Treatise Farther Appeal Part 1
| Author | John Wesley |
|---|---|
| Type | treatise |
| Year | None |
| Passage ID | jw-treatise-farther-appeal-part-1-015 |
| Words | 400 |
Supposing
candour and love out of the question, are they the words of
truth? I dare stake my life upon it, there is not one true
clause in all this paragraph. The propositions contained therein are these :
(1.) That the religion I preach consists in enthusiastic ardour. (2.) That it can be attained by very few. (3.) That it can be understood by very few. (4.) That it cannot be practised without breaking in upon
the common duties of life. (5.) And that all this may be proved by my own account of it. I earnestly entreat your Grace to review my own account
of it, as it stands in any of my former writings; or to consider
the short account which is given in this; and if you can thence
make good any one of those propositions, I do hereby pro
mise, before God and the world, that I will never preach more. At present I do not well understand what your Grace means
by “an enthusiastic ardour.” Surely you do not mean the
love of God! No, not though a poor, pardoned sinner should
carry it so far as to love the Lord his God with all his heart,
and with all his soul, and with all his strength ! But this
alone is the ardour which I preach up as the foundation of the
true and only Christianity. I pray God so to fill your whole
heart therewith, that you may praise him for ever and ever. But why should your Grace believe that the love of God can
be attained by very few ; or, that it can be understood by very
* The (then) Archbishop of York. few 7 All who attain it understand it well. And did not He
who is loving to every man design that every man should
attain true love? “O that all would know, in this their day,
the things that make for their peace l’’
And cannot the love both of God and our neighbour be
practised, without breaking in upon the common duties of
life? Nay, can any of the common duties of life be rightly
practised without them? I apprehend not. I apprehend I
am then laying the true, the only foundation for all those
duties, when I preach, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself.”
2.