Wesley Corpus

To Gilbert Boyce Date: BANDON, May 22, 1750. 'Tis no wonder that young and unlearned preachers use some improper expressions. I trust, upon friendly advice, they will lay them aside. And as they grow in years they will increase in knowledge. I have neither inclination nor time to draw the saw of controversy. But a few here remarks I would make in order to our understanding and (I hope) loving one another the better. You think the mode of baptism is 'necessary to salvation': I deny that even baptism itself is so; if it were, every Quaker must be damned which I can in no wise believe. I hold nothing to be (strictly speaking) necessary to salvation but the mind which was in Christ. If I did not think you had a measure of this, I could one love you as an heathen man or a publican. They who believe with the faith working by love are God's children. I don't wonder that God permits (not causes) smaller evils among these when I observe far greater evils among them; for sin is an infinitely greater evil than ignorance. I do not conceive that unity in the outward modes of worship is so necessary among the children of God that they cannot be children of God without it, although I once thought it was.