Wesley Corpus

«4, It was in the year 1715 that a soldier of the emperor’s, lately discharged, came to Sehl, a village of which the Jesuits are lords, and began to talk with Augustin Neusser and his brother. He sharply reproved their hypocrisy, in pretending to be Romanists, and dissembling the true faith. Yet they conferred with flesh and blood, till the year 1722, when at length they forsook all and retired into Upper Lusatia. They left three brothers behind them, who were soon after cast into prison, and grievously persecuted by the Papists; so that as soon as ever a door was opened, they also left all, and followed their brothers into Lusatia. The same did many others soon after, as finding no safety either for body or soul in their own country ; whence, about the same time, Michael and Martin Linner, and the Haberlands, were driven out, with their families, after having suffered the loss of all things, for not conforming to the Romish worship, and for receiving those they called heretics into their houses. «¢°5, But the brethren at Kuhnewald were treated with still greater ° severity. Ali their books were taken away; they were compelled, by the most exquisite torments, to conform to the Popish superstitions and idolatries ; and, in the end, cast into, and kept in, the most loathsome prisons, whereby David Schneider, the Nitschmans, and many others, were constrained also to leave their country, and all that they had. These eT + 90 REV. J. WESLEY’S JOURNAL. [ Aug. 1738. are the plain reasons of our leaving Moravia, of which your excellency desired an account from us.’ “In the mean time we found a great remissness of behaviour had crept in among us. And indeed the same was to be found in most of those round about us, whether Lutherans or Calvinists; so insisting on faith, as to forget, at least in practice, both holiness and good works.