“I am yours, etc.,
“Love Truth.”
This was turning the tables upon the vehement churchman; and with this we, for the present, leave the question, whether, in 1760, the Methodists were Dissenters or were members of the Church of England.
Wesley was at this period too much occupied with other matters, to have time to devote to literary pursuits; and yet the year 1760 was not, even in this respect, altogether barren.
For instance, he published a 12mo pamphlet of 72 pages, entitled, “The Desideratum: or Electricity made plain and useful. By a Lover of Mankind, and of Common Sense.” In his preface, he states, that he has endeavoured to “comprise in his tract the sum of all that had hitherto been published on this curious and important subject.” Electricity he considered “the noblest medicine yet known.”
The only other publication which he issued, in 1760, was a 12mo volume of more than three hundred pages, with the title, “Sermons on Several Occasions. By John Wesley, M. A.” The title was imperfect, for in the same volume, and continuously paged, there are the following additional pieces: namely, “Advice to the Methodists, with regard to Dress,” 20 pages; “The Duties of Husbands and Wives,” 70 pages; “Thoughts on Christian Perfection,” 30 pages; and “Christian Instructions, Extracted from a late French Author,” 54 pages.
The sermons are seven in number. The first, on Original Sin; the second, on the New Birth; the third, on the Wilderness State; the fourth, on Heaviness through Temptations; the fifth, on Self Denial; the sixth, on the Cure of Evil Speaking; and the seventh, on the Use of Money.
The last mentioned sermon is pregnant with not a few of Wesley’s most strongly expressed sentiments. Concerning himself, he tells us that, from “a peculiar constitution of soul,” he is “convinced, by many experiments, that he could not study, to any degree of perfection, either mathematics, arithmetic, or algebra, without being a deist, if not an atheist; though others may study them all their lives without sustaining any inconvenience.”
On the payment of taxes, he remarks: “It is, at least, as sinful to defraud the king of his right, as to rob our fellow subjects; the king has full as much right to his customs as we have to our houses and apparel.”
“Drams, or spirituous liquors, are liquid fire,” and all who manufacture or sell them, except as medicine, “are poisoners general. They murder his majesty’s subjects by wholesale. They drive them to hell like sheep. The curse of God is in their gardens, their walks, their groves. Blood, blood is there: the foundation, the floor, the walls, the roof of their dwellings, are stained with blood.”