Wesley Corpus

6. The next instance which you relate as an instance of despair is that of a young woman of Kingswood; which you break off with, ‘Take me away, &c.’ (page 112). But why did you not decipher that &c. Why did you not add the rest of the paragraph Because it would have spoiled your whole argument. It would have shown what the end of the Lord was in permitting that severe visitation. The words are: ‘We interrupted her by calling again upon God; on which she sunk down as before (as one asleep), and another young woman began to roar as loud as she had done. My brother now came in, it being about nine o'clock. We continued in prayer till past eleven; when God in a moment spoke peace into the soul, first of the first tormented, and then of the other. And they both joined in singing praise to Him who had “stilled the enemy and the avenger.”’ (Journal, ii. 298-9.) 7. I am sorry to find you still affirm that, with regard to the Lord’s Supper also, I ‘advance many injudicious, false, and dangerous things. Such as: (1) That “a man ought to communicate, without a sure trust in God's mercy through Christ.”’ (Second Letter, p. 117.) You mark these as my words; but I know them not. (2) ‘That there is no previous preparation indispensably necessary but a desire to receive whatsoever God pleases to give.’ But I include abundantly more in that desire than you seem to apprehend, even a willingness to know and do the whole will of God. (3) ‘That no fitness is required at the time of communicating’ (I recite the whole sentence) ‘but a sense of our state, of our utter sinfulness and helplessness; every one who knows he is fit for hell being just fit to come to Christ in this as well as in all other ways of His appointment.’ But neither can this sense of our utter sinfulness and helplessness subsist without earnest desires of universal holiness. ‘There was another passage,’ you say, ‘which you chose to omit’ (page 118). Which this was I do not understand. Nor do I perceive any one of these dreadful positions (as you style them) to be contrary to the Word of God.