Wesley Corpus

Thur. 2'7.--I called on the solicitor whom I had employed in the suit lately commenced against me in chancery; and here I first saw that foul monster, a chancery bill! A scroll it was of forty-two pages, in large folio, to tell a story which needed not to have taken up forty lines! And stuffed with such stupid, senseless, improbable lies, (many of them, too, quite foreign to the question,) as, I believe, would have cost the compiler his life in any Heathen court either of Greece or Rome. And this is equity in a Christian country! This is the English method of redressing other grievances! I conclude this year with the extract of a letter which I received some weeks before :-- * Honourep Sir,--I beg leave to give you a short account of my ex perience from the time I can remember. “In my childhood, confused convictions often passed through my mind, so that I almost always had the fear of God before my eyes, and a sense of his seeing me; and I frequently used to abstain from sin upon that account. When I did sin, I was immediately checked and grieved; so that E generally was serious, nothing like any of my other brothers, and was, on that account, esteemed a good child, and greatly caressed. I constantly said my prayers, and was much given to reading; but it was chiefly plays and romances, of which I was as fond as I was of cards, shows, races, feasts, and whatever are called innocent diversions. Yet even these were always a burden to me when over; so that I was forced to own, All these are vanity. ** At about sixteen, I was sent to Yarmouth, where I fell twice or thrice into intemperance, for which I was severely reproved in my conscience ; but I used to make up matters by going oftener to church: and having good health, and no care, I was generally easy in my mind, and gay and jocose in my conversation.