Wesley Corpus

Your Lordship cannot but discern how the whole tenor of his book tends to destroy the Holy Scriptures, to render them vile in the eyes of the people, to make them stink in the nostrils of infidels. For instance: After reading his laboured ridicule of the sorrow and fear which usually attend the first repent ance, (called by St. Chrysostom, as well as a thousand other writers, “the pangs or throes of the new birth,”) what can an infidel think of those and the like expressions in Scripture: “I have roared for the very disquietness of my heart: Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and an horrible dread hath overwhelmed me?” After his flood of satire on all kind of con flicts with Satan, what judgment can a Deist form of what St. Paul speaks concerning the various wrestlings of a Christian with the wicked one? Above all, how will his bringing the lewd heathem poets to expose the pure and spiritual love of God, naturally cause them to look with the same eyes on the most elevated passages of the inspired writings? What can be more diverting to them than to apply his yAvicvrukpov eporos, “bitter-sweet of love,” to many expressions in the Canticles? (On which, undoubtedly, he supposes the Fair Circassian to be a very just paraphrase 1) “Ay,” say they, “the very case: ‘Stay me with apples; for I am sick of love.’” 7. Probably the Comparer will reply, “No, I do not ridicule the things themselves; repentance, the new birth, the fight of faith, or the love of God; all which I know are essential to religion; but only the folly and the enthusiasm which are blended with these by the Methodists.” But how poor a pre tence is this ! Had this really been the case, how carefully would he have drawn the line under each of these heads, between the sober religion of a Christian, and the enthusiasm of a Methodist! But has he done this? Does he take particular care to show under each what is true, as well as what is false, religion ? where the former ends and the latter begins? what are the proper boundaries of each?