THE

CHRISTIAN EXAMINER

AND

RELIGIOUS MISCELLANY.

VOLUME XLIII.

FOURTH SERIES, VOLUME VIII.

JULY, SEPTEMBER, NOVEMBER, 1847.

BOSTON:

PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM CROSBY.

NEW YORK: C. S. FRANCIS & CO.

LONDON: JOHN CHAPMAN, 121 NEWGATE STREET.

1847.

THE

CHRISTIAN EXAMINER

AND

RELIGIOUS MISCELLANY.

JULY, 1847.

ART. I. — JOHN WESLEY.*

THE eighteenth century, rife as it was in doubters and deniers, had its hearts of faith and tongues of fire. The assailants of Christianity were, indeed, more than met by its intellectual champions. In point of scholarship, science, and philosophy, faith bore the palm in the desperate struggle. Gibbon wrought no harm to Lardner, nor Volney to Priestley. Butler, and Kant, and Reid tower above Hume, and Diderot, and Condillac. If we speak of theorists of nature, how small and contemptible seems the system of D'Holbach by the side of that of Swedenborg! Who compares Helvetius with Cuvier ?

But there is one thing more rare, as well as more power

*1. The Life of Wesley; and Rise and Progress of Methodism. By ROBERT SOUTHEY, Esq., LL D. Third Edition. With Notes by the late SAMUEL TAYLOR Coleridge, Esq., and Remarks on the Life and Character of John Wesley, by the late ALEXANDER KNOX, Esq. Edited by the REV. Charles Cuthbert Southey, A. M. London. 1846. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 1058.

2. The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, M. A.. sometime Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. Collected from his Private Papers and Printed Works ; and written at the Request of his Executors. To which is prefixed some Account of his Ancestors and Relations; with the Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, M.A., collected from his Private Journal, and never before published. The whole forming a History of Methodism, in which the Principles and Economy of the Methodists are unfolded. By JOHN WHITEHEAD, M. D. Boston: J. McLeish. 1844. 2 vols. 8vo pp. 308 and 313.

3. The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, A. M., sometime Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, and Founder of the Methodist Societies. By RICHARD WATSON. New York. 1831.

VOL. XLIII.

- 4TH S. VOL. VIII. NO. I.

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