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PRINTED AND SOLD FOR THE AUTHOR,

BY N. LOMAS, CASTLE STREET.

SOLD ALSO, BY JOHN MASON, 14, CITY ROAD, AND
66, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.

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PREFACE.

METHODISM has been justly characterized as a revival of primitive Apostolical Christianity. The instruments by which it was effected were distinguished by great disinterestedness, fervent piety, and untiring zeal.

It is important that those who have entered into their labours, should be accurately acquainted with the spirit and manner of life of the men whom God so greatly honoured as instruments of spiritual good, and that they should tread in their steps. The generation of ministers contemporary with Mr. WESLEY, and employed by him, has nearly passed away. The subject of this Memoir was one of their number,-one of the connecting links between the former and the present race of Wesleyan Ministers;-exhibiting in modern times a fair specimen of the simplicity, the gravity, the spirituality, and the holy fervour, by which the early Methodist Preachers were distinguished.

DUP. EXCH. 30 AUG 1904

CREW THEOL SEM LIB

2

Simply to present his character and labours to view, leaving them to make their own impression, is the object of this unpretending volume. The writer could have wished that the task had been committed to abler hands; but he was not left at liberty to submit his father's papers to any other eye. Numerous engagements arising out of the superintendence of the circuits in which he has travelled since his father's death, have prevented the earlier execution of his design. Only short fragments of time, and these often separated by long intervals,―could, consistently with the claims of his circuits, be devoted to the examination and transcription of his father's papers. This disadvantage, together with the circumstance that he is unpractised in authorship, must be pleaded as his apology for the many defects which, it is feared, the reader will discover.

As far as it has been practicable, the subject of the Memoir has been made his own biographer: and it is hoped, that the copious extracts from his journals and letters will interest and edify the widely extended circle of his surviving friends. Passing notices of contemporary events connected with the history of Methodism, will be found in various parts of the volume. These might easily have been multiplied, had the limits of the work permitted. The difficulty has been to select from a journal and correspondence so uniform in their excellence, and extending over a space of near fifty-eight years; and to compress into one small volume the history of so long a public life.

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