Wesley Corpus

This is as broad Socinianism as can be imagined. Nay, it is more. It is not only denying the satisfaction of Christ, but supposing that He died for devils as much and for the angel in heaven much more than He did for man. Indeed, he calls Him an expiatory sacrifice, a propitiatory victim; but remember, it was only in this sense: for you are told again (page 399), ‘See the deplorable ignorance of those who represent the expiatory sacrifice of Christ as destined to appease vindictive justice and avert divine vengeance. It is by such frivolous and blasphemous notions that the Schoolmen have exposed this divine mystery.’ These ‘frivolous and blasphemous notions’ do I receive as the precious truths of God. And so deplorable is my ignorance, that I verily believe all who deny them deny the Lord that bought them. Page 400: ‘The immediate, essential, necessary means of reuniting men to God are prayer mortification, and self-denial.’ No; the immediate, essential, necessary mean of reuniting me to God is living faith, and that alone: without this I cannot be reunited to God; with this I cannot but be reunited. Prayer, mortification, and self-denial are the fruits of faith and the grand means of continuing and increasing it. But I object to the account Mr. R. and all the Mystics give of those. It is far too lax and general. And hence those who receive all he says will live just as they did before, in all the ease, pleasure, and state they can afford. Page 403: ‘Prayer, mortification, and self-denial produce necessarily in the soul faith, hope, and charity.’ On the contrary, faith must necessarily precede both prayer, mortification, and self-denial, if we mean thereby ‘adoring God in spirit and in truth, a continual death to all that is visible, and a constant, universal suppression and sacrifice of all the motions of fate love.’ And the Chevalier talks of all these tike a mere parrot, if he did not know and feel in his inmost soul that it is absolutely false that any of these should subsist in our heart till we truly believe in the Son of God.