Wesley Corpus

But you know you are not happy. Your formal religion no more makes you happy, than your neighbour's gay religion does him. O how much have you suffered for want of plain dealing! Can you now bear to hear the naked truth? You have “the form of godliness, but not the power.” You are a mere whited wall. Before the Lord your God, I ask you, Are you not? Too sure; for your “inward parts are very wickedness.” You love “the creature more than the Creator.” You are “a lover of pleasure more than a lover of God.” A lover of God | You do not love God at all, no more than you love a stone. You love the world; therefore the love of the Father is not in you. 49. You are on the brink of the pit, ready to be plunged into everlasting perdition. Indeed you have a zeal for God; but not according to knowledge. O how terribly have you been deceived posting to hell, and fancying it was heaven. See, at length, that outward religion, without inward, is nothing; is far worse than nothing, being, indeed, no other than a solemn mockery of God. And inward religion you have not. You have not the faith “that worketh by love.” Your faith (so called) is no living, saving principle. It is not the Apostle's faith, “the substance,” or subsistence, “of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” So far from it, that this faith is the verything which you call enthusiasm. You are not con tent with being without it, unless you blaspheme it too. You even revile that “life which is hid with Christ in God; ” all seeing, tasting, hearing, feeling God. These things are foolish ness unto you. No marvel; “for they are spiritually discerned.” 50. O no longer shut your eyes against the light! Know, you have a name that you live, but are dead. Your soul is utterly dead in sin; dead in pride, in vanity, in self-will, in sensuality, in love of the world. You are utterly dead to God. There is no intercourse between your soul and God.