Wesley Corpus

You number up all the parts of my letter, which are only speaking to the same parts in yours, as things entirely beside the point. If they are not to the point in mine, how came they to have a place in yours, which was written under divine direction Why did you give me occasion to speak of things that needed nothing to be said of them Had you said but one thing, I would have spoke to nothing else. In your first letter I was blamed for not calling you to such a faith in Christ as strips us naked of our own works, our own righteousness; for not teaching you this doctrine -- ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ with all thy heart, and nothing shall be impossible to thee.’ This is the faith in Christ which all Mystical spiritual books are full of. What you have heard from me on this head of faith in our former conversations would make a volume; but because I appealed to a text of Scripture, ‘Without Me ye can do nothing,’ you have quitted this faith. And now you say this, and no other, is the question: whether I ever advised you ‘to seek first a living faith in the blood of Christ.’ But, sir, this is not the main question of your first letter; had you had only this question to have proposed, you would not have written to me at all. But if I tell you that you conceived a dislike to me, and wanted to let me know that a man of God had shown you the poverty and misery of my state--if I tell you that this was the main intent of your letter, you know that I tell you the truth. To come to your, &c. &c .... But this matter, it seems, now is of no importance.