Wesley Corpus

Perhaps, if you give another reading to Thoughts upon Dress, you will clearly see that both reason and religion are more deeply concerned than we are apt to imagine even in the trifling article of dress--trifling if compared with the weightier matters of the law, yet in itself of no small importance; and that, whether you consider yourself as an individual or as a member of a Christian society. Certainly Dr. Young can only mean, ' None is happy unless he thinks himself so'; and truly this is no great discovery. Is it any more than, ' None is happy unless he is so' If he means more than this, he means wrong, for we know the best man is the happiest; but if I thought myself the best man in the world, I should be very proud, and consequently not happy at all. To Thomas Rutherford LONDON, March 3, 1776. DEAR TOMMY,--I am glad you have a convenient lodging at Edinburgh. You should try all the little places round Glasgow as soon as you can preach abroad. Rd. Watkinson is as much called to preach as you or I. But is it any wonder his mouth should be shut when he is worn down with weakness and pain and the unkind censures of those he is among Some of the Calvinists stumbled in lately while I was preaching. 'Ay,' said one of them, 'poor man! He has quite lost his gift! ' Perhaps your Greenock critics might do the same. So they said of Hugh Saunderson. Those who will not conform to the Rules of our Society are no members of it. Therefore I require John Campbell, John Laird, and Peter Ferguson to take their choice one way or the other. If they will meet their class weekly, they are with us. If they will not, they put themselves from us. And if the rest of the Society cannot or will not bear the expense, our preachers shall trouble Greenock no more. But show them the reason of the thing in The Plain Account of the People called Methodists. After they have considered this, let them either join with us upon these terms or be our friends at a distance.