“What shall I say of predestination? An everlasting purpose of God to deliver some from damnation, does, I suppose, exclude all from that deliverance who are not chosen. And if it was inevitably decreed from eternity that such a determinate part of mankind should be saved, and none beside them, a vast majority of the world were only born to eternal death, without so much as a possibility of avoiding it. How is this consistent with either the Divine justice or mercy? Is it merciful to ordain a creature to everlasting misery? Is it just to punish man for crimes which he could not but commit? That God should be the author of sin and injustice (which must, I think, be the consequence of maintaining this opinion), is a contradiction to the clearest ideas we have of the Divine nature and perfections.”[38] If the ideas of Wesley and his mother, on the way of attaining salvation, had been as scriptural as his ideas on general redemption, both would have been in a holier and happier frame of mind. Wesley’s religion already made him the subject of contemptuous sneers. Hence the following from his father:— “WROOTE, _August 2, 1725_. “DEAR SON,—If you be what you write I shall be happy. As to the gentlemen candidates you mention, does anybody think the devil is dead, or asleep, or that he has no agents left? Surely virtue can bear being laughed at. The Captain and Master endured something more for us before He entered into glory, and unless we track His steps, in vain do we hope to share that glory with Him. “Nought else but blessing from your loving father, “SAMUEL WESLEY.” Wesley was still in doubt in reference to several matters which had occurred to him during his late religious reading; and to relieve his doubts, his mother sent him some of the ablest letters she ever penned. The subjoined is taken from a long epistle now before us, and only part of which has heretofore been published:— “WROOTE, _August 18, 1725_. “DEAR JACKEY,—Divine faith is an assent to whatever God has revealed to us, because He has revealed it. And this is that virtue of faith which is one of the two conditions of our salvation by Jesus Christ. But this matter is so fully and accurately explained by Bishop Pearson (under ‘I Believe’) that I shall say no more of it.