Wesley Corpus

3. Because it is an unscriptural way of speaking: The Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament speaking, frequently and expressly, both of holiness, of good works, of the law and the commandments of God, as expressly and frequently to the full, as of believing in Jesus Christ. 4. Because by experience I find, it is a dangerous way of speaking, and that, both to the speaker and to the hearers: To the speaker, as it has a peculiar tendency to puff him up, to engénder pride; to make him exalt himself, (under pretence of exalting the grace of God,) and despise others: To the hearers, as it keeps many who are before our eyes from ever awaking out of the sleep of death; as it throws others again into that fatal slumber, who were just beginning to awake; as it stops many in the midst of their Christian course, and turns others clear out of the way; yea, and plunges not a few into all the wretchedness of unclean living. In consideration of this, I the more earnestly desire, when I speak on this head in particular, to “speak as the oracles of God;” to express scriptural sense in scriptural words; in every phrase I use, to keep as close as I can to “the law and the testimony;” being convinced there are no words so fit to express the deep things of God, as those which “holy men of old spake” when “they were moved by the Spirit of God.” LoNDoN, August 24, 1745.