Wesley Corpus

“But it is not so to me,” says the objector: “Why then should I leave it off?” I answer, First, To give an example to those to whom it is undeniably prejudicial. Secondly, That you may have the more wherewith to give bread to the hungry, and raiment to the naked. 15. “But I cannot leave it off; for it helps my health. Nothing else will agree with me.” I answer, First, Will nothing else agree with you? I know not how to believe that. I suppose your body is much of the same kind with that of your great-grandmother. And do you think nothing else agreed with her, or with any of her progenitors? What poor, puling, sickly things, must all the English then have been, till within these hundred years! But you know they were not so. Other things agreed with them; and why not with you? Secondly, If, in fact, nothing else will, if tea has already weakened your stomach, and impaired your digestion to such a degree, it has hurt you more than you are aware. It has prejudiced your health extremely. You have need to abhor it as deadly poison, and to renounce it from this very hour. So says a drinker of drams: “Nothing else will agree with me. Nothing else will raise my spirits. I can digest nothing without them.” Indeed! Is it so? Then touch no more, if you love your life. Thirdly, Suppose nothing else agrees with you at first; yet in a while many things will. When I first left off tea, I was half asleep all day long; my head ached from morning to night. I could not remember a question asked, even till I could return an answer; but in a week’s time all these inconveniences were gone, and have never returned since. Fourthly, I have not found one single exception yet; not one person in all England, with whom, after sufficient trial made, nothing else would agree. It is therefore well worth while for you to try again, if you have any true regard for your own health, or any compassion for those who are perishing all around you for want of the common necessaries of life. 16. If you are sincere in this plea, if you do not talk of CoNCERNING TEA.