Wesley Corpus

I preached at St. John’s, Wapping, at three, and at St. Bennett’s, Paul’s Wharf, in the evening. At these churches, likewise, I am to preach no more. At St. Antholin’s I preached on the Thursday following. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I had continual sorrow and heaviness in my heart: something of which I described, in the broken manner I was able, in the following letter to a friend :-- “O why is it, that so great, so wise, so holy a God will use such an instrument as me! Lord, ‘let the dead bury their dead!’ But wilt thou send the dead to raise the dead? Yea. thou sendest whom thou wil 70 REV. J. WESLEY’S JOURNAL. | [ May, 1738. send, and showest mercy by whom thou wilt show mercy! Amen! Be it then according to thy will! If thou speak the word, Judas shall cast out devils. | ‘“‘T feel what you say, (though not enough,) for 1 am under the same condemnation. I see that the whole law of God js holy, just and good. I know every thought, every temper of my soul, ought to bear God’s image and superscription. But how am I fallen from the glory of God! I feel that ‘I am sold under sin.” I know, that I too deserve nothing but wrath, being full of all abominations: and having no good thing in me, to atone for them, or to remove the wrath of God. All my works, my righteousness, my prayers, need an atonement for themselves. So that my mouth is stopped. I have nothing to plead. God is holy, I am unholy. God is a consuming fire: I am altogether a sinner, meet to be consumed. / “Yet I hear a voice (and is it not the voice of God?) saying, ‘ Believe and thou shalt be saved. He that believeth, is passed from death unto life. God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.’