Wesley Corpus

And I answer: (1) That faith is one thing, the full assurance of faith another. (2) That even the full assurance of faith does not imply the full assurance of perseverance: this bears another name, being styled by St. Paul ‘the full assurance of hope.’ (3) Some Christians have only the first of these; they have faith, but mixed with doubts and fears. Some have also the full assurance of faith, a full conviction of present pardon; and yet not the full assurance of hope, not a full conviction of their future perseverance. (4) The faith which we preach as necessary to all Christians is the first of these, and no other. Therefore (5) It is no evasion at all to say, ‘This (the faith which we preach as necessary to all Christians) is not properly an assurance of what is future.’ And consequently my charge against Mr. Bedford stands good--that his sermon on Assurance is an ignoratio elenchi, an ‘ignorance of the point in question,’ from beginning to end. [See letter of Sept. 28, 1738.] Therefore neither do I ‘charge another wrongfully, nor contradict myself about the doctrine of Assurances.’ 21. To prove my art, cunning, and evasion, you instance next in the case of impulses and impressions. You begin: ‘With what pertinacious confidence have impulses, impressions, feelings, &c., been advanced into certain rules of conduct! Their followers have been taught to depend upon them as sure guides and infallible proofs.’ To support this weighty charge, you bring one single scrap, about a line and a quarter, from one of my Journals. The words are these: ‘By the most infallible of proofs, inward feeling, I am convinced.’ Convinced of what It immediately follows: ‘Of unbelief, having no such faith as will prevent my heart from being troubled.’ I here assert that inward feeling or consciousness is the most infallible of proofs of unbelief -- of the want of such a faith as will prevent the heart’s being troubled. But do I here ‘advance impressions, impulses, feelings, &c., into certain rules of conduct’ or anywhere else You may just as well say I advance them into certain proofs of transubstantiation. Neither in writing, in preaching, nor in private conversation have I ever ‘taught any of my followers to depend upon them as sure guides or infallible proofs’ of anything.