Wesley Corpus

My comfort is, that through grace I now believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that his Spirit doth bear witness with my spirit that I am a child of God. I take comfort in this and this only, that I see Jesus at the right hand of God; that I personally for myself, and not for another, have an hope full of immortality; that I feel the love of God shed abroad in my heart, being crucified to the world, and the world crucified to me. My rejoicing is this, the testimony of my conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, I have my conversation in the world. Go and find, if you can, a more solid joy, a more blissful comfort, on this side heaven. But this comfort is not shaken, be that opinion true or false; whether the saints in general can or can hot fall. If you take up with any comfort short of this, you lean on the staff of a broken reed, which not only will not bear your weight, but will enter into your hand and pierce you. 25. Seventhly. Those who live by faith may yet fall from God, and perish everlastingly. For thus saith the same inspired writer, “The just shall live by faith; but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.” (Heb. x. 38.) “The just,” the justified person, “shall live by faith,” even now shall he live the life which is hid with Christ in God; and if he endure unto the end, he shall live with God for ever. “But if any man draw back,” saith the Lord, “my soul shall have no pleasure in him;” that is, I will utterly cast him off; and accordingly the drawing back here spoken of is termed, in the verse immediately following, “drawing back to perdition.” “But the person supposed to draw back is not the same with him that is said to live by faith.” I answer, (1.) Who is it then? Can any man draw back from faith who never came to it? But, (2.) Had the text been fairly translated, there had been no pretence for this objection. For the original runs thus: O Bixalog ex rissa's gnasra" was sav wrossix, rai.