Wesley Corpus

9. I think that all this time you are directly pleading for looseness of manners, and that everything you advance naturally tends thereto. This is my grand objection to that doctrine of the necessity of sinning; not only that it is false, but that it is directly subversive of all holiness. The doctrine of the Gnostics was not that a child of God does not commit sin, i.e. act the things which are forbidden in Scripture, but that they are not sin in him, that he is a child of God still; so they contended not for sinless but sinful perfection: just as different from what I contend for as heaven is from hell. What the Donatists were I do not know. But I suspect they were the real Christians of that age, and were therefore served by St. Augustine and his warm adherents as the Methodists are now by their zealous adversaries. It is extremely easy to blacken; and could I give myself leave, I could paint the consequences of your doctrine in at least as dark and odious colors as you could paint mine.