Wesley Corpus

4. ‘As to the English that really were to blame, they confessed their faults and asked Mr. Wesley's pardon. And some of them, if I mistake not, did it with tears.’ I really think you do mistake again. I remember no such thing. Fifty persons and more spoke bitter things concerning me. One or two asked my pardon for so doing, but in so slight and cursory a manner that I do not so much as know who were the men, neither the time or place where it was done -- so far were they from doing it with tears, or with any solemnity or earnestness at all. As for the rest, if they were ever convinced or ashamed at all, it is a secret to me to this day. 5. ‘Therefore to publish things which ought to have been buried in eternal oblivion is what I do not like.’ This whole matter of asking pardon you seem to mistake, as Count Zinzendorf did before. I wish you would consider the answer I gave him: ‘They asked my pardon for using me ill. I replied, that was superfluous: I was not angry with them; but I was afraid of two things, -- (1) that there was error in their doctrine; (2) that there was sin (allowed) in their practice.’ This was then, and is at this day, the one question between them and me. Now, this cannot be buried in oblivion. That error and sin have spread too far already; and it was my part, after private reproof had been tried again and again to no purpose, to give public warning thereof to all the world, that, if possible, they might spread no farther.