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MR. WHITE. 1305
of Mathesius and Brockmer, in these words : "With the true story
of Brockmer before us, communicated to Wesley by Mathesius, and
printed by Wesley within three years in the same ’Arminian
Magazine,’ we ask, ’Can anything be more discreditable to Wesley’s
veracity than this second story? It is superfluous at this day to pay
compliments to Wesley for his zeal, ability, and blessed labours ;
these are universally confessed ; but we cannot forget, that he was
a sad gossip and that truth was nearly certain to suffer when it
encountered his dislike or self-will. The instance before us is no
more than characteristic of his loose and unscrupulous habit of
writing and speaking." Mr. White finishes his arraignment of John
Wesley in these words : "The narrative of Brockmer preserved by
Mathesius ought to be kept entirely apart from Wesley’s, which is
to be consigned, without hesitation, to the refuge of lies" (I, p. 229).
Mr. White in this manner gets rid of John Wesley’s statement
in 1783 ; but there is still Mathesius’ account published by Wesley
in 1781 in the field. This Mr. White puts on one side, on p. 220,
in the following words : "Mathesius some years afterwards [i. e. after
he had come to London in 1766] gave the Rev. John Wesley a copy
of Brockmer’s narration, which Wesley printed in his Arminian
Magazine for January, 1781. We have also in manuscript, in
Swedish, the story directly from Mathesius’s own hand. This I
have had translated, and from it print. With the exception of two
or three extra details [?] it is precisely the same as that given in
the Arminian Magazine."
But, says Mr. White in 1856, Mathesius’ testimony is of no account,
because "he himself, in later years, went out of his senses." To this
declaration, however, Mr. White in 1867 takes violent exception, and
he exclaims in his preface (p. vii), "It will be observed that it [the
Book of Dreams ] has enabled me to vindicate the memory of the
Rev. A. Mathesius, who for many years has been hooted through
Swedenborgian literature as a slanderer, and subsequently a
madman."
How Mr. White by the publication of Mathesius ’ account of 1796
was able to vindicate his memory," appears from Document 270,
where the two accounts of Mathesius are compared in parallel columns,
and where it is shown that these accounts, far from differing simply
by "two or three extra details," as alleged by Mr. White, are full
of inconsistencies and contradictions.
Mr. White is as little successful in the other endeavours which
he makes to vindicate the memory of Mathesius. On p. 232 he
appeals to the records of the Swedish Church to bear out his state
ment that "Mathesius was never insane;" and in proof of this quotes
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