Wesley Corpus

[London], August 3. -- I heartily concur with you in dealing with all, not only with disorderly walkers, but also triflers, aa, ppa, the effeminate and busybodies, as with M. F. [See C. Wesley's Journal, ii. 90-1. He heard Michael Fenwick preach at Leeds () on Aug. 5. ‘It was beyond description.... I talked closely with him, utterly averse to working, and told him plainly he should either labor with his hands or preach no more. He hardly complied, though he confessed it was his ruin, his having been taken off his business. I answered I would repair the supposed injury, by setting him up again in his shop.’ See letter of Sept. 12, 1755. See also ibid. p. 94: ‘I heard J. J., the drummer, again, and liked him worse than at first’] I spoke to one this morning, so that I was even amazed at myself. [London], August 8. -- We must have forty itinerant preachers, or drop some of our Societies. You cannot so well judge of this without seeing the letters I receive from all parts. [London], August 15. -- If our preachers do not, nor will not, spend all their time in study and saving souls, they must be employed dose in other work or perish. [London], August 17. -- C. S. pleads for a kind of aristocracy, and says you and I should do nothing without the consent of all the preachers; otherwise we govern arbitrarily, to which they cannot submit. Whence is this [Cullompton], August 24. -- Oh that you and I may arise and stand upright! [See next letter for Charles Wesley's verdict.] I quite agree with you: let us have but six, so we are all one. I have sent one more home to his work. We may trust God to send forth more laborers; only be not unwilling to receive them, when there is reasonable proof that He has sent them. [Wesley says on Aug. 21 that in Wiltshire and Devonshire he ‘found more and more proof that the poor wretch [Wheatley] whom we had lately disowned was continually laboring to poison our other preachers’ See Journal, iii. 535.] To Ebenezer Blackwell [10] BRISTOL, July 3, 1751.