“London, December 23, 1762.
“Dear Brother,—This is too critical a time for me to be out of London.
“I believe several in London have imagined themselves saved from sin ‘upon the word of others’; and these are easily known. For that work does not stand; such imaginations soon vanish away. Some of these, and two or three others, are still wild. But the matter does not stick here. I could play with all these, if Thomas Maxfield were right. He is mali caput et fons; so inimitably wrong headed, and so absolutely unconvincible; and yet (what is exceeding strange) God continues to bless his labours.
“My kind love to Sally. I shall soon try your patience with a long letter. Adieu!
“John Wesley.”[497]
The bishop, referred to in one of the above letters, was Warburton, bishop of Gloucester; but, as Wesley’s answer was not published till the beginning of 1763, we defer any further notice of this furious episcopal onslaught upon Wesley and his friends.
Other publications, however, must be mentioned. The following, was an octavo shilling pamphlet, which originated in a dispute in the London Chronicle; “Presbyters and Deacons not commissioned to preach without the Bishop’s Allowance. A Discourse addressed to a certain Methodist Clergyman.” The title suggests the substance of this bigoted performance.
Another harmless missile, hurled at the poor Methodists, was by the renowned translator of Plutarch’s Lives, now a young curate in the county of Essex: “Letters on Religious Retirement, Melancholy, and Enthusiasm. By John Langhorne.” 8vo, 87 pages. Dedicated to the Bishop of Gloucester. The worst thing said of Methodism is, that, though averse to popery, it holds one of its worst doctrines, namely; a pretence to plenary inspiration; and, that all the difference between the two systems is that, instead of one pope, the Methodists “find a thousand in their ignorant teachers, whom they consider as so many gods, and whose crude and undigested preachments they regard as oracles.”
A third, and infinitely worse production, was a small half-crown octavo, with the title, “A plain and easy Road to the Land of Bliss; a Turnpike set up by Mr. Orator.” The Monthly Review (no friend to Methodism) remarks concerning this miserable book: “It is a dull and indecent satire on the Methodists, in imitation, as its author imagines, of the celebrated Tale of a Tub, which it resembles in no respect whatever. It is not only contemptible for its stupidity; but in itself: is a filthy, obscene thing, for which its writer ought to be washed in a horsepond.”[498]
A fourth was the following: “A Specimen of Preaching, as practised, among the People, called Methodists. By J. Helme.” A number of phrases, said to be used by the Methodists, are here strung together, in the shape of a sermon, founded upon the text, “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” Helme expresses, the opinion, that the jesuits and other emissaries of the Church of Rome are at the bottom of the Methodist “schemes of nonsense and delusion”; and that “the manner in which the fanatics take upon themselves to treat the sublime truths of Christianity cannot fail to shock both the ear and the understanding of all who make any pretensions to religion or common sense.”[499]