Wesley Corpus

They remain still in their damnable estate, lacking the very true Christian faith. “The right and true Christian faith is, not only to believe that the Holy Scriptures and the articles of our faith are true, but also to have a sure trust and confidence to be saved from everlasting damnation, through Christ.” Perhaps it may be expressed more clearly thus: “A sure trust and confidence which a man hath in God, that by the merits of Christ his sins are forgiven, and he reconciled to the favour of God.” For giving this account of Christian faith, (as well as the preceding account of repentance, both which I have here also purposely described in the very terms of the Homilies,) I have been again and again, for near these eight years past, accused of enthusiasm; sometimes by those who spoke to my face, either in conversation, or from the pulpit: but more fre quently by those who chose to speak in my absence; and not seldom from the press. I wait for those who judge this to be en thusiasm, to bring forth their strong reasons. Till then, I must continue to account all these the “words of truth and sober ness.” 6. Religion itself (I choose to use the very words wherein I described it long ago) we define, “The loving God with all our heart, and our neighbour as ourselves; and in that love abstaining from all evil, and doing all possible good to all men.” The same meaning we have sometimes expressed a little more at large thus: “Religion we conceive to be no other than love; the love of God and of all mankind; the loving God “with all our heart, and soul, and strength,’ as having ‘first loved us,’ as the fountain of all the good we have received, and of all we ever hope to enjoy; and the loving every soul which God hath made, every man on earth, as our own soul. “This love we believe to be the medicine of life, the never failing remedy for all the evils of a disordered world, for all the miseries and vices of men. Wherever this is, there are virtue and happiness going hand in hand.