Wesley Corpus

Such a complication of villanies of every kind, considered with all their aggravations; such a scorn of whatever bears the face of virtue; such injustice, fraud, and falsehood; above all, such perjury, and such a method of law, we may defy the whole world to produce. What multitudes are found throughout our land, who do not even profess any religion at all ! And what numbers of those who profess much, confute their profession by their practice yea, and perhaps by their exorbitant pride, vanity, covetousness, rapaciousness or oppression, cause the very name of religion to stink in the nostrils of many (otherwise) reasonable men I 2. “However, we have many thousands still of truly virtuous and religious men.” Wherein does their religion consist? in righteousness and true holiness; in love stronger than death; fervent gratitude to God, and tender affection to all his crea tures? Is their religion the religion of the heart; a renewal of soul in the image of God? Do they resemble Him they worship? Are they free from pride, from vanity, from malice and envy; from ambition and avarice; from passion and lust; from every uneasy and unlovely temper? Alas, I fear neither they (the greater part at least) nor you know what this religion means; or have any more notion of it, than the peasant that holds the plough of the religion of a Gymnosophist. It is well if the genuine religion of Christ has any more alli ance with what you call religion, than with the Turkish pil grimages to Mecca, or the Popish worship of our Lady of Loretto. Have not you substituted, in the place of the reli gion of the heart, something (I do not say equally sinful, but) equally vain, and foreign to the worshipping of God “in spirit and in truth?” What else can be said even of prayer, (public or private,) in the manner wherein you generally perform it? as a thing of course, running round and round in the same dull track, without either the knowledge or love of God, without one heavenly temper, either attained or improved ! O what mockery of God is this! And yet even this religion, which can do you no good, may do you much harm. Nay, it is plain it does; it daily increases your pride, as you measure your goodness by the number and length of your performances.