“They were fools. You are the most admirable thing in the world, sir—a zealous parson; but a thoroughbred horse is not the best for daily use; a little blood is excellent, but not too much. Your zeal will wear you out—ay, and it will wear your listeners out sooner. You cannot expect to lead a perpetual revival, as people call it, and that's why I am convinced that the humdrum system, with a stout woollen petticoat here and a bottle of sound port there, is the best for the parsons and the best for the people.”
“Your views are shrewd, and I dare not at this moment say that they are not justifiable. But for myself—sir, if God gives me strength, I shall not slacken the work with which I believe He hath entrusted me—until our churches are filled with men and women eager in their search after the Truth.”
“If all your friends were like you, the thing might be accomplished, Mr. Wesley; but the breakdown of your methods—your Methodism—will come through your introduction of the laity as your chief workers. You will find yourself face to face with Pritchards, and the last state of the people will be, as it is now, worse than the first. You may have done some good since you came here to preach a month ago, but you have—unwittingly, I say—done great mischief. My parishioners were heretofore living quite comfortably, they were satisfied with my ministrations, such as they were. I have heard it said that a healthy man does not know that he has any liver or spleen or vitals within his body: 'tis only the sick that have that knowledge. Well, the same is true in respect to their souls. Sir, there was not a man of my flock that knew he had a soul. There was a healthy condition of things for you!”
“Sir, I entreat of you not to mock!”
“I am not mocking, friend Wesley. What have people in the state of life to which the majority of my parishioners have been called, to do with the state of their souls? There should be a law that no man below the Game Law qualification shall assume that he has a soul.”
“I cannot listen further to you, Mr. Rodney.”
“Nay, Mr. Wesley, whatever you be, I'll swear that you are no coward: you will not run away by reason of not agreeing with an honest opponent—and I am not an opponent—I am only an honest friend. I say that my people were simple, homely people who respected me because I never wittingly awoke a man or woman who went asleep in my church, and because I never bothered them with long sermons, when they could hear their Sunday dinners frizzling in their cottages—they respected me for that, but more because they knew I had a sound knowledge of a horse, a boat, a dog and a game-cock.”
“Mr. Rodney——”
“Pshaw, Wesley, have you not eyes to see that the Church of England exists more for the bodies than the souls of the people? I would rather see a good, sturdy lot of Englishmen in England—good drinkers of honest ale, breeders of good fat cattle, and growers of golden wheat—honest, hard swearers of honest English oaths, and with selfrespect enough to respect their betters—I would rather have them such, I say, than snivelling, ranting Nonconformists, prating about their souls and showing the whites of their eyes when they hear that an educated man, who is a gentleman first and a parson afterwards, follows the hounds, relishes a main in the cockpit, and a rubber of whist in the rectory parlour and preaches the gospel of fair play for ten minutes in his pulpit, and the rest of the twenty-four hours out of it.”
“And I, Mr. Rodney, would rather hear of the saving of a sinner's soul by a Nonconformist ranter, Churchman though I be, than see the whole nation living in comfortable forgetfulness of God.”