Wesley Corpus

Whether a person who goes thus far, who uses public and private prayer and avoids sins of commission, be a good Christian, is a question which you beg we may drop for the future, because it is not your province to determine it. Alas, sir, you ask what I have no power to grant. When both the glory of my Savior and the safety of your soul so loudly require me to speak, I may not, I dare not, I cannot be silent, especially when I consider the reason you give for my being so--viz. that it is not your province to manage this point of controversy. No! Are you not, then, in covenant with Christ And is it not your province to know the terms of that covenant 'This do, and thou shalt live,' saith the Lord of life. Is it not your business to understand what this is Though you are no divine, is it not your concern to be assured what it is to be a Christian If on this very point depends your title either to life or death eternal, how shall I avoid giving you what light I can therein without the deepest wound to my own conscience, the basest ingratitude to my friend, and the blackest treachery to my Master The question, then, must be determined some way; and for an infallible determination of it, to the law and to the testimony we appeal: at that tribunal we ought to be judged; if the oracles of God are still open to us, by them must every doubt be decided. And should all men contradict them, we could only say, ' Let God be true, and every man a liar.' We can never enough reverence those of the Episcopal Order. They are the angels of the Church, the stars in the right hand of God. Only let us remember he was greater than those who said, ' Though I or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel than that ye have received, let him be accursed.'