Wesley Corpus

May the Lord remember him in that day! Meantime, will no one follow his example? I am, Sir, “Your humble servant, Mon, 5.--This week I wrote to the author of the “West minster Journal” as follows: “I HoPE you are a person of impartiality; if so, you will not insert what is urged on one side of a question only, but likewise what is offered on the other. “Your correspondent is, doubtless, a man of sense; and he seems to write in a good humour: But he is extremely little acquainted with the persons of whom he undertakes to give an account. “There is ‘gone abroad,” says he, “an ungoverned spirit of enthusiasm, propagated by knaves, and embraced by fools.” Suffer me now to address the gentleman himself. Sir, you may call me both a knave and a fool: But prove me either the Jan. 1761.] JOURNAL, 35 one or the other, if you can. “Why, you are an enthusiast.’ What do you mean by the term? A believer in Jesus Christ? An assertor of his equality with the Father, and of the entire Christian Revelation? Do you mean one who maintains the antiquated doctrines of the New Birth, and Justification by Faith? Then I am an enthusiast. But if you mean any thing else, either prove or retract the charge. “The enthusiasm which has lately gone abroad is faith which worketh by love. Does this ‘endanger government itself?’ Just the reverse. Fearing God, it honours the King. It teaches all men to be subject to the higher powers, not for wrath, but for conscience’ sake. “But, ‘mo power in England ought to be independent of the supreme power.” Most true; yet ‘the Romanists own the authority of a Pope, independent of civil government.” They do, and thereby show their ignorance of the English constitution. “In Great Britain we have many Popes, for so I must call all who have the souls and bodies of their followers devoted to them. Call them so, and welcome. But this does not touch me; nor Mr. Whitefield, Jones, or Romaine; nor any whom I am acquainted with : None of us have our followers thus devoted to us. Those who follow the advice we constantly give are devoted to God, not man. But ‘the Methodist proclaims he can bring into the field twenty-five thousand men.” What Methodist?