Wesley Corpus

‘You go on: “How could you so long and so intimately converse with . . . such desperately wicked people, as the Moravians, according to your own account, were known by you to be” O sir, what another assertion is this!“The Moravians, according to your own account, were known by you to be desperately wicked people while you intimately conversed with them!” Utterly false and injurious! I never gave any such account. I conversed intimately with them both at Savannah and Herrnhut. But neither then nor at any other time did I know or think or say they were “desperately wicked people.” I think and say 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.”’ After this, are you the person who complains of me for imperfect and partial quotations I added, ‘You surprise me yet more in going on thus: “In God’s name, sir, is the contempt of almost the whole of our duty, of every Christian ordinance, to be so very gently touched” Sir, this is not the case. This charge no more belongs to the Moravians than that of murder.’ You reply, ‘Mr. Spangenberg and Mr. Molther are accused by name. If falsely, I am sorry both for them and you.’ ‘Accused’ True. But of what of the contempt of every Christian ordinance, of almost the whole of our duty By no means. The plain case is, I accuse them of one thing--namely, teaching that an unbeliever should abstain from the ordinances. You accuse them of another --contemning every Christian ordinance and almost the whole of our duty. And this you would father upon me. I desire to be excused. 10. As to what I said in my letter to the Moravian Church,--‘You can hinder this if you will; therefore, if you do not prevent their speaking thus, you do in effect speak thus yourselves,’ -- it may be observed: (1) that this letter is dated August 8, 1740; (2) that from that time the Moravian Church did in great measure prevent any of their members speaking thus.