Wesley Corpus

But this one thing we may reasonably desire of you,--Do not increase the difficulties, which are already so great, that, without the mighty power of God, we must sink under them. Do not assist in trampling down a little hand ful of men, who, for the present, stand in the gap between ten thousand poor wretches and destruction, till you find some others to take their places. 25. Highly needful it is that some should do this, lest those poor souls be lost without remedy: And it should re joice the hearts of all who desire the kingdom of God should come, that so many of them have been snatched already from the mouth of the lion, by an uncommon, though not unlaw ful, way. This circumstance, therefore, is no just excuse for not acknowledging the work of God; especially, if we con sider, that whenever it has pleased God to work any great work upon the earth, even from the earliest times, he hath stepped more or less out of the common way;--whether to excite the attention of a greater number of people than might otherwise have regarded it; or to separate the proud and haughty of heart, from those of an humble, childlike spirit; the former of whom he foresaw, trusting in their own wisdom, would fall on that stone and be broken; while the latter, inquiring with simplicity, would soon know of the work, that it was of God. 26. “Nay,” say some, “but God is a God of wisdom: And it is his work to give understanding. Whereas this man is one of them, and he is a fool. You see the fruits of their preaching.” No, my friend, you do not. That is your mis take. A fool very possibly he may be. So it appears by his talking, perhaps writing too. But this is none of the fruits of our preaching. He was a fool before ever he heard us. We found and are likely to leave him so. Therefore his folly is not to be imputed to us, even if it continue to the day of his death. As we were not the cause, so we undertake not the cure, of disorders of this kind. No fair man, therefore, can excuse himself thus, from acknowledging the work of God.