Wesley Corpus

To his Brother Samuel Date: LINCOLN COLLEGE, December 5, 1726, Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1726) Author: John Wesley --- DEAR BROTHER,--I return you thanks for your favorable judgment on my sermon, and for the alterations you direct me to make in it; yet, in order to be still better informed, I take the liberty to make some objections to some of them, in one or two of which I believe you misunderstood me. I. The reasons why I conceive the Samaritans to have been idolaters are, first, because our Savior says of them, ' Ye worship ye know not what '; which seems to refer plainly to the object of their worship: and, secondly, because the old inhabitants of Samaria, who succeeded the Israelites, were undoubtedly so; and I never heard that they were much amended in after-times, -- ‘These nations feared the Lord, and served their graven images, both their children and their children's children' (2 Kings xvii. 41). II. Were the Jews obliged to love wicked men And is not our commandment extended to some cases to which theirs did not reach to the excluding some instances of revenge, which were indulged to them We are doubtless to love good men more than others; but to have inserted it where I was only to prove that we were to love them, and not how much, would not, I think, have been to my purpose. Where our Savior exerts His authority against His opposers, I cannot think it safe for me to follow Him. I would much sooner in those cases act by His precepts than 'example: the one was certainly designed for me, the other possibly was not. The Author had power to dispense with His own laws, and wisdom to know when it was necessary: I have neither. No one would blame a man for using such sharpness of speech as St. Stephen does; especially in a prayer made in the article of death, with the same intention as his.