Wesley Corpus

You remark: (6) ‘He is very liable to err, not considering things coolly and carefully.’ I answered: ‘So indeed I am. I find it every day more and more. But I do not yet find that this is owing to my want of “considering things coolly and carefully.” Perhaps you do not know many persons (excuse my simplicity in speaking it) who more carefully consider every step they take. Yet I know I am not cool or careful enough. May God supply this and all my wants!’ [See letter of Feb. 2, 1745, acct. III 5.] You reply, ‘Your private life I have nothing to do with’; and then enlarge on my ‘method of consulting Scripture’ and of using lots, of both which by-and-by. But meantime observe this does not affect the question; for I neither cast lots, nor use that method at all, till I have considered things with all the care I can. So that, be this right or wrong, it is no manner of proof that I do not ‘carefully consider every step I take.’ But how little did I profit by begging your excuse, suppose I had spoken a word unguardedly! O sir, you put me in mind of him who said, ‘I know not how to show mercy!’ You have need never to fight but when you are sure to conquer, seeing you are resolved neither to give nor take quarter. You remark: (7) ‘He is very difficult to be convinced by reason and argument, as he acts upon a supposed principle superior to it--the direction of God’s Spirit.’ I answered: ‘I am very difficult to be convinced by dry blows or hard names, but not by reason or argument. At least, that difficulty cannot spring from the cause you mention; for I claim no other direction of God's Spirit than is common to all believers.’ You reply: (1) ‘I fear this will not be easily reconcilable to your past presences and behavior’ (page 124). I believe it will; in particular to what I speak of the light I received from God in that important affair (Journal, i. 327). But as to the directions in general of the Spirit of God, we very probably differ in this: you apprehend those directions to be extraordinary which I suppose to be common to all believers.