Wesley Corpus

12. Your Church discipline is novel and unprimitive throughout. Your Bishops as such are mere shadows, and are only so termed to please those who lay stress upon the Threefold Order. The Eldest is (in fact) your Bishop, as far as you have arly; but he is only half an ancient Bishop. The ancient Presbyter you have split into Sympresbyters, Lehrers, Aufsehers, and Ermahners; the ancient Deacon into Hilfers, Krankenwarters, Dieners, and so on. 13. The ordination (or whatever it is termed) of your Eldest plainly shows you look upon Episcopal ordination as nothing; although it is true you make use of it at other times, ‘that you may become all things to all men.’ But the Constitution of your Church is indeed congregational, only herein differing from others, -- (1) that you hold neither this nor any other form of Church government to be of divine right: (2) that the Count has, in fact, the whole power which was ever lodged, either in the Bishops and priests of the ancient Church, in the King and Convocation in England, the General Assembly in Scotland, or the Pope in Italy; nay, there is scarce an instance in history of such a stretch of episcopal or royal or papal power, as his causing the Lot to be cast over again in the election of the Eldest at Herrnhut. 14. Fifthly, you receive not the Ancients but the modern Mystics as the best interpreters of Scripture, and, in conformity to these, you mix much of man's wisdom with the wisdom of God; you greatly refine the plain religion taught by the letter of Holy Writ, and philosophize on almost every part of it, to accommodate it to the Mystic theory. Hence you talk much, in a manner wholly unsupported by Scripture, against mixing nature with grace, against imagination, and concerning the animal spirits, mimicking the power of the Holy Ghost. Hence your brethren zealously caution us against animal joy, against natural love of one another, and against selfish love of God; against which (or any of them) there is no one caution in all the Bible. And they have in truth greatly lessened, and had wellnigh destroyed, brotherly love from among us.