Wesley Corpus

We are not very solicitous as to the credit or the use of any particular set of phrases. Only let men be humbled as repenting criminals at the Redeemer's feet; let them rely as devoted pensioners on his precious merits; and they are undoubtedly in the way to a blissful immortality.” (Dialogues, vol. i., p. 43. Dublin edition.) DUBLIN, April 5, 1762. To whEREIN ALL THAT 1s PERson AL, IN LETTERs JUST TURL1s HEn, UNDER THE NAME of THE REv. MR. HERVEY, 1s ANswen ED. 1. PERHAPs I should not have submitted, at least not so soon, to the importunity of my friends, who have long been soliciting me to abridge and publish the ensuing treatise, had not some warm people published a tract, entitled, “The Scrip ture Doctrine of Imputed Righteousness Defended.” I then judged it absolutely incumbent upon me to publish the real Scripture doctrine. And this I believed I could not either draw up or defend better than I found it done to my hands by one who, at the time he wrote this book, was a firm and zealous Calvinist. This enabled him to confirm what he advanced by such authorities, as well from Calvin himself, as from his most eminent followers, as I could not have done, nor any who had not been long and critically versed in their writings. 2. A greater difficulty was, to know what notice I ought to take of Mr. Hervey’s treatise, wrote, as the Leeds publisher says, with a “becoming and well-tempered tartness.” The case was peculiar. My acquaintance with Mr. Hervey com menced about thirty years ago, when I was a Fellow, and he was a Commoner, of Lincoln College in Oxford. At my request he was permitted, as was Mr. Whitefield some time after, to make one of a little company who used to spend the evenings together, in reading the Holy Scriptures. And I rejoiced in having many opportunities of assisting him both in his studies and in his Christian warfare; which he acknowledged in very strong terms, by a letter now in my hands, wrote not long after the publication of his “Medita tions among the Tombs.” In my answer to this, I told him frankly, there were one or two passages in that book, which, if I had seen before it was printed, I should have advised him not to insert.