Excerpt from The Fly Sheets Vindicated: Or the Statements and Arguments of the Writers in the Fly Sheets Re-Asserted and Defended

AN attempt having been made, by the writers of the Fly Sheets, at great personal inconvenience and expense, to effect a peaceable reform in various departments of the Executive of Modern Wesleyan Method ism; and that attempt having failed, through the supineness or timidity of those who ought to have been the first to move in such a cause, they now reluctantly, and as a last resource, bring the case before the Wesleyan Community at large. To the people they now make their appeal. It is in the power of the people to remedy the mischiefs of which the writers complain, and to restore their beloved Methodism to its original purity and efficiency. Let them but speak with sufficient plainness, on the various questions now in agitation, and all will be well. No grasp, however tenacious; no efi'rontery, however bold; can long retain and support an abuse upon which the people have once past the sentence of condemnation.

That the writers of the Fly Sheets were anxious to preserve the peace of the body undisturbed, is obvious from the fact, that, with few exceptions, the circulation of those papers was confined amongst the preachers. Had they been desirous to stir up strife, or had their motives been mercenary, the publication of those. Documents in the ordinary, method, would have amply secured both those objects. This, however, was far from their thoughts, whilst engaged in their unpleasant task. It was hoped, that, as the evils on which the writers animadverted originated with, and were perpetuated by, the preachers, the remedy would also have been found by them, and by them promptly applied to them, therefore, in the first instance, the appeal was made. This hope, however, has proved fallacious. With a few noble exceptions, the preachers have allowed themselves to be either caj oled or terrified into a measure intended to throw discredit on the statements contained in the Fly Sheets, and consequently to perpetuate the evils exposed. Indeed, it has been the fashion to denounce the Fly Sheets as the repositories of all that is calumnious and false; and that, too, in many instances, by men who have never bestowed the requisite pains to investigate the state ments they contain. This, doubtless, has been found the most conveni ent mode of settling the questions mooted in those obnoxious papers. It is much less difficult to make a bold assertion, than to originate a sound argument it is far easier to denounce a book as false, wholesale, and in the mass, than to demonstrate its falsehood in the detail. Hence the charitable credulity of a generous and Christian people has been imposed upon. And even those individuals who are too well acquainted with the administration of Methodism as it Is, to be altogether deceived by sweeping assertions, in the absence of logical and docu mentary proof, - (not having had an opportunity of judging for them selves as to the truth or falsehood of the allegations contained in the Fly - have been considerably mystified in their attempts to form an opinion on the subject.

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