Wesley Corpus

MY DEAR BROTHER, -- That should be always upon your mind, to carry the gospel into new places. There is room still for enlarging our borders, particularly in Holderness. I am in doubt whether anything will much avail Sister Harrison till she takes the quicksilver and aqua sulphurata. But John Floyd [Floyd, then preacher at Birstall. See letter of March 15, 1777.] tells me elixir of vitriol does just as well as the aqua sulphurata. -- I am Your affectionate friend and brother. To his Niece Sarah Wesley MANCHESTER, March 31, 1781. MY DEAR SALLY, -- The expression of ‘eating and drinking unworthily’ has one, and only one, meaning affixed to it by St. Paul, who is the only inspired writer that uses that expression. He means by it that particular sin of which the Corinthians were then guilty -- the snatching one before another his own supper, so that one was hungry and another was drunken. Now, it is certain you are in no danger of this any more than of committing murder. Deadness, coldness, wandering thoughts of various kinds are totally distinct from it. And now, when the worst of these occur, you may answer with pious Kempis, ‘Go, go, thou unclean spirit. These are not my thoughts but thine, and thou shalt answer for them to God.’ [Imitation, 111. vi.] God is now aiming, in all His dealings with you, to bring you to a knowledge of yourself as one in whom by nature dwells no good thing. And this He is particularly pursuing when you approach His Table. Were He to give you at that time remarkable joy or sweetness, it would not answer His design; neither were He to give you much contrition and brokenness of heart. Therefore He leaves you in great measure to your own dull, unfeeling heart, that you may know yourself in order to know Him. But nevertheless this is the way; walk thou in it, and in due time you shall reap if you faint not.