Wesley Corpus

Friday, 7. I preached about nine at Andover, to a few dead stones; at one in Whitchurch, and in the evening at Basingstoke. The next day, Saturday, 8, I was once more brought safe to London. I spent about a fortnight, as usual, in examining the society; a heavy, but necessary, labour. Mon. 17.--I sent the following letter: “To the Editor of Lloyd's Evening Post. “SIR, November 17, 1760. “IN your last paper we had a letter from a very angry gentleman, (though he says he had put himself into as good humour as possible,) who personates a Clergyman, but is, I presume, in reality, a retainer to the theatre. He is very warm against the people vulgarly called Methodists, “ridiculous impostors,’ ‘religious buffoons,’ as he styles them; ‘saint errants,” (a pretty and quaint phrase,) full of “inconsiderate ness, madness, melancholy, enthusiasm;’ teaching a ‘knotty and unintelligible system’ of religion, yea, a ‘contradictory or self-contradicting; nay, a ‘mere illusion,” a “destructive scheme, and of pernicious consequence; since ‘an hypothesis is a very slippery foundation to hazard our all upon.’ “Methinks the gentleman has a little mistaken his character: He seems to have exchanged the sock for the buskin. But, be this as it may, general charges prove nothing: Let us come to particulars. Here they are: ‘The basis of Methodism is the grace of assurance,” (excuse a little impropriety of expression,) ‘regeneration being only a preparative to it.’ Truly this is somewhat ‘knotty and unintelligible.’ I will endeavour to help him out. 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; the faith which works by love; which, by means of the love of God and our neighbour, produces both inward and outward holiness. This faith is an evidence of things not seen; and he that thus believes is regenerate, or born of God; and he has the witness in himself: (Call it assurance, or what you please:) The Spirit Nov. 1760.] JOURNAL. 25 itself witnesses with his spirit that he is a child of God. “From what scripture’ every one of these propositions ‘is collected, any common Concordance will show. “This is the true portraiture of Methodism, so called. ‘A religion supe rior to this’ (the love of God and man) none can ‘enjoy,' either in time or in eternity.