Wesley Corpus

*°%. I do not admire their close, dark, reserved behaviour, particularly toward strangers. The spirit of secrecy is the’spirit of their community, often leading even into guile and dissimulation. One may observe in them much cunning, much art, much evasion, and disguise. They often appear to be what they are not, and not to be what they are. They so study to become all things to all men, as to take the colour and shape of any that are near them: directly contrary to that openness, frankness, and plainness of speech, so manifest in the Apostles and primitive Christians. : “3. Ido not admire their confining their beneficence to the narrow bounds of their own society. This seems the more liable to exception, as they boast of possessing so immense riches. In his late book the Count particularly mentions, how many hundred thousand florins a single mem ber of their Church has lately expended; and how many hundred thousand crowns of yearly rent, the nobility and gentry only of his society enjoy in one single country. Meantime do they, all put together, expend one hundred thousand, yea, one thousand, or one hundred, in feeding the hungry, or clothing the naked, of any society but their own? ‘©4, Ido not admire the manner wherein they treat their opponents. I cannot reconcile it either to love, humility, or sincerity. Is utter contempt or settled disdain, consistent with love or humility? And can it consist with sincerity, to deny any charge which they know in their conscience is true? To say, those quotations are unjust, which are literally copied from their own books? To affirm, their doctrines are misrepresented, when their own sense is given in their own words? To cry, ‘Poor man! He is quite dark! He is utterly blind! He knows nothing of our doctrines!’ though they cannot point out one mistake this blind man has made, or confute one assertion he has advanced ? “Fourthly. I least of all admire the effects their doctrine has had on seme who have lately begun to hear them.