Wesley Corpus

Do not be surprised, good Aspasia, when I assure you that I exceedingly rejoice at your other affliction. I am extremely glad to find you among those few who are yet concerned for the honor of their Master, and can't but congratulate you upon your wise choice. ' If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him.' I know there are in these last days many seduced by fair speeches 'to deny the Lord that bought them,' to affirm that He and the Father are not one, and that it is robbery to think Him equal with God. Indeed, the first reformers of the Christian Faith in this point (with whom Dr. Clarke [See letters of Dec. 6, 1726, and Sept. 24, 1753.] joins), only modestly asserted that the Church was bought with the blood of Christ, but not of God, i.e. not of 'the God who is over all, who is and was and is to come, the Almighty.' And it was many hundred years after, that Socinus roundly maintained that Christ never purchased any Church at all, nor 'gave His life a ransom for any man, all those phrases being purely metaphorical.' That any one had any hope of. outgoing him I never heard before; but surely those gentlemen who will prove them to be fictitious have a much better courage than even Socinus. Yet there is one step farther for these too -- to affirm the same of all the saints; and then Tindal's [Matthew Tindal (1657 - 1733), LL.D., the chief exponent of Deism, whose Christianity as Old as the Creation appeared in 1730.] arguments are ready to their hands.