To the Editor of the 'London Magazine' Editor's Introductory Notes: 1760 Date: LONDON, December 12, 1760. Patience, dear sir, patience! or I am afraid your choler will hurt your constitution as well as your argument. Be composed, and I will answer your queries, 'speedily, clearly, and categorically.' Only you will give me leave to shorten them a little, and to lay those together which have some relation to each other. Permit me likewise, before I enter on particulars, to lay a few circumstances before you which may add some light to the subject and give you a clearer knowledge of the people with whom you are so angry. About thirty years since, I met with a book written in King William's time, called The Country Parson's Advice to his Parishioners. There I read these words: 'If good men of the Church will unite together in the several parts of the kingdom, disposing themselves into friendly societies, and engaging each other in their respective combinations to be helpful to each other in all good, Christian ways, it will be the most effectual means for restoring our decaying Christianity to its primitive life and vigour and the supporting of our tottering and sinking Church.' A few young gentlemen then at Oxford approved of and followed the advice. They were all zealous Churchmen, and both orthodox and regular to the highest degree. For their exact regularity they were soon nicknamed Methodists; but they were not then, or for some years after, charged with any other crime, real or pretended, than that of being righteous over-much. See letter of June 11, 1731, to his mother. Nine or ten years after, many others 'united together in the several parts of the kingdom, engaging in like manner to be helpful to each other in all good, Christian ways.' At first all these were of the Church; but several pious Dissenters soon desired to unite with them. Their one design was to forward each other in true, scriptural Christianity.

Presently the flood-gates were opened, and a deluge of reproach poured upon them from all quarters. All manner of evil was spoken of them, and they were used without either justice or mercy; and this chiefly (I am sorry to say it) by the members of our own Church. Some of them were startled at this, and proposed a question, when they were met together at Leeds, whether they ought not to separate from the Church; but after it had been fairly and largely considered, they were one and all satisfied that they ought not. The reasons of that determination were afterwards printed and lately reprinted and strongly enforced by my brother. Hinc illae lacrymae! 'Hence these tears,' Terence's Andria, 1. i. 99. This, I presume, has occasioned your present queries. For though you talk of our 'Episcopal communion,' I doubt not that you are either a Papist or a Dissenter. If I mistake, you may easily set me right by telling your real name and place of abode. But, in spite of all we could say or do, the cry still continued; 'You have left the Church; you are no ministers or members of it.' I answer, as I did fourteen years ago to one who warmly affirmed this: 'Use ever so many exaggerations, still the whole of the matter is, (1) I often use extemporary prayer; (2) wherever I can, I preach the gospel; (3) those who desire to live according to the gospel, I advise how to watch over each other and to put from them those who walk disorderly.' See letter of June 17, 1746, sect. III. 9. Now, whether these things are right or wrong, this single point I must still insist upon: all this does not prove either that I am no member or that I am no minister of the Church of England. Nay, nothing can prove that I am no member of the Church, till I am either excommunicated or renounce her communion, and no longer join in her doctrine and in the breaking of bread and in prayer. Nor can anything prove I am no minister of the Church, till I either am deposed from my ministry or voluntarily renounce her, and wholly cease to teach her doctrines, use her offices, and obey her rubrics.

Upon the same principle that I still preach and endeavour to assist those who desire to live according to the gospel, about twelve years ago I published proposals for printing 'A Christian Library: Consisting of Extracts from and Abridgements of the Choicest Pieces of Practical Divinity which have been published in the English Tongue.' And I have done what I proposed. Most of the tracts therein contained were written by members of our own Church; but some by writers of other denominations: for I mind not who speaks, but what is spoken. On the same principle, that of doing good to all men, of the ability that God giveth, I published 'Primitive Physick; or an Easy and Natural Method of Curing most Diseases'; and, some years after, a little tract entitled Electricity made Plain and Useful. On the same principle I printed an English, a Latin, a French, and a short Hebrew Grammar, as well as some of the Classics, and a few other tracts, in usum juventutis Christianae. 'For the use of Christian youth.' This premised, I now proceed to the queries: Q. 1. 'Why have you not cleared yourself of those reflections that you stand charged with by a learned author' I have throughly cleared myself in the three letters to that learned author which were published immediately after his tracts. Q. 2. 'Can you constantly charge your people to attend the worship of our Church and not Dissenters' meetings 'I can: this is consistent with all I have written and all I have done for many years. 'But do you not call our Church a mere rope of sand' No: look again into the Plain Account, See letter in Dec. 1748, Sect. l. II, to Vincent Perronet. and you will see (if you care to see) that those words are not spoken of our Church. Q. 6. 'But do you not hold doctrine contrary to hers' No. 'Do you not make a dust about words' No. 'Do you not bewilder the brains of weak people' No. Q. 11. 'Do you not in print own Episcopacy to be jure divino' Not that I remember. Can you tell me where But this I own; I have no objection to it nay, I approve it highly. Q. 16. 'But are you not guilty of canonical disobedience to your Bishop' I think not. Show me wherein.

Q. 17. 'Did not you suffer your lay preachers at Leeds to debate whether they should separate from the Church' Yes, and encouraged them to say all that was in their hearts. 'Why did you do this' To confirm their adherence to it; and they were so confirmed that only two out of the whole number have since separated from it. Q. 18. 'If most votes had carried the day, what had followed' If the sky should fall! Q. 12. 'What did you propose by preaching up to the people a solemn covenant' To confirm them in fearing God and working righteousness. I shall probably do the same again shortly. And if you desire any farther information, you are welcome to hear every sermon which I preach concerning it. Q. 13. 'Was not this intended to cut them off from ever communicating with any company of Christians but yourselves' No; nothing less. It was not intended to cut them off from anything but the devil and his works. Q. 14. 'Do you not commend the Quakers' Yes, in some things. 'And the French prophets' No. Q. 15. 'Do you not stint your lay preachers to three or four minutes only in public prayers' I advise them not usually to exceed four or five minutes either before or after sermon. See A Preservative against Unsettled Notions in Religion, 1758, p. 244. Q. 3. 'Is not your Christian Library an odd collection of mutilated writings of Dissenters of all sorts' No. In the first ten volumes there is not a line from any Dissenter of any sort; and the greatest part of the other forty is extracted from Archbishop Leighton, Bishops Taylor, Patrick, Ken, Reynolds, Sanderson, and other ornaments of the Church of England. Q. 4. 'Is not this declaring that you have a superior privilege beyond all men to print, correct, and direct as you please' I think not. I suppose every man in England has the same privilege. Q. 5. 'Is it performed according to the first proposals and the expectation of the subscribers' It is performed according to the first proposals; nor could any subscriber reasonably expect more.

Q. 7. 'Why did you not in your New Testament distinguish those places with italics where you altered the old translation' Because it was quite needless; as any who choose it may easily compare the two translations together. 'But should you not have given the learned a reason for every alteration' Yes, if I had written for the learned; but I did not, as I expressly mentioned in the Preface. Q. 8. 'Do you not assume too much in philosophy and physic as well as in theology' I hope not. Q. 9. 'Why did you meddle with electricity' For the same reason as I published the Primitive Physick to do as much good as I can. Q. 19. 'Are you a clergyman at all' Yes. 'Are you not a Quaker in disguise' No. 'Did not you betray the Church, as Judas his Master, with a kiss' No. 'If you be in the wrong, God confound your devices!' I say the same thing. 'If in the right, may He display it to all people!' Amen! In His own time. I take this opportunity to answer the queries also which occur on page 614: 1. 'If the operations of the Spirit overpower the natural faculties, must they not destroy free agency' I neither teach nor believe that the ordinary operations of the Spirit do overpower the natural faculties. 2. 'If every man be furnished with an inward light as a private guide and director, must it not supersede the necessity of revelation' This affects the Quakers, not the Methodists, who allow no inward light but what is subservient to the written Word, and to be judged thereby: they are therefore no 'enthusiasts'; neither is it yet proved that they are 'deluded' at all. They follow no ignis fatuus, but 'search the Scriptures freely and impartially.' And hence their 'doctrines are not the dogmas of particular men,' but are all warranted by Scripture and reason. I am, sir, Your sincere well-wisher.