Wesley Corpus

It is your doctrine as well as mine, and St. Paul’s: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels; though I have all knowledge, and all faith; though I give all my goods to feed the poor, yea, my body to be burned, and have not love, I am nothing.” Whatever public worship, therefore, people may have at tended, or whatever ministry they have lived under from their infancy, they must at all hazards be convinced of this, or they perish for ever; yea, though that conviction at first unhinge them ever so much; though it should in a manner distract them for a season. For it is better they should be perplexed and ter rified now, than that they should sleep on and awake in hell. 9. In the Tenth, Twelfth, and Thirteenth queries I am not concerned. But you include me also when you say, in the Eleventh, “They absolutely deny that recreations of any kind, considered as such, are or can be innocent.” I cannot find any such assertion of mine either in the place you refer to, or any other. But what kinds of recreation are innocent it is easy to determine by that plain rule: “Whether ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” I am now to take my leave of you for the present. But first I would earnestly entreat you to acquaint yourself what ourdoc trines are, before you make any fartherobservations upon them. Surely, touching the nature of salvation we agree, -that “pure religion and undefiled is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction,”--to do all possible good, from a principle of love to God and man; “and to keep ourselves unspotted from the world,”--inwardly and outwardly to abstain from all evil. 10. With regard to the condition of salvation, it may be re membered that I allow, not only faith, but likewise holiness or universal obedience, to be the ordinary condition of final salva tion; and that when I say, Faith alone is the condition of pre sent salvation, what I would assert is this: (1) That without faith no man can be saved from his sins; can be either inwardly or outwardly holy. And, (2.) That at what time soever faith is given, holiness commences in the soul.