Wesley Corpus

Mon. 8.--About eight, I reached Hampton Common, nine or ten miles from Gloucester. There were, it was computed, five or six thousand persons. I exhorted them all to come unto God, as having ‘nothing to pay.” I could gladly have stayed longer with this loving people; but I was now straitened for time. After sermon I therefore hastened away, and in the evening came to Bristol. Tues. 9.--My brother and I rode to Bradford. Finding there had been a general ' misrepresentation of his last sermon, as if he had asserted reprobation therein, whereby many were greatly offended; he was constrained to explain himself on that head, and to show, in plain and strong words, that God “willeth all men to be saved.” Some were equally offended at this ; but whether men will hear, or whether they will forbear, we may not “shun to declare” unto them, “all the counsel of God.” At our return in the evening, not being permitted to meet at Weaver’s Hall, we met in a large room, on Temple Backs; where, having gone through the sermon on the mount, and the epistles of St. John, I began that of St. James; that those who had already learned the true nature of inward holiness, might be more fully instructed in outward holiness, without which also we cannot see the Lord. Wed. 10.--Finding many to be in heaviness, whom I had left full of peace and joy, I exhorted them at Baptist Mills, to “look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” We poured out our complaint before him in the evening, and found that he was again with us of a truth. One came to us soon after I was gone home, who was still in grievous darkness. _ But we commended her cause to God, and he immediately restored the light of his countenance. Thur. 11.--We wee comforted by the coming in of one who was a notorious drunkard Journal I.--11, 158 REV. J. WESLEY’S JOURNAL. [Oct. 1739