A Letter to Monthly Reviewers.

LETTER

TO

THE MONTHLY REVIEWERS.

GENTLEMEN, September 9, 1756.

FOR a considerable time I have had a desire to trouble you with a few lines; but have been prevented, partly by a variety of other business, partly by the small probability of your impartially considering what was said. I will, however, make the trial. If you can read candidly, well; if not, it is but a little labor lost.

The question I would propose is this: Is it prudent, is it just, is it humane, to jumble whole bodies of people together, and condemn them by the lump? Is it not a maxim now almost universally received, that there are good and bad in every society? Why, then, do you continually jumble together, and condemn by the lump, the whole body of people called Methodists? Is it prudent (just to touch even on so low a consideration) to be constantly insulting and provoking those who do you no wrong, and had far rather be your friends than your enemies? Is it consistent with humanity, to strike again one who gives no provocation, and makes no resistance? Is it common justice, to treat with such contempt as you have done in the last month’s Review those who are by no means contemptible writers? Be persuaded, gentlemen, to give yourselves the pains of reading either Mr. Herbert’s “Providence,” or the verses which Norris entitles “The Meditation;” and you will find them scarce inferior, either in sense or language, to most compositions of the present age. To speak more freely still: Where is the justice of coupling the hymns of Methodists and Moravians together? Lay prejudice aside, and read with candor but the very first hymn in our first Hymn-Book; and then say whether your prose is not as nearly allied to John Bunyan’s, as our verse to Count Z’s. As, probably, you have never seen the books which you condemn, I will transcribe a few lines: —

THEE when morning greets the skies

With rosy cheeks and humid eyes;

Thee, when sweet declining day

Sinks in purple waves away;

Thee will I sing, O Parent Jove,

And teach the world to praise and love.

Yonder azure vault on high,

Yonder blue, low, liquid sky,

Earth, on its firm basis placed,

And with circling waves embraced

All creating power confess,

All their mighty Maker bless.

Thou shakest all nature with thy nod;

Sea, earth, and air confess the God:

Yet does thy powerful hand sustain

Both earth and heaven, both firm and main.

The feather’d souls that swim the air,

And bathe in liquid ether there,

— the lark, precentor of their choir,

Leading them higher still and higher, —

Listen and learn; the’ angelic notes

Repeating in their warbling throats;

And, ere to soft repose they go,

Teach them to their lords below.

On the green turf, their mossy nest,

The evening anthem swells their breast.

Thus, like thy golden chain from high,

Thy praise unites the earth and sky.

O ye nurses of soft dreams,

Reedy brooks, and winding streams:

Or murmuring o’er the pebbles sheen,

Or sliding through the meadows green,

Or where through matted sedge you creep,

Traveling to your parent deep;

Sound His praise by whom you rose,

That Sea which neither ebbs nor flows.

O ye immortal woods and groves,

Which the enamour’d student loves;

Beneath whose venerable shade,

For thought and friendly converse made,

Famed Hecadem, old hero, lies,

Whose shrine is shaded from the skies,

And, through the gloom of silent night,

Projects from far its trembling light;—

You, whose roots descend as low

As high in air your branches grow,

Your leafy arms to heaven extend,

Bend your heads, in homage bend;

Cedars and pines, that wave above,

And the oak, beloved of Jove!

Now, gentlemen, can you say, between God and your own souls, that these verses deserve the treatment you have given them? I think you cannot. You are men of more understanding. You know they are not contemptible. If any of you will strike a real blot, if you will point out even in public (though that is not the most obliging way) anything justly reprovable in our writings, probably we shall acknowledge and correct what is amiss; at least, we shall not blame you. But every impartial man must blame that method of proceeding which neither consists with justice nor humanity.

Perhaps you may say you have been provoked. By whom? “By Mr. Romaine.” I answer, I am not Mr. Romaine; neither am I accountable for his behavior. And what equity is this? One man has offended you: Therefore you fall upon another. Will it excuse you to say, “But he is called by the same name?” especially when neither is this his own name, but a term of derision. Gentlemen, do to others as you would have them do to you: Then you will no more injure one who never offended you; (unless this offend you, that he does really believe Jesus Christ to be God over all, blessed for ever;) then you will not return hatred for goodwill, even to so insignificant a person as

JOHN WESLEY.