Wesley Corpus

I have at length gone through your whole performance, weighed whatever you cite from my writings, and shown at large how far those passages are from proving all, or any part, of your charge. So that all you attempt to build on them, of the pride and vanity of the Methodists; of their shuffling and prevaricating; of their affectation of prophesying; laying claim to the miraculous favours of Heaven; unsteadiness of temper; unsteadiness in sentiment and practice; art and cunning; giving up inspiration and extraordinary calls; scepticism, in fidelity, Atheism; uncharitableness to their opponents; con tempt of order and authority; and fierce, rancorous quarrels with each other; of the tendency of Methodism to undermine morality and good works; and to carry on the good work of Popery:--All this fabricfalls to the ground at once, unless you can find some better foundation to support it. (Sections iii. vi.; ix., xi.--xv.; xviii.-xxi.) 50. These things being so, what must all unprejudiced men think of you and your whole performance? You have ad Vanced a charge, not against one or two persons only, but indis criminately against a whole body of people, of His Majesty’s subjects, Englishmen, Protestants, members, I suppose, of your own Church: a charge containing abundance of articles, and most of them of the highest and blackest nature. You have prosecuted this with unparalleled bitterness of spirit and acri mony of language; using sometimes the most coarse, rude, scurrilous terms, sometimes the keenest sarcasms you could devise. The point you have steadily pursued in thus prose cuting this charge, is, First, to expose the whole people to the hatred and scorn of all mankind; and, next, to stir up the civil powers against them. And when this charge comes to be fairly weighed, there is not a single article of it true ! The passages you cite to make it good are one and all such as prove nothing less than the points in question; most of them such as you have palpably maimed, corrupted, and strained to a sense never thought of by the writer; many of them such as are flat against you, and overthrow the very point they are brought to support.