Wesley Corpus

“We are always,’ says he, “to resist the devil, to quench all his fiery darts, and to perfect holiness in the fear of God. We are to be built up in Christ, until we come to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.’ “But how does this agree with his asserting, “our natural state doth remain, in a measure, with all its corrupt principles and practices, as long as we live in the present world? You may as well wash a Blackamoor white, as purge the flesh from its evillusts. It will lust against the Spirit in the best saints upon earth.” How then am I to come “to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ?’ Is there a reconciliation between the ‘fulness of Christ’ in a believer, and all his ‘corrupt principles and practices?’ Is it thus, that the strong man armed is to be cast out, with the spoiling of his goods? Does he tell me, I am to quench all ‘the fiery darts of the devil;’ and in the same breath that I ‘may as well wash Nov. 1767.] JOURNAL, 305 a Blackamoor white;’ that I ‘can do all things through Christ strengthening me;’ and yet, that the flesh shall never be purged from its evil lusts; no, not in the best saints on earth, so long as they live in the present world? What a wonderful communion is here between light and darkness! What strange fellowship between Christ and Belial | “What can we infer from hence, but that Mr. Marshall’s book, containing so much poison mixed with food, is an exceeding dangerous one, and not fit to be recommended to any but experienced Christians?” The following letter is of a very different kind:-- “I was yesterday led to hear what God would say to me by your mouth. You exhorted us to ‘strive to enter in at the strait gate.” I am willing so to do. But I find one chief part of my striving must be, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to instruct the ignorant, to visit the sick and such as are in prison, bound in misery and iron. “But if you purge out all who scorn such practices, or at least are not found in them, how many will remain in your society?