Wesley Corpus

In November 1729, at which time I came to reside at Oxford, your son, my brother and myself, and one more agreed to spend three or four evenings in a week together. Our design was to read over the classics, which we had before read in private, on common nights, and on Sunday some book in divinity. In the summer following, Mr. Morgan told me he had called at the jail, to see a man that was condemned for killing his wife; and that, from the talk he had with one of the debtors, he verily believed that it would do much good if any one would be at the pains now and then of speaking with them. This he so frequently repeated, that on the 24th of August, 1730, my brother and I walked down with him to the Castle. We were so well satisfied with our conversation there, that we agreed to go thither once or twice a week; which we had not done long, before he desired me, August 31, to go with him to see a poor woman in the town who was sick. In this employment too, when we came to reflect upon it, we believed that it would be worth while to spend an hour or two in a week; provided the minister of the parish in which any such person was were not against it. But that we might not depend wholly on our own judgments, I wrote an account to my father of our whole design; withal begging that he, who had lived seventy years in the world, and seen as much of it as most private men have ever done, would advise us whether we had yet gone too far, and whether we should now stand still or go forward. Part of his answer, dated September 28, 1730, was this: