Feeling thus that opinions were a matter of quite secondary consideration, Wesley had no hesitation about modifying, or even totally abandoning, opinions which he found to be practically injurious.[734] He confessed, as we have seen, that he was quite wrong in his theory of the Divine origin of Episcopacy, and in his estimate of his own state of mind previous to his conversion in 1738.  He very materially modified his doctrine of Christian perfection when he found it was liable to practical abuse, and appended notes to an edition of hymns in which that doctrine was too unguardedly stated.[735] He confessed his error on the subject of Christian assurance in a characteristically outspoken fashion.  ‘When,’ he wrote in old age, ’fifty years ago, my brother Charles and I, in the simplicity of our hearts, taught the people that unless they knew their sins were forgiven they were under the wrath and curse of God, I marvel they did not stone us.  The Methodists, I hope, know better now.  We preach assurance, as we always did, as a common privilege of the children of God, but we do not enforce it under pain of damnation denounced on all who enjoy it not.’  He thought it idle to discuss the question of regeneration in baptism when it was obvious that baptized persons had practically as much need as heathens to be born again.[736] It was quite as much their fondness for controversy as their rigid Calvinism which put him out of love with the Scotch and made him feel that he could do no good among them.[737]

In accounting for Wesley’s repugnance to religious controversy it should not be forgotten that in the latter half of his life controversial divinity had sunk to a low ebb, at least among those with whom he would most naturally come into contact.  A man of his logical mind, clear common sense, and extensive reading could hardly fail to be disgusted with much that passed for religious literature.  He shrunk with a horror which is almost amusing from the task of reviewing religious publications in the ‘Arminian Magazine.’  ‘I would not,’ he said, ’read all the religious books that are now published for the whole world.’  He protested against ‘what were vulgarly called Gospel sermons.’  ’The term,’ he says, ’has now become a mere cant word.  I wish none of our Society would use it.  It has no determinate meaning.  Let but a pert, self-sufficient animal that has neither sense nor grace bawl out something about Christ and His blood, or justification by faith, and his hearers cry out, “What a fine Gospel sermon!"’[738]

In fact, Wesley in his later years was very much alienated from what was called ‘the religious world.’  He had received some of his severest wounds in the house of his friends.  Not Warburton, nor Lavington, nor Gibson had spoken and written such hard things against him as many of the most decidedly Evangelical clergy.  He clung to the poor and unlettered, not, as it has been asserted, because he desired to be a sort of Pope among them, but because he really