. Hawker and Co. to make the new
birth itself as plain as a pikestaff, or a whale's foal, or Sarah
Robarts's rabbits.

Ib. p. 30.

So that they go on in their sin waiting for a new birth, &c.

"So that they go on in their sin!"--Who would not suppose it notorious
that every Methodist meeting-house was a cage of Newgate larks making up
their minds to die game?

Ib.

The following account is extracted from the Methodist Magazine for
1798: "The Lord astonished 'Sarah Roberts' with his mercy, by 'setting
her at liberty, while employed' in the necessary business of 'washing'
for her family, &c.

N. B. Not the famous rabbit-woman.--She was Robarts.

Ib. p. 31.

A washerwoman has 'all her sins blotted out' in the twinkling of an
eye, and while reeking with suds is received in the family of the
Redeemer's kingdom. Surely this is a most abominable profanation of
all that is serious, &c.

And where pray is the absurdity of this? Has Christ declared any
antipathy to washerwomen, or the Holy Ghost to warm suds? Why does not
the Barrister try his hand at the "abominable profanation," in a story
of a certain woman with an issue of blood who was made free by touching
the hem of a garment, without the previous knowledge of the wearer?

'Rode, caper, vitem: tamen hinc cum stabis ad aras, In tua quod fundi
cornua possit, erit'.

Ib. p. 32.

The leading design of John the Baptist * * was * this:--to prepare the
minds of men for the reception of that pure system of moral truth
which the Saviour, by divine authority, was speedily to inculcate, and
of those sublime doctrines of a resurrection and a future judgment,
which, as powerful motives to the practice of holiness, he was soon to
reveal.

What then? Did not John the Baptist himself teach a pure system of moral
truth? Was John so much more ignorant than Paul before his conversion,
and the whole Jewish nation, except a few rich freethinkers, as to be
ignorant of the "sublime doctrines of a resurrection and a future
judgment?" This, I well know, is the strong-hold of Socinianism; but
surely one single unprejudiced perusal of the New Testament,--not to
suppose an acquaintance with Kidder or Lightfoot--would blow it down,
like a house of cards!

Ib. p. 33.

--their faiths in the efficacy of their own rites, and creeds, and
ceremonies, and their whole train of 'substitutions' for 'moral duty',
was so entire, and in their o