Wesley Corpus

Nay, it is plain it does; it daily increases your pride, as you measure your goodness by the number and length of your performances. It gives you a deep contempt of those who do not come up to the full tale of your virtues. It inspires men with a zeal which is the very fire of hell, furious, bitter, implacable, unmerciful; often to a degree that extin guishes all compassion, all good nature and humanity, Inso much that the execrable fierceness of spirit, which is the natural fruit of such a religion, hath many times, in spite of all ties, divine and human, broke out into open violence, into rapine, murder, sedition, rebellion, civil war, to the desolation of whole cities and countries. Tantum haec religio potuit suadere malorum !" 3. Now, if there be a God, and one that is not a mere idle * So much mischief this religion does ! spectator of the things that are done upon earth, but a re warder of men and nations according to their works, what can the event of these things be? It was reasonable to believe that he would have risen long ago and maintained his own cause, either by sending the famine or pestilence among us, or by pouring out his fury in blood. And many wise and holy men have frequently declared that they daily expected this; that they daily looked for the patience of God to give place, and judgment to rejoice over mercy. 4. Just at this time, when we wanted little of “filling up the measure of our iniquities,” two or three Clergymen of the Church of England began vehemently to “call sinners to re pentance.” In two or three years they had sounded the alarm to the utmost borders of the land. Many thousands gathered together to hear them; and in every place where they came, many began to show such a concern for religion as they never had done before. A stronger impression was made on their minds, of the importance of things eternal, and they had more earnest desires of serving God than they had ever had from their earliest childhood. Thus did God begin to draw them toward himself, with the cords of love, with the bands of a man. Many of these were in a short time deeply convinced of the number and heinousness of their sins.