Wesley Corpus

4. But what is this to the “monstrous, shocking, amazing blasphemy, spoken by Mr. Charles Wesley? who one day,” you say, “preaching on Hammond's Marsh, called out, ‘Has any of you got the Spirit?’ and when none answered, said, ‘I am sure some of you have got it; for I feel virtue go out of me.’” (Page 18.) Sir, do you expect any one to believe this story? I doubt it will not pass even at Cork; unless with your wise friend, who said, “Methodists! Ay, they are the people who place all their religion in wearing long whiskers.” 5. In the same page, you attack Mr. Williams for applying those words, “I thy Maker am thy husband.” Sir, by the same rule that you conclude “these expressions could only '78 LETTER. To flow from a mind full of lascivious ideas,” you may conclude the forty-fifth Psalm to be only a wanton sonnet, and the Canticles a counterpart to Rochester’s Poems. But you say, he likewise “made use of unwarrantable expres sions, particularly with regard to faith and good works; and the next day denied that he had used them.” (Pages 10, 1].) Sir, your word is not proof of this. Be pleased to produce proper vouchers of the facts; and I will then give a farther answer. Likewise, as to his “indecent and irreverent behaviour at church, turning all the Preacher said into ridicule, so that numbers asked, in your hearing, why the Churchwardens did not put the profane, wicked scoundrel in the stocks; ” my present answer is, I doubt the facts. Will your “men of undoubted character” be so good as to attest them? 6. Of all these, Mr. Williams, Cownly, Reeves, Haughton, Larwood, Skelton, Swindells, Tucker, and Wheatly, you pro nounce in the lump, that they are “a parcel of vagabond, illi terate babblers;” (pages 3,4;) of whom “every body that has the least share of reason must know,” that, though “they amuse the populace with nonsense, ribaldry, and blasphemy, they are not capable of writing orthography or good sense.” Sir, that is not an adjudged case. Some who have a little share of reason, think they are capable both of speaking and writing good sense.