Wesley Corpus

May, 1738. ] REV. J. WESLEY’S JOURNAL. 71 both in public and in private, and read, with the Scriptures, several other books of religion, especially comments on the New Testament. Yet I had not all this while so much as a notion of inward holiness; nay, went on habitually and, for the most part, very contentedly, in some or other known sin: indeed, with some intermission and short struggles, especially before and after the holy communion, which I was obliged to receive thrice a year. I cannot well tell what I hoped to be saved by now, when I was continually sinning against that little light I had ; unless by those transient fits of what many divines taught me to call repentance. 4, When I was about twenty-two, my father pressed me to enter into holy orders. At the same time, the providence of God directing me to Kempis’s “Christian Pattern,” I began to see, that true religion was seated in the heart, and that God’s Law extended to all our thoughts as well as words and actions. I was, however, very angry at Kempis, for being too strict ; though I read him only in Dean Stanhope’s translation. Yet I had frequently much sensible comfort in reading him, such as | was an utter stranger to before: and meeting likewise with a religious friend, which I never had till now, I began to alter the whole form of my conversation, and to set in earnest upon a new life. I set apart an hour or two a day for religious retirement. I communicated every week. I watched.against all sin, whether in word or deed. I began to aim at, and pray for, inward holiness. So that now, ‘ doing so much, and living so good a life,” I doubted not but I was a good Christian.