Wesley Corpus

You ask, why I “do not warn the members of our society against fornication and adultery.” I answer, For the same reason that I do not warm them (in those short hints) against rebellion or murder; namely, because I do not apprehend them to be in immediate danger thereof. Whereas many of them are in continual danger, either of “taking the name of God in vain, of profaning the day of the Lord, or of drunkenness, or brawling, or of uncharitable or unprofitable conversation.” But you say, “Many persons of great eminence among you have been publicly charged with the commission of these crimes.” But will you undertake to make those charges good? Whenever your “Christian charity, and hearty desire for our success in so important a work,” shall oblige you to instance particulars, I do hereby promise to give you a particular answer. “But has not a Preacher of your sect preached and printed to prove the lawfulness of polygamy?” I answer, No Preacher in connexion with me has ever done any such thing. What Mr. Hall of Salisbury has dome, is no more to me than it is to you; only that I am a greater sufferer by it. For he renounced all the Methodists several years since: And, when I was at Salisbury last, turned both me and my sister out of his house. No man therefore of common, heathen humanity, could ever blame me for the faults of that unhappy man. In declaring my “abhorrence of all vices of that kind,” I cannot be more plain or explicit than I have been. I can only declare again, that I believe neither fornicators, adul terers, nor unclean persons shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; and that I rank together sorcerers, whoremongers, murderers, idolaters, and whosoever maketh or loveth a lie. I well know, “a weak brother,” as you define him, that is, a man of “profane eyes, and an unholy imagination,” if you talk either of love-feasts, or persons confessing their faults to one another, will immediately run over all the scenes of the “New Atalantis.” But I leave that to himself. I must not neglect a scriptural advice, because such an one is offended at my following it. Your “friendly advice to avoid spiritual selfishness,” I will endeavour to follow as soon as I understand it.