Wesley Corpus

+ The following is Francis's translation of this quotation from Horace : "Wondrous indeed! that bulls ne'er strive to bite, Nor wolves with desperate horns engage in fight." EDIT. You smite with the tongue; with the poison of asps, which is under your lips. A few specimens follow: "The popular Preachers worship another God." "It can never be allowed that Dr. Doddridge worshipped the same God with Paul." "Notice the difference betwixt the God of these Preachers, and the true God; betwixt their Christ, and the Christ preached by the Apostles; betwixt their spirit, and the Spirit that influenced the Apostles." "I know no sinners more hardened, none greater destroyers of mankind, than they." "By no small energy of deceit, they darken the revelation of God, and change the doc trine of the blessed God into a doctrine of self-dependence." Strange, that you yourself should do the very same thing! averring, that "men are justified by a knowledge of the righteousness of Christ," not by the bare work which Christ has wrought! You put me in mind of an old usurer, who vehemently thanked a Minister that had preached a severe sermon against usury; and being asked, "Why do you talk thus?" replied, "I wish there were no usurer in London beside myself!" Sir, do not you wish there was no Minister in Great Britain who taught this doctrine, beside yourself? "That any who has learnt his religion from the New Testament, should mistake their doctrine for the Christian, is astonishing." Theirs, or yours? for it happens to be one and the same with regard to the present point. "By many deceits they change the truth of God into a lie." (Ibid.) If they do, so do you. Indeed you heavily complain of the imputation. You say, "It is both astonish ing and provoking, that, after all, men will say, there is no difference between their scheme and yours." And yet, after all, so it is: Truth is great, and will prevail. In the leading point, that of justification, both you and they teach, "Men are justified by a knowledge of the righteousness of Christ." Only they think, it is a divine, supernatural, experimental knowledge, wrought in the inmost soul; and you think, it is a bare historical knowledge, of the same kind with that which the devils have.