The doctrines which they chiefly insist upon, are the great doctrines of the reformation: “That man is very far gone from original righteousness. That he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works to faith and calling upon God. That we are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings. That albeit good works, which are fruits of faith, and follow after justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God’s judgment; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith; insomuch that by them a lively faith may be evidently known, as a tree is discerned by its fruits.” These are doctrines as diametrically opposite to the church of Rome, as light to darkness. They are the very doctrines, for which Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer, and so many of our first reformers were burned at the stake. And I will venture to say, are doctrines which, when attended with a divine energy, and preached with power, “without taking to their assistance the several arts of management and craft,” always have, and always will, maugre all opposition, make their way through the world, however weak the instruments that deliver them may be, and whatever offences and divisions about some non-essentials may arise among themselves.
These are things which always did, and always will happen in the purest ages of the church. Paul and Barnabas were permitted not only to fall out, but to separate from each other, merely on account of a dispute that arose about taking with them one John, whose surname was Mark. And yet this was over-ruled for the furtherance of the gospel. There was an incestuous person in the church of Corinth, when under even a truly apostolical inspection. And to what heights the contentions arose between Luther, Calvin, and Zwinglius, at the first dawnings of the reformation, about predestination and the sacrament; and that of Bishop Cranmer, Ridley, and Hooper, many years after, about the vestments, is too notorious to be mentioned. It must needs be, that such offences come, whilst good men carry about with them the remainders of indwelling sin, prejudices of education, blindness in their understandings, and have an artful enemy always near at hand, and always ready to blow up the coals of contention, in order to raise a smoke, whereby he may blacken or blemish the work of God. The blessed Jesus wisely permits such things, to cure us of spiritual pride, to remind us of the necessity of looking to himself, to teach us to cease from man, by convincing us, that the best of men are but men at the best, to inure us to long-suffering and forbearance one towards another, to excite in us a more eager desire after heaven, where these disorders will be at an end, and for a more glorious display of his infinite wisdom and power at the day of judgment; when he will convince the wondering world, that in spite of all the subtlety, malice, and rage of his enemies, together with the weaknesses, blindnesses, and jarrings of his friends, he has fully accomplished that glorious work, for which he came to shed his blood; I mean the renewal of a multitude of souls, which no man can number, out of every nation, language, and tongue, by making them partakers of his righteousness, and, through the powerful operations of his blessed Spirit, bringing them back to, and re-instamping upon them that divine image, in which they were originally created.
To awaken a drowsy world to a sense of this, to rouse them out of their formality, as well as profaneness, and put them upon seeking after a present and great salvation, to point out to them a glorious rest, which not only remains for the people of God hereafter, but which by a living faith the very chief of sinners may enter into even here, and without which the most blazing profession is nothing worth; is, as far as I know, the one thing, the grand and common point, in which all the Methodists endeavours do center.
This is what some of all denominations want to be reminded of; and to stir them up to seek after the life and power of godliness, that they may be christians not only in word and profession, but in spirit and in truth, is, and, through Jesus Christ strengthening me, shall be the one sole business of my life. “As for all those (as one expresses it) who are for clipping the wings of the mystic dove, and for confining the power and Spirit of God within the bounds of human establishments, I am well aware of what opposition I must continue to meet with from that quarter. But blessed be God, there are some few amongst us that are men of greater latitude, who can think, and dare speak, more worthily of God’s sovereignty, and acknowledge a work to be his, though it be not according to the exact measure of canonical fitness.” Amongst these, I shall be sure to find hearty friends and well-wishers. And if by others of more confined principles, I am for this accounted an enthusiast, papist, or any thing else, they or you are very welcome to confer that, or any other title, upon, Sir,
Your very humble servant,
G. W.
AN
Expostulatory Letter,
ADDRESSED TO
NICHOLAS LEWIS,
Count Zinzendorff,
AND
Lord Advocate of the Unitas Fratrum.
O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?
Galatians iii. 1.