Wesley Corpus

The hearing from my dear Peggy at this critical time gives me a particular satisfaction. I wanted to know how you bore such a trial, a wound in the tenderest part. You have now a first proof that the God whom you serve is able to deliver you in every trial. You feel, and yet conquer. We conquer all when we can say, 'Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.' I hope you are delivered not only from repining with regard to her, but from reasoning with regard to yourself. You still see the more excellent way and are sensible of the advantages you enjoy. I allow some single women have fewer advantages for eternity than they might have in a married state. But, blessed be God, you have all the advantages which one can well conceive. You have affectionate, wise, and pious friends deeply experienced in the way of God. You have leisure and opportunity for every good work and for improvement in all holiness. O may you improve every advantage to the uttermost! And give more and more comfort to, my dear Peggy, Your ever affectionate brother. To Joseph Benson CORK, May 27, 1769, DEAR JOSEPH,--You have now (what you never had before) a clear, providential call to Oxford. [He entered at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, and kept some of his terms whilst Head Master at Trevecca.] If you keep a single eye and have courage and steadiness, you may be an instrument of much good. But you will tread on slippery ground, and the serious persons you mention may do you more hurt than many others. When I was at Oxford, I never was afraid of any but the almost Christians. If you give way to them and their prudence an hair's breadth, you will be removed from the hope of the gospel. If you are not moved, if you tread in the same steps which my brother and I did, you may be a means under God of raising another set of real Bible Christians. How long the world will suffer them (whether longer than they did us or not) is in God's hand. With regard to Kingswood School, I have one string more: if that breaks, I shall let it drop. I have borne the burthen one-and-twenty years; I have done what I could: now let someone else do more.--I am, dear Joseph,