Wesley Corpus

6. However, you think there is no occasion now for the expressions used in ancient times, since the persuasions which were common then are now scarcely to be found. For ‘does any Church of England man,’ you ask, ‘maintain anything like this -- that men may commute external works instead of internal holiness’ Most surely: I doubt whether every Church of England man in the nation, yea, every Protestant (as well as Papist) in Europe, who is not deeply sensible that he did so once, does not do so to this day. I am one who for twenty years used outward works, not only as ‘acts of goodness,’ but as commutations (though I did not indeed profess this), instead of inward holiness. I knew I was not holy. But I quieted my conscience by doing such-and-such outward works; and therefore I hoped I should go to heaven, even without inward holiness. Nor did I ever speak close to one who had the form of godliness without the power but I found he had split on the same rock. Abundance of people I have likewise known, and many I do know at this day, who ‘are so grossly superstitious as to think devotion may be put upon God instead of honesty’; as to fancy, going to church and sacrament will bring them to heaven, though they practice neither justice nor mercy. These are the men who make Christianity vile, who, above all others, ‘contribute to the growth of infidelity.’ On the contrary, the speaking of faith working by love, of uniform outward religion springing from inward, has already been the means of converting several Deists and one Atheist (if not more) into real Christians.