Wesley Corpus

Secondly, Where is the trouble given, even when you are abroad, if they drink tea, and you fill your cup with milk and water? Thirdly, Whatever trouble is taken, is not for “insignifi cant me,” but for that poor man who is half-starved with cold and hunger; for that miserable woman who, while she is poisoning herself, wipes her mouth, and says she does no evil; who will not believe the poison will hurt her, because it does not (sensibly at least) hurt you. O throw it away! let her have one plea less for destroying her body, if not her soul, before the time ! 25. You object, farther, “It is my desire to be unknown. for any particularity, unless a peculiar love to the souls of those who are present.” And I hope, to the souls of the absent too; yea, and to their bodies also, in a due propor tion, that they may be healthy, and fed, and clothed, and warm, and may praise God for the consolation. 26. You subjoin : “When I had left it off for some months, I was continually puzzled with, Why, What, &c.; and I have seen no good effects, but impertinent questions and answers, and unedifying conversation about eating and drinking.” I answer, First, Those who were so uneasy about it, plainly showed that you touched the apple of their eye. Conse quently, these, of all others, ought to leave it off; for they are evidently “brought under the power of it.” Secondly, Those impertinent questions might have been cut short, by a very little steadiness and common sense. You need only have taken the method mentioned above, and they would have dropped in the midst. Thirdly, It is not strange you saw no good effects of leaving it off, where it was not left off at all. But you saw very bad effects of not leaving it off; viz., the adding sin to sin; the joining much unedifying conversation to wasteful, unhealthy self-indulgence. Fourthly, You need not go far to see many good effects of leaving it off: You may see them in me. I have reco vered thereby that healthy state of the whole nervous system, which I had in a great degree, and I almost thought irre coverably, lost for considerably more than twenty years.