A Second Letter.

SECOND LETTER

TO

THE MONTHLY REVIEWERS.

———

October 5, 1756.

REALLY, gentlemen, you do me too much honor. I could scarce expect so favorable a regard from those who are professed admirers of Mr. Aaron Hill’s verse, and Mr. Caleb Fleming’s prose. Nevertheless, I cannot but observe a few small mistakes in the eight lines with which you favor me. You say, “We suppose the specimen of Mr. Wesley’s Hymns” (the false spelling is of little consequence) “was sent us for this purpose;” namely, to publish. Truly it was not: It never entered my thought; as, I apprehend, may appear from the whole tenor of the letter wherein those lines were inserted.

“And if the Moravians please to select a like sample of what has been done by them, they may expect from us the same justice.” Another little mistake: Those lines are not selected; but are found in the very first hymn (as I observed in my last) that occurs in the first verses which my brother and I ever published. “We have received a letter, complaining of our having jumbled the poetry of the Methodists and Moravians in an indiscriminate censure.” Not so. The thing chiefly complained of was,

1. Your “jumbling whole bodies of people together, and condemning them by the lump, without any regard either to prudence, justice, or humanity.”

2. Your “treating with such contempt those who are by no means contemptible writers, — Mr. Norris and Mr. Herbert.”

The last and least thing was, your “coupling the hymns of Moravians and Methodists together.” It was here I added, “As, probably, you have never seen the books which you condemn, I will transcribe a few lines:” But neither did I give the least intimation of “appealing hereby to the public, in proof of our superiority over the Moravians.” This is another mistake. At first I was a little inclined to fear, a want of integrity had occasioned this misrepresentation; but, upon reflection, I would put a milder construction upon it, and only impute it to want of understanding. Even bodies of men do not see all things; and are then especially liable to err, when they imagine themselves hugely superior to their opponents, and so pronounce ex cathedra.

Another instance of this is just now before me. A week or two ago, one put a tract into my hands, in which I could discern nothing of the Christian, gentleman, or scholar; but much of low, dull, ill-natured scurrility and blasphemy. How was I surprised, when I read in your three hundred and fifteenth page, “We have read this little piece with great pleasure” when I found you so smitten with the author’s “spirit, sense, and freedom,” his “smart animadversions” and “becoming severity!” O gentlemen! do not you speak too plain? Do not you discover too much at once? especially when you so keenly ridicule Mr. Pike’s supposition, that the Son and Spirit are truly divine? May I ask, If the Son of God is not truly divine, is He divine at all? Is he a little God, or no God at all? If no God at all, how came he to say, “I and the Father are one?” Did any Prophet before, from the beginning of the world, use any one expression which could possibly be so interpreted as this and other expressions were by all that heard Jesus speak? And did he ever attempt to undeceive them? Be pleased, then, to let me know, if he was not God, how do you clear him from being the vilest of men?

I am, gentlemen,

Your well-wisher, though not admirer,

JOHN WESLEY.