Wesley Corpus

I hereby openly retract it, and ask pardon of God and you. To draw toward a conclusion: Whosoever they are that “despise me, and make no account of my labours,” I know that they are “not in vain in the Lord,” and that I have not “fought as one that beateth the air.” I still see (and I praise “the Father of Lights, from whom every good and perfect gift de scendeth”) a continual increase of pure religion and undefiled, of the love of God and man, of the “wisdom ” which is “pure and peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy, and of good fruits.” I see more and more of those “who before lived in a thorough contempt of God’s ordinances, and of all duties, now zealously discharging their duties to God and man, and walking in all his ordinances blameless.” A few indeed I have seen draw back to perdition, chiefly through a fear of being “righteous overmuch.” And here and there one has fallen into Calvinism, or turned aside to the Moravians. But, I doubt not, these “are in a better state” than they were before they heard us. Admit they are in error, yea, and die therein, yet who dares affirm they will perish everlastingly? But had they died in gross sin, we are sure they had fallen into “the fire that never shall be quenched.” I have now considered, as far as my time would permit, (not everything in your letter, whether of moment or no, but,) those points which I conceived to be of the greatest weight. That God may lead us both into all truth, and that we may not drop our love in the pursuit of it, is the con tinual prayer of, everend Sir, Your friend and servant for Christ’s sake, June 17, 1746. Let me not, I pray you, accept any man's person, neither let me give flattering titles unto man. For I know not to give flattering titles; in so doing, my Maker would soon take me away. Job xxxii. 21, 22. MY LoRD, 1.