Wesley Corpus

MY DEAR BROTHER,--The conversation I had with you yesterday in the afternoon gave me a good deal of satisfaction. As to some things which I had heard (with regard to your wasting your substance, drinking intemperately, and wronging the poor people of Siberton), I am persuaded they were mistakes; as I suppose it was that you converse much with careless, unawakened people. And I trust you will be more and more cautious in all these respects, abstaining from the very appearance of evil. [See letter of Sept. 21, 1755.] That you had not always attended the preaching when you might have done it you allowed, but seemed determined to remove that objection, as well as the other of using such exercises or diversions as give offence to your brethren. I believe you will likewise endeavour to avoid light and trifling conversation, and to talk and behave in all company with that seriousness and usefulness which become a preacher of the gospel. Certainly some years ago you was alive to God. You experienced the life and power of religion. And does not God intend that the trials you meet with should bring you back to this You cannot stand still; you know this is impossible. You must go forward or backward. Either you must recover that power and be a Christian altogether, or in a while you will have neither power nor form, inside nor outside. Extremely opposite both to one and the other is that aptness to ridicule others, to make them contemptible, by exposing their real or supposed foibles. This I would earnestly advise you to avoid. It hurts yourself; it hurts the hearers; and it greatly hurts those who are so exposed, and tends to make them your irreconcilable enemies. It has also sometimes betrayed you into speaking what was not strictly true. O beware of this above all things! Never amplify, never exaggerate anything. Be rigorous in adhering to truth. Be exemplary therein. Whatever has been in time past, let all men now know that John Trembath abhors lying, that he never promises anything which he does not perform, that his word is equal to his bond. I pray be exact in this; be a pattern of truth, sincerity, and godly simplicity.