strictly verified.' Indeed, some, he says, 'have gone farther in their allegations than the writer of "Practical Methodism ;" and he is "perfectly satisfied," that he has made no representations that need to be corrected, qualified, or explained, beyond what is now before the reader.'

He

Dr. Green's correspondent 'professes to speak of what he has personally known.' So Dr. Green himself understands him; and also that his representation is that the practices which he condemns are general in the Methodist communion.' How he acquired a personal knowledge that the abominations which he describes are general throughout a body spread over the whole of the United States and territories, is more than we can divine. Indeed the gross ignorance which he displays in relation to some of our most notorious and important regulations and practices, demonstrates the absolute impossibility that what he says in this respect can be true. even mistakes, it seems, for Methodists, those worthies, the most virulent opposers of the Gospel of the Son of God,' whom it will be hereafter seen he describes as hickory Methodists,' and yet presumes every hickory Methodist in the country, is a unit in the long list, which, when summed up, gives us in round numbers 450,000 members at the bottom.' This is the veritable witness, professing to speak from personal knowledge, who has so shamefully abused Dr. Green's credulity, and by whose secret word, it seems, practical Methodism is to be condemned to indelible infamy. These hickory Methodists,' the most virulent opposers of the Gospel of the Son of God,' it must be recollected, are, according to our author, those 'apostate' Methodists who pass over to 'Universalism and a belief of other heresies,' of whom he presumes, that the sum total of the apostates from all other denominations, would count, if as many, but very few more, than those of the Methodists alone.' Yet every one of these, he presumes, is a unit in the long list which gives us the round number of 450,000 members!

6

We will conclude this introductory article in reply to Dr. Green, with an extract, in substance, from a wholesome rebuke administered on a similar occasion by the Rev. Timothy Merritt, (of New-England,) to the Rev. Dr. Snell, a correspondent of the Boston Recorder. Dr. Snell, in the same base and cowardly manner with Dr. Green's correspondent, had procured to be published in the Boston Recorder a gross anonymous slander on the Methodist missions,-not calculating, it seems, on the surrender of his name. The editor of the Recorder, however, more magnanimously and with a juster sense of the obligations of honor and of Christianity than Dr. Green, gave up, on application, the name of the author. In consequence, Mr. Merritt addressed Dr. Snell publicly, and by name, to the following effect:

REV. SIR, It becomes my duty to address you publicly on the subject of your communication on " Methodist missions," which appeared in the Boston Recorder of the 12th ult. [We believe in January or February last.]— The article of yours to which I allude, is regarded throughout as a mis

representation of the conduct and motives of the Methodists, and especially of the Methodist ministers. The object of this address is not to vindicate the Methodists against your charges and misrepresentations, but to hold you to the proof of your assertions. However desirous I might be to justify them on the present occasion, you have done what you could to render it impracticable, by concealing your name, by withholding the names of the accused, and by not giving either date or place in. connection with your charges. Surely you did not design that your charges should ever come under examination. And I think it should be regarded as a special providence that your name has been given up by the editor of the Recorder.

Mr. Merritt then enumerates various misrepresentations of Dr Snell, and afterward adds to the following purport:

It is not my design to say that no Methodist has been guilty of any imprudence or excess, in any of the respects you have mentioned. I do not say there is no truth in the facts you have stated as general. But I do say, that you have misrepresented and coloured those facts. The evidence of false colouring is as manifest on the face of your representation, as ever the marks of forgery were on a counterfeit bill. By an artful arrangement of words, by an imputation of wrong motives, by a misrepresentation or total omission of circumstances, truth becomes falsehood, and produces the worst effects of falsehood. The latter is at once the most common and the most injurious mode of slandering.

Now, sir, I believe this is the case in respect to many of the facts you state, if facts they are. For the want of some other facts and cireumstances connected with them, those you narrate become in effect falsehoods. I believe this, because I have known facts of the kind of several that you relate, proper and honorable, viewed with their accompanying circumstances, which would become falsehoods by your method of treatment. Thus it may be with what you say of the Methodist ministers, "taking part with the enemies of evangelical truth-with disaffected men and excommunicated members." The accompanying circumstances in these and other cases are, I will venture to believe, withheld in your statements. And this gives them their injurious effect. I cannot better show the effect of such an artful misrepresentation of facts, than in the words of the writer of the article on "Whitman's Letters," which you have no doubt read with approbation, if you were not the writer of it yourself,-in the Recorder of the 12th ult., and which immediately precedes yours, on which I am remarking. Speaking of the "facts within his own knowledge," he says, "There is not one of these which is not told in a manner that makes the narration an absolute falsehood-whether designed or not, on his part, I do not undertake to affirm."

You must here, sir, permit me to say that the Methodists [and their ministers] have a right to ask and to demand of you a disclosure of names, of persons, places, and dates, in connection with your charges, that the guilty, if such there are, may be brought to light, and that the innocent may have an opportunity to be heard in their own defence, before they are publicly condemned, and branded as hypocrites.* Their claim is certainly a reasonable one. It is what a candid public will award to them. It is what you yourself would require if placed in their circumstances. It is what every principle of honor and religion requires of you.

You did not expect to be called upon in this way when you wrote the article under consideration. You evidently wished to be unknown, and to

[* And in regard to the calumnies contained in Dr. Green's articles we might add, as impious knaves, fools, &c, &c.]

speak behind the screen. You concealed your name, and the names of the accused. But why did you conceal your name, if conscious rectitude supported your cause?

Nomine mutato, Sc.-Only change the name, and the above is as justly applicable to Dr. Green's correspondent as to Dr. Snell; and in the guilt of his correspondent, Dr. Green, in our estimation, by the course he pursues, very largely partakes.

NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS.

WE will thank the author of a 'Memento of the rise of Methodism on Alleghany Circuit,' to revise his article, if he has a copy of it. Some of the facts stated in relation to the original formation of the circuit, and its first regular itinerant preachers, do not appear to accord with the Minutes. The little village' alluded to also, is not named. In all such cases, the State, and we would add the Annual Conference, within which any circuit, town, village, &c, spoken of, are situated, ought to be mentioned. There are frequently circuits, and much more frequently, towns and villages of the same name, within different States and Conferences; and in all historical papers particularly, it is desirable that the strictest accuracy be observed, and that as little be left to conjecture as possible. We advise correspondents, moreover, to be careful always, as far as practicable, to compare any verbal information which they may receive with the Minutes, and other authentic records of the Church. If any error be discovered, let it be pointed out, or any additional information be supplied. But unless very satisfactory proof of error be adduced, we prefer always to take the Minutes as our guide.

The valuable original letters of Mr. Wesley, furnished by another respected correspondent, will be reserved for the Complete and Standard edition of his Works, now in press.

NOTE.

We invite the special attention of readers to the valuable article entitled, The Edification of the Church promoted by a Divinely called Ministry of diversified Talent.' Its length, we are persuaded, will constitute no objection to it in the minds of those who shall give it a candid and prayerful perusal.