Wesley Corpus

To John Baily Date: LIMERICK, June 8, 1750. Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1750) Author: John Wesley --- REVEREND SIR, -- 1. Why do you not subscribe your name to a performance so perfectly agreeing both as to the matter and form with the sermons you have been occasionally preaching for more than a year last past As to your seeming to disclaim it by saying once and again, ‘I am but a plain, simple man,’ and ‘The doctrine you teach is only a revival of the old Antinomian heresy, I think they call it,’ I presume it is only a pious fraud. But how came so plain and simple a man to know the meaning of the Greek word Philalethes Sir, this is not of a piece. If you did not care to own your child, had not you better have subscribed the second (as well as the first) letter George Fisher [The letter thus subscribed was published in Cork on May 30, 1750.] 2. I confess you have timed your performance well. When the other pointless thing was published, I came unluckily to Cork on the selfsame day. But you might now suppose I was at a convenient distance. However, I will not plead this as an excuse for taking no notice of your last favor; although, to say the truth, I scarce know how to answer it, as you write in a language I am not accustomed to. Both Dr. Tucker, Dr. Church, and all the other gentlemen who have wrote to me in public for some years have wrote as gentlemen, having some regard to their own, whatever my character was. But as you fight in the dark, you regard not what weapons you use. We are not, therefore, on even terms: I cannot answer you in kind; I am constrained to leave this to your good allies of Blackpool and Fair Lane. [Celebrated parts of Cork.] I shall first state the facts on which the present controversy turns, and then consider the most material parts of your performance.