Wesley Corpus

In the second letter to Mr. Church I explain myself farther on this head: ‘I am sorry to find you still affirm that, with regard to the Lord’s Supper also, I “advance many injudicious, false, and dangerous things. Such as: (1) That ‘a man ought to communicate without a sure trust in God's mercy through Christ.’” You mark these as my words; but I know them not. (2) “That there is no previous preparation indispensably necessary, but a desire to receive whatsoever God pleases to give.” But I include abundantly more in that desire than you seem to apprehend, even a willingness to know and do the whole will of God. (3) “That no fitness is required at the time of communicating” (I recite the whole sentence) “but a sense of our state, of our utter sinfulness and helplessness; every one who knows he is fit for hell being just fit to come to Christ in this as well as in all other ways of His appointment.” But neither can this sense of our utter sinfulness and helplessness subsist without earnest desires of universal holiness.’ [See letter of June 17, 1746, sect. II. 7.] And now, what can I say Had your Lordship never seen this That is hardly to be imagined. But if you had, how was it possible your Lordship should thus explicitly and solemnly charge me, in the presence of God and all my brethren (only the person so charged was not present), with ‘meaning by those words to set aside self-examination, and repentance for sins past, and resolutions of living better for the time to come, as things no way necessary to make a worthy communicant’ (Charge, p. 18.) If an evidence at the Bar should swerve from truth, an equitable judge may place the thing in a true light. But if the judge himself shall bear false witness, where then can we find a remedy