Wesley Corpus

I have scarce heard one Moravian brother own his Church to be wrong in anything. Many of you I have heard speak of it, as if it were infallible. Some of you have set it up as the judge of all the earth, of all persons as well as doctrines. Some of you have said, that there is no true Church but yours; yea, that there are no true Chris tians out of it. And your own members you require to have implicit faith in her decisions, and to pay implicit obedience to her directions.” (Vol. I. p. 329.) I can in no degree justify these things. And yet neither can I look upon them in the same light that you do, as “some of the very worst things which are objected to the Church of Rome.” (Remarks, p.7.) They are exceeding great mistakes: Yet in as great mistakes have holy men both lived and died;-- Thomas à Kempis, for instance, and Francis Sales. And yet I doubt not they are now in Abraham’s bosom. 4. I am more concerned for their “despising and decrying self-denial;” for their “extending Christian liberty beyond all warrant of holy writ;” for their “want of zeal for good works;” and, above all, for their supposing, that “we may, on some accounts, use guile;” in consequence of which they do “use guile or dissimulation in many cases.” “Nay, in many of them I have found” (not in all, nor in most) “much subtlety, much evasion and disguise; so “becoming all things to all men, as to take the colour and shape of any that were near them.” (Ibid. pp. 307, 258, 332, 327.) I can neither defend nor excuse those among the Moravians whom I have found guilty of this. But neither can I condemn all for the sake of some. Every man shall give an account of himself to God. But you say, “Your protesting against some of theiropinions is not sufficient to discharge you. Have you not prepared the way for these Moravians, by countenancing and commending them; and by still speaking of them as if they were in the main the best Christians in the world, and only deluded or mistaken in a few points?” (Remarks, pp. 11, 12.) I cannot speak of them otherwise than I think.