“Could you, think you, live upon the income of your fellowship? If you can, do. The trustees are indeed very willing to support you, and they take it ill that anybody should say you have been too expensive. But the Bishop of London (as I have heard), and some others, have been offended at your expenses. And not indeed altogether without reason, because you declared at your leaving England that you should want scarcely anything. I just give you these hints. Pray for direction, and then act as you judge best. “Charles is so reserved: I know little about him: he neither writes to me, nor comes to see me: what he intends is best known to himself. Mr. Hutton’s family go on exceedingly well. Your friend Mr. Morgan (I hear) either has, or is about publishing a book, to prove that every one baptized with water is regenerate. All friends at Oxford go on well. Mr. Kinchin, Mr. Hutchins, Mr. Washington, Bell, Turney, Hervey, Watson, are all zealous. Mr. Atkinson labours under severe trials in Westmoreland; but is steady, and sincere, and an excellent Christian. Dick Smith is weak, but not utterly gone. Mr. Robson, and Grieves, are but indifferent: the latter is married to a widow, and teaching school at Northampton. Mr. Thompson, of Queen’s, has declared his resolution of following Christ. “Remember me to Mr. Wallis, Mark Hind, and the Davison family, Mrs. Gilbert Mears, Mr. Campbell, Mr. and Mrs. Burnside, Mr. and Mrs. Williamson. “Yours in Christ, “BENJAMIN INGHAM.” Wesley’s ideas of religion, at this period, may be gathered from the following extracts from a letter, dated “Savannah, March 28, 1737,” and addressed to “William Wogan, Esq., in Spring Gardens, London.”[182] “I entirely agree with you, that religion is love, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; that, as it is the happiest, so it is the cheerfulest thing in the world; that it is utterly inconsistent with moroseness, sourness, severity, and indeed with whatever is not according to the softness, sweetness, and gentleness of Christ Jesus. I believe it is equally contrary to all preciseness, stiffness, affectation, and unnecessary singularity. I allow, too, that prudence, as well as zeal, is of the utmost importance in the Christian life. But I do not yet see any possible case wherein trifling conversation can be an instance of it. In the following scriptures I take all such to be flatly forbidden: Matt. xii. 36; Eph. v. 4, and iv. 29; Col. iv. 6. “That I shall be laughed at for this, I know; so was my Master. I am not for a stern, austere manner of conversing. No: let all the cheerfulness of faith be there, all the joyfulness of hope, all the amiable sweetness—the winning easiness of love. If we must have art, ‘_Hic mihi erunt artes_.’” Again, in another letter, written to Mrs. Chapman a day later, he says:—