Wesley Corpus

To his Brother Charles Date: LEEDS, May 3, 1786. Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1786) Author: John Wesley --- DEAR BROTHER, - If there be a man in England who understands Mrs. Horton's case, it is Dr. Wilson. I advise John Horton to find him out if he be above ground. [Mary, daughter of Henry Durbin, a chemist in Bedminster and a Bristol preacher, whom Wesley married to John Horton, of Highbury Place, London, on Sept. 21, 1780. Her husband was a merchant and on the Common Council. He was one of the executors of Wesley's Will. Mrs. Horton died on May 26, 1786, at the age of thirty-four. Charles Wesley wrote a long poem on his friend: And through a blameless life expressed The tempers of the Lamb. See Journal, vii. 295; C. Wesley's Journal, if. 412-18; letter of May 18, 1786; and for Dr. Andrew Wilson, Oct. 13, 1770, to Lowes.] I do not know that anyone opens your letters. They come to me with the seal unbroken. As you observe, one may leave a church (which I would advise in some cases) without leaving the Church. Here we may remain in spite of all wicked or Calvinistical ministers. [See letter of April 18.] Commonly, when I am in London, I am so taken up, that I cannot often spare time to go three miles backward and forward. That was the πρώτον ψεύδος, ['The first false step.' Charles lived in Marylebone, where Mrs. Gumley had given him the lease of her house in Chesterfield Street. See letter of May 18.] the getting you an house so far from me as well as hr from both the chapels. I cannot help it if people have no docity. Seven guineas Patty has had from me within this month, besides ten or eleven which she has worried me to give Nancy Jervas this winter. [Mrs. Hall had a small income of her own, but was a good deal dependent on her brother. See Stevenson's Wesley Family, pp. 380-1.]