Wesley Corpus

To his Brother Charles Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1751) Author: John Wesley --- [LONDON], December 4 1751. On some points it is easier to write than to speak, especially where there is danger of warmth on either side. In what respect do you judge it needful to break my power and to reduce my authority within due bounds I am quite ready to part with the whole or any part of it. It is no pleasure to me, nor ever was. There is another tender point which I would just touch on. The quarterly contribution of classes (something more than two hundred a year) is to keep the preachers and to defray all the expenses of the house. But for this it did never yet suffice. For you, therefore (who have an hundred and fifty pounds a year to maintain only two persons), [100 a year was guaranteed to Charles at his marriage. He had no child in 1751.] to take any part of this seems to me utterly unreasonable. I could not do it, if it were my own case: I should account it robbery -- yea, robbing the Spittle. [Spittle (or spital), hospital for ‘poor folks diseased’ or for lepers (Brewers Dic. Of Phrase and Fable).] I have often wondered how either your conscience or your sense of honor could bear it; especially as you know I am almost continually distressed for money, who am expected to make up the deficiencies of this as well as all the other funds. I am willing (if our judgments differ) to refer this or anything else, to Mr. Perronet or Mr. Blackwell. I desire only to spend and be spent in the work which God has given me to do. Adieu.