Wesley Corpus

9. You proceed: ‘How can you justify the many good things yousay of the Moravians, notwithstanding this character You saythey love God: But how can this be, when they even plead againstkeeping most of his commandments You say, you believe theyhave a sincere desire to serve God. How, then, can they despise hisservice in so many instances You declare some of them muchholier than any people you had yet known. Strange! if they fail in so many prime points of Christian duty, and this not only habitually and presumptuously, but even to the denying their use and necessity. You praise them for trampling under foot “the lust ofthe flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life:” And yet youmake them a close, reserved, insincere, deceitful people. ‘How you will explain those things, I know not.’ (Remarks, pp. 20, 21.) By nakedly declaring each thing as it is. They are, I believe,the most self-inconsistent people now under the sun: And I describethem just as I find them; neither better nor worse, but leaving thegood and bad together. Upon this ground I can very easily justifythe saying many good things of them, as well as bad. For instance: I am still persuaded that they (many of them) love God; althoughmany others of them ignorantly ‘plead against the keeping,’ not ‘most,’ but some, ‘of his commandments.’ I believe ‘they have asincere desire to serve God:’ And yet, in several instances, some ofthem, I think, despise that manner of serving him which I knowGod hath ordained. I believe some of them are much holier thanany people I had known in August, 1740: Yet sure I am that othersamong them fail, not indeed in the ‘prime points of Christianduty,’ (for these are faith, and the love of God and man,) but in several points of no small importance. Not that they herein sinpresumptuously, neither; for they are fully, though erroneously,persuaded in their own minds. From the same persuasion they act,when they, in some sense, deny the use or necessity of those ordinances. How far that persuasion justify or excuse them, I leave to Him who knoweth their hearts. Lastly. I believe they trample under foot, in a good degree, ‘the lust of the flesh, the lust of theeye, and the pride of life:’ And yet many of them use reserve, yea, guile. Therefore, my soul mourns for them in secret places.