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The Great Controversy 1888
and ‘speak evil of the law;’ who teach men to break (to dissolve, to
loose, to untie the obligation of) not one only, whether of the least
or of the greatest, but all the commandments at a stroke.” “The most
surprising of all the circumstances that attend this strong delusion, is
that they who are given up to it, really believe that they honor Christ
by overthrowing his law, and that they are magnifying his office, while
they are destroying his doctrine! Yea, they honor him just as Judas did,
when he said, ‘Hail, Master, and kissed him.’ And he may as justly
say to every one of them, ‘Betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?’
It is no other than betraying him with a kiss, to talk of his blood, and
take away his crown; to set light by any part of his law, under pretense
of advancing his gospel. Nor indeed can anyone escape this charge,
who preaches faith in any such a manner as either directly or indirectly
tends to set aside any branch of obedience; who preaches Christ so as
to disannul, or weaken in any wise, the least of the commandments of
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God.”
To those who urged that “the preaching of the gospel answers all
the ends of the law,” Wesley replied: “This we utterly deny. It does
not answer the very first end of the law, namely, the convincing men
of sin, the awakening those who are still asleep on the brink of hell.”
The apostle Paul declares that “by the law is the knowledge of sin;”
“and not until man is convicted of sin, will he truly feel his need of the
atoning blood of Christ.... ‘They that be whole,’ as our Lord himself
observes, ‘need not a physician, but they that are sick.’ It is absurd,
therefore, to offer a physician to them that are whole, or that at least
imagine themselves so to be. You are first to convince them that they
are sick; otherwise they will not thank you for your labor. It is equally
absurd to offer Christ to them whose heart is whole, having never yet
been broken.”
Thus while preaching the gospel of the grace of God, Wesley,
like his Master, sought to “magnify the law, and make it honorable.”
Faithfully did he accomplish the work given him of God, and glorious
were the results which he was permitted to behold. At the close of his
long life of more than fourscore years—above half a century spent in
itinerant ministry—his avowed adherents numbered more than half a
million souls. But the multitude that through his labors had been lifted
from the ruin and degradation of sin to a higher and purer life, and
the number who by this teaching had attained to a deeper and richer