1. “Desiderii Erasmi Colloquia Selecta. In Usum Juventutis Christianæ.
Edidit Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ Presbyter.” 12mo, 85 pages.
2. “Phædri Fabulæ Selectæ. In Usum Juventutis Christianæ. Edidit
Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ Presbyter.” 12mo, 35 pages.
3. “A Compendium of Logic.” 12mo, 33 pages. This was a translation
of Dr. Henry Aldrich’s “Artis Logicæ Compendium. Oxon: 1691” [8vo].
“Logic,” says Wesley, “is the art of apprehending things clearly,
judging truly, and reasoning conclusively. What is it, viewed in
another light, but the art of learning and teaching; whether by
convincing or persuading? What is there, then, in the whole compass of
science, to be desired in comparison of it? It is good for this, at
least (wherever it is understood), to make people talk less; by showing
them both what is, and what is not, to the point; and how extremely
hard it is to prove anything.”[105] It is well known, that Wesley
himself was an adept in the art of logic. “For several years,” says
he, “I was moderator in the disputations which were held six times a
week at Lincoln College, in Oxford. I could not avoid acquiring hereby
some degree of expertness in arguing; and especially in discerning
and pointing out well covered and plausible fallacies. I have since
found abundant reason to praise God for giving me this honest art. By
this, when men have hedged me in by what they called demonstrations, I
have been many times able to dash them in pieces; in spite of all its
covers, to touch the very point where the fallacy lay; and it flew open
in a moment.”[106]
All the works, already mentioned, were chiefly designed for the use of
Kingswood school. Those that follow were of a different kind.
4. “Letter to the Rev. Mr. Bailey, of Cork, in answer to a letter to
the Rev. John Wesley.” 12mo, 36 pages. Wesley handles Bailey with
deserved severity, telling him, that many of his accusations are no
more likely to be credited than that of a wise friend of his, who
said “the Methodists were a people who placed all their religion
in wearing long whiskers.” Bailey’s slanderous charges were of the
coarsest kind. The Methodist preachers were “a parcel of vagabond,
illiterate babblers, who amused the populace with nonsense, ribaldry,
and blasphemy, and were not capable of writing orthography or good
sense.” Wesley is called a “hairbrained enthusiast,” and is accused “of
frontless assurance, and a well dissembled hypocrisy”; of “promoting
the cause of arbitrary popish power”; of “robbing and plundering the
poor, so as to leave them neither bread to eat, nor raiment to put on”;
and of “being the cause of all that Butler had done.” Such a slanderer
had no claim to mercy. “Never,” says Wesley, “was anything so ill
judged as for you to ask, ‘Does Christianity encourage its professors
to make use of lies, invectives, or low, mean abuse, and scurrility,
to carry on its interests?’ No, sir, it does not. I disclaim and abhor
every weapon of this kind. But with these have the Methodist preachers
been opposed in Cork above any other place. In England, in all Ireland,
have I neither heard nor read any like those gross, palpable lies,
those low Billingsgate invectives, and that inexpressibly mean abuse,
and base scurrility, which the opposers of Methodism have continually
made use of, and which has been the strength of their cause from the
beginning.”
5. “A Short Address to the Inhabitants of Ireland. Occasioned by some
late occurrences. Dublin: 1750.” 12mo, eight pages. Wesley, in this
small tract, answers three questions concerning the Methodists, or, as
the Irish called them, Swaddlers—1. What are the Methodists? 2. What do
they teach? 3. What are the effects of their teaching?
6. “A Letter to the Author of the ‘Enthusiasm of the Methodists and
Papists compared.’” 12mo, 44 pages.
Lavington, bishop of Exeter, was the author here addressed. Early in
1749 he published the first part of his work, and it is this only
which Wesley answers. In his preface, the bishop tells his readers,
that the Methodists are “a set of pretended reformers,—a dangerous
and presumptuous sect, animated with an enthusiastical and fanatical
spirit;” and that his object is “to draw a comparison between the wild
and pernicious enthusiasms of some of the most eminent saints of the
popish communion, and those of the Methodists in our own country.”
He further alleges, that the Methodists are a people of “sanctified
singularities, low fooleries, and high pretensions; they are doing
the papists’ work for them, and agree with them in some of their
principles; their heads are filled with much the same grand projects,
and they are driven on in the same wild manner,—not perhaps from
compact and design, but from a similar configuration and texture of
the brain, or the fumes of imagination producing similar effects.”
The preachers were “strolling predicants, of affected phrases,
fantastical and unintelligible notions, whimsical strictnesses,
and loud exclamations. The windmill indeed was in all their heads.
Every flash of zeal and devotion,—every wild pretension, scheme,
tenet, and overbearing dictate,—impulses, impressions, feelings,
impetuous transports and raptures,—intoxicating vapours and fumes
of imagination,—phantoms of a crazy brain, and uncouth effects of
a distempered mind or body,—their sleeping or waking dreams,—their
actions and passions,—all were ascribed, with an amazing presumption,
to the extraordinary interposition of heaven, setting its seal to their
mission.”
In illustration of all this, Whitefield and Wesley are treated with the
grossest ridicule.
Whitefield replied to Lavington at once, and published his pamphlet
in the month of May, with the title: “Some Remarks on a Pamphlet,
entitled, The Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists compared; wherein
several mistakes in some parts of his past writings and conduct are
acknowledged, and his present sentiments concerning the Methodists
explained.” 8vo, 48 pages.
In September following, another reply was published, namely, “Some
Remarks on the Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists compared. By
Vincent Perronet, A.M.” Price threepence.[107]
Limited space prevents any further notice of these productions; except
to say, that both are ably written, and evince a Christian spirit.
Wesley’s reply was finished at Canterbury on the 1st of February, 1750,
and was published soon afterwards. Like most of his other writings,
it is as brief as he could make it. Wesley was too busy to compose
elaborate answers to the attacks of his opponents. Besides, had it
been otherwise, his passion for saying all he wished to say in as few
words as possible, would, under any circumstances, have prevented him
from using the verbosity of others. Lavington’s pamphlet was anonymous;
but there was little doubt respecting its author. Though a bishop,
his composition is loose and faulty, and is characterized by the most
glaring grammatical mistakes. He might be a punster and buffoon; but
his performance does him no honour as a scholar. If the blunders in
his pamphlet had been found in his youthful essays, they would have
been more likely to have secured him a flagellation in the Winchester
school, where it was his privilege to be, than to obtain the applause
of his tutors and friends. His gift was not genius, nor yet grace; but
a sort of merry-andrewism, more laughable than learned, and more suited
for a stage than for a bishop’s throne.
Wesley tells him, that it is well he hides his name; otherwise he would
be obliged to hide his face; for some of his sentences are neither
sense nor grammar. He writes: “I must beg you, sir, in your third part,
to inform your reader, that whenever any solecism or mangled sentences
appear in the quotations from my writings, they are not chargeable upon
me; that if the sense be mine (which is not always), yet I lay no claim
to the manner of expression; the English is all your own.”
Wesley’s letter was addressed to an anonymous author; but that author
was a bishop, and for a bishop to be lectured about his bad English was
a pill which Lavington must have found difficult to swallow. The next
quotation, however, must have been bitterer still.
“You proceed to prove my enthusiasm from my notions of conversion.
And here great allowances are to be made, because you are talking of
things quite out of your sphere; you are got into an unknown world! Do
you know what conversion is? ‘Yes; it is to start up perfect men at
once’ (page 41). Indeed, sir, it is not. A man is usually converted
long before he is a perfect man. It is probable most of the Ephesians
to whom St. Paul directed his epistle were converted. Yet they were
not ‘come’ (few if any), ‘to a perfect man, to the measure of the
stature of the fulness of Christ.’ I do not, sir, indeed I do not,
undertake to make you understand these things. I am not so vain as to
think it is in my power. It is the utmost of my hope to convince you,
that you understand just nothing about them.”
The following is Wesley’s concluding paragraph.
“Any scribbler, with a middling share of low wit, not encumbered with
good nature or modesty, may raise a laugh on those whom he cannot
confute, and run them down whom he dares not look in the face. By
this means, even a comparer of Methodists and papists may blaspheme
the great work of God, not only without blame, but with applause;
at least, from readers of his own stamp. But it is high time, sir,
you should leave your skulking place. Come out, and let us look each
other in the face. I have little leisure, and less inclination, for
controversy. Yet I promise, if you will set your name to your third
part, I will answer all that shall concern me, in that, as well as the
preceding. Till then,
“I remain, sir,
“Your friend and well wisher,
“JOHN WESLEY.”
This was galling; the bishop felt it so; and, as we shall see
hereafter, allowed his indignation to boil over. Southey says, that
Wesley did not treat Bishop Lavington with the urbanity which he
usually displayed towards his opponents. This is scarcely true; but
if it were, his grace of Exeter deserved all he got. We regret, that
we shall be obliged to renew acquaintance with him. Meanwhile, let
us briefly say, that this buffooning bishop was born at Mildenhall
in 1683. On leaving the school at Winchester, he was removed to New
College, Oxford, where he graduated for the civil law, and obtained a
fellowship. At the age of thirty-four, he was made rector of Hayford
Warren; then prebendary of Worcester; then canon of St. Paul’s; and
then bishop of Exeter. He died on the 13th of September, 1762; exactly
fifteen days after the following entry in Wesley’s journal:—
“Sunday, August 29, 1762.—I preached, at eight, on Southernhay Green”
[Exeter] “to an extremely quiet congregation. At the cathedral, we
had an useful sermon, and the whole service was performed with great
seriousness and decency. Such an organ I never saw or heard before,
so large, beautiful, and so finely toned; and the music of ‘Glory be
to God in the highest,’ I think, exceeded the ‘Messiah’ itself. I was
well pleased to partake of the Lord’s supper with my old opponent,
Bishop Lavington. O may we sit down together in the kingdom of our
Father!”
1751.
[Sidenote: 1751 Age 48]
The year upon which we are now entering was one of vast anxiety and
trouble, and, of course, like previous years, was characterized by
unceasing activity on the part of the great chiefs of the Methodist
movement. Charles Wesley was from four to five months in London, about
the same in Bristol, and spent the rest in an important visit to the
numerous societies in the midland counties and the north of England.
Whitefield gave the first two months of the year to the metropolis,
the next three to the west of England and to Wales, more than two to
Ireland and Scotland, and then, in August, set sail for America. Wesley
himself spent eight months in itinerancy, and the rest in London.
Moravianism was more than ever a _vexata quæstio_. Whitefield, in a
letter dated March 30, 1751, remarks:—“I doubt not but there are many
holy souls among the Moravians; but their not preaching the law, either
as a _schoolmaster_ to show us our need of Christ, or as a _rule of
life_, after we have closed with Him, is what I can in nowise concur
with. These their two grand mistakes, together with their unscriptural
expressions in their hymns, and several superstitious fopperies lately
intruded among them, make me think they are sadly departed from the
simplicity of the gospel.”[108]