Wesley Corpus

O how do these Heathens shame us! Their very comedies contain both excellent sense, the liveliest pictures of men and manners, and so fine strokes of genuine morality, as are seldom found in the writings of Christians. Mon. 19.--I spent an hour with B a I n. If the account she gives is true, what blessed creatures are both those gentlemen and their wives that would use the most scurrilous language, yea, strike and drive out of their house, and that in a rainy night, a young gentlewoman, a stranger, far from home, for joining with the Methodists Do these call them selves Christians? Nay, and Protestants? Call them Turks. Papist is too good a name. Tues. 20.--I went to Shoreham. Here I read Mr. Arch deacon Blackburne’s “Considerations on the Penal Laws against Papists.” In the Appendix, p. 198, to my no small surprise, I read these words, said to be wrote by a gentleman at Paris: “The Popish party boast much of the increase of the Methodists, and talk of that sect with rapture. How far the Methodists and Papists stand connected in principles I know not; but I believe, it is beyond a doubt, that they are in constant correspondence with each other.” It seems this letter was published in the “St. James's Chronicle.” But I never saw or heard of it, till these words were printed in the “Canterbury Journal,” as Mr. Blackburne’s own. And he has nearly made them his own, by his faint note upon them, “I would willingly hope some doubt may be made of this.” Indeed he adds, “Mr. Whitefield took timely care to preclude all suspicions of his having any connexions with Popery.” Yea, and Mr. Wesley much more, even as early as Aug. 31, 1738. Again, in my Journal, Aug. 27, 1739, I published the only letter which I ever wrote to a Popish Priest. And it is in proof of this proposi 350 REv. J. wesLEY’s [Jan. 1769.