Wesley Corpus

It is not neces sary that a man do any works, that he may be justified and saved. God doth not require thee to do anything, that thou mayest be saved or justified. The law sets thee to work; but the gospel binds thee to do nothing at all. Nay, the works are not only not required, but forbidden. God forbids us to work for justification. And when the Apostle Paul presses men to believe, it is as much as if he had bid them not to work.” Friend.--Let Paul be permitted to answer for himself. In the twenty-sixth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, he relates how our Lord sent him “to open the eyes of the Gentiles,-- that they might receive remission of sins.” (Verses 17, 18.) “Whereupon,” saith he, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision; but showed--to the Gentiles, that they should repent, and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance.” Observe: He “obeyed the heavenly vision,” by teaching the Gentiles, before they were justified, before they had “received forgiveness of sins,” to “repent and do works meet for repent ance.”. So far was he from “bidding them not to work,” while he was “pressing them to believe.” Ant.--You are got to your “carnal reasoning” again. Friend.--Carnal reasoning, I perceive, is a cant term, which you use when you know not what else to say. But I have not done with this instance yet. Did St. Paul, indeed, preach to those Heathens according to the instructions given him from heaven, or did he not? Ant.--Without doubt, he did; otherwise he would have been “disobedient unto the heavenly vision.” Friend.--How then say you that a Minister of Christ ought to preach nothing but “Believe, believe?” and, that to tell men of doing anything, is “preaching the law?” Do you not herein condemn, not only the great Apostle, but also Him that sent and commanded him “thus to preach?” Ant.--Why, surely, you would not have us to be “under the law !” Friend.--I fear you know not what that expression means. St. Paul uses it thrice in his Epistle to the Romans, five times in that to the Galatians, and in one passage of his former Epistle to the Corinthians; where he declares in what sense he was himself “under the law,” and in what sense he was not.