Wesley Corpus

Nevertheless I cannot but observe a few small mistakes in the eight lines with which you favor me. You say, ‘We suppose the specimen of Mr. Wesley’s Hymns’ (the false spelling is of little consequence) ‘was sent us for this purpose’ - namely to publish. Truly it was not: it never entered my thought; as, I apprehend, may appear from: the whole tenor of the letter wherein those lines were inserted. ‘And if the Moravians please to select a like sample of what has been done by them, they may expect from us the same justice.’ [See letters of Oct. 24, 1755, and Sept. 9, 1756.] Another little mistake: those lines are not selected, but are found in the very first hymn (as I observed in my last) that occurs in the first verses which my brother and I have ever published. ‘We have received a letter complaining of our having jumbled the poetry of the Methodists and Moravians in an indiscriminate censure.’ Not so. The Chief thing complained of was, (1) Your ‘jumbling whole bodies of people together and of condemning them by the lump without any regard either to prudence, justice or humanity.’ (2).Your ‘treating with such contempt those who by no means contemptible writers - Mr. Norris and Mr. Herbert.’ The last and least thing was your ‘coupling the hymns of Moravians and Methodists together.’ It was here I added, ‘As probably you have a never few seen the books which you condemn, I will transcribe a few lines’; but neither did I give the least intimation of ‘appealing hereby to the public in proof of our superiority over the Moravians.’ This is another mistake. At first I was a little inclined to fear a want of integrity had occasioned this misrepresentation; but, upon reflection, I would put a milder construction upon it, and only impute it to want of understanding. Even bodies of men do not see all things; and are then especially liable to err, when they imagine themselves hugely superior to their opponents, and so pronounce ex cathedra.