Wesley Corpus

and Farrago Double-distilled.5 Why do the zealots of Geneva rage, And fiercest war with an old prophet wage? Why doth their chief with blackest slanders load An hoary servant of the living God? Sincerely hate, affectedly contemn, "Because he contradicts himself not them!" Let Wesley then a different method try, Himself gainsay, his own report deny; Evade or contradict the general call, And teach, "The Saviour did not die for all." This contradiction openly confest Would cancel and atone for all the rest! 5Appears in MS Miscellaneous Poems, 24. Responding to: Richard Hill (1732-1808), Some Remarks on a Pamphlet Entitled "A Third Check to Antinomianism" (London: Dilly, 1772); and Logica Wesleiensis; or, The Farrago Double-Distilled (London: Dilly, 1773). Volume 2 (1779): 47 On Reading the Checks and Other Polemical Works of Mr. Fletcher.6 When Zeal impetuous urg'd her vot'ries on To force submission to great Calvin's throne, With fire unhallow'd glowing in her breast, She cries aloud, "Protest, my friends, Protest!" WISDOM in guise of peaceful Fletcher came, And check'd her rage, and stopp'd the spreading flame; His pencil gives fair Truth her robes of light, While vanquish'd Error flies to shades of night. Where are Geneva's doughty champions fled? Is he that slew the great Goliah dead? What! None to raise the baseless image found? Lo? Their Diana's prostrate on the ground! Kingston,7 Nov. 4, 1778. 6I.e., the series of Checks on Antinomianism by the Wesleys' colleague, John William Fletcher 7This is likely Kingsdown, Wiltshire, near Bristol. Charles's letters show that he was there in late Volume 2 (1779): 545 Epitaph on Lady Gertrude Hotham.8 Stranger to sin and guilty fears, An useful life of fourscore years She liv'd on earth, like those above, A life of humble praise and love: And lo, the same from first to last, When all her toils of love are past, With triumph calm her course she ends, And in a flaming9 car ascends! 8Appears in MS Funeral Hymns, 78. Lady Gertrude Hotham (1696-1775), widow of Sir Charles Hotham (1693-1738), 5th Baronet of Scarborough, and daughter of Philip Stanhope, the third Earl of Chesterfield, was a Methodist sympathizer and friend of the Charles Wesley family, including him in her will. 9Lady Hotham died from severe burns, when her clothing caught fire from a candle.