Wesley Corpus

(4.) How are ye affected to the truth of God? How many hope that God will not be true to his word ' There are thousands that hear the gospel, and hope to be saved, who never experienced the new birth, nor do at all concern them selves in that question,-whether they are born again or not. Our Lord’s words are plain and peremptory: ‘Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” What, then, are such hopes, but real hopes that God will recal his word, and that Christ will prove a false Prophet? (5.) How are they affected to the power of God? None but new creatures can love him for it. Every natural man would contribute to the building another tower of Babel, to hem it in. On these grounds I declare every unrenewed man ‘an enemy to God.” “2. Ye are enemies to the Son of God: That enmity to Christ is in your hearts, which would have made you join the ‘husband "men who killed the heir and cast him out of the vineyard.” ‘Am I a dog, ye will say, ‘to have so treated my dear Saviour?” So said Hazael, in another case. Yet how did he act? Many call him dear, to whom their sins are ten times dearer than their Saviour. He is no otherwise dear to them, than as they abuse his death, for the peaceable enjoyment of their sins; that they may live as they list in this world, and, when they die, be kept out of hell. To convince you of this, I will lay before you the enumity of your hearts against Christ in all his offices:-- “(1.) Every unregenerate man is an enemy to Christ in his prophetic office. For evidence of this, consider,-- “(i.) The entertainment he meets with, when he comes to teach souls “inwardly’ by his ‘Spirit.” Men do what they can to stop their ears, that they may not hear his voice. They “always resist the Holy Ghost;’ they “desire not the knowledge of his ways. The old calumny is thrown upon him again: ‘He is mad; why hear ye him?’ ‘The spirit of bondage is accounted by many mere distraction and melan choly: Men thus blaspheming God’s work, because they themselves are beside themselves, and cannot judge of those matters.