Wesley Corpus

8. You go on: ‘How could you so long and so intimately conversewith -- such desperately wicked people as the Moravians, accordingto your own account, were known by you to be’ O Sir, whatanother assertion is this! ‘The Moravians, according to your ownaccount, were known by you to be desperately wicked people,while you intimately conversed with them!’ Utterly false andinjurious. I never gave any such account. I conversed intimatelywith them, both at Savannah and Hernhuth. But neither then, norat any other time, did I know, or think, or say, they were ‘desperately wicked people.’ I think and say, nay, you blame me for saying, just the reverse, viz., that though I soon ‘found among them a few things which I could not approve;’ yet I believe they are ‘in the main some of the best Christians in the world.’ You surprise me yet more in going on thus: ‘In God’s name, Sir, isthe contempt of almost the whole of our duty, of every Christianordinance, to be so very gently touched’ Sir, this is not the case. This charge no more belongs to the Moravians, than that ofmurder. Some of our countrymen spoke very wicked things. TheMoravians did not sufficiently disavow them. These are thepremises. By what art can you extort so dreadful a conclusion fromthem ‘Can detestation, in such a case, be too strongly expressed’ Indeedit can; even were the case as you suppose. ‘Either they are some of the vilest wretches in the world, or you are the falsest accuser in the world.’ Neither one nor the other: Though I prove what I allege,yet they may be, in the main, good men. ‘Charity has scarce anallowance to make for them, as you have described them." I have described them as of a mixed character, with much evil amongthem, but more good. Is it not a strange kind of charity, whichcannot find an allowance to make in such a case ‘If you havedescribed them truly, they ought to be discouraged by all means that can beimagined.’ By all means! I hope not by fire and faggot; though thehouse of mercy imagines these to be, of all means, most effectual.