Wesley Corpus

To is “meant to set aside all repentance for sins past, and reso lutions of living better for the time to come?” 11. Your Lordship next falls with all your might upon that strange assertion, as you term it, “We come to his table, not to give him anything, but to receive whatsoever he sees best for us.” “Whereas,” says your Lordship, “in the exhortation at the time of receiving, the people are told that they must give most humble and hearty thanks,--and immediately after re ceiving, both Minister and people join in offering and present ing themselves before God.” (Ibid. pp. 20, 21.) O God! in what manner are the most sacred things here treated! the most venerable mysteries of our religion | What quibbling, what playing upon words, is here! Not to give him anything. “Yes, to give him thanks.” O my Lord, are these the words of a Father of the Church ! 12. Your Lordship goes on : “To the foregoing account of these modern principles and doctrines, it may not be improper to subjoin a few observations upon the indirect practices of the same people in gaining proselytes.” (Ibid. pp. 23, 24.) “I. They persuade the people, that the established worship, with a regular attendance upon it, is not sufficient to answer the ends of devotion.” Your Lordship mentioned this likewise in the Observations. In your fourth query it stood thus: “Whether a due and regular attendance on the public offices of religion, paid in a serious and composed way, does not answer the true ends of devotion.” Suffer me to repeat part of the answer then given:-- “I suppose by ‘devotion’ you mean public worship; by the ‘true ends’ of it, the love of God and man; and by “a due and regular attendance on the public offices of religion, paid in a serious and composed way, the going as often as we can to our parish church, and to the sacrament there administered. If so, the question is, Whether this attendance on those offices does not produce the love of God and man. I answer, Sometimes it does, and sometimes it does not. I myself thus attended them for many years; and yet am conscious to myself, that, during that whole time, I had no more of the love of God than a stone.