“Yet, while I warmly for her faith contend, Shall I her blots and blemishes defend? Inventions _added_ in a fatal hour, Human appendages of pomp and power Whatever shines in outward grandeur great, I give it up—_a creature of the State_! Nor would I e’er disgrace the Church’s cause, By penal edicts, and compulsive laws. Let others for the shape and colour fight, Of garments short or long, or black or white; Or, fairly matched, in furious battle join For and against the sponsors and the sign; Copes, hoods, and surplices _the Church_ miscall, And fiercely run their heads against the wall; Far different care is mine; o’er earth to see Diffused her true essential piety.” He then refers to the great revival of religion within the Church, and adds:— “For her, whom her apostate sons despise, I offer up my life in sacrifice, My life in cherishing a parent spend, Fond of my charge, and faithful to the end. Thrust out as from her pale, I gladly roam, Banished myself, to bring her wanderers home. Yet well content, so I my love may show, My friendly love, to be esteemed her foe, Foe to her order, governors, and rules: The song of drunkards, and the sport of fools; Or, what my soul doth as hell fire reject, A pope—_a count_—and leader of a sect.“ The battle was not ended. A month subsequent to the Leeds conference, the following letter was addressed to Wesley, by his clerical friend, the Rev. Mr. Baddiley. “HAYFIELD, _June 7, 1755_. “DEAR SIR,—I would speak with regard to the case debated in your last conference at Leeds. Some of your lay itinerant preachers had a desire, as such, to administer the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper. Now might it not be justly said unto them, ‘_Seemeth it but a small thing unto you, that God hath separated you from among the congregation, to bring you near to Himself, that ye thus seek the priesthood also? Alas! alas! ye take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi._’ “What can the event be, but settling in such places as seem most commodious to them, and then settling upon their lees? Has not this been the general bane of scriptural Christianity? Has it not eaten out the life of religion, and caused the power of godliness to dwindle in Dissenters of every denomination? For who—who can bear ease and fulness of bread? “Be not, dear sir, estranged in your affection, nor straitened in your bowels of love to the mother that bare you, and still continues, notwithstanding small irregularities in you, to dandle you on her knees. O! labour, watch, and pray, with all your might, that no such breach be made. Wherefore should the pickthank heathen have cause to say, ‘Where is now their God?’ I query much, if, upon dissenting from the Established Church, the divisions and subdivisions of the Methodists among themselves would not exceed those of the anabaptists in Germany.”[230]