He acted on
this principle, in his debate with me, with the greatest fidelity. He
raked together, and gave forth in his speeches, all the foolish and
wicked stories which my old persecutors had fabricated and spread abroad
respecting me, except those about my having committed suicide, and being
smothered to death, and some others which were so notoriously false that
they could no longer be used to my disadvantage. Those stories he
improved by making them worse. He made a number of new ones also.
I had published a book, giving the story of my life up to the time of my
expulsion from the Methodist New Connexion. This work, like my other
works, was written in the clearest and simplest style, so that no man
with ordinary abilities could fail to understand it, and no man without
powers of perversion bordering on the miraculous, could give to any part
of it an objectionable meaning. This book he took, and read, and
misread, and interpreted, and misinterpreted, so as to make the
impression on persons unacquainted with it, that I had written and
published the most foolish, ridiculous, and in some cases, really
discreditable things of myself, and even false and unwarrantable
statements about others.
Before the discussion came on he gave a lecture on this book.
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