Wesley Corpus

Qui captat risus hominum, farnamque dicacis. [Horace's Satires, I. iv. 82-3: ‘One that affects the droll, and loves to raise a home-laugh.’] But to the proof. ‘Mr. Wesley,’ you say, ‘at one time declares for a disinterested love of God; at another declares there is no one caution in all the Bible against the selfish love of God.’ Nay, sir; I will tell you what is stranger still: Mr. Wesley holds at one time both sides of this contradiction. I now declare both that ‘all true love is disinterested, “seeketh not her own,” and that there is no one caution in all the Bible against the selfish love of God.’ What, have I the art to slip out of your hands again ‘Pardon me,’ as your old friend says, ‘for being jocular.’ 20. You add, altius insurgens [Virgil's Aeneid, xi. 697: ‘Rising to more exalted strains.’]: ‘But it is a considerable offence to charge another wrongfully and contradict himself about the doctrine of Assurance.’ To prove this upon me you bring my own words: ‘The assurance we preach is of quite another kind from that Mr. Bedford writes against. We speak of an assurance of our present pardon; not, as he does, of our final perseverance.’ (Journal, ii. 83.) ‘Mr. Wesley might have considered,’ you say, ‘that, when they talk of “assurance of pardon and salvation,” the world will extend the meaning of the words to our eternal state.’ I do consider it, sir; and therefore I never use that phrase either in preaching or writing. ‘Assurance of pardon and salvation’ is an expression that never comes out of my lips; and if Mr. Whitefield does use it, yet he does not preach such an assurance as the privilege of all Christians. ‘But Mr. Wesley himself says, that “though a full assurance of faith does not necessarily imply a full assurance of our future perseverance, yet some have both the one and the other.” And now what becomes of his charge against Mr. Bedford And is it not mere evasion to say afterwards, “This is not properly an assurance of what is future”’ Sir, this argument presses me very hard! May I not be allowed a little evasion now Come, for once I will try to do without it, and to answer flat and plain.