Wesley Corpus

To Gilbert Boyce Date: BANDON, May 22, 1750. Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1750) Author: John Wesley --- DEAR SIR, -- I do not think either the Church of England, or the People called Methodist or any other particular Society under heaven to be the True Church of Christ. For that Church is but one and contains all the true believers on earth. But I conceive every society of true believers to be a branch of the one true Church of Christ. ‘Tis no wonder that young and unlearned preachers use some improper expressions. I trust, upon friendly advice, they will lay them aside. And as they grow in years they will increase in knowledge. I have neither inclination nor time to draw the saw of controversy. But a few here remarks I would make in order to our understanding and (I hope) loving one another the better. You think the mode of baptism is ‘necessary to salvation’: I deny that even baptism itself is so; if it were, every Quaker must be damned which I can in no wise believe. I hold nothing to be (strictly speaking) necessary to salvation but the mind which was in Christ. If I did not think you had a measure of this, I could one love you as an heathen man or a publican. They who believe with the faith working by love are God's children. I don't wonder that God permits (not causes) smaller evils among these when I observe far greater evils among them; for sin is an infinitely greater evil than ignorance. I do not conceive that unity in the outward modes of worship is so necessary among the children of God that they cannot be children of God without it, although I once thought it was.