Wesley Corpus

every soul committed to their charge ? And watch over each with all tenderness and long-fuffering, as they that must give account? Marking how they either fall or rise? How these wax weary and faint in their mind ; and those grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ? Who can do this, unless his whole heart be in the work ? Unless he defire nothing but to spend and be spent for them; and count not his life dear unto himself, so he may present them blameless in the day of the Lord Jesus, Can any shepherd do this (and if he do it not, he will never give an account with joy) who imagines, he has little more to do, than to preach once or twice a week ? That this is the main point, the chief part of that office, which he hath taken upon himself before God? What grols ignorance is this? What a total mistake of the truth? What a miserable blunder touching the whole nature of his office? It is indeed a very great thing, to speak in the name of God; it might make him that 1s the stoutest of heart tremble, if he considered, that every time he speaks to others, his own soul is at stake, But great, inexpressibly great as this is, it is perhaps the least part of our work. To seek and to save that which is lost,” to bring souls from Satan to God, to instruct the ignorant, to reclaim the wicked, to convince the gainsayer; to direct their feet mto the way of peace, and then keep them therein ; to follow them step by step, lest they turn out of the way, and advise them in their doubts and temptations; to lift up them that fall, to refresh them that are faint, and to comfort the weak-hearted ; to administer various helps, as the variety of occasions require, according to their several necessities. These are parts of our office; all this we have undertaken at the peril of our own soul, A sense of this made that holy man of old cry out, I marvel if any Ruler in the Church shall be faved : ” and a greater than him says, in the fulness of his heart, % Who is sufficient for these things ?“