sea.

the net of the Gospel, were fit to be cast into the One serious brother withdrew his friendship, because a sheet of his writing paper had been made free with; another withdrew ten pounds of his independent support, when hit at by a passage in a sermon. The godly were offended at his love of study; and his preaching wanted rant for the enthusiastic. Yet he was himself an enthusiast, if that signify the being guided by impressions; and a Calvinist, if it be so to talk of discriminating grace. It is not probable, that the Bishop of St. Asaph promised to be his friend under the rose. He had a little seminary of pupils, and Jay among the rest; who caught the flame of piety from his lamp. But Jay might as well have burnt the love-letters. Sympathy in love cannot be produced in a third person *.

• Whitfield, the fellow-student of the Wesleys, at Oxford, was ordained at Gloucester in 1736, and preached his first sermon," On the Necessity and Benefit of religious Society;" which is said to have driven fifteen of his hearers mad. He crossed the Atlantic seven times, and established an Orphan House at Georgia; preaching, on his return to England, in the open air, with a Stentorian voice, to multitudes, at Moorfields, Kennington, and Blackheath. The Tabernacle, in Moorfields, was at first a temporary shed, used by him in inclement weather. The present building was opened in 1754, and that in Tottenham Court Road, in 1756. About 1748, Lady Huntingdon sent for him to preach in her house; and he was complimented by the Earl of Ches

XV. Dr. Archibald Maclaine died at Bath, A. D. 1804, in his eighty-second year. He had

terfield and Lord Bolinbroke. Perhaps they were only quizzing him.

"To hear a hot-brained Atheist

Thanking a Reverend Doctor for his sermon!"

Otway.

He now preached fifteen times in a week, and was followed by immense numbers; some of whom were sincere, and others enamoured of enthusiasm. To these last his impassioned manner was the excitement of a spiritual dram. He died in 1770, at the age of fifty-six, and was interred at Newbury Port. He was the founder of the Calvinistic Methodists.

Whitfield was an active and zealous, but an irritable and violent man. He paid his addresses to a young lady, thinking her to be converted; but deserted her, finding her to be only in a seeking state. He did not make his wife unhappy intentionally. He gave no wages to any of his servants; saying, that "if they loved him, they would serve disinterestedly." He preached wherever he could obtain permission; telling the Scots, that their discipline was the best in the world;" `and adding, that if the Pope would but lend him his pulpit, he would there preach Christ." He was continually inveighing against the clergy, particularly those who were letter-learned. His manner was vehement: his voice was sometimes heard at a half-mile's distance. His allusions were coarse: he talked of the pangs of the new birth. He ascribed the opposition made to him by the bishops, to persecution and hatred of the Gospel. Sometimes his language bordered on impiety: as when he said, that on entering a certain city, he could hardly avoid the hosannahs of the multitude. He confessed, at last, that he had used language too Apostolical, spoken in his own spirit, used a bitter zeal, and trusted to inward impressions.

been forty-eight years minister of the English church at the Hague, where he married the daughter of Chais. On retiring to his deathbed, he thanked God, that while the wisest heathens knew nothing of a future state, he, who had been a sinner, knew in whom he had believed. He was the translator of "Mosheim," and author of "A Letter to Soame Jenyns," exposing the loose reasonings in his "Internal Evidences."

Dr. Erskine, of Edinburgh, died in 1803, at an advanced age, and after a ministry of thirtyeight years in the Scots Kirk. Pious and learned, he commanded veneration by the bend of age, and by the broad Scottish dialect; which, in the kinsman of Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, produced an effect like family plate, or an ivy-covered mansion. Two posthumous volumes of his sermons, plain and practical, perpetuate on earth the simplicity of his character and teaching.

CHAPTER XXXV.

SECTS.

Contents.

I. Universalists.-II. Destructionists.-III. Privationists. Statement and Refutation of their several Principles.

UNIVERSALISTS.

I. As the Arminians, in opposition to Calvin's system of partial election, maintained that Christ died for all mankind, and that every man might be saved if he would; the Universalists have pushed this correct opinion to an extravagant extent, by affirming, that after a temporary punishment of the wicked, the actual salvation of all men will finally take place. This heretical notion found its first patron in Origen; and was afterwards professed by some divines, called the "Merciful Doctors" by Augustine; it was held also, by the German Baptists, the American Tunkers, and the Dutch Memnonites. Among the advocates of Universalism in our own country, are to be numbered, Rust Bishop of Dromore, and Newton of Bristol; Adams Archdeacon of Llandaff; Stonehouse, and Browne, two English clergymen. David Hartley, Elkanah Winchester,

W. Vidler, and N. Scarlett, Tillotson, Burnett, Master of the Charterhouse, Law, and Watts, are all thought to have inclined to this opinion. Under the same suspicion lie Paley and Gilpin ; and to these may be added Hey, if any fixed opinion can be discovered in the lectures of that quibbling and hesitating divine*.

Although Universalism has crept into the English Church, and pervades the creeds of some Arians, of Socinians, and of Deists—their cousingermans; its advocates have not incorporated themselves into a sect; unless we except a congregation of Rellyanists, assembling in Windmill Street, Finsbury Square, and having members in several parts of England and America; who, after their leader, Relly, support their tenets, chiefly, on what St. Jude terms "The common salvation;" a phrase, however, plainly signifying, in a catholic epistle, the salvation common to Jews

1

* Burnett and Bennett, on the Ninth Article.-Hey, v. ii. p. 390.-Tillotson, v. iii. fol. § 3.-Hartley, on Man-Law's Letters.-Newton's Dissertations on the Prophecies —Winchester's Dialogues.-Scarlett, on the New Testament.

On the other hand,-Edwards, of America; Scrutator's Letters; Andrew Fuller, in the "Monthly Repository;" Dodwell and Crouch's University Sermons; Edwards, on the Eternity of Hell, and Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners.

The doctrine is elucidated with much elegance in Dr. Estlin's Sermons, entitled "God is Love:" and in Dr. Southwood Smith's "Illustrations of the Divine Government."