the people that bear his name to waste their strength in angry strife with each other; while their children and youth need their special care,-the heathen are perishing by millions for lack of knowledge, the judgments of God are abroad in the land, and all Europe groans under the pressure of miseries which nothing but vital Christianity can relieve. Whole nations now writhe in agony under the misery of infidelity, superstition and sin, and are blindly seeking relief in such political changes as have hitherto augmented the evils which they were intended to remove; and shall we, instead of applying the gospel remedy upon the widest possible scale, exhaust our energies and destroy our influence by unseemly quarrels? "Where envying and strife is, there is" not only the absence of combined and zealous efforts for the good of others, but "confusion (tumult, unquietness) and every evil work." James iii. 16. Methodism still numbers among its adherents men of intelligence and tried integrity, who revere the memory of their founder, cherish an indomitable attachment to his principles, and will rather die in the struggle than betray their trust, by giving up the system into the hands of men who have attempted to subvert its essential principles, and yet have not dared to show their faces. May the able and good men who are now suffering the glorious reproach of fidelity, bear with meekness and in a forgiving spirit the calumnies with which they are loaded; and may you, gentlemen, be sustained in so using the weapons of truth and love, as to assist in guarding the Wesleyan section of the Catholic Church "From open and from secret foes, that it may still flourish in peace and unity, and be a general blessing to the world! TZADDI. THE REV. D. WALTON AND THE MANCHESTER DISTRICT MEETING. To the Editors of Papers on Wesleyan Matters. For the information of such of your readers as may have been misled by the Editor of the "Wesleyan" and his correspondents, or by the lithographed letter which has been issued from Bolton, on various points connected with the case of the Rev. D. Walton and the Manchester Minor District Meeting, the following statement of facts is respectfully submitted :— 1. Mr. T. P. Bunting was in possession of the chief evidence adduced on Mr. Walton's trial, at the time when he interrogated Mr. W. on the subject of his connexion with the "Fly-Sheets " in the Manchester and Bolton District Missionary Committee; and he was also in possession of the means of securing its formal production. 2. The enquiry of Mr. Bunting was made, not only with the implied consent of that Meeting, no one objecting,—but also with the express consent of Mr. Walton. 3. Mr. Walton was, more than twelve months before, privately interrogated, as to his connexion with the "Fly-Sheets," and on that occasion failed to give a satisfactory reply. 4. The account, given in the " Wesleyan," of the course by which the evidence given at the trial found its way to Mr. Bunting, as to time and other circumstances therein stated, is, for the most part, a pure fabrication. 5. Mr. Walton, both at the commencement and the close of the investigation, expressed his entire satisfaction and confidence, both as to the constitution of the Minor District Meeting, and the character and feeling of the individuals who composed it. 6. The evidence of Mr. Ratcliffe was not "volunteered," but constrained by a conviction of the duty which he owed to the authority of the District Meeting. 7. Mr. Walton, in the course of his trial, not only admitted the substantial agreement of certain passages in the M.S., seen by Mr. Ratcliffe, with what afterwards appeared in the "Fly-Sheets," but also the verbal identity of several remarkable expressions. 8. The entire series of the resolutions adopted by the Minor District Meeting, and an admonitory letter founded on those resolutions, have been communicated to Mr. Walton alone. The First only of those resolutions has been communicated to Mr. T. P. Bunting. You may rely on the authority on which this statement is made,-the utmost pains having been employed to ensure correctness. No such statement would have been forwarded, but that the "Wesleyan " and his friends have so greatly misrepresented the points to which it refers. Yours respectfully, Q. Q. "The truth is, in most of the transactions of human life, the cruelest, and most killing blows, given both to persons and societies, have been from some amongst themselves: hardly any government or constitution comes to confusion, but by some hungry vipers which were conceived and bred in her own bowels, and afterwards gnawed their way through them: hardly any church (though in never so flourishing a condition) is destroyed, but by the help of some wretches, who first eat her bread, (and perhaps wear her honours,) and then lift up their heel against her; suck themselves fat with her milk, and then stab her to the heart through the breast which gave it. Such oftentimes has been the fate of the greatest things. They have been ruined from within, which no force from abroad could shake. A bullet from an enemy often goes beside a man, and so spares him; but an imposthume in his head, or an apoplexy, strikes him dead."-SOUTH. Our correspondent in York, who has furnished an account of the York Quarterly Meeting, has our thanks for his communication, and is respectfully informed that the proceedings of the Manchester District Meeting, are not a matter with which any Quarterly Meeting has any right to meddle; and that the entertainment of that question on the occasion referred to, was of course illegal. The "Friend to Truth and Daylight," residing, as he intimates, in the "City of Waters," scarcely needed to have mentioned the name of the minister (in the West of England) who has proffered the service of his advocacy to the Rev. D. Walton, even though it should cost him his ministerial existence." His communication will be duly attended to. 66 We are obliged to Q. E. D. for his communication. But the fact to which he testifies, that two ministers, both of them under circumstances of something more than suspicion, 66 were seen in close council in the neighbourhood of Bolton, on the evening of the Saturday preceding the trial," may be left, without comment, to make its own impression. "X. Y."-His communication respecting the minister who thought it right on a recent occasion to indulge himself in "tarring and feathering one of his discourses delivered in the neighbourhood of Wednesbury, with an extract from the 'Fly-Sheets,'" cannot be otherwise than thus very briefly noticed. The intention is good, but we may hope that the rebuke which he received upon the spot from some of his hearers, may for the present be sufficient. No. II. of the Papers on Wesleyan Matters will be published on the 25th of January. Communications on subjects connected with Wesleyan Methodism are respectfully solicited from parties concurring in the general views of the Preface,-to be addressed 66 "TO THE EDITORS OF PAPERS ON WESLEYAN MATTERS,' Wolverhampton: Printed by JOSEPH BRIDGEN, Darlington street, and Published by Messrs. SIMPKIN, MARSHALL and Co., Stationers' Hall Court, London; and may be had through any respectable Bookseller in any part of Great Britain. PAPERS ON WESLEYAN MATTERS FEBRUARY 1, 1849. METHODISM AS IT IS, AND NOT AS IT IS MISREPRESENTED TO BE, BY ITS ENEMIES, AND BY SOME OF ITS PROFESSED FRIENDS. THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. Tantæne animis cœlestibus iræ ?-VIRGIL. Does rage so fierce in heavenly bosoms dwell? 66 It is remarkable that each of the three great epic poets, Homer, Virgil, and Milton, traces the origin of the calamities which constitute the main subject of his poem, to passions of the worst description. The first of them ascribes "the woes unnumbered" which befell the Greeks during the siege of Troy, to Achilles' dreadful wrath." The second makes the afflictive wanderings of Æneas and his countrymen, after the destruction of that city, to be the consequence of Juno's disappointed jealousy and rage; and the third leads us to regard the indignant pride and the revengeful spirit of Satan, as that which "brought death into the world, and all our woe.' And were any poet to select materials for the subject of an epic from any of those periods of Wesleyan history, in which more than ordinary mischief, has befallen the Connexion, he might in like manner sing of that mischief as having had its primary source, and its chief maintenance, from motives of the same description. Take, for example, the troubles which so violently agitated the Connexion within the period of a few years after the death of Mr. Wesley, including the disturbances created by the struggle of certain bodies of trustees and others, for the privilege of tyrannizing over both ministers and people; and the later contest of Mr. Kilham and his party, for the purpose of controlling the spiritual authority of the ministerial pastorate, by the establishment of a coordinate authority to be vested in the laity. Or take the agitation which the "Dissentients," at Leeds, so stubbornly maintained, on occasion of the introduction of an organ into Brunswick Chapel; or the turmoil which was raised at a still more recent period, on the vexata quaestio of the establishment of the Wesleyan Theological Institution. C These ferments have now in succession worked out their natural results; and the true principles and motives of the parties who originated them, but ill-concealed at the time, have since been exhibited in a light which will enable future historians to do justice, both to them and to the parties against whom they contended. They may, therefore, be left for the present to the unenviable celebrity with which their names and doings are unalterably associated. It is a matter of nearer and more practical concern, that their successors in the work of unholy agitation should now be more particularly brought to the scrutiny which their pretensions challenge. It may be observed, that persons of this class have always been extremely sensitive, as is the case at present, to any question on the subject of the motives by which they have been actuated; and have uniformly pleaded for the restriction of enquiry, in their own case, to the truth or falsehood of the statements, which have formed the substance of their complaint and accusation; and, doubtless, they have better reasons than they dare to mention, for the peculiar tenderness they manifest upon that point. But they can urge no reasonable argument for the exemption which they claim from the preliminary scrutiny to which witnesses in general, and more particularly adverse witnesses, are usually subjected, the credit of their testimony being largely implicated in the result of the examination which they are so anxious to evade. At all events, it is with a singularly awkward grace, that our modern agitators plead for such a privilege, their own allegations being almost wholly directed against the motives, rather than against the conduct, of those whom they have so formally arraigned; and motives of the very lowest character being by them, in some instances, attributed to those whom they assail, when no complaint against their practice is in the least degree pretended. The protest which these accusers of the brethren so inconsistently set up, is primá facie evidence, of the most fatal and conclusive character, that what they seek to shelter will not bear examination; and their reluctance is but another reason why they should be fully tested. In entering on the enquiry to which general custom, and their own luckless example, give to those to whom they have appealed for judgment an unquestionable claim, the first thing that becomes evident is a spirit of malevolence and rancour wholly incompatible with any honest regard either to justice or to truth. They would fain have their judges to believe that they are actuated by a loftier and more worthy spirit, which they are pleased to dignify with the name of "independence." But it is in vain that they endeavour to conceal their true spirit under that specious name, or under the profession that they are seeking to promote the welfare and purity of “our beloved Methodism," by the exposure and removal of alleged abuses. Whether abuses such as they complain of really exist or not, their profession of a simple zeal for their correction is too deeply spotted with the venom, that pervades the whole tenor of their sayings and their doings, to be received as the genuine expression of any virtuous or honourable feeling, and carries in itself the proof of motives wholly "from beneath." What are the motives which have kindled in their breasts so 66 strange" a fire, is by no means an uninteresting or irrelevant subject of enquiry. Nor |