Wesley Corpus

11. You cite as a fourth instance of my enthusiasm that I say, ‘A Methodist (a real Christian) cannot adorn himself on any pretence with gold or costly apparel’ (page 21). If this be enthusiasm, let the Apostle look to it. His words are clear and express. If you can find a pretence to set them aside, do. I cannot; nor do I desire it. 11. My ' seeming contempt of money' (page 26) you urge as a fifth instance of enthusiasm. Sir, I understand you. You was obliged to call it seeming, lest you should yourself confute the allegation brought in your title-page. But if it be only seeming, whatever it prove besides, it cannot prove that I am an enthusiast. 12. Hitherto you have succeeded extremely ill. You have brought five accusations against me, and have not been able to make one good. However, you are resolved to throw dirt enough that some may stick. So you are next to prove upon me ‘a restless impatience and insatiable thirst of traveling and undertaking dangerous voyages for the conversion of infidels; together with a declared contempt of all dangers, pains, and sufferings; and the designing, loving, and praying for ill usage, persecution, martyrdom, death, and hell’ (page 27). In order to prove this uncommon charge, you produce four scraps of sentences (page 31), which you mark as my words, though, as they stand in your book, they are neither sense nor grammar. But you do not refer to the page or even the treatise where any one of them may be found. Sir, it is well you hide your name, or you would be obliged to hide your face from every man of candor or even common humanity. 13. ‘Sometimes indeed,’ you say, ‘Mr. Wesley complains of the scoffs both of the great vulgar and the small’ (page 32); to prove which you disjoint and murder (as your manner is) another of my sentences. ‘But at other times the note is changed, and “till he is despised no man is in a state of salvation.”’ ‘The note is changed’! How so When did I say otherwise than I do at this day -- namely, ‘that none are children of God but those who are hated or despised by the children of the devil’