Wesley Corpus

If with regard to yourself, it will be your fault if you do not employ it better. I do not say you will, but I am sure you may; and if you do not, it is your own sin, and your own shame. If with regard to others, how do you know that it will not be employed better? I trust it will. It cannot be denied that it often has, and that it always may be. And it is highly probable all who save anything from the best motive, will lay it out to the best purpose. 20. “As to example,” you say, “I have lately been without hopes of doing any good by it.” I suppose you mean, because so exceeding few will follow either your example or mine. I am sorry for it. This only gives me a fresh objection to this unwholesome, expensive food; viz., that it has too much hold on the hearts of them that use it; that, to use a scriptural phrase, they are “under the power of ” this trifle. If it be so, were there no other reason than this, they ought to throw it away at once; else they no more regard St. Paul than they do you or me; for his rule is home to the point: “All things are lawful for me; but I will not be brought under the power of amy.” Away with it then, however lawful, (that is, though it were wholesome as well as cheap,) if you are already brought “under the power of ” it. And the fewer they are who follow this rule, the greater reason there is that you should add one example more to those few. Though, blessed be God, they are not so few as you suppose. I have met with very many in London who use less of it than they had done for many years; and above an hundred who have plucked out the right eye and cast it from them, who wholly abstain from it. 21. You add, “But I am equally, yea, abundantly more, concerned to set an example in all Christian behaviour.” I grant it: This, therefore, “ought you to have done, and not to leave the other undone.” 22.