Wesley Corpus

Friend.--You have no tittle of Scripture for this. Bond age to fear and bondage to sin are mentioned there; and bondage to the ceremonial law of Moses: But, according to your sense of the word, all the angels in heaven are in bondage. , Ant.--Well, I am not bound. St. Paul himself says to believers, “Why are ye subject to ordinances?” (Col. ii. 20.) Friend.--True; that is, Why are you Christian believers subject to Jewish ordinances? such as those which are mentioned in the very next verse, “Touch not, taste not, handle not.” Ant.--Nay, that is not all. I say, “Outward things do nothing avail to salvation.” This is plain; for “if love to God, and love to our neighbour, and relieving the poor, be altogether unprofitable and unavailable either to justification or salvation; then these outward works, in submitting to outward ordinances, are much less available.” Friend.--Do you speak of the ordinances of Christ? Ant.--I do. “They bring in the most dangerous kind of Popery, and pervert the pure gospel of Christ, who persuade men, that if they do not submit to the ordinances of the Lord Jesus, he will not confess them before his Father.” And I affirm, “it is better not to practise outward ordinances at all, than to practise them on these gospel-destroying principles, to the ruining of our souls.” Friend.--What scripture do you produce for this? Ant.--I wish you would not build so much upon the letter: It is your letter-learning too makes you talk of inherent righteousness. * Friend.--Do you say then, a believer has no inherent righteousness? Ant.--That I do. I say, “God will save us to the utmost, without any righteousness or holiness of our own.” To look for inherent righteousness, “is to deny the Spirit, and trample under foot the blood of the covenant. Believers have not any inherent righteousness in them. Our righteousness is nothing but the imputation of the righteousness of Christ.” Friend.--Now, I believe that Christ by his Spirit works righteousness in all those to whom faith is imputed for righteousness. Ant.--“By no means; all our righteousness is in Christ. It is wholly imputed, not inherent. We are always righteous in Christ, but never righteous in ourselves.” Friend.--Is not, then, every believer righteous or holy? Ant.--Doubtless; but he is holy in Christ, not in himself.