Wesley Corpus

No wonder, then, that you have it not -- nay, that you are at the utmost distance both from the love of God and of your neighbor. You cannot love God, because you do not love your neighbor. For he that loves God loves his brother also. But such hatred malevolence, rancor, bitterness as you show to all who do not exactly fall in with your opinion was scarce ever seen in a Jew, an heathen or a popish inquisitor. ‘Nay, but you abhor persecution. You would persecute no man.’ I should be very loath to trust you. I doubt, were it in your power, you would make more bonfires in Smithfield than Bonner and Gardiner put together. But if not, if you would not pemecute with fire and faggot, Mirum! Ut neque calce lupus quenquam, neque dente petit bos. [Horace’s Satires, II. i. 55: ‘Wondrous indeed! that bulls ne'er strive to bites, Nor wolves with desperate horns engage in fight.’] What does this prove Only that you murder in another way. You smite with the tongue, with the poison of asps which is under your lips. A few specimens follow: -- The popular preachers worship another God’ (page 338). It can never be allowed that Dr. Doddridge worshipped the same God with Paul’ (page 470). ‘Notice the difference betwixt the God of these preachers and the true God, betwixt their Christ and the Christ preached by the Apostles, betwixt their spirit and the Spirit that influenced the Apostles’ (page 40). ‘I know no sinners more hardened, none greater destroyers of mankind than they’ (page 98). ‘By no small energy of deceit, they darken the revelation of God and change the doctrine of the blessed God into a doctrine of self-dependence.’ Strange that you yourself should do the very same thing! averring that ‘men am justified by a knowledge of the righteousness of Christ,’ not by the bare work which Christ has wrought! You put me in mind of an old usurer who vehemently thanked a minister that had preached a severe sermon against usury; and bring asked, ‘Why do you talk thus’ replied, ‘I wish them were no usurer in London beside myself’! Sir, do not you wish there was no miniser in Great Britain who taught this doctrine beside yourself