Wesley Corpus

Benson, “it is what I will not attempt: But if I can suggest anything that will assist you therein, I shall think my little labour well bestowed. With this view I have been looking over many of his letters, and observe in them all, what I have a thousand times observed in his conversa tion and behaviour, the plainest marks of every Christian grace and virtue. “Perhaps if he followed his Master more closely in one thing than another, it was in humility. It is one branch of poverty of spirit (another word for humility) to think meanly of ourselves. As he certainly thought meanly of himself, both as a Christian, as a Preacher, and as a writer, I need not say how he shone in all those characters; but he knew not that he shone in any of them. How low an opinion he had of himself as a Christian, manifestly appears from his placing himself at the feet of all, and showing a continual desire to learn from every company he was in. He paid all due deference to the judgment of others, readily acknowledged whatever was good in them, and seemed to think himself the only person in whom there dwelt no excellency worth notice. Hence it was that he often wrote and spoke, as if he had not received that grace which he undoubtedly had received. And indeed he overlooked what he had attained, through the eager desire he had of higher and greater things. Many of his letters show how very meanly he thought of his own attain ments as a Christian; through the continually increasing views which he had of the divine purity, and of the high degree of conformity thereto which is attainable even in this world. “And however little he was in his own eyes as a Christian, he was equally so as a writer and a Preacher. In consequence of the mean opinion he had of his own abilities, he gladly offered what he wrote to be corrected by any friend, however inferior to himself. Thus in a letter, dated November 23, 1771, he says, ‘I have sent a letter of fifty pages upon Antinomianism. I beg, upon my bended knees, you would revise and correct it. I have followed my light, small as it is.