Wesley Corpus

24 To Dr Lavington Bishop Of Exeter

AuthorJohn Wesley
Typeletter
YearNone
Passage IDjw-letter-1751-24-to-dr-lavington-bishop-of-exeter-027
Words352
Works of Piety Primitive Christianity Free Will
Who those other ‘forty were that,’ you say, ‘left them’ I know not. Perhaps you may inform me. Upon the whole, all these quotations prove only this: That about eleven years ago Mr. Cennick, falling into predestination, set the Society in Kingswood a-disputing with each other, and occasioned much confusion for some months. But still you have not gone one step toward proving (which is the one point in question) that the Methodists in general were even then ‘all together by the ears,’ and much less that they have been so ever since and that they are so now. However, you fail not to triumph (like Louis le Grand after his victory at Blenheim): ‘What shall we say now Are these the fruits of Methodism’ No, sir. They are the fruits of opposing it. They are the tares sown among the wheat. You may hear of instances of the same kind both in earlier and later ages. You add: ‘This. is bad enough; but it is not the worst. For consider what becomes of those that leave them’ Why, sir, what if ‘their last end be worse than their first’ Will you charge this upon me By the same rule you must have charged upon the Apostles themselves whatever befell those who, having ‘known the way of righteousness,’ afterwards ‘turned back from the holy commandment once delivered to them.’ 36. You conclude this section: ‘Mr. Wesley will probably say, “Must I be answerable for the Moravians, against whom I have preached and written” True, since he and the Moravians quarreled. But who gives them a box on the ear with the one hand and embraces them with the other Who first brought over this wicked generation Who made a Moravian his spiritual guide who fanaticized his own followers and deprived them of their senses whose Societies (by his own confession) run over in shoals to Moravianism forty or fifty at a time Would they have split upon this rock, if they had not been first Methodists Lastly: where is the spawn of Moravianism so strongly working as in the children of Methodism’