Wesley Corpus

The love of Christ constraineth him. After this, he may obey, or he may not; no constraint being laid upon him Q. 12. Can faith be lost, but through disobedience? A. It cannot. A believer first inwardly disobeys, inclines to sin with his heart: Then his intercourse with God is cut off; that is, his faith is lost: And after this, he may fall into out ward sin, being now weak, and like another man. Q. 13. How can such an one recover faith? A. By “repenting, and doing the first works.” (Rev. ii. 5.) Q. 14. Whence is it that so great a majority of those who believe fall more or less into doubt or fear? A. Chiefly from their own ignorance or unfaithfulness: Often from their not watching unto prayer: Perhaps some times from some defect, or want of the power of God in the preaching they hear. Q. 15. Is there not a defect in us? Do we preach as we did at first? Have we not changed our doctrines? A. (1.) At first we preached almost wholly to unbelievers. To those therefore we spake almost continually of remission of sins through the death of Christ, and the mature of faith in his blood. And so we do still, among those who need to be taught the first elements of the gospel of Christ. (2.) But those in whom the foundation is already laid, we exhort to go on to perfection; which we did not see so clearly at first; although we occasionally spoke of it from the beginning. (3.) Yet we now preach, and that continually, faith in Christ, as the Prophet, Priest, and King, at least, as clearly, as strongly, and as fully, as we did six years ago. Q. 16. Do we not discourage visions and dreams too much, as if we condemned them toto genere? A. We do not intend to do this. We neither discourage nor encourage them. We learn from Acts ii. 17, &c., to expect something of this kind “in the last days.” And we cannot deny that saving faith is often given in dreams or visions of the night; which faith we account neither better nor worse, than if it came by any other means. Q. 17. Do not some of our assistants preach too much of the wrath, and too little of the love, of God? A.