Wesley Corpus

“Many of those who are perhaps as zealous of good works as you, think I have allowed you too much. Nay, my brethren, but how can we help allowing it, if we allow the Scriptures to be from God? For is it not written, and do not you yourselves believe, ‘Without holiness no man shall see the Lord?’ And how then, without fighting about words, can we deny, that holi ness is a condition of final acceptance? And as to the first acceptance or pardon, does not all experience as well as Scrip ture prove, that no man ever yet truly believed the gospel who did not first repent? Repentance therefore we cannot deny to be necessarily previous to faith. Is it not equally undeniable, that the running back into wilful, known sin (suppose it were drunkenness or uncleanness) stifles that repentance or convic tion? And can that repentance come to any good issue in his soul, who resolves not to forgive his brother? or who obsti nately refrains from what God convinces him is right, whether it be prayer or hearing his word? Would you scruple your self to tell one of these, “Unto him that hath shall be given; but from him that hath not,’ that is, uses it not, “shall be taken even that which he hath?’ Would you scruple to say this? But in saying this, you allow all which I have said, viz., that previous to justifying faith, there must be repentance, and, if opportunity permit, “fruits meet for repentance.” “And yet I allow you this, that although both repentance and the fruits thereof are in some sense necessary before justification, yet neither the one nor the other is necessary in the same sense, or in the same degree, with faith. Not in the same degree. For in whatever moment a man believes, (in the Christian sense of the word,) he is justified, his sins are blotted out, “his faith is counted to him for righteousness. But it is not so, at whatever moment he repents, or brings forth any or all the fruits of repentance. Faith alone therefore justifies; which repentance alone does not; much less any outward work. And consequently, none of these are necessary to jus tification, in the same degree with faith. “No in the same sense. For none of these has so direct, immediate a relation to justification as faith.