Wesley Corpus

After a few impartial inquiries of this kind, I am persuaded you will not say, ‘As a commutation, surely no Protestant ever did (receive the sacrament) but yourself.’ Is there not something wrong in these words on another account, as well as in those, ‘You should not treat others as the children of the devil, for taking the same liberty which you and Mr. Whitefield take, who continue, notwithstanding, to be the children of God’ Is there not in both these expressions (and perhaps in some others which are scattered up and down in your letters) something too keen something that borders too much upon sarcasm upon tartness, if not bitterness Does not anything of this sort either make the mind sore or harden it against conviction Does it not make us less able to bear plainness of speech or at least less ready to improve by it Give me leave to add one word more before I proceed. I cannot but be jealous over you. I fear you do not know, near so well as you suppose, even what passes in your own mind. I question not but you believe that without inward holiness no man shall see the Lord; but are you sure you never once entertained a thought that something else might be put upon Him in the stead Perhaps not grossly, not if it appeared just in that shape: no, nor have I, for these twenty years. But I find the same thought to this day stealing in continually under a thousand different forms. I find a continual danger of stopping short of a full renewal in the image of God; a continual propensity to rest in whatever comes between--to put some work or other that I do, even for God’s sake, or some gift that I receive, in the stead of that great work of God, ‘the renewal of my soul after His likeness in righteousness and true holiness.’