Wesley Corpus

To answer Mr. Wesley's letter seems to be quite needless, because there is nothing substantial or properly argumentative in it. I was once a kind of oracle to Mr. Wesley. I judged him to be much under the power of his own spirit. To this was owing the false censure which he published against the Mystics as enemies to good works. (Pages 128, 130.) His letter is such a juvenile composition of emptiness and pertness as is below the character of any man who had been serious in religion for half a month. It was not ability but necessity that put his pen into his hand. He had preached much against my books, and forbid his people the use of them; and for a cover of all this he promised from time to time to write against them; therefore an answer was to be made at all adventures. He and the Pope conceive the same reasons for condemning the mystery revealed by Jacob Behmen. (Page 190.) Of the latter he gives this account: The pamphlet you sent is worse than no advice at all; but infinitely beyond Mr. Wesley's Babylonish Address to the Clergy, almost all of which is empty babble, fitter for an old grammarian that was grown blear-eyed in mending dictionaries than for one who had tasted of the powers of the world to come (page 198). I leave others to judge whether an answer to that letter be quite needless or no, and whether there be anything substantial in it; but certainly there is something argumentative. The very queries relating to Jacob's Philosophy are arguments, though not in form; and perhaps most of them will be thought conclusive arguments by impartial readers. Let these likewise judge if there are not arguments in it (whether conclusive or no) relating to that entirely new system of divinity which he has revealed to the world.