Wesley Corpus

With respect, therefore, both to your name, prin ciples, and practice, you may be considered as a new people. Another peculiar circumstance of your present situation is, that you are newly united together; that you are just gathered, or (as it seems) gathering rather, out of all other societies or congregations; nay, and that you have been hitherto, and do still subsist, without power, (for you are a low, insignificant" people,) without riches, (for you are poor almost to a man, having no more than the plain necessaries of life,) and without either any extraordinary gifts of nature, or the advantages of education; most even of your Teachers being quite unlearned, and (in other things) ignorant men. There is yet another circumstance, which is quite peculiar to yourselves: Whereas every other religious set of people, as soon as they were joined to each other, separated themselves from their former societies or congregations; you, on the con trary, do not; nay, you absolutely disavow all desire of sepa rating from them. You openly and continually declare you have not, nor ever had, such a design. And whereas the con gregations to which those separatists belonged have generally spared no pains to prevent that separation; those to which you belong spare no pains (not to prevent, but) to occasion this separation, to drive you from them, to force you on that divi sion to which you declare you have the strongest aversion. Considering these peculiar circumstances wherein you stand, you will see the propriety of a Second advice I would recom mend to you: “Do not imagine you can avoid giving offence.” Your very name renders this impossible. Perhaps not one in a hundred of those who use the term Methodist have any ideas of what it means. To ninety-nine of them it is still heathen Sreek. Only they think it means something very bad,--either a Papist, a heretic, an underminer of the Church, or some unheard-of monster; and, in all probability, the farther it goes, it must gather up more and more evil. It is vain, therefore, for any that is called a Methodist ever to think of not giving offence. And as much offence as you give by your name, you will give still more by your principles.