Wesley Corpus

To his Mother Date: August 17, 1753, Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1733) Author: John Wesley --- The thing that gives offence here is the being singular with regard to time, expense, and company. This is evident beyond exception, from the case of Mr. Smith, [William Smith, Fellow of Lincoln, and apparently one of the Oxford Methodists. On Aug. L x732, Clayton wrote to Wesley (who was then in London, where he was elected a member of the S.P.C.K., and visited William Law at Puthey) that since he had left Oxford no one had attacked Smith and himself. ' I have gone every day to Lincoln, big with expectations to hear of some mighty attack made upon Mr. Smith; but, I thank God, I have always been disappointed: for not one of the Fellows has once so much as tried to shake him or to convert him from the right way, &c.' After his return from Georgia, at Oxford on Feb. 11, 1737, Charles Wesley (see his Journal, i. 68) exhorts 'poor languid Smith' to resume all his rules of holy living.] one of our Fellows, who no sooner began to husband his time, to retrench unnecessary expenses, and to avoid his irreligious acquaintance, but he was set upon, by not only all those acquaintance, but many others too, as if he had entered into a conspiracy to cut all their throats; though to this day he has not advised any single person, unless in a word or two and by accident, to act as he did in any of those instances.