Charles I. and II.? And that very
period, which the Barrister affirms to have been distinguished by the
moral vigor of the great mass of Britons,--was it not likewise the
period when this very doctrine was preached by the Clergy fifty times
for once that it is heard from the same pulpits in the present and
preceding generation? Never, never can the Methodists be successfully
assailed, if not honestly, and never honestly or with any chance of
success, except as Methodists;--for their practices, their alarming
theocracy, their stupid, mad, and mad-driving superstitions. These are
their property 'in peculio'; their doctrines are those of the Church of
England, with no other difference than that in the Church Liturgy, and
Articles, and Homilies, Calvinism and Lutheranism are joined like the
two hands of the Union Fire Office:-the Methodists have unclasped them,
and one is Whitfield and the other Wesley.
Ib. p. 75.
"For the same reason that a book written in bad language should never
be put into the hands of a child that speaks correctly, a book
exhibiting instances of vice should never be given to a child that
thinks and acts properly." (Practical Education. By Maria and R.L.
Edgeworth.)
How mortifying that one is never lucky enough to meet with any of these
'virtuosissimos', fifteen or twenty years of age. But perhaps they are
such rare jewels, that they are always kept in cotton! The Kilcrops! I
would not exchange the heart, which I myself had when a boy, while
reading the life of Colonel Jack, or the Newgate Calendar, for a
waggon-load of these brilliants.
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