“Mr. Wesley has as much of the _insidious_ in his composition, as he has of the _acid_; and it would be difficult to say which predominates.” “He is for adding the lion to the fox. He wishes not only to wheedle, but to _thunder_ the Church out of her Calvinism. He is, like Mahommed, for propagating his religion by the sword. Peals of anathemas are issued, and torrents of the lowest calumny are thrown out, against all who abide by the thirty-nine articles. Pope John’s authority may have some weight with such men as Messrs. Walter Sellon, Haddon Smith, and Thomas Olivers; but not an inch beyond the purlieus of ignorance, prejudice, and superstition will his dictatorship extend.” “His mode of phraseology is as pregnant with craft as his conduct is destitute of honour. He first _hatches_ blasphemy, and then _fathers_ it on others.” “His forehead must be _petrified_, and quite impervious to a blush.” “He sits down, and deliberately _writes_ a known, wilful, palpable lie to the public.” “He is a pitiful nibbler at the file he cannot bite.” “Thomas Olivers, a _journeyman shoemaker_, retained by Mr. Wesley as a lay preacher at the rate of £10 per annum, is his bully in chief. _In chief_, did I say? I had forgot the Rev. Mr. Walter Sellon; prunella claims precedency of leather; _Thomas_ is only _second_ in commission. Mr. Wesley skulks for shelter under a cobbler’s apron.” “Has Tom, the shoemaker, more _learning_, or more _integrity_, than John the priest?” “Without the least heat or emotion, I plainly say, Mr. Wesley _lies_.”[181] The following is part of Mr. Toplady’s concluding paragraph. “One word to Mr. Wesley himself, and I have done. Time, sir, has already whitened your locks; and the hour must shortly come, which will transmit you to the tribunal of that God, on whose sovereignty a great part of your life has been one continued assault. At that bar _I_ too must hold up _my_ hand. Omniscience only can tell, _which_ of us shall first appear before the Judge of all. I shortly _may_, you shortly _must_. The part you have been permitted to act in the religious world will, sooner or later, sit heavy on your mind. Depend upon it, a period will arrive when the Father’s _electing_ mercy and the Messiah’s adorable _righteousness_, will appear in _your_ eyes, even in yours, to be the only safe anchorage for a dying sinner. I mean, unless you are actually given over to final obduration; which, I trust, you are not; and to which, I most ardently beseech God, you never may.” Poor young Augustus Toplady, now thirty-one years of age, after doing his utmost to purge his pamphlet from offensive expressions, thus, by the electing grace of God, speaks of a man approaching seventy. Little did he think, that within seven years he himself would stand before that bar with which he threatened Wesley; and that the hoary headed man, who he thought might be “given over to final obduration,” would be his survivor nearly thirteen years.