Wesley Corpus

If they have called thc Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household !” Yet I cannot but remind considerate men, in how remarkable a manner the wisdom of God has for many years guarded against this pretence, with respect to my brother and me in particular. Scarce any two men in Great Britain, of our rank, have been so held out, as it were, to all the world; especially of those who from their childhood had always loved and studiously sought retirement. And I had procured what I sought; I was quite safe, as I supposed, in a little country town, when I was required to return to Oxford, without delay, to take the charge of some young gentlemen, by Dr. Morley, the only man then in England to whom I could deny nothing. From that time both my bro ther and I (utterly against our will) came to be more and more observed and known, till we were more spoken of, than perhaps * “A cure of souls.”--EDIT. two so inconsiderable persons ever were before in the nation. To make us more public still, as honest madmen at least, by a strange concurrence of providences, overturning all our preced ing resolutions, we were hurried away to America. However, at our return from thence, we were resolved to retire out of the world at once; being sated with noise, hurry, and fatigue, and seeking nothing but to be at rest. Indeed, for a long season, the greatest pleasure I had desired on this side eternity was, Tacitum sylvas inter reptare salubres, Quaerentem quicquid dignum sapiente bonoque." And we had attained our desire. We wanted nothing. We looked for nothing more in this world when we were dragged out again, by earnest importunity, to preach at one place, and another, and another, and so carried on, we knew not how, without any design but the general one of saving souls, into a situation, which, had it been named to us at first, would have appeared far worse than death. 19. What a surprising apparatus of Providence was here ! And what stronger demonstrations could have been given, of men’s acting from a zeal for God, whether it were “according to knowledge” or no?