Wesley Corpus

5. Yet I was sorry to see your Lordship’s authority cited on such an occasion; inasmuch as many of his readers, not considering the man, may think your Lordship did really countenance such a writer; -- one that turns the most serious, the most awful, the most venerable things into mere farce; that makes the most essential parts of real, experimental religion matter of low buffoonery; that, beginning at the very rise of it in the soul, namely, ‘repentance towards God, a broken and a contrite heart,’ goes on to ‘faith in our Lord Jesus Christ’ whereby ‘he that believeth is born of God,’ to ‘the love of God shed abroad in the heart,’ attended with ‘peace and joy in the Holy Ghost,’ to our subsequent ‘wrestling not’ only ‘with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers and wicked spirits in high places,’ and thence to ‘perfect love’ the ‘loving the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength’; and treats on every one of these sacred topics with the spirit and air of a merry-andrew. What advantage the common enemies of Christianity may reap from this your Lordship cannot be insensible.