Wesley Corpus

I immediately removed to Hernhuth. After I had been here a quarter | of a year, the Count preached one day, upon the nature of sanctification. I found I had not experienced what he described, and was greatly terrified. I went to my cousin Wensel, who advised me to read over the third, fourth, and fifth chapters of the Epistle to the Romans. I did so. I had read them a hundred times before, yet now they appeared quite new, and gave me such a sight of God’s justifying the ungodly, as I never had before. On Sunday I went to church at Bertholdsdorf; and whiie we were singing those words, Wir glauben auch in Jesum Christ,--' We believe also in Jesus Christ,--I clearly saw him as my Saviour. 1 wanted immediately to be alone, and to pour out my heart before him. My soul was filled with thankfulness; and with a still, soft, quiet joy, such as it is impossible to express. I had full assurance that ‘my Beloved’ was ‘ mine, and I’ was ‘ his ;’ which has never ceased to this day. I see by a clear light what is pleasing to him, and I do it continually in love. I receive daily from him peace and joy ; and I have nothing to do but to praise him.” The most material part of Davin ScuNneIpER’s account was this :-- * Both my father and mother feared God, and carefully instructed me n the Holy Scriptures. I was, from a child, earnestly desirous to follow their instructions, and more so after my father’s death. Yet as I grew up, many sins got the dominion over me; of which God began to give me a sense, by the preaching of Pastor Steinmetz; who, speaking one day of drunkenness, to which I was then addicted, I was so grieved and ashamed, that for several days I could not bear to look any one in the face. It pleased God afterward to give me, though not all at once, a sense of my other both outward and inward sins. And before the time of my coming out of Moravia, I knew that my sins were forgiven. Yet I cannot fix or any particular time when I knew this first. For I did not clearly know if ut once: God having always done every thing in my soul by degrees.