Wesley Corpus

DEAR BROTHER,--Spend as many hours in the congregation as you will or can. But exercise alone will strengthen your lungs. Or electrifying, which I wonder you did not try long ago. Never start at its being a quack medicine. I desire no other, particularly since I was so nearly murdered by being cured of my ague secundum artem. You should always (and I hope you do) write standing and sloping. We are always in danger of enthusiasm, but I think no more now than any time these twenty years. The word of God runs indeed, and loving faith spreads on every side. Don't take my word or any one's else, but come and see. 'Tis good to be in London now. It is impossible for me to correct my own books. I sometimes think it strange that I have not one preacher that will and can. I think every one of them owes me so much service. Is it right that my sister Patty should suffer Mr. Hall to live with her? I almost scruple giving her the sacrament, seeing he does not even pretend to renounce Betty Rogers. [Mrs. Hall. Westley Hall died in 1776. Betty Rogers seems to be the young seamstress by whom he had an illegitimate child. See Stevenson's Wesley Family, pp. 370-3; and letter of June 14.] Was it right for W. Baynes [William Baynes had been a preacher (1749-56), and was a master at Kingswood School at the time of the fire in 1757. See Journal, iv. 242, vi. 177-8; C. Wesley's Journal, I;. 256.] to carry on his affair with Sammy Whittaker without consulting either you or me? Pray tell Brother Sheen I am hugely displeased at his reprinting the Nativity hymns [Hymns for the Nativity of our Lord, sixth edition, was printed in Bristol in 1761. Sheen was probably a master at Kingswood, as Charles Wesley wants him to be told there was 'a hue and cry' in London because parents had not been informed of the safe arrival of their boys at school (about 1757). See C. Wesley's Journal, ii. 266; and letter of Sept. 8 to him.] and omitting the very best hymn in the collection, 'All glory to God in the sky, &c.' I beg they may never more be printed without it. Omit one or two, and I will thank you. They are namby-pambical.