Such is the substance of Whitefield’s letter. What were its effects? Wesley writes:—
“July, 1753.—I found the town much alarmed with Mr. Rimius’s narrative, and Mr. Whitefield’s letter to Count Zinzendorf. It seems, indeed, that God is hastening to bring to light those hidden works of darkness. Mr. Whitefield showed me the letters he had lately received from the count, P. Bohler, and James Hutton. I was amazed. Either furious anger or settled contempt breathed in every one of them. Were they ashamed after all the abominations they had committed? No; they were not ashamed: they turned the tables upon Mr. Whitefield. The count blustered, like himself, and roundly averred, he could say something if he would. James Hutton said flat, ‘You have more than diabolical impudence; I believe the devil himself has not so much.’”
Wesley has not recorded the sentiments of his old friend Peter Bohler; but Whitefield states, that Bohler availed himself of the pulpit to declare, that his letter “was all a lie.”[186] It so happens, however, that, since then, the letters of the count, of Bohler, and of Hutton have been published. Zinzendorf says: “As yet, I owe not a farthing of the £40,000 you are pleased to tell me of;” and concludes thus: “As your heart is not prepared to love me, nor your understanding to listen to my reasons” (which he declines to give) “I wish you well, sir, and am your loving friend, Louis.”
Peter Bohler, in his letter of May 4, begins: “Sir, I pity you very much, that you suffer yourself to be so much imposed upon, and to print your impositions so inconsiderately. You have now attempted a second time to ruin my character.” He then denies, that he was the inventor of the artificial mount, but does not affirm that it was not employed. He concludes as follows: “Dear Mr. Whitefield, when the secret intentions of man, together with all his unjust deeds, will be judged, how glad would you be then, not to have treated our society in general, and, in particular, that venerable person against whom your letter is chiefly levelled, and poor I, in so injurious, yea, I may say, impudent and wicked a manner. Peter Bohler.”
Hutton’s letter eulogizes the count in the highest terms. “When he awakes in the morning, he is all sweetness, calmness, tender harmoniousness with those about him; and, all the day long, he is busied in doing and contriving the kindest offices for mankind.” He is “usefully employed constantly eighteen hours in twenty-four, and very frequently more; and is a man of no expense at all upon his person, so that any one receiving £50 a year to find him in all necessaries, to his satisfaction, would certainly be no loser by the bargain.” And yet, “many bulls of Bashan round about, as brute beasts without understanding, roared madly against him; and, by daubings and grotesque paintings, described him as a Mahommed, a Cæsar, an impostor, a Don Quixote, a devil, the beast, the man of sin, the whore, the antichrist.”
It is right to add, that Thomas Rhodes, whose case Whitefield had quoted, says, in a letter dated October 21, 1733: “what Mr. Whitefield has written concerning the United Brethren and me, is, the greatest part, entire falsities, and the remainder are truths set in a false light.” He admits, however, the sale of his estate.
Far from pleasant is the task of raking into dunghills such as this; but history cannot afford to forget unpleasant facts. Whitefield’s letter, perhaps, was obtrusive, and officious, and, to some extent, incorrect; but there can be no doubt, that its leading allegations were founded upon truth.
Happily for himself, Wesley was not an actor in this humbling fracas; and yet, before the year was ended, he was involved within its meshes. In October, he spent four days at Bedford, where a Moravian congregation had been founded in 1744, and where, in 1747, “the chief labourer” startled some of the Brethren by announcing: “My brethren, we have received new orders. In London, Yorkshire, and all other places, no person is to go out of the town without the leave of the chief labourer. So it must be here. Observe, no one must go out of town, no not a mile, without leave from me.” In 1750, they built a chapel; squabbles followed; and Wesley, apparently by request, went, at the time above stated, to visit them. He writes: “I met the little society, just escaped with the skin of their teeth. From the account which each of these gave, it appeared clear to a demonstration—(1) That their elders usurped a more absolute authority over the conscience, than the Bishop of Rome himself does. (2) That, to gain and secure this, they used a continued train of guile, fraud, and falsehood of every kind. (3) That they scrape their votaries to the bone as to their worldly substance, leaving little to any, to some nothing, or less than nothing. (4) That still they are so infatuated as to believe, that theirs is the only true church upon earth.”
But leaving the Moravians, let us track Wesley’s footsteps during the year 1753.
The first two months were spent in London. He visited “the Marshalsea prison, a nursery of all manner of wickedness.” “O shame to man,” he writes, “that there should be such a picture of hell upon earth! And shame to those who bear the name of Christ, that there should need any prison at all in Christendom.”