To Mary (Goldhawk/Vazeille) Wesley (April 9, 1759)

https://wesleyworks.ecdsdev.org/letters/1759-04-09-ToMaryWesley

To Mary (Goldhawk/Vazeille) Wesley Grimsby
April 9, 1759

My Dear Molly,

I must write once more. Then, if I hear nothing from you, I have done.

Above a year ago, while I suspected nothing less, you opened my bureau and took out many of my letters and papers. Mr. Blackwell advised me, before you, if you refused to restore them, to send that instant for a smith and break open your bureau and take my own, to prevent which you restored them. But it was not long before you robbed me again, and showed my private letters to more than twenty different persons on purpose to make them have an ill opinion of me. For the same end you spoke much evil of me while I was several hundred miles off.

1JW defines 'evil-speaking' as 'speaking evil of an absent person' in Sermon 49, 'The Cure of Evil-speaking' , §1, 2:252 in this edn.

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Your pretence was that I conversed with sisters Ryan and Crosby.

2I.e, his correspondence with Sarah Ryan and Sarah Crosby

I know it was only a pretence, and told your friends the humouring you herein would leave matters just where they were. I knew giving a person drink would not cure a dropsy.

3'Dropsy' was the term for swelling of bodily tissue due to accumulating liquid (i.e., an edema); thus, JW is saying that you do not cure a problem by giving in to it.

However, at their instance I made the experiment. I broke off all correspondence with them, whether by speaking or writing.

4Indeed, there is no evidence of correspondence between JW and Crosby or Ryan after Dec. 1758, until the mid 1760s.

For a while, having gained your point, you was in a good humour. Afterwards it was just as I said. You robbed me again. And your sin (as before) carried its own punishment, for the papers you had stole harrowed up your soul and tore your poor fretful spirit in pieces.

Notwithstanding this, you wrote me two loving letters.

5These letters have not survived, because Mary requested JW to destroy her letters after he received them.

(I hope, not with a design of reading them to other people; which I shall not suspect if you assure me you have not read or shown them in part or in whole to any one.) So that I was a little surprised when at our meeting in Colchester I found you thoroughly out of humour.

6JW was in Colchester on Mar. 19, 1759, though his Journal makes no mention of Mary's presence there; see 21:179 in this edn.

It really seemed as if you was heartily vexed by the papers you had taken, and so were resolved to have it out with me. Accordingly you could not refrain from throwing squibs

7'Squibs': broken firecrackers, a term used to describe caustic conversational insults.

at me even in company, and from speaking with such keenness when we were alone as I think no wife ought to speak to an husband— such as I apprehend you could not have used decently to any but Noah Vazeille.

8Mary's son by her first husband, who would be 12 years old at the time.

Perhaps you may now take the greater liberty, because, having stripped me of all my papers, you imagine it is now absolutely impossible for me to justify myself. But you are under a mistake. To all that know me, my word is a sufficient justification. And if anything more is needful, I know One that is able to say to the grave, 'Give back!' Yea, and if he say it to jealousy, cruel as the grave, it shall hear and obey his voice.

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Wishing you the blessing which you now want above any other, namely, unfeigned and deep repentance, I remain,

Your much injured yet still affectionate husband,
John Wesley

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Entry Title: To Mary (Goldhawk/Vazeille) Wesley (April 9, 1759)

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