Wesley Corpus

Proceed we now to the Christian world. But we must not judge of Christians in general from those who are scattered through the Turkish dominions, the Armenian, Georgian, Mengrelian Christians; nor indeed from any others of the Greek communion. The gross, barbarous ignorance, the deep, stupid superstition, the blind and bitter zeal, and the endless thirst after vain jangling and strife of words, which have reigned for many ages in the Greek Church, and well nigh banished true religion from among them, make these scarce worthy of the Christian name, and lay an insuperable stumbling-block before the Mahometans. 8. Perhaps those of the Romish communion may say, “What wonder that this is the case with heretics? with those who have erred from the Catholic faith, nay, and left the pale of the Church?” But what is the case with them who have not left that Church, and who retain the Roman faith still ? yea, with the most zealous of all its patrons, the inhabitants of Italy, of Spain, and Portugal? Wherein do they excel the Greek Church, except in Italianism, received by tradition from their heathen fathers, and diffused through every city and village? They may, indeed, praise chastity, and rail at women as loudly as their forefather, Juvenal; but what is the moral of all this?-- Nonne putas melius, quod tecum pusio dormit * This, it must be acknowledged, is the glory of the Romish Church. Herein it does excel the Greek. They excel it, likewise, in Deism. Perhaps there is no country in the world, at least in that part of it which bears the Christian name, wherein so large a proportion of the men of education are absolute Deists, if not Atheists, as Italy. And from hence the plague has spread far and wide; through France in particular. So that, did not temporal motives restrain, no small part of the French Nobility and Gentry would pay no more regard to the Christian Revelation, than do the Mandarins in China. They excel still more in murder, both private and public. Instances of the former abound all over Italy, Spain, and Portugal; and the frequency of shedding blood has taken away all that horror which otherwise might attend it.