Wesley Corpus

Sir, I will tell you a secret. Those lines are not mine. However, I will once more venture to defend them, and to aver that your consequence is good for nothing: ‘If this love is spoken of in the latter lines, then it is not in the former.’ No! Why not I take it to be spoken of in both; the plain meaning of which is, ‘If Thou art not love, I am content to perish. But if Thou art, let me find the effects thereof; let me be saved by grace.’ 16. You next accuse me of maintaining a stoical insensibility. This objection also you borrow from Mr. Church. You ought likewise to have taken notice that I had answered it and openly disowned that doctrine: I mean, according to the rules of common justice. But that is not your failing. 17. Part of your thirty-ninth page runs thus: ‘With respect to all this patient enduring hardships, &c., it has been remarked by learned authors that “some persons by constitutional temper have been fond of bearing the worst that could befall them; that others from a sturdy humor and the force of education have made light of the most exquisite tortures; that when enthusiasm comes in, in aid of this natural or acquired sturdiness, and men fancy they are upon God's work and entitled to His rewards, they are immediately all on fire for rushing into sufferings and pain.”’ I take knowledge of your having faithfully abridged -- your own book, shall I say, or the learned Dr. Middleton’s But what is it you are endeavoring to prove Quorsum haec tam putida tendant [Horace's Satires, II. vii. 21: ‘Whither tends this putid stuff’] The paragraph seems to point at me. But the plain, natural tendency of it is to invalidate that great argument for Christianity which is drawn from the constancy of the martyrs. Have you not here also spoken a little too plain Had you not better have kept the mask on a little longer Indeed, you lamely add, 'The solid and just comforts which a true martyr receives from above are groundlessly applied to the counterfeit.' But this is not enough even to save appearances.