Wesley Corpus

I gave it some years ago in these words:-- “It is that great change which God works in the soul when he brings it into life; when he raises it from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. It is the change wrought in the whole soul by the almighty Spirit of God, when it is ‘created anew in Christ Jesus, when it is ‘renewed after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness;’ when the love of the world is changed into the love of God, pride into humility, passion into meekness, hatred, envy, malice, into a sincere, tender, disinterested love to all mankind. In a word, it is that change whereby the ‘earthly, sensual, devil ish’ mind is turned into the mind which was in Christ Jesus.” (Vol. VI. p. 71.) This is my account of the new birth. What is there ridiculous or enthusiastic in it? “But what do you mean by those tempests, and cries, and pains, and infernal throes attending the new birth?” I will tell you as plainly as I can, in the very same words I used to Dr. Church, after premising that some experience much, some very little, of these pains and throes: “‘When men feel in themselves the heavy burden of sin, see damnation to be the reward of it, behold with the eye of their mind the horror of hell, they tremble, they quake, and are inwardly touched with sorrowfulness of heart, and cannot but accuse themselves, and open their grief unto Almighty God, and call unto him for mercy.