Wesley Corpus

4. To the public, constantly add the private means of grace, particularly prayer and reading. Most of you have been greatly wanting in this; and without this you can never grow in grace. You may as well expect a child to grow without food as a soul without private prayer; and reading is an excellent help to this. I advise you to read in particular, constantly and carefully, the New Testament; Lessons for Children, which are all the choicest parts of the Old Testament, with short notes; Instructions for Children, which are a body of divinity for plain people; and that golden treatise The Christian Pattern; the Plain Account of the Methodists. No Methodist ought to be without these, nor the Primitive Physick, which (if you have any regard for your bodies or your children) ought to be in every house. To all that can understand it, I recommend one book more, A Preservative Against Unsettled Notions; a book which, by the blessing of God, may help you from being tossed about with divers winds of doctrines. Permit me to give you one advice more under this head: do not encourage young raw men to exhort among you. It does little good either to you or them. Rather, in every Society, where you have not an experienced preacher, let one of the leaders read the Notes [His Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament] or the Christian Library. By this the wisest among you may profit much, a thousand times more than by listening to forward youths who neither speak English nor common sense. 5. Let all of you who have faith meet in band without excuse and without delay. There has been a shameful neglect of this. Remove this scandal. As soon as the Assistant has fixed your band make it a point of conscience never to miss without an absolute necessity; and the preacher's meeting you all together one night out of two will be an additional blessing.