Character-Sketches (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1882 Excerpt: ... VII. CHANNING--HERESY AND REFORM. T AM sick of opinions; I am weary to hear---them; my soul loathes this frothy food. Give me solid and substantial religion, give me a humble, gentle lover of God and man; a man full of mercy and good faith, without partiality and without hypocrisy; a man laying himself out in the work of faith, the patience of hope, the labor of love. Let my soul be with these Christians, wheresoever they are, and whatsoever opinion they are of." Let not the scrupulous reader be alarmed at this liberalism; these are not the words of the heresiarch, William Ellery Channing. They were written by one "John Wesley, late fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford." But we venture the opinion, that, had John Wesley known personally William Ellery Channing, he would have drawn his portrait with such lines as those we cite. Southey has a paragraph on what he calls "Wesley's Perfect Charity," in which the poet affirms that Wesley "judged kindly of the Romanists, and of heretics of every description, wherever a Christian disposition and a virtuous life were found;" and that "he published the lives of several Catholics and one Socinian, for the edification of his followers." This Socinian was the "good man" Thomas Firmin. Wesley, in his prefatory remarks to the memoir, says: "I was exceedingly struck at reading the following life, having long settled it in my mind that the entertaining wrong notions concerning the Trinity was inconsistent with real piety. But I cannot argue against matter of fact. I dare not deny that Mr. Firmin was a pious man, although his notions of the Trinity were quite erroneous." This "pious man," Thomas Firmin, was, we repeat, a Socinian; William Ellery Channing was what all orthodox believers will admit to be much better: he was ...