Wesley Corpus

To Lady Cox Date: OXON, March 7, 1738. Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1738) Author: John Wesley --- MADAM,--Some days since, I was shown several queries [Given at the close of the letter.] which had been sent to Bath, and an answer to them, intended to have been sent likewise. But I could not approve of that answer, it seeming to me to savor too much of the wisdom of the world, which they will never know how to be enough afraid of who have seen what havoc it makes, even among the children of God. I will therefore answer them myself with all simplicity and without any regard to the judgment of the world; as knowing that, if my words do not appear foolishness to the world, it is because there is nothing of the wisdom of God in them. A plain account of the beginning of the sect inquired after was printed two or three years since. [Probably the Defense mentioned in Green's Anti-Methodist Publications, No. 1. See p. 135.] To which need only be added that, though some time after Mr. Morgan's death my brother and I were left alone, yet this loss was overbalanced the following year [The same year. Morgan left Oxford on June 5, 1732, and died on Aug. 26. Wesley met Clayton on April 20, 1732, and asked him to his room at Lincoln College. ‘At the first opportunity I acquainted him with our whole design, which he immediately and heartily closed with.’ See letter of Oct. 18, 1732.] by our acquaintance with Mr. Clayton. With him, several of his pupils, and afterward some of mine, joined together in the labor of love; to whom were soon added Mr. Broughton, Ingham, Whitefield, Hervey, whose zeal stirred up many others not to be ashamed of their Master or His words, even in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.