Wesley Corpus

'Let us labour to convince all mankind that to be a real Christian is to love the Lord our God with all our heart and to serve Him with all our strength; to love our neighbour as ourselves, and therefore to do unto every man as we would he should do unto us. [See letter of June 17 1746, sect. vi. 3-4.] To change one of these heathens into a real Christian, and to continue him such, all the ordinary operations of the Holy Spirit are absolutely necessary. 'But what are they' I sum them up (as I did in the Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion) in the words of as learned and orthodox a divine as ever England bred:-- 'Sanctification being opposed to our corruption, and answering fully to the latitude thereof, whatsoever of holiness and perfection is wanting in our nature must be supplied by the Spirit of God. Wherefore, we being by nature totally void of all saving truth and under an impossibility of knowing the will of God, this "Spirit searcheth all things, yea even the deep things of God," and revealeth them unto the sons of men; so that thereby the darkness of their understanding is expelled, and they are enlightened with the knowledge of God. The same Spirit which revealeth the object of faith generally to the universal Church, doth also illuminate the understanding of such as believe, that they may receive the truth. For faith is the gift of God, not only in the object, but also in the act. And this gift is a gift of the Holy Ghost working within us. And as the increase of perfection, so the original of faith, is from the Spirit of God by an internal illumination of the soul. 'The second part of the office of the Holy Ghost is the renewing of man in all the parts and faculties of his soul. For our natural corruption consisting in an aversation of our wills and a depravation of our affections, an inclination of them to the will of God is wrought within us by the Spirit of God.