Wesley Corpus

I expect to see Mr. Piers every day. When I do, I will inquire farther concerning that note.[See letter of Jan. 18.] I am, with thankfulness for this and all your favours, dear madam, Your obliged servant. To ‘John Smith’ LONDON, June 25, 1746. SIR, -- At length I have the opportunity, which I have long desired, of answering the letter you favored me with some time since. [Wesley had sent him A Farther Appeal with his previous letter, and this ‘John Smith’ acknowledges in his letter of Feb. 26.] Oh that God may still give us to bear with each other and to speak what we believe is the truth in love! 1. I detest all zeal which is any other than the flame of love. Yet I find it is not easy to avoid it. It is not easy (at least to me) to be ‘always zealously affected in a good thing’ without being sometimes so affected in things of an indifferent nature. Nor do I find it always easy to proportion my zeal to the importance of the occasion, and to temper it duly with prudence according to the various and complicated circumstances that occur. I sincerely thank you for endeavoring to assist me herein, to guard me from running into excess. I am always in danger of this, and yet I daily experience a far greater danger of the other extreme. To this day I have abundantly more temptation to lukewarmness than to impetuosity; to be a saunterer inter sylvas Academicas, a philosophical sluggard, than an itinerant preacher. And, in fact, what I now do is so exceeding little, compared with what I am convinced I ought to do, that I am often ashamed before God, and know not how to lift up mine eyes to the height of heaven! 2. But may not love itself constrain us to lay before men ‘the terrors of the Lord’ And is it not better that sinners ‘should be terrified now than that they should sleep on and awake in hell’ I have known exceeding happy effects of this, even upon men of strong understanding; yet I agree with you that there is little good to be done by ‘the profuse throwing about hell and damnation,’ and the best way of deciding the points in question with us is cool and friendly argumentation.