[British Critic, Oct. 1840]
Little as we can be supposed to agree with the theological views of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, the well-known friend and patroness of Whitfield, we have risen from the perusal of her life, as lately published, with feelings of interest,—kind, though sad,—or rather the more sad because of the kindness which we feel towards so many of the persons and things recorded in it. We proposed no more on taking it up, nor do we propose more now, than to select some passages from it illustrative of the religious transactions with which Lady Huntingdon was connected; but a number of musings have arisen in us, while engaged on it, which it is difficult wholly to suppress, yet impossible duly to draw out. The history of Methodism is, we do not scruple to say, the history of a heresy; but never surely was a heresy so mixed up with what was good and true, with high feeling and honest exertion,—never a heresy which admitted of more specious colouring or more plausible excuse,—never a heresy in which partizan must be more carefully discriminated from partizan, persons from their tenets, their intentions from their conduct, their words from their meaning, what they held of truth from what they held of error, their beginnings from their endings. Being nothing short of a formal heresy, ultimately good could not come of it, nor will good come of it. We have not yet seen its termination, and therefore as yet can but partially argue ab eventu, which in theological matters is an evidence so solemn, so conclusive. “Ye shall know them by their fruits,” is our Lord’s canon concerning all schemes of doctrine, however attractive or fair of promise, which come not of the Catholic Church. Already has one of the two branches of Methodism, and that the principal one, borne, in the person of its most learned divine, the bitter fruit of error in the most sacred doctrine of theology. We hope nothing, then, we fear everything, from a religious movement, which nevertheless in its rise excites our sympathy, and of which we do not deny, as of any event in the world, the incidental benefits. Yet interest, pity and admiration we do feel for many of the principal agents in it; and if the choice lay between them and the reformers of the sixteenth century (as we thankfully acknowledge it does not,) a serious inquirer would have greater reason for saying, “Sit anima mea cum Westleio,” than “cum Luthero,” or “cum Calvino,” and “cum multis aliis,” as the grammar has it, “quos nunc perscribere longum est.”
What pleases us in the Volume before us is the sight of a person simply and unconditionally giving up this world for the next. This must be right, whoever does it, and whatever else is right or wrong. So far Lady Huntingdon gained a point, and sets Christians of all times an example. She devoted herself, her name, her means, her time, her thoughts, to the cause of Christ. She did not spend her money on herself; she did not allow the homage paid to her rank to remain with herself: she passed these on, and offered them up to Him from whom her gifts came. She acted as one ought to act who considered this life a pilgrimage, not a home,—like some holy nun, or professed ascetic, who had neither hopes nor fears of anything but what was divine and unseen. And such she was in an age which particularly required a witness that such things could be, or that it was possible to love anything better than the goods of life,—an age of which Hoadly was the bishop and Walpole the minister, and Pope the poet, and Chesterfield the wit, and Tillotson the ruling doctor. She was the representative, in an evil day, of what was, then as now, lost to the Church,—of the rich becoming poor for Christ, of delicate women putting off their soft attire and wrapping themselves in sack-cloth for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. And moreover, though she was a partizan, and party feeling has at first sight nothing attractive, at least in the eyes of this generation, yet after all,—whatever be its evils, whatever its inherent faults, whatever unintentional but real opposition in a given case to the will of God,—there is something very stirring and touching in the sight of a number of persons loving each other disinterestedly, and co-operating one with another, whoever they are; and that for no object of earth, but with a view of advancing His cause whose servants they profess to be. How far this high and pure motive existed among Lady Huntingdon’s friends, we do not here decide; but as far as it was there, it arrests and subdues our feelings, though existing in the midst of what is in itself base and contemptible. When faith and love, or even their types and semblances, are in any measure met with in the history of religious error, they outweigh much of extravagance, much of absurdity, nay, of buffoonery, and even of unreality, which somewhere or other will be sure to make its appearance in those who figure in it. However, we must pass on to the business which lies before us, and in doing so, we fear we must be laying aside in no small degree the amiable feelings in which we have been indulging. There is nothing in the Volume itself which has given rise to them to call for much of such sympathy; and though it is not worth while to make much of its faults, yet we must not seem to extend to it an expression of kindness which is due only to its subject.