Wesley Corpus

of it?” If not, are they not all “liable to the penalties of the several statutes made before that time against unlawful assemblies?” How can they escape? Have they “qualified themselves for holding these separate assemblies, according to the tenor of that Act?” Have, then, “the several members thereof taken the oaths to the government?” And are the “doors of the places wherein they meet always open at the time of such meetings?” I presume you know they are not; and that neither “the per sons nor places are so qualified as that Act directs.” How then come “the Bishops and Clergy to countenance and encourage” unlawful assemblies? If it be said, “They meet in a private, inoffensive way;” that is nothing to the point in hand. If those meetings are unlawful in themselves, all their inoffensiveness will not make them lawful. “O, but they behave with modesty and decency.” Very well; but the law ! What is that to the law There can be no solid defence but this: They are not Dissenters from the Church; therefore they cannot use, and they do not need, the Act of Toleration. And their meetings are not seditious; therefore the statute against seditious meetings does not affect them. The application is obvious. If our meetings are illegal, so are theirs also. But if this plea be good (as doubtless it is) in the one case, it is good in the other also. 8. You propose another objection to our manner of preach ing, in the second part of the “Observations.” The substance of it I will repeat, and answer as briefly as I can :-- “They run up and down from place to place, and from county to county;” that is, they preach in several places. This is undoubtedly true. “They draw after them confused multitudes of people;” that is, many come to hear them. This is true also. “But they would do well to remember, God is not the author of confusion or of tumult, but of peace.” I trust we do: Nor is there any confusion or tumult at all in our largest congregations; unless at some rare times, when the sons of Belial mix therewith, on purpose to disturb the peace able worshippers of God.