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.