Wesley Corpus

9. Drawing to a conclusion, you say, “What pity, so many volumes should have been written upon the question,--whether a man be justified by faith or works, seeing they are two essen tial parts of the same thing!” (Page 25.) If by works you understand inward and outward holiness, both faith and works are essential parts of Christianity; and yet they are essentially different, and by God himself contradistinguished from each other; and that in the very question before us: “Him that worketh not, but believeth.” Therefore, whether a man be jus tified by faith or works, is a point of the last importance; other wise, our Reformers could not have answered to God their spend ing so much time upon it. Indeed, they were both too wise and too good men to have wrote so many volumes on a trifling or needless question. 10. If in speaking on this important point, (such at least it appears to me,) I have said any thing offensive, any that im plies the least degree of anger or disrespect, it was entirely foreign to my intention; nor indeed have I any provocation: I have no room to be angry at your maintaining what you believe to be the truth of the gospel; even though I might wish you had omitted a few expressions, Quas aut incuria fudit, Aut humana parum cavit natura." In the general, from all I have heard concerning you, I cannot but very highly esteem you in love. And that God may give you both “a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort,” is the prayer of, Reverend Sir, Your affectionate brother and servant, My Lord, YoUR Lordship well observes, “To employ buffoonery in the service of religion is to violate the majesty of truth, and to deprive it of a fair hearing. To examine, men must be serious.” * Such as escaped my notice; or such as may be placed to the account of human infirmity. (Preface, p. 11.) I will endeavour to be so in all the following pages; and the rather, not only because I am writing to a person who is so far, and in so many respects, my superior, but also because of the importance of the subject: For is the question only, What I am? a madman, or a man in his senses?