Later English Reformers
213
On his return to England, Wesley, under the instruction of a Mora-
vian preacher, arrived at a clearer understanding of Bible faith. He
was convinced that he must renounce all dependence upon his own
works for salvation and must trust wholly to “the Lamb of God, which
[256]
taketh away the sin of the world.” At a meeting of the Moravian society
in London a statement was read from Luther, describing the change
which the Spirit of God works in the heart of the believer. As Wes-
ley listened, faith was kindled in his soul. “I felt my heart strangely
warmed,” he says. “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salva-
tion: and an assurance was given me, that He had taken away my sins,
even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”—Ibid., page
52.
Through long years of wearisome and comfortless striving—years
of rigorous self-denial, of reproach and humiliation—Wesley had
steadfastly adhered to his one purpose of seeking God. Now he had
found Him; and he found that the grace which he had toiled to win
by prayers and fasts, by almsdeeds and self-abnegation, was a gift,
“without money and without price.”
Once established in the faith of Christ, his whole soul burned with
the desire to spread everywhere a knowledge of the glorious gospel of
God’s free grace. “I look upon all the world as my parish,” he said;
“in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounden
duty, to declare unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of
salvation.”—Ibid., page 74.
He continued his strict and self-denying life, not now as the ground,
but the result of faith; not the root, but the fruit of holiness. The grace
of God in Christ is the foundation of the Christian’s hope, and that
grace will be manifested in obedience. Wesley’s life was devoted to
the preaching of the great truths which he had received—justification
through faith in the atoning blood of Christ, and the renewing power of
the Holy Spirit upon the heart, bringing forth fruit in a life conformed
to the example of Christ.
Whitefield and the Wesleys had been prepared for their work by
long and sharp personal convictions of their own lost condition; and
that they might be able to endure hardness as good soldiers of Christ,
[257]
they had been subjected to the fiery ordeal of scorn, derision, and per-
secution, both in the university and as they were entering the ministry.
They and a few others who sympathized with them were contemp-