Wesley Corpus

“It was in these favoured moments of converse that we found, in a particular manner, the reward which is annexed to the “receiving a Prophet in the name of a Prophet.’ And in some of these he occasionally mentioned several circumstances, which (as none knew them but himself) would otherwise have been buried in everlasting oblivion. “One of those remarkable passages was, “In the beginning,” said he, ‘of my spiritual course, I heard the voice of God, in an articulate but inexpressibly awful sound, go through my soul in those words: If any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself.’ He mentioned another peculiar manifestation of a later date, ‘in which,” said he, ‘I was favoured, like Moses, with a supernatural discovery of the glory of God, in an ineffable converse with him, face to face; so that, whether I was then in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell.’ 16. “At another time he said, ‘About the time of my entering into the ministry, I one evening wandered into a wood, musing on the importance of the office I was going to undertake. I then began to pour out my soul in prayer; when such a feeling sense of the justice of God fell upon me, and such a sense of his displeasure at sin, as absorbed all my powers, and filled my soul with the agony of prayer for poor, lost sinners. I continued therein till the dawn of day; and * I considered this as designed of God to impress upon me more deeply the meaning of those solemn words: Therefore knowing the terrors of the Lord, we persuade men.’ 17. “The blessed state of his soul continually manifested itself, by its overflowing good-will to all that came in his way. And yet his spirit was so deeply impressed with those words, “Not as though I had already attained,’ that the vehemence of his desire for a fuller manifestation of God seemed some times to border upon unhappiness. But his ardent soul only felt the full impression of those words of the Apostle: “Forgetting the things that are behind, and reaching forth unto those that are before, I press toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.’ 18. “One end of his retiring to Newington was, that he might hide himself from company.