Wesley Corpus

DEAR SAMMY,--Certainly you cannot remove without giving Mr. Crook a quarter's warning. If you do remove, you need be under no concern about repaying, nor about those you leave behind. Our preachers, when it is needful, must allow them a little more time. [He had been helping the Methodists in the neighbourhood of his curacy. See letters of Nov. 21, 1759, and June 23, 1760. ] How easy it is to puzzle a cause, and to make a thousand plausible objections to any proposition that can be advanced. This makes me quite out of conceit with human understanding and human language. So confused is the clearest apprehension! So ambiguous the most determinate expressions! Lay aside the terms 'Adamic law, 'gospel law,' or any law. The thing is beyond dispute, and you may as well demand a scriptural proof that two and two make four. Adam in Paradise was able to apprehend all things distinctly, and to judge truly concerning them; therefore it was his duty so to do. But no man living is now able to do this; therefore neither is it the duty of any man now living. Neither is there any man now in the body who does or can walk in this instance by that rule which was bound upon Adam. Can anything be more plain than this--that Adam could, that I cannot avoid mistaking Can anything be plainer than this--If he could avoid it, he ought or than this--If I cannot, I ought not I mean it is not my duty: for the clear reason that no one can do the impossible. Nothing in the Sermon or the Law contradicts this. If anything does, it is wrong. Oh what a work might be done in this kingdom if we had six zealous, active, punctual men in it! Be you one.--I am, dear Sammy, Your affectionate brother. To his Brother Charles Editor's Introductory Notes: 1760 [11] COOLALOUGH, June 23, 1760.