East Anglia by James Ewing Ritchie — Read

Bungay Nonconformity -- Hannah More -- The Childses -- The Queen's Librarian -- Prince Albert.

In the beginning of the present century, a disgraceful attack on Methodism -- by which the writer means Dissent in all its branches -- appeared in what was then the leading critical journal of the age, the _Edinburgh Review_. 'The sources,' said the writer, a clergyman (to his shame be it recorded) of the Church of England -- no less distinguished a divine than the far-famed Sydney Smith -- 'from which we shall derive our extracts are the Evangelical and Methodistical magazines for the year 1807, works which are said to be circulated to the amount of 18,000 or 20,000 every month, and which contain the sentiments of Arminian and Calvinistic Methodists, and of the Evangelical clergymen of the Church of England. We shall use the general term of Methodism to designate these three classes of fanatics, not troubling ourselves to point out the finer shades and nicer discriminations of lunacy, but treating them as all in one general conspiracy against common-sense and rational orthodox Christianity. ' To East Anglia came the reputed worthy Canon for an illustration of what he termed their policy to have a great change of ministers. Accordingly, he reprints from the _Evangelical Magazine_ the following notice of an East Anglian Nonconformist ordination, which, by-the-bye, in no degree affects the charge unjustly laid at the door of these 'fanatics,' as engaged 'in one general conspiracy against common-sense and rational orthodox Christianity.'