Wesley Corpus

1758 To a Gentleman at Bristol [1] BRISTOL, January 6, 1758 SIR, -- You desire my thoughts on a paper lately addresses to the inhabitants of St. Stephen’s parish, [Bristol], and an answer thereto entitled A Seasonable Antidote against Popery. I have at present little leisure, and cannot speak so fully as the importance of the subject requires. I can only just tell you wherein I do or do not agree with what is advanced in the one or the other. I agree with the main of what is asserted in that paper, allowing for some expressions which I could wish had been altered, because some of them are a little obscure, others liable to misinterpretation - indeed, so liable that they could scarce fail to be misunderstood by the unwary and censured by the unfriendly reader. But I cannot agree that ‘obedience is a condition or antecedent to justification,’ unless we mean final justification. This I apprehend to be a considerable mistake; although, indeed, it is not explicitly asserted, but only implied in some part of that address. I entirely agree with the author of the Seasonable Antidote in the important points that follow: ‘That a sinner is justified or accounted righteous before God, only through the righteousness’ (or merits) ‘of Jesus Christ; that the end of His living and dying for us was that our persons first and then our works might be accepted; that faith is the hand which apprehends, the instrument which applies, the merits of Christ for our justification; that justifying faith is the gift of the Holy Spirit; that He evidences our being justified by bearing His testimony with our spirits that we are the children of God, and by enabling us to bring forth first the inward and then the outward fruits of the Spirit; and, lastly, that these fruits do not justify us, do not procure our justification, but prove us to be justified, as the fruits on a tree do not make it alive, but prove it to be alive’ (pages 33-4). These undoubtedly are the genuine principles of the Church of England. And they are confirmed, as by our Liturgy, Articles, and Homilies, so by the whole tenor of Scripture. Therefore, till heaven and earth pass away, these truths will not pass away.