To his Mother Date: LINCOLN COLLEGE, February 28, 1730. DEAR MOTHER, Two things in Bishop Taylor Taylor's Rules and Exercises of Holy Living, chap. iv., Of Christian Hope. The five acts of Hope: Means of Hope, and Remedies against Despair (ed. of 1700), pp. 191-5. See letter of June 18, 1725. I have been often thinking of since I writ last; one of which I like exceedingly, and the other not. That I dislike is his account of Hope, of which he speaks thus: 'Faith believes the revelations, Hope expects His promises; Faith gives our understandings to God, Hope our passions and affections; Faith is opposed to infidelity, Hope to despair.' In another place his words are: ' Faith differs from Hope in the extension of its object and the intension of its degree; Faith belongs to all things revealed, Hope only to things that are good, future, and concerning ourselves.' Now, to pass over less material points, doesn't this general objection seem to be against him, that he makes Hope a part or species of Faith, and consequently contained in it, as is every part in its whole Whereas, had it been so, St. Paul would have broken that universally received rule, never to set things in contradistinction to each other one of which is contained in the other. May we not, therefore, well infer that, whatever Hope is, it is certainly distinct from Faith as well as Charity, since one who, we know, understood the rules of speaking, contradistinguishes it from both

As Faith is distinguished from other species of assent, from Knowledge particularly, by the difference of the evidence it is built on, may we not find the same foundation for distinguishing Hope from Faith as well as from Knowledge Is not the evidence on which we build it less simple than that of Faith, and less demonstrative than the arguments that create Knowledge It seems to have one of its feet fixed on the Word of God, the other on our opinion of our own sincerity, and so to be a persuasion that we shall enjoy the good things of God, grounded on His promises made to sincere Christians, and on an opinion that we are sincere Christians ourselves. Agreeably to this, Bishop Taylor himself says in his Rules for Dying: ' We are to be curious of our duty and confident of the article of remission of sins, and the conclusion of those promises will be that we shall be full of hopes of a prosperous resurrection.' Every one, therefore, who inquires into the grounds of his own hope reasons in this manner: If God be true, and I am sincere, then I am to hope. But God is true, and I am sincere (there is the pinch): Therefore I am to hope.

What I so much like is his account of the pardon of sins, which is the clearest I ever met with: ' Pardon of sins in the gospel is sanctification. Christ came to take away our sins, by turning every one of us from our iniquities (Acts iii. 26). And there is not in the nature of the thing any expectation of pardon, or sign or signification of it, but so far as the thing itself discovers itself. As we hate sin, grow in grace, and arrive' at the state of holiness, which is also a state of repentance and imperfection, but yet of sincerity of heart and diligent endeavor; in the same degree we are to judge concerning the forgiveness of sins. For, indeed, that is the evangelical forgiveness, and it signifies our pardon, because it effects it, or rather it is in the nature of the thing, so that we are to inquire into no hidden records. Forgiveness of sins is not a secret sentence, a word, or a record, but it is a state of change effected upon us; and upon ourselves we are to look for it, to read it and understand it.' Holy Dying, chap. v. sect. 5. In all this he appears to steer in the middle road exactly, to give assurance of pardon to the penitent, but to no one else. Yesterday I had the offer of another curacy, The curacy eight miles from Oxford. Was this Stanton Harcourt Cary's Survey of England and Wales, 1784, shows the distance from Oxford to be eight miles by curving road, about seven direct. Richard Green, in John Wesley the Evangelist, p. 86, says it is 'probably Stanton Harcourt.' to continue a quarter or half a year, which I accepted with all my heart. The salary is thirty pounds a year, the church eight miles from Oxford; seven of which are, winter and summer, the best road in the country. So now I needn't sell my home, since it is at least as cheap to keep one as to hire one every week.

I have another piece of news to acquaint you with, which, as it is more strange, will, I hope, be equally agreeable. A little while ago Bob Kirkham Son of the Rev. Lionel Kirkham. See Journal, i. 23-7; Telford's, Life of Wesley, pp. 232-3. took a fancy into his head that he would lose no more time and waste no more money; in pursuance of which he first resolved to breakfast no longer on tea, next to drink no more ale in an evening, or however but enough to quench his thirst, then to read Greek or Latin from prayers in the morning till noon and from dinner till five at night. And how much may one imagine he executed of these resolutions Why, he has left off tea, struck off his drinking acquaintance to a man, given the hours above specified to Greek Testament and Hugo Grotius, The Dutch jurist and theologian (1583-1645). His Annotations on the Old and New Testaments appeared in 1641 6. and spent the evenings either by himself or with my brother and me. I am, dear mother, Your dutiful and affectionate Son. I don't despair of spending two days with you before Whitsuntide is over.