Wesley Corpus

9. But will this, or a thousand such instances as this, ‘stop the mouths of all adversaries at once’ O sir, would one expect such a thought as this in one that had read the Bible What if you could convert as many sinners as St. Paul himself Would that ‘stop the mouths of all your adversaries’ Yea, if you could convert three thousand at one sermon, still you would be so far from ‘stopping all their mouths at once,’ that the greater part of them would gnash upon you with their teeth, and cry, ‘Away with such a fellow from the earth!’ I never, therefore, expect ‘to persuade the world,’ the majority of mankind, that I ‘have been’ for some years ‘advancing nothing’ but what has a clear, immediate connection with ‘the true knowledge and love of God’; that God hath been pleased to use me, a weak, vile worm, in reforming many of my fellow sinners, and making them at this day living witnesses of ‘inward and pure religion’; and that many of these, ‘from living in all sin, are quite changed, are become’ so far ‘holy that,’ though they are not 'free from all sin,' yet no sin hath dominion over them. And yet I do firmly believe ‘it is nothing but downright prejudice to deny or oppose any of these particulars.’ (Preface, p. 5.)