Wesley Corpus

4. You go on: ‘Both commonly begin their adventures with field-preaching’ (Enthusiasm, &c., p. 11). Sir, do you condemn field-preaching toto genere, as evil in itself Have a care! or you (I should say the gentleman that assists you) will speak a little too plain, and betray the real motives of his sincere antipathy to the people called Methodists. Or do you condemn the preaching on Hahham Mount -- in particular, to the colliers of Kingswood If you doubt whether this has done any real good, it is a very easy thing to be informed. And I leave it with all impartial men whether the good which has in fact been done by preaching there, and which could not possibly have been done any other way, does not abundantly ‘justify the irregularity of it’ (page 15). 5. But you think I am herein inconsistent with myself. For I say, ‘The uncommonness is the very circumstance that recommends it.’ (I mean, that recommended it to the colliers in Kingswood.) And yet I said but a page or two before, ‘We are not suffered to preach in the churches, else we should prefer them to any places whatsoever.’ Sir, I still aver both the one and the other. I do prefer the preaching in a church when I am suffered; and yet, when I am not, the wise providence of God overrules this very circumstance for good, many coming to hear because of the uncommonness of the thing who would otherwise not have heard at all. 6. Your second charge is that I ‘abuse the clergy, throw out so much gall of bitterness against them, and impute this black art of calumny to the Spirit and power given from God’ (page 15). Sir, I plead Not guilty to the whole charge. And you have not cited one line to support it. But if you could support it, what is this to the point in hand I presume calumny is not enthusiasm. Perhaps you will say, ‘But it is something as bad.’ True; but it is nothing to the purpose: even the imputing this to the Spirit of God, as you here represent it, is an instance of art, not of enthusiasm.