Wesley Corpus

‘It is well if the genuine religion of Christ has any more alliance with what you call religion than with the Turkish pilgrimages to Mecca or the Popish worship of Our Lady of Loretto. Have not you substituted in the place of the religion of the heart something, I do not say equally sinful, but equally vain and foreign to the worshipping of God in spirit and in truth What else can be said even of prayer, public or private, in the manner wherein you generally perform it as a thing of course, running round and round, in the same dull track, without either the knowledge or the love of God, without one heavenly temper, either attained or improved ' [Works, viii. 202.] Now, sir, what room is there for your own exclamations - ‘What sort of heavenly temper is his How can he possibly, consistently with charity, call this our general performance’ Sir, I do not. I only appeal to the conscience of you and each particular reader whether this is or is not the manner wherein you (in the singular number) generally perform public or private prayer. ‘How possibly, without being omniscient, can he affirm that we (I presume you mean all the members of our Church) pray without one heavenly temper or know anything at all of our private devotions How monstrous is all this!’ Recollect yourself, sir. If your terror is real, you are more afraid than hurt. I do not affirm any such thing. I do not take upon me to know anything at all of your private devotions. But I suppose I may inquire without offence, and beg you seriously to examine yourself before God. So you have brought no one proof that ‘skepticism, infidelity, and Atheism are either constituent parts or genuine consequences of Methodism.’ Therefore your florid declamation in the following pages is entirely out of its place. And you might have spared yourself the trouble of accounting for what has no being but in your own imagination. 27. You charge the Methodists next with ‘an uncharitable spirit’ (sect. xv. p. I15, &c.). All you advance in proof of this, as if it were from my writings, but without naming either page or book, I have nothing to do with. But whatever you tell me where to find I shall carefully consider.