Wesley Corpus

To explain this you say: ‘The fervor made the soul delight in God. But it was too much an own delight. It was a fancied self-holiness, and occasioned rest and satisfaction in itself, in a spiritual self.’ (Page 175.) Either fervor does bring us to purity of love and absolute resignation or not. To say it does not, contradicts what you said before: to say it does, contradicts what you say now, For if it does, we cannot say, ‘Coldness does the work which fervor did in an higher degree.’ I should not insist so long on these glaring inconsistencies, were not the doctrine you are here laboring to support absolutely inconsistent with that of St. Paul, and naturally productive of the most fatal consequences. St. Paul asserts the present kingdom of God in the soul is ‘righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.’ He continually teaches that these, which God hath joined, man ought not to put asunder; that peace and joy should never be separated from righteousness, being the divine means both of preserving and increasing it; and that we may, yea ought to, rejoice evermore, till the God of peace sanctifies us wholly. But if these things are so, then ‘distress and coldness are’ not ‘better’ than fervent love and joy in the Holy Ghost.