Wesley Corpus

If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household?” 70. This only we confess, that we preach inward salvation, now attainable by faith. And for preaching this (for no other crime was then so much as pretended) we were forbid to preach any more in those churches, where, till then, we were gladly received. This is a notorious fact. Being thus hindered from preaching in the places we should first have chosen, we now declare the “grace of God which bringeth salvation,” in all places of his dominion; as well knowing, that God dwelleth not only in temples made with hands. This is the real, and it is the only real, ground of complaint against us. And this we avow before all mankind, we do preach this salvation by faith. And not being suffered to preach it in the usual places, we declare it wherever a door is opened, either on a mountain, or a plain, or by a river side, (for all which we conceive we have sufficient precedent,) or in prison, or, as it were, in the house of Justus, or the school of one Tyrannus. Nor dare werefrain. “A dispensation of the gospel is committed to me; and woe is me, if I preach not the gospel.” 71. Here we allow the fact, but deny the guilt. But is every other point alleged, we deny the fact, and call upon the world to prove it, if they can. More especially, we call upon those who for many years saw our manner of life at Oxford. These well know that “after the straitest sect of our religion we lived Pharisees;” and that the grand objection to us for all those years was, the being righteous overmuch ; the reading, fasting, praying, denying ourselves,--the going to church, and to the Lord’s table,--the relieving the poor, visiting those that were sick and in prison, instructing the ignorant, and labouring to reclaim the wicked,--more than was necessary for salvation. These were our open, flagrant crimes, from the year 1729 to the year 1737; touching which our Lord shall judge in thatday. 72. But, waving the things that are past, which of you now convinceth us of sin?