Wesley Corpus

If James Barry or Stephen Proctor [The preacher at Brecon] is faulty in the Article you mention, tell them of it, and I am persuaded they will mend. You will do well to remind them in particular of teaching the children and visiting the sick. I believe they will take it kindly.--I am Your affectionate brother. To Samuel Sparrow LONDON, December 28, 1773. DEAR SIR,--Upon the head of Authority we are quite agreed. Our guides are Scripture and reason. We agree, too, that preachers who ' relax our obligation to moral virtues, who decry holiness as filthy rags, who teach men that easy, palatable way to heaven, of faith without works,' cannot easily fail of having a multitude of hearers; and that therefore it is no wonder if vast numbers crowd Blackfriars church and the chapel at the Lock [William Romaine was Rector of St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, from 1766 to 1795. Martin Madan was Chaplain of the Lock Hospital, 1750-80; he published Thelyphthora, in favor of polygamy, in 1780]. There is also too ' just a ground for charging the preachers both there and at the Tabernacle with grievous want of charity.' For most of them flatly maintain all who do not believe as they believe are in a state of damnation, all who do not believe that absolute decree of election, which necessarily infers absolute reprobation. But none were induced to hear my brother and me or those connected with us by any such means as these: just the reverse. We set out upon two principles: (1) None go to heaven without holiness of heart and life; (2) whosoever follows after this (whatever his opinions be) is my 'brother and sister and mother.' And we have not swerved an hair’s breadth from either one or the other of these to this day.