Wesley Corpus

But notwithstanding this, do you not agree with us in condemning the vices above recited; pro faneness, drunkenness, whoredom, adultery, theft, disobedi ence to parents, and such like? And how unhappily do you agree with us in practising the very vices which you condemn ! And yet you acknowledge, (nay, and frequently contend for this with a peculiar earnestness,) that every Christian is called to be “zealous of good works,” as well as to “deny himself and take up his cross daily.” How, then, do you depart from your own principles, when you are gluttons, drunk ards, or epicures? when you live at your ease, in all the ele gance and voluptuousness of a plentiful fortune? How will you reconcile the being adorned with gold, arrayed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day, with the “deny ing yourself and taking up your cross daily?” Surely, while you indulge the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, and the pride of life, the excellent rules of self-denial that abound in your own writers leave you of all men most inexcusable. 12. Neither can this self-indulgence be reconciled with the being “zealous of good works.” For by this needless and continual expense, you disable yourself from doing good. You bind your own hands. You make it impossible for you to do that good which otherwise you might. So that you injure the poor in the same proportion as you poison your own soul. You might have clothed the naked; but what was due to them was thrown away on your costly apparel. You might have fed the hungry, entertained the stranger, relieved them that were sick or in prison; but the superfluities of your own table swallowed up that whereby they should have been profited. And so this wasting of thy Lord’s goods is an instance of complicated wickedness; since hereby thy poor brother perisheth, for whom Christ died. I will not recommend to you either the writings or examples of those whom you account heretics: (Although some of these, if you could view them with impartial eyes, might “provoke you to jealousy: ”) But O that God would write in your hearts the rules of self-denial and love laid down by Thomas à Kempis!