Wesley Corpus

I had said, ‘In order to God's giving us faith and pardon, nothing is indispensably required but repentance’--that is, ‘conviction of sin, producing real desires and sincere resolutions of amendment.’ But you ‘apprehend that I am here in a great mistake’; that I give ‘a very partial account of repentance’; that I ought to 'include therein a sincere desire and purpose' to obey God. I do: I have said so expressly. And ‘living in obedience to God's will, when there is opportunity.’ Very well; but I here speak of what is indispensably required--that is, whether there is opportunity of actual obedience or no. ‘And a faith in God's mercies through Christ Jesus.’ A very great mistake indeed! -- my not including faith in that repentance which I say is indispensably required in order to faith! ‘(2) You make sinless perfection necessary after justification, in order to make us meet for glory.’ And who does not Indeed, men do not agree in the time. Some believe it is attained before death; some in the article of death; some in an after-state, in the Mystic or the Popish purgatory. But all writers whom I have ever seen till now (the Romish themselves not excepted) agree that we must be 'fully cleansed from all sin' before we can enter into glory. 3. After what has already been allowed, I cannot think it needful to dispute farther on the head of Justification. Rather suffer me to close this part of our debate by transcribing what I assent to from that clear recapitulation of your sentiments which you have given in pages 45 and 46: -- ‘(1) Justification is the act of God, pardoning our sins and receiving us again to His favor. This was free in Him, because undeserved by us; undeserved, because we had transgressed His law, and could not, nor even can now, perfectly fulfill it. ‘(2) We cannot, therefore, be justified by our works; because this would be to be justified by some merit of our own. Much less can we be justified by an external show of religion or by any superstitious observances.