Wesley Corpus

You judge rightly: perfect love and Christian liberty are the very same thing; and those two expressions are equally proper, being equally scriptural. 'Nay, how can they and you mean the same thing? They say you insist on holiness in the creature, on good tempers, and sin destroyed.' Most surely. And what is Christian liberty but another word for holiness? And where is this liberty or holiness if it is not in the creature? Holiness is the love of God and man, or the mind which was in Christ. Now, I trust, the love of God is shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Ghost which is given unto you. And if you are holy, is not that mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus? And are not the love of God and our neighbour good tempers? And, so far as these reign in the soul, are not the opposite tempers, worldly-mindedness, malice, cruelty, revengefulness, destroyed? Indeed, the unclean spirit, though driven out, may return and enter again; nevertheless he was driven out. I use the word 'destroyed' because St. Paul does; 'suspended' I cannot find in my Bible. 'But they say you do not consider this as the consequence of the power of Christ dwelling in us.' Then what will they not say? My very words are: 'None feel their need of Christ like these; none so entirely depend upon Him. For Christ does not give light to the soul separate from, but in and with, Himself. Hence His words are equally true of all men in whatever state of grace they are: "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me: without" (or separate from) "Me ye can do nothing." For our perfection is not like that of a tree, which flourishes by the sap derived from its own root; but like that of a branch, which, united to the vine, bears fruit, but severed from it is "dried up and withered."'