Wesley Corpus

To the Author of the 'Westminster Journal' [The New Weekly Miscellany, or Westminster Journal.] Date: LONDON, January 7, 1761. Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1761) Author: John Wesley --- SIR, --I hope you are a person of impartiality; if so, you will not insert what is urged on one side of a question only, but likewise what is offered on the other. Your correspondent is doubtless a man of sense, and he seems to write in a good humour; but he is extremely little acquainted with the persons of whom he undertakes to give an account. There is 'gone abroad,' says he, 'an ungoverned spirit of enthusiasm, propagated by knaves and embraced by fools.' Suffer me now to address the gentleman himself. Sir, you may call me both a knave and a fool; but prove me either the one or the other if you can. 'Why, you are an enthusiast.' What do you mean by the term? A believer in Jesus Christ? An asserter of His equality with the Father and of the entire Christian revelation? Do you mean one who maintains the antiquated doctrines of the New Birth and Justification by Faith? Then I am an enthusiast. But if you mean anything else, either prove or retract the charge. The enthusiasm which has lately gone abroad is faith which worketh by love. Does this 'endanger government itself'? Just the reverse. Fearing God, it honours the King. It teaches all men to be subject to the higher powers, not for wrath, but for conscience' sake.