Wesley Corpus

To any who knew something of inward religion I should have observed that this is what serious divines mean by desertion. But all expressions of this kind are jargon to you. So, allowing it to be whatever you please, I ask only, Do you know how long I continued in this state how many years, months, weeks, or days If not, how can you infer what my state of mind is now from what it was above eleven years ago Sir, I do not tell you or any man else that ‘I cannot now find the love of God in myself’; or that now, in the year 1751, I rarely feel more than a cold attention in the Holy Communion: so that your whole argument built on this supposition falls to the ground at once. 26. Sensible, I presume, of the weakness of this reason, you immediately apply to the passions by that artful remark: ‘Observe, reader, this is the man who charges our religion as no better than the Turkish pilgrimages to Mecca or the Popish worship of Our Lady of Loretto!’ Our religion! How naturally will the reader suppose that I fix the charge either on the Protestant religion in general, or on that of the Church of England in particular! But how far is this from the truth! My words concerning those who are commonly called religious are: ‘Wherein does their religion consist in righteousness and true holiness, in love stronger than death, fervent gratitude to God, and tender affection to all His creatures Is their religion the religion of the heart, a renewal of the soul in the image of God Do they resemble Him they worship Are they free from pride, from vanity, from malice, from envy, from ambition and avarice, from passion and lust, from every uneasy and unlovely temper Alas, I fear neither they (the greater part at least) nor you have any more notion of this religion than the peasant that holds the plough of the religion of a Gymnosophist. [Ancient Hindu philosophers and ascetics who discarded all clothing.]