Wesley Corpus

To Dr. Lavington, Bishop Of Exeter Date: LONDON, December 1751. Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1751) Author: John Wesley --- SIR, -- 1. You have undertaken to prove (as I observed in my former letter, a few sentences of which I beg leave to repeat) that the ‘whole conduct of the Methodists is but a counterpart of the most wild fanaticisms of Popery’ (Preface to the First Part, p. 3). You endeavor to support this charge by quotations from our own writings, compared with quotations from Popish authors. It lies upon me to answer for one. But in order to spare both you and myself, I shall at present consider only your Second Part, and that as briefly as possible. Accordingly I shall not meddle with your other quotations, but (leaving them to whom they may concern) shall examine whether those you have made from my writings prove the charge for which they were made or no. If they do, I submit. But if they do not, if they are ‘the words of truth and soberness,’ it is an objection of no real weight against any sentiment, just in itself, though it should also be found in the writings of Papists -- yea, of Mahometans or Pagans. 2. In your first section, in order to prove the ‘vain boasting of the Methodists,’ you quote a part of the following sentence: ‘When hath religion, I will not say since the Reformation, but since the time of Constantine the Great, made so large a progress in any nation within so short a space’ (I beg any impartial person to read the whole passage, from the eighty-fourth to the ninetieth page of the third Appeal. [A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, Part III. See Works, viii. 205-9.]) I repeat the question, giving the glory to God; and, I trust, without either boasting or enthusiasm. In your second you cite (and murder) four or five lines from one of my Journals 'as instances of the persuasive eloquence of the Methodist preachers' (pages 1, 9). But it unfortunately happens that neither of the sentences you quote were spoke by any preacher at all. You know full well the one was used only in a private letter, the other by a woman on a bed of sickness.