Wesley Collected Works Vol 8
| Author | John Wesley |
|---|---|
| Type | treatise |
| Year | None |
| Passage ID | jw-wesley-collected-works-vol-8-247 |
| Words | 377 |
For as long
as they love God, (and that love no man taketh from them,)
they are always happy in God. Thus they calmly travel on
through life, being never weary nor faint in their minds, never
repining, murmuring, or dissatisfied, casting all their care upon
God, till the hour comes that they should drop this covering of
earth, and return unto the great Father of spirits. Then, espe
cially, it is that they “rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of
glory.” You who credit it not, come and see. See these living
and dying Christians. Happy while on earth they breathe;
Mightier joys ordain'd to know,
Trampling on siu, hell, and death,
To the third heaven they go! Now, if these things are so, what reasonable man can deny
(supposing the Scriptures to be true) that God is now visiting
this nation, in a far other manner than we had cause to ex
pect? Instead of pouring out his fierce displeasure upon us, he
hath made us yet another tender of mercy: So that even when
sin did most abound, grace hath much more abounded. 6. Yea, “the grace of God, which bringeth salvation,” pre
sent salvation from inward and outward sin, hath abounded of
late years in such a degree, as neither we nor our fathers had
known. How extensive is the change which has been wrought
on the minds and lives of the people! Know ye not that the
sound has gone forth into all the land; that there is scarce a city
or considerable town to be found, where some have not been
roused out of the sleep of death, and constrained to cry out, in
the bitterness of their soul, “What must I do to be saved ?”
that this religious concern has spread to every age and sex;
to most orders and degrees of men? to abundance of those,
in particular, who, in time past, were accounted monsters of
wickedness, “drinking in iniquity like water,” and commit
ting all “uncleanness with greediness.”
7. In what age has such a work been wrought, considering
the swiftness as well as the extent of it? When have such
numbers of sinners in so short a time been recovered from
the error of their ways?