Wesley Corpus

By these dull wretches you have been an unspeakable loser. Perhaps it was in company with some of these that you first thought of taking a little sport, and catching a few fish, or killing a partridge or an hare. Miserable employment for a preacher of the gospel! for a Methodist preacher, above all others! Though I do not at all wonder if, after practicing it for some time, you should be so infatuated as even to defend it. I am afraid these same poor creatures afterwards taught you (if that report be true) even to countenance that wickedness for which Cornwall stinks in the nostrils of all who fear God or love King George; I mean that of smuggling: though surely they could not persuade you to receive stolen goods! That is an iniquity to be punished by the Judges. Is there any truth in that other charge (you must not ask who tells me so; if so, I have done), that you imposed on Mrs. H--- in the writings, and fraudulently procured 100 a year to be engaged for instead of fourscore I hope this was a mistake; as well as that assertion that you encouraged drunkenness by suffering it in your company, if not in your own house. O remember from whence you are fallen! Repent, and do the first works! First recover the life of God in your own soul and walk as Christ walked. Walk with God as you did twelve years ago. Then you might again be useful to His children. Supposing you was truly afire to God yourself, how profitably then (leaving the dead to bury their dead) might you spend three months in a year at Bristol or London, three in Cornwall, and six in spreading the gospel wherever it might be needful. I have now told you all that is in my heart: I hope you will receive it not only with patience but profit. You must be much in the way or much out of the way, a good soldier for God or for the devil. O choose the better part! - now! - to-day ! - I am Your affectionate brother.