Wesley Corpus

Treatise Second Letter On Enthusiasm Of Methodists And Papists

AuthorJohn Wesley
Typetreatise
YearNone
Passage IDjw-treatise-second-letter-on-enthusiasm-of-methodists-and-papists-015
Words388
Free Will Works of Piety Assurance
I am persuaded you have. And yet surely your brain is always cool and temperate! never “intoxicated with the heated fumes of spirituous particles !” 13. If you quote not incoherent scraps, (by which you may make anything out of anything,) but entire connected sen tences, it will appear that the rest of your quotations make no more for your purpose than the foregoing. Thus, although I allow, that on May 24, “I was much buffeted with tempta tions; but I cried to God, and they fled away; that they re turned again and again; I as often lifted up my eyes, and he sent me help from his holy place;” (Vol. I. p. 103;) it will only prove the very observation I make myself: “I was fight ing both under the law and under grace. But then I was some times, if not often, conquered; now I was always conqueror.” That sometime after, I “was strongly assaulted again, and after recovering peace and joy, was thrown into perplexity afresh by a letter, asserting that no doubt or fear could con sist with true faith; that my weak mind could not then bear to be thus sawn asunder,” will not appear strange to any who are not utter novices in experimental religion. No more than that, one night the next year, “I had no life or spirit in me, and was much in doubt, whether God would not lay me aside, and send other labourers into his harvest.” 14. You add, “He owns his frequent relapses into sin, for near twice ten years. Such is the case of a person who tells us that he carefully considered every step he took; one of inti mate communication with the Deity l’” Sir, I did not tell you that; though, according to custom, you mark the words as mine. It is well for you, that forging quotations is not felony. My words are, “O what an hypocrite have I been (if this be so) for near twice ten years! But I know it is not so. I know every one under the law is even as I was;” namely, from the time I was twelve years old, till considerably above thirty. “And is it strange,” you say, “that such a one should be destitute of means to resolve his scruples?