←1305
←1305
Dr. Johnson (see Boswell’s Life) with much truth ascribes the success of the Methodists, in drawing away the members of the establishment, to their plain mode of address. King James in a curious document entitled—‘The Reason of the King’s Direction for Preaching and Preachers’—traces the many defections to Popery, and Anabaptism, or to other points of separation, to the ‘lightness, affectedness, and unprofitableness,’ of the preachers in his day, ‘mustering up much reading, or displaying their wits,’ while leaving the people’s mind, ‘for all this airy nourishment, no better than mere table-books, ready to be filled up with the catechism of the Popish priests, or the pamphlets of the Anabaptists.