Wesley Corpus

To his Brother Charles Date: PLYMOUTH DOCK, August 19, 1785. Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1785) Author: John Wesley --- DEAR BROTHER, - I will tell you my thoughts with all simplicity, and wait for better information. If you agree with me, well; if not, we can (as Mr. Whitefield used to say) agree to disagree. For these forty years I have been in doubt concerning that question, 'What obedience is due to "heathenish priests and mitred infidels"' [From Charles Wesley's 'Elegy on the Death of Robert Jones.' See his Journal, ii. 299. ]I have from time to time proposed my doubts to the most pious and sensible clergymen I knew. But they gave me no satisfaction; rather they seemed to be puzzled as well as me. Some obedience I always paid to the bishops in obedience to the laws of the land. But I cannot see that I am under any obligation to obey them further than those laws require. It is in obedience to those laws that I have never exercised in England the power which I believe God has given me. I firmly believe I am a scriptural έπίσκοπος, as much as any man in England or in Europe; for the uninterrupted succession I know to be a fable, which no man ever did or can prove. But this does in no wise interfere with my remaining in the Church of England; from which I have no more desire to separate than I had fifty years ago. I still attend all the ordinances of the Church at all opportunities; and I constantly and earnestly desire all that are connected with me so to do. When Mr. Smyth [The Rev. Edward Smyth.] pressed us to 'separate from the Church,' he meant, 'Go to church no more.' And this was what I meant seven-and-twenty years ago when I persuaded our brethren 'not to separate from the Church.'