The life and times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., founder of the Methodists. Vol. 1 (of 3)Tyerman, L. (Luke)
History
The life and times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., founder of the Methodists. Vol. 1 (of 3)
Tyerman, L. (Luke)
Methodism; Wesley, John, 1703-1791
A fortnight later, Wesley, “a presbyter of the church of God in
England,” wrote a long letter “to the church of God at Herrnhuth,” in
which he states, that, though some of the Moravians had pronounced him
“a child of the devil and a servant of corruption,” yet, he was now
taking the liberty of speaking freely and plainly concerning things
in the Moravian church which he deemed unscriptural. He enumerates
the heresies which have been so often mentioned. He tells them, that
a Moravian preacher, in his public expounding, said: “As many go to
hell by praying as by thieving.” Another had said, “I knew a man who
received a great gift while leaning over the back of a chair; but
kneeling down to give God thanks, he lost it immediately through doing
so.” He charges the Moravians with exalting themselves and despising
others, and declares, that he scarce ever heard a Moravian owning his
church or himself to be wrong in anything. They spoke of their church
as if it were infallible, and some of them set it up as the judge of
all the earth, of all persons and of all doctrines, and maintained that
there were no true Christians out of it. Like the modern Mystics, they
mixed much of man’s wisdom with the wisdom of God, and philosophised on
almost every part of the plain religion of the Bible. They talked much
against mixing nature with grace, and against mimicking the power of
the Holy Ghost. They cautioned the brethren against animal joy, against
natural love of one another, and against selfish love of God. “My
brethren,” concludes Wesley, “whether ye will hear, or whether ye will
forbear, I have now delivered my own soul. And this I have chosen to do
in an artless manner, that if anything should come home to your hearts,
the effect might evidently flow, not from the wisdom of man, but from
the power of God.”
On September 1, Charles Wesley wrote to Whitefield in America, as
follows:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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