Wesley Corpus

Neither ought he in anywise to cast away his confidence, or to deny the faith he has received, because it is weak, or because it is ‘tried with fire, so that his soul is ‘in heaviness through manifold temptations.” “Neither dare we affirm, as some have done, that all this salvation is given at once. There is indeed an instantaneous, as well as a gradual, work of God in his children; and there wants not, we know, a cloud of witnesses, who have received, in one moment, either a clear sense of the forgiveness of their sins, or the abiding witness of the Holy Spirit. But we do not know a single instance, in any place, of a person’s receiving, in one and the same moment, remission of sins, the abiding witness of the Spirit, and a new, a clean heart. “Indeed, how God may work, we cannot tell; but the general manner wherein he does work is this: Those who once trusted in themselves that they were righteous, that they were rich, and increased in goods, and had need of nothing, are, by the Spirit of God applying his word, convinced that they are poor and naked. All the things that they have done are brought to their remembrance and set in array before them, so that they see the wrath of God hanging over their heads, and feel that they deserve the damnation of hell. In their trouble they cry unto the Lord, and he shows them that he hath taken away their sins, and opens the kingdom of heaven in their hearts, ‘righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.’ Sorrow and pain are fled away, and “sin has no more dominion over them. Knowing they are justified freely through faith in his blood, they “have peace with God * Sometimes they do not; at other times they do, and that grievously. + Not all who are saved from sin; many of them have not attained it yet.