*

sent over Spangenberg to act as mediator; and Spangenberg having pronounced that the Moravians had been blameable, and had injured Wesley, the Count gave orders that they should ask his forgiveness; and when he found that Wesley had rejected the proffered reconcileation, he came to England himself. The meeting between these personages was arranged by Hutton, and took place in Gray'sInn Walks. They conversed in Latin; and Zinzendorf, who assumed throughout the scene that superiority to which his birth and rank had habituated him, began by demanding of Wesley wherefore he had changed his religion: "You have affirmed," said he, "in your epistle, that they who are true Christians are not miserable sinners; and this is most false; for the best of men are most miserable sinners, even till death. They who teach otherwise are either absolute impostors, or they are under a diabolical deluYou have opposed our brethren, who taught better things; and when they offered peace, you denied it. I loved you greatly," said Zinzendorf, "when you wrote to me from Georgia: then I knew that you were simple at heart. You wrote again; I knew that you were simple at heart, but that your ideas were disturbed. You came to us, and then your ideas were more and more confused." And he reproached him for having refused to be reconciled with the brethren, when, in obedience to Spangenberg, they had entreated his forgiveness. Wesley replied, it was true that they had treated him wrongfully, and afterwards asked his forgiveness. He had made answer, that forgiveness was unnecessary, because he had never been offended; but that he feared lest they taught erroneously, and lived incorrectly;

sion.

* It is not to the credit of Wesley that these circumstances are not stated in his Journal, and no otherwise recorded than in the conversation with Count Zinzendorf, which, he says, he dared not conceal. But, as he printed it in the original Latin, and did not think proper to annex a translation, it was effectually concealed from the great majority of his followers. Neither are they noticed by any of the biographers of Wesley.

and this was the matter in dispute: they erred in their opinions concerning Christian perfection, and concerning the means of grace. To this Zinzendorf vehemently replied, "I acknowledge no inherent perfection in this life. This is the error of errors. I persecute it through all the world with fire and sword. I trample upon it, I destroy it. Christ is our only perfection. All Christian perfection is faith in the blood of Christ. It is imputed, not inherent. We are perfect in Christ; we are never perfect in ourselves." Wesley protested, that this was merely a dispute concerning words, and attempted to prove it so by a series of interrogations, by which the Count was led to this assertion,We reject all self-denial; we trample on it. In faith we do whatever we desire, and nothing more. We laugh at all mortification; no purification precedes perfect love." If this meant all that it expresses, it would indeed be a perilous doctrine. But it often happens, that language equally indiscreet is innocently intended, and less evil is produced by it than might reasonably be ap prehended, because the intention is understood.

Wesley put an end to this curious conversation, by promising that, with God's help, he would perpend what the Count had said. But his part was already taken: no further attempt at reconciliation was made; and after three years had elapsed, he published the breach to the world, in the fourth part of his Journal, which he dedicated to the Moravian Church, and more especially to that part of it then or lately residing in England. "I am constrained at length," he said, "to speak my present sentiments concerning you. I have delayed thus long, because I loved you, and was therefore unwilling to grieve you in any thing: and likewise because I was afraid of creating another obstacle to that union which, if I know my own heart in any degree, I desire above all things under heaven. But I dare no longer delay, lest my silence should be a snare to any others of the children of God; and lest you yourselves should be more confirmed in what I cannot reconcile

to the law and the testimony. This would strengthen the bar which I long to remove. And were that once taken out of the way, I should rejoice to be a door-keeper in the house of God, a hewer of wood, or a drawer of water among you. Surely I would follow you to the ends of the earth, or remain with you in the uttermost parts of the sea." He praised them for laying the true foundation in their doctrine; for brotherly love of each other; for their sober, innocent, and industrious lives. "I love and esteem you," he said, " for your excellent discipline, scarce inferior to that of the apostolic age: for your due subordination of officers, every one knowing and keeping his proper rank; for your exact division of the people under your charge, so that each may be fed with food convenient for them; for your care that all who are employed in the service of the Church, should frequently and freely confer together; and, in consequence thereof, your exact and seasonable knowledge of the state of every member, and your ready distribution either of spiritual or temporal relief, as every man hath need." In relating what he found himself enforced by a sense of duty to lay before the public, he endeavoured, he said, to do it with a tender hand; "relating no more than I believed absolutely needful, carefully avoiding all tart and unkind expressions, all that I could foresee would be disobliging to you, or any further offensive than was implied in the very nature of the thing; labouring every where to speak consistently with that deep sense which is settled in my heart, that you are (though I cannot call you Rabbi, infallible) yet far, far better and wiser than me." He added, that if any of the Moravian Brethren would show him wherein he had erred in this relation, either in matter or manner, he would confess it before angels and men, in whatever way they should require; and he entreated that they would not cease to pray for him as their weak but still affectionate brother.

After the breach had been thus formally announced, Count Zinzendorf' published an advertisement,

declaring that he and his people had no connexion with John and Charles Wesley. The Moravians forbore from all controversy upon the subject, but Wesley did not continue the tone of charity and candour in which he had addressed them upon the separation. Speaking of a short narrative which Zinzendorf had written of his own life, he says, "Was there ever such a Proteus under the sun as this Lord Fraydeck, Domine de Thurstain, &c. &c. for he has almost as many names as he has faces or shapes. Oh, when will he learn (with all his learning) simplicity and godly sincerity? When will he be an upright follower of the Lamb, so that no guile may be found in his mouth ?" He still for a while professed that he loved the Moravians; but he gave such reasons for not continuing to admire them as he had formerly done, that it was manifest the love also was on the wane, and would soon be succeeded by open enmity. He censured them for calling themselves the Brethren, and condemned them with asperity for arrogating to themselves the title of the Moravian Church, which he called a palpable cheat. He blamed them for conforming to the world by useless trifling conversation; for levity in their general behaviour; for joining in diversions in order to do good, and for not reproving sin even when it was gross and open. He said that much cunning might be observed in them, much evasion and disguise: that they treated their opponents with a settled disdain, which was neither consistent with love nor humility that they confined their beneficence to the narrow bounds of their own society. Their preaching, he said, destroyed the love of God and the love of our neighbour. "If a man," said he, "was before a zealous member of our church, groaning for the prosperity of our Zion, it is past; all that zeal is at an end: he regards the Church of England no more than the Church of Rome; his tears no longer fall, his prayers no longer ascend, that God may shine upon her desolation. The friends that were once as his own soul, are now no more to him 39

VOL. I.

:

than other men. All the bands of that formerly endeared affection are as threads of tow that have touched the fire. Even the ties of filial tenderness are dissolved. The child regards not his own parent he no longer regards the womb that bare, nor the paps that gave him suck. Recent instances are not wanting. I will particularize, if required. Yea, the son leaves his aged father, the daughter her mother, in want of the necessaries of life. I know the persons. I have myself relieved them more than once for that was corban whereby they should have been profited."-He should have asked himself whether Methodism did not sometimes produce the same effects. The fifth commandment is but a weak obstacle in the way of enthusiasm.

Wesley soon went further than this, and throwing aside all appearance of any remaining attachment to the Moravians, charged them with being cruel and deceitful men. He published in his journals accusations against them of the foulest kind, made by persons who had forsaken their society; thus giving the whole weight of his judgment to their abominable* charges. And he affirmed that it was clear to a demonstration, that the Moravian elders assumed a more absolute authority over the conscience than the Pope himself: that to gain and secure this, they used a continued train of guile, fraud, and falsehood of every kind; and that they scraped their votaries to the bone as to their worldly substance. Yet, he added, they were still so infatuated as to believe that theirs was the only true Church upon earth. They could not possibly have believed so, if they had been guilty of the crimes

*"Mr. Rimius has said nothing to what might have been said concerning their marriage economy. I know a hundred times more than he has written; but the particulars are too shocking to relate. I believe no such things were ever practised before; no, not among the most barbarous heathens." Journal 9. p. 179. (vol. 3. of Wesley's Works. 1810.) In another part of the same Journal (p. 107.) they are charged, upon the testimony of another witness, with the vilest abominations.