Wesley Corpus

In the third book (page 209) I read, ‘The desire of God, purely as beatifying, as the source of infinite pleasure, is a necessary consequence of the natural love we have for happiness.’ I deny it absolutely. My natural love for happiness was as strong thirty years ago as at this instant. Yet I had then no more desire of God, as the source of any pleasure at all, than I had of the devil or of hell. So totally false is that, ‘That the soul inevitably loves what it judges to be the best.’ Equally false is his next corollary -- that ‘if ever fallen spirits see and feel that moral evil is a source of eternal misery, they cannot continue to will it deliberately' (ibid.). I can now show living proofs of the contrary. But I take knowledge, both from this and many other of his assertions, that Mr. R. never rightly understood the height and depth of that corruption which is in man, as well as diabolical nature. The doctrine of Pure Love as it is stated in the fourth book and elsewhere (the loving God chiefly is not solely for His inherent perfections) I once firmly espoused. But I was at length unwillingly convinced that I must give it up or give up the Bible. And for near twenty years I have thought, as I do now, that it is at least unscriptural, if not anti-scriptural; for the Scripture gives not the least intimation, that I can find, of any higher, or indeed any other, love of God than that mentioned by St. John - ‘We love Him, because He first loved us.’ And I desire no higher love of God till my spirit returns to Him. Page 313: ‘There can be but two possible ways of curing moral evil -- the sensation of pleasure in the discovery of truth, or the sensation of pain in the love of error.’ So here is one who has searched out the Almighty to perfection! who knows every way wherein He can exert His omnipotence! I am not clear in this. I believe it is very possible for God to act in some third way. I believe He can make me as holy as an archangel without any sensation at all preceding.