Wesley Corpus

Three things, above all, permit me, even me, to press upon you, with all the earnestness of love First, With regard to your doctrine, that ye purge out from among you, the leaven of Antinomianism, wherewith you are so deeply infected, and no longer “ make void the Law through faith.” Secondly, With regard to your discipline, that ye “ call no man Rabbi, Master,” Lord of your faith, “ upon earth.” Subordination, I know, is needful; and I can show you such a subordination, as in fact answers all Christian purposes, and is yet as widely distant from that among you, as the heavens are from the earth. Thirdly, » With regard to your practice, that ye renounce all craft, cunning, subtlety, dissimulation ; wisdom, falsely so called ; that ye put away all disguise, all guile out of your mouth; that in all “ simplicity and godly sincerity” ye “have your conversation in this world;” that ye use “ oreat plainness of speech” to all, whatever ye suffer thereby ; seeking only, “by manifestation of the truth,” to “ commend” yourselves « to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” Sune 24, 1744. JOURNAL.--No. V. Sunpay, September 6, 1741.---Observing some who were beginning to use their liberty as a cloak for licentiousness, I enforced, in the morning, those words of St. Paul, (worthy to be written in the heart of every believer,) “ All things are lawful for me; but all things are not expedient ;” and, in the evening, that necessary advice of our Lord, «That men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” Mon. '7.--I visited a young man in St. Thomas’s Hospital, who, in strong pain, was praising God continually. At the desire of many of the patients, I spent a short time with them in exhortation and prayer. O what a harvest might there be, if any lover of souls, who has time upon his hands, would constantly attend these places of distress, and, with tenderness and meekness of wisdom, instruct and exhort those on whom God has laid his hands, to know and improve the day of their visitation ! Wed. 9.--I expounded in Greyhound-lane, Whitechapel, part of the one hundred and seventh psalm. And they did rejoice whom “the Lord had redeemed, and delivered from the hand of the enemy.”