Wesley Corpus

DUBLIN, July 20, 1771. MY DEAR SISTER,--For your own satisfaction I send you this [See letter of July 10.]; but I wish you would not show it before the Conference. If the Calvinists do not or will not understand me, I understand myself. And I do not contradict anything which I have written within these thirty years. You understand me right, and express more at large the very thing I mean. I know not that any one could express it more justly in the same number of words. Poor Mr. Shirley's triumph will be short. Peace be with your spirit!--My dear sister, adieu! To Miss Bishop, Near Lady Huntingdon's Chapel, Bath. To his Brother Charles KINGSWOOD, August 3, 1771. DEAR BROTHER,--I will not throw away T. Rankin on the people of London. He shall go where they know the value of him. [Rankin had been in London; he now went to Cornwall West.] We cannot put out what we never put in. I do not use the word merit. [See sect. 6 in letter of July 10.] I never did. I never did, neither do now, contend for the use of it. But I ask you or any other a plain question; and do not cry 'Murder,' but give me an answer: What is the difference between merere and 'to deserve' or between 'deserving' and meritum I say still, I cannot tell. Can you Can Mr. Shirley or any man living In asking this question, I neither plead for merit nor against it. I have nothing to do with it. I have declared a thousand times there is no goodness in man till he is justified; no merit either before or after: that is, taking the word in its proper sense; for in a loose sense meritorious means no more than rewardable. As to Reprobation, seeing they have drawn the sword, I throw away the scabbard. I send you a specimen. Let fifteen hundred of them be printed as soon as you please. [A Defence of the Minute of Conference (1770) relating to Calvinism. See Green's Bibliography, No. 273; and letters of July 10 and 20. ] Nothing was ever yet expended out of the Yearly Subscription without being immediately set down by the secretary. I never took a shilling from that fund yet. What you advise with regard to our behaviour toward opposers exactly agrees with my sentiments.