Wesley Corpus

Mon. 22.--The words on which my book opened at the society, in the evening, were these :--‘ Ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts. Your words have been stout against me, saith the Lord. But ye say, What have we spoken so much against thee ? Ye have said, It is vain to serve God! And what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance?” Mal. iii, 7, 13. Wed. 24.--I read over, and partly transcribed, Bishop Bull’s Harmonia Apostolica. The position with which he sets out is this : “‘ That all good works, and not faith alone, are the necessarily previous condition of justification,” or the forgiveness of our sins. But in the middle of the treatise he asserts, “ That faith alone is the condition of justification :” “ For faith,” says he, “ referred to justification, means all inward and outward good works.” In the latter end, he affirms, “that there are two justifications ; and that only inward good works necessarily precede the former, but both inward and outward, the latter.” Sat. 27.--I rode to London, and enforced, in the evening, that solemn declaration of the great Apostle, “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid. Yea, we establish the law.” Sun. 28.--] showed in the morning at large, “* Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty ;”’ liberty from sin ; liberty to be, to do, and to suffer, according to the written word. At five I preached at Charles’ Square, to the largest congregation that, I believe, was ever seen there on, “Almost July, 1741.] REV. J WESLEY’S JOURNAL. 215 thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” As soon as I had done, [ quite lost my voice. But it was immediately restored, when I came to our little flock, with the blessing of the Gospel of peace; and I spent an hour and half in exhortation and prayer, without any hoarseness, faintness, or weariness. Jon. 29.--I preached in the morning, on, “ Ye are saved through faith.” In the afternoon I expounded, at Windsor, the story of the Pharisee and Publican. I spent the evening at Wycombe, and the next morning, Tuesday, 30, returned to Oxford.