To the Rev. Charles Wesley

https://wesleyworks.ecdsdev.org/letters/Letter-to-CW17641231

405 To the Rev. Charles Wesley London
December 31, 1764

[[Dear Brother,]] 406

Pray tell Thomas Lewis I believe on I spoke to yesterday will make us a good housekeeper. She is selling off her things, and can come in two or three weeks.

John Matthews sent for me between 2 and 3 on Friday morning.

1 John Matthews, husband of JW's step-daughter Jeanne (Vazeille), had been dying of consumption since at least August; see JW, Journal, Aug. 27, 1764, 21:487 in this edn.

One had a little before asked him how he found himself, and he answered, 'The Lord protects, for ever near.' When I came, he was perfectly sensible. I began to pray at three, and before I had spoken many words his soul was set at liberty, without a groan. Here is a subject for y<our pen.

2There is a hole in the paper and the words in brackets are supplied.

> He has had 'the witness', in my sense, for several months—that is, he knew he was in the favour of God, and had no doubt of going to heaven.

3 Charles Wesley did in fact write a manuscript poem 'On the Death of Mr. John Matthews, Dec. 28, 1764', surviving in MARC, MA 1977/583/20. A transcription is available in S T Kimbrough, Jr., and Oliver Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley (Nashville, 1992), 3:335-37 (or on the CSWT website; see p. xv above).

I hope Goodwin is above three-quarters printed.

4I.e., JW's extract of John Goodwin's Treatise on Justification.

You know doctors differ. I could trust Dr. Turner as well as any.

5 JW had recommended Dr. Turner to his wife in a letter of July 10, 1756.

I shall say a word to the preachers in Ireland. I really thought Mark Davis had had more wit and more modesty.

I do not yet find anything on the atonement fit for a deist. Pray inquire of your learned friends.

My love to Sally.
[[Adieu.]]

I have sent you by Miss Billo the Preface to Goodwin and the Appeals. You will English the Latin verses, and produce the nearest and correctest edition of them which has ever appeared.

6Cf. JW to CW, Dec. 7, 1764. There is no evidence that CW prepared the English translations requested at this time. Only the Earnest Appeal was issued in a new edition in 1765, and there was no English translation provided for the Latin verse.

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