Wesley Corpus

To the Editor of 'Lloyd's Evening Post' Editor's Introductory Notes: 1760 Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1760) Author: John Wesley --- [15] London, November 22, 1760. SIR,--Just as I had finished the letter published in your last Friday's paper four tracts came to my hands: one wrote, or procured to be wrote, by Mrs. Downes; one by a clergyman in the county of Durham; the third by a gentleman of Cambridge; and the fourth by a member (I suppose, dignitary) of the Church of Rome. How gladly would I leave all these to themselves, and let them say just what they please! as my day is far spent and my taste for controversy is utterly lost and gone. But this would not be doing justice to the world, who might take silence for a proof of guilt. I shall therefore say a word concerning each. I may, perhaps, some time say more to one or two of them. The letter which goes under Mrs. Downes's name scarce deserves any notice at all, as there is nothing extraordinary in it but an extraordinary degree of virulence and scurrility. Two things only I remark concerning it, which I suppose the writer of it knew as well as me: (1) that my letter to Mr. Downes was both wrote and printed before Mr. Downes died; (2) that when I said, Tibi parvula res est [See letter of Nov. 17, 1759.] ('Your ability is small') I had no view to his fortune, which I knew nothing of, but (as I there expressly say) to his wit, sense, and talents as a writer. The tract wrote by the gentleman in the North is far more bulky than this; but it is more considerable for its bulk than for its matter, being little more than a dull repetition of what was published some years ago in The Enthusiasm of the Methodists and Papists Compared. [See letter of Feb. 1, 1750.] I do not find the author adds anything new, unless we may bestow that epithet on a sermon annexed to his Address, which, I presume, will do neither good nor harm. So I leave the Durham gentleman, with Mrs. Downes, to himself and his admirers.