Wesley Corpus

‘The “wedding garment” here means holiness’ (page 337). ‘This is His tender complaint, “They will not come unto Me !”’ (page 340). Nay, that is not the case; they cannot. He Himself has decreed not to give them that grace without which their coming is impossible. ‘The grand end which God proposes in all His favorable dispensations to fallen man is to demonstrate the sovereignty of His grace.’ Not so: to impart happiness to His creatures is His grand end herein. Barely to demonstrate His sovereignty is a principle of action fit for the great Turk, not the Most High God. ‘God hath pleasure in the prosperity of His servants. He is a boundless ocean of good.’ (Page 341.) Nay, that ocean is far from boundless, if it wholly passes by nine-tenths of mankind. ‘You cannot suppose God would enter into a fresh covenant with a rebel’ (page 342). I both suppose and know He did. ‘God made the new covenant with Christ, and charged Him with the performance of the conditions.’ I deny both these assertions, which are the central point wherein Calvinism and Antinomianism meet. ‘“I have made a covenant with My chosen” ‘--namely, with ‘David My servant.’ So God Himself explains it. ‘He will wash you in the blood which atones and invest you with the righteousness which justifies’ (page 362). Why should you thus continually put asunder what God has joined ‘God Himself at the last day pronounces them righteous because they are interested in the obedience of the Redeemer’ (page 440). Rather because they are washed in His blood and renewed by His Spirit.