To the Editor of 'Lloyd's Evening Post' TO MR. T. H., alias E. L., c. c. Date: December 20, 1760. What, my good friend again! Only a little disguised with a new name and a few scraps of Latin! I hoped, indeed, you had been pretty well satisfied before; but since you desire to hear a little farther from me, I will add a few words, and endeavour to set our little controversy in a still clearer light. Last month you publicly attacked the people called Methodists without either fear or wit. You charged them with 'madness, enthusiasm, self-contradiction, imposture,' and what not! I considered each charge, and, I conceive, refuted it to the satisfaction of all indifferent persons. You renewed the attack, not by proving anything, but affirming the same things over and over. I replied; and, without taking notice of the dull, low scurrility, either of the first or second letter, confined myself to the merits of the cause, and cleared away the dirt you had thrown. You now heap together ten paragraphs more, most of which require very little answer. In the first you say: 'Your foolishness is become the wonder and admiration of the public.' In the second: 'The public blushes for you, till you give a better solution to the articles demanded of you.' In the third you cite my words, I still maintain 'the Bible, with the Liturgy, and Homilies of our Church; and do not espouse any other principles but what are consonant to the Book of Common Prayer.' You keenly answer: 'Granted, Mr. Methodist; but whether or no you would not espouse other principles if you durst is evident enough from some innovations you have already introduced, which I shall attempt to prove in the subsequent part of my answer.' Indeed, you will not. You neither prove, nor attempt to prove, that I would espouse other principles if I durst. However, you give me a deadly thrust: 'You falsify the first Article of the Athanasian Creed.' But how so Why, I said: 'The fundamental doctrine of the people called Methodists is, Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the true faith.' Sir, shall I tell you a secret It was for the readers of your class that I changed the hard word 'catholic' into an easier.

In the fourth paragraph you say: 'Did you never use that phrase the grace of assurance ' Never, that I remember, either in preaching or writing; both your ears and eyes have been very unhappy if they informed you I did: and, how many soever look either sorrowful or joyful, that will not prove the contrary. 'But produce your texts.' What, for a phrase I never use I pray you have me excused. But (as I said before) 'from what scripture every one of my propositions is collected any common Concordance will show.' To save you trouble, I will for once point out those scriptures: 'Whosoever will be saved must believe' (Mark xvi. 16; Acts xvi. 31); 'This faith works by love' (Gal. v. 6); it is 'an evidence of things not seen' (Heb. xi. 1); 'He that believes is born of God' (1 John v. 1); 'He has the witness in himself' (verse 10); 'The Spirit itself witnesses with his spirit that he is a child of God' (Rom. viii. 16). In the fifth you say: 'You embrace any shift to twist words to your own meaning.' This is saying just nothing. Any one may say this of any one. To prove it is another point. In the sixth you say: 'No Protestant divine ever taught your doctrine of Assurance.' I hope you know no better; but it is strange you should not. Did you never see Bishop Hall's Works Was not he a Protestant divine Was not Mr. Perkins, Bolton, Dr. Sibbs, Dr. Preston, Archbishop Leighton Inquire a little farther; and do not run thus hand over head, asserting you know not what. By assurance (if we must use the expression) I mean 'a confidence which a man hath in God that by the merits of Christ his sins are forgiven and he reconciled to the favour of God.' Stop! Do not run your head into a noose again. These are the words of the Homily. In the seventh you grant 'that works are not meritorious unless accompanied with faith.' No, nor then neither. But pray do not talk of this any more till you know the difference between meritorious and rewardable; otherwise your ignorance will cause you to blunder on without shame and without end.

In your eighth you throw out an hard word, which somebody has helped you to, Thaumaturg what is it about lay preachers. When you have answered the arguments in the Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, I will say something more upon that head. In the ninth you say something, no way material, about the houses at Bristol, Kingswood, and Newcastle; and in the last you give me a fair challenge to a 'personal dispute.' Not so; you have fallen upon me in public, and to the public I appeal. Let all men, not any single umpire, judge whether I have not refuted your charge, and cleared the people called Methodists from the foul aspersions which, without why or wherefore, you had thrown upon them. Let all my countrymen judge which of us have spoken the words of truth and soberness, which has reason on his side, and which has treated the other with a temper suitable to the gospel. If the general voice of mankind gives it against you, I hope you will be henceforth less flippant with your pen. I assure you, as little as you think of it, the Methodists are not such fools as you suppose. But their desire is to live peaceably with all men; and none desires this more than JOHN WESLEY.