Wesley Corpus

You have admirably well expressed what I mean by an opinion contradistinguished from an essential doctrine. Whatever is 'compatible with a love to Christ and a work of grace' I term an opinion. And certainly the holding Particular Election and Final Perseverance is compatible with these. 'Yet what fundamental error,' you ask, 'have you opposed with half that frequency and vehemence as you have these opinions' So doubtless you have heard. But it is not true. I have printed near fifty sermons, and only one of these opposes them at all. I preach about eight hundred sermons in a year; and, taking one year with another, for twenty years past I have not preached eight sermons in a year upon the subject. But, 'How many of your best preachers have been thrust out because they dissented from you in these particulars' Not one, best or worst, good or bad, was ever thrust out on this account. There has been not a single instance of the kind. Two or three (but far from the best of our preachers) voluntarily left us after they had embraced those opinions. But it was of their own mere motion: and two I should have expelled for immoral behaviour; but they withdrew, and pretended 'they did not hold our doctrine.' Set a mark, therefore, on him who told you that tale, and let his word for the future go for nothing. 'Is a man a believer in Jesus Christ and is his life suitable to his profession' are not only the main but the sole inquiries I make in order to his admission into our Society. If he is a Dissenter, he may be a Dissenter still: but if he is a Church-man, I advise him to continue so; and that for many reasons, some of which are mentioned in the tract upon that subject. When you have read what I have wrote on occasion of the Letters lately published, I may say something more on that head. And it will then be time enough to show you why some part of those Letters could not be wrote by Mr. Hervey. I think on Justification just as I have done any time these seven-and-twenty years, and just as Mr. Calvin does. In this respect I do not differ from him an hair's breadth.