Wesley Corpus

Maxfield, or you, took it to be any thing else, it was your own fault, not mine. And when ever you waked out of that dream, you ought not to have laid the blame of it upon me. It is true that joy is one part of ‘the fruit of the Spirit, of the kingdom of God within us. But this is first ‘righteousness, then ‘peace,’ and ‘joy in the Holy Ghost. It is true, farther, that if you love God with ‘all your heart, you may ‘rejoice evermore. Nay, it is true still farther, that many serious, humble, sober-minded believers, who do feel the love of God sometimes, and do then rejoice in God their Saviour, cannot be content with this; but pray continually, that he would enable them to love, and ‘rejoice in the Lord always.” And no fact under heaven is more undeniable, than that God does answer this prayer; that he does, for the sake of his Son, and through the power of his Spirit, enable one and another so to do. It is also a plain fact, that this power does commonly overshadow them in an instant; and that from that time they enjoy that inward and outward holiness, to which they were utter strangers before. Possibly you might be mistaken in this; perhaps you thought you had received what you had not. But pray do not measure all men by yourself; do not imagine you are the universal standard. If you deceived yourself, (which yet I do not affirm,) you should not infer that all others do. Many think they are justified, and are not; but we cannot infer, that none are justified. So neither, if many think they are ‘perfected in love,’ and are not, will it follow that none are so. Blessed be God, though we set an hundred enthusiasts 342 REv. J. wesLEY’s [Sept. 1768. aside, we are still ‘encompassed with a cloud of witnesses,” who have testified, and do testify, in life and in death, that perfection which I have taught these forty years I This per fection cannot be a delusion, unless the Bible be a delusion too; I mean, “loving God with all our heart, and our neigh bour as ourselves.’ I pin down all its opposers to this defini tion of it. No evasion l No shifting the question | Where is the delusion of this?