Wesley Corpus

11. As to the manner of their preaching, they spoke with authority, as speaking not their own word, but the word of Him that sent them, and “by manifestation of the truth, commending themselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” They were “not as many that cauponize the word of God,” debase and adulterate it with foreign mixtures, “but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, spake they in Christ.” They approved themselves the Minis ters of God, “in much patience, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; by pureness, by knowledge,” knowing all their flock by name, all their circumstances, all their wants; “by long suffering, never weary of well-doing, by kindness, by love CHURCH of ENGLAND’s ADVANTAGE. 133 unfeigned; by the word of truth, by the power of God” attending it, “by the armour of righteousness on the right hand, and on the left.” Hence they were “instant in season, out of season,” being never afraid of the faces of men, never ashamed of Christ or of his words, even before an adulterous and sinful generation. They went on unmoved through “honour and dishonour,” through “evil report and good report.” They regarded not father or mother, or wife or children, or houses or lands, or ease or pleasure; but, having this single end in view, to save their own souls, and those that heard them, they “counted not their lives dear unto themselves, so that they might” make full proof of their ministry, so that they might “finish their course with joy, and testify the gospel of the grace of God.” Let all the Right Reverend the Bishops, and the Reverend the Clergy, only walk by this rule,--let them thus live, and thus testify, with one heart and one voice, the gospel of the grace of God, and every Papist within these four seas will soon acknowledge the truth as it is in Jesus. of THE I LAY this down as an undoubted truth:--The more the doctrine of any Church agrees with the Scripture, the more readily ought it to be received. And, on the other hand, the more the doctrine of any Church differs from the Scripture, the greater cause we have to doubt of it. 2.