Wesley Corpus

I have earnestly opposed, but did never teach or embrace, them. “There is another notion,” your Lordship says, “which we find propagated throughout the writings of those people, and that is, the making inward, secret, and sudden impulses the guides of their actions, resolutions, and designs.” (Ibid. p. 14.) Mr. Church urged the same objection before: “Instead of making the word of God the rule of his actions, he follows only his secret impulse.” I beg leave to return the same answer. “In the whole compass of language there is not a proposition which less belongs to me than this. I have de clared again and again, that I make the word of God “ the rule’ of all my actions; and that I no more follow any ‘secret impulse’ instead thereof, than I follow Mahomet or Confucius.” (Answer to Mr. Church, page 406.) 6. Before I proceed, suffer me to observe, here are three grievous errors charged on the Moravians, Mr. Whitefield, and me, conjointly, in none of which I am any more concerned than in the doctrine of the metempsychosis ! But it was “not needful to charge particular tenets on particular 484 lETTER. To persons.” Just as needful, my Lord, as it is not to put a stumbling-block in the way of our brethren; not to lay them under an almost insuperable temptation of condemning the innocent with the guilty. I beseech your Lordship to answer in your own conscience before God, whether you did not foresee how many of your hearers would charge these tenets upon me; nay, whether you did not design they should. If so, my Lord, is this Christianity? Is it humanity? Let me speak plain. Is it honest Heathenism? 7. I am not one jot more concerned in instantaneous justifi cation, as your Lordship explains it, viz., “A sudden, instanta neous justification, by which the person receives from God a certain seal of his salvation, or an absolute assurance of being saved at last.” (Charge, p. 11.) “Such an instantaneous work ing of the Holy Spirit as finishes the business of salvation once for all.” (Ibid.) I neither teach nor believe it; and am there fore clear of all the consequences that may arise therefrom.