Wesley Corpus

3. Now although a believer is "not without law to God, but under the law to Christ," yet from the moment he believes, he is not "under the law," in any of the preceding senses. On the contrary, he is "under grace," under a more benign, gracious dispensation. As he is no longer under the ceremonial law, nor under the Mosaic institution; as he is not obliged to keep even the moral law, as the condition of his acceptance; so he is delivered from the wrath and the curse of God, from all sense of guilt and condemnation, and from all that horror and fear of death and hell whereby he was all his life before subject to bondage. And he now performs (which while "under the law" he could not do) a willing and universal obedience. He obeys not from the motive of slavish fear, but on a nobler principle; namely, the grace of God ruling in his heart, and causing all his works to be wrought in love. 4. What then Shall this evangelical principle of action be less powerful that the legal Shall we be less obedient to God from filial love than we were from servile fear It is well if this is not a common case; if this practical Antinomianism, this unobserved way of making void the law through faith, has not infected thousands of believers. Has it not infected you Examine yourself honestly and closely. Do you not do now what you durst not have done when you was "under the law," or (as we commonly call it) under conviction For instance: You durst not then indulge yourself in food: You took just what was needful, and that of the cheapest kind. Do you not allow yourself more latitude now Do you not indulge yourself a little more than you did O beware lest you "sin because you are not under the law, but under grace!" 5. When you was under conviction, you durst not indulge the lust of the eye in any degree. You would not do anything, great or small, merely to gratify your curiosity. You regarded only cleanliness and necessity, or at most very moderate convenience, either in furniture or apparel; superfluity and finery of whatever kind, as well as fashionable elegance, were both a terror and an abomination to you.