_To W―――― P――――, Esq._
_At my Tottenham-Court Bethel, Six in the Morning, December 30, 1766._
_My very dear Sir_,
THE _Christmas_ holiday season hath prevented my sending an immediate answer to your last kind letter. The order therein given shall be readily complied with, and the love therein expressed, returned, by praying for the writer’s whole self, and the honourable, christian, and ministerial circle with which they are at present happily surrounded with, _four Methodist parsons_. Honourable title! so long as attended with the cross. When fashionable, (and blessed be GOD there is not much danger of that) we will drop it. _Four Methodist parsons!_ enough (when JESUS says, Loose them and let them go) to set a whole kingdom on fire for GOD. I wish them prosperity in the name of the LORD. _I pre sequar etsi non passibus æquis._ Fy upon me, fy upon me, fifty-two years old last _Saturday_; and yet, O loving, ever-loving, altogether lovely JESUS, how little, yea how very little have I done and suffered for thee! Indeed and indeed, my dear and honoured friends, I am ashamed of myself: I blush and am confounded. To-morrow, GOD willing, and _Thursday_ also, with many hundreds more, I intend to take the sacrament upon it, that I will begin to begin to be a christian. Though I long to go to heaven to see my glorious Master, what a poor figure shall I make among the saints, confessors, and martyrs, that surround his throne, without some deeper signatures of his divine impress, without more fears of christian honour. Our truly noble mother in _Israel_, is come to _London_ full of them. _Crescit sub pondere virtus. _ She is come out of her cell, with her face shining again. Happy they who have the honour of her acquaintance! Highly honoured are those ministers, who have the honour of preaching for and serving her. Good and honest and dearly beloved Sir _C――――s_, and all your happy circle, male and female, I am persuaded are of my mind. O this single eye, this disinterested spirit, this freedom from worldly hopes and worldly fears, this flaming zeal, this daring to be singularly good, this holy laudable ambition to lead the van; O it is, what? an heaven upon earth! O for a plerophory of faith! To be filled with the Holy Ghost. This is the grand point. GOD be praised that you have it in view! All our lukewarmness, all our timidity, all our backwardness to do good, to spend and be spent for GOD, is all owing to our want of more of that faith, which is the inward, heart-felt, self-evident demonstration of things not seen. But whither am I going? Pardon me, good Sir: I keep you from better company. Praying that all (if you live to be fifty-two) may not be such dwarfs in the divine life as I am, I hasten to subscribe myself, most honoured friends,
Yours, &c. &c. &c. in JESUS,