Wesley Corpus

To William Law Date: LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXON, June 16, 1754. Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1734) Author: John Wesley --- REVEREND SIR, -- I must earnestly beg your immediate advice in a case of the greatest importance. Above two years since, I was entrusted with a young gentleman of good sense, an even generous temper, and pretty good learning. [See letter of June 11, 1731, to his father. Wesley's anxiety about this student and also concerning Richard Morgan shows how faithfully he watched over them. At the end of July Charles Wesley tells his brother Samuel that John had spent the last week 'at London, chiefly in consulting Mr. Law about one of his pupils; but he found time, notwithstanding, to dispatch three sheets of Job while there, and still goes on with much more expedition than my father did while upon the spot.' This letter to Law evidently led to a personal consultation.] Religion he had heard little of; but Mr. Jackson's Practice of Devotion, [Lawrence Jackson (1691-1772), Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, 1716; Prebendary of Lincoln 1747.] your two treatises, and Thomas Kempis, by the blessing of God, awakened him by degrees to a true notion and serious practice of it. In this he continued sensibly improving till last Lent; at the beginning of which I advised him to do as he had done the year before--viz. to obey the order of the Church, by using such a sort and measure of abstinence as his health permitted and his spiritual wants required. He said ' he did not think his health would permit to use that abstinence which he did the year before.' And, notwithstanding my reply, ' that his athletic habit could be in no danger by only abstaining from flesh and using moderately some less pleasing food,' he persisted in his resolution of not altering his food at all. A little before Easter, perceiving he had much contracted the time he had till then set apart for religious reading, I asked him whether he was not himself convinced that he spent too much time in reading secular authors. He answered he was convinced any time was too much, and that he should be a better Christian if he never read them at all. I then pressed him earnestly to pray for strength, according to that conviction; and he resolved to try for a week.