Wesley Corpus

I have seen such terrible effects of this unscriptural way of speaking, even on those ‘who had once clean escaped from the pollutions of the world,’ that I cannot but earnestly wish you would speak no otherwise than do the oracles of God. Certainly this mode of expression is not momentous. It is always dangerous, often fatal. ‘Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound; that as sin had reigned unto death, so might grace,’ the free love of God, ‘reign through righteousness,’ through our justification and sanctification, ‘unto eternal life’ (Rom. v. 20-1). This is the plain, natural meaning of the words. It does not appear that one word is spoken here about imputed righteousness; neither in the passages cited in the next page from the Common Prayer and the Articles. In the Homily likewise that phrase is not found at all, and the main stress is laid on Christ's shedding His blood. Nor is the phrase (concerning the thing there is no question) found in any part of the Homilies. (Letter 3, P. 93.) ‘If the Fathers are not explicit with regard to the imputation of active righteousness, they abound in passages which evince the substitution of Christ in our stead -- passages which disclaim all dependence on any duties of our own and fix our hopes wholly on the merits of our Savor. When this is the case, I am very little solicitous about any particular forms of expression’ (page 101.) O lay aside, then, those questionable, dangerous forms, and keep closely to the scriptural! ‘The authority of our Church and of those eminent divines’ (Letter 4, p. 105) does not touch those ‘particular forms of expression’; neither do any of the texts which you afterwards cite. As to the doctrine we are agreed. ‘The righteousness of God signifies the righteousness which God-Man wrought out’ (ibid.). No; it signifies God's method of justifying sinners. ‘The victims figured the expiation by Christ’s death; the clothing with skins, the imputation of His righteousness’ (page 107). That does not appear. Did not the one rather figure our justification, the other our sanctification