Wesley Corpus

It is a ‘renewal of believers in the spirit of their minds, after the like mess of Him that created them.” God hath now laid “the axe unto the root of the tree, purifying their hearts by faith, and ‘cleansing all the thoughts of their hearts by the inspiration of his Holy Spirit. Having this hope, that they shall see God as he is, they “purify themselves even as he is pure, and are ‘holy, as he that hath called them is holy, in all manner of conversa tion.” Not that they have already attained all that they shall attain, either are already in this sense perfect. But they daily ‘go on from strength to strength; beholding” now, “as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, they are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, by the Spirit of the Lord.” “And ‘where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty; such liberty ‘from the law of sin and death, as the children of this world will not believe, though a man declare it unto them. ‘The Son hath made them free’ who are thus ‘born of God,” from that great root of sin and bitterness, pride. They feel that all their ‘sufficiency is of God,” that it is He alone who “is in all their thoughts, and ‘worketh in them both to will and to do of his good pleasure. They feel that ‘it is not they’ that ‘speak, but the Spirit of their ‘Father who speaketh’ in them, and that whatsoever is done by their hands, “the Father who is in them, he doeth the works.’ So that God is to them all in all, and they are nothing in his sight. They are freed from self-will, as desiring nothing but the holy and perfect will of God; not supplies in want, not ease in pain,” nor life, or death, or any creature; but continually crying in their inmost soul, “Father, thy will be done.” They are freed from evil thoughts, so that they cannot enter into them, no, not for a moment. Aforetime, when an evil thought came in, they looked up, and it vanished away. But now it does not come in, there being no room for this, in a soul which is full of God. They are free from wanderings in prayer.