Wesley Corpus

You never learned, either from my conversation or preaching or writings, that 'holiness consisted in a flow of joy.' I constantly told you quite the contrary: I told you it was love; the love of God and our neighbour; the image of God stamped on the heart; the life of God in the soul of man; the mind that was in Christ, enabling us to walk as Christ also walked. If Mr. Maxfield or you took it to be anything else, it was your own fault, not mine. And whenever you waked out of that dream, you ought not to have laid the blame of it upon me. It is true that joy is one part of 'the fruit of the Spirit,' of the kingdom of God within us. But this is first 'righteousness,' then 'peace,' and 'joy in the Holy Ghost.' It is true, farther, that if you love God with 'all your heart' you may 'rejoice evermore.' Nay, it is true still farther that many serious, humble, sober-minded believers, who do feel the love of God sometimes, and do then rejoice in God their Saviour, cannot be content with this, but pray continually that He would enable them to love and 'rejoice in the Lord always.' And no fact under heaven is more undeniable than that God does answer this prayer; that He does, for the sake of His Son, and through the power of His Spirit, enable one and another so to do. It is also a plain fact that this power does commonly overshadow them in an instant, and that from that time they enjoy that inward and outward holiness to which they were utter strangers before. Possibly you might be mistaken in this; perhaps you thought you had received what you had not. But pray do not measure all men by yourself; do not imagine you are the universal standard. If you deceived yourself (which yet I do not affirm), you should not infer that all others do. Many think they are justified, and are not; but we cannot infer that none are justified. So neither, if many think they are 'perfected in love,' and are not, will it follow that none are so.