Wesley Corpus

Your affectionate friend and brother. To John Mason BRISTOL, October 3, 1789. MY DEAR BROTHER, -- If, as I am informed, Mr. Gregor is a lover of King George and the present Administration, I wish you would advise all our brethren that have votes to assist him in the ensuing election. -- I am Your affectionate friend and brother. To Mr. Mason, St. Austle's, Cornwall. To the Printer of the 'Bristol Gazette' [See letters of Sept. 25 and Oct. 12 (to Adam Clarke).] BRISTOL, October 3, 1789. SIR, -- I am much obliged to your last correspondent also for the candor with which he writes. 'Mr. Wesley,' he observes, 'had cautioned us against the use of hops on account of its poisonous quality. But the authority on which he grounds this is only an old obsolete Act of Parliament. He has not informed us of its mode of operation on the animal frame.' 'Tis very true. I leave that to the gentlemen of the Faculty, for many of whom I have an high respect. Meantime I declare my own judgment, grounded not only on the Act of Parliament, but first on my own experience with regard to the gravel or stone, and secondly on the opinion of all the physicians I have heard or read that spoke on the subject. I do not apprehend that we need recur either to 'the Elements of Chemistry' or to the College of Physicians on the head. I urge a plain matter of fact - 'that hops are pernicious.' I did not say to all (though perhaps they may more or less) but to those that are inclined to stone, gout, or scurvy. So I judge, because I feel it to myself if I drink it two or three days together; and because so I hear from many skillful physicians; and I read in their works. I cannot but return thanks to both your correspondents for their manner of writing, worthy of gentlemen. As to the gentleman brewer of Bath that challenges me to engage him for five hundred pounds, I presume he had taken a draught of his well-hopped beverage, or he would not have been so valiant. So I wish him well; and am, sir, Your humble servant. To Elizabeth Baker SARUM, October 5, 1789.