Wesley Corpus

2. How easily, then, might a short question have prevented this whole dispute and saved you the trouble of a mere ignoratio denchi for almost forty pages together! As to the assurance you speak of, neither my brother, nor I, nor any of our friends that I know of, hold it; no, nor the Moravian Church, whose present judgment I have had better opportunity to know than the author of what is called your Catechism. I dare not affirm so much of this assurance as that ‘it is given to very few’; for I believe it is given to none at all. I find it not in the Book of God. Yea, I take it to be utterly contrary thereto, as implying the impossibility of falling from grace; from asserting which fatal doctrine I trust the God whom I serve will always deliver me. 3. That assurance of which alone I speak, I should not choose to call an assurance of salvation, but rather (with the Scriptures) the assurance of faith. And even this I believe is not of the essence of faith, but a distinct gift of the Holy Ghost, whereby God shines upon His own work and shows us that we are justified through faith in Christ. If any one chooses to transpose the words, and to term this, instead of the assurance of faith, the faith of assurance, I should not contend with him for a phrase: though I think the scriptural words are always the best; and in this case particularly, because otherwise we may seem to make two faiths, whereas St. Paul knew but of one.