Wesley Corpus

(As to what you talk about perverting Scripture, I pass it by, as mere unmeaning common place declamation.) It is the poor old worn-out tale of “get ting money by preaching.” This you only intimate at first. “Some of their followers had an inward call to sell all that they had, and lay it at their feet.” (Page 22.) Pray, Sir, favour us with the name of one, and we will excuse you as to all the rest. In the next page you grow bolder, and roundly affirm, “With all their heavenly-mindedness, they could not help casting a sheep’s eye at the unrighteous mammon. Nor did they pay their court to it with less cunning and success than Montanus. Under the specious appearance of gifts and offerings, they raised contributions from every quarter. Be sides the weekly pensions squeezed out of the poorer and lower part of their community, they were favoured with very large oblations from persons of better figure and fortune; and especially from many believing wives, who had learned to practise pious frauds on their unbelieving husbands.” I am almost ashamed (having done it twenty times before) to answer this stale calumny again. But the bold, frontless manner wherein you advance it, obliges me so to do. Know then, Sir, that you have no authority, either from Scripture or reason, to judge of other men by yourself. If your own conscience convicts you of loving money, of “casting a sheep’s eye at the unrighteous mammon,” humble yourself before God, if haply the thoughts and desires of your heart may be forgiven you. But, blessed be God, my conscience is clear. My heart does not condemn me in this matter. I know, and God knoweth, that I have no desire to load myself with thick clay; that I love money no more than I love the mire in the streets; that I seek it not. And I have it not, any more than suffices for food and raiment, for the plain con veniences of life. I pay no court to it at all, or to those that have it, either with cunning or without. For myself, for my own use, I raise no contributions, either great or small.