Sufficient, sovereign, saving grace.
Jesus hath said, we all shall hope,
Preventing grace for all is free:
And I, if I be lifted up,
I will draw all men unto Me.
Arise, O God, maintain Thy cause!
The fulness of the Gentiles call:
Lift up the standard of Thy cross
And all shall own Thou diedst for all.[132]
In other hymns he employs the most biting, taunting sarcasm. It is difficult to suppose that these were ever sung even in the thickest of the fight; but they were sown broadcast (price fourpence), and were, no doubt, read with ecstatic delight by those who were on the Wesleys’ side in the great controversy. It is easy at this distance of time and circumstance to condemn the vehemence of the language used on both sides, especially in the later and more acrimonious stages of the controversy. But this was one of ‘freedom’s battles.’ It was magnificent, and it was war. To the Wesleys the doctrine that by the arbitrary decree of God—the God of love!—children were born to a doom which they could neither escape nor deserve was hateful, blasphemous, impossible. If this were indeed the truth of God, what gospel was there to preach? Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die and meet the inevitable doom. Nor could they tolerate what seemed to them the smug satisfaction of ‘the elect,’ to whose certainty of salvation the equal certainty of the damnation of the reprobate added a pleasing flavour. They would not accept salvation on such terms. ‘Take back,’ Charles Wesley cries indignantly,