To the Monthly Reviewers Date: LONDON, October 5, 1756. Really, gentlemen, you do me too much honor. I could scarce expect so favorable a regard from those who are professed admirers of Mr. Aaron Hill's verse and Mr. Caleb Flemings prose. Nevertheless I cannot but observe a few small mistakes in the eight lines with which you favor me. You say, 'We suppose the specimen of Mr. Wesley's Hymns' (the false spelling is of little consequence) 'was sent us for this purpose' - namely to publish. Truly it was not: it never entered my thought; as, I apprehend, may appear from: the whole tenor of the letter wherein those lines were inserted. 'And if the Moravians please to select a like sample of what has been done by them, they may expect from us the same justice.' See letters of Oct. 24, 1755, and Sept. 9, 1756. Another little mistake: those lines are not selected, but are found in the very first hymn (as I observed in my last) that occurs in the first verses which my brother and I have ever published. 'We have received a letter complaining of our having jumbled the poetry of the Methodists and Moravians in an indiscriminate censure.' Not so. The Chief thing complained of was, (1) Your 'jumbling whole bodies of people together and of condemning them by the lump without any regard either to prudence, justice or humanity.' (2).Your 'treating with such contempt those who by no means contemptible writers - Mr. Norris and Mr. Herbert.' The last and least thing was your 'coupling the hymns of Moravians and Methodists together.' It was here I added, 'As probably you have a never few seen the books which you condemn, I will transcribe a few lines'; but neither did I give the least intimation of 'appealing hereby to the public in proof of our superiority over the Moravians.' This is another mistake. At first I was a little inclined to fear a want of integrity had occasioned this misrepresentation; but, upon reflection, I would put a milder construction upon it, and only impute it to want of understanding. Even bodies of men do not see all things; and are then especially liable to err, when they imagine themselves hugely superior to their opponents, and so pronounce ex cathedra.

Another instance of this is just now before me. A week or two ago one put a tract into my hands in which I could discern nothing of the Christian gentleman, or scholar, but much of low, dull, ill-natured scurrility and blasphemy. How was I surprised when I read in your three hundred and fifteenth page, 'We have read this little piece with great pleasure'! when I found you so smitten with the author's 'spirit, sense, and freedom,' his 'smart animadversions' and 'becoming severity'! O gentlemen! do not you speak too plain Do not you discover too much at once especially when you so keenly ridicule Mr. Pike's supposition See reference to Samuel Pike's Philosopha Sacra in Journal, iv. 146-7. 190. Pike (1717 - 1773) adopted the views of Sandeman; he became an Independent minister. that the Son and Spirit are truly divine May I ask, If the Son of God is not truly divine, is He divine at all Is He a little God, or no God at all If no God at all, how came He to say, 'I and the Father are one' Did any prophet before, from the beginning of the world, use any one expression which could possibly be so interpreted as this and other expressions were by aft that heard Jesus speak And did He ever attempt to undeceive them Be pleased, then, to let me know, if He was not God, how do you clear Him from being the vilest of men I am, gentlemen, Your well-wisher, though not admirer.