Wesley Corpus

It is true that Mr. Law, whom I love and reverence now, was once 'a kind of oracle' to me. He thinks I am still 'under the power of' my 'own spirit,' as opposed to the Spirit of God. If I am, yet my censure of the Mystics is not at all owing to this, but to my reverence for the oracles of God, which, while I was fond of them, I regarded less and less; till at length, finding I could not follow both, I exchanged the Mystic writers for the scriptural. It is sure, in exposing the Philosophy of Behmen, I use ridicule as well as argument; and yet I trust I have by the grace of God been in some measure 'serious in religion,' not 'half a month 'only, but ever since I was six years old, [His father admitted him to the Lord's Table when he was only eight. See Stevenson's Wesley Family, p. 330.] which is now about half a century. I do not know that the Pope has condemned him at all, or that he has any reason so to do. My reason is this, and no other: I think he contradicts Scripture, reason, and himself; and that he has seduced many unwary souls from the Bible way of salvation. A strong conviction of this, and a desire to guard others against that dangerous seduction, laid me under a necessity of writing that letter. I was under no other necessity; though I doubt not but Mr. Law heard I was, and very seriously believed it. I very rarely mention his books in public; nor are they in the way of one in an hundred of those whom he terms my people--meaning, I suppose, the people called Methodists. I had therefore no temptation, any more than power, to forbid the use of them to the Methodists in general. Whosoever informed Mr. Law of this wanted either sense or honesty.