Wesley Corpus

For it does not leave us to receive our notices of them by mere reflection from the dull glass of sense; but resolves a thousand enigmas of the highest concern by giving faculties suited to things invisible. O who would not wish for such a faith, were it only on these accounts How much more, if by this I may receive the promise, I may attain all that holiness and happiness ! 12. So Christianity tells me; and so I find it, may every real Christian say. I now am assured that these things are so: I experience them in my own breast. What Christianity (considered as a doctrine) promised, is accomplished in my soul. And Christianity, considered as an inward principle, is the completion of all those promises. It is holiness and hap piness, the image of God impressed on a created spirit; a fountain of peace and love springing up into everlasting life. Section III. 1. And this I conceive to be the strongest evidence of the truth of Christianity. I do not undervalue traditional evidence. Let it have its place and its due honour. It is highly serviceable in its kind, and in its degree. And yet I cannot set it on a level with this. It is generally supposed, that traditional evidence is weak ened by length of time; as it must necessarily pass through so many hands, in a continued succession of ages. But no length of time can possibly affect the strength of this internal evidence. It is equally strong, equally new, through the course of seventeen hundred years. It passes now, even as it has done from the beginning, directly from God into the believing soul. Do you suppose time will ever, dry up this stream ? O no ! It shall never be cut off: Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis avum.* 2. Traditional evidence is of an extremely complicated nature, necessarily including so many and so various consi derations, that only men of a strong and clear understanding can be sensible of its full force. On the contrary, how plain * It flows on, and will for ever flow. and simple is this; and how level to the lowest capacity!