Wesley Corpus

Sir, you run very fast. And yet I hope to overtake you by-and-by. ‘Mr. Wesley,’ you say, ‘has preached against the Moravians since he quarreled with them.’ Sir, I never quarreled with their persons yet: I did with some of their tenets long ago. He ‘gives them a box on the ear with the one hand and embraces them with the other.’ That is, I embrace what is good among them, and at the same time reprove what is evil. ‘who first brought over this wicked generation’ Not I, whether they be wicked or not. I once thought I did; but have since then seen and acknowledged my mistake. ‘Who made a Moravian his spiritual guide’ Not I, though I have occasionally consulted several. ‘who fanaticized his own followers and deprived them of their senses’ Not I. Prove it upon me if you can. ‘whose Societies (by his own confession) run over in shoals to Moravianism, forty or fifty at a time’ Truly not mine. Two-and-fifty of Kingswood Society ran over to Calvinism; and, a year before, part of Fetter Lane Society gradually went over to the Moravians. But I know none of ours that went over ‘in shoals.’ They never, that I remember, gained five at a time; nor fifty in all, to the best of my knowledge, for these last ten years. ‘Would they’ (of Fetter Lane) ‘have split on this rock, if they had not first been Methodists’ Undoubtedly they would; for several of them had not first been Methodists. Mr. Viney, for instance (as well as several others), was with the Germans before ever he saw me. ‘Lastly: where is the spawn of Moravianism working so strongly as in the children of Methodism’ If you mean the errors of Moravianism, they are not working at all in the generality of the children of Methodism; the Methodists in general being thoroughly apprized of and fully guarded against them. So much for your modest assertion that the Methodists in general are ‘all together by the ears’; the very reverse of which is true. They are in general in perfect peace. They enjoy in themselves ‘the peace of God which passeth all understanding.’ They are at peace with each other; and, as much as lieth in them, they live peaceably with all men.