RIMAN, and others.]

[Footnote 2: _Life of the Rev_. JOHN WESLEY _and of the Rev_. CHARLES
WESLEY, his brother, by the Rev. HENRY MOORE. 8vo. Lond. 1824. 2 vol.
Vol. I. p. 334. This interview was on the 28th of April, 1735.]

In consequence of this engagement of the Wesleys, the General deemed
it highly proper to visit their venerable and excellent parents at
Epworth, not only to confirm their consent, but to communicate to them
such information as should interest them strongly in every measure
which aimed at the instruction, civilization, and christianizing of
the natives of Georgia, from whom he and the new settlers had met so
kind a reception. A reference to this, gives me the opportunity of
introducing a letter from that aged minister, the Reverend Samuel
Wesley, written rather more than a year before, in which he mentions
the progress which he had made in a work that he was about to publish,
and acknowledges the obligations which he was under to the General for
kindnesses shown to himself and sons.[1]

[Footnote 1: This letter is not in the "_Memoirs of the Wesley
Family_," published by Dr. Adam Clarke in 1822; having been recently
discovered.]

Epworth, July 6, 1734.

Honored sir,

May I be admitted, while such crowds of our nobility and gentry are
pouring in their congratulations, to press with my poor mite of thanks
into the presence of one who so well deserves the title of UNIVERSAL
BENEFACTOR OF MANKIND. It is not only your valuable favors on many
accounts to my son, late of Westminster, and myself, when I was not a
little pressed in the world, nor your more extensive charity to the
poor prisoners; it is not these only that so much demand my warmest
acknowledgments, as your disinterested and immovable attachment to
your country, and your raising a new Colony, or rather a little world
of your own in the midst of wild woods and uncultivated deserts, where
men may live free and happy, if they are not hindered by their own
stupidity and folly, in spite of the unkindness of their brother
mortals.

I owe you, sir, besides this, some account of my little affairs since
the beginning of your expedition. Notwithstanding my own and my son's
violent illness, which held me half a year, and him above twelve
months, I have made a shift to get more than three parts in four of my
_Dissertations on Job_ printed off, and both the paper, printing, and
maps, hitherto, paid for. My son John at Oxford, now that his elder
b