Wesley Corpus

18, 19.) I doubt, there is scarce one line of all these which is consistent either with truth or love. But I will transcribe a few more, before I answer: “How could you so long and so intimately converse with, so much commend, and give such countenance to, such desperately wicked people as the Moravians, according to your own account, were known by you to be? And you still speak of them, as if they were, in the main, the best Christians in the world. In one place you say, ‘A few things I could not approve of; but in God’s name, Sir, is the contempt of almost the whole of our duty, of every Christian ordinance, to be so gently touched? Can detestation in such a case be too strongly expressed? Either they are some of the vilest wretches in the world, or you are the falsest accuser in the world. Christian charity has scarce an allowance to make for them as you have described them. If you have done this truly, they ought to be discouraged by all means that can be imagined.” 7. Let us now weigh these assertions. “They” (that is, “the charms of their sour behaviour”) “must be in your eye very extraordinary.”--Do not you stumble at the threshold? The Moravians excel in sweetness of behaviour. “As they can be sufficient to cover such a multitude of errors and crimes.” Such a multitude of errors and crimes / I believe, as to errors, they hold universal salvation, and are partly Antinomians, (in opinion,) and partly Quietists; and for this cause I cannot join with them. But where is the multitude of errors? Whosoever knows two or three hundred more, let him please to mention them. Such a multitude of crimes too ! That some of them have used guile, and are of a close reserved behaviour, I know. And I excuse them not. But to this multitude of crimes I am an utter stranger. Let him prove this charge upon them who can. For me, I declare I cannot. “To keep up the same regard and affection.”--Not so. I say, my affection was not lessened, till after September, 1739, till I had proof of what I had feared before. But I had not the same degree of regard for them when I saw the dark as well as the bright side of their character.