Wesley Corpus

A. No, not by half the Assistants. (1.) Who has sent me word, whether the other Preachers behave well or ill? (2) Who has visited all the classes and regulated the Bands quarterly? (3.) Love-feasts for the Bands have been neglected: Neither have persons been duly taken in and put out of the Bands. (4.) The societies are not half supplied with books; not even with those above-mentioned. O exert yourselves in this! Be not weary! Leave no stone unturned ! (5.) How few accounts have I had, either of remarkable deaths, or remarkable conver sions ! (6.) How few exact lists of the societies ! (7.) How few have met the married and single persons once a quarter I Q. 44. Are there any other advices which you would give the Assistants? A. Several. (1.) Take a regular catalogue of your societies, as they live in house-row. (2.) Leave your successor a particu lar account of the state of the Circuit. (3) See that every Band-Leader has the Rules of the Bands. (4.) Vigorously, but calmly, enforce the Rules concerning needless ornaments, drams, snuff, and tobacco. Give no Band-ticket to any man or woman who does not promise to leave them off (5.) As soon as there are four men or women believers in any place, put them into a Band. (6.) Suffer no love-feast to last above an hour and an half; and instantly stop all breaking the cake with one another. (7.) Warn all, from time to time, that none are to remove from one society to another without a certificate from the Assistant in these words: (Else he will not be received in other societies:) “A. B., the bearer, is amember of our society in C.: I believe he has sufficient cause for removing.” I beg every Assistant to remember this. (8.) Everywhere recommend decency and cleanliness: Cleanliness is next to godliness. (9.) Exhort all that were brought up in the Church, to continue therein. Set the example yourself; and immediately change every plan that would hinder their being at church at least two Sundays in four. Carefully avoid whatever has a tendency to separate men from the Church; and let all the servants in our preaching-houses go to church once on Sunday at least. Is there not a cause? Are we not unawares, by little and little, sliding into a separation from the Church?