Wesley Corpus

To Dr. Stebbing Date: July 31, 1739. Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1739) Author: John Wesley --- REVEREND SIR, -- 1. You charge me (for I am called a Methodist, and consequently included in your charge) with ‘vain and confident boastings; rash, uncharitable censures; damning all who do not feel what I feel; not allowing men to be in a salvable state unless they have experienced some sudden operation, which may be distinguished as the hand of God upon them, overpowering, as it were, the soul; with denying men the use of God's creatures, which He hath appointed to be received with thanksgiving, and encouraging abstinence, prayer, and other religious exercises, to the neglect of the duties of our station.’ O sir, can you prove this charge upon me The Lord shall judge in that day! 2. I do, indeed, go out into the highways and hedges to call poor sinners to Christ; but not in a tumultuous manner, not to the disturbance of the public peace or the prejudice of families. Neither herein do I break any law which I know; much less set at naught all rule and authority. Nor can I be said to intrude into the labors of those who do not labor at all but suffer thousands of those for whom Christ died to ‘perish for lack of knowledge.’