Wesley Corpus

As to the fruit of this new manner of preaching, (entirely new to the Methodists) speaking much of the promises, little of the commands; (even to unbelievers, and still less to believers;) you think it has done great good; I think it has done great harm. I think it has done great harm to the Preachers; not only to James Wheatly himself, but to those who have learned of him,-David Trathen, Thomas Webb, Robert Swindells, and John Maddern: I fear to others also; all of whom are but shadows of what they were; most of them have exalted themselves above measure, as if they only “preached Christ, preached the gospel.” And as highly as they have exalted themselves, so deeply have they despised their brethren ; calling them “legal Preachers, legal wretches;” and (by a cant name) “Doctors,” or “Doctors of Divinity.” They have not a little despised their Ministers also, for “counte nancing the Doctors,” as they termed them. They have made their faults (real or supposed) common topics of con versation; hereby cherishing in themselves the very spirit of Ham; yea, of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. I think it has likewise done great harm to their hearers; diffusing among them their own prejudice against the other Preachers; against their Ministers, me in particular, (of which you have been an undeniable instance,) against the scriptural, Methodist manner of preaching Christ, so that they could no longer bear sound doctrine; they could no *- - -- longer hear the plain old truth with profit or pleasure, nay, hardly with patience. After hearing such Preachers for a time, you yourself (need we further witnesses?) could find in my preaching no food for your soul; nothing to strengthen you in the way; no inward experience of a believer; it was all barren and dry; that is, you had no taste for mine or John Nelson's preaching; it neither refreshed nor nourished you. Why, this is the very thing I assert: That the gospel Preachers, so called, corrupt their hearers; they vitiate their taste, so that they cannot relish sound doctrine; and spoil their appetite, so that they cannot turn it into nourishment; they, as it were, feed them with sweetmeats, till the genuine wine of the kingdom seems quite insipid to them.