Wesley Corpus

Sun. 2'7.--I preached in Painswick at seven, on the spirit of fear and the Spirit of adoption. I went to church at ten, and heard a remarkable discourse, asserting, that we are justified by faith alone ; but that this faith, which is the previous condition of justification, is the complex of all Christian virtues, including all holiness and good works, in the very idea of it. Alas! how little is the difference between asserting, either, 1. That we are justified by works, which is Popery bare-faced ; (and, indeed, so gross, that the sober Papists, those of the Council of Trent in particular, are ashamed of it;) or, 2. That we are justified by faith and works, which is Popery refined or veiled; (but with so thin a veil, that every attentive observer must discern it is the same still;) or, 3. That we are justified by faith alone, but by such a faith as includes all good works. What a poor shift is this :--“‘I will not say, We are justified by works; nor yet by faith and works; because I have subscribed articles and homilies, which maintain just the contrary. No; I say, We are justified by faith alone ; but then by faith I mean works !”” When the afternoon service was ended at Runwick, I stood and cried to a vast multitude of people, “ Unto him that worketh not, but believeth, his faith is counted for righteousness.” I concluded the day on Hampton Common, by explaining, to a large congregation, the essential difference between the righteo isness of the law and the righteous ness of faith. Ce, ae anew | a‘. : \ 260 REV. J. WESLEY’S JOURNAL. [July, 1742