Wesley Corpus

Will it be agreeable to my dear Lady Maxwell that I trouble her with a letter so soon and that I write with so little ceremony that I use no compliment, but all plainness of speech If it be not, you must tell me so, and I shall know better how to speak for the time to come. Indeed, it would be unpleasing to me to use reserve: the regard I feel for you strongly inclines me to 'think aloud,' to tell you every thought which rises in my heart. I think God has taken unusual pains, so to speak, to make you a Christian;-- a Christian indeed, not in name, worshipping God in spirit and in truth; having in you the mind that was in Christ, and walking as Christ also walked. He has given you affliction upon affliction; He has used every possible means to unhinge your soul from things of earth, that it might fix on Him alone. How far the design of His love has succeeded I could not well judge from a short conversation. Your Ladyship will therefore give me leave to inquire, Is the heaviness you frequently feel merely owing to weakness of body and the loss of near relations I will hope it is not. It might, indeed, at first spring from these outward pressures. But did not the gracious Spirit of God strike in, and take occasion from these to convince you of sin, of unbelief, of the want of Christ And is not the sense of this one great cause, if not the greatest, of your present distress If so, the greatest danger is, either that you should stifle that conviction, not suffering yourself to be convinced that you are all sin, the chief of sinners; or that you should heal the wound slightly, that you should rest before you know Christ is yours, before His Spirit witnesses with your spirit that you are a child of God. My dear Lady, be not afraid to know yourself--yea, to know yourself as you are known. How soon, then, will you know your Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous! And why not this day why not this hour If you feel your want, I beseech the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ to look upon you now! O give Thy servant power to believe!