Wesley Corpus

3. Fear, indeed, is one cause of my declining this; fear, as I said elsewhere, [In the Preface to The Principles of a Methodist; an Answer to Josiah Tucker, Vicar of All Saints, Bristol. See Works, viii. 359; Green's Bibliography, No. 35; and letter of June 8, 1750.] not of my adversary, but of myself. I fear my own spirit, lest ‘I fall where many mightier have been slain.’ I never knew one (or but one) man write controversy with what I thought a right spirit. Every disputant seems to think, as every soldier, that he may hurt his opponent as much as he can: nay, that he ought to do his worst to him, or he cannot make the best of his own cause; that, so he do not belie or willfully misrepresent him, he must expose him as much as he is able. It is enough, we suppose, if we do not show heat or passion against our adversary. But not to despise him, or endeavor to make others do so, is quite a work of supererogation. 4. But ought these things to be so (I speak on the Christian scheme.) Ought we not to love our neighbor as ourselves And does a man cease to be our neighbor because he is of a different opinion nay, and declares himself so to be Ought we not, for all this, to do to him as we would he should do to us But do we ourselves love to be exposed or set in the worst light Would we willingly be treated with contempt If not, why do we treat others thus And yet, who scruples it Who does not hit every blot he can, however foreign to the merits of the cause Who in controversy casts the mantle of love over the nakedness of his brother Who keeps steadily and uniformly to the question, without ever striking at the person Who shows in every sentence that he loves his brother only less than the truth