Besides these, Wesley also published many new editions of former
tracts, for the use of his recently instituted tract society, most of
these reissues having upon the title page, “This tract is not to be
sold, but given away.”
His principal publication, however, was his _Arminian Magazine_, and
this was as vigorously conducted as before. Again, we have
half-a-dozen original sermons, by Wesley himself, all of them
remarkable, and among the most able that he ever published. These
include his two discourses on good and fallen angels; in which he
propounds the doctrine, that good angels minister to our happiness, by
assisting us in our searches after truth, by preserving us in danger,
by dreams, etc.: and that all evil angels are united under one common
head; and are often the authors of accidents, diseases, fires, storms,
and earthquakes. Then there is his elaborate sermon on “The Mystery of
Iniquity,” in which he expresses the opinion, that the “greatest blow
that genuine Christianity ever received was when Constantine the Great
called himself a Christian, and poured in a flood of riches, honours,
and power upon the Christians, more especially upon the clergy.” Next
we have his curious homily on the Spread of Christianity, where he
hazards the conjecture that truth will be transmitted from this nation
to that, until at last it reaches the South Sea islands. And, finally,
there are his characteristic sermons on Family Religion, and on
Training Children. As usual, every number of the magazine has an
article on the Calvinian controversy. Biographical accounts are still
numerous. Extracts from his own Natural Philosophy, and from Locke’s
Essay on the Human Understanding, form a part of each of the twelve
numbers; as do also Benson’s letters in reply to Madan’s treatise on
polygamy; likewise extracts from Dr. Hilldrop’s able “Thoughts on the
Brute Creation,” professedly to prove a theory which Wesley liked, the
ultimate restoration of the brute creation; and a series of profoundly
thoughtful articles on “The True Original of the Soul.” Nine numbers
have extracts from Baxter’s “Certainty of the World of Spirits, fully
evinced by unquestionable Histories of Apparitions and Witchcrafts.”
There are forty-five letters; forty-one poems; and a number of
portraits, including those of John Hampson and William Thom, both of
whom left the Methodist connexion. There are also long continued
extracts from Bryant’s Analysis of Ancient Mythology, which Wesley
pronounces to be “one of the most remarkable books, in its kind, which
has been published for centuries.” And, finally, there are Wesley’s
“Thoughts on the Writings of Baron Swedenborg.” The baron, a little
before he died, presented Wesley with his last and largest theological
work, the “True Christian Religion”; but he failed to make a convert
of him. Wesley believed him to be insane, and traced his insanity to a
fever, which he had in London, when “he ran into the street stark
naked, proclaimed himself the Messiah, and rolled himself in the
mire.” He was a “fine genius,--majestic though in ruins.”