Wesley Corpus

Who ne'er forsook her faith for love of peace, Nor sought with fire and sword to show her zeal; Duteous to rulers when they most oppress, Patient in bearing ill, and doing well. [Description of Divine Religion, from The Battle of the Sexes, stanza xxxv., by his brother Samuel. For 'tender' (line 1) read 'cheerful,' for 'rulers' (line 7) 'princes.' Wesley quotes the last line in the obituary of Robert Swindells (Minutes, x783).] Directly contrary to every article of this was his madness. It was harsh, sour, cloudy, and severe. It was sometimes extravagantly light and sometimes sternly serious. It undermined his best resolutions by an absurd deference to example. It damped the fervor of his zeal and gradually impaired the warmth of his charity. It had not, indeed, as yet attacked his duteous regard for his superiors, nor drove him to exterminate sin by fire and sword; for when it had so obscured that clear judgment whereon his holiness stood that his very faith and patience began to be in danger, the God whom he served came to his rescue and snatched him from the evil to Come. 'But though his religion was not the same with his madness, might it not be the cause of it ' I answer, No. 'Tis full as reasonable to believe that light is darkness as that it is the cause of it. We may just as well think that mildness and harshness, sweetness and sternness, gentleness and fury are the same thing, as that the former are the causes of the latter, or have any tendency thereto. 'But he said himself his distemper was religious madness, and who should know better than himself' Who should know the truth better than one out of his senses Why, any one that was in them, especially any one that had observed the several workings of his soul before the corruptible body pressed it down; when his apprehension was unclouded, his' judgment sound, and his reason cool and unimpaired. Then it was that he knew himself and his Master; then he spoke the words of truth and soberness, and justified by those words the wisdom he loved, only not as much as he adorned it by his life.