Wesley Corpus

But you might now suppose I was at a convenient distance. However, I will not plead this as an excuse for taking no notice of your last favour; although, to say the truth, I scarce know how to answer it, as you write in a language I am not accustomed to. Both Dr. Tucker, Dr. Church, and all the other gentlemen who have wrote to me in public for some years, have wrote as gentlemen, having some regard to their own, whatever my character was. But as you fight in the dark, you regard not what weapons you * The Letter thus subscribed was published at Cork, on May 30th last. use. We are not, therefore, on even terms; I cannot answer you in kind; I am constrained to leave this to your good allies of Blackpool and Fair-Lane.* I shall first state the facts on which the present controversy turns; and then consider the most material parts of your performance. First. I am to state the facts. But here I am under a great disadvantage, having few of my papers by me. Excuse me therefore if I do not give so full an account now, as I may possibly do hereafter; if I only give you for the present the extracts of some papers which were lately put into my hands. 1. “THoMAs Jones, of Cork, merchant, deposes, “That on May 3, 1749, Nicholas Butler, ballad-singer, came before the house of this deponent, and assembled a large mob : That this deponent went to Daniel Crone, Esq., then Mayor of Cork, and desired that he would put a stop to those riots; asking, at the same time, whether he gave the said Butler leave to go about in this manner: That Mr. Mayor said, he neither gave him leave, neither did he hinder him : That in the evening Butler gathered a larger mob than before, and went to the house where the people called Methodists were assembled to hear the word of God, and, as they came out, threw dirt and hurt several of them.