Wesley Corpus

Page 393: ‘The Divinity is unsusceptible of anger.' I take this to be the pt ed [‘The prime fallacy.’] of all the Mystics. But I demand the proof I take anger to have the same relation to justice as love has to mercy. But if we grant them this, then they will prove their point. For if God was never angry, His anger could never be appeased; and then we may safely adopt the very words of Socinus, Tota redemptionis nostrae per Christum metaphora, ['The whole of our redemption by Christ is a metaphor.’ See letter of April 27, 1741.] seeing Christ died only to ‘show to all the celestial choirs God’s infinite aversion to disorder.’ Page 394: ‘He suffered, because of the sin of men, infinite agonies, as a tender father suffers to see the vices of his children. He for all that lapsed angels and men should have suffered to all eternity. Without this sacrifice celestial spirits could never have known the horrible deformity of vice. In this sense He substituted Himself as a victim to take away the sins of the world; not to appease vindictive justice, but to show God's infinite love of justice.’ This is as broad Socinianism as can be imagined. Nay, it is more. It is not only denying the satisfaction of Christ, but supposing that He died for devils as much and for the angel in heaven much more than He did for man. Indeed, he calls Him an expiatory sacrifice, a propitiatory victim; but remember, it was only in this sense: for you are told again (page 399), ‘See the deplorable ignorance of those who represent the expiatory sacrifice of Christ as destined to appease vindictive justice and avert divine vengeance. It is by such frivolous and blasphemous notions that the Schoolmen have exposed this divine mystery.’ These ‘frivolous and blasphemous notions’ do I receive as the precious truths of God. And so deplorable is my ignorance, that I verily believe all who deny them deny the Lord that bought them. Page 400: ‘The immediate, essential, necessary means of reuniting men to God are prayer mortification, and self-denial.’ No; the immediate, essential, necessary mean of reuniting me to God is living faith, and that alone: without this I cannot be reunited to God; with this I cannot but be reunited.