Wesley Corpus

It generally spares the objector the trouble of reasoning, and is a shorter and easier way of carrying his cause. For instance: I assert, that “till a man “receives the Holy Ghost, he is without God in the world; that he cannot know the things of God, unless God reveal them unto him by his Spirit; no, nor have even one holy or heavenly temper, without the inspiration of the Holy One.” Now, should one who is conscious to himself that he has experienced none of these things, attempt to confute these propositions either from Scripture or antiquity, it might prove a difficult task. What then shall he do? Why, cry out, “Enthusiasm | Fanaticism l’’ and the work is done. “But is it not mere enthusiasm or famaticism to talk of the new birth ?” So one might imagine, from the manner in which your Lordship talks of it: “The Spirit did not stop till it had manifested itself in the last effort of its power,-the new birth. The new birth began in storms and tempests, in cries and ecstasies, in tumults and confusions. Persons who had no sense of religion, that is, no ecstatic feelings, or pains of the new birth. What can be the issue of the new birth, attended with those infernal throes? Why would he elicit sense from these Gentiles, when they were finally to be deprived of it in ecstasies and new births? All these circumstances Mr. W. has declared to be constant symp toms of the new birth.” (Pages 123, 126, 180, 170,225,222.) So the new birth is, throughout the whole tract, the stand ing topic of ridicule. “No, not the new birth itself, but your enthusiastic, ridiculous account of it.” What is then my account of the new birth? I gave it some years ago in these words:-- “It is that great change which God works in the soul when he brings it into life; when he raises it from the death of sin to the life of righteousness.