Wesley Corpus

“Because I believe, these do ordinarily convey God’s grace even to unbelievers.” Is this “contending only for a mere possibility of using them without trusting in them?” Not only in this, and many other parts of the Journals, but in a sermon wrote professedly on the subject, I contend that all the ordinances of God are the stated channels of his grace to man; and that it is our bounden duty to use them all, at all possible opportunities. So that to charge the Methodists in general, or me in particular, with undervaluing or dis paraging them, shows just as much regard for justice and truth, as if you was to charge us with Mahometanism. 40. Tedious as it is to wade through so many dirty pages, I will follow you step by step, a little farther. Your Eleventh proof, that we “undermine morality and good works,” is drawn from the following passage:- “I know one ‘under the law” is even as I was for near twice ten years. Every one when he begins to see his fallen state, and to feel the wrath of God abiding on him, relapses into the sin that most easily besets him, soon after repenting of it. Sometimes he avoids, and at many other times he cannot per suade himself to avoid, the occasions of it. Hence his relapses are frequent, and, of consequence, his heart is hardened more and more. Nor can he, with all his sincerity, avoid any one of these four marks of hypocrisy, till, ‘being justified by faith,’ he ‘hath peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.’” (Vol. I. p. 222.) You, Sir, are no competent judge in the cause. But to any who has experienced what St. Paul speaks in his seventh chapter to the Romans, I willingly submit this whole question. You know by experience, that if anger was the sin that did so easily beset you, you relapsed into it for days, or months, or years, soon after repenting of it. Sometimes you avoided the occasions of it; at other times you did not. Hence your relapses were frequent, and your heart was hardened more and more: And yet all this time you was sincerely striving against sin; you could say, without hypocrisy, “The thing which I do, I allow not; the evil which I would not, that I do.