Wesley Collected Works Vol 10
| Author | John Wesley |
|---|---|
| Type | treatise |
| Year | None |
| Passage ID | jw-wesley-collected-works-vol-10-342 |
| Words | 394 |
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
296 SERIOUS THOUGHTS UPoN
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.