r apparent inconsistencies in his career) that Wesley attached
very little value to the mere holding of right opinions. Orthodoxy, he
thought, constituted but a very small part, if a part at all, of true
religion. 'What,' he asks, 'is faith? Not an opinion nor any number of
opinions, be they ever so true. A string of opinions is no more
Christian faith than a string of beads is Christian holiness.' Opinions
were 'feathers light as air, trifles not worth naming.' Controversy was
his abhorrence; he thought 'God made practical divinity necessary, but
the Devil controversial.' When he entered into controversy with Tucker
in 1742, 'I now, he wrote, 'tread an untried path with fear and
trembling--fear not of my adversary, but of myself.' Just twenty years
later he records with evident satisfaction that he has entirely lost his
taste for controversy and his readiness in disputing, and this he takes
to be a providential discharge from it. 'I am sick,' he writes on
another occasion, 'of opinions; I am weary to bear them: my soul loathes
this frothy food. Give me solid, substantial religion. Give me an
humble, gentle lover of God and man. Whosoever thus doeth the will of my
Father which is in Heaven, the same is brother, and sister, and mother.'
He was anxious to promote a union between all the Evangelical clergy,
but it must be on the condition that the points of difference between
them should not be discussed. He was quite ready to hand over his
opponents to Fletcher, or Sellon, or Olivers, or anyone whom he judged
strong enough to take them in hand. He prided himself on the fact that
Methodism required no agreement on disputed points of doctrine among its
members. 'Are you in earnest about your soul?' That was the one question
that must be answered in the affirmative. 'Is thine heart right as my
heart is with thy heart? If so, then give me thine hand.' Or, as he
elsewhere expresses it, 'The sum is, One thing I know: whereas I was
blind, now I see--an argument of which a peasant, a woman, a child, may
feel all the force.'[733]

This almost supercilious disregard of mere orthodoxy was all very well
in Wesley's days, but it would never have done in the earlier part of
the century; for it tacitly assumed that the main truths of Christianity
had been firmly established; and the assumption was justifiable. The
work of the apologists had prepared the way for the work of the
practical reformer. If the former had not done their work, th