You receive not the ancient, but the Modern Mystics, as the best interpreters of Scripture. And in conformity to these, you mix much of man’s wisdom with the wisdom of God: You greatly refine the plain religion taught by the letter of the Holy Writ [the Bible], and philosophize on almost every part of it, to accommodate it to the Mystic theory.

—Journal 1.330

The names and issues change, but here we see that Wesley could well be commenting on that sad spectacle of religious revisionism that is predominant in many of the Christian mainline churches in the West today, a revisionism that seeks to rewrite Scripture in its own image. The old preacher in Ecclesiastes was certainly correct in his assertion that there is nothing new under the sun.