Wesley Corpus

And his devout soul, always burning with love and zeal, led him to intermingle prayer with all he said. Meanwhile his manner was so solemn, and at the same time so mild and insinuating, that it was hardly pos sible for any who had the happiness of being in his company not to be struck with awe and charmed with love, as if in the presence of an angel or departed spirit. Indeed I frequently thought, while attending to his heavenly discourse and divine spirit, that he was so different from, and superior to, the gene rality of mankind, as to look more like Moses or Elijah, or some Prophet or Apostle come again from the dead, than a mortal man dwelling in a house of clay. It is true, his weak and long afflicted body proclaimed him to be human. But the graces which so eminently filled and adorned his soul, manifested him to be divine. And long before his happy spirit returned to God that gave it, that which was human seemed in a great measure to be “swallowed up of life.” O what a loss did Trevecka sustain, what an irreparable loss, when he left it ! 12. “But why then did he leave it? Why did he give up an office, for which he was so perfectly well qualified? which he executed so entirely to the satisfaction of all the parties wherewith he was concerned, and in which it had pleased God to give so manifest a blessing to his labours? Perhaps it would be better, in tenderness to some persons, eminent for piety and usefulness, to let that matter remain still under the veil which forgiving love has cast over it. But if it be thought that justice to his character, and to the cause which from that time he so warmly espoused and so ably defended, requires some light to be cast upon it, it may be the most inoffensive way to do it in his own words.” It will be proper to observe here, for the better understand ing of the following letter, that some time before Mr. Fletcher quitted Trevecka, Mr. Benson had been discharged from his office there; not for any defect of learning or piety, or any fault found with his behaviour; but wholly and solely because he did not believe the doctrine of absolute predestination. 13.