Wesley Corpus

To the Author of the ‘Craftsman’ Source: The Letters of John Wesley (1745) Author: John Wesley --- [July] 1745. SIR, -- In your late paper of June 22 I find (among many to the same effect) these words: -- ‘Methodists place all merit in faith and grace, and none in good works. This unwarrantable strange sect of a religion, founded on madness and folly, hold that there is no justification by good works, but by faith and grace only. They hereby banish that divine part of our constitution, reason; and cut off the most essential recommendation to heaven, virtue. ‘Men who are far gone in their mad principles of religion suspend the hand of industry, become inactive, and leave all to Providence, without exercising either their heads or hands. ‘The doctrine of Regeneration is essential with political Methodists; who are now regenerated, place all merit in faith, and have thrown good works aside.’ I am pressed by those to whose judgment I pay great regard to take some notice of these assertions; and the rather because you sometimes seem as if you thought the Christian institution was of God. Now, if you really think so, or if you desire that any man should believe you do, you must not talk so ludicrously of Regeneration; for it is an essential doctrine of Christianity. And you may probably have heard, or even read in former years, that it was the Author of this institution who said, ‘Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ This He represents as the only possible entrance into the experimental knowledge of that religion, which is not founded (whatever you may suppose) on either madness or folly, but on the inmost nature of things, the nature of God and man, and the immutable relations between them. By this religion we do not banish reason, but exalt it to its utmost perfection; this being in every point consistent therewith, and in every step guided thereby.