Wesley Corpus

To James Hervey Date: LONDON, March 20, 1739. You say you cannot reconcile some parts of my behavior with the character I have long supported. No, nor ever will. Therefore I have disclaimed that character on every possible occasion. I told all in our ship, all at Savannah, all at Frederica, and that over and over, in express terms, 'I am not a Christian; I only follow after, if haply I may attain it.' When they urged my works and self-denial, I answered short, 'Though I give all my goods to feed the poor, and my body to be burned, I am nothing: for I have not charity; I do not love God with all my heart.' If they added, 'Nay, but you could not preach as you do, if you was not a Christian,' I again confronted them with St. Paul: 'Though I speak with the tongue of men and angels, and have not charity, I am nothing.' Most earnestly, therefore, both in public and private, did I inculcate this: 'Be not ye shaken, however I may fall; for the foundation standeth sure.' If you ask on what principle, then, I acted, it was this: A desire to be a Christian; and a conviction that, whatever I judge conducive thereto, that I am bound to do; wherever I judge I can best answer this end, thither it is my duty to go. On this principle I set out for America, on this I visited the Moravian Church, and on the same am I ready now (God being my helper) to go to Abyssinia or China, or whithersoever it shall please God by this conviction to call me. As to your advice that I should settle in college, I have no business there, having now no office and no pupils. And whether the other branch of your proposal be expedient for me, viz. 'To accept of a cure of souls,' it will be time enough to consider when one is offered to me.