Wesley Corpus

13. Another consequence which you charge on my preaching justification by faith, is, the introducing the errors of the Mora vians. “Had the people,” say you, “gone on in a quiet and regular practice of their duty, as most of them did before you deluded them, it would have been impossible for the Moravian tenets to have prevailed among them. But when they had been long and often used to hear good works undervalued, I cannot wonder that they should plunge into new errors, and wax worse and worse.” (Page 12.) This is one string of mistakes. “Had the people gone on in a quiet and regular practice of their duty, as most of them did before you deluded them.” Deluded them Into what? Into the love of God and all mankind, and a zealous care to keep his commandments. I would to God this delusion (if such it is accounted) may spread to the four corners of the earth ! But how did most of them go on before they were thus deluded ? Four in five, by a moderate computation, even as other baptized Heathens, in the works of the devil, in all the “wretchlessness of most unclean living.” “In a quiet and re gular practice of their duty!” What duty? the duty of cursing and swearing; the duty of gluttony and drunkenness; the duty of whoredom and adultery; or of beating one another, and any that came in their way? In this (not very “quiet or regular”) practice did most of those go on before they heard us, who have now “put off the old man with his deeds,” and are “holy in all manner of conversation.” Have these, think you, “been long and often used to hear good works undervalued?” Or are they prepared for receiving the Moravian errors, by the knowledge and love of God? O Sir, the Moravians know, if you do not, that there is no such barrier under heaven against their tenets as those very people whom you suppose just prepared for receiving them. But “complaints,” you say, “of their errors, come very ill from you, because you have occasioned them.” Nay, if it were so, for that very cause they ought to come from me.