Wesley Corpus

8. About six years ago you removed to Salisbury, and began a Society there. For a year or two you went with them to the church and sacrament, and simply preached faith working by love. God was with you, and they increased both in number and in the knowledge and love of God. About four years since, you broke off all friendship with us; you would not so much as make use of our hymns, either in public or private, but laid them quite aside, and took the German hymn-book in their stead. You would not willingly suffer any of your people to read anything which we wrote. You angrily caught one of my Sermons out of your servant's hand, saying you would have no such books read in your house. In much the same manner you spoke to Mrs. Whitemarsh, when you found her reading one of the Appeals. So that, as far as in you lay, you fixed a great gulf between us and you, which remains to this day, notwithstanding a few steps lately made towards a reunion. About the same time you left off going to church as well as to the sacrament. Your followers very soon trod in your steps, and, not content with neglecting the ordinances of God, they began, after your example, to despise them and all that continued to use them, speaking with equal contempt of the public service, of private prayer, of baptism, and of the Lord’s supper. From this time also you began to espouse and teach many uncommon opinions: as, that there is no resurrection of the body; that there is no general judgment to come; and that there is no hell, no worm that never dieth, no fire that never shall be quenched. 9. Your seriousness and advertence to the presence of God now declined daily. You could talk on anything or nothing, just as others did. You could break a jest, or laugh at it heartily; and as for fasting, abstinence, and self-denial, you, with the Moravians, trampled it under-foot. You began also very frequently to kiss the women of the Society. (In the following paragraphs I recited to him the things he had done with regard to more than one, or two, or three women, concluding thus :)