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The Great Controversy 1888
ciety in London, a statement was read from Luther, describing the
change which the Spirit of God works in the heart of the believer.
As Wesley 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 salvation; 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.”
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.”
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
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long and sharp personal convictions of their own lost condition; and
that they might be able to endure hardness as good soldiers of Christ,
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 contemptu-
ously called Methodists by their ungodly fellow-students,—a name
which is at the present time regarded as honorable by one of the largest
denominations in England and America.
As members of the Church of England, they were strongly attached
to her forms of worship, but the Lord had presented before them in his
Word a higher standard. The Holy Spirit urged them to preach Christ
and him crucified. The power of the Highest attended their labors.