Wesley Corpus

I was lately advised to read Thomas Kempis [Wesley says (Journal, May 1738): I read him only in Dean Stanhope's translation. Yet I had frequently much sensible comfort in reading him.' The tenth edition of Stanhope's Christian Pattern, or a Treatise of the Imitation of Jesus Christ, was published in x72t (Roberts.... London). Evidently Stanhope's version did not satisfy him. Later we find him using the Latin text of Sebastian Castalio; and in the letter of April 19, 17654, he quotes from the better text of Lambinet. In 1735 his own version was published. See Moore's Life of Wesley, ii. 401; W.H.S. Proceedings, xii. 33n; and page 131n.] over, which I had frequently seen, but never much looked into before. I think he must have been a person of great piety and devotion, but it is my misfortune to differ from him in some of his main points. I can't think that when God sent us into the world He had irreversibly decreed that we should be perpetually miserable in it. If it be so, the very endeavor after happiness in this life is a sin; as it is acting in direct contradiction to the very design of our creation. What are become of all the innocent comforts and pleasures of life; if it is the intent of our Creator that we should never taste them If our taking up the cross implies our bidding adieu to all joy and satisfaction, how is it reconcilable with what Solomon so expressly affirms of religion--that her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths peace A fair patrimony, indeed, which Adam has left his sons, if they are destined to be continually wretched! And though heaven is undoubtedly a sufficient recompense for all the afflictions we may or can suffer here, yet I am afraid that argument would make few converts to Christianity, if the yoke were not easy even in this life, and such an one as gives rest, at least as much as trouble.