’s hoy of Methodism by his rude and stupid tail-hauling me back from it.

Ib. p. 53.

  I can assure these gentlemen that I regard with a reverence as pure
  and awful as can enter into the human mind, that blood which was shed
  upon the Cross.

That is, in the Barrister’s creed, that mysterious flint, which with the subordinate aids of mutton, barley, salt, turnips, and potherbs, makes most wonderful fine flint broth.  Suppose Christ had never shed his blood, yet if he had worked his miracles, raised Lazarus, and taught the same doctrines, would not the result have been the same?—­Or if Christ had never appeared on earth, yet did not Daniel work miracles as stupendous, which surely must give all the authority to his doctrines that miracles can give?  And did he not announce by the Holy Spirit the resurrection to judgment, of glory or of punishment?