This final sermon is again one which Charles copied from his brother's MS during the first leg of his journey back to England in 1736 and like the other three (Sermons 20, 21, and 22, on Mark 12: 30; Luke 10: 42 and Proverbs 11: 30) is found in a hard-back volume of sermons now held at the John Rylands University Library of Manchester. 1 Charles records that John preached the sermon on several occasions, the first being at St Michael's [Oxford] in 1726. 2 On the right hand side of the page, however, is the entry 'St John's, October 23, 1737'. This is most likely a reference to Charles's preaching of the sermon. 3 There is no entry in the journal for that day.
There is little indication in the MS itself that Charles has made any major changes to his brother's form of the sermon, and since John's copy has not survived the correlation cannot be checked. If Charles copied more or less exactly what he found it was presumably because he agreed with it, and hence the sermon may be taken as an indication of his views on the question of angelic intervention no less than John's. Certainly he was ready to see the work of such agents in his own ministry. For example, the journal entry for 10 February 1748 includes the words
I observed the man who had knocked down J. Healey striking him on the face with his club; cried to him to stop, which drew him upon me, and probably saved our brother's life, whom another blow might have dispatched. They had gathered against our coming great heaps of stones, one of which was sufficient to beat out our brains. How we escaped them, God only knows, and our guardian angels. I had no apprehension of their hurting me, even when one struck me on the back with a large stone, which took away my breath. 4
And again for 19 July of the same year he wrote
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