The details of this period of two years and a quarter in Wesley’s history are few. His life at Epworth and Wroote was doubtless the ordinary every-day sort of life of an earnest country parish clergyman. Fortunately, one of his sermons, preached during the time that he was his father’s curate, has been preserved, and is important as showing how, from the very commencement of his ministry, he rigidly adhered to the principle of preaching the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The text is 2 Corinthians ii. 17, and the subject of the sermon is that of “corrupting the word of God.” Among corrupters he notices:—1. Those who introduce “into it human mixtures, and blend with the oracles of God impure dreams, fit only for the mouth of the devil.” 2. Those who mix it “with false interpretations.” 3. Those who do not add to it but take from it, “washing their hands of stubborn texts, that will not bend to their purposes, or that too plainly touch upon the reigning vices of the places where they live.” Those who do not corrupt the word of God “preach it genuine and unmixed,” unimpaired and in all its fulness. “They speak with plainness and boldness, and are not concerned to palliate their doctrine to reconcile it to the tastes of men. They will not, they dare not, soften a threatening so as to prejudice its strength; neither represent sin in such mild colours as to impair its native blackness.”[63] Here we have Wesley, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, displaying the same conscientious fidelity and unflinching boldness, which so strikingly characterized the whole of his future ministry. In July, 1728, Wesley repaired to Oxford, where, on Sunday, September 22, he was ordained priest by Dr. Potter, who had ordained him deacon in 1725. Nine days afterwards, he returned to his curacy at Wroote, where, as already stated, he continued preaching and fulfilling other ministerial duties until November 22, 1729. What were the results of Wesley’s preaching? Wesley himself shall tell us. He writes: “I preached much, but saw no fruit of my labour. Indeed, it could not be that I should; for I neither laid the foundation of repentance, nor of believing the gospel; taking it for granted that all to whom I preached were believers, and that many of them needed no repentance.”[64] Let Christian ministers be admonished. Is it not a fact—a general, if not universal fact—that where these doctrines are not preached all other preaching is almost, if not altogether, useless? Christ’s ministry throughout was in perfect accordance with its commencement, when following John the Baptist, as His high herald, He cried, “Repent ye, and believe the gospel.” This kind of preaching is always useful. Would to God we had more of it at the present day!