Wesley Corpus

To Lady Maxwell Date: LONDON, August 8, 1788. Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1788) Author: John Wesley --- MY DEAR LADY, -- It is certain many persons both in Scotland and England would be well pleased to have the same preachers always. But we cannot forsake the plan of acting which we have followed from the beginning. For fifty years God has been pleased to bless the itinerant plan, the last year most of all. It must not be altered till I am removed; and I hope will remain till our Lord comes to reign upon earth. I do not know (unless it unfits us for the duties of life) that we can have too great a sensibility of human pain. Me-thinks I should be afraid of losing any degree of this sensibility. I had a son-in-law (now in Abraham's bosom) who quitted his profession, that of a surgeon, for that very reason; because he said it made him less sensible of human pain. [Was this Noah Vazeille] And I have known exceeding few persons who have carried this tenderness of spirit to excess. I recollect but one who was constrained to leave off in a great measure visiting the sick because he could not see any one in pain without fainting away. Mr. Charles Perronet was the first person I was acquainted with who was favored with the same experience as the Marquis De Renty ['I bear in me ordinarily an experimental verity and a plenitude of the most Holy Trinity, which exalts me to a simple view of God.' (Wesley's Extract of the Life of Monsieur De Renty). See letter of Oct. 3, 1731.] with regard to the ever-blessed Trinity, Miss Ritchie was the second, Miss Roe (now Mrs. Rogers) the third. I have as yet found but a few instances; so that this is not, as I was at first apt to suppose, the common privilege of all that are 'perfect in love.' [Compare letters of June 11 1777 (to Hannah Ball), and July 4, 2787, and Lady Maxwell's letters to Alexander Mather in her Life, pp. 359-61.]