“I have often wondered that men should be so vain as to amuse themselves with searching into the decrees of God, which no human wit can fathom, and do not rather employ their time and powers in working out their salvation. Such studies tend more to confound than to inform the understanding, and young people had better let them alone. But since I find you have some scruples concerning our article, Of Predestination, I will tell you my thoughts of the matter. If they satisfy not, you may desire your father’s direction, who is surely better qualified for a casuist than I. “The doctrine of predestination, as maintained by the rigid Calvinists, is very shocking, and ought to be abhorred, because it directly charges the most high God with being the author of sin. I think you reason well and justly against it; for it is certainly inconsistent with the justice and goodness of God to lay any man under either a physical or moral necessity of committing sin, and then to punish him for doing it. “I firmly believe that God, from eternity, has elected some to eternal life; but then I humbly conceive that this election is founded on His foreknowledge, according to Romans viii. 29, 30. Whom, in His eternal prescience, God saw would make a right use of their powers, and accept of offered mercy, He did predestinate and adopt for His children. And that they may be conformed to the image of His only Son, He calls them to Himself, through the preaching of the gospel, and, internally, by His Holy Spirit; which call they obeying, repenting of their sins and believing in the Lord Jesus, He justifies them, absolves them from the guilt of all their sins, and acknowledges them as just and righteous persons, through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ. And having thus justified, He receives them to glory—to heaven. “This is the sum of what I believe concerning predestination, which I think is agreeable to the analogy of faith; since it does in nowise derogate from the glory of God’s free grace, nor impair the liberty of man. Nor can it with more reason be supposed that the prescience of God is the cause that so many finally perish, than that one knowing the sun will rise to-morrow is the cause of its rising.” John Wesley substantially adopted his mother’s predestinarian views, as may be seen in his sermon on the text which she expounds in the foregoing letter; but his notions of that faith by which a sinner is justified were, at present, like those of his mother, vague and general, and far from being clear. The time for Wesley’s ordination was now approaching, and the money question again rose up like a spectre, and required attention. His father writes:— “BAWTRY, _September 1, 1725_.