Wesley Corpus

It is you yourselves that, by opposing the very end of his coming into the world, are crucifying the Son of God afresh, and putting him to an open shame. It is you that, by expecting to see the Lord without holiness, through the righteousness of Christ, “make the blood of the covenant an unholy thing,” keeping those unholy that so trust in it. O beware ! for evil is before you. If those who name not the name of Christ, and die in their sins, shall be punished seven-fold, surely you who thus make Christ a minister of sin, shall be punished seventy-and-seven fold. What; make Christ destroy his own kingdom? make Christ a factor for Satan? set Christ against holiness? talk of Christ as saving his people in their sins? It is no better than to say, He saves them from the guilt, and not from the power, of sin. Will you make the righteousness of Christ such a cover for the unrighteousness of man? So that by this means, “the unrighteous” of every kind “shall inherit the kingdom of God!” Stop! Consider! What are you doing? You did run well: Who hath bewitched you? Who hath corrupted you from the sim plicity of Christ, from the purity of the gospel? You did know, “He that believeth is born of God: And whosoever is born of God sinneth not;” but while “he keepeth himself, that wicked one toucheth him not.” O come back to the true, the pure, the old gospel ! that which ye received in the begin ning. Come back to Christ, who died to make you an holy people, “zealous of good works.” “Remember from whence you are fallen, and repent, and do the first works.” Your “Father worketh hitherto:” Doye work; else your faith is vain. For “wilt thou know, O vain,” O empty “man, that faith without works is dead?” Wilt thou know that “though I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing?” Wilt thou know, that all the blood and righteous ness of Christ, unless “that mind be in thee which was in Him,” and thou likewise “walk as Christ walked,” will only increase thy damnation?