Wesley Corpus

7. In the midst of this you drew new matter of offence from my acquaintance with Mrs. Lefevre, a dove-like woman, full of faith and humble love and harmless as a little child. I should have rejoiced to converse with her frequently and largely; but for your sake I abstained. I did not often talk with her at all, and visited her but twice or thrice in two years. Notwithstanding which, though you sometimes said you thought her a good woman, yet at other times you did not scruple to say you 'questioned if I did not lie with her.' And afterward you seemed to make no question of it. 8. Some time after you took offence at my being so much with Mrs. Blackwell, and was 'sure she did me no good.' But this blew over, and you was often in a good humor for a week together, till October 1757. Sarah Ryan, the housekeeper at Bristol, then put a period to the quarrel between my brother and you. Meantime she asked me once and again, 'Sir, should I sit and hear Mrs. Wesley talk against you by the hour together' I said, 'Hear her, if you can thereby do her any good.' A while after, she came to me and said, 'Indeed, sir, I can bear it no longer. It would wound my own soul.' Immediately you was violently jealous of her, and required me not to speak or write to her. At the same time you insisted on the 'liberty of opening and reading all letters directed to me.' This you had often done before: but I still insisted on my own liberty of speaking and writing to whom I judged proper; and of seeing my own letters first, and letting you read only those I saw fit.