Wesley Corpus

p. 219.) Sir, do I here “summon my opponents to the bar of judg ment?” So you would make me do, by quoting only that scrap, “I cite you all, before ‘the Judge of all the earth!’” You then add, with equal charity and sincerity, “Here you have the true spirit of an enthusiast, flushed with a modest assur ance of his own salvation, and the charitable prospect of the damnation of others.” O Sir, never name modesty more ! Here end your laboured attempts to show the “uncharitable spirit” of the Methodists; who, for anything you have shown to the contrary, may be the most charitable people under the Sun. 30. You charge the Methodists next with “violation and contempt of order and authority;” (Section xviii. p. 124;) namely, the authority of the governors of the Church. I have answered every article of this charge, in the Second and Third Parts of the “Farther Appeal,” and the “Letter to Mr. Church.” When you have been so good as to reply to what is there advanced, I may possibly say something more. What you offer of your own upon this head, I shall consider without delay:-- “Women and boys are actually employed in this ministry of public preaching.” Please to tell me where. I know them not, nor ever heard of them before. You add, what is more marvellous still, “I speak from per sonal knowledge, that sometimes, a little before delivering of the elements at the communion, three or four Methodists together will take it into their heads to go away; that sometimes, while the sentences of the offertory were reading, they have called out to the Minister who carried the bason, reproaching him for ask ing alms of them; that sometimes, when the Minister has deli vered the bread into their hands, instead of eating it, they would slip it into their pockets.” Sir, you must show your face, before these stories will find credit on your bare asseveration. “Yet they are surprised,” you say, “that every man in his senses does not, without the least hesitation, join them.” Sir, I am surprised (unless you are not in your senses) at your advancing such a barefaced falsehood. 31. You go on: “Under this head may, not improperly, be considered their undutiful behaviour to the civil powers.” What proof have you of this?