Wesley Corpus

3. In this, then, I entreat your Lordship to bear with me, and in particular when I speak of myself (how tender a point!) just as freely as I would of another man. Let not this be termed boasting. Is there not a cause Can I refrain from speaking, and be guiltless And if I speak at all, ought I not to speak (what appears to me to be) the whole truth Does not your Lordship desire that I should do this I will, then, God being my helper. And you will bear with me in my folly (if such it is), with my speaking in the simplicity of my heart. 4. Your Lordship begins: ‘There is another species of enemies, who give shameful disturbance to the parochial clergy, and use very unwarrantable methods to prejudice their people against them, and to seduce their flocks from them -- the Methodists and Moravians, who agree in annoying the Established ministry, and in drawing over to themselves the lowest and most ignorant of the people, by presences to greater sanctity’ (Charge, p. 4). But have no endeavors been used to show them their error Yes; your Lordship remarks, ‘Endeavors have not been wanting. But though these endeavors have caused some abatement in the pomp and grandeur with which these people for some time acted’ (truly, one would not have expected it from them!), ‘yet they do not seem to have made any impression upon their leaders.’ (Page 6.) Your Lordship adds: ‘Their innovations in points of discipline I do not intend to enter into at present; but to inquire what the doctrines are which they spread’ (page 7). ‘Doctrines big with pernicious influences upon practice’ (page 8). Six of these your Lordship mentions, after having premised, ‘It is not at all needful, to the end of guarding against them, to charge the particular tenets upon the particular persons among them’ (page 7). Indeed, my Lord, it is needful in the highest degree. For if the minister who is to guard his people, either against Peter Bohler, Mr. Whitefield, or me, does not know what our particular tenets are, he must needs ‘run as uncertainly and fight as one that beateth the air.’