Wesley Corpus

5. From the spirit and manner wherein he writes, let us now proceed to the matter. But that is so various, and scattered up and down for an hundred and fifty pages, without much order or connexion, that it is difficult to know where to begin. However, all tends to one point; the good design of the writer is, to blacken. With this laudable view, he observes the old rule, “Throw dirt enough, and some will stick:” Knowing that the mud may be thrown in a trice; but it will take time and pains to scrape it off. Indeed, he takes true pains to fasten it on; to represent Mr. W. as a knave and a fool; a man of no conscience, and no under standing. It is true, the latter is insisted on most at large: By an hundred instances Mr. H. has made it plain to all the world, that Mr. W. never had three grains of common sense; that he is the veriest weathercock that ever was; that he has not wit enough to be fixed in anything, but is “tossed to and fro continually;” “that he is to this very moment so absolutely unsettled with regard to every fundamental doc trine of the gospel, that no two disputants in the Schools can be more opposite to each other than he is to himself.” 6. But some may naturally ask, “What is the matter? What makes Mr. H. so warm? What has Mr. W. done, that this gentleman, this Christian, ita gladiatorio animo ad eum affectat viam P* that he falls upon him thus outrageously, dagger out of sheath, without either rhyme or reason?” “O, the matter is plain. Beside that he is Mr. F.'s friend, he is an Arminian; and nothing is bad enough for an Arminian.” “An Arminian | What is that?” “I cannot tell exactly; but to be sure it is all that is bad. For a Popish friar, a Benedictine monk, bears witness, (and Mr. H. avers * This accommodated quotation from Terence is thus rendered by Colman : “Growing desperate, and making towards him With a determined gladiatorial air.”--EDIT. the same,) that the tenets of the Church of Rome are nearer by half to Calvinism than to Arminianism; nearer by half to Mr. H.’s tenets than to Mr. W.’s.” “Truly, I always thought so.