1755 JAMES HERVEY. Important Methodist Manuscript by Member of the Holy Club with John & Charles Wesley

A wonderful original section of original manuscript, with corrections, of one of James Hervey's most influential works, i.e. Theron and Aspasio, or a series of Letters upon the most important and interesting Subjects. 

James Hervey [1714-1758] was a member of the Holy Club at Oxford, along with his friends and sometime theological nemeses, John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield. He emerged from Oxford as a significant voice of the Great Awakening, though ending up in the Calvinist camp of the movement with Whitefield, and remaining within the Anglican church. 

His Meditations and Contemplations were in constant print for nearly 150 years. But it was his 1755 production of Theron and Aspasio that brought him into the theological spotlight. Whitefield and his long-time supporter, Selina, Countess of Huntingdon [to whom he dedicated the works] both felt it tended toward antinomianism. The work was replied to by John Wesley in print and essentially echoed the Marrow Controversy happening at the same time in Scotland. It is still considered a spiritual classic by those of the Marrow school.

The present manuscript is from Letter XII and reflects what must be a near final draft of the work with only minor corrections from the text here to the final, i.e. the replacement of the word "trust" in this manuscript with "hope" in the final at line 6, etc. The footnote manuscript on the rear is present in Hervey's final printed version as well.