For John Wesley was their only saint, and they honestly
believed that they alone of all Methodist communities were following in his
footsteps. Poor souls! they lived as far from what Wesley taught as it is
easily possible to conceive. As for Gray Michael, he was under the
impression that he and his sect worthily held aloft the true light which
Wesley brought in person to Newlyn, and he talked with authority upon the
subject of his master and his master's doings. But he knew little about the
founder of Methodism in reality, and still less about the history of the
Methodist movement. Had he learned that John Wesley himself was once
accused of Popish practices; had he known that not until some years after
the great preacher's death did his party, in conference assembled, separate
itself from the Church of England, he had doubtless been much amazed.
Though saturated with religious feeling, the man was wholly ignorant of
religious history in so far as it affected his own country. To him all
saints not mentioned in Scripture were an abomination and invention of
Rome. Had he been informed that the venerable missionary saints of his
mother land were in no case Romish, another vast surprise must have awaited
him.
Let it not for an instant be supposed that the Luke Gospelers represented
right Methodism. But they fairly exemplified a sorry side of it; those
little offshoots of which dozens have separated from the parent tree; and
they exhibited most abundantly in themselves that canker-worm of Pharisaism
which gnaws at the root of all Nonconformity.
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