Wesley Corpus

‘I go away, not of choice, but of necessity.’ So you must think till God opens your eyes. ‘Your kindness at our first acquaintance, the Providence that brought us together, and the keeping up that acquaintance after so many snares of the enemy to destroy it, make it sacred as well as dear to me.’ And yet for such a reason as this, -- because I advise you to abstain from doing what I think you have no fight to do, what I judge to be both evil in itself and productive of ill consequences, --for this reason you burst all the bonds asunder and cast away the cords from you. The Lord God enlighten the eyes of your understanding and soften and enlarge your heart! To Samuel Walker [8] KINGSWOOD, September 3. 1756. REVEREND AND DEAR SIR, -- I have one point in view - to promote, so far as I am able, vital practical religion; and by the grace of God to beget, preserve, and increase the life of God in the souls of men. On this single principle I have hitherto proceeded, and taken no step but in subserviency to it. With this view, when I found it to be absolutely necessary for the continuance of the work which God had begun in many souls (which their regular pastors generally used all possible means to destroy), I permitted several of their brethren, whom I believe God called thereto and qualified for the work, to comfort, exhort and instruct those who were athirst for God or who walked in the light of his countenance. But, as the persons so qualified were few and those who waned their assistance very many, it followed it followed that most these were obliged to travel continually from place to place; and this occasion several regulations from time to time, which were chiefly made in our conferences.