Wesley Corpus

But you say, ‘They hereby cut off the most essential recommendation to heaven, virtue.’ What virtue That of self-murder; that of casting their own infants to be devoured by beasts or wolves; that of dragging at their chariot-wheels those whose only crimes were the love of their parents, or children, or country These Roman virtues our religion does cut off; it leaves no place for them. And a reasonable Deist will allow that these are not ‘the most essential recommendation to heaven.’ But it is far from cutting off any sort, degree, or instance of genuine virtue; all which is contained in the love of God and man, producing every divine and amiable temper. And this love we suppose (according to the Christian scheme) to flow from a sense of God’s love to us; which sense and persuasion of God’s love to man in Christ Jesus, particularly applied, we term faith -- a thing you seem to be totally unacquainted with. For it is not the faith whereof we speak, unless it be a ‘faith working by love,’ a faith ‘zealous of good works,’ careful to maintain, nay, to excel in them. Nor do we acknowledge him to have one grain of faith who is not continually doing good, who is not willing ‘to spend and be spent in doing all good, as he has opportunity, to all men.’ Whoever, therefore, they are that ‘throw aside good works, that suspend’ (as you prettily phrase it) ‘the hand of industry, become inactive, and leave all to Providence, without exercising either their heads or hands,’ they are no more led into this by any doctrine of ours than by the writings of Paul of Tarsus.