Wesley Corpus

* You say, you cannot reconcile some parts of my behaviour with the character I have long supported. No, nor ever will. Therefore I have disclaimed that character on every possible occasion. I told all in our ship, all at Savannah, all at Frederica, and that over and over, in express terms, ‘I am not a Christian; I only follow after, if haply I may attain it. When they urged my works and self denial, I answered short, ‘Though I give all my goods to feed the poor, and my body to be burned, Iam nothing: for I have not charity ; I do not love God with all my heart.’ If they added, ‘Nay, but you could not preach as you do, if you was not a Christian ;’ I again confronted them with St. Paul; ‘ Though I speak with the tongue of men and angels, and have not charity, I am nothing.’ Most earnestly, therefore, both in public and private, did I inculeate this: ‘Be not ye shaken, however I may fall; for the foundation standeth sure.’ “Tf you ask on what principle, then, I acted: it was this: ‘ A desire to be a Christian ; and a conviction that whatever I judge conducive thereto, that I am bound to do; wherever I judge I can best answer this end, thither it is my duty to go.’ On this principle I set out for America; on this, I visited the Moravian Church; and on the same am I ready now (God being my helper) to go to Abyssinia or China, or whithersoever it shall please God, by this convicticn, to call me. *‘ As to your advice that I should settle in college, I have no business orm 138 REV. J. WESLEY’S JOURNAL. [June, 1739. there, having now no office, and no pupils. And whether the other branch of your proposal be expedient for me, viz. ‘To accept of a cure of souls,’ it will be time enough to consider, when one is offered to me.