“REVEREND AND DEAR SIR,--Do you ask what I have been about? I answer, preaching Christ wherever a door has been opened to me. Sometimes I have cast a handful of seed on your ground; and should it ever come to a harvest you are welcome to it: it will become Jesus’s property at last. What melancholy consequences from late productions! They forbid me to be any longer an idle hearer or a careless reader. I have been obliged, from conscience, to make a stand against dear Mr. Fletcher’s groundless arguments and most bitter invectives.[171] Many things, he has said, are a proper antidote applied wrong, and to improper objects, and thereby become poison, whereas they might have been a healing medicine. But I must say no more on this subject; I am writing to one who will give it little attention. “Dr. Owen’s ‘Death of Death’ has been my favourite study of late; and, in consequence of embracing the doctrine therein contained, I must agree to disagree with Mr. Fletcher’s thoughts, and dear Mr. Wesley’s _friendly pen_. Excuse my frank acknowledgments, and give me leave to differ and love. God bless you to your latest period, and make your last days your best! So prays, reverend and dear sir, yours most respectfully and affectionately, in our dear Lord Jesus, “CORNELIUS WINTER.”[172] From Trevecca, Wesley proceeded to Bristol, and here, and in the neighbourhood, he employed the next seven weeks. In Bristol itself, he “visited the whole society from house to house, taking them from west to east.” He not unfrequently preached in the open air, and strikingly remarks: “to this day field preaching is a cross to me; but I know my commission, and see no other way of preaching the gospel to every creature.” The children at Kingswood, and at Miss Owen’s school at Publow, were almost all converted. He writes: “I suppose such a visitation of children has not been known in England these hundred years!”[173] “Publow is now what Leytonstone was once. Here is a family indeed. Such mistresses, and such a company of children, as I believe all England cannot parallel!” Leaving Bristol on October 5, and preaching on his way at Shaftesbury, Salisbury, Winchester, and Portsmouth, he came to London on October 10. He had been seven months from home, if indeed he had a home! and yet, after spending only one day in London, he again set out on his usual preaching tour in the counties of Bedford and Northampton. Returning to London, where he spent another day, he started on his visitation in Oxfordshire. Returning again to London, and again spending a single day, he went off, on October 26, to Norfolk, where he employed a fortnight. Except making a journey into Kent, and another to Hertfordshire, the remainder of the year was passed in the metropolis.